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Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Volume II
Louis Goldblatt
WORKING CLASS LEADER IN THE ILWU, 1935-1977
in two volumes
With an Introduction by
Clark Kerr
An Interview Conducted by
Estolv Ethan Ward
in 1978, 1979
All uses of this manuscript are covered by
a legal agreement between the Regents of the
University of California and Louis Goldblatt
dated December 4, 1979. The manuscript is
thereby made available for research purposes.
According to the agreement, the manuscript is
closed to all users until January 1, 1983,
except with the written permission of Louis
Goldblatt. All literary rights to publish are
reserved to Louis Goldblatt until January 1,
1990. No part of the manuscript may be quoted
for publication without the written permission
of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the
University of California at Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publi
cation should be addressed to the Regional
Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should
include identification of the specific passages
to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages,
and identification of the user. The legal agree
ment with Louis Goldblatt requires that he be
notified of the request and allowed thirty days
in which to respond.
Copy no. /
Copyright Cc) 1980 by the Regents of the University of California
TABLE OF CONTENTS Louis Goldblatt
VOLUME I
INTRODUCTION by Clark Kerr
INTERVIEW HISTORY
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD 1
The Lithuanian Freethinkers
Walking Away From the Czar
Strikes and "Cossacks" 5
About Religion 6
A Quick Jump to Hollywood
Back to the Bronx 9
The Other Children 10
The Division of Labor 11
Women and Orthodoxy
The Family Scene
Friends and Enemies 20
Anti-Semitism 24
Musical Beginnings 26
The Work Ethic 37
Leftwing Politics 43
II ON TO CALIFORNIA 54
Education, Work, Political Action 54
Joining the Young Communists 69
Matrimony 78
Life in Berkeley 82
Law and Justice 92
The Great 1934 Strike 99
The Communist Candidacy
The Electrifying Speaker 120
The Dangers of Fascism 121
III THE MARCH INLAND 127
The Warehouse Organizing Drive 127
The 1936 Strike 142
The Move to the CIO 156
The Teamster Blockade 170
IV TROUBLES AND TURBULENCE 183
Strikes, Fights and Progress 183
The Hot Boxcar 186
The Master Contract
Problems About War-like Japan 197
The Crockett Struggle 202
More CIO Activity 219
The Pardoning of Tom Mooney 225
Disturbing War Rumbles 234
Labor Spies 237
Union Leadership vs. Leftwing Politics 242
A Lively Social Life 248
V EFFECTS OF THE WAR 265
First Mention of Hawaii 265
More About the California CIO 269
Concentration Camps for Japanese 281
The Power of Jewish Tradition 290
VI THE HAWAIIAN DRAMA OPENS 296
Aftermath of the Tolan Hearing 296
Studying Hawaii 298
Feudal Power - The Big Five 303
Discovery of the Natural Leader 308
A Boat-Ride to the Islands 310
Grass Roots Political Action 318
How to Quell Racial Friction 319
The Garbage Can Agreement 323
VII MEANWHILE ON THE MAINLAND 327
The Party Connection Dissolves 327
Work on the War Labor Board 328
VIII SCARING THE BIG FIVE 344
A Smashing Political Victory 344
Stories About a Wobbly 352
The Pre-Strike Legal Victory 357
IX A TEST OF UNION STRENGTH 366
Striking on the Big Five's Money 366
The Passion for Land 378
Smashing Racial Discrimination 384
The Tough Hotelman 393
That Awful Brown Rice 402
X FINANCIAL LEGERDEMAIN 409
Staving Off a Mill on Dollar Judgment 409
Waving Farewell to the Party 419
XI END OF WARTIME CONTROLS 432
"Free Enterprise" Again 432
The Committee for Maritime Unity 443
A Question of Sleep 446
Effects of the Cold War 455
"Hawaii for the Hawaiians" 457
Showdown! 464
XII THE "NEW LOOK" 476
Employers Turn the Other Cheek 476
Kindness to Union Men 486
Family Interlude 489
A Horrendous Period 499
XIII A STORY ALL BY ITSELF 504
The Great Longshore Strike in Hawaii 504
A Long, Difficult Strike 516
The "Dear Joe" Stories 519
The "Broom Brigade"
Fun on An Airplane 527
Strike-Breaking Attempts 530
The Ranks Hold Solid 543
A Rift in the Leadership? 548
XIV ZERO SPELLS SUCCESS 556
"No Stoop, No Squat, No Squint" 556
A Heave-Ho to the "Final Offer" 557
Dangers Abroad 562
Talking with Mr. Kruschchev 576
The International Blacklist 585
Blighty Lets Down the Bars 589
VOLUME II
XV PERILS OF PARALLELISM 596
More About Expulsion from the CIO 596
XVI THE "CONSPIRACY" CASE 611
And Other Headaches 611
More Trouble in Hawaii 623
Other Legal Harassment 627
The Man Who Turned 643
XVII A SWEET REVENGE 654
The Lanai Strike 654
Oh! Those Early Fifties! 673
Fighting at the Dalles 678
Seven Key Words 680
XVIII A PACE-SETTING PENSION PLAN 685
One Hundred Bucks a Month 685
Death of Gene Paton 692
Reason Instead of Force 694
The Velde Committee 713
The Witness Lies 721
Relations with the ILA 726
The Shady Side of the Street 733
The Eastland Committee 736
The McClellan Committee 738
The Kennedy Brothers 750
XIX IMPROVING RELATIONS WITH THE TEAMSTERS 757
An Analysis of Jimmy .H of fa 757
An Interesting Phone Call 764
XX NEW MAN IN THE PICTURE 781
A Very Smooth Operator 781
An Amazing Change 784
Matson Gets the Brush-Off 785
Pensions, Dental Plan, Housing 787
How To Save a Million Dollars 793
"Conformance and Performance" 801
XXI THE MECHANIZATION PROGRAM 807
Velvet Glove on Steel Hand 807
Yarns of the Docks 811
Moans and Groans 814
An Evening with Chaplin 817
Comparisons with the ILA 824
The Guaranteed Annual Wage 825
What Are "Conditions"? 829
XXII END OF AN ERA 843
Conventional Operations Disappear 843
The Shorter Work Week 848
One Crucial Word 855
XXIII THAT CHARMING SCOUNDREL 862
A Bigger Share of the Pie 862
Fantastic Economic Power 866
Men's Opinions of Each Other 870
XXIY CLASHING PERSONALITIES 877
Changes in the Union Membership 877
The 1958 Sugar Strike 880
Whispers vs. Pacts 886
XXV COOPERATION WITH THE TEAMSTERS 893
Formation of the ILWU-Teamsters
Joint Council 893
Dealing with Jimmy Hoffa 896
Men with Brass Balls 898
Teamsters v. Farm Workers 909
How Kennedy Beat Nixon 914
XXVI BRIDGES-ILA v. GOLDBLATT 918
Sharp Disputes Among the Leadership 918
Ideologies? 922
Back to the Womb? 927
Bridges Makes a Switch 931
XXVII A MINUET WITH THE IBT 934
Definite Affiliation Negotiations 934
Problems with the ILWU Constitution 936
Problems with the IBT Constitution 937
How Not to Conduct a Strike 939
XXVIII EVENTS OF THE SIXTIES 943
An Historical Period 943
Lessened ILWU Activity 944
Tackling High Medical Costs 949
The Free Speech Movement 952
Protests v. the Vietnam War 955
Supporting the Farm Workers 961
XXIX THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPER STRIKE 971
Rank and File Discontent 971
Helping in the Printers' Strike 973
An Assist in the Guild Strike 978
Sixteen Unions Involved 979
Getting the Crafts Together 982
A Plan That Succeeded 986
XXX MORE ABOUT THE SIXTIES
A Very Tough Clash
Cooperation Works Well
A Sociological Lesson
Health Plan Alternatives
Hoffa Goes to Jail
XXXI INTERNAL POLITICKING
The Fight for Vice-President
The Membership Questionnaire
Total Polarization
The Hawaii Hotel Negotiations
XXXII THE LONGSHORE STRIKE OF 1971
Bridges Snubs the Alliance for
Labor Action
Bridges Renews ILA Affiliation Plea
Another Try at the Teamsters
XXXIII VIETNAM AND OTHER PROBLEMS
The Full-Page Ad
More Internal Friction
The 1974 Sugar Strike
XXXIV THE $28,000,000 POKER GAME
But First, Open Heart Surgery
An Important Golf Game
The Ante Goes Up
Bridges Rocks the Boat
The Political Economics of Sugar
Corn Sweeter Than Sugar?
Goldblatt's Swan Song on Sugar
This Consultant Business
XXXV ISRAEL AND THE ARABS
The Israeli Groupings
Peace or Land?
Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic vs. Arab
Angry Discussions
XXXVI THE LAST WAREHOUSE PROBLEM
New Man Talks Tough
A Short, Sweet Strike
992
992
993
997
1000
1001
1003
1003
1008
1012
1020
1027
1027
1033
1037
1038
1038
1043
1045
1051
1051
1056
1059
1061
1067
1073
1075
1079
1085
1085
1089
1093
1098
1101
1101
1104
XXXVII THAT DELEGATION TO CHINA
The First Inquiries
Wives - A Strange Question
Finally, The Trip to China
No Inflation
Safe Streets
Industry Has Far To Go
Target Date Is A. D. 2000
Revolutionary Problems
Role of the Unions
Use of Incentives
No Grievance Procedure
XXXVIII THE AGE LIMIT PLOY
The 65-Year Rule
Goldblatt Calls the Turn
The Office Boss
XXXIX THE FOND FAREWELLS
The Dinner for Harry
The Affair for Lou
The Daughters
Family Doings
Ruminations
Hope for the World
1106
1106
1108
1111
1113
1113
1114
1115
1115
1117
1118
1120
1122
1122
1126
1130
1138
1138
1141
1143
1146
1154
1161
TAPE GUIDE TO BOTH VOLUMES
INDEX TO BOTH VOLUMES
1166
1171
596
VOLUME II
X7 PERILS OF PARALLELISM
(Interview 22: 15 August, 1978)
More About Expulsion From The CIO
ard: Lou, we were going to talk about the circum
stances surrounding the expulsion of the ILWU
from the CIO.
LG-: Yes - I think we've covered very thoroughly the
1949 ILWU convention, although I "believe the
three guys who came out did not include R. J.
Thomas. That was at a later time or different
circumstances. The ones who were here were
Adolph G-ermer, Jim Leonard - was it Tim Flynn?
Ward: Yes, Flynn -
LG-: Right - he was on the CIO staff in Los Angeles.
The ones who were around the convention and who
sent the telegram saying we better line up or
else. The principal issue on which there was
sharp disagreement, the most fundamental as far
as the ILWU was concerned, was autonomy.
Just to make clear what we meant by that: it
didn't necessarily mean, for example, that if
the CIO Executive Council adopted a position,
we would arbitrarily have the right to just go
out and denigrate it and turn it down. On that
score, we said okay, we'll feel obligated to
present the recommendation, but at that point
the membership still had the right to agree or
disagree. It was not a business of being a
group of completely undisciplined characters who
597
LG: were out to do as they pleased. Autonomy was
the basic issue. A second issue that loomed
big at the convention was the World Federation
of Trade Unions; by 1949, the CIO was pulling
out of it, although the CIO was one of the found
ing members of the WFTU. The Cold War had set
in and changes that were reflected in the CIO
were taking place in the political scene.
As I recall, Bob Robertson went to the CIO
convention in 1948. In '48, of course, we were
up to our ears in the longshore strike and it
could very well be that he was the only one we
sent, just to be present and pick up whatever
support we could for the strike. Whether he went
to the '49 convention, I'm not sure myself.
There were a whole series of unions under the
gun - United Electrical Workers, the Radio
Operators, American Communications Association,
the Pur and Leather Workers; another was Mine,
Mill and Smelter Workers, a total of around ten.
Some of them small, some of them big. Whether
the Packinghouse Workers were under the gun,
I'm not sure; they probably were because I think
it was before they merged with the Butcher Work
men. Anyway, they had these series of trials,
and now I'll eo back to our trial, which took
place in 1950.
We felt that the trial itself of course didn't
amount to much; it was pretty well pro forma.
Arthur Goldberg was counsel for the CIO at the
time and he presented the CIO's case, all of it
predicated around "parellelism," or that the
II WU was taking the same position as the Commun
ist party. There was no discussion on the
merits, whether it was a good position or a bad
position. The only concern of the CIO was that
this was their way of proving that we were
following: a Communist party line. This of course
was not true. The union would take issues up on
their own merits, like the Marshall Plan.
Ward: What was the union's position on the Marshall
Plan?
598
LG-: Our general position was that we were not opposed
to the Marshall Plan as such, the idea of help-
ins; some of the staggering economies in Europe.
We didn't think the Marshall Plan was going to
provide any genuine amelioration for what to
us appeared to be the growing signs of another
depression. The immediate post-war "boom was
somewhat over and, you might recall, by 1949
unemployment was growing very rapidly. The
economy took quite a tailspin until it was shored
up by the Korean War.
Our principal objection was the use of the
Marshall Plan to interfere in the internal
affairs of other countries, including the promo
tion in almost all cases of hard, rightwing
lines invariably in violent opposition to any of
the leftwing unions like the CG-IL in Italy, or
the CG-T in France.
Of course the Administration was huckle-de-
buck for the Marshall Plan, and that was the
position of the CIO as well. As a matter of
fact, by 1949 there was a good deal of economic
information coming along to confirm the ILWU
position. But these things sort of got lost in
the shuffle. That was not the concern of the
people who were pressing for our ouster.
This whole move was for the CIO to wear its
sack cloth and ashes, do penance, and finally
get accepted into the official circles. I think
that cleaning up the CIO v/as just another facet
of the Cold War and its application inside the
trade union movement. Bear in mind, all this
went hand in hand with Taft-Hartley, with non-
Communist affidavits, with the step-up in
redbaiting that was going on. All these things
were a single package.
Ward: What was the evidence?
LG-: The same parellelism, nothing else.
Ward: Nobody got up and said something?
599
LG: Yes. But there was no effort to prove, for
example, that somebody was a member of the
Communist party, that so many members of our
Executive Board were in the Communist party.
None of this. They satisfied themselves entirely
with this business of putting a case together
which put the Pep-pies' World on one side, The
Dispatcher on the other and said they took the
same position on this or that and the other
thing.
Ward: So, they did that?
LG: Yes. No attempt to weigh them, either. In
other words, there was no effort in the presen
tation of the material to say, all right, they
took this position which was identical with that
of the Communist party. They ignored the
following 25 issues of the two papers that might
have given them doubts.
These, of course, are things that I'm thor
oughly familiar with because I recall some
pretty sharp differences with some of the party
people on some of their positions. One, where
they developed this theory of super-seniority.
I, for one, felt that this was a terribly
mistaken policy. I think eventually the whole
thing was dropped; it was just one of those
flyers. Somebody sits down and works these
things out on the typewriter, even before they
think them through.
/
There were other things I felt didn't make
too much sense; some of their, not dallying
around with the '49 strike - they pretty well
left it alone - but party people had been down
there and of course they had a party organization
in Hawaii. For some reason or other, they in
effect tried to preempt the union thinking on a
lot of these things.
I guess that happens to a lot of organiza
tions, the party people posing the problem that
we might be pretty good trade unionists but after
all we didn't know the political scene the way
they did; sort of an odd down-grading. I got
600
LG-: reports on some of their meetings. I know that
Jack and I talked it over and I said, "Oh,
forget the whole thing; no use getting into that
kind of a discussion with them. It's a waste of
time . "
So, it isn't as though the CIO made any
attempt to find these things out - it was just
this other type of presentation. I think that
0. A. Knight - Jack Knight - was a member of
that committee.
Ward: Was there any attempt on the part of the ILWU to
point out the things you .just mentioned? The
differences in strategy and tactics?
LG-: I doubt it; we weren't going to go in there to
try to prove that we were not guilty by redbait
ing others. This is the most accepted technique
of all - and I think the most dangerous - because
you start on that line and the end point is
exactly what the opposition wants to get done.
You start out by saying, "Look, I am not a
Red." Somebody then says, "Okay, prove it."
"Well, I disagreed with the Communist party on
this, that or the other and agreed on some of
the things I might have thought they were right
on. I might have second thoughts about them -
I'm still of an independent mind." "Well, that
doesn't mean a thing; what are you doing to ac
tively fight them?"
Once you start proving it that way, then
they're standing behind you and saying, "How
come you've stopped fighting?" You out of wind
or something? Why don't you take this issue up,
that issue up?" Pretty soon they're barraging
you with every redbaiting program you can
imagine. It's a route that once you start, there
is no turning back.
I'm not saying you don't challenge these
things under certain circumstances: like we
spent some time in that fact-finding hearing in
Hawaii. I recall before the fact-finding hear
ing even started, there was the offer to make it
binding arbitration which was immediately rejected
by the employers.
601
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
I deliberately made another proposal, that they
start the whole fact-finding off by looking into
the question of whether or not this was a
Communist strike. Apparently there was a bit
of a halt in the proceedings; their panel huddled
or caucused or something, then announced,
"Communism is not an issue." That had nothing
to do with what the papers were saying - no, of
course not - so, it is not as though you don't
tackle some of these things, but you tackle them
in a different way. So, to try to present this
stuff to the CIO - that would have made no sense
at all.
Was there anybody at the CIO hearing before this
committee, chaired by 0. A. Knight, for the ILWU?
Yes, Harry was there.
Oh, Harry was there?
I think Bill Glazier might have been there. I
know we sent Tony Rania back there. Tony Rania
was head of this combined Hawaii local, Local
142, and he made a very dramatic presentation.
He came from the Waialua plantation. That's on
Oahu and one of the last that we organized.
That was the one managed by this guy, Midkiff.
The guy who had you out to dinner?
Yep, the guy who was going to pay us the dues if
we'd leave him alone; smart, paternalistic
attitude; paid off a little bit better where the
whole strike leadership wound up as lunas after
the strike.
Well, anyway Tony Rania was there and present
ed a damn dramatic case. He had worked at Waia
lua, as well as other sugar plantations; he knew
a lot about it and had been there most of his
life. When he got all through, there was no
reply to the things he testified about: the
difference that the ILWU made in plantation life;
what happened in the political scene; what
happened sociologically as well as economically.
What happened was a complete revolution.
602
LG: No, the only reply of the people in the CIO
pressing for expulsion was the standard one
they used in those days. "This might be true,
but the real question is 'Why did you do these
things? What was the real motive? ' "
##
Ward: Okay, did Harry or anyone else make any response
besides Tony?
LG: Yes. I think Harry Presented a case, pretty
much along the lines of the position the ILWU
convention had taken, the feelings of the union
about autonomy and the guarantees of autonomy
that were the initial understandings and agree
ments on affiliation.
Ward: Was any argument made before this committee to
the effect that they had supported the ILWU and
the officials of the ILWU - the ILWU hadn't
changed. Why this change on the part of the
CIO?
LG: Well, no, that's irrelevant, as far as the people
present were concerned.
Ward: Well, did anybody say so?
LG: I suppose Harry did, yeah. That was one of the
things we hammered away at, at the convention
before a vote was taken on autonomy. The vote
on autonomy was overwhelming.
Ward: So you were kicked out?
LG. Yeah. All the unions under the gun agreed
generally on the procedure to be used. There
was a strong feeling on the part of the UE that
the so-called trials were just kangaroo courts,
nothing but show pieces designed to promote the
CIO's efforts to wipe out these unions. In the
case of the UE they walked out. So, there
wasn't complete agreement but no hard words
among us; one outfit wanted to go about it one
way and the other outfit wanted to go at it
another way.
603
LG-: e decided it was better to stay on and fight.
Incidentally, not too different a position
than what we took at the time we affiliated
with the CIO and were still part of the AFofL.
There again, we made the decision that we were
not just going to walk away, we would stay and
fight, even though it might eventually lead to
expulsion; the fight was worthwhile and we'd
pick up some allies. And I think we did.
I think that the fight against the expulsion,
brought on the exposure that we're not the ones
who changed, it was the CIO, which was expelling
its own conscience when we were expelled. I
think that was a major factor in the ranks being
extremely solid during the whole beef; it
became extremely important when we had to go
through the whole period of attempted raids by
the CIO and the Teamsters. Anyway, the net re
sult was that we were heaved out of the CIO.
The Raids
Ward: And then came the raids?
LG-: Right, within Local 6 particularly and to some
degree in other Warehouse locals. They started
so-called Blue Card groups, where people would
signify their loyalty to the CIO by signing
blue cards; they attempted to form what amounted
to a CIO faction.
They had a very limited amount of success,
frankly because a pretty thorough job had been
done, including not .just the information in The
Dispatcher; we covered all these things in great
detail. We didn't see any purpose in keeping
this information from anyone and we involved the
rank and file in the hearing back east. I don't
think Tony Pania was the only guy who went back
there - I think there were several Board members.
The Blue Card group - and in some places
they had the support of the ACTU - had rather
limited success. The place where the raids
604
LG: were significant and more difficult was in
Warehouse. Bear in mind, the 1949 warehouse
strike wound up towards the fall of the year.
The local finally muscled its way through the
strike. It was costly and too long; it was one
of those situations where the employers, at the
time of the contract expiration where wages were
open, refused to make any kind of an offer at all.
Whether this was just some of the bigger em
ployers in the Distributors Association feeling
pretty cocky with the passage of Taft-Hartley;
whether some of them felt that "because the Hawaii
strike was already under way - we would have an
awful lot of trouble fighting a two-front war.
The Bridges indictment had come down. It could
be that they felt that all these things combined
presented a fairly good picture.
Ward: From their point of view?
LG: Prom their point of view; it's true also that
about that time the economy was staggering. The
post-war bloom had come off the rose and there
were signs of increasing unemployment. Whatever
all the reasons were, they amounted to the
employers just setting on their heels. In the
1949 warehouse strike, the issue of arbitration
came to the forefront almost as quickly as in
Hawaii .
I think that the fight in 1948 on the Pacific
Coast, fighting in Hawaii in '49 and taking on
the battle in warehouse were fundamentally sound.
A lot of things are learned very quickly in
strikes; issues come to the forefront in a hurry,
meetings are very big. Whoever made the crack
that that's when you get a college education in
a couple of months was not too far off.
Everything is discussed; not just the stock
issues but the relationship of the strike with
rest of the labor movement, between the strake
and the community, what was going on within
the CIO; there was no backing away on the econo
mic scene. I think that had we backed away,
another issue would have come to the forefront.
605
LG-: It became an issue in Mine-Mill, namely, is
leftwing leadership too damn expensive to have
around? Not .just the running "battle that ensues,
the constant harassment. Does it "become
expensive in the sense that this fight against
political persecution "begins to preempt the
economic struggle where the guy's bread and
butter and paycheck are on the line?
I'm not saying it's ever posed that way, but
you begin to read the rumbles and you know when
some of the overtones are around. You might be
a good guy, we don't mind your political opinions,
that's your business; we think a lef twine; union
is the only kind of union that makes some sense,
but - and you get that "but" - then you better
keep a close eye on it.
So, I think the economic policy followed by
the union to fight on on these issues was a
sound one, including attending the FTU meeting;.
These are things we believed in, these are the
things we fought for; they had been adopted by
the convention. 'There was no lack of debate:
wide open debate, the CIO was invited to be
there .
This is the way you follow through; okay, we
believe these things, the convention adopted
them and we'll do them. Those things stood us
in good stead, although we went through a very
rough period with the Blue Card.
The only damage that was really done was the
Teamster raid. In 1938 and the struggle around
the master contract a Teamster local led by Ted
"White came out of the woodwork.
Ward: Eight- sixty?
LG-: Eight-sixty, right. They announced a master
agreement which was exactly what the employers
were demanding; there were full-page ads in the
paper by the Teamsters. Beck had never
completely recovered from '37, and he was still
licking his wounds. One of the guys who had
been a business agent for Local 6, and he always
remained friendly, was Joe Dillon. Joe Dillon
is gone now - he's dead.
606
LG-: Joe went over the hill one day, but he did so
in a pretty forthright way; talked to Harry and
myself and said, "Look, you guys just aren't
paying me enough. You guys don't think that
way. I'm living down the Peninsula and my wife
likes it there; my kids are all going to Catho
lic schools. I can't get by on that kind of
dough. I've been offered a job with the
Teamsters; they're going to give me my own local
down there and I'm taking it. I guarantee you
I won't be party to any attempt to raid or screw
around with the ILWU." He was cordial enough.
Well, after the expulsion from the CIO, a
group of our officials - from what information
came along later - had been in touch v/ith Joe
Dillon and also with Beck and I think through
Beck with Einar Mohn. Years later, Einar Mohn
conceded that was one of his major mistakes.
As a matter of fact, years later when we
started cooperating with the Teamsters in the
warehouse field, on several occasions they tried
to hand us back some of these workers who had
gone over the hill in San Francisco and become
part of Teamster Local 12, which was sort of
dying on the vine.
Our position at the time was that we were not
Indian givers and they had them and it was their
headache. They were obviously trying to unload
a problem because they picked up a couple of
guys who were quite impossible.
The guys who went over the hill were primar
ily led by a couple of business agents, one of
whom was also functioning International Rep for
a while, Domenic Gallo; then with him was a guy
named George Pedrin. Tony Koslowski - he was
killed later or died; rather a nice guy, but
when he was on the booze, quite impossible I
always liked him. They picked up a few other
guys, and before long here was a full blown
Teamster raid going on, directed first against
some of our grocery houses.
Local 6 had about 10,000 members. By the
time the raid was finished, they had picked up
around 250 all together, but where they did
607
LG-: major damage was in Petaluma; there we had a
foothold in things like the feed mills and grain
mills; whether any of them are functioning at
this day, I don't know. We also had gone through
a very bitter post Taft-Hartley strike up there
against Sunset Line and Twine.
That's where Taft-Hartley was interpreted to
provide that after a certain length of time,
strikebreakers had the right to vote. Later on
they modified it to say strikebreakers and the
strikers both could vote. They began to use the
Taft-Hartley Law for decertification and it
first blossomed in Sunset Line and Twine.
We were not in compliance with Taft-Hartley -
there was damn little we could do about it - all
we could do was to fall back on the economic
strength of our people, which worked or didn't
work, depending on the situation. They made
things like fishing lines and other kinds of
lines; it wasn't a big place, 40 or 50 people,
maybe. We had a loyal bunch of people there,
but the strike was broken.
Many years later I found out that the Team
sters spent well over a half a million dollars
on the raid. Now when you start pricing out
that thing - half a million dollars for 250
people - that runs you somewhere in the neigh
borhood of $2,000 per man, that's ,about right:
$2,000 times 250 makes a half a million. So,
it was a very expensive thing for the Teamsters;
what they finally wound up with was no great
blessing for them, either.
Incidentally, perhaps the most effective
thing that these guys did, and it didn't build
their union a goddam bit, did enormous damage
to the labor movement. The only effective piece
of propaganda they used during that whole
Teamster raid was that one of the things they
stood for was no compulsory attendance at
membership meetings. This was one of the
principles of the ILWU.
Ward: Well, that's one of the ways you can run a top-
controlled union.
608
LG-: Sure, you have a couple of trustees, you pay
for them coming to the meeting and then a
couple of friends and you buy a few beers after
wards ....
Ward: And that's the meeting?
LG-: That's the meeting. To us, of course,
attendance at a meeting was highly important.
It was a very educational thing and we didn't
have any heavy penalty. It was a one buck fine,
if you didn't attend a membership meeting, but
nobody wanted that fine in his book, you see;
that was important. And the Teamsters cam
paigned that local compulsory attendance was
illegal under Taft-Hartley. And they were
right, because under Taft-Hartley the only thing
a person had to do to remain a member in good
standing, even though you had a union shop
contract, was to tender his dues, period.
That's one of the things that went by the
board. We used to have big meetings. Local 6
had to use the Civic Auditorium - it was the
only auditorium around that was adequate because
our membership meetings would run about . . .
Ward: About 10,000 then?
LG-: Slightly less, 10,000 would fill the Civic
Auditorium; for a while we met only in San
Francisco, after a while we had meetings on both
sides of the Bay because we had a very big
membership in Oakland. There we used the Oakland
Civic Auditorium. Even after membership attend
ance wasn't compulsory, we'd meet there for
strike meetings or contract ratification. But
in San Francisco we used the Civic Auditorium;
the whole downstairs would be completely filled.
That's where some of the big breaks took place
on this group going over the hill, led by G-allo.
He was challenged by G-eorge Valter in the
membership meeting and as soon as the meeting
was over, he jumped off the platform - Gallo is
a good fighter - and clipped Valter on the jaw
and cut it open. G-eorge had that scar until he
died.
609
LG: Anyway, that was the most effective thing Taft-
Hartley and the Teamsters did. It helped
eviscerate the democratic function of the union;
one of the great contributions of Taft-Hartley
and Landrum-Griffin (another piece of anti-union
legislation). So, that was a costly and diffi
cult period. Bear in mind that the same period
we're talking about was the latter part of 1949
and most of 1950. Anyway, we survived.
Ward: Was that the time when you lost in Chicago and
New Orleans?
LG: Beginning about that time the thing that became
evident was that we would have to pull in our
lines and protect our base. It was more and more
difficult to hane on to places like in Cleveland,
or Chicago, or Minneapolis, or New Orleans.
Gradually, in almost all cases, there was a
constructive turn-over. We'd meet with friendly
unions and recommend to our locals that because
we couldn't service them and in view of the
whole situation, they might be better off in
some friendly union. That was worked out.
Ward: Who'd be the friendly unions?
LG: Oh, I think in the case of the Cleveland workers,
I'm quite sure it was the Packinghouse Workers.
These were unions where we knew some of the
people.
Ward: How about New Orleans?
LG: I don't recall where we turned them over. We
lost the best guy we had down there. Andy
Nelson died very young - he was a good, effective
black guy.
Ward: What happened to him?
Got sick all of a sudden and died. So, Warehouse
continued to be stable, although later on, we were
definitely in a holding action partially because
of all the raids.
610
LG: An interesting thing happened in Warehouse where
the employers themselves realized that if the
"bargaining unit was taken apart then they would
really be "back to the situation which was fought
out in 1938 around the hot boxcar - the whipsaw.
So they were compelled to go before the (Nation
al Labor Relations) Board and talk about the
traditional bargaining unit, and there was a
holding action.
I remember negotiating a contract - it must
have been the period right after Pat died -
where we had to make a deal for something like
two and one-half cents an hour, which even in
those days was considered pretty poor. And the
membership knew why we did it; that we had to
regroup our forces; we had taken a certain
amount of buffeting.
Good guys from the local later on said that
it was "the best damn agreement that you ever
signed", in some ways because it was the only
thing to do instead of going into another fruit
less fight. The '49 strike was too expensive
in terms of the amount of time spent on the
.bricks, and not enough fundamental issues were
involved.
Oh, one other point. During this Teamster
raid there were some really violent outbreaks
when the Teamsters tried to move into places
like the United Grocers by picketing the joint
and shutting it down; tell the guys that the
only way you can go to work is to sign up with,
the Teamsters.
These were pretty wild confrontations where
the only way we could handle these things was
to muster all of our guys out of the hiring
hall, bring guys from the Eastbay where
necessary. Guys like Paul Heide, for example,
did yeoman service. A couple of these fights
broke out with guys swinging two-by-fours. Then
it broke out again at the Purity Warehouse, down
at the foot of Telegraph Hill. We had the thing
pretty v/ell in hand and the Teamsters had to
call it a day. So, those were dramatic and
hectic days.
611
THE "CONSPIRACY" CASE
And Other Headaches
Ward: Yes, now you're coming into 1950 and '51; the
Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt indictment came down
in '49, but the trial didn't open until when?
LG: Late '49, as I recall.
Ward: Want to talk about that for a while? V/as that
before a jury or before Judge Harris?
LG: Before a jury. Before the trial began, I went
east with Norman Leonard (one of our attorneys)
must have been around the time of the World
Series game. I went back there and talked to
Jim Landis; he'd been the hearing officer . . .
Ward: Yes - yes . . .
LG: I talked to him about the trial. He knew all
about it and I think that he made up his mind
that the thing was unpardonable. I think Landis
looked back at that whole '39 hearing as a great
experience, and of course it sure changed his
life. Finally when it got to the Supreme Court,
he was completely vindicated. The only time I
think he was really comfortable was when he was
in charge of the Civil Aeronautics Authority for
awhile -
Ward: SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), wasn't
it?
LG: No - Civil Aeronautics Authority too -
612
Ward: Later?
LG: Yes. I remember talking to pilots and they thought
he was the only guy who had ever come along who
made a bit of sense and got a few things done for
them.
I put the proposition to Landis and said
I'd like to have him handle the trial. He said,
"Look, it's quite impossible. I know you don't
know much about the judicial system." And I
said, "I don't." And he said, "Well, this sort
of thing is not done where a man has been a
hearings officer once and then turns up as
defense counsel."
Obviously, he was not opposed to what we were
trying to do; he made one recommendation. He
said, "I think you ought to talk to James Lawrence
Fly." Fly was one of the heads of the American
Civil Liberties Union; he was with Roger Baldwin.
He said, "I don't think Fly will handle the case,
it's not his dish of tea, but I think it's
awfully important that you use him for the pre-
trial motions." So I talked to Fly; we arranged
and he came out.
As a matter of fact, Fly's daughter, Mary,
was married at that time to Telford Taylor, so
in some ways it was a bit of a family arrange
ment. I feel quite positive that Landis talked
to Fly and that Fly talked to Telford Taylor,
who had been part of the American prosecuting
counsel at Nuremberg. He was General Taylor; I
guess he was with the Adjutant General's office.
So, we had Fly come out just to argue the pre-
trial motions. It was one of these hearings
where the only people who are interested are
lawyers.
Ward: On what constitutes a conspiracy?
LG: Yes, that's right. For example, when Harry got
his citizenship finally right after the end of
the war in 1945, the government raised no ob
jections of any kind. The big issues as far as
Fly was concerned were the statute of limitations
and res adjudicata, which I think means that the
613
LG-: tiling has been tried and disposed of and it's
not to be tried again.
Ward: The thing has been adjudged - let it lie.
LG: That's right, judged and dead. I guess a lot
of people now put that in the form of double
jeopardy.
ard: Res adjudicata was used against Tom Mooney
effectively, but in the Bridges case it had no
effect whatever.
LG: In the Bridges case? It did have its effect
Ward: Well, in the end it did, but insofar as the
trial courts were concerned, no.
LG: No, Harris just paid no attention to it. After
all, all a judge has to do in a pre-trial motion,
as I understand it, is to say "Denied." I'm not
even sure that he is obligated to give any reason.
Ward: I think you're right.
LG: No, the only reason I mention this is because
after the trial and after losing before the jury;
after the jailing of Harry when the Korean War
broke, this case wound its way through the
courts and when the Supreme Court finally did
rule, the main things they relied on were the
issues argued by Ply.
Ward: I think you should discuss the jailing of Harry;
why and under what circumstances, and so forth.
LG: Well, as you know, Harry was convicted after the
jury was out six or seven days - a long time.
(Vincent) Hallinan and (James M. ) Mclnnis had been
drawn in as attorneys, in addition to the (ILWU)
law firm. Hallinan is of course a very headstrong
guy, and whether his tactics were the best in
this case, I don't know. Hallinan had this
theory that the job of good defense counsel was
to be a lightning rod; he will take the heat,
and the defendant is the one who wins. I'm not
sure that it worked that way; there was so much
lightning that everybody got hit.
614
Ward: I know that they got Mclnnis in jail -
LG: Well, I'm not sure that's true of lightning
rods, but it's true of that situation. No,
Vince was sentenced for contempt - he did six
months. Mclnnis got three months. As a matter
of fact, Terry and I visited Vince when he was
up at McNeil Island -
Ward: Vince went there twice, first for contempt of
court; then later he did a year and a half for
income tax evasion; they got him, all right.
Bill Cleary (William F. Cleary, the attorney
who represented the State of California against
Tom Mooney) v/as the go-between -
LG-: Cleary is the guy that Vince used occasionally -
Ward: Cleary came to Vince and said - after the
Bridges case - "Now, look, if you continue what
you're doing, making speeches about how the
government wronged Bridges, they're going to
get you. They're out after you and they told
me and I am their messenger." And sure enough
they moved on a technicality which, insofar as
legalistics were concerned, had nothing to do
with Bridges, Robertson and Schmidt.
LG: I know that Vince was mixed up later in this
income tax case - I remember testifying for
Vince in that case. He did time twice, first
for contempt because Harris was going to put
him into jail forthwith; later for the income
tax gimmick the government devised.
I remember going to see Artie Samish - I had
gotten to know Artie. Artie was an odd guy,
very peculiar guy. Perhaps he was the most
honest lobbyist in Sacramento. He said, "These
legislators are here to be bought. I'm not
here to buy. I represent the liquor industry."
His attitude to the unions was very simple.
He said, "If we waited for the rich people to
support the liquor industry we'd go broke. I
never heard of a rich guy buying a bottle of
beer."
615
LG-: So that, during a period when I was doing some
legislative work in Sacramento, when I was head
of Labor's Non-Partisan League, was when I first
met him; struck up an interesting relationship.
I gather he enjoyed my company and I always
enjoyed him "because he was a great raconteur.
I kept up this friendship.
"When he was being pushed around by some
Senate committee or legislative committee -
there was this big hearing on Big Daddy, you
know; the unofficial boss of California, stories
about him in the magazines.
I remember being at some New Year's Eve
gathering down near Montgomery Street, in the
offices of (Attorney) Barney Dreyfus and some
of the others; I left there and was going down
Montgomery Street and I passed the old, old
building where Artie Samish had his offices.
And I thought I'll go by and say 'hello' to
Artie. I went up to his office and there was
Artie Samish sitting all by himself on New Year's
Eve. ' All of his so-called cronies and pals had
run out on him. We sat around and talked for a
while; but before he would talk, he went around
and turned on about four or five radios, so
that -
Ward: So the bugs couldn't . . . ?
LG-: So that his conversation and mine would be
completely lost in all the other stuff coming
across the airways. He was that kind of a guy.
Ward: Was that conversation really that kind where you
had to take those precautions?
LG-: No. I thought that Artie was sort of on the
spot and you don't run out on a guy just because
he's in a jam. I'm not saying that he ever
supported labor issues, but the only understand
ing I ever had with him was that I could ask
him to try to stop something - not press for
something, just try to stop it.
And he knew enough about these people, the
committee heads, like the inside of his hand.
He knew how every damn committee operated and
616
LG: who could be reached, quite easily. I went to
Artie when Jim and Vince were sentenced for
contempt and where Harris was going to jail them
immediately, which would have pulled them out of
the trial, and Artie said he would try; in the
next day or so, Harris said, "I'll impose
sentence when the trial is over." That was the
occasion when Vince later went to MacNeil's
Island, I'm sure. I know that Vince came back
from there saying that the most impossible
animal in the whole world was chickens. He had
to take care of them for a while. He said they
were the most ignorant, stupid, impossible little
things - -
Ward: Yes, they are. Well, getting back to Harry's
trip to jail.
LG: Okay, this was after the trial. During the
trial, of course, they had the usual parade of
witnesses and there were some startling ones,
you will recall; that Kentucky colonel, who
really came apart; Ross, an old party guy. I
had known him when he was in San Francisco. He
was the head of the PW or something ....
Ward: Lawrence Ross?
LG: Yes, Lawrence Ross and then, of course, Merv
Rathborne.
Ward: George Wilson?
LG: Yes, George Wilson turned up on the witness
stand. John Shoemaker from the '34 strike. He
had a distinguished record; then Henry Schrimpf ,
which is understandable. He was a bitter and
impossible enemy of Harry's for years. I'm not
sure whether Lundeberg turned up at the trial or
not - later on, I' think he did - it might have
been before Judge Goodman for all I know. Much
later on the Korean War broke; June, 1950, I
believe was the date.
##
617
LG-: Just one last item on the Bridges trial: we had
quite a staff of people working on the trial -
Elinor Kahn was working on it. Morris Watson
did a masterly job with the dally releases; he
would at least get a fair shake in the press, or
part of it. And of course the membership was
being kept advised all the time and they donated
a fair amount of money; the attorneys' fees were
quite nominal.
At one point in the trial Judge Harris
apparently indicated he was prepared to issue a
directed verdict in the case of Bob Robertson.
There was a discussion of this and Vince was
very much opposed - it simply indicated the weak
ness in the government's case, no question about
that. The evidence against Bob Robertson was
laughable.
Yince's feeling was, and Bob supported it,
that if they allowed Bob's case to be separated,
it would simply strengthen the case against
Harry and Henry, so they stuck together. Anyway,
the verdict came down against them.
In 1950 when the Korean War broke, the union
took a position calling for a cease-fire and
return to the 38th Parallel. It wasn't the most
popular one at the time because the Cold War was
damn near at its height and there was a lot of
hysteria; the whole thing was built around this
world Communist conspiracy and so forth, and this
was just the beginnings of it with the North
Koreans marching into the South, the poor innocent
South Koreans, (Dictator) Syngman Rhee. Donohue,
who had been the prosecuting attorney ...
Ward: "Jiggs" Donohue?
LG-: "Jiggs" Donohue - he represented the Department
of Justice in the trial. He called for a revoca
tion of bail before Harris. I guess it was
Donohue 's statement or the judge's, to the effect
that "there is no room for minority opinion when
this country is at war". War had never been
declared, although Truman had the afterthought
of going to the UN and at least getting some
token troops from the other countries.
618
LG: All the union position called for was to stop
the killings, stop the shooting, cease-fire and
both sides go back to the 38th Parallel, the
boundary before the war broke. As far as
Donohue was concerned, that was treason. Harris
agreed with him and revoked bail and Harry went
to the clink.
The Circuit Court of Appeals decision was very
strong, a very powerful ruling. Harry was re
leased. But, once again, all these forces which
had been in operation from the Federal government
on down in an attempt to take the union apart
were back in full swing.
The Coos Bay Caucus
LG: Anyway, something else had come along and we had
scheduled a waterfront caucus in Coos Bay, Oregon,
at the same time Harry was in the clink. "While
the release of Harry was the focal point of the
caucus, we had learned that the Secretary of
Labor had called a preliminary conference on
waterfront security. The ILWU and the MC&S had
been excluded from this affair.
What had come along was waterfront screening,
again another sign of the Cold War and here was
the Coast Guard getting into the act. Waterfront
screening was used to decimate some of the crews.
Outfits like the MC&S suffered untold casualties -
guys were just driven off the ships, they wouldn't
be given their papers and the employers would not
hire them.
Ward: On what basis was the screening done?
LG: Suspected Communist affiliation. Years later
the whole damn thing was declared illegal, but
the damage had been done. This was when, if you
insisted upon a hearing before the Coast Guard,
you could appear there. In other words, say,
you were rejected for your Coast Guard pass and
you insisted upon a hearing, they would eive you
a hearing.
619
LG: The hearing officer would sit there with a
folder in front of him and say, "We have evidence
that you have been a member of the Communist
Party or that you are still a member of the
Communist Party, or that you subscribe to certain
publications and so forth and so on. What do
you have to say for yourself?" Your job then was
to try to guess what they had and deny it success
fully.
It was like two insane guys, you know; the
guy behind the folder was obviously out of his
mind and before long he would drive the witness
out of his mind, too, with this endless guessing
contest. Here was a man's job hanging on it.
Well, in the case of the ILWU, this became a
crucial test. Remember, we were talking a bit
earlier today about how much of a price is paid
in defending union leadership. Does it become
one where the union is constantly under the gun,
not just of pot-shots from the employers, or an
occasional volley from the State Legislature
like Governor Stainback or We, The Women who
kind of take a shot at your ass when you're not
looking? When all the big guns are wheeled in
and they start lobbing these shells at you from
Washington and where the Justice Department gets
in something like the BRS trial; the Coast
Guard is waiting in the wings and they move along
with Coast Guard screening; obviously what would
have happened in the case of the ILWU would have
been real decimation of the union.
The position we took became a rather crucial
fight in the life of the union; otherwise we
might have suffered the same fate as a lot of the
good guys in the NMU, and of the entire union in
the case of the Marine Cooks and Stewards. A
lot of our friends were also screened at the
time, like Walter Stack; he probably was run off
the job. The position we took was that - -
Ward: This was at the Coos Bay caucus?
LG: The International took that position before the
Coos Bay caucus and then had to fight for it
at the caucus where some of the arch redbaiters
620
LG: were just out of their minds. The position we
took was that if the Coast Guard wanted to screen
on army and navy jobs on the ground of so-called
national security, we wouldn't object to that too
much. We didn't like the whole idea of screening;
of course we were opposed to it, but if the guys
wanted to get their Coast Guard passes to get
those jobs, we were not going to make that the
issue; but we would not permit screening on
commercial jobs.
There was a small-fry, self-appointed red-
baiter who had been a member of the ACTU; Kelley
- not Tim - was his name, from Local 34. This
guy actually had the temerity to be on the phone
from Coos Bay; it's a small town - everybody
knows what's going on. Chances are that even
the telephone operator could be related to one
of our guys in a small town like that.
He was on the phone regularly to Tobin, who
was then Secretary of Labor, talking about the
caucus and what he ought to do next and so
forth. It was pretty hair-raising stuff, ob
viously a whole cabal trying to move in and take
over. On that score the caucus was rather
crucial.
Another issue was fomented, but it was not
one on which we were going to back away. Bear
in mind around 1949 you had all that hysteria
around Peekskill. Remember when Paul Robeson
was due to sing there, his concert was broken
up by a bunch of Legionnaires and rightwingers,
people stoned and beaten up.
Naturally we supported Robeson and condemned
the whole thing. Robeson had become an honor
ary member of our union. At that time I think
he was the only honorary member. Later on, we
added a couple of others, Rockwell Kent and Vince
Hallinan. To become an honorary member of the
ILWU meant a unanimous vote by the convention
and under a set of interesting rules where if
somebody wanted to object, they simply rose and
objected; no reason had to be given. So to
become an honorary member really meant something.
621
LG: It was not like one of these things that you .lust
adopted another resolution on. Well, Paul Robeson
was an honorary member - the only honorary member
as I recall - and some of this group came in with
a resolution that we take away Paul Robeson' s
honorary membership, even though the caucus had
no authority to do this. That belonged to the
convention. That we take it away from Paul
Robeson and give it to Jackie Robinson. Well,
some of us really took out after that one.
We said, if there is a proposal here for
Jackie Robinson to be an honorary member, we'd
consider that. After all, he had broken the
color line in baseball, but we'd like to know
how many guys in the Portland delegation would
be willing to work with Jackie Robinson if he
decided to take a job on the Portland waterfront
where they had no blacks. There was a real
cleavage on that issue. Luckily we won.
Paul Robeson retained his honorary membership
and the caucus finally shaped up fairly well,
even though a couple of ambitious guys took the
only suite at the North Bend Hotel setting up
unofficial headquarters preparatory to taking
over the reins of office. But nothing happened
and by and large the membership hung tough. They
adopted a position on Coast Guard screening which
was very important.
Ward: The position you outlined a few minutes ago?
LG: Yes, and we did not change our position on the
Korean War - we stuck with it; I mean the Inter
national stuck with it. The caucus however
followed the lead of several of our big locals
and supported the government position on the
Korean War.
Ward: That position was pretty well implemented in
actual work practice, wasn't it? The position
you took at that caucus?
LG: On screening?
Ward: I mean, the employers and the stevedoring
companies went along with it, didn't they?
622
LG-: It wasn't a question whether the stevedoring
companies went along with it - there was a wee
bit more work for the dispatchers "because every
dispatcher knew where the army, navy piers were
and where the commercial piers were. If you were
being dispatched in San Francisco to Pier 35,
you knew perfectly well that that was a commercial
job. If on the other hand, you were sent over
to the army base, that was quite different. So,
we got some very funny feedback later on, most
of which was really hilarious.
For example, in the case of Seattle they had
some very arrogant Coast Guard guys or MPs (mili
tary policemen), who had a tendency to hard- time
our guys going to work at the army or navy base,
so there was a good deal of groaning about it
and complaining.
Well, those installations were a fair distance
away from the hiring hall. The commercial piers
were close by, not exactly walking distance but
maybe a half a mile at the most; and there were
some characters in Seattle who had 'never given
up the whole beef on the Red issue.
As a matter of fact, they were the ones who
made it so tough for a guy like Bert Nelson to
go back into the local after he had been under
ground when the Communist party sent some of its
members underground during the Smith Act trials;
they really gave him a hard time after that.
They voted him down a couple of times, so that
Bert had a rough time.
They went so far as to say that our position
on the Coast Guard screening was just a very
ingenious scheme to give the Reds the better
jobs on the commercial work, you see. Well, I
don't think anybody ever took it seriously but
it shows how people start to think and how way
off the beam they go.
Of course, luckily we had a guy like Bill
Settings up there; he was a tower of strength
and he ' s the kind of a guy who would take on all
comers. But the Coast Guard screening issue was
big. I recall it was in 1951 or '52 v/hen they
suddenly decided to attempt Coast Guard screening
623
LG-: at one of the commercial piers. It was on the
north side of the waterfront in San Francisco -
which pier I'm trying; to recall, I think it was
State Line, I'm not positive; it was around pier
27. I'm inclined to think that's right, but I
could be wrong on that. They turned up there - -
Ward: The MPs did?
LG: Yes, or guys from the Coast Guard, or whoever
they were, demanding Coast G-uard clearances.
Luckily one of the officials got word of that
very fast and our men just stood around the dock
and said, "Nobody's going in there - nobody is
showing any card whether he has one or not."
Because there v/ere guys there who had Coast
G-uard clearance and other men who didn't. We
said there would be no Coast Guard screening on
this commercial work and we made it stick.
The Coast Guard made a lot of noise for a few
hours and finally called it off. So, it was a
rather important showdown - it was another effort
to see whether somehow they could spread the
thing. Bear in mind, as far as the Coast Guard
was concerned, the screening applied to everyone
on the waterfront. The union's position was that
we would go along with it in the case of army
and navy piers, but not in the case of commercial
work.
More Trouble In Hawaii
Ward: I see. Now, you said the other day that the
period of harassment of the union extended from
'47 to '53. What other examples of harassment
do you think are worth discussing now?
LG: Well, you had the running beef in Hawaii right
before the '49 strike, when they had the so-called
"reluctant 39". Those were some un-American
Activities hearings that took place and there
were some 39 people, the big majority of whom
were ILWU members who were called to testify and
all of them refused. There was no let-up after
the '49 strike, even though there finally was a
settlement.
624
LG: I'm trying to remember the date of the Smith Act
cases. Bear in mind, the key defendant in the
Smith Act case in Hawaii was Jack Hall. As a
matter of fact, not only was he the key
defendant - Jack Kawano testified against him.
He had been the head of the Longshore union years
before, but he had sort of dropped out of the
whole thing; the union really went by him, is
what happened; it moved much faster than he could
have.
Ward: Let's see - by the Smith Act trial, you mean Hall
was accused under the Smith Act, of what?
LG: Let me try to recall the exact indictment, which
is to "aid and advocate the teaching of the
violent overthrow of the U. S. Government."
Bear in mind, no overt acts were ever called for.
Ward: I see.
LG: In other words, ideas were on trial, or particu
larly what you might have circulated; like one
of the key witness'es was some guy who was not a
bad egg - he wasn't too bright, really - and he
had worked with the union for a while. I think
he was making a trip back on a ship and somebody
gave him a bundle of literature; he didn't even
know what the literature was - never bothered to
read any of it.
He testified that he had this duffle bag full
of literature, so he in effect was helping to
promote this conspiracy to teach and advocate,
that was it. So, in the case of Jack Hall, he
and six others were indicted. There were Charlie
and Aileen Fujimoto, Koji Aryoshi, Jack Hall -
that makes four, Dwight "Jim" Freeman, that's
five and John Reinecke, six - and a man named
Jack Kimoto. Anyway -
Ward: Reinecke was a teacher, wasn't he?
LG: Yes, he was a teacher - he and his wife were
both teachers. By the way, there have been some
recent developments with the Reineckes that give
you a bit of faith, after years of being black
balled, you know, couldn't teach. John floundered
625
LG: around doing odd jobs; I don't think his wife
worked particularly. Finally, he did some
research work for Art Rutledge of the Teamsters
Union down there, but always maintained a very
dignified posture.
Last year there was a push put on in Hawaii
to have a hearing on the Reinecke case. The
hearing concluded that the Reineckes had been
fired unjustly and the Legislature adopted a bill
to compensate them for the years they had lost
in terms of wages and pension benefits and so
forth. It comes when they're both quite along
in years.
There's a sort of poetic justice in the
thing and there was a bit of poetic justice when
Aryoshi, years after the Smith Act trial, went
to visit China. He had met Chou En Lai and Mao
Tse Tung when the Red Army was headquartered in
Xian and Yenan, and of course, he was very warm
ly greeted when he went there again.
The Star-Bulletin, which was awfully anxious
to get some stories on China - there's a large
Chinese population in Hawaii - hired Aryoshi to
do a series of stories on his trip to China.
And when I saw Koji I had only one question of
him, "Did you charge enough?" I doubt if he
did; he was such an honest soul, he would think
it was far more important to get the articles in
the paper.
After the indictment came down, the FBI went
to Dave Thompson - remember, he was a war vet
eran, an ex-Marine; he lost a leg at Iwo Jima
and decided he wanted to live in Hawaii after
the war. He was one of those we had come to the
Labor School and he found his forte very quickly
in the ILWU by doing educational work and putting
out the Voice of the ILWU down there.
I've always been very fond of Dave, a very
good guy and as honest as the day is long. At
times he's very amusing - he's so deadly serious,
you know. I'll never forget at one. stage of the
1946 strike, Dave and I were talking after
negotiations. It had been a very bitter session,
626
LG: very bad, and to some things looked a lot worse.
I didn't think so because there were indications
that the strike was in very good shape.
Dave said, "Lou, you gotta do something, you
gotta do something." "What do you mean, I gotta
do something?" "Well," he says, "one of the
things you're taught when you are in the armed
services is that any leader in a situation like
this keeps things moving." "I don't know," I
said, "I've never been in the armed services -
I only had a very brief and amusing spell in the
ROTC. I don't know why you have to do anything.
I think in a case of a strike like this, you just
do nothing - just sit."
He said, "Why?" So I said, "Somewhere along
the line the employers are going to make a
mistake or crack, that's all." But Dave was
wonderfully adventurous of mind and very purist,
very hard working.
Ward: The FBI came to him - why?
LG: The FBI wanted to make a proposition to him and
he used some excuse and said he couldn't do it
right then because he had some appointment he
had to keep and would they come back another day.
So they set up another date. Well, when they
came back a second time his home was wired by
us. Bob McElrath was sitting in the basement
with a recording machine and there was a micro
phone planted and they recorded the whole thing.
Burris and Condon were the two FBI guys; Bob
McElrath recorded the whole conversation. Their
proposition to Dave was very forthright and very
simple: if he would talk to Jack Hall about
cooperating with the FBI which, of course, means
turning State's evidence and doing what he could
to jail others, they could make it six defendants
instead of seven. We had the whole thing put
on a record, tried to play it in the Smith Act
case; it was ruled out; although we used it a
couple of times when talking on the Smith Act
case.
627
Other Legal Harassment
LG: So, all I'm trying to say is that this vendetta
did not stop. The general atmosphere in terms
of redbaiting was stepped up, not just with the
Smith Act cases, it's when they moved to put
the Marine Cooks and Stewards out of business.
They also jailed Bryson for false affidavits;
it's when they went after Maurice Travis (of
Mine-Mill).
I recall calling Telford Taylor to see whether
he would cooperate and give a legal hand to the
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, under the gun of
Taft-Hartley and the Subversive Activities Con
trol Board - we used to call it the SCAB board.
That's when they went after Mine-Mill, so that
the harassment was going on continuously. It
was almost one continuous crisis that went from
'47 until those cases were disposed of.
Ward: Quite a long time.
LG-: A span of nine years and somehow or other, the
Smith Act cases sort of parallel in dates; it
was a long stretch.
(Interview 23: 22 August, 1978)
Ward: Lou, let's check up on the dates which were
uncertain.
LG: Well, I wasn't too far off, Estolv. As you know,
Bridges, Robertson and Schmidt were convicted in
1950. Well, July, 1949 was the time of the
Marseille convention and the meeting of the WFTU,
the one I attended.
Ward: And that's the one that Harry couldn't attend
because he was out on bail?
LG: Right. The matter had been taken up at the
convention and the convention voted to attend -
628
LG: that was the 1949 convention. Harry was
designated to go, and Johnny Meletta. Inasmuch
as other things were cooking, nobody knowing
exactly what the outcome would be, I was
designated to go in the event Harry couldn't make
it.
When he applied to go to Marseille, at first,
the government indicated that they would insist
on raising the bail. I think he was out on heavy
ball. Then the government came along and took
the position that they simply wanted to prohibit
him from going; the net result being that I went
in his place.
Then the Korean War broke - that was somewhere
around June 1950. We went into a pretty rough
period. Bear in mind again that you had this
whole cabal moving in on the union from all sides
both the administrative part of the government
and particularly the judicial part under Tom
Clark.
While we had not yet been expelled from the
CIO, there was every indication that we would be
unless we backed away on the basic principle of
autonomy, namely the right of the membership to
make the final decision. Somewhere along the
line, the CIO said when it came to economic
matters the membership had that right.
But' as to political questions, all of a sudden
they would try to impose the discipline, let us
say, of a labor party without a labor party; if
a decision was made at the top on certain
endorsements, that you just had to go along.
Our position was that the membership still had
the final say. That's what autonomy meant and
those were the things we were guaranteed at the
time we affiliated.
I think I mentioned to you Harry's position
'on the Korean War, that he was opposed to any
war, that there ought to be a cease-fire and try
to resolve thines in other ways. This also be
came a beef within the union with much of the
union ecoing along with the government, perhaps
with a few reservations; maybe not the same sort
629
LG-: of jingoism that Truman and others had in mind.
Then the developments in Washington: a move to
establish what they called "security regulations"
on the waterfront, things later developed into
the whole Coast Guard screening and so forth.
When the conference was held on setting up
these security arrangements, the administration
dipped into the ranks of the ILWU; in other words,
some locals were invited to attend "but the
International was completely by-passed.
Ward: I bet the Portland local was invited.
LG-: I'm not sure they attended. I have the recollec
tion that Local 10, Sandeen, might have been
there. I think somebody was there from Local 34;
whether other locals were there, I'm not sure.
The session was held back in Washington and we
saw the security thing as just an attempt to
to spread the Cold War and redbaiting directly
into the ranks of the union.
It was a counterpart of the Taft-Hartley af
fidavits and everything else that was going on.
The un-American Activities Committee was in full
swing at the time. The Hollywood Ten (ten movie
actors, writers and directors who were called
before the House un-American Activities Committee)
had been pretty well chopped up when they refused
to take the Fifth. They took the First Amendment,
put up a fight on that and lost, if you will
recall. They were cited for contempt.
When Harry was jailed, the sugar workers
walked out in protest in Hawaii. It was during
the period when he was in jail that we had the
caucus in Coos Bay.
Ward: ' How long did the sugar workers stay out?
LG-: It was a one-day protest - maybe a little more.
Well, he was freed on bail September first, but
that was after the decision by the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals; I was trying to recall the
names of the judges involved. The two who were
in the majority for his release were William
Healey and William E. Orr; they are the ones who
630
LG-: used the expression that they had to set their
faces like "flint against the storm." Harry's
case went to the Supreme Court, of course - and
the Supreme Court reversed the BRS conviction
on June 26, 1953. You recall that I told you
that we had gotten James Lawrence Fly -
Ward: Yes, to make the motion?
LG: To argue the pre-trial motions - actually it was
around these pre-trial motions - not on the
trial itself - that the Supreme Court based its
reversal; the man who argued the case for us was
Telford Taylor. Telford Taylor was the son-in-
law of James Lawrence Fly. Taylor had also been
chief U. S. prosecutor at Nuremberg.
Ward: Was he chief?
LG: For a while. I think that (Supreme Court Justice)
Robert H. Jackson was the chief for a while,
Taylor was assistant; and when Jackson left there,
Taylor took over. He carried the rank of General
I guess from the Adjutant General's office. I
recall talking to him about the thing and he
explained that he didn't handle trial work, that
he handled primarily or entirely appellate
matters.
Those would be cases, I guess, before the ap
pellate courts, primarily Federal - or perhaps,
State too - and the Supreme Court. I think Norm
Leonard went back to join him at the argument.
He and Norm hit it off very well; Taylor carried
the burden of the thing and the decision of Judge
Harris was reversed.
##
Ward: All right, v/e were discussing -
LG: About Telford Taylor; the trial took place before
Federal Judge Goodman. The government had two
strings to its bow. There was a conspiracy
indictment. There was also a civil charge,
namely, that Harry's citizenship be revoked
without criminal penalties.
631
LG: Everybody assumed the case was finished; most
people were just flabbergasted when the govern
ment announced it was not through; they then
proceeded to institute the civil charge which
had not been dropped; it just lay pending the
outcome of the criminal case.
Ward: Would the statute of limitations apply there?
LG: I should think so, but I don't know enough about
the law - or make the fine distinction that you
weren't really in jeopardy in the same way - that
they just took your citizenship away. I'm sure
the same points were argued again before the
judge that were argued in the criminal conspiracy
trial.
This was the trial before Goodman without a
jury; it was a civil case and I think the
attorneys decided they would go before Goodman
and try to avoid some of the hysteria that had
plagued the previous trial. And bear in mind,
the previous conviction came down in that period
when the Cold War was really heating up.
Anyway, we decided we should try to get
Telford Taylor to handle the case before Goodman.
I recall going back east, on something else as
well, and sitting down with Telford Taylor and
asking him to handle the trial. He said, "Okay"
he would. I think he, himself, had gotten very
deeply into the Bridges case. This business of
endless harassment going as far back as an at
tempt in Congress to pass a bill of attainder . .
Ward: Yes, I know.
LG: And there had been the (Madame Prances) Perkins
hearings, then the Immigration hearing, then the
Landis hearing; the Sears*hearing, which wound
up with a Supreme Court victory for Harry; the
conspiracy case which also wound up in the
Supreme Court - this just went on and on. And
here was the Goodman case. Taylor felt he really
ought to see the thing through. He came out
here; I recall he asked us to arrange a place
for him where he could stay and work. We found
* Before Judge Charles B. Sears.
632
LG: a place for him at the Huntington on Nob Hill
and got him a small suite there, so that he had
a desk to work at and keep his papers there.
The most startling thing came out of Taylor
just before the trial began. I went by there
one day to see what else he needed, perhaps to
deliver some additional documents. He said,
"I think you ought to know this, Lou, I've
never handled a trial case in my life." So,
here was Telford Taylor handling his first trial,
case before Judge Goodman.
Well, v/e had all kinds of trepidations about
Goodman, tried to find out what sort of a man
he was like. He lived a life of his own, had an
attractive suite at the Fairmont (Hotel), a home
in Woodside. He used to ride all the time - he
was a horseman. I think he v/as married to quite
a wealthy woman -
Ward: I was going to say that's more money than a
Federal judge makes.
LG: Yes, he appeared to be in fairly good shape. I
know Ben Swig (owner of the Fairmont) was a good
friend of his - they used to see each other
socially. Perhaps that's why he stayed at the
Fairmont.
Ward: Goodman was Jewish, wasn't he?
LG: Yes.
Ward: So was Harris.
LG: Harris was born Jewish, I think and -
Ward: Changed to Catholic?
LG: Yes. He went apostate. But as you know, Good
man finally came along with an excellent decision
in 1954 or '55. It could have been at that trial
where Lundeberg turned up -
Ward: Oh!
LG: I believe so. I don't think he turned up at the
conspiracy case; I think it was at that trial,
anyway, that wound up the case.
633
LG: Telford Taylor continued fairly close to us in
the years afterwards. I used to stop by and see
him whenever I was in New York. I got to know
him and his wife quite well. Very pleasant
guy, very bright and quite a good pianist; loved
to compose marches, of all things.
Ward: No wonder, he was a general ....
LG: NAW! I think his military background was
limited to the adjutant-general's office; but
maybe you're right, maybe that got to him. But
whether he had any political ambitions, I don't
know. I know he was touted for a while as a
logical candidate for the U. S. Senate out of
New York, or a state office. That wound up the
Bridges case, finally.
Ward: Did that wind up the harassment?
LG: Yes, harassment in that form. It didn't wind
up harassment of the union, not by any manner
of means; later in the fifties all kinds of
people in the union were being hauled in before
the un-American Activities Committee. As a
matter of fact, that started in Hawaii in 1949.
That was the reluctant 39, most of whom were
ILWU members; all of them took the Fifth. Later
in that same decade I was hauled before the un-
' American Activities Committee, before the
Eastland Committee, before the McClellan Commit
tee at different times.
Ward: In the forties?
LG: Fifties, fifties - all in the fifties, as I
recall. On the Smith Act the indictment was
in 1951 in Hawaii - that was when Jack Hall was
indicted, August 28, 1951. I was down in Hawaii
at the time. As a matter of fact, Terry and the
girls were there. I recall now, we were in
sugar negotiations at that time because the
contract expired September 1. But I had been
down there a bit earlier because of the Lanai
pineapple strike; it was a strike that lasted
almost seven months.
Ward: Wasn't Lanai the place where in the early days
of organizing the guys had to sneak over at
night in boats?
634
LG: Lanai is one of the places where they had to use
sampans because if they arrived by plane - I
guess the airport was open by then - the company
knew every single person who came on or off that
island, so they took to the small fishing boats;
the fishermen would take them over; not too far
away, ,just across the channel. That's all there
is on the island.
Ward: Just one company?
Just one company, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company
which in turn is owned by Castle & Cooke.
The reason I recall being down there is be
cause we were in sugar negotiations. We'd
gotten out very late and I had driven Jack home;
it must have been around one or two o'clock in
the morning because I dropped him at his house
and promptly headed off to where we v/ere staying
up in Manoa. We had rented a small place up
towards the hills. The University of Hawaii is
in the area. We had some friends living there;
as a matter of fact, I think it was Meyer
Symonds, who lived not too far from us. The
girls used to spend some time at their home and
I think he helped us find the place where we
stayed.
Anyway, I headed right for home and I couldn't
have been asleep more than an hour or so when
the phone rang and it was Yoshiko; they had just
come and picked up Jack and hauled him off to
the clink. Imagine, this great FBI, you see,
in Hawaii where of course you could escape in
just five seconds by walking on the water; the
secret roundup just before daybreak - all part
of their staging; these dangerous criminals.
So, Terry and I gathered the kids together
and went down to Jack's house, started getting
on the phone, waking people up to find out what
the score was. The sugar committee was due to
meet that morning early; we started around seven
o'clock the next morning - and Jack had been
hauled off to the clink by the U. S. Marshal.
I don't think there had even been a bail hearing
yet. Bail was posted later that day.
635
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward;
LG:
Well, the sugar committee went alons; with my
suggestion that we deliberately suspend all
negotiations. We announced that Jack, as far
as we were concerned, was absolutely essential
to the negotiations, which would not be resumed
until Jack was available.
The other side agreed to that?
Who? The employers? No - no, the employers
just stood to one side. They kept insisting
later on that they really had nothing to do
with this. How do you know the truth in these
things? As I told you, I discovered that there
wasn't all that much uniformity in the employers'
thinking, necessarily.
The Big Five would hammer out a policy, so-
called, and the respective employers had what
amounted to a veto power. In other words, un
less they could get unanimity on a particular
program, nothing was done. It gave any one of
the agencies strength out of all proportion to
its economic weight. I suppose from their point
of view it was the only effective way of holding
their team together.
Now, it could very well be that the employers
as a group and I'm inclined to think that guys
like Blaisdell - I'm not sure that Blaisdell was
still there at that time; he might have been
eased out - Dwight Steele - as to whether Steele
or Blaisdell were party to this thing, I have
doubts.
You didn't totally dislike either of those
fellows, did you?
No, Steele was a little more abrasive, a little
more difficult to get along with. I got along
with Blaisdell quite well and liked him as a
person. He was an interesting character; came
from around Butte, Montana - a bit of a cowboy.
He wound up ranching, not too far from Carson
City - Minden. It's right at the foot of the
Kingsbury grade. I remember visiting him there
a year or two after that. They were raising
those very beautiful sheep - heavy wool.
636
Ward: Is he still alive, Blaisdell?
LG-: No, he died about three or four years ago. He
was an interesting character. No, he must have
still been down there because he played a very
important role in the Lanai strike.
But, I spoke to the Marshal and said, "Look,
things are completely loused up; there's going
to be no negotiations and there'll probably be
a sugar strike, thanks to the way you have
handled this thing." Oh, he didn't want any
part of that. I think he was just a local yokel
and sure as hell didn't want to upset the whole
apple cart in Hawaii. They had gone through the
'49 strike. We won that and everybody knew it.
Not too long after that, in early 1950, the
employers hired 15 or 16 guys in violation of
the contract. Our guys walked out. The company
fell all over itself and let their guys go at
once; so the waterfront was in good shape.
People in Hawaii were breathing a sigh of relief,
Sure, Lanai was on strike but Hawaii could
co on almost untouched in its main pursuits.
This would have an enormous impact in Hawaiian
Pine; it turned out later that the company took
fantastic losses; but the economy and Waikiki,
the flow of tourists, shipping, suear were all
functioning. The whole prospect of another
confrontation didn't particularly appeal to
anyone down there.
Anyway, I finally told the Marshal, we're not
going to proceed unless we can meet with Jack
Hall. He wasn't out on bail yet. The Marshal
said, "Well, I can't release him, but there's a*
good sized office down there next to mine and
if you want to come down there, come down." So,
I recall taking the whole committee and going
down to the Marshal's office.
Of course, we wanted the stuff to get in the
papers, and it did. There was a clear, sharp
demonstration of support, a very quick reaction
to the Smith Act indictment. Bear in mind, all
the an ti- Communist hysteria that had been going
637
n there for a long time; the best thing to do
was to hit it between the eyes as quickly as you
could.
We met down there. There weren't enough
chairs; I remember guys sitting on top of the
file cabinets and some of them on the floor. It
wasn't all that big a room, I guess about the
size of this kitchen, maybe a little bit smaller -
jammed ...
Ward: Did they bring Jack in?
LG: Jack was brought in.
Ward: He was a prisoner, but he was there?
LG: Yes, and photographers came in taking pictures
of us.
Ward: Wonderful publicity!
LG: Yeah, although they took some very unkind photos;
but that's the way they are. The important
thing was that we signified as quickly as possible
that the union was with Jack. Everybody talked
about it. We said, "Okay, we'll wait until the
contract runs out and strike, unless Jack is
made available." By the end of that afternoon
he was released on bail.
Ward: This was before a judge?
LG: Yes, I forget which judge it was. Anyway that
was when he was indicted; the trial itself start
ed on November 7 of '52. I think that's the
date of the October Revolution, isn't it?
(Laughter)
Ward: I really wouldn't know - I could look it up.
LG: Well, anyway, that trial went on for a long
time. It stretched on until -
Ward: There were six other defendants?
LG: Seven in all, right. That was the incident
around which Burris and Condon of the FBI visited
638
LG: Dave Thompson - and his room was wired before
they got there with Bob McElrath doing the
recording. There's one amusing sidelight,
although the thing that came through clearest
on the tape was that if Jack would cooperate
they could make it six instead of seven; a
blatant effort to get him to turn stool pigeon
and invent stories about the other defendants.
The amusing sidelight is that McElrath says
that while he was doing this tape down in the
basement he had to keep very quiet. Hawaii
houses are not that soundproof. He discovered
that he just had to take a leak. He had no
place to go. Mac liked his beer, and he figured
the logical thing was to finish a can of beer
and use it a second time.
Anyway, the trial went on to June of the
following year; there were a number of interrup
tions . . .
Ward: Well, it started in 1952 and went to June, 1953.
LG.: Yes. You had the holiday season there, and the
courts don't overwork themselves during that
time of the year. Hawaii is a funny place; they
start wishing a Merry Christmas and a Happy New
Year after Thanksgiving and they don't stop wish
ing you a Happy New Year until some time late in
January. On that score it's a very social
community.
Ward: Wanted to make sure they're good Christians?
LG: Not particularly; a lot of it is part of the whole
sociability. The holiday season is a time of
very intensive family entertainment - people
making the rounds of each other's homes and
things like New Year's Eve are typical. Even
around the plantation communities, a guy would
make the rounds of all of his close friends -
not everybody he knew; obviously, he couldn't
make it - and have a drink with each of them . . ,
Ward: Must get a little rugged?
LG: Yeah, and you get some wild stories about it,
too.
639
LG-: But the Seven were found guilty and the entire
ILWU walked out in protest; stopped work. Local
142 called a special convention of the entire
union in Hawaii. By that time it was a merged
local; they called the special convention to
"blast the results of the trial, pledge their
support, and continue to fight on the issue.
That case kicked around in the courts and
went to the Appellate Court and Hall and the
others were acquitted on January 20, 1958 - that
followed the reversal of Smith Act cases "by the
Supreme Court. The Smith Act case was a tag-
end affair. t Smith Act cases had gone on in New
York and you remember the one in Los Angeles
and other parts of the country.
So that there had "been any number of Smith
Act cases, much earlier. I recall that the
first changing of the tide on the whole Cold
War, the Smith Act cases and the endless red
baiting, was after the confrontation between
"Jumping Joe" McCarthy and (Joseph) Welch -
Ward: The Army case?
LG-: Yes, the Army case. It was when Eisenhower
finally got angry and where some Back Bay Bos-
tonians got in the act; God knows they were no
leftwingers, but strong 'adherents of the basic
principles of democracy, and only then was there
a change in atmosphere.
The more I look back at that period, Truman
was just horrendous. I know that now he's being
dolled up and a lot of people are having second
thoughts about what a wonderful man he was - a
modest haberdasher. I don't think anything
could be further from the truth. After all, he
was the architect of the Cold War. You can say
that Churchill was, but Truman toddled along
right after him.
It was Pulton, Missouri where Churchill made
his "Iron Curtain" speech when Truman was in
power, and it was Truman who was reelected in
1948. It was under Truman that Joe McCarthy
really got going; even though he gave lip service
to opposition of Taft Hartley, he collapsed
completely on the issue.
640
LG-: As to whether he did all he should, I don't
know. A number of us felt that he could have
done more to make sure that the right senators
were available. So, that whole Truman era, at
least for a union like ours, and I think for
most of the labor movement, was bad; he was the
guy who took Murray completely in tow. He gave
him the key to the kitchen, or whatever it was,
in the White House, so that Murray had access
all the time .
Ward: The key to the toilet, you mean?
LG-: Well, maybe, perhaps or if you get into the
house by way of the toilet, but Murray had ac
cess to Truman and Truman knew the importance
of buttering a man like this. And did so
successfully. That was when the expulsions took
place in the CIO. The whole atmosphere was
nationally reflected, of course, in the courts
and in the unions and by the employers.
Had it not been for Taft-Hartley and that
whole era, I don't think you would have had the
kind of violent lengthy beefs; every one of
these strikes were long strikes - the '48 strike
ran around 95 days, the warehouse strike in '49
lasted 110 days, the strike of the longshoremen
in Hawaii lasted 178 days - almost six months;
no two ways about it, the employers felt full of
beans.
The economy was taking a tumble; towards
1949, unemployment was very heavy until we found
ourselves in Korea, again under the Truman
leadership. So everybody brushes off these
things and talks about Truman firing (General
Douglas) MacArthur . . .
Ward: The buck stopped here?
LG: Yes, these, in my opinion, were awfully simplis
tic statements. I think MacArthur was the kind
of a ffuy any man who was President of the United
States would have to fire sooner or later.
Either that or resign himself to beine a door
mat. I think that was the way MacArthur was,
and there was no taming him. If there was any
guy who had a complete God complex, it was
MacArthur. So, those were just rough, rough
years.
641
LG: Eisenhower went in around 1952 and there was no
immediate change; under Dulles (John Poster Dulles,
former secretary of state) the atmosphere changed
almost not at all. Eisenhower did manage to
extricate us from Korea - went back exactly to
what we had been talking about, the 38th
Parallel. We happened to leave an awful lot of
American kids behind and an awful lot of Koreans
and Chinese -
V/ard: Do you want to discuss the Hawaii trial in detail?
Is there anything interesting in the testimony or
the witnesses?
LG: Part of the witnesses were just the usual trained
snakes, you know, or trained cobras, as Hallinan
used to call them. Paul Crouch was down there;
those were the guys who came in as the experts
on communism. After all the Smith Act indictments,
I've tried to recall the exact phraseology; it's
something like "the conspiracy to teach the
advocacy of."
In other words, this whole thing was like a
three-step affair; the objective of the ,
prosecution was to boil the thing down to the
conspiracy to teach. Consequently, my giving ,>
you a pamphlet becomes a conspiracy to teach or
if the two of us give a third person a pamphlet
it is definitely a conspiracy, right?
So this was the device that was used; they
had these same trained characters from trial to
trial on the government payroll, all the time.
Louis Budenz was one, Manning Johnson was another,
Paul Crouch was another: they had a whole series
of the them.
V/ard: Ross - Lawrence Ross?
LG: Lawrence Ross, whether he turned up again I
don't know - he turned up in the Bridges case,
but he was pretty thoroughly ripped apart there.
He was the Kentucky colonel whose name was
Rosenstein, I think it was. They tried to bury
his whole background until I believe it was
Elinor Kahn who dug it up; she was on our re
search staff for the Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt
case.
642
LG: Me also dug up a lot of stuff on their false
testimony about Harry being at a meeting of the
Communist party where he v/as elected to its
Central Committee. He was in Stockton at the
same time; we even had the testimony of a couple
who got married and they remembered being at a
dinner party in Stockton where we had a dinner .
for our guys; all the plane schedules and every
thing else literally made it impossible to meet
these dates. That didn't bother the government.
You might remember that we had a pretty active
campaign demanding perjury indictments against
people like Manning Johnson and Crouch, Ross.
Ward: What about the defense witnesses - anything
of interest there?
LG: I'd say that the only thing of interest was a
couple of people - one was Mayor Wilson; he was
no longer mayor at that time.
Ward: What was his first name?
LG: John Wilson -
Ward: He was mayor of Honolulu?
LG: He was mayor of Honolulu for a long time. He
was an engineer. He was the man who conceived
the idea of digging a tunnel through the Pali
to go from one side of the island to the other.
Ward: The road went over the Pali.
LG: Yes, because going over the Pali was a very
difficult road and he was the one who engineered
the tunnel; very difficult job, lots of water,
lots of rain up there. It is called the Wilson
Tunnel.
Ward: The tunnel was built?
LG: The tunnel was built and I believe he was the
engineer on the job. He appeared on behalf of
Jack. Another man who appeared for Jack was
Delbert Metzger. Metzger was a wonderful old
Federal judge - -
643
Ward: You told me all about him.
LG: Who had the balls to stand up to the military
government and threw out martial law. There
were other witnesses for Jack, but there was
nothing really to contravert in the trial. In
other words, what do you arsue? Did Jack get
some of this literature? He probably did, sure,
They had this weak character who had worked for
our union at one time; he brought over a bag of
this literature, and they made a big thing of
that. He was coming back on the ship anyway.
Ward: That gives us a kind of a roundup it seems to
me.
The Man Who Turned
LG: The key guy against the union was Jack Kawano.
Now Jack Kawano had been one of the founders of
the longshore union in Honolulu. He was the
president of Longshore Local 136 in Hawaii; that
was before the merger of all the locals down
there. He was president at the time when they
had the first National Labor Relations Board
election which we finally won, sometime around
the end of 1940, maybe 1941.
The war came along. During the war, Jack
Kawano was completely shunted aside by the mili
tary. They put him on some sort of a little
Manpower Commission.
Ward: Wasn't he the guy who started to raise tomatoes?
LG: He went out and started raising tomatoes; wasn't
working on the waterfront. After the war, he
was active in the rebuilding of the union. I
got to know him very well and spent quite a bit
of time with him.
Ward: What made him turn?
LG: He was a bit of a recluse in the sense that
while I used to see him a fair amount, he was
never as intimate as some of the other guys
644
LG: in terms of sitting around, having coffee and
just bullshitting. It's hard to put your finger
on what makes a guy turn in a situation like
that; he stuck with the union through the '49
strike.
As a matter of fact, I recall he came to the
mainland and spoke to a Local 6 meeting when the
warehousemen were on strike, sort of linking up
the two battles; he seemed to stand up okay. I
think what might have made him turn was that
the union moved right past him. In other words,
he played one role in the formative days. The
moment the sugar organization took on an enormous
amount of mobility and strength, automatically
the relationship of forces changed.
When they began to consolidate the union into
Local 142, perhaps some longshoremen thought
they had made a mistake by not having a more
important place. Kawano continued to be the head
of the longshoremen, but the president of 142
then was Tony Rania, as I recall, from Waialua,
a Filipino; Constantine Samson, a Filipino from
Waimanalo plantation was vice-president. That
plantation is now out of business. Newton Miyagi
was secretary. Later on Carl Demaso became
president.
Now, maybe Kawano felt that with sugar and
pineapple and with the growth of organization,
his role was diminished or that he was being
forced to take a back seat; some of the guys
down there, for example, felt that the Filipinos
were using their racial bloc or because of their
racial importance were playing an undue role.
There was quite a clash to make sure that there
would be some balance of leadership. Whether
Kawano was affected by that, I don't know. I've
never gotten any indication in any conversation
I had with him.
Ward: It wasn't economic?
LG: It could have been; I don't think he wound up
getting either fame or fortune out of his dup
licity. As a matter of fact, later on he wound
up as a janitor in a theatre in Los Angeles.
645
Ward: Well, what did his testimony do among the members
of the union?
LG: Almost none, because "by that time he had dropped
out of activity. I remember going to the trial
one day and just sitting there glaring at him;
I didn't know what the hell had gotten into this
guy.
He just looked right through everybody to the
back wall; obviously well rehearsed and doing a
real job both on Jack and the other defendants
in terms of their linkage with these other key
witnesses - the guys who were the real theoreti
cal experts - by showing that there had been a
Communist party in Hawaii and that Jack had been
part of it; that they were active; that they had
literature; that they had classes; that they had
influence in the union.
Ward: Did Kawano place Jack in a Communist meeting?
LG: Yes - yes, regularly. Kawano, after that, faded
out of the scene. It wasn't that much of a
loss. There were other competent guys who had
come along in the '49 Longshore strike.
Again things go through your mind as to why
a number of Hawaiians left Hawaii, who had been .
very active in the building of the longshore
union and helping out in sugar; a number of the
guys who wound up on the island of Lanai, help
ing to organize the pineapple workers. Something
had moved past these people or they didn't quite
keep up with it; that could easily turn to bitter
ness.
We have talked about the whole period of the
Red Scare, Taft-Hartley and the tough days, and
I thought it was more like ten years.
##
LG: I guess the reason I put it at ten years,
instead of another period, was that after 1955
there was a change in the national atmosphere.
I think it was around 1955 when they reversed
the Smith Act convictions, so that when I say
646
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Why, if they reversed the Smith Act convictions,
did it take them three years for Jack Hall to
be freed of the charges?
I think it's just the rate at which these things
go through the courts. As I recall, there was
no great surprise on anybody's part that the
court reversed the convictions in Hawaii. It
could be even that through vindictiveness on
the part of courts and judges, prosecution,
Federal government, they figure, okay, the
longer you drag it out, the more damage can be
done.
Wasn't it Shakespeare who put the words in
Hamlet's mouth - one of the reasons for justi
fiable suicide being the law's delay? So, the
only reason I put it that way is because I really
see the thing as sort of tapering off in 1955.
Does that fairly give the picture of the period
of harassment?
Yes and no; let me give you an example. It took
a combination of various forms of strategy to
meet the whole era. After the passage of Taft-
Hartley, the employers attempted to utilize it
for a showdown and kick the union around in the
1948 Longshore strike.
Literally you had no choice but to fight, but
it also meant a strategy where you couldn't back
away from a legitimate beef. You had to take
them on, but it would be a bleeding operation,
both on the employer and for the union. These
were costly strikes, and bear in mind, we weren't
a big union or a very wealthy union.
You didn't have a big strike fund?
We didn't have any strike fund.
You did have a policy, did you not, that when
a strike took place the officers went off the
payroll, right along with the members?
Right - correct. That was automatic in the
locals. In the case of the International, it
depended on what proportion were out, so that
647
LG-: it did -not have uniform application. But as I
recall, at the time Longshore and Warehouse were
"both out in '49, we were really scrounging around
for nickels; it was not easy.
Ward: Did you take a financial dumping too?
LG-: We weren't getting paid so much to be dumped
very far.
Ward: Well, you were cut some anyhow?
LG: Oh, sure - we made heavy contributions to the
strike fund; every nickel counted; this was a
real draining operation. It also meant, for
example, that sometimes the only way that you
could even retreat was by fighting - which
sounds like a contradiction in terms. There's
all the difference in the world between a
retreat and a rout and if you can retreat and
keep your army intact, there are circumstances
that warrant it.
For example, the 1949 Warehouse strike was an
expensive strike. The members wound up getting
a dime an hour increase in pay. The employers
initially offered absolutely zero - just renew
the contract as is. Actually, the members were
doing quite well in '48, '49 was different; but
we had to fight then. We struck Crockett in '49.
The Longshore strike in Hawaii wasn't even over
yet. We finally picked up a little more than a
dime in Crockett; I think 10 cents plus an
extra seven cents automatically early in the
following year in March, pretty much along the
lines of the settlement in Hawaii.
In Hawaii, here was a strike that went six
months around the issue of wages, but with a
much more fundamental sociological issue behind
it. The others, you couldn't say had the same
sociological issues; the closest being the
Longshore strike in '48 on the west coast.
There you had a combination of several factors.
Employers were determined to reverse the whole
scene in terms of the hiring hall and to use
this new-fangled weapon, Taf t-Hartley, to kick
the union into line.
648
LG-: All this time we had a "battle going on in the
question of the n on- Communist affidavits. There
is nothing in the law to this day that says you
have to use Taft-Hartley or the National Labor
Relations Board. And the Board has become more
of a pain in the neck today in terms of trying
to get anything done; even the minimal improve
ments that Carter was committed to went down
the drain in Congress.
So, we adhered to this line - it sort of
made sense. A number of other leftwing unions
did the same thing, but before lone: the CIO was
using Taft-Hartley in order to raid. The Team
sters were using Taft-Hartley in order to raid.
Finally, sometime in 1950, we decided we had
no choice but to comply with Taft-Hartley.
There was never a question in our minds about
the legal elements on compliance - that we could
have done at all times. The real hitch was go
ing along with the whole concept. We finally
had to comply. It was the only way to defend
ourselves.
So, we were both fighting and retreating and
having to take certain steps which eventually
resulted in pulling in our lines. Simultaneously,
in 1949 and 1950, the whole process of expulsion
of the leftwing unions from the CIO began. I
had thought that Arthur Goldberg played a role
in the trial itself; apparently not, from what
I have been able to check. I gather he's the
one who prepared the material.
Even after the expulsion we had a policy to
stay in the CIO. It was a different policy, for
example, than that of UE and Farm Equipment, who
said, "The hell with the whole thing - it's just
a kangaroo court, anyway. e thought the thing
to do was to fight as long as we could, to build
as many allies as we could, which we did; but
still it was a retreating fight. Toward the end
of 1950, the State CIO Council, for example, was
taken over; Richard T. Leonard and Tim Flynn, I
think; he was CIO Director in Los Angeles;
Leonard was a CIO administrative officer. They're
the ones who moved in with court orders and so
forth.
649
Ward: That was when Merv Rathborne was secretary
wasn't it?
LG: No, it was afterwards. Merv appeared as a
witness against Earry.
Ward: Oh, that's right - but who was secretary then?
LG: Bjorne Hailing was secretary. They took over
the CIO councils; I mentioned earlier the
International taking over 150 Golden Gate which
technically was owned by the San Francisco CIO
Council. This must have been 1948 or early in
1949, because we had this feeling that things
were going sour. We were down at 604 Montgomery;
we had gotten out of 150 Golden Gate - there
wasn't enough room; but the CIO Council and some
of the tiny unions used the. place.
We finally decided we might as well take the
building back; most of the money in there was
ours; so I recall Dick Lynden was on the CIO
Council's board there, so I said to Dick, "Why
don't you call a special meeting of the board
of directors and vote to sell the building back
to the ILWU." There were some screams, but there
was some money around and I made out the check
and paid them the same day and we took over the
building. This was just as well, because other
wise the CIO would have picked it up when they
took over the Council.
We had a set-up which amounted to unity
committees.. Various labor unions in areas like
Los Angeles and San Francisco made attempts to
maintain all the ties we could, whatever strength
we could. We fought against being separated
from the rest of the trade union movement and we
constantly fought for unity.
We did this even during the Teamster raid in
early 1950; by that time Joe Dillon had gone
over the hill with a group from Local 6. We
called a special convention of Local 6. We
invited the Teamsters to come to the convention,
so it was both a bold policy as well as being
forced to fight a retreating action. The reason
we invited them to come to the convention was
650
LG-: again the constant hammering away - the struggle
for men's minds, trying to convince them that
here was a line that made some sense.
I remember our publicity was very intense in
those days. We made a proposition to the Team
sters. We said, "Look, the one thing that
won't do any good around here is cannabalism.
Basically, it finally works out that the
employers are the only guys who have anything
to gain from it. They use one union against the
other, they divert the attention of the union,
they turn people against the union - they do
harm and no good.
"We'll invite you to the convention; whatever
your reasons are - because they had talked first
with the CIO, Tim Plynn - for getting out of the
ILWU, you put them out in front of the delegates.
The issue will be argued out there and we'll
take a referendum vote of the whole Local 6
membership. If they go along with you, every
body goes. If they turn it down, you get out,
no jurisdictional raids."
Of course, they just ignored it, but on the
other hand, if you look past the immediate
individuals and the little petty struggles for
power and address yourself to basic principles,
then you can see how an approach of this sort
had an awful lot of value. So, there was never
any reluctance on our part -
Ward: You're just about calling Eisenhower a Teamster
official, because that is what he did in
Vietnam - -
LG-: That's what he said he would do - -
Ward: Well, he backed away from it.
LG-: Yes, he backed away from it; the Teamster
officials did an Eisenhower, that's more accu
rate. In other words, what Eisenhower agreed
to in '54 was not too different; that was a bit
after us, but that's all right.
651
LG-: But it was a sound program - not too different
than the program we took with the CIO. e said,
"Look, we've got no objection to being voted
down. All we want is a chance to say our piece
and let the membership have the last say."
That's all it was. That's all we ever asked
for in the APofL. Just a chance to take the
deck - no more. If the labor movement is to
be anything, it's got to be that sort of a forum
for ideas and conflict. Well, those people
weren't operating that way and many people don't
to this day, so ....
All I'm saying is that it was a combination
of all these factors at work. Again, bear in
mind that everybody was moving into our flanks
at the same time. In glancing over The Dispatcher,
I happened to start putting down a list of the
number of people who zeroed in against us just
in Hawaii Longshore alone.
In addition to others already mentioned,
there was an outfit that called itself I M U A,
which in Hawaiian means "forward." But they
used the initials for "I Might Undertake Anything."
This was a so-called Hawaii residence group,
dominated by haoles. They were out crusading
against us; taking out ads and everything else.
Ward: Incidentally - spell the word "haole" for me.
LG: HAOLE; they say the word literally means
"white stranger." It's used when they talk
about white persons generally. I always thought
it also meant a luna. I was corrected once by
a Hawaiian.
I happened to be stuck on the Kona coast -
not too far from Kailua. I stayed in some small
motel for the night and there was a Hawaiian
teacher who owned this place - very friendly and
knew a little bit about the union and wanted to
talk about it.
I used the word haole and he said, "By the
way, do you know the origin, the derivation of
the word?" I said, "No, I always thought it
meant either a luna, first rank luna or a v/hite
652
LG: man, generally from the mainland." "Well, he
said, I've done some studying on this." Now,
I'm not saying that this is authoritative; I'm
not terribly sure it's important that it be
authoritative. It's much more important to re
call these marvelous things that go on in the
minds of people when they decide to work on
something like this.
He said, "The white haole is a conjunction of
two Hawaiian words. The words are hau and ule."
Now, I know what ule is in Hawaiian - that's a
prick - and hau, according to him, means shove.
"When the white seamen got there the first thing
they did would be to grab some of these Hawaiian
wahines and rush them off into the brush; so we
labelled them hauule - haoles." Well , that ' s
just some of the theory; regardless of the facts,
it's a good story.
Ward: Well, the story about the derivation of okulehau
LG: Which was the drink - -
Ward: Bottoms up - -
LG: No, the okole is your ass; it literally meant -
oh, okolemaluna, that's what you're thinking of.
Maluna is moon - okole is your fanny. We say,
"bottoms up," but the words literally mean "ass
to the moon."
Ward: Well, the way I heard it was that Captain Cook
was getting whatever he could get hold of to
distill -
LG: No, taro was what they made it out of -
Ward: Whatever they used - anyway, they had this big
kettle and they made the brew in this kettle
and that's where the big, black iron bottom came
from. That was my version. It's more polite.
LG: Yes, that might be the derivation of the word
okulehau, but the expression for bottoms up is
literally bottoms up - okolemaluna.
Ward: Well, anyway, you were talking about the IMUA
and -
653
LG-: The Citizens Committee. President Truman,
Interior Secretary (Julius A.) Krug. And there
was also a campaign to support G-overnor Stainback;
Maldonado, the renegade member of Local 10; also
the Maritime Democratic Club which was set up in
San Francisco, another redbaiting outfit.
Maldonado was repudiated by the Maritime Democra
tic Club and finally expelled by Local 10. Of
course, there were injunctions and seizure orders
and the advertisements with their "Dear Joe"
editorials; the American Legion. The Hawaiian
Legislature with their Acts 2 and 3. V/hat a
lash-up!
654
XVTI A SWEET REVENGE
(Interview 24: 29 August, 1978)
The Lanai Strike
Ward: Now, Lou, I think you were talking about the
Lanai strike.
LG: That would "be logical.
Ward: Let's get into the pineapple situation.
In 1947 we took a setback in pineapple. No
question that the strike there was somewhat
premature. Also, no doubt in my mind that there
was a sort of overwhelming intoxication with the
season. People are hypnotized by all this fruit
that is becoming fresh and has to be canned at
one time .
In the pineapple growing season, the crop is
geared to the availability of seasonal labor.
They used a good many high school - and I guess
a few college - kids for the canning operation.
Most canneries which would sort of putter along
were using what they called intermittent workers,
During the peak season they would go up to
thousands of employees. In any event, - even
though there were some differences later,
particularly in Jack Hall's mind, as to whether
or not we should have settled when we did -
there was a retreat in pineapple in 1947.
655
LG-: In the period that then ensued, through the
Hawaii Employers Council I think, the employers
worked out their joint strategy. I don't think
there was anything sub rosa; they were just
representing their own interests. Naturally,
you're not too fond of that, particularly if the
odds get very bad. But what they were able to
do, though, was run broken field through the
union. There were a number of pineapple
companies, the major one being Hawaiian Pine,
which was in turn owned by Castle and Cooke.
Del Monte had a cannery in Hawaii together
with certain land that they worked - lease lands,
I think, primarily, on Oahu but also on the is
land of Molokai. Libby McNeil and Libby had a
cannery in Hawaii and also worked some lands.
There were some smaller canneries on the island
of Kauai which I believe are all phased out by
now.
During the '47 beef or directly afterwards
we lost one of the companies through successful
efforts of the employers to take the union apart.
Well, the program of the employers was not
something to be misunderstood. I think it is one
of the inevitable things, depending on the balance-
of organization. If the union stays strong and
the industry is well organized, you're going to
find fragmentation among the employers, depending
on the exercise of economic strength.
If, on the other hand the union is weak, the
employers very quickly take advantage by either
moving into those areas where they can disor
ganize the workers entirely or set the pattern
at the weakest link. There's nothing that
requires any great, brilliant strategy to figure
that one out. So the employers would then fol
low a policy of imposing a wage settlement.
The contracts had come open once or twice and
what the employer did was to just simply announce,
"Okay, this is what we're going to pay, we're
not going to pay anymore. You can sit and bar
gain." They were careful. They didn't want
charges of refusal to bargain in good faith and
things like that.
656
LG: Even before they made their proposals they had
a pretty good idea as to where the weak spots
were, so in a number of cases they would start
off with the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, the
"biggest. It was also one which I suppose had
the weakness of "bigness because the seasonal
workers were not part of the union.
Henry White, president of the company, had
led the strikebreaking efforts; there were
pictures of him and his family out in the field
picking pineapples. On that score, I think Jack
was right; I would have liked to watch what
happened within a week or so of this kind of
effort.
Ward: Yes, I can see why.
LG: Well, come the end of 1950 - the pineapple
agreement was open, the employers proposed an
8-cent an hour increase and the initial nego
tiations were with Hawaii Pine. We called in
the full committee, even though the employers
were dealine company by company, because we felt
it was important to keep the union together, and
to keep the industry together as best we could
within our own ranks.
The general feeling was that we couldn't
effectively fight back at that moment and that
while people weren't too happy with the offer,
it was better to take it and rebuild; the process
was going on. The one group of workers who
rejected the proposal, also a part of the Hawaiian
Pineapple Company, were the workers on the is
land of Lanai. Lanai also means something like
a -
Ward: It's a porch, isn't it?
LG: It's a porch and I guess the reason the
island was called Lanai was that it is sort of
a porch for the island of Maui; it was just a
few miles across the channel there.
Ward: It's not a very large island, is it?
LG: Let's see, there were about 20,000 acres under
cultivation.
657
ard: Forty-fifty square miles?
LG: That's about all.
Ward: Then it's about as big as the city of San Francisco?
LG: No, no - a little bit bigger. There's a fair
section of the island that is not cultivated; some
high hills, all wooded and there's still a good
deal of game there. During the Lanai strike
people were well organized and they managed to
get fed. They rejected the contract. Finally,
they struck, somewhere around February, 1951.
I recall the beginning of the strike because
I was down there; there was a sugar caucus and
we were formulating our demands and tidying up
some of the other battles. There was also the
process of consolidation of the various locals
in Hawaii. The pineapple caucus decided they
were going to take the employers' offer, the
eight cents.
Earlier we not only discussed this with the
pineapple workers in Hawaii, who were under the
gun, but the other v/orkers as well. The head
quarters of the union were in the second floor
of an office building; makeshift offices because
the union was about to go ahead and build its
new headquarters at 451 Atkinson Drive, right
across the street. The meeting facilities at
the office were not terribly good.
I recall leaving the meeting there and some
of the fellows from Lanai, including Pedro de la
Cruz, were waiting and said, "We'd like to sit
down and talk for a while." So, we were just
sitting around there on a bit of lawn and all
they wanted to know was, did they have the right
to strike at Lanai.
I told them sure they had the right to strike -
no question about that; the employers were
negotiating company by company and practically
plant by plant. And there was nothing in the
way of an industry contract that was being
jeopardized. I didn't see that they were bound
by the industry vote. I told them they had the
Left to right: Jack Hall, Harry Bridges, Louis
Goldblatt. In Hawaii, 1950s.
Terry and Louis Goldblatt meeting Eleanor
Roosevelt at White House luncheon for
people helpful to the war effort, ca . 1943
Photo by Don Faulkner Photography
658
LG: right to strike, "But before you do, there are
a few things that should be understood both by
the workers and by the leadership. Number one,
when you're striking you'll be not entirely on
your own, but damn near."
You see, lanai had no cannery; they just
picked the fruit and shipped it in barges,
generally an overnight run to Oahu, where the
next morning it hit the canneries. I said that
the chances of spreading a picket line - let us
say, if the employers managed to work - over to
Hawaii Pine are just about zero.
It's not because a lot of good people there
wouldn't walk out; I think we'd lose it. We're
just in no shape to take on a long beef there;
plus there's no question in my mind that the
employers are going to stick with this thing for
a while, because they think they can fragment
industry bargaining.
I said, "That's one thing you ought to under
stand, to start with. As to whether you'll be
completely on your own, that will not be true -
you'll have the support of the union. When it
comes to finances, we'll help you as best we can;
I think you had better set up relief committees
from the very start. The other thing, if you
have any idea that you are going to win a strike
of this sort in two or three months, forget it.
It will take a lot longer. These employers like
it the way it is, and they are not about to give
it up."
They listened very carefully, didn't ask too
many questions; when I got through, they went
back to the initial question: did they have the
right to strike? That's it. Some time in Feb
ruary Lanai went down, and there started an
episode that added up all the things that were
happening in Hawaii; the divergent currents,
both in terms of public and governmental hosti
lity, and also what was going on among the
employers.
Ward: You had a replay of redbaiting, newspaper
antagonism?
659
LG: Well, for a while there just was a complete blanket
of silence. Later on, the papers began talking
about our destroying the pineapple industry, the
usual thing. Nobody was too upset about that.
As a matter of fact, I think some of the guys
felt a bit better when wome of the blasting came
along because they figured when the employers got
hurt, they screamed. That strike moved along on its
own, amazingly well organized ....
Ward: There was no production?
LG-: No; the only way you could have had production
was to bring in strikebreakers.
Ward: And they didn't do that?
LG: No - I think that the chances of their being
successful were very, very thin. This whole
damn island was just owned by Hawaiian Pine.
Everything on it. I think even the post office
was leased from the company. In any event, the
guys did an effective job. They set up huge
soup kitchens, fed entire families there. They
had regular hunting parties going up into the
hills, getting wild pigs still running around.
There are small deer on Lanai. I don't know
if anybody ever bothered with a hunting license.
I'm not sure those were necessary. They had
gardening crews and they also had fishing parties.
Everybody was accounted for and very well discip
lined.
Well, one of the things that I couldn't quite
figure out was what this strike was all about.
I understood exactly how they felt, but they
were taking a kicking around.
Ward: What were their demands over the 8 cents?
LG-: They demanded more money - 12 cents instead of
the 8. They demanded some stronger seniority
rights; there were some poor classifications;
they had grievances long pending. After the '47
strike, the employers were not making much of
an effort to settle a grievance; but I felt those
were not reasons enough by themselves.
660
during; that same year that Jack Hall was
indicted and we had some other headaches.
During one of the trips down there, I sat around
and asked a lot of questions and finally realized
that this was a strike without an obvious strike
issue; the issues were somewhere else. On poking
around, some of the things emerged and this gives
you an idea how deep some of the hostilities went
in Hawaii.
In 1946, they had brought in a whole group
of Filipinos. Those Filipinos were allocated
around to various companies; in the main, field
workers. Some went to sugar and some to pine
apple; some of them went to Lanai.
We objected to the importation of any
additional Filipinos in 1946, not because of
any hostility to the Filipinos, but because we
felt that because the war was over there would
be a certain amount of shift back to the planta
tions; mechanization was moving on apace and
before long these men would not be necessary.
All you would have would be a lot of headaches
and hardships.
This didn't stop the employers a bit, and
through their recruiting machinery they brought
these people in. Well, maybe a year or so later,
or maybe 1950 for that matter, all of a sudden,
Hawaiian Pine, at least on Lanai, decided they
didn't need those additional workers. It's a
small island, about 3,000 people, maybe 5,000
now, and I guess at that time, close to a thous
and were working for Hawaiian Pineapple Company.
These men had all made friends, of course,
particularly in the Filipino community. One
afternoon they were notified that there was no
longer any need for them; -they better go back to
wherever they're living, - some in single men's
barracks, some in houses which had been converted
for single men - and get their things. And that
same night they started to ship them out.
Ward: Where did they ship them to?
LG: I guess back to Honolulu and from there back to
the Philippines. It might have been in 1949
because many of those workers had been brought
661
LG-: in under 3-year contract. When the three years
were up, the' employers were not going to renew
them; okay, off they go. Maybe some of them
were just dropped in Honolulu and told "Do the
best you can."
The thing that really burned the workers on
Lanai was the inhumanity of the company; the
business of notifying a guy who's made his tran
sition, been there several years, notifying him
in the afternoon to go home, get his things and
get out. As they put it, "Not even time to have
a little bit of a luau; not even time to have a
small party so that the guys could say goodbye."
This really burned them and the resentment must
have been very, very deep. My hunch is that
before these gays left ail they asked of their
friends was "just get even, just get even."
That was one of the things. So, I thought
there must be some others. I kept poking around
and discovered there was another deep-seated
grievance - the way the houses were laid out.
The workers lived down on what was almost flat
country; part of the island is fairly flat.
Part of it is slightly hilly, then there are a
couple of slightly higher hills on the island,
around Lanai City.
Ward: You .just mentioned that the supervisors lived
on top of the hills.
LG: Right. The few roads on top of the hill v/here
the supervisors lived were paved. The roads
down around the camps were dust. Most of
Hawaiian land is volcanic land, has a fine, red
dust, and the guys were telling me - they were
primarily Japanese because these were family
men ...
Ward: And the Filipinos were pretty well gone by that
time?
LG: No, no; these were just part of these old pend
ing grievances. As a matter of fact, the
majority of the workers on that plantation were
Filipinos.
662
The story that came out from some of the others
we were talking about was that it was not too
uncommon where a housewife would get up in the
morning, do the washing, hang it all out. Bear
in mind again, these were all dirt roads there.
Before long a truck would be going by and all
this stuff had to be washed a second time. When
it came to the supervisor on top of the hill,
they had no such problem. Their wash would be
nice and clean - no dust around or anything.
So, there were these resentments around in
addition . . .
Ward: Were there any more like that, aside from the
dust and revenge?
LG-: The feeling, for example, particularly from
1947 when it came to trying to settle any kind
of grievance; it was a question of the attitude
of the employers when they met . . .
Ward: You mean the attitude of the employers when they
met the employees?
LG: Yes, arrogance, brushing them off; that was what
it amounted to. So it was a combination of
these things and these guys were just determined
to hang on.
Well, it was somewhere in the midst of that
strike where they set up a sort of a two-bit
Hawaiian un-American Activities Committee; every
body was in the act by that time. California
had one and most of the states had one, all aping
the House un-American Activities Committee;
which was also going on, too. You had all the
so-called reluctant witnesses I mentioned to you
in 1949. They were cited for contempt by the
House.
That was the period when even if you took the
Fifth Amendment, you were cited for contempt.
The first two cases went before Judge Metzger;
one of them was Yukio Abe, a longshoreman, a
good guy. In both cases, Metzger dismissed the
charges on the grounds that taking the Fifth
Amendment did not constitute a contempt of
Congress. This became a very important point.
663
LG: Anyway, these things were going on too. A man
whose name was (Ronald B.)Jamieson, an attorney
or a judge, was with their un-American Activi
ties Committee, the local one, as a so-called
conciliator. He got in touch with me and said
he wanted to talk about the Lanai strike. Well,
we sat down and had coffee. He said, ""What's
the strike all about?"
I said, "I don't know; if you ask me what
the specific strike issues are, I know what
they are and they are written down. If you want
a copy I'll send it to you. But that's not the
problem." He said, "Well, what is the problem?"
I said, "The toughest strike in the world to
settle is a strike without a strike issue. And
the real issues here are not in the written
demands. The real issues here are all in the
backlog of grievances that have piled up over
the years." And I mentioned a couple of them
to him.
He says, "Well, settle the thing." I said
"I have no idea; right now I'm sure that if you
had a meeting of those workers and said, 'How
about a deal? We'll sink the island; will that
settle the strike?', they'll vote 'yes'."
Next thing I know, not too long thereafter,
this guy testifies that he met with me and I
told him that the program in the Lanai strike
was to sink the island. That's how seriously
they took all this stuff. All he could see
in his head were these crazy visions of a union
embarked on a program to destroy Hawaii, period.
To even sink the island; that ends it, right?
Ward: How far along in the strike was this? How many
weeks or months?
LG: Oh, I guess three or four months. That strike
lasted a long time - over seven months, close
to eight. One of the longest strikes I've ever
been into. No, no, I was mixed up in a strike
that went nine months later - that was over at
Colgate. But this was the longest one we ever
664
had down there, longer than the longshore strike,
178 days. So, it just gives you an idea of how
people thought. This guy, I don't think he had
all of his marbles anyway. I think he wound up
later on over in Kaneohe - that's the place . .
Ward: You mean Jamieson?
Yes, that's the place for the mentally ill,
mentally disturbed. So, that gives an idea of
what the reaction was, but this thing just drag
ged along.
Ward: Who were the attorneys in the Hawaii Seven;
Jack Hall's particularly?
LG: Dick (Richard) G-ladstein -
Ward: Dick Gladstein?
LG-: Yes, and Harriet Bouslog, Meyer Symonds and Al
Wirin. Gladstein came down there. As a matter
of fact, Harriet was worked over by the courts
there because she made a speech somewhere about
the whole nature of the Smith Act trial and
what was going on.
Ward: She was not allowed to speak?
LG-: I mean, after all when you are talking about
the Smith Act, you're talking about something
that's completely contrived - nothing makes
any sense. If the indictment made sense, then
I suppose everything else would make sense.
We finally got a fairly good agreement in
sugar, notwithstanding Jack's indictment. I
recall that the word went out by Jack's office
and the various locals - just in the process
of merging into Local 142 to have them take
things like food, staples and so forth and so
on which many of them had accumulated in
preparation for a strike and send that to Lanai,
which they did. So that food kept coming in,
money kept coming in - not big money, but enough
to get by.
665
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
The company meanwhile filed action in court
and tried to collect all the rents from the
guys. e told them not to pay rent until the
strike was over. So, the company exerted some
additional pressure. The company decided to
sit this one out and they wrote off a full
pineapple crop, something pretty close to twenty
five million dollars worth, which in those days
was a fair amount of money. When you look at
it in terms of the number of workers involved . .
What did they save in terms of wages?
You're talking about say, a thousand workers;
say they were making an average of four bucks
an hour - you're talking about 32,000 bucks a
day, I guess. That would be about $160,000
a week. Oh well, the amount was substantial,
but that's not the way an employer measures
things. It's not how much you've lost in
wages, it's how much you've lost in profits.
He's not in business to pay wages, he's in
business to make a buck.
Toward the tail end of the strike, I got a
call from Jim Blaisdell who wanted to sit down
with Jack and myself. "Something has to be
done about this Lanai thing."
He'd not been active in it before?
Yes, it was a quiet period by the Employers
Council. In other words, no real attempt to
move; the logical explanation was that the
employers had made a decision to sit this one
out. I'd say that they looked at it as a
straight out-and-out investment - that they
would get the returns from this later on.
Blaisdell wanted to sit down with Jack and
myself and we said that was okay. Jim suggested
that we have lunch over at the Tropics (restaur
ant) out at Waikiki. We sat around - we had a
few drinks and had lunch. Jim liked to drink,
Jack didn't mind, and it didn't bother me too
much. I don't think it was until late that
afternoon, must have been around three, four
o'clock. We had been there a long time.
666
A lot of these discussions are general bullshit,
you know, feeling out and probing and so forth.
And we found no good reason to open up the
question; it was a question o-f- just waiting.
Finally, Jim was very direct - by that time we
had covered some of the imponderables about
strike issues. I had told him about my conver
sation with Jamieson- whether that was in the
press, I don't know. I had said to Jim, "It's
still true - you want to make a deal with the
guys to sink the island, they will all vote
yes."
So, Jim said, "Let's forget that; we want to
settle." I said, "I'll write it out." And I
had an envelope in my back pocket - I don't
carry a notebook. I sat down and wrote the
things out and said, "Here's what they are.
You say eight cents; that will not do. We need
more than that, and 12 cents is not sufficient
either. It'll have to be 15 cents - that's
only the first condition. Second, the industry
has to go back into industry bargaining. The
15 cents has to go to all of the workers. The
8 cents is already in effect, so 7 cents has to
go into effect for everybody on top of the
eight. That means that on Lanai they would get
the 8 cents back to the time of the expiration
of the contract in October of the previous
year." This must have been, oh, the strike
had been maybe six months along at the time -
Ward: From August - September? Somewhere in there?
LG: It would have been to the end of September the
year before; there would be a pre-period of
retroactivity up until the strike began. All
pineapple workers would get the additional
seven cents. The industry would go back and
bargain because we had to straighten out problems
of seniority and classifications that oueht to
be settled locally; also something ought to be
done about this whole attitude on grievances by
the supervisors, and so forth and so on.
"Well," he said, "have you got them all down?"
I said, "Yep." As we left the Tropics, Jack
turned to me and said, "Well, I know you had a
667
LG-: fair amount to drink," and I said, "I had a lot
to drink," and he said, "That thing will never
fly." "I'm not sure about that," I replied.
"What the hell, the strike is this far along
with every indication that the guys are not
going to crack; they'll just hang in there,
that's all. Right now, at least they're eating
regularly and we'll see what happens."
So, two or three days later - this must have
"been the seventh month of the strike - we get a
call from Blaisdell asking if we both could meet
over at his house. It was a Sunday; he said he
wanted us to meet with the industry.
I said, "Sure, we'll be there, but you have
the terms ready that I think we can handle.
Frankly I know of no way of handling a strike
settlement with the Lanai guys alone. It's an
issue that has to go somewhat beyond them -
where they feel they have accomplished something
beyond the specific economic demands. The only
big thing I can think of is the resumption of
industry bargaining " - which is about as cold
a way as any of saying okay, we've got to make
up for the damage done in the '47 beef.
He said, "Well, I think it's going to sit
all right." So, I told him we'd be there.
Jack and I went over to his house; he was living
in this house just past Diamond Head, very
attractive section. I told you about Jim's
beefing that his house was on the Bishop estate.
And Jim had the industry people there.
I remember this guy, Vern Haas, he was there
from Libby; Jack Driver, a guy I got to know
quite well was there from CalPack. Henry White
was there; he'd be the first one we were look
ing for, the head of Hawaiian Pine. Jim was
determined that there would be as little
conversation as possible - it was going to be
a social afternoon. They had brought along an
assistant, so it was a good sized crowd -
Ward: Just the two of you and a half a dozen of them,
huh?
668
Jim and his wife, Barbara, a few more than a
dozen; I'd say eighteen or twenty. Jim took out
a bottle of gin; I'll never forget this. He
figured that making mixed drinks was a waste of
time, so he "had the glasses all lined up, filled
up the . . .
Ward: So that everybody would help themselves?
No. Jim fixed the drinks and lined them up,
and left the room. Before long, it was a very
cheerful thing. Obviously, the employers were
very happy. I think they decided, "Okay, it's
worth a try but at some point you have to call
it a- day." It was clear that the agreement was
okay, no problem there.
Jim had a motorcycle and he was roaring
around every once in a while; Jim was pretty
wild when he got gassed and he had a large
garden and he'd take his motorcycle and roll
clear around this garden. He wouldn't go out
on the street. And he had a pellet gun and he
was out on the beach shooting at tin cans and
stuff of that sort. It got to be that kind of
an afternoon.
When I've had a few drinks I decide I can still
play the piano, and I was playing more in those
days. I was playing the piano for a while and
I recall Henry White coming over and saying,
"You know, if I could play the piano, none of
this stuff would be very important." I just
looked at him. No matter how much you've had
to drink, you know when you're getting your leg
pulled. Apparently, he had been a supporter of
the Hawaiian Symphony for a long, long time.
Anyway, that was one of those silly things.
Somehow some of them finally wound up in a
poker game. I sat in for a little while; Jack
was playing; he's a good poker player. He had
that amazing technique, you know, which I'm
sure he developed over the years. Jack's sight
was not too good, or appeared to be not too
good. He never drove a car, partially because
of his sight.
669
LG: They were playing something like stud poker
and he wanted to think through and he'd say,
"I want to take a look at those things," and
he'd start peering down at each hand, obviously
calculating just what the odds were; the cards
were in his head before he would make his bets.
Well, I got out because I wasn't getting any
place. Jack wound up with all kinds of money;
he was calling everybody and collecting all
kinds of bets. He was good. He always wore
these aloha shirts with pockets on them, two up
here and two down below and he was putting money
in the various pockets.
Finally we broke the thing up. Jim wanted to
know what we were going to do. And I said,
"Well, I'll be in touch with Lanai; I'll be
going over there in the next day or so." He
said, "Oh, I hope the hell it sticks." I said,
"Well, we'll see."
I remember driving Jack home from there. He
didn't live all that far away, up in the hills.
Even though he started putting all that money
he had won on the table, Yoshiko was not
impressed. He was just late for dinner. I took
off in a hurry.
It was a couple of days later - I had called
Pedro de la Cruz, who was the leader there,
asking him to get the committee together, and
I went over. The guys met me at the airport
and I recall that before we went to the meeting
they drove me on along some of the fields there
and said, "Just smell." And they were right;
the crop was gone, it had all turned to alcohol;
you could get drunk just standing there looking
at it.
I said, "Gee, that stuff is all around." He
said, "Yeah - it's foul." We got together in
the committee and I said, "Why don't you bring
in all the leaders you can." So, they brought
a lot of guys in; sort of small headquarters,
right next to the grocery store that Pedro de
la Cruz owned. They brought them in and I
started going over the settlement and said, "This
is a real victory. "
670
For a while, they just sat there, cold, and I
said, "Look, something is bothering somebody
here; what's it all about?" Finally, one guy
got up and said, "I'll tell you what's the
matter. You say, we're going to get 15 cents
instead of the 12. That's good, but that's not
the point. All the other workers gonna get
7 cents on top of the 8 cents, so they get the
same 15 cents we get. They didn't fight!"
(laughter)
They knew the facts, they understood the
score, they realized before they struck that
they would be on their own. That was okay.
But the idea that somebody else was going to
get something without fighting, they found so
hard to handle. So, we spent a good deal of
time discussing industry bargaining and what
it means - why the settlement 'made sense and
why it was such a big victory, because it was
really a much bigger victory than just winning
the contract on Lanai.
Actually if you continued the way they did
and nobody else got anything instead of the
15 cents, the next time around the employers
will tell a group of workers in another cannery
that okay you want more than we're offering
you, you take an eight month strike too.
But the real significance here was that the
employers decided they'd lost the game; it took
a couple of years; now they had to pay for it.
The biggest victory was going back into industry
bargaining. If somebody was trying to run
broken field, he had to be tackled awfully hard
by somebody.
Well, the workers finally got it, and said,
"We'd like to know your recommendation." I
said, "We'll recommend it - can we have a meet
ing late this afternoon?" "No." I asked, "Why?"
"There's a hunting party out - we have to wait
until they come home. A group is out fishing;
we don't know what time they'll get back; we
can't have a meeting until tomorrow or the next
day." So, I sat around with Pedro de la Cruz
for a while -
671
Ward: A question: you said Pedro de la Cruz owned
this store, yet lie was a strike leader; how
could . . .
LG-: He came out of the plantation; he had this tiny
little store there, just his own personal store.
Ward: But was he still a pineapple worker?
LG: He was on leave and he was a union official.
He was a very effective fellow. Later became
a member of the Legislature.
Ward: So, it took a day or so to get the meeting
organized.
LG: Yes, we organized a meeting. So, Pedro and I
sat around a bottle of Scotch or something. He
decided this warranted a bit of a celebration.
He had a few drinks and before long he went
sound asleep. Somebody had given me a flower
lei when I came there; the usual politeness.
Good will. After all, these guys didn't figure
I was an outsider, you know; carpet bagger.
I was going to give it to Pedro and a woman
came along, and said, "Don't do that. Never do
that." And that's how you find out about some
of their superstitions. I said, "Okay, v/e'll
hang it up there until he wakes up." "Never
hang it on a man who'd sleeping," she said,
"because that's the same thing as putting it on
a dead man." Interesting. Pick up these little
things .
Pedro left a very strong impression on me be
fore he fell asleep that it was just as well
that the guys handle a beef on their own,
including the meeting. Let them run it but
you'll be all right; you have the key fellows.
They had a group there who were just as
tough as nails, particularly the Filipinos and
the Japanese, guys like Shiro Ckama and his
brother Goro, very effective leaders; and the
Filipinos were a tough, tough group. I'm sure
that one thing that would never occur to any
body would be to break ranks. Anyway, I said
in that case you guys go ahead with your meeting
and I'll go back to Honolulu.
672
So, I took the last ride out of there - I think
there was one just before sunset. I went back
and I was at the hotel and I got a phone call
around two o'clock in the morning. It was
Blaisdell trying to run me down. He said,
"What happened at Lanai? Is it settled?"
"I don't know, I think it is." "Did you have a
meeting?" "Yes," I said, "with the committee,
but not the membership. They're meeting tomor
row, maybe." "Why in the hell did you leave?",
he says. "Don't worry about it."
By that time, he had a lot at stake. Because
I'm sure Jim had told the employers "This is
one of the things you bargain for." He knew
about the business of picking off places one by
one; some advantage to the employers, yes, but
it can also be turned around. My hunch is that
he told the employers that was the reason for
the settlement - "Okay, you decide to go this
route."
Interesting, in 1947 when the employers
presented their so-called final offer before
the strike broke, Steele was the one who
presented that; when the settlement came along,
it was Blaisdell. I don't know if there's any
difference in policy between Steele and Blais
dell, or whether the employers played games
with the Employers Council, which is much more
likely.
The Employers Council, as far as the employers
were concerned, was just a group of guys they
hired, period. They followed the employers'
orders. I guess when they had one set of orders
they said, "Okay, we'll carry this one out. If
it doesn't work we'll shift around." It was
Blaisdell who carried the ball for settlement.
Anyway, the vote finally came along and the
contract was accepted.
Back to industry bargaining and it has
stayed that way since. How things do change I
Presently, for example, - and this began a
couple of contracts ago - the man who began to
move up in Hawaiian Pine and who had been their
chief negotiator for the whole pineapple industry,
673
LG: and who heads it now is a man named Al Fraga.
He's also with the Hawaii Employers Council
now. He and Tommy Trask, our new regional
director, both worked in Hawaiian Pine at the
same time, and the atmosphere is considerably
different. I'm not saying they agree on every
thing, but at least they level with each other.
Ward: The chance of misunderstanding each other is
much less than it used to be.
LG: Much less, plus a lot of the game playing was
knocked off. The employers still want to get
by as cheaply as they can, but the tactics are
a little bit different. Anyway that's the way
Lanai settled up. It sort of rounded out a lot
of the beefs that went through '46 and '49.
Ward: So, there's a space there of about five years to
straighten out pineapple.
LG: Yes, about four years.
Oh. Those Early Fifties!
Ward: Okay. What next? What else would you like to
get into before we get into your headaches with
the various redbaiting committees?
LG: Well, I told you I looked up a couple of things.
One was the Goodman trial - that was after the
Supreme Court victory on Bridges, Robertson and
Schmidt in 1953.
Ward: Oh, yes, this is the civil case -
LG: That went to Paul Goodman in 1955; it went be
fore him on June 20th - that's the one where
Telford Taylor came out. The case was concluded
on July 22. That was a trial where there were
very few interruptions.
Ward: That was July 22, 1955?
LG: That would be July 22nd and he came down with
the decision on the 29th -
674
Ward: You mean a week later?
LG-: And that wound up the Bridges case. I did some
checking on a couple of other things and just
so as to get some things straight, I mentioned
that Coos Bay caucus which took place in 1950
after the Korean War "broke, and that the Coast
Guard screening had come up at that time. That
was not correct. There were some rumbles of it,
yes, and I mentioned the fact that there was one
delegate to the caucus - I think his name was
Kelly - who was in touch with Tobin. It was
very hard to make secret phone calls from
there. The guys know just about everybody.
But screening didn't come in full fledged at
that time. That was later on. And then when
screening did come along, I took the position
that we adopted which did not oppose screening
on strictly military cargo, but on commercial
ships we took a firm position, including
threatening to walk off if there was any attempt
to screen our guys. We made it stick, but that's
when the decimation began of other unions, where
a number of the seamen were knocked off their
jobs -
Ward: Marine Cooks?
LG-: Right, and some of the guys in the NMU, Marine
Firemen. Of course, the whole story about
screening is a chapter by itself. Just the
insanity that went along with it, including at
some point all kinds of people getting into
the act; longshoremen denied the pass, like a
longshoreman who carried several decorations
from World War II and was denied a pass, who
said, "I'm not a Communist and have never been
to a Communist meeting nor been invited to one."
"Well, aren't there any Communists in the
local?" He said, "I don't know, I've never
seen their books." And finally, the guy from
the Coast Guard says, "Well, you know, if you
would be a little bit helpful, you might get
yourself invited." That was an offer to turn
stoolpigeon if he wanted to get the pass. Oh,
they had the guts to write the whole thing up
and give it to the union paper.
675
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
But that was the atmosphere at the time - we
were in the Korean War, and this went on and on
and on. Luckily, we held- our ranks; in the
case of many other unions, the damage was done.
Of course, "by that time - about 1951 - the
raiding was going on full "blast.
Was the ACTU still active or had they given up?
They were still around and, as a matter of fact,
Father Rice was still around. He was the
ideological leader of the whole thing in the
Catholic Church; the one in San Francisco was
Father Boss.
As a matter of fact, on the Korean War the
caucus was generally pretty bad. While the
International still had a position that was
anti-war, that we had enough, that Korea could
very well "be the "beginning of World War Three,
the caucus itself in effect reiterated the same
program as the Democratic party, that this had
"been an invasion "by the Communists and so forth
and so on; luckily it didn't go so far as to
include screening and everything else.
These things, particularly the Korean thing,
came into focus at the 1951 convention, which
was held in Hawaii; the first International
convention down there. Since then there has
been a practice of meeting in Hawaii every ten
years. We met there in 1951; we met there in
'61 and we met there in 1971.
Your conventions meet every odd year?
Yes, every odd year - every two years. And I
think Canada has become a sort of ten year
rotation too. And there's a certain number in
San Francisco -
So, two out of the five conventions in the ten
years are either in Hawaii or Canada?
That's right. Anyway, the 1951 convention was
extremely important because the Bridges case
was still hanging fire; redbaiting was going on
apace; we had been expelled from the CIO; you
676
LG: had your Hall hysteria in Hawaii, including the
un-American Activities Committee down there,
plus other attacks we had gone through.
They were constantly announcing our demise;
there were obituaries about this union written
almost every other week. The time of the Coos
Bay caucus, there were reporters all over the
place; they had never seen so many reporters in
Coos Bay, all of them with the single purpose
to carry the story when the union repudiated
Bridges, who was in the clink; repudiated by
our union and we got to be good, respectable
CIO people.
When the Korean War broke, other headaches
piled up very rapidly; the screening piled up.
On top of that you had the Wage Stabilization
Board. The War Labor Board had gone out of
business after World War II.
With the beginning of the Korean War, they
put into effect the Wage Stabilization Board,
which had so-called "guide lines" which really
applied only to wages. Everything else had no
mandatory features of any kind; there was no
OPA as such. It's^a good deal like the
governor asking for a voluntary roll-back on
rents. It meant just about as much.
The '51 convention became crucial in the
sense that it would be the time to take stock,
find out how much of an impact all these things
had had on the union, and whether we could
really keep going. Holding it in Hawaii was a
good thing. The place we had for it, by the
way, was I guess the most beautiful convention
site anybody could ever have had. Luckily,
there's a place down there not too far from
Kapiolani Park, alongside, but off towards the
ocean.
Ward: It's on Oahu?
LG-: On Oahu. It's down a way from Waikiki itself.
677
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
##
A beautiful place, you said.
Yes, a place called Queen's Surf; this was a
place that had "been the home of a very wealthy
man. And this must have been turned into a bit
of a night club, a very large room, big enough
to seat our entire convention.
You had two hundred people there, didn't you?
Oh, we had close to 500, and they v/ere all
seated there. As a matter of fact, Franklin D.
Roosevelt stayed at this house once when he was
in Hawaii. The man who owned the place at the
time installed an elevator to take Roosevelt
up to his bedroom in one corner of the house.
I remember going over there to look at it and
it was that kind of a home.
They weren't doing too well at the time, in
1951. That was before the enormous tourist
boom. They were happy to have us and the only
arrangement we had was that we have our lunches
there. We bought them in advance, which wasn't
too bad. We told them we'd make a deal provided
they didn't open up the bar until 4:30 or 5:00
at the tail end of the convention. It was a
lovely place.
A lot of the guys were just fascinated - guys
from the mainland. To the guys in Hawaii this
was just a bit of old hat. They would grab a
quick bite at lunch, then go out in the sunshine
and take a dip in the pool. The headquarters
were at a place called the Edgewater Hotel.
This was one of the earliest of the so-called
highrises, owned by a man named Kelly, an
interesting character.
I recall Kelly coming to me after the conven
tion had been in town two or three days and he
said, "Gee, aren't you guys having a good time
here?" "'Why?" "Well, you hardly see them
around the hotel; we have some Hawaiian music.
What are they all doing?" I said, "Look, I
guarantee you that they all are busy; at least
678
two thirds of them are down at the Kalihi
district where pineapple-cannery workers
gather; they all have built up their social
groups . "
Hawaiian guys, they're marvelous; just on
their own they must have decided, "Okay, you
take him, and I'll take him," and so forth
and so on. Of course, they are great hosts and
they were really determined to cement the soli
darity between Hawaii and the mainland. There
had been good cooperation in the strikes. They
helped with the longshore strike. ,
Fighting At The Dalles
I recall for example they went out of their way
to be very friendly with the guys from Portland
and this had nothing to do with Portland's
racial policy. I don't know if they even knew
about it; that's not what they thought about.
What they thought about instead was that in
1949 during one of the efforts on the part of
the employers in Hawaii to move cargo to the
west coast, they moved those barges of pine
apples up to the Dalles. The Dalles is
practically in the Cascades, above Bonneville
Dam. There are some locks there ....
Ward: Biggest locks I ever saw.
LG-: Those are the ones that go beyond the Bonneville
Dam - -
Ward: One hundred and thirty five feet in one lift,
something like that.
LG-: Huge, and the Dalles is really cow country.
Well, for a while there that barge was chased
all over Puget Sound. I remember the Seattle
longshoremen renting a plane to follow it
because the word had gone out that nobody was
going to touch it. They finally gave up on the
Puget Sound and took it up the Columbia River;
they decided they wouldn't run the risk of
trying to unload it in Portland.
679
LG-: They took the barge beyond Portland up into the
Dalles where they decided they could hire some
farmers, some cowboys; the usual business of
poor farmers in Hawaii, who were going to go
broke; plus the whole fruit crop in California,
the canned crop you know of mixed fruit - that
was all going to go down the drain, too. The
pineapple interests in Hawaii had managed to get
through some legislation that fruit cocktail-
had to contain a certain amount of pineapple,
and that's why the pineapple barge had been
loaded.
But the Portland longshoremen worked up
quite a head of steam and said, "Hell, no."
There were quite a number of our men went there
and there was quite a big beef. Our guys were
determined that the barge would not be worked,
because we had worked the only ship that had
ever gone to The Dalles. And as far as they
were concerned, it was their work, as well as
the most important thing, that this was strike
breaking.
Also, it gives you an idea of how strong
the sentiment was in support of the guys in
Hawaii. Anyway, they went up there. One guy
found an axe somewhere and thought of cutting
the lines" on" the barge. Luckily, he didn't
cut them all. Had he done so, that barge would
have drifted down and got stuck in the locks
and then we would have been in all kinds of
trouble with the Federal government.
As it was, it was still a costly venture;
they got some big fines against us as a result
of a couple of truck drivers who got in the way;
although afterwards our men were pretty damn
polite. They told the farmers and others "Just
don't screw around, that's all." So, the guys
in Hawaii were determined to see that the men
from Portland were well taken care of. So, on
that score the convention was excellent.
680
Seven Key Words
There were still other issues, such as the Korean
War. There were a couple of resolutions that
were extremely important, the most important
being a resolution on world peace, which we
knew would be the focal point of the debate.
The officers' report, which generally goes on
the deck about the same time as the resolution
on a specific subject; a very specific reference
was in there that the Korean War shored up the
economy.
In 1949 and 1950, this country had begun
to go into a bit of a depression. There was
a substantial amount of unemployment; prices
were rising all of a sudden because of the
Korean War and I think the economic analysis
was correct" about the Korean War shoring up
the economy. There were some seven words that
became the focal point of a lot of debate.
Ward: What were the seven words?
LG-: That "the Korean War shored up the economy."
Some of the guys said we should take those
words out and the report would be accepted
unanimously.
Again, the Hawaii convention was a lot like
the Coos Bay caucus, with the reporters stand
ing around ready to predict our demise. There
was one reporter down there from the San
Francisco Examiner; he just went on a big
drunk, but he wrote the stories just like the
Examiner wanted. This became a great laughing
stock at the convention.
Anyway, the delegates said, "Nope, those
words are not going to come out." It was
really a very good high level debate - one of
the best I've heard in a convention. Finally,
the report was adopted; a few dissenting votes,
but practically unanimous.
681
LG: The balance of the report was in good shape. The
resolution on world peace was adopted either unani
mously or overwhelmingly. The convention had a good
tone to it, all the way through, and in terms of
solidifying the union, it accomplished its purpose.
The officers ran for reelection; no opposition, either
to Harry or Jerry Bulcke, Bob Robertson or myself.
Ward: Without opposition?
LG: You know, under the ILWU constitution running for
office at a convention is perhaps the easiest thing
in the world. An individual doesn't have to be a
delegate to the convention. A person is nominated
and goes on the ballot, period.
Ward: Well, can he decline?
LG: He can decline, yes.
Ward: Is there a little bit of back-scratching; nominating
so and so, knowing he was going to decline?
LG: No, not that I recall - not at that convention.
Notwithstanding the beef we had about the officers'
report, the rest of it fell in place and the general
atmosphere that came out of the convention was "Sure,
we had our differences, but the union is going to
stick together."
At the time of the convention or very shortly
thereafter we picked up the second installment on the
1949 longshore strike victory. You recall the final
settlement in 1949 didn't close the gap entirely, but
we did pick up 21 cents in a two step affair -
Ward: You gained six cents on the differential?
LG: Right. Then agreement was reached in Hawaii for an
additional 20 cents in 1951, which everybody spoke
of with a clear indication of how they felt about the
strike, even though it was long and costly. If you
win a strike the benefits carry over for a number of
contracts. If you lose it, the same thing happens in
reverse, as in the case of pineapple. So, the
convention accomplished its purpose.
682
LG: Incidentally, one brief item about The Dalles and the
refusal of guys to handle cargo here on the coast.
One of the things that did develop during that time
had its importance in a cumulative way later on. The
employers, as a group, would not go along with Matson;
that became evident. Matson would have liked to see
the whole coast closed down on the grounds that we
were refusing to handle cargo.
Out of that whole '49 beef came different language
in the ILWU contract to the effect that in the event
an ILWU local - as in Hawaii or Alaska - was on strike
and the same would be true of Canada - the longshore
men under the Pacific Coast longshore agreement would
not have to handle cargo destined to be handled by
strikebreakers at the other end, or the other way
around. They would not have to handle cargo that came
into the west coast ports that had been loaded by
strikebreakers, say, in Hawaii.
It meant the strengthening of the hand of the
longshoremen; as when I mentioned this twenty cents
that they got in 1951. Eventually they got parity
in wages.
Ward: How many years later, about?
LG: Not too much longer after that, around the mid-1950' s.
An interesting sidelight; one of our issues in the
1949 longshore strike was arbitration which the
employers made the equivalent of fornication, almost
anything except arbitration. This is the area in
which Wayne Morse stuck his neck out and did a hell
of a job.
Later on the issue of arbitration became important
as a partially defensive movement that was essential
for holding the union together. For example, arbitra
tion became a key issue in the warehouse strike of
1949; the employers were highly resistant. Once we
got the concept of parity, we have several longshore
contracts where the wage issue, if it couldn't be
resolved, was sent back to arbitration.
Remember the time it went to arbitration before
Sam Kagel; we didn't get a big increase, six cents,
but we automatically got that amount of money as soon
as the contract was open in Hawaii.
683
LG: I was down there on something else when somebody
called me - it was one of the members of the Hawaii
Senate. They were having a hearing before their
labor committee on Acts 2 and 3, adopted in '49, and
we had this running fight to get the damn things
repealed. Very, very hard to get done though, so he
asked if I would come and testify, which I did and I
let go a blast against the employers, and the state
as well; the whole '49 thing had never gotten out
of my craw, anyway.
I said, "You know, for a long time, you fought for
statehood around here" - and either they had gotten
it or it was pretty close, or something. This all
goes back to the question of equal representation;
the American Revolution was around the same thing,
taxation without representation. Now, this bill came
about, in part, because these employers said there
would be no arbitration under any circumstances. That
was one of the reasons for the strike. The way things
have finally worked out, you have a situation here
where you have arbitration without representation."
Well, they all wanted to know how that worked, so
I went over the longshore contract on the west coast
and the fact that we were dovetailed into the Hawaii
contract later on and still get the same wage increase
automatically. That contract on the west coast
provided for arbitration. Arbitration had taken place
and that same amount of money was then applied to
Hawaii .
I said, "Now, during that arbitration the Hawaii
interests couldn't even appear; they were not repre
sented. Of course, Matson was represented. e know
that - they are part of the PMA; but the whole pre
tense down here is that we are not dealing with
Matson; we are dealing with various stevedoring
companies. They might be alter egos, in many cases.
So, now you have arbitration. You finally got it
whether you liked it or not and you got it without
representation. "
You didn't have to say a word. One of the
employers, I bumped into him a couple of days later
in negotiations, and he said, "That was a low blow."
He didn't explain why. I said, "Well, isn't it true?"
And he said, "Why not let bygones be bygones?" So, I
said, "Pine - let's get rid of Acts 2 and 3."
684
LG-: That's part of an atmosphere you get down there; all
part of this hoo mail -mail , as they call it - just
plain bullshit. You somehow get along. Sure, you
fought earlier and somebody might have sneaked up
behind you and put a knife in your back, but what
the hell, you're still around. No- hard feelings. A
great saying down there - no hu-hu - don't get angry.
That's after it's all over with! Anyway, longshore
finally fell in place.
The reason I mentioned the twenty cents is because
in 1949 we had those Wage Stabilization Board guide
lines. There was a beef with the Wage Stabilization
Board on the effectuation of the agreement. And it
came along again in the case of the sugar contract.
That was negotiated in 1951.
685
XVIII A PACE-SETTING PENSION PLAN
One Hundred Bucks A Month
LG-:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Then it came along full blast in 1951 because Longshore
negotiated both a wage increase and the first Longshore
pension plan, which was to go into effect in January,
1952. Those pension negotiations are worth spending
a minute on. Pensions had become an issue in the
trade union movement. You recall the Mine Workers'
$100 a month pension?
Yes.
The Steelworkers had picked up a hundred-dollar a
month pension which included Social Security.
Which included . . . .?
At that time, yes. In other words, the pension an
individual got for a certain number of years ....
Social Security plus enough from the union to make
up that $100 a month!
Anyway, when our pensions were on deck, there was a
continuous barrage by the II WU against the CIO and
the A F of L for their going along with the Wage
Stabilization Board. In fact, there was one wage
opening that the Steelworkers passed up, and we didn't
pass up any opportunity to go after Phil Murray and
some of the leadership back there.
They had tried to do us in and there was no love
lost. That was not the case, by the way, on a local
basis. Locally some CIO charters had been lifted
686
LG: and locals reorganized without the leftwing groups;
we still had labor alliances with them. e still
tried to hold together whatever we could in the way
of friends.
When we negotiated the pension plan our attitude
was that under no circumstances were we going to
integrate the thing with Social Security, and secondly,
that the pension had to "be a hundred dollars a month.
Well, we got into a rather interesting set of nego
tiations.
Line (Lincoln) Fairley was our research director,
a very, very competent guy. He and I spent a good
deal of time together talking about pensions - not
that I knew a great deal about it. I figured that we
would have to work out something different, because
the kind of money we thought was around for pensions
was about 15 cents an hour. If you started putting
into effect a fully funded pension, 15 cents would
never cover $100 a month.
By that time the employers also wanted to see a
pension, in the main because things had improved on
the waterfront, where the men were pretty well
protected. The attitude of the union was simple; if
we couldn't get $100 a month, then we were going to
retire on the job.
If necessary, some of the guys would be assigned
to make sure that the old timers would be able to
get down there inside the gate and report for work.
This alternative was not too promising for the
employers, plus you had the atmosphere and discipline
where it could have been done; there's a great deal
of loyalty to the old timers who had gone through the
'34 strike. After all, they had also gone through
the '48 strike, and we were not about to abandon them.
It was pretty apparent across the table. Vic
Pearson was representing the employers. The old
Waterfront Employers Association was dissolved by
1951. There was the new Pacific Maritime Association.
Henry Clark was head of -the thing for a while; then
it was split into an on-shore group longshoremen, and
off-shore group seamen. Clark went with the off-shore
group and Vic Pearson became the head of the on-shore
group.
687
LG-: As I said earlier, he was a rather pleasant guy. He
was one of those who testified as a character witness
for Harry, together with a couple of others who
represented the shipowners, Ken Finessy and Hubert
Brown. Vic Pearson indicated that 15 cents was around
and if "you can buy what you want for the 15 cents,
go ahead. "
So, Line and I devised a new kind of pension plan
which caused consternation down around Montgomery
Street, with the insurance companies and the banks
and so forth. I had started doing a lot of reading
about insurance companies and pensions. One of the
things I was learning about insurance companies was
that they are one of the prime sources of capital
for the big corporations.
Insurance companies have certain advantages for
the large corporations; that's one of the reasons
the boards of directors of the big insurance companies
are all made up of the heads of various corporations.
The reason the insurance companies have an advantage
over a bank is that the bank has a demand on it for
solvency, immediacy; a certain amount of funds has
to be available for immediate reserves.
In the case of the insurance companies, - let's
say it's a life insurance policy - the only way to
collect on that, your family might, but only after
you kick off. In the case of a pension, the only way
to collect your annuity or pension - they used to call
them annuities - was when you reached a certain age.
I also found out they had two different annuity
tables. If you go in to buy life insurance, they use
one annuity table. That annuity table in effect says
"You're a bad risk. I don't know how you're still
staggering around. Okay, we'll still let you buy the
life insurance." But it's predicated on your living
only a certain length of time, and the premium is
also padded to make sure the insurance company is
protected.
If you go to the same insurance company the next
week to buy another annuity, then you're going to
outlive all of these charts; you're the perfect phy
sical specimen. Once you start collecting an annuity,
you won't live the ordinary 13 or 14 years, you'll
probably live twenty, so it's a different annuity
table predicated on how long you can collect the an
nuity.
688
LG: The net result of that is that the insurance companies
"become the holders of all this capital; a natural
place for a big corporation to go if they're floating
a bond issue. They want money and they want long
term. The people on the street, when they found out
about this plan . . .
Ward: What was the plan, specifically?
LG: The plan was very simple, really. We said there isn't
enough money to fund the pension. What you mean by
funding is this: you have to have enough money coming
in to pay the benefits as they come due and in addition
to start funding what is called the past service liab
ility.
At the time a pension plan is put into effect, you
have men with varying ranges of service, some with
ten, some with fifteen, some with twenty years of
service - that's past service liability. You have a
certain pension due to them for those years of service.
Then you also have the men who might be under the gun.
Of course, one of the things the unions have to
struggle for if you want to get a decent pension -
even the one the Steelworkers negotiated, which we
consider to be pretty bad - just because a guy was
63 or 64 or 65, you wanted him to get a pension.
Sure. In that case you distributed the load to the
younger guy; he just started work and he'll have to
wait a long time. So, you in effect have a combina
tion of both these liabilities, right?
Let us say that the current service is ten dollars
for each year of service; the current service would
then be whatever it costs to pay for that $10 a year
of sexvice. But since he is not ready for it, the
amount will be less because, depending on his age,
that money is going to be banked for a certain length
of time, providing enough money to pay the man who
just retired and the ones who will retire. So, most
funds are, or they used to be, fully funded.
The whole idea of the plan was that, say, a plan
was funded over a span of 20 years. At the end of 20
years, from that point on, the employer only had to
pay for current service because all the past service
had been funded. And that is called a fully funded
689
LG: plan, the attractive feature of it being that the
money is all there; the unattractive feature being
that you can't pay adequate benefits to people who
are under the gun. There is literally no need to
fully fund a plan, although this has become essential
now under a new law covering employees' retirement
security.
The plan that Line and I finally dreamed up was:
"Okay, we're going to have a different kind of pension
plan - it's a ten year plan; it would be in effect
from 1952 to 1962. Under this plan a man with 25
years service would get $100 bucks - 25 years service
at age 65 or over." There would be enough there to
pay him 100 bucks; that's all the money we would
negotiate and the 15 cents would cover that.
Then the question comes along; what would you have
around at the end of the ten years? The answer is,
absolutely nothing. We're flat broke. A guy who had
read the usual stuff about annuities would say,
""What the hell happens to me? I'm only 55." We said,
"There's only one choice you have. Stick around and
build a strong union; then you'll be tough enough to
go get another pension plan and a better one too.
The most important thing is to keep a tight grip on
the handle of that pump - that's what counts."
They brought in actuaries who said, "We've never
heard of a thing like this; the whole thing is
financially unsound; we're not positive the government
would okay it," and so forth and so on. They were
just reflecting the same thing as the insurance com
panies. All their training is that way and that's
the way they think. I recall one man on the employer
negotiating committee - Titchner that was the name.
A rather nice guy -
Ward: Titchner?
LG: I'm quite sure that's his name. Well, I was describ
ing some of these annuities and why I thought they
were phonies. The way things had been going parti cul-
arily with inflation, you're putting in good dollars
and when you get back at the end of ten years, they're
bad dollars. He said, "Gosh, how do you know what
kind of a plan I have?" He was one of these
unfortunates who had been buying annuities all of his
life.
690
LG: He would have been better off doing anything else with
that money; anything but a pension because in buying
a pension all of his life, I guess 20 or 25 years,
when it came due didn't amount to anything.
Ward: Right.
LG: Anyway, they finally agreed. They said, "Okay, if
you think it will work, fine." We put that plan
into effect and it was really very revolutionary.
You can see why the banks, the insurance companies
particularly, would have themselves a hemorrhage.
They had fits about this thing. There were all kinds
of debates about it.
I recall inviting anybody who wanted to argue
pensions - great - you're welcome. I got some of
these ideas reading some material written by Victor
Perlo, as I recall.
Ward: Oh, really?
LG: Yes, of all people, because he had had something
somewhere on the nature of insurance companies under
the capitalist economy. From that I began to work
backwards and realized that actually the only way to
avoid the inflation problem was something as close
as you could get to "pay as you go".
I recall some discussions later on where some guy
said, "Look, this is how much money is going to be
in the fund, based on general man hours. Okay, and
this is what you think the liability will be. Right.
But let me ask a question - what happens if the
pension plan runs out - the ten years run out? You
have enough money to take care of everybody and that
can be banked and there's still dough left over? In
that case you can have a big discussion and play
last man out.' And if there's one man around and
the residue is still left, he gets the whole damn
thing."
I said, "After all, there's only one way you can
beat the system when you retire and that's by out
living it. There's no other way. I mean, you're
all through working and you can't lick the employer
on the job, so your job as a pensioner is to just
outlive the system."
691
LG: Those were rather humorous discussions - lots of fun -
and our members not only accepted it, they thought
it was great. I guess it was in 1952 when we had
the first flock of pensioners, and I mean we had a
flock of them. We had dinners for them; they were
lovely affairs. The old timers, real veterans of
the waterfront; we had them up and down the coast.
I think something like 1200 pensioners at the first
crack.
Ward: That many?
LG: An enormous number - enough money was there - we had
it figured. Also our guys did a fantastic job of
taking care of the retired men; they went to fellows
who were in the hospital, hadn't been -able to work
for four or five years because of job-related injuries
or job-related sickness, and managed to get them on
the pension list on the grounds they had put in the
eligible years. They scoured the coast to take care
of every guy who was eligible. That was the opening
of the whole pension thing, and must have been in the
1951 negotiations.
But back to the Wage Stabilization Board. Believe
it or not, that Wage Stabilization Board would not
immediately okay our pension. The wages that were
negotiated were no problem because they were under
the so-called guide lines.
The Stabilization Board had gotten to the point
where they were always cutting the baby in half;
that was their way of proving they did a job, even
though the guy who was in charge of the thing, Nat
Feinsinger, was an old friend of the union in many
ways. He had been down in Hawaii in 1946 after Stan
White was given the heave-ho. He was the one who
brought Clark Kerr in there as an. arbitrator. We sent
a whole delegation of old-timers back there from up
and down the coast.
Ward: Back to Washington?
LG: Right - back to Washington. Harry went with them,
and L. B. Thomas. They made the rounds of Washing
ton, had a long session with the Wage Stabilization
Board and built up a head of steam where the guys
finally just put it to them: "Either this thing is
692
LG-: approved, or the coast is going down and under no
circumstances do you cut this baby in half and start
chopping it up so we have to put it back together
again."
Finally the thing was approved; for that time, it
was a very big pension - $100 a month. In that same
period, I think the Auto Workers got a slightly better
pension than the Steelworkers - $125; but again it was
integrated into Social Security. That was the fad
of the times. It's understandable; it's about the
only way some of the unions could break through. It
was a big thing. Later in 1951, we got into pension
negotiations in Hawaii, and that is a sort of a
chapter of its own.
##
(Interview 25: 5 September, 1978) ##
Death of G-ene Paton
Ward: You were saying you wanted to discuss happenings in
Warehouse in 1952 and '53.
LG-: Let me give you some of the highlights of what develop
ed. Gene Paton died in 1951, oh, I'd say of a com
bination of many things. He had won a battlefield
commission as Captain. Paton showed enormous courage
during the war. When Pat got back he really got
into the swim of things. I mentioned the drive we
had for a voluntary wage increase in warehouse after
OPA had been knocked out; and how that was worked out.
Pat was re-elected president of Local 6. One year
he didn't serve - 1949, I think; he'd been pretty
ill and took some time off, but his attitude towards
his illness and his drinking was one of brushing it
off.
Anyway, Pat came back again as president; I guess
it was in the 1949 election, in the fall of the year.
But a lot of these things began to crawl up his back.
It was a combination of fatigue and reaction to the
war.
693
LG-: I recall a letter lie wrote during the war saying that
the world had better be a better place after the war;
an awful lot of guys were being lost and they felt
it was in some good cause, and it better be a good
cause. Well, it didn't turn out that way; with the
advent of the Cold War and some of the other things,
Pat's reaction was the same as others.
Ward: You seem to be saying that he felt the war efforts
of his comrades had been in vain.
LG-: No question about that. He would never talk about
what went on during the war. He was not like some
of these vets who tell you about every single battle
field experience; never talked about it at all. The
only part of the chapter that was of interest to him
was its conclusion: that it better be a better world.
During the Teamster raid Pat stood up very well.
He was an effective leader, including succeeding in
getting some 'key places like Walkup Warehouse back
into Local 6. He handled himself very well; the
membership liked him, but '51, I guess, things sort
of crawled up his back. Finally, just took the way
out of going off the bridge.
This was just before the convention in Hawaii,
because during that convention we sat around with
some of the guys from Local 6, including Chili Duarte.
Chili decided he would run for office. Naturally, I
supported him, and I think everybody else did, too.
Chili was elected. Chili was an extremely hard work
er and also had a good touch with the membership.
Not exactly the same as Pat's, but . . .
Ward: He was simpatico.
LG: Yes, he was simpatico; he was a great mixer. He was
always on the job. He had some advantages over Pat.
Chili might be out bouncing around with some of his
pals in North Beach or West Oakland or with Billy
Lufrano, but it made no difference what time he
wound up at night, 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning, he
was there on the job, as was Billy. Billy was the
dispatcher and he had to be down there at six. He
always made it somehow; in what shape I'm not sure,
but he would always make it down there. And Chili
did a good job.
694
Reason Instead of Force
LG: But times were rough; following the 1949 strike, we
had the problem of both a fighting program and a
holding action in Local 6. The fact that we had the
master contract had some value. The employers were
not about to wash that all out because there was
still the ghost of what happened -if they went
industry- by-industry or house-by-house; they could
be picked off.
I recall an agreement around 1950 or '51. Ac
tually, the wage increase we got was very nominal -
three and a half cents, plus some other benefits,
yet it was one of the best agreements we ever signed
in the sense of maintaining the union and continuing
a fighting program, with the membership understand
ing why it was being done. It sat extremely well and
the union held together.
In the case of warehouse, our drive for health
and welfare became an element of importance around
the middle of 1951; then pensions, which had begun
to become an issue. That was deferred for about a
year. We finally got through those things and the
contract began to be fleshed out with those provisions,
There was an interesting aspect to this from the
employer. The man who had taken over as the executive
officer of the Distributors Association was also
an attorney.
ard: What was his name?
LG: J. Hart Clinton.
Ward: I remember that name.
LG: Yes. I got to know him, and while we didn't see
eye to eye on a lot of things and we'd get into
periodic clashes, he had an interesting kind of
integrity. He was Irish in background and a
Catholic; somewhere along the line he had picked up
a terrific hatred for turncoats; he had absolutely
no use for these guys who had gone over the hill.
695
LG-: As to whether he wanted the ILVU around, that had
nothing to do with it. I guess, as far as he was
concerned, if there was no union the employers
perhaps would "be better off. On the other hand,
when it came to these guys like Gallo and Pedrin,
he felt that if they double-crossed their own snays,
they would double-cross everybody else. By the way,
he turned out to be 100 per cent right, because later
on they got to be a complete pain in the ass, even
to the Teamsters.
Some years later times had changed and we were
working with the Teamster warehousemen; I got to
know people like Einar Mohn. There were indications
they they wanted to give us back some of the people
in Local 12 -and I remember the crack we used all the
time, "Look, we're not Indian givers." And the
attitude " of the guys, a lot of them, was "good
riddance." Clinton's attitude in that regard was
good.
When it came to the business of protecting the
master contract the employers found they would have
to support the ILWU position: namely, that the mas
ter contract was a single bargaining unit, because
the Teamster petitions, or attempts to raid, included
filing separate petitions wherever they could, so
they could nick off a plant here and a plant there.
In a couple of the big plants we defeated them any
way.
Then when it came to the main body, the NLRB
finally took the position that the petitions would
have to apply to the entire bargaining unit. If
there was going to be an election - and we said
that would be fine, but it would have to cover the
entire group - the Teamster answer was "no dice."
If there had been such an election, I think we
would have taken the same position that I had taken
in 1948 in Hilo during that whole period of internal
dispute around sugar where we had insisted on a
referendum vote; if the majority had voted to leave,
we'd tell the minority to go with them.
So, this was not without its value and I'd say that
our general approach in terms of the membership, the
696
LG: balance of the labor movement, and direct appeals
to the Teamsters - we'd be constantly putting out
leaflets and talking to them-- kept on-the-job
relationships just as strong, or were strengthened
because the guys were doubly active.
It was during that same period of time that
arbitration became a sort of offensive-defensive
weapon which proved that when you are under attack,
you're not going to give up the fight. It's also
terribly important that you have a solution for that
fight; this has such deep appeal that you not only
hold your own people together, you begin to pick up
allies; even including, well, perhaps not allies,
but individuals among the employers who figure: "The
union is not taking this insane position that people
are attributing to it . . . "
Ward: Reasonable.
LG: Yes. All this pounding away at arbitration began to
undercut the employer opposition; how long can you
keep this hysteria going when the other guy is say
ing, "Will you please stop the shouting; if we can't
reach agreement across the table, there must be a
third party somewhere in the country - you'll find
either a law professor 01* politician or a priest, or
what have you - to sit down and say, 'Here's a
reasonable solution, f " which is what arbitration real
ly amounts to; when it is binding it has more force
than that.
We weren't about to give up, we stayed on the
attack, we didn't surrender, we didn't start running.
I think this was terribly important; we kept winning
victories, because in Longshore we kept picking
things up; in Warehouse we made it; in Hawaii, we
got over the hump. When it came to its fundamental
objective, namely, what the unions could do to better
the lives of the people it represented, as well as to
maintain an internal democratic structure which was
distinctive, these made up the mortar that held the
union together.
Ward: Okay, now, Gene Paton is gone. Chili Duarte is
president - what happened in '52?
697
LG-: I mentioned pension negotiations in Hawaii. Those
negotiations went on for an awful long time. We
picked up pensions in San Francisco for west coast
Longshore; the day the pensions went into effect,
it "became a very big thing with all kinds of thank-
you parties, acknowledgments. The reaction of the
guys on the front was pretty well overwhelming.
When the union was formed, the average longshoreman
just didn't concede that things like pensions were
possible, because longshoring was basically casual.
Ward: It had been, traditionally, and even the union
itself indicated, casual ....
LG-: That's right: "Men along the shore." During the
war I could have picked up all kinds of bets - you
don't want to go around taking money -from the mem
bers - I'd get nothing but the most - oh! - endless
skepticism and hee-haws when I mentioned that because
I had been on the War Labor Board and I had gone
through some of the battles - I said, "We're going
to pick up vacations" - well, the whole idea seemed
preposterous.
Well, we did it - we got vacations. They have
become as permanent part of the contract as anything
else. When you start talking about health and
welfare, we finally got over the hump on that. The
membership was a bit more used to the idea that
these things could be done; and the breakthrough
took place on pensions.
Ward: And Hawaii?
LG: Then in Hawaii, we ran into an odd problem. I think
I mentioned to you the fact that each of the five
factors was also an agent for an insurance company.
Those are chief agents. The rest of the people are
sort of sub-agents or salesmen. During the 1949
longshore strike sugar got piled up until hell
wouldn't have it; they were even storing it out
doors and providing a picnic for the rats.
I found out later that the employers managed to
get through the financial situation during that
period by some very large loans from the insurance
companies. The loan from Prudential was something
like $40,000,000; at least that's the information
698
I picked up. - Jack was very thorough about these
things; that's where Jack was absolutely fantastic.
He was a real bird-dog for information.
Bob McElrath, who later became regional director
when Jack left the Islands to come up here, would
have made a perfect gumshoer. This guy loved to
move around town; knew just about every newspaper
man; got to be very active later on helping out the
newspaper unions in joint negotiations down there
with the various papers. Had some joint strikes -
successful. Bob could ferret out all kinds of
information. I don't think anybody in Hawaii could
have kept a secret; if Bob was looking for it, he'd
find it.
Ward: Well, there was a small town atmosphere in Hawaii
also.
LG: That's right. When it comes to some circles, it's
still a small-town thing; if an outfit like American
Airlines opens up a big hotel, or a Sheraton
interest, those things operate in a financial world
of their own, whereas your Hawaii internal economy
is different. Of course, in that period, particul
arly, it was pretty well rotated around sugar,
pineapple, longshore and the Big Five.
Ward: Well, now, this business of the $40,000,000 loan and
the relationship of the factors to the insurance
companies; how did that affect your pension negotia-
ti ons?
LG-: It affected them in this way; the employers were
determined to have an insured plan. That's one way
that you pay off an obligation. They probably also
had this thinking in their heads that insured plans
fully funded, formed an old traditional concept of
how pensions are handled. And I suppose in periods
of relatively stable economy this had been the trad
itional way employers would handle their pensions;
of course, where they had -a company pension. It
wasn't going to be a self-administered thing.
When you go back one step and see the inter
locking between these big corporations and the
insurance companies, the whole thing becomes part
of one cabal. We had had some sessions with the
699
LG: employers and had gotten nowhere. We recessed then,
with the employers suggesting they would bring some
experts down there - actuaries - which they did.
They were primarily people from Prudential; their
chief was named .(Henry) Melinkoff . I got to know him
quite well after a while.
Ward: Any relation to H.P.?
LG: No, I don't think he spelled the name that way.
That was Henry Melnikow. This man was Melinkoff.
He was headquartered back in New Jersey at the time.
A guy with an inventive mind - he's the one who
dreamed up what is called variable annuities. No
need to go into that.
I discussed with Line Fairley, who had worked
very closely with me on longshore pensions, what we
would do about this. We decided there was no purpose
in bringing an expert down. I spent about a week,
ten days, with Virginia Woods -
Ward: Who was an actuary in fact, if not in title, at the
time.
LG: Mathematics was her field. I asked Virginia if she
would explain actuarial tables to me and how they
were put together. She quickly got some additional
information and I spent the time with her going over
these actuarial tables, how they were put together,
how these insurance companies work; what made sense
and what didn't make sense.
I found out there were many kinds of actuarial
tables; there was the standard actuarial table; the
1940 actuarial table; there was the actuarial table
they used for pensions; the one they used for life
insurance; the Immediate Participation Guarantee -
the IPG Plan - Deposit Administration.
. In other words, they didn't all have to be the
ordinary deferred annuities where you put in a
certain amount of money over a certain number of
years, based on the individual, and then you begin
to collect back your pension. First, your own
contribution in the case of a contributory pension;
then the employers', and these were the standard
annuities which obviously wouldn't work for a large
group of workers; plus how did you know the actuarial
tables made any damn sense, you see.
700
LG: Anyway, when we got through with all this, I said,
"Let's draw up a couple of charts." We drew up five
charts. They must "be around somewhere in the
records here or in Hawaii. We drew up these charts
"based on the data they supplied us which was the
number of men in the industry in Longshore, their
length of service, and their average age. That's
the basic data you work on in getting a pension plan
together. Well, I still recall that opening session
with the employers -
Ward: After the recess?
LG: After the recess. I went down there and had this
material and went over it with Jack. We had stayed
up a little bit too late talking with some of the
guys on the committee who were there and just gener
ally relaxing, so that I hadn't had an awful lot of
sleep, but I was there, on time. The meeting got
under way and here were these fellows I hadn't seen
before sitting across the table from us and the
employers at their side or in the row behind them.
They got started and they had this man Melinkoff
and his assistant, who I think was Reynolds. They
presented the ordinary type of pension including
the purchase of the deferred annuities. They didn't
propose a Deposit Administration Plan or anything
else.
The Deposit Administration Plan at least had the
minor advantage that, assuming that the actual
result in terms of the work force as compared to the
actuarial tables gave you what they called a favor
able result, this meant that more people died than
were supposed to die, in the case of pensions; in
case of life insurance, less people die than are
supposed to die. At least the fund itself gets the
benefit after the insurance company takes theirs.
When they got through, we said, "That's fine,
but - ". At that point, Phil Maxwell was handling
the negotiations for the employers on pensions.
Phil turned towards us and said, "Did you bring your
expert down?" I said, "He's here; I've been given
the job." Everybody laughed like they thought it
was just a lot of fun.
701
LG-: V/ell, luckily, I had done my homework, which is
awfully import ant in any set of negotiations,
particularly on something like pensions or health
and welfare or any complicated issue. I had all these
charts in a large brief case, carefully tabulated.
So, I took them out and said, "Now, working on
your actuarial tables, here's Chart No. 1 accurately
drawn." They looked it over for a while and said,
"Yes, we would have done your work for you, but it's
good. It seems to be accurate - okay, age dispersion
and everything else."
Then I went through these charts and got to the
last one, and they realized where I was going and
they began to introduce reservations but without any
success because all I asked was, "Are the figures
correct? The data you have given us was character
istic?" "Yeah, yeah - it's correct."
So, I said, "V/ell, based upon what you .lust
proposed we have it figured out; I'll show you the
last chart; either it was for every dollar' that was
put into pensions or for every fifty cents, the men
would sometimes get a nickel back." They looked at
that for a lone time and said, "Well, maybe those
figures are right but that's not the way things work."
No explanation. We had worked the thine out to the
point where we took their own logic and their own
type of pensions to show what happens.
Well, one of the reasons could be that partially
because of the war, I guess, and partially because
the work force in Hawaii did not have a characteristic
age dispersion, you didn't have a characteristic
number like we did up and down the west coast in
longshore, with quite a balance of guys in the older
bracket, with a number of men over 65 still plugging
away.
This was not true, however, in Hawaii. During
the war, a lot of older Japanese, even though they
could still work on the front, were disgusted by the
whole thing that was going on and quit; never came
back, even after the war.
Then, again, a lot of longshore work was being
done by Filipinos who are not big but very strong,
very hardworking, and it could be that at a certain
702
LG: point it was more than they could take. In other
words, come 45 or 50 years, they either got accident
prone or it was just too much for them and they had
to get into some other kind of work.
That's where we got into a real debate. I said,
"Well, we did not draw up the actuarial data; you're
the ones who supplied us with the material. We did
not draw up this basic statistical information; we
don't have it. It came from the companies, the ages,
the work records of the men, and so forth and so on.
"If the figures you give us are characteristic be
cause of the nature of the work force and the nature
of the work and the high incidence of attrition that
the work causes, then of course our data is correct.
We don't know, because we didn't compile the data
that you have given us."
It was an odd situation, because when we came
back that afternoon, their experts were sitting in
back and the employers were sitting in front!
Ward: They reversed the position!
LG: They decided we better get back in negotiations
instead of having the experts fiddle around with it.
That night I got a call from this actuary, Melinkoff.
He says, "I understand you take a swim every evening."
I said, "Yes, most nights." "You take a walk along
the beach too, I understand." I said, "Yeah." He
said, "Well, I'm staying down at the Royal Hawaiian."
"Well, I'll be walking in that direction," I said.
Sure enough, he's there on the beach waiting; we
sat around on the beach and talked. "Well, I can't
argue with your information - your charts. Somebody
did a good .job." I said, "Yep." "And you under
stand them." And I said, "Yep."
Then he said, "This thing cannot be settled by-
experts. I suggest this. I don't care what it is
you negotiate with the employers; it's entirely up
to you and we're not going to stick our nose into
it. Once you negotiate it, I guarantee you we'll
insure it." That was it. I said, "Okay, thanks."
For years afterwards, he used to stop by when he was
in town; he'd come by the house.
703
Ward: It took Mm years to learn it.
LG: Yes. But he realized that there were some people in
the union movement who wouldn't rely on experts;
they figured that there is nothing unknowable and
I generally felt that way; luckily we had some good
people around who felt the same way. Line was that
way. A lot of people get an exclusive; they become
the experts. They even talk in a language that's
designed to make sure that nobody else can understand
it.
If everybody understood what the hell they were
talking about, everybody might know too much and the
moment people know too much, then what the experts
have to sell goes down in value; almost every little
field becomes a trade secret. 'Line was very help
ful on this; also Bill Glazier, who came out here,
you know, and later worked as an administrative
assistant to the officers. He felt the same way;
and Virginia Woods was excellent.
The net result was that we finally worked out
what amounted to a quite good pension plan. In some
ways, as good as the west coast longshore pension
plan. It may not have had as good a basic benefit,
but the maximum benefit went up beyond that. Once
it was negotiated, and notwithstanding what their
actuary told me, Prudential began to hedge.
One of their main hedges was that they were not
going to use the actuarial table we used. A whole
group of us had to go over for a meeting with
Prudential at their headquarters in Los Angeles where
we had this roundy-go-roundy with the executives.
They finally insured the whole thing, and that pen
sion plan is still in effect.
I mention this as a sidelight to what was going
on in the Islands and some of the things that were
developing. It also indicated something else; in the
period up until then it was just a straight headon
set of negotiations and clash where necessary with
the employers around the basic elements of the
contract.
Things had gotten to be more complicated with
elements coming into the picture such as health and
welfare, pensions; later on the problems of severance
704
LG-: pay, repatriation allowance, all kinds of things
that are now "built into the sugar contract and
longshore contract, so different from anywhere else.
Ward: Repatriation is something that didn't occur in the
mainland contracts, did it?
LG-: No, I guess not. As to whether or not it ought to
be applied is another story. If a guy comes up here
from Mexico and keeps sending his money home and
works here for 10, 15, 20 years in one area of
agriculture - let us say, around Paterson, where
some of the guys work the year around - why
repatriation allowance shouldn't be applicable to
him, I don't know.
Anyway, as these things developed, Jack's expertise
and know-how - the same sort of expertise he manifest
ed at the time of the Fair Labor Standards Act suit -
became more and more valuable: it became a major
contribution to the work of the union.
So, these were some of the things that were going
on in the Islands; but once the Lanai strike was over,
a certain chapter in Hawaii that ran from '46 through
'51 - that was sort of the end of that.
Ward: The feudalism was pretty well dissipated. Right?
LG: Yes. The union had gotten over the hump. And -
oh, something that had almost become a slogan. The
union was here to stay, became a way of life on the
plantations, became a way of life for the pineapple
workers and the waterfront. The impact swept all
through the economic, social and political structure
of Hawaii. It took various forms, but it became a
somewhat different course of history; although not
without its difficulties . . .
Ward: When did the runaway plantations operations begin?
They were of so much concern for a while.
LG: There was no such thing as runaway in sugar planta
tions -
Ward: But pineapple, though.
705
LG-: Right, because in the case of sugar one of the
reasons for the industry in Hawaii was not only that
they were able to grow sugar profitably; one of the
reasons they became part of the U. S. as a territory,
instead of British, was to make sure of the access of
sugar in the U. S. market; the sugar industry there
for many, many years operated under the covering
blanket of the Suear Act, so sugar played one role.
Pineapple was different. In the case of pine
apple there were two major factors in operation,
resulting not in runaway shops so much as those
interests expanding their holdings in other parts of
the world, particularly in the Philippines, while
some of their holdings in Hawaii began to contract.
For example, an outfit like California Packing
Corporation had pineapple plantations in the
Philippines, and still do on the island of Mindanao.
Ward: Where they had plenty of trouble, I bet.
LG-: Yeah, as a matter of fact, one time I was wondering
how in the devil we could give a little help to some
of those people down there by shooting a couple more
managers in the ass.
As a matter of fact we tried to make contact with
those workers, and we did. We also got copies of
some of their agreements, which seemed more like
company agreements. They didn't even have wage
scales in the contract.
In comparatively recent years they opened up some
very big holdings in Thailand, but not for long.
Perhaps the unstable political situation made them
decide to get out - though in the case of Hawaiian
Pine, the biggest producer there, it didn't. Libby,
McNeil and Libby had holdings in the Philippines.
I don't think Libby has given up pineapple entirely,
even though there is no operation in Hawaii.
Around Oahu, the three major producers were
Hawaiian Pineapple Company, Castle and Cooke, Gal-
Pack and Libby. There is no Libby cannery any more.
There is still a CalPack cannery, but CalPack also
had interests in the Philippines. Libby closed up
entirely on the island of Molokai. That's one of
the runaway plantations you're thinking about and
where we had a good deal of hassle ....
##
706
##
LG: So, let me complete. Libby expanded its holdings
to the Philippines. CalPack was talking the same
way and that created a good deal of consternation.
Ward: You were talking about Molokai?
LG: Those were both on the island of Molokai. CalPack
also had some operations on the island of Oahu. The
other big inroad on the pineapple lands was the
expansion of Honolulu into big suburban areas. They
built v/hat really amounts to a whole new city, though
actually it is a part of Honolulu. People commute
to work there all the time. It's right in the pine
apple fields practically, called Mililani Town -
Ward: That's on the other side of the Pali, then?
LG: No - no, Mililani Town would be out toward Waialua.
It's not in the same direction. It's toward the
other end of the island. The end of that island
would be west - it's on a small plateau, maybe 2,000
feet at the most. Then there's a huge plateau area
that was excellent pineapple land, partly because of
altitude and the kind of rainfall they have there.
So, these are the things that took place in
pineapple. A lot of the small canneries folded
entirely, like several on Kauai that just gave up.
There is still a pineapple cannery going on the
island of Maui.
Ward: Would that be an argument of the employers that the
union forced the small guys out of business?
LG: You're not talking of small people; even the ones
who were on Kauai are not like small farmers. The
main problem there was whether the holdings were
big enough to warrant a completely modern cannery.
The canneries in Honolulu proper, I guess, have as
modern machinery as anybody can find. I don't know
if you have ever seen pictures of them at work.
Ward: I've been in a cannery.
LG: Well, a pineapple cannery - to see the size of the
operation! One of the big things they invented was
something they called the Ginaca machine, invented
by a worker so the pineapple could be peeled by machine,
707
Ward: Kind of shave it off with a sharp edged cylinder?
LG: Right. That's "been in effect for many, many years
now. Well, taking the "eyes" out is still a hand
process, unless you want to lose an awful lot of the
fruit. They finally decided losing a good deal of
the pineapple didn't make much difference because
they could use it either for mulch or for juice; a
great deal of juice comes out of pineapple production.
The amount of pineapple, the proportion of pine
apple "being moved into the U. S. market from Hawaii
has changed. At one time Hawaii had something close
to a monopoly on production. No pineapple is produced
on the mainland of the U. S. Well, Puerto Rico at
one time tried pineapple. It's never "been a good
variety; once in a while you see the fruit in the
eastern markets, fresh but small. It didn't compare
with the kind of agricultural production they had
in Hawaii.
There was a contraction in production later on;
imports from Mexico, particularly fresh pineapple,
a little bit of it canned; greater imports from the
Philippines, obviously because of the advantage there
of the terribly low wage rates, which more than
offset the shipping costs. The great change that
took place around the late 1960s was the importation
of fresh pineapple.
Ward: Air transportation did that, didn't it?
LG: Air transportation made a big difference. Pineapple
has a fairly decent shelf life, somewhere around
four to five days. It won't have the same shelf
life as some things like apples, and the problem on
shipping pineapple was that by the time it got here
it wasn't fresh, really; when pineapple begins to
run, that's it. When the juice begins to move down
towards the bottom, it can't be reversed in any way.
One thing that helped was airplane traffic, be
cause a lot of planes were going down there. Tourist
industry began to boom. The planes had nothing to
take back. They had a certain amount of cargo to
take down because it became more and more profitable
to ship a lot of essential parts for automobiles,
and what have you, by plane rather than by ship.
708
LG: You didn't have to carry big inventories that way;
an advantage for the businessman, but they had no
return cargo. True, there would be some flowers,
but that doesn't amount to enough.
Somewhere along the line I'd heard their initial
agreement with some of the airlines was to ship the
pineapple over here fresh for as little as 7 cents
a pound. Of course, that's an awful big break on
fresh fruit. Consequently, you'll see fresh pine
apple on the market now, and it's not priced all that
high. Of course, these days they price everything
high, but initially over here you could pick up a
fresh pineapple for 50, 55 cents, and they were quite
good. They had a whole process of convincing and
educating the consumer on how to use pineapple.
But the expansion of the fresh fruit market has
also made a big difference. One of the results now
is that there is an attempt to cultivate the pineapple
in such a manner that you get more of an all-year
around crop; it used to be highly seasonal. These
things have changed, but I don't see any further
contraction of the pineapple* industry right now.
I'd say the major pressure on pineapple would be
the attractiveness for other purposes of a lot of
the land in Hawaii; there's similar pressure on sugar.
A lot of this land is not far away from Honolulu and
if you look at the distance as compared to commuting
standards on the mainland, it doesn't amount to
anything; but that's been solved now.
Of course the containers now which are refrigerated
also make a difference. You don't have to get com
plete refrigeration to ship pineapple because they
don't want that much fresh at one time. A regular
refrigera'tion ship, like Mat son, can have refrigerated
containers in addition to others; there's a method of
plugging them in.
I'd say that the principal danger about the further
contraction of pineapple would emanate from the push
of real estate interests and the greed of the estates.
An awful lot of the land on which pineapple is
cultivated is not owned by the companies. It's owned
by -various estates such as the Bishop Estate, the II
Estate, Campbell Estate.
709
LG-: They are constantly pressuring for additional pay
ments on their lease rental; and there's always
speculation, I guess, in the minds of the companies
as to what they do when the lease runs out, because
the estate is comparing these rents to what the
devil they could get for a long-term lease on the
same land for housing. Their interest in maintaining
agriculture in Hawaii you can put in your eye and
see fine. It's one of the things that's part of the
rape of the Islands.
Anyway, I just thought I'd give you some of that
background on the pension negotiations.
Ward: Very interesting. Now what?
LG: I might want to bounce back later and cover some of
the other things that happened in 1953. In 1953, we
were still on strike at the place across San
Francisco Bay - Colgate-Palmolive. To give you an
idea what the employer attitude was and the atmosphere
of the times; that strike went on eight months at
Colgate. It finally would up with Paul Heide and
Ole Fagerhaus going east and making rounds in a
camper spreading a boycott of Colgate-Palmolive
products, going into every labor council in small
towns, big towns, big cities.
Chili went back there; it took us a hunk of money,
but we got the New Jersey Colgate Plant shut down.
It was not for a great deal of time; primarily done
through the Teamsters. It was a long and bitter
fight. The company was obviously determined to
crack the union.
The atmosphere was still on - it hadn't changed
any. In '53, Jack's trial was still on, and a key
witness against him was Jack Kawano. When the guys
began to check out Kawano 's record in the 1949
strike, he did practically nothing; just sort of
disappeared. He did come out and support G-overnor
Stainback's fact-finding board for the 14 cents;
tried to put it as a patriotic thing, that the real
reason we stayed out for more money was not because
it was in the interests of the workers - it was just
because it was Communist party policy.
710
LG-: He had to concede, however, that later on we won
the strike and got a tremendous amount of dough as
well as finally getting parity on wages. He also
appeared as a witness against our guys in the un-
American Activities Committee hearings down there.
In 1953 the appeal on the Bridges-Robertson-
Schmidt case was still going on. Even during the
Supreme Court hearings, as I recall, the government
arrogance in this thing was fantastic.
There was some other case pending at the time
that had to do with one of the same points that
was raised in the Bridges case, res adjudicata or
statute of limitations; the government attorney
representing the Department of Justice made the
crack, before the court, I believe, that as far as
the Department of Justice was concerned, they were
prepared to lose the other one if they could get
the conviction upheld on Bridges, Robertson and
Schmidt.
It had become amazingly crude; during this whole
period, beginning in 1950 with the Korean War, they
put the Wage Stabilization Board into effect, which
was an attempt to control wages during that war; no
attempt to control prices.
It didn't even have the facade of the World War
II period. I think the whole feeling of the people
really made OPA stick. During that war, housewives
felt it was part of their obligation to inspect all
the price lists, and if there was the slightest
change, bingo! - reports and screaming and what have
you. You had the most widespread policing of prices
that the country had ever seen. Of course, nothing
of the sort during the Korean War, because here was -
Ward: It wasn't that kind of a war.
LG: It wasn't that kind of a war. Truman himself called
it a police action. It was just another attempt to
kick the hell out of labor - nothing more, nothing
less; some of the unions foregoing wage increases,
or getting nothing at all, or very small increases.
When we negotiated the Longshore pension increase,
how much better that was than anything won by Steel,
or Auto even.
711
LG-: We made quite an issue of this, of course, in the
paper. And it was terribly important for our men
to realize that even though it was a rough period,
we were getting results; that was the key. And the
fight paid - the fight was worthwhile.
At the 1953 convention, we made the decision that
inasmuch as the BRS case had not yet come down - the
'53 Convention was sometime in April, no later than
early May - we ought to elect standby officers to
take charge in the event Bridges and Robertson and
Schmidt's convictions were upheld. And the conven
tion was pretty tense on that score; even though the
union was in quite good health.
As a matter of fact, there were some interesting
.stories at the time, including one in Fortune, that
after all the turmoil of Taft-Hartley and the CIO
expulsion, the union was better off than ever.
The net result at the convention was Jimmy Pant 2
of Portland was elected a standby officer in the
event Harrv went to the clink, and Joe Kealaleo
* (Joe Blurr) of Hawaii was elected to take the place
of Bob Robertson if he had to serve time. We elected
those standby officers for no other purpose than to
serve notice on the courts and the CIO and the
employers that the union was going to stick around.
Any funny ideas they had that they might behead
the union and that the union would then begin to die
off - the announcements of our death were periodic;
they were just whistling in the dark, that's all;
whistling past the graveyard - their own.
So, this was the atmosphere at the time we elected
the standby officers; then in '53 two things happened
at almost exactly the same time. The Supreme Court
ruled our way on Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt, and Jack
Hall was convicted.
When Jack and the other Smith Act defendants were
convicted, our members shut down; everybody in Hawaii
walked out for a day.
Sure it was a blow, particularly to Jack and his
family; but the attitude of the union was that if
anything they were even more determined to just hang
712
LG: in there, not back away at all. In the course of
all this so much had been exposed about the employers;
who their friends were and who their enemies. The
air really was cleared; talk about a period of
education and understanding among workers - that was
it!
Come Labor Day, we decided to make that a big
thing in Hawaii; we had big Labor Day gatherings on
all the islands and we decided to bring additional
forces down there. Harry went down there for the
Labor Day thing; I did.
In Honolulu, they had an old-fashioned parade
through the downtown area of Honolulu and wound up
at the lolani Palace, the Governor's Palace - it
had been the palace of the old royalty. They had a
mass meeting on Kauai, a big parade and floats, and
a rather pleasant picnic afterwards. I went over
there to speak.
There was a big gathering in Honakaa, of all
places. I think Jack Hall was over there, and that
was the sugar plantation area - that would be the
northern part of the Hamakua coast, several planta
tions around there. There were speakers on the
island of Maui - it was a real outpouring for Labor
Day and in support of Jack.
There was also a feeling of confidence that if
the union could take all the bumping around and come
through it with victory on the Bridges-Robertson-
Schmidt case, that we would win out on the Hall case
as well.
I know that we didn't break stride - the union
just kept pounding away; but that did not stop the
government. I guess that's something that somebody
else will have to come along and study; when some
of these things get going, they seem to have their
own inner motion like ....
Ward : Parkins on ' s L aw?
LG: I don't know if it's Parkinson's Law, but there's .
another law; I think it's Murphy's Law; if anything
can get fucked up, it will be. When something gets
going like a redbaiting campaign, it develops a
motion of its own, and to turn the thing around has
to be pretty dramatic, like in the case of (Senator)
McCarthy.
713
LG: The redbaiters have an unlimited appetite; they have
to keep making headlines, which becomes very intoxi
cating to them. There's a whole staff that builds a
vested interest; they get all kinds of snakes and
stoolpigeons who begin to make a lifetime career of
this, hoping it will go on forever; and there will
always be soft pickings.
These "experts" they have, like Paul Crouch against
Bridges. He turns up in Hawaii, of course. It
becomes a self-perpetuating institution. This kept
going in 1953, even though by that time about the
only impact it was having in terms of our own
membership was just to harden them; to what degree it
had impacts elsewhere, I don't know; whether it made
a difference, in the election of some of these
politicians - no question it kept their names before
the public. Lots of them think that way.
The Velde Committee
LG: In the middle of 1953 the Velde Committee came to
town. You know, these guys would take turns being
chairman of the Un-American Activities Committee.
For example, some two-bit Congressman - that's all
(Harold H.) Velde was - would say, "Look, it's my
turn now to get a couple of these headlines," and
they would come out here.
Sometimes they would have a sub-committee of one
or two. The only people who were in full complement
would be the staff; these were the guys whose total
day's work was to turn up another list of witnesses
and ask them the standard question. They would
measure their success by the head-count. When the
Velde Committee was here, by that time there was a
real fight-back on the whole damn business.
I was in the Islands at the time in the middle of
sugar negotiations in 1953. Chili was hauled up
before the Committee; Dick Lynden, Paul Heide. I
guess they figured it was time to give the warehouse
men their turn in the barrel, but they must have
expected to have me in there too.
714
LG: I recall a night or two before I was due to leave
for Hawaii, the process server came "by the house.
We were living on Ashbury Terrace; my dad was visit
ing and I told him he'd better answer the door because
they'd been running around with these subpoenas.
The guy asked for me and my dad said, "No, he's not
home - he's gone; I don't know when he'll be back."
No attempt to plague us.
As a matter of fact, some of the guys in San
Francisco were pretty friendly. I think I mentioned
a man whose name was either Fitzgerald or Fitzpatrick,
with the Red Squad here. One time, he came into the
office and he had a whole bunch of subpoenas. He
said, "Is Harry around?" I said, "Mo, he's out of
town."
He said, "Well, how about Lou Goldblatt, is he
here?" I said, "No, he's gone too." Here he is
sitting right across the table talking to me, across
the desk. And he goes down a list of guys. "No,
he's not here," or "He doesn't belong here at all."
Finally, he turned to me and said, "Look, Lou, we
gotta get some guys served." (laughter) He had
no use for the goddam thing. He was a nice egg,
actually.
Anyway, these are some of our guys called up.
One of our old-timers, who worked at Illinois Glass
at the time - Ole Fagerhaus; you know Ole.
Ward: Oh sure, yes.
LG: An awfully good man; he still plugs away, gives a
hand once in a while on organizing; he's in his
seventies, you know, in great shape. Once in a
while he goes back and helps his father out! In
Minnesota some place. They come off the land and
Ole is a real wonderful down-to-earth guy.
Well, during that Velde Committee hearing the
longshoremen called a stop-work meeting -some 3,000
turned up at City Hall. I think it was that hearing
that broke into a big riot at one point. They were
washing people down the stairs at City Hall, I think.
Ward: Oh, yes.
715
LG-: I'm not sure if it was that hearing or a later
hearing.
Ward: I think that's about '53 or '54 - somewhere in there.
LG: No, it was later, I'll tell you why "because I was in
town when that took place and I wasn't in town at
the time the longshoremen's demonstration took
place.
Ward: Well, anyway, I know damn well that the staircase
hosing down was when I was working at a plastic
factory.
LG-: Oh, Becky Jenkins (daughter of a longshore leader)
was mixed up in that. I must have been in town be
cause I remember getting a call from Archie Brown
(prominent as a Communist and in Local 10) and
Archie was saying, "Lou, you gotta do something -
this is fascism!" I said, "Well, how are we doing
at the hearing?" He said, "Oh, everybody is up in
arms at the Committee." I said, "Are we -winning?"
He said, "Yes." So, I said, "Well, then, it can't
be fascism." (laughter)
Not that I was that cool; once in a while, though,
you have to think of something a little bit crazy.
But I remember in Ole's case Owens-Illinois decided
they were going to discharge him. The un-American
Activities Committee measured its success by how
many scalps they could hang on the wall. They had
been very successful in this, and as far as I know
the only place where they have not had any luck was
with the ILWU around the bay area.
This was a different island in the whole country;
we were determined nothing of the sort was going to
happen. I had worked at Owens-Illinois and I knew
some of the people there, but I hadn't seen any of
them for years. I recall at that time calling up
Henry Wade, who was then the manager of the place.
Later on when he retired, I couldn't shake loose
of him; he'd be around the building all the time just
to go to lunch or to spend the evening; go out and
have drinks; sort of indicated that he'd always felt
that the way the company had handled some of these
things was all wrong; insisted on taking me by his
apartment, meeting his daughter and his wife.
716
LG: As a matter of fact, I dragged him along to a meeting
of Local 10; Martin Luther King was talking there to
a group of longshoremen.
Well, anyway, I called Henry Wade and said, "Look,
if you let Ole go, the place is going down; a matter
of policy, that's all." He said, "I'm just telling
you - those are company orders. You've got to give
me a way out. And if you don't have one, there's
nothing we can do about it. We'll take it to
arbitration." I said, "No, I'm not going to arbitra
tion - I'll call you back."
I talked about it to several people and then
called him back and said, "We'll make one proposition
to you and no others; no purpose in kicking this
thing around further. You keep him on the job and
you can issue a statement to the effect that unless
he is vindicated by the courts, he will be fired.
You v/ait until the appeal is finished. He's still
going to have his day in court, like anybody else."
He said, "Well, maybe I can handle that." Ole stayed
on the job.
About that time we were winning a lot of these
cases, notably the cases in Hawaii through Judge
Metzger. It must have been about that time that the
Watkins decision (an historic case in which John
Watkins, a UAW organizer, used the First Amendment
to the U. S. Constitution in refusing to testify
re Communism) came along - I think that was where
the Supreme Court said that taking the Fifth Amend
ment didn't in any way have a connotation of guilt;
that it was no different than citing the First
Amendment or any other amendment.
Eventually the un-American Activities Committee
found it could get nowhere with these contempt
citations in Congress, at least not on the refusal
to testify. It also pretty well determined which
way people would have to act before these committees,
because the moment you opened up the door on answer
ing questions, you ran the risk of all kinds of things,
Ward: Well, for instance, if you answer the question, "Are
you now or have you ever been?" - if you answer "Yes",
then you have to implicate all the people you've ever
met or else you're in contempt of Congress; whether
you are willing to admit membership or not doesn't
have anything to do with it.
717
LG: Correct - the moment you get into that area, you've
opened up Pandora's Box and there is no way to close
it. They're the only ones who can close it on you;
that's where they get people to spill their guts.
Anyway, insofar as we were concerned, we kept our
record intact.
Ward: Well, what happened to 01 e?
LG: Ole stayed on the job. Later on, we hauled him off
the job for other reasons, primarily to organize.
But this un-American Activities Committee was
still functioning; the McCarthy Committee was going
full blast, out of their goddam, cotton-picking
minds. The McCarran Act had been passed; remember
all the fuss about that? In the case of the ILWU,
they began to hit us with parts of this Act, even
though it was primarily designed against the foreign
born.
I remember we were all part of that Protection
for the Foreign Born Committee; I was speaking to
various groups on the thing; it was all one move
against us, just like screening was used to try to
blacklist guys.
The McCarran Act was used primarily against some
of our Filipino members. One of our leaders in
Hawaii, a fine Filipino leader, Simeon Bagasol, had
been active in the inter-Island strike, had gotten
blacklisted off the waterfront, but finally got
back to work. He was cited and his case was finally
won.
But they went against a lot of our Filipino
members. For example, Immigration made an inter
pretation - I think it was under the McCarran Act -
that if one of the Filipinos, a member of our union,
say Alaska Cannery Workers, went to Alaska to work
the salmon season, coming back to Seattle was a new
entry because Alaska was a territory, not a state,
at the time.
We actually took one of those cases up to the
U. S. Supreme Court, a case involving several guys.
The one who had been picked up by Immigration was
a man named Alec Alcantra. I guess they always
list these names alphabetically, so he must have
718
LG-: "been listed first. He was one of our cannery work
ers and they got him under moral turpitude because
he ran a small gambling game when he got back to
Seattle.
This was all out-and-out intimidation. It would
have meant at that time that one of our Filipino
members in Hawaii - a delegate, an officer or what-
have-you, coming over to the mainland for a
convention, on returning to Hawaii would have been a
new entry and could have been picked up for
deportation; they were not citizens as yet.
Bear in mind that Filipinos came in here not as
foreigners but as "nationals" - a distinction that
must have arisen under these treaty arrangements;
they had come in that way for years. So, even
though we had won in the middle of 1953 on BRS, we
sure as hell were not out of the woods.
All during the same period there was also a
consistent fight for labor unity. e had a major
campaign going to try to re-establish' the old
Waterfront Federation of Longshoremen, Teamsters,
Seamen, Warehousemen; including mass leaflet dis
tributions, using a lot of our officials to go out
there and talk to some of the guys.
It did a great deal to get into the ranks of
other unions; there was a genuine neutralization
of some of these attacks by direct man-to-man
contact on the job. What is picked up is that there's
a good understanding among the membership that you
are fighting for certain principles, and just because
some guys have turned tail or have chickened out
doesn't mean to say you give up the fight.
Well, I'd better mention a couple of things. I
told you that we had taken the fishermen into our
union. During that same period the attrition was
still pretty heavy against unions like the Fur
Workers, United Public Workers - remember Abe Flaxer
(president of the State, County and Municipal Work
ers) and that group? It was getting pretty bad.
I recall a whole group of these officials being
cited on Taft-Hartley. Hugh Bryson was indicted on
Taft-Hartley and later on he did some time in jail.
The Marine Cooks and Stewards were violently attacked
from the CIO and particularly from Lundeberg.
719
LG: There was a. big beef on the waterfront around the
"Aleutian" where Lundeberg had signed a backdoor
agreement on this ship to put on his own men in
place of the MC&S crew; that was a major confronta
tion on the waterfront, with Lundeberg bringing damn
near a thousand armed guys down there. That was a
battle which looked as though it would break out in
fierce violence. The decision was finally made that
the only way the MC&S might be saved was to have
the members sign in the ILWU; this had to be done
man-by-man, and there was a major signup.
I think that Lundeberg realized that in a direct
election for the MC&S in the stewards department
with the ILWU on the ballot, he would have lost out.
I'll have to check as to when exactly that election
took place and what form it took. They finally
washed the MC&S out of business, but that was done
by devising a new bargaining unit.
Lundeberg filed for an election on the ships to
include the Sailors, the Marine Firemen and the
Marine Cooks and Stewards; this would give them a
combination that would overwhelm the Marine, Cooks
and Stewards.
In the meantime, the ILWU was still battling
away, still trying to protect the MC&S and other
progressive unions.
##
Ward: Okay, Lou, we're going to talk about some of your
own troubles now,
LG: You want to talk about some of the committees I was
hauled before, right? Well, there were some rather
important developments in relationship to the ILA
which I guess resulted in my being hauled before . .
Ward: Okay, let's take the ILA first.
LG: The one that I recall that takes priority is, there
was an un-American Activities Committee hearing
again - the year was 1956.
Ward: You went to the one at the Post-office?
LG: The Post-office building and Richard Arens was the
counsel. I was hauled before that committee. The
guy I recall being there in addition to myself was
Victor Arnautoff. Victor Arnautoff was an artist.
720
Ward: Yes, he taught at Stanford. Every September there is
a public art festival in San Francisco, and
Arnautoff the year before had done a caricature of
Dick Nixon, who was then Vice-President; that ir
ritated all the dogs and they hauled him up before
the committee.
LG-: Right - so it had to be some time in 1956. And
you're right about the art festival where he had a
caricature of Dick Nixon. It was a typical un-
American Activities Committee hearing. George
Andersen went along with me, as counsel. I guess
I was cited because they hadn't managed to pick me
up in the 1953 hearing. I was living here (in Mill
Valley) at the time.
Ward: In this house?
LG-: Positive - yes, we moved here in 1955. The guy who
came up to serve the subpoena here was the local
chief of police - Dan Tursik. I bump into him once
in a while. For years when I'd see him, all he could
do was talk about how sorry he was that he had to
come up and do this, but after all he was doing his
job. And I'd make the crack, "That's what the
hangman said, you know."
I almost got even with Dan, very unintentionally,
by the way. I was playing golf one time at the Mill
Valley golf course and on one hole - what the devil
he was doing out there I don't know, but he walked
out pretty close to the green - it was really the
only decent shot I hit all day. The ball was
straight and strong and it didn't miss him by more
than an inch or two. Whether he thought it was
deliberate or not, I don't know, but I couldn't have
seen him from where I was.
Anyway, he came up here and said the neighbors
were complaining about a dog barking and I said,
"I have no dog." He said, "Well, I have something
for you." And he had the subpoena - I'm pretty
sure that was the one, unless it was the one for
the Eastland Committee. It was not the one for the
McClellan Committee because the McClellan Committee
telegram I got when I was back in Colorado staying
with Frank Oppenheimer (a prominent scientist and
brother of the famous Robert Oppenheimer).
721
Ward: Well, this committee hearing with George Andersen -
what did you do? Just take the Fifth?
LG-: They had testimony against me in 1953. Apparently,
one of their stable of stoolpigeons had been all
prepared to testify against me in 1953 , so they went
right ahead with the testimony. They had the usual
stuff that I had been a member of the Young Communist
League, and so forth and so on.
Ward: Who was he?
The Witness Lies
LG-: A guy named Lou Rosser - I had known him in Los
Angeles many, many years before, some time in the
1930s. He said I had had an alias, Lou Miller, and
some other stuff. Under cross examination, when
somebody asked him questions whether he was a member
of a union, he said, he was a member of Local 10.
He had never been a member of Local 10.
Of course, there are never any perjury indict
ments on these things. He had me placed at all
kinds of meetings in Los Angeles. I was living up
here. I was with the union or the State CIO. He
was all over the place; the usual business.
I took the Fifth Amendment although I decided
something at that hearing, and George thought it
was okay. He said, "Sure, go ahead and give it a
try." I spoke out: "You know, we should make an
issue of this business that taking the Fifth Amend
ment is not a presumption of guilt." It was the
Watkins decision I was referring to.
I got into a big hassle with the chairman of
the committee, (Chester) Doyle. I kept after him
and said, "It's your job to protect me in this
hearing, particularly against this guy who is trying
to badger me. I am not going to be badgered; I'm
not going to be buffaloed and I want you to protect
me."
He said, "Don't worry about that; there isn't any
presumption of guilt or anything of the sort." "I'm
going to take the Fifth Amendment and that's all."
So, we went round and round for a while.
722
LG: The counsel, this guy Arens, struck me as something
odd; he was still hung over. I thought that as long
as I kept addressing myself to Doyle about protect
ing my rights, there would be no great problem. It
didn't turn out to be. When I had been with the
State CIO, Doyle was one of the guys the CIO helped
to get elected in L. A. He must have remembered it
too, because he was very uncomfortable -
Ward: Chester Doyle, wasn't that?
LG: Chet Doyle, yes; he was from somewhere around the
Compton area.
Ward: He accepted left-wing support in the beginning and
as soon as he got there, the hell with it.
LG: Oh, yeah, just like Tenney and the guy, what's his
name, who headed the Little Dies Committee here -
Ward: Tenney?
LG: He later was mayor of Los Angeles - (Sam) Yorty!
Ward: I understand he ' s a friend of Nixon's now.
LG: Oh, yes, that seems to be logical. At some point
along the line I got into a fight with the counsel
because he started reading from some pamphlet under
the name of Lou Miller. I let him go on for a while
and then I said, "Look, if you want to hand me
something, don't throw it." And we got into a pretty
bad exchange and I let go full blast about the
committee and everything else.
I had forgotten all about it until many years
later when I was invited to speak at a teachers
meeting that was being held over here (in Mill
Valley) just about the time that school breaks up.
They had a nice dinner there; Terry and I went.
Their activists were union people and the guy in
charge of the meeting must have had a real sense of
mischief, and also was very curious about things,
because he'd gotten a tape - I don't know where the
tape came from; maybe one of the regular stations
had it - of my clash with the committee. It sounded
better than I thought it did at the time. It was
really quite something; talk about de ,1 a vu!
723
Ward: The meeting wasn't antagonistic to you?
LG: No, no - it was very friendly, because there was
quite an impassioned speech there about the un-
American Activities Committee.
The thing that really got me angry, sitting there
waiting to be called before that damned committee,
was I saw a number of people whom I recognized; all
good leftwingers. I'm sure there wasn't a person
there who had ever cheated anybody or doublecrossed
his neighbor in his whole life; Victor Arnautoff,
whom I knew for a long time.
There was a young girl sitting there who I think
was in law school at the time; she later on made her
main job seeking prison reform and fighting for the
release of prisoners who had been kicked around for
years - Solodoy, I think her name was - a very-
nice gal. At the end of my speech, she broke out in
applause and some other people joined in.
I started walking out and -just as I got to the >
door, Congressman Doyle said, "You're not dismissed."
I said, "What else is there?" He said, "You're
dismissed now." Anyway, I went up to Harrington's
and had a drink. Phil Eden (an ILWU research assis
tant) was there and he said, "That's a contempt."
I said, "I don't think so," and George didn't think
so either.
I got a call from Victor Arnautoff a couple of
days later and he said, "I want to thank you for one
thing." And I said, "What was that?" "Well, as a
result of your explosion" - the thing was in the
headlines, pictures and all that stuff making it
look like a big fight; Christ J couldn't have fought
my way out of a paper bag with all those guys around,
plus the marshal I don't know where they found a
moose that big; all the photographers; pictures and
what have you.
Ward: So, what about Arnautoff?
LG: He said, "Well, this business about you and the
committee made all the headlines, and my appearance
just got buried. It looks as though finally they'll
renew my contract" - he was on a year-to-year
contract.
724
Ward: They went after him at Stanford?
LG: They were going to renew his contract -
ard: But they didn't renew it?
LG: Yes, at that time they did; later on, no. This was
an indication of an odd facet in this country where
in many ways the private universities turned out to
"be better than the state ones. The state universi
ties had this Levering Act (requiring the taking of
a "loyalty" oath).
They never let go. Their idea is to hound a per
son until he disappears; hound him out of a city,
out of a job and make it impossible for him to get
a new job. Anyway, that was the only beneficial
thing that happened there, as far as I could see.
(Interview 26: 12 September, 1978)
Ward: Are we finished with the House un-American Activi
ties Committee session in San Francisco?
LG: There were a lot of headlines on the thing. The
headlines actually were not accurate. Something to
the effect that I had gotten thrown out of the
hearings; that wasn't really true. Sure, it made
the sort of copy that newspapermen like; and the
photographs! But that wasn't really what happened.
Ward: Well, the marshal took your arm or something?
LG: Right; and I broke away from him and said, "Look,
I've got no quarrel with you," and I started to walk
out. I assumed that he was there to take me out.
When I got to the door that was when Doyle said,
"You're not excused." And I stopped and he said,
"You're excused."
A couple of small sidelights about that. We were
already here in Mill Valley. Maybe this was a sign
of the times; it wasn't just the new neighborhood we
were living in. One of the things I recall is that
almost all the neighbors - I had met most of them
by that time - made it their business to be on the
725
LG: street when I was driving home to tell me they
thoueht I was doing the right thing and they support
ed me. Quite a contrast to some of the earlier years
where, partly because we lived in San Francisco,
Ashbury Terrace, the kids were given a bad time by
the other youngsters. I'm inclined to think it was
part of the redbaiting.
I remember Terry had been active in the PTA
(Parent-Teachers Association); we had two of our
youngsters in the Twin Peaks School and Liza when
she got old enough would go there too. Terry was
due to be president of the PTA. She was down in
Hawaii visiting me when she got a wire saying that
their nominating committee had reconsidered,
expressing a reflection of the times and the intense
redbaiting that was going on.
This was a public school - Twin Peaks. I think
the impact on the family was felt when we were there.
It was a bit gratifying to find that the people
around Mill Valley didn't feel the same way. Things
had begun to change.
I believe it was around 1955, wasn't it, when
Eisenhower had his confrontation with McCarthy. That
was the time Senator McCarthy decided to take out
after some of the army brass. I recall the special
counsel was Joe Welch, Boston Back Bay, a stiff-
necked Republican who did one of those classic jobs
of taking McCarthy apart.
Ward: He was the Leon Jaworski of his time.
LG: Ch, I think he showed a lot more stuff; Jaworski 's
latest caper is not particularly distinguished, is
it?
In 1955 or close thereafter the Supreme Court
issued its first decision that began to challenge
the Smith Act. It wasn't in the New York case, but
it was one of the subsidiary cases. I think it was
around that same decision later on that the Jack
Hall case was thrown out.
Checking on those dates, the year of the un-
American Activities Committee was in 1956; the
hearing before the Eastland Committee was around
mid-1957 - June and July.
726
Ward: All right, let's go on with that now.
LG: And the McClellan hearing was in 1959.
Relations With. The ILA
Ward: All right, Eastland.
LG: Okay, we're on Eastland. Somewhere around 1953,
things began to move on the east coast in the ILA;
Ryan was still president at the time. There was a
good deal of turmoil. There had been several strikes
on the east coast; in almost everyone of them, the
membership was running out from under the officials,
and the officials were finally catching up or sitting
tight.
Ward: What you'd call a bunch of wildcats, huh?
LG: Yes, except they were more organized than that. They
had a lot of local leadership support, with the
national officials playing a sort of, oh, semi-
mediator liaison relationship with the employers;
typical Joe Ryan. The background of the ILA I don't
have to spell out; it's common knowledge.
These wildcats resulted in a good deal of publi
city as to what was going on in the ILA. The anti-
union pressures were still on; everything that we'd
said turned out to be correct. Once they began to
pick off the leftwing unions, they would not stop
there .
Nobody in his right mind would expect a head-on
confrontation between the government, or some of
the congressional bodies, directly against the main
bodies of labor. They would proceed to try to nick
the unions off one at a time, and the first one
under attack was the ILA. The ILA was eventually
suspended somewhere around 1954 or '55.
Ward: Suspended by?
LG: The AFof L. I'm also inclined to think this was
prior to the merger of the CIO and the APofL. When
the ILA was expelled, although . . .
727
Ward: Or suspended - you used the term "suspended" a minute
ago.
LG: I think maybe it was "expelled" "because . . .
Ward: I never heard of suspensions.
LG: It was a situation where the APofL began to embark
on its program - sort of cleaning its own house
business. This later resulted in a whole series of
things; the so-called ethical practices committee
that was set up by the APofL, in which the CIO might
have taken part. That was the business of improving
their image by doing a job on certain unions before
the government people could do it. The thing that
bothered us most was that the official bodies of the
APofL were doing this job on the other workers.
I'm never going to say that the ILA was an exemp
lary union; we know better. Its method of operation,
of course, would be anathema to an organization like
ours. We belonged to the ILA at one time, back in
the 30s. We broke with them because of our extreme
unhappiness with them, including the fact they would
not take a referendum on whether we'd join in the
CIO.
This did not change the ILA's tactics one bit.
Joe Ryan or "King Joe" Ryan, as he was referred to -
his philosophy in life remained the same; namely,
next to himself he liked silk underwear best and
lived high off the hog. He even had a special fund
of which he didn't have to make any particular
accounting. It was lacked into by one of the govern
ment bodies, I think, and there were expense chits
there for taking a group of people out to the Stork
Club.
This was all part of the business of conducting
his anti-subversive campaign. There was a standard
technique, you know, like the two recourses they
seemed to use constantly - and this is not anti-
religious or anti-Oath olic as such - super-patriotism
and the church. Very common for them to put on
highly publicized mass attendance in the Gatholic
churches during any sort of a beef. Their endless
red-baiting is common knowledge. Later on, it took
the form of refusal to handle Russian cargoes.
728
LG-: One of the scandals was about the time they held up
a whole shipment of Russian furs; later on it was
discovered that as soon as the right guys had been
taken care of - a couple of bucks on the side -
the furs got unloaded very nicely.
Yet, it was the general feeling within the ILWU -
Harry felt the same way and he sure as heck had no
great love for the ILA - that there were a lot of
things that had to be done within the ILA, but should
be the problem of the membership. The moment the
government steps in on these self-appointed missions,
the result invariably is that you can't get them out.
This, by the way, is what eventually happened,
particularly in New York, their main concentration.
A lot of the rumbles around there, the attempts to
raid the ILA, finally resulted in the establishment
of the so-called Bi-State Waterfront Commission.
Ward: Oh, New Jersey and New York?
LG: Jersey and New York, which in effect established the
screening procedure for all longshoremen. Instead
of establishing a genuine hiring hall, they estab
lished a registration system which literally was for
the purpose of making sure the screening worked, the
ostensible reason being to drive all the gangsters
and racketeers off the waterfront.
They might have gotten some of them, but also
they made sure they got anybody else who talked up,
particularly against the employers. We came out
openly in The Dispatcher in favor of the ILA being
left alone; the fight to change the ILA was the
fight of the membership itself.
Notwithstanding guys like Ryan and some of the
things that took place, there were spots like Boston
and Philadelphia - and even whole areas like the
south - where you had fairly independent crews. Red
Moran in Philadelphia had some good guys there. There
was a background in Philadelphia of having a Wobbly
local; it continued that way for many years, even
after the Wobblies in all other parts of the country
began to fall apart.
They maintained organization by issuing monthly
union buttons; you had to have those in order to
work. As a matter of fact, this was later picked up
729
LG: around here as well - the monthly union "button.
This was a better way of getting the job done than
the union shop.
Anyway, our position was that this was an internal
problem of the ILA. We put a man to work for us,
Charles Velson. He's dead now; an old time trade
unionist. He had been active in the Boilermakers
and the Shipyard Workers, had been a boilermaker
himself - rather advanced grade, where they do the
designing on plates.
Ward: You put Velson on, to do what?
LG: Primarily to get in touch with the guys in the ILA,
the good guys he could talk to, and to make it clear
that'we didn't have any use for this attack against
them. We did think that far more fundamental would
be a common contract expiration date with the west
coast; or joint negotiations or parallel negotiations,
where you keep in touch with each other. In other
words, we hoped to sort of remedy the rift that had
gone on from 1937 for damn near 20 years and to see
if we could get things back on a trade union basis.
Along the line there, the AFofL made an attempt
to dismantle the ILA by an out-and-out raid. This
was led by a combined union force designated by the
AFofL Executive Council, or by Meany, made up of Dave
Beck and Paul Hall, the two key men; Dave Beck from
the Teamsters, and Paul Hall from the Seamen's Union
on the east coast.
They set up a rival organization called the
International Brotherhood of Longshoremen, the IBL.
It later went to an NLRB election which the ILA won
hands down. Our estimate was correct: sure, the
guys were damn unhappy about some of the things that
were going on, like the shape-up, the shakedowns,
the lack of job security, which was pretty bad in
many cases; the use of preferred and star gangs; the
failure to work out any kind of machinery to move
men from port to port; not even from dock to dock.
It was not uncommon for a local to be confined to
one dock. If there were no ships in or for some
other reason things were bad, the only way they could
find a job on another dock might be to just wander
over there and see what their chances were; maybe yes,
730
LG: maybe no. In most cases the local on the other dock
would say, hey, our guys go first and you have to
wait. No attempt to work these things out in any
kind of intelligent fashion.
You had a series of locals down in the lower East
Side; the "banana dock, then you had what they called
the "pistol local" up near the Chelsea district;
there were other locals right near there, a whole
series of them. One of these local officers is now
an official of the ILA -
Ward: What's the name?
LG-: John Bowers. Anyway, in the course of working with
the fellows in the ILA, Charlie made a lot of pretty
effective contacts. You have to talk to some very
peculiar people - they're not really peculiar, they're
slightly different - like Tony Anastasia, who was
head of the Brooklyn longshoremen.
I made a number of trips back there, primarily to
to see if we could set up a meeting with (Captain
William V.) Bradley. Bradley was the man who took
Joe Ryan's place. Ryan stepped down or died.
Ward: Well, it doesn't matter - not too important.
LG: Captain Bradley was from the Inland Boatmen; he was
not a longshoreman, but this was a group that had
belonged to the Inland Boatmen's Union and had
joined the ILA; he became the head of the ILA.
He was a fairly clean guy, as far as I could
figure. I don't think he was mixed up with the
rackets, but I couldn't help but feel that in many
ways he was just an office holder. He liked his
good eating and good living; pretty soon you found
out that if you wanted to find him - although I
rarely went by there - you went to a place across
from their headquarters on 14th Street; Cavanaugh's,
a very fine Irish restaurant; that's where Bradley
would be.
It was still primarily the Irish group around
Ryan; they continued in command. Meeting with
Bradley didn't get too far. I talked to him about
trying to get some coordinated work going in Wash
ington, D. C. on the Longshore and Harbor V/orkers
731
LG: Act. We did get a "bit accomplished in that direction.
Also, I mentioned that we'd like to see something done
in the way of better communication. As a matter of
fact, they sent a delegation out to visit the west
coast. Whether that was "before the hearing in 1957
or afterwards, I'm not sure; whether it was everybody
watching everybody else, I had no idea. Instead of
its being a comparatively small delegation, it was
a big group - around eight or ten.
e asked them to come out here to take a look at
the hiring hall, visit our library and talk to some
of our people. They came by our library at 150 Gold
en Gate and Ann was in charge -
Ward: Ann Rand?
LG: Yes, a very competent person. So, I introduced her
to the delegation, asked her if she'd spend an hour
or so just showing them around; she did. She went
through the various stacks and the files - the
comprehensive records we had on the contracts,
arbitrations and literature concerning shipping; it
was about as complete a library as 3^ou could have -
an industrial or labor relations library.
I found out later from Ann, "Well, first they
wanted to know if I could microfilm the whole thing -
they'd like to buy it."
Their concept of something like this is, you look
at it and you buy the whole thing; you get the
pictures of it and it's the same thing, isn't it?
Instead of thinking, where could they find a librar
ian to come out here and work with Ann Rand to see
what they could do in the way of picking up at least
some of the benefit of what we had done. ( laughter)
Later on, they tried to set up a bit of a research
department; that showed up in negotiations and in
the hearings before the Waterfront Commission.
The night they arrived, I happened to be in the
office a little bit late; Bill Chester, (ILWU region
al director) was there too. I got a call; it's from
Teddy Gleason (a top ILA officer) and he said they
were down at the St. Francis Hotel and were having a
bit of a problem getting registered. I said, "Is
the manager there?" They said, "Yes." "Ask him to
please come to the phone." Apparently, the manager
was a little bit leary of the whole thing - I don't
know why.
732
Ward: He thought the mob had come in?
LG: They were respectably dressed, but there was some
thing about them; I don't know. I said, "There's
no problem." So, they all got registered and they
got back on the phone and thanked us and asked if we
wanted to go out to dinner. I said that would be
fine and we would come by and pick them up.
I asked Bill to stick around and the two of us
drove down there; we picked them up and I v/asn't
sure where we'd go, so I asked them what they wanted.
They would like some steaks; they're good trencher
men and steak was still the main diet. We went over
to Alfred's (a San Francisco steak house) - the
place right above the tunnel and it's open late. I
hadn't been there for maybe five or six years. We
go in there.
I will say one thing, they may not have known too
much about libraries but they sure know how to read
a menu and they knew how to order. It was getting
toward the tail end of the meal and I turned to
Chester and said, "Do you have any money?" I looked
in my wallet and I had maybe around ten bucks.
"Yes, said Bill, "but, it's only around ten or
fifteen dollars." So, I said, "Forget it; we can't
cover this." The waiter came over with the check and
I said, "Do you want a credit card?" I don't carry
these eating credit cards, like Diners Club and all
that junk. "Or would you rather have my (business)
card and save yourself a fee and send the bill to
the office?"
The waiter said, "Let me have your card." In a
few minutes, the manager is out there and said, "Lou,
it's wonderful to see you." I don't recall ever
meeting the guy in my life. He said, "We'll be glad
to send the bill to your office." He called the
waiter over and said, "Get a drink for everybody
here." Well, as we were walking out, the ....
##
733
Ward: You were /just going to tell . . .
LG: Oh, yes, we were walking out of this restaurant and
Fred' Field (one of the ILA men) turned to me and
said, "Well, nobody else maybe caught this, but I
did. You didn't know that man and he didn't know
you." So, I said, "That's true." He said, "You
know, they wouldn't even take our credit card in lots
of restaurants in New York." To them, I guess, this
indicated standing or muscle.
Ward: Respect?
LG: Yes, respect. It impressed them more than the
library or the hiring hall - but that's the way they
were.
As I said one time, there was this remark by Jesus
Menendez (a sugar worker) in Cuba, "Con estos bueyos
tenemos arai". It means "With these oxen, you have
to plow." That was his remark in Cuba during a
sugar meeting in 1947. A group of delegates weren't
there because they had been out at some night club
until the middle of the night. He thought it was a
disgrace. That's the way Jesus Menendez disposed
of it.
The Shady Side Of The Street
LG: We continued the contact with the ILA. Charlie
Velson was an enormously hard worker. During that
campaign against the AFofL raid, he helped the ILA
with their literature. He got to meet a number of
the people there; some of them not the ordinary type
of unionist; some of them a bit on the wrong side
of the tracks.
One of the things' you discover pretty quickly in
New York is that to think that somebody can waltz
through life simon-pure and never talk to one of
these people, or run across the street when you see
one coming, doesn't work; not that kind of a scene.
You have a lot of little kingdoms there, particularly
in the ILA.
734
LG: One of the people that I got to see was Tony Anasta-
sia. Albert Anastasia, I think, had just gotten out
of jail -
Ward: Albert was Tony's "brother?
LG: Yes, Tony's brother; as a matter of fact, he was
assassinated not too long after he got out of jail.
You hear about these things as rumors and stories
about his jurisdiction and how he decided to re
establish it. I guess it is typical of New York.
I began to feel some of this in the case of Tony,
when I sat and talked to him. Some of the things I
said would flabbergast him; then I realized I might
just as well be straight even though he was not
going to believe a lot of it. I remember one time
talking to him at his home; I saw him there several
times.
When you were talking to Tony privately, you sat
downstairs in a sort of family room, a basement that
had been converted. Tony didn't drink particularly,
but he always had something around; he was very
sociable, very pleasant and very polite at all times;
friendly and anxious to learn.
The thing I kept pounding at him was, "Somewhere
along the line somebody has to start merging some of
these locals around here. You have all kinds of
locals right here in Brooklyn. I don't know exactly
where the union is going, but you sure as hell need
a bigger ballpark to play in." His union was con
centrated primarily around Red Hook and I think some
of that advice fell on good ears; they began to put
a few things together, so that perhaps the most
effective local in the New York scene is the one
that Tony used to be in charge of. His son-in-law,
Tony Scotto,is now the head of that local. Tony
Scotto is a very capable guy, and I think he knows
a great deal and from all indications is a pretty
good unionist.
Ward: You have to talk up because she's making it sound
like a railroad train crossing a trestle. (This
refers to Yarrow, a parrot engaged in rustling
the paper lining the bottom of her cage.)
LG: Yarrow is a female and she's nesting.
735
LG-: And at one of these sessions, Tony asked, "How much
are you making a week?" At that time, I think the
salary was about $75 dollars a week or maybe a
hundred dollars. I told him, "It's in the constitu
tion." He thought for a long time and said, "Jesus,
that's smart!" And then I realized very quickly how
he took the whole thing.
Ward: Officially?
LG: That's right - that's how much you got officially.
That's what you reported on. Income taxes were
straight. (laughter) And I remember a crack made
by him one time. Around New York some of the people
could quote the prices on decisions you could get
from the Superior Court.
Ward: The Superior Court - that would be the lower court?
LG: The lower court, right.
Ward: Because their Supreme Court there is our Superior
Court here.
LG: Right. And they could quote the prices on these
decisions. This is after the Bridges victory, well,
maybe a couple of years after. He asks, "How do you
reach those guys?" He was talking about the Supreme
Court decision. By_ that time, you begin to under
stand their lingo; '"reaching" means how do you work
a deal with the guy and how do you communicate with
him? He simply assumed you could reach them.
Ward: How do you get the decision except by paying for it?
LG: That's right. That's the way it's done; after all,
they hire a lawyer. The idea for example of conduct
ing a mass campaign, as we did in the BRS case, in
the Hall case, calling the guys out in protest over
these raw deals, would be inconceivable to them.
These things are done by hiring the right lawyers,,
paying them and spending the money where it has to
be spent; how simple it is.
Tony must have been concerned about some of the
things that were going around in the press, because
I recall he made a crack to me: "You see and read
all kinds of things about me; they call me 'tough
Tony'', but I'll tell you one thing: no girls, no
drugs ! "
736
Ward: In other words, he didn't run whorehouses or peddle
heroin.
LG: Right. That's the way they think; he figured if he
didn't get mixed up in such things, all this other
stuff was a bunch of crap. Anyway, I suddenly began
to see a new scene in life.
Actually the ILA thing didn't get very far because
when they were in a beef with the North Atlantic
Shipping Association in one of their strikes, we took
the position - I pressed for it - that we shouldn't
handle any east coast ships that were diverted. We
sent the thing to a referendum vote, too, and got
the membership to adopt it. A short time afterwards
we got a telegram from Captain Bradley saying, "We'd
appreciate it if you just didn't interfere into our
affairs - we'll call you in case we need you."
So, it was clear that they were prepared to pick
our brains, if you want to put" it that way, get
whatever assistance we could give them, purely as
something they could pick up, but there would be no
exchange for it, even though they might make vague
statements that some day maybe there should be a
common expiration date.
It became more and more apparent that they had no
intention of moving that way. I guess to them
cooperation with a union such as the ILWU v/ith its
concept of rank-and-file unionism would have been as
big a menace as the Waterfront Commission moving in.
I for one, in 1955, felt pretty keenly that it was a
good possibility; as a result of all that effort we
did give it a whirl, but it never really got off the
ground .
Finally, we had no choice but to pull Charlie
Velson out of there. He had done a good job; he had
some very good contacts. He was able to work with
a number of people.
The Eastland Committee
LG: It was on account of this that I got hauled before
the Eastland Committee. The Eastland Committee at
that time was a counterpart of the Subversive
737
LG-: Activities Control Board. Remember the Subversive
Activities Control Board?
Ward: The SCAB Board.
LG: The SCAB Board they called it; that was the Board
that went all out against the Mine Mill and Smelter
Workers. I think they got Telford Taylor to help
them in that case. Maurice Travis was involved.
I got hauled before the committee and as I recall,
Teddy Gleason was called too. Ryan was out of the
picture; Bradley was in. I think they had defeated
the attempt of the AFofL, under Beck and Paul Hall,
to move in on them. I gather the general theory
behind Eastland's subpoenas was that we were active
on the east coast and this was a form of leftwing
infiltration of the ILA. Interesting how even two
unions talking to each other can be a form of in
filtration.
They started off by trying to get me to answer
a series of questions about the finances of the liWU.
I concluded that the purpose of those questions was
solely to find out whether Charlie Yelson was on our
payroll, if so how much was he paid, whether he had
any expense money. I figured I was not going to
open that door to them.
I mean, our books had been scoured so thoroughly;
I told you about the Juneau Spruce thing and the
court order to go through our records. I don't know
how long that damn thing went on. Internal Revenue
had been around, coming to talk to me; I talked about
my personal finances.
I was called to testify in a case against Vince
Hallinan; that was another charge against him, on
taxes. I wouldn't turn over the records of the BRS
committee. I said, "I'll hold on to them and I'll
read the items I think are relevant, but I will not
disclose the names." We had the individual names
of contributors there and I was not going to turn
them over.
They finally compromised on that - they were
fairly decent about it. Vince, of course, got very-
little for his work; a very small fee. With all
this poking around, I think Internal Revenue knew
all there was to be known about the ILWU's finances.
738
Ward: So, you refused?
LG: I told the Eastland Committee, "Look, you just get
the Internal Revenue and the FBI sleuths off our
back; I'll answer any questions you want and "be
done with it, but they'd been all over the place and
I don't see any point in going into all this business,
They didn't press it too hard, luckily. They wanted
to know if we had anything to do with the ILA and I
said, "Sure, we have certain joint union programs
going that make some sense."
They wanted to know on what and I said, "Well,
right now we're greatly concerned about the Longshore
and Harbor Workers Act; the benefits are completely
obsolete; they have to be brought up to date. Some
thing has to be done to put that whole Act in line
with what the workers are earning today, what they
ought to get for their industrial injuries."
Longshoremen are covered under a separate act than
ordinary workmen's compensation: the Longshoremen's
and Harbor Workers Act.
Gleason was called to testify and he in effect
said the same thing; yes, they worked with the ILWU
for the same Longshore and Harbor Workers Act, and
other trade union problems. I think they were
hoping to open up a whole business of the ILWU
spending huge amounts of money ....
The McClellan Committee
Ward: What was the third committee you appeared before?
LG: The third was a hearing before the McClellan
Committee. That was the one where Bobby Kennedy
was the chief counsel; his brother was a member of
that committee.
Ward: John was then a senator?
LG: Yes, and the work was done particularly by Bobby
Kennedy. The staging that was going on there had
to do with putting together the campaign by Kennedy
when he ran for President in I960.
739
LG: That case too, in my opinion, was a corollary - or
at least caused "by the APL opening the door with
their ethical practices committee. In other words, by
setting up this ethical practices committee they were
conceding that something new had to be added to clean
up the labor movement. Of course the inevitable hap
pened; some ambitious congressman would say, "Pine,
we'll get in the act."
Out of all these hearings and everything else
you got Landrum-Griffin. In 1947 you had Taft-
Hartley at the beginning of the Cold War. In 1957,
at the tail end of the Cold War, even though some of
the anti-labor stuff was beginning to phase out, you
got Landrum-Griffin; helped along in the application
of this campaign for wearing white linen by the APofL.
This was also combined with a very aggressive campaign
against Hoffa.
Ward: With which the Kennedys had a great deal to do?
LG: A great deal. 'Insofar as Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy
were concerned, it became a real 'contest of wills.
Hoffa was "a very interesting guy, a very, very
American product; typical of some of the' things that
developed in this country from initial immigrant
population to the robber barons.
Ward: What was his ethnic background?
LG: Polish. Born in Detroit; worked in the warehouses -
grocery warehouse, I believe. Kroeger, one of the
big outfits in the midwest. Helped to organize the
place where he worked sometime in the thirties; made
the clink time after time for general picket line
beefs. He was an effective leader; became the head
of one of the big Detroit locals in the Teamsters
Union, 299, I believe.
Ward: Wasn't he trying to get back into it just before he
was bumped off?
LG: I'm not sure. His basic ambition was not in that
direction; it was to get back in as the general
president of the Teamsters Union.
I'll have to go back a little bit ... I first
met Hoffa in Hawaii. I was having dinner one night
with a couple of people at the Tropics, v/here the
Ala Moana Hotel is now, near Atkinson Drive. This
740
LG: Tropics was a quiet place for dinner. They served
a good meal there and I liked the fellow who ran the
place. Anyway, somebody came to the table; might
have been Tony, the owner. He said, "Hoffa is sitting
over there with a group of guysr would you like to
meet him?" I said, "I don't think so, not right now -
I don't think it's a good idea." I finished my
dinner and found out he was staying at the Royal.
His executive board was meeting in Hawaii. This must
have been around 1956 or '57, thereabouts.
I called him the next day. I said, "I didn't
intend to be discourteous or anything; sure I want
to meet you, but I didn't think it was a good idea
for us to meet at the Tropics." I said that we'd
had all kinds of battles down here, and the ILWU was
still having plenty of them and we are lining up
with what you're trying to do. There were all of
these preliminary moves going on within the Teamsters
Union, which had its own system of manoeuvering;
Beck had been indicted in Seattle. I forget what
the ....
Ward: Income tax, wasn't it?
LG: Income tax and something about having sold something
which had been entrusted to him and pocketing the
money. It would seem sort of startling in view of
the kind of salary he was paid. Anyway, Beck was
still president of the Teamsters Union.
Ward: But he wasn't present down there?
LG: ; Yes, sure, he was there - he was presiding at the
executive council meeting. Periodically, they move
around; very common for them to rotate those meetings
in different parts of the country.
So I said, "There really wasn't any offense meant;
I want to see you because I think we have a lot to
talk about." He said, "Sure, let's get together. It
might not be a good idea for you to come to the
Royal, why don't you go over there. It might have
been the Princess Kaiulani across the street. Harold
Gibbons has a suite there; I'll meet you there." So,
we set up a date for lunch and we had an interesting
few hours, just kicking the gong around, talking.
Harold at first was there; Harold is ...
741
Ward: Harold?
LG-: Harold Gibbons is a person all of Ms own. He's
still on the executive council of the Teamsters
Union. He was the head of the "big St. Louis local.
Harold, I "believe, at one time was a Socialist,
together with some other people who at that time
were in the Retail and Wholesale Employees Union
(Wolchok's outfit).
I know that Larry Steinberg was one of those, and
they decided to throw their lot in with the Teamsters.
The amount of progress they made in the other
direction didn't amount to much. Harold was bright;
he later became head of the (Teamsters') Central
States Conference. Recently, I think his work has
been pretty much confined to executive board member;
I'm not sure that he's in charge of any of the other
major enterprises right now.
Harold had had some clashes with our union, parti
cularly with Bob Robertson in the city of St. Louis,
primarily in a place called Rice Warehouse. Harold
used to say it was the toughest damn fight he'd ever
been in - he' didn't know what the hell held the ILWU
up, because apparently he had the whole city organized
against us, hammering in every direction. Our thing
just had to fold, so he had a lot of grudging respect
for our union.
He knew who I was and I knew who he was, of course,
having spent some time in St. Louis. He was doing
quite a bit of needling, at first. Hoffa finally
turned to him and said, "You know, Hal, I'd like to
hear what this fellow has to say; after all, they've
done quite a job here in Hawaii. I'd like to know
how they put those sugar plantations together and
things like that."
Obviously, Hoffa was pretty well versed on what
had gone on in the Islands and the unions there. He
knew that the only ma.jor viable organization at that
time was the ILW. Later on there were the Public
Workers, and the Hotel Workers grew up; but in terms
of a tough, fighting outfit that had broken the grip
of feudalism, it was the ILWU. He was quite curious
about it. Well, I went into a lot' of the background,
the whole structure of the Islands, the economic
picture, some of the problems he would have.
742
LG: Also, I told him that any battle between the Teamsters
and the ILwTJ down in Hawaii didn't make a damn bit
of sense; the only people who would profit would be
the employers.
We didn't want any of his teamsters, particularly
in Honolulu. On the outside Islands, yes, that's
different because certain problems caused by mechani
zation were coming up in sugar; workers would be
looking for other jobs and they would figure they had
first dibs on them and wouldn't give up without a
struggle. Anyway, I think he understood those things;
but it was a good session. I saw him after that . . .
Ward: Let me ask you at this time, was there any contact
between him and Harry Bridges?
LG: Not at that time - later on.
Ward: You were the first, then, - you were the first ILU
leadership to contact Hoffa?
LG: Yes, I was the first. But - oh, Harry later got to
see a good deal of Jimmy and did a lot of talking with
him, particularly during the time when Jimmy was
really being pushed around.
You have to remember that after Kennedy was
elected, Bobby Kennedy became Attorney General, and
then he did something that is almost unheard of. He
had a special task force whose sole purpose was to
get Hoffa; they had to find something on him to put
him away.
Ward: There was something going on though before that.
Before John Kennedy was elected President, hadn't
relations started between ILWU and Hoffa?
LG: Yes.
Ward: And Bobby Kennedy came out here and went to the bank
which was patronized by Glads tein - (the ILWU law
firm) - and demanded to see Gladstein's personal
account. The bank officials asked for a court order.
Kennedy said, "I don't need a court order." "Well,
who are you?" "I'm Robert Kennedy, that's who I am."
They said, "That's all right, sorry, Mr. Kennedy."
And he wasn't even attorney-general at that time!
743
LG: No, he was not attorney general then; he must have
done that as counsel for the McClellan Committee.
As a matter of fact, Bobby Kennedy had an unbelievable
amount of chutzpah; there was no end to his brass.
I'm not sure what year Hoffa was elected president
of the Teamsters Union.
Ward: Well, does that matter particularly?
LG: I'll tell you why. I had seen Jimmy Hoffa a couple
of times on some other matters; I believe by that time
he had been elected president of the Teamsters Union.
There had been a suit filed against the Teamsters
Union by a so-called "rank and file" group, primarily
in New York. This was really a self-appointed group,
working in league with a notorious redbaiter, an
attorney named Godfrey Schmidt. He's the one who
put out a book called Red Channels, a blacklist of
actors, radio and television performers.
Ward: Yes, I've heard of that book.
LG: All kinds of wonderful people, you know, were just
run out of their jobs - Jack Gilford, Zero Hostel,
endless numbers, particularly during the McCarthy
days.
I recall, somewhere about the time they were just
beginning to struggle back, meeting Jack Gilford. I
forget what thing he was in; it might have been "A
Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum". He
suggested I come by his house; they were having some
sort of a party. I think it was his wife's birthday
and it was a very pleasant affair. His wife used to
work on radio imitating children's voices. She got
blacklisted. Imagine how subversive that is, imita
ting childrens' voices!
So, this was the sort of thing Godfrey Schmidt
specialized in; he had a hammer lock on these people.
His whole idea was that he had them half scared to
death. I think he shook down all kinds of producers,
maybe not in the method of a guy walking around and
saying, "Pay off or else the place won't be here
tomorrow", but in his own way he'd get these people
to contribute. I think he even put out a little
bulletin as to what was going on in the theatrical
scene in New York.
744
Ward: What handle did he have with this group pursuing
Hoffa?
LG-: He "became their attorney. The charges were a whole
melange of things - illegal election and so forth.
I recall sending a memo back to Jimmy by way of
Art Rutledge, right after Jimmy was elected. This
suit was still going on. I said, "Why don't you
make a straight proposition to Schmidt and to Bobby
Kennedy that you are prepared to call a special con
vention of the Teamsters; let them all say their piece;
then conduct a referendum vote as to whether or not
you stay in office."
Of course, he would have won hands down, over
whelmingly. Jimmy commanded the respect of the men.
Another thing, he knew his contracts; he really had
no fear of the employers.
I'll admit he also had certain reckless aspects
to his character. If going to this point from that
point in a straight line was perfectly safe, I doubt
he would have gone that way; if there were another
route that went along the precipice, he would take
the circular route along that precipice. Living a
bit on the dangerous side was a part of him.
Incidentally . . .
Ward: He did it once too often?
LG-: Probably; there's no indication that he's around and
less indication that they'll ever find him. But he
also had a wonderful contempt for the employers - he
didn't think they were all that tough; he felt that
they had a soft underbelly and couldn't take a fight;
he was smart.
He used to say, "These guys think we're going to
tie up the whole trucking industry all over the
country; let them think it - I don't care. If that
makes them a bit frightened, no harm done. You think
I'd do that? I'm not crazy. That would give them
too much of a handle; we'll just take them a piece at
a time . "
He had that kind of power. He was the first to
put together a national contract. He had the power
to pull the employers together, because they either
745
LG: went for a program like that - even if it might cost
a few more bucks - or they ran the risk of being
picked off, just as he said he would. No question
about it, when he said things like that he was sincere,
I don't think Hoffa bluffed.
Anyway, Godfrey Schmidt was the representative of
this so-called group. I can't recall their specific
charges - something about an illegal convention,
some of the delegates weren't elected properly;
vague charges all put together.
Some of them, I suppose, were true; that happens
with every union or big organization. I'm sure that
if you question the elections that took place prior
to a PTA convention you'd find that some of them
weren't exactly in keeping with their by-laws.
One of the results was that they held up Hoffa 1 s
taking office as president. The compromise finally
offered, I guess by the court or through Godfrey
Schmidt, was that he could take the office of presi
dent if there were a group of monitors set up to
supervise the affairs of the union. I guess Hoffa
figured what the hell can they do? Everybody else
was bothered a lot about it except Hoffa; he didn't
give a damn. He knew perfectly well that the whole
machinery of the union could operate effectively
whether those guys were there or not.
He also felt very strongly that they had nothing
to hide. Sure, the average guy in our union, if he
saw some of the expense accounts of some of those
officials, wouldn't be very happy; but on the other
hand those expense accounts were within the consti
tution of their union, no question.
They weren't going to find any peculations; some
body rifling the cash register, or anything of that
sort. Later on, with all their charges against the
Teamsters, they couldn't show that sort of thing.
It had to be something else, namely, certain
types of investment. The important thing here is
that I was in San Francisco; by that time I knew
Hoffa and we were on a good talking relationship
where I could call him. I got a call from Herb
Resner (who, after the Mooney case, became a member
of the ILWU law firm); Bartley drum (an attorney who
had gotten his start in San Francisco) was in town.
746
LG-: Herb said, "Bart would like to talk to you; can you
have dinner?" I said, "Sure," and we went down and
had dinner someplace, either the Poodle Dog or the
Fly Trap. Bart's story was quite simple. Godfrey
Schmidt, as a result of this litigation, had submit
ted a bill to the Teamsters Union in excess of
$200,000.
Ward: Attorney's fees?
LG-: Attorney's fees, I guess. I think this was in
addition to what he was picking up as a monitor;
he'd make these regular trips to Washington. Godfrey
Schmidt had hired Bartley Crum to try to collect this
fee. That's the background on this McClellan Commit
tee hearing.
Ward: What a strange position . . . ?
LG: A strange position for Bartley Crum. As a matter of
fact, I knew Bartley Crum back in the thirties when
he was in John Francis Neylan's office; the
conservative if not reactionary lawyer whose claim
to fame -
Ward: General counsel for the Hearst press!
LG: Right, but he had also defended Anita Whitney against
the Criminal Syndicalism Act. I met John Francis
Neylan during that time. This is about the only
thing he wanted to talk about; not the rest of it,
because he was also representing Safeway. As a
result of that meeting I met Navy Bill Ingram from
Gal (the University of California).
But I had known Bart Crum, who used to move in
progressive circles here. He wrote this book on
Israel called Behind The Silken Curtain. That was
after the 1948 war of independence in Israel. I
always considered Bart a very friendly, pleasant guy.
Well, Bartley Crum's position, at least in regard
to Hoffa, was really quite simple. Crum said that
Godfrey Schmidt had retained him to collect his fee.
Crum said I should know his position on things like
monitors or court interference in unions; he didn't
believe in it, very bad. He thought the best thing
to do was to have the thing paid off, and maybe the
monitors would go away.
747
LG: Well, I was skeptical about the whole thing. I knew
a bit about Godfrey Schmidt. I trusted Bart Crum.
I didn't see how he could get mixed up in anything
peculiar, but the thing that went through my head
and kept going through, at that session - and later
on as I pursued it - was Godfrey Schmidt using
Bartley Crum the way he was using everybody else;
that he was trying to double cross him too, or to
put the whole thing together as another big Communist
Red plot.
Of course that would give Schmidt just the head
lines he wanted - Communists and racketeers;
Communism and corruption. Communism by itself wasn't
enough, because here you had the APofL going hell
bent- for- election on the issue of corruption. That
puzzled me.
I told Bart Crum - he wanted to know if I could
talk to Hoffa - "Sure, that was no problem, but I'm
not going to talk to Hoffa unless I know where
you're going to go and what you're trying to do.
I'm not so concerned about you as I am about Schmidt
because this man is a most unsavory character."
Bart Grum never had a kind word to say about
Schmidt - he was very careful about that - or if he
did, he didn't say it to me. Anyway, Bart Crum kept
in touch with me and I said, "My feeling is that
Hoffa' s reaction would be that all this guy is try
ing to do is to collect a hunk of change. I don't
think Hoffa would trust him as far as he could see
him. I wouldn't and I don't think anybody else
would. "
I said, "It's up to you; I'm not anxious to get
mixed up in something like this. I'm prepared to
talk to Hoffa if you can't talk to him yourself/
which I would be in favor of. Just go talk to him."
"Well, "he says, "There's no use - Hoffa would
just refer me to his lawyers." By that time, Hoffa
had a whole staff of lawyers around him, on the
Bobby Kennedy issue and on the monitors and what
have you. The lawyers were having a field day.
They were practically living at the Teamster build
ing there. I guess the cost of these things doesn't
make that much difference - they're a very wealthy
union, you know.
748
Ward: Yes, the $200,000 was not such a terrible thing.
LG: I think to them $200,000 would have been chicken
feed; it would have been very small, compared to
the kind of dough they put out in every direction.
Let me go upstairs and look for something . . .
(Goldblatt disappears briefly, returning with a
telegram in his hand.) This is a wire that I got
in 1959 ....
Ward: This is addressed to the ILWU, signed by Bartley
drum. It says, "Dear Louie: Important that
Schmidt's fees as monitor be paid if plans to go
forward. Have you contacted Hoffa? .... Bartley
Crum" I didn't notice the date.
LG: It's 6-19-59.
Ward: All I can make out of it is "19". Okay, it's 6-19-
59. What happened prior to this?
LG: I talked to Jimmy about it and he was very skeptical
about Schmidt, naturally. He figured the whole case
in the first place had been contrived; that Schmidt
was just riding the coat tails of ....
##
Ward: We left off talking about the coattails of Bobby
Kennedy.
LG: Right. I made it clear to Bartley Crum that I had
talked to Jimmy about this: "I wouldn't say there
was no interest; but he has no way of knowing what's
going to happen other than that Godfrey Schmidt is
going to pick up a great big hunk of money, some
thing close to a quarter of a million dollars, and
the net result will be that he'll be right there
and things will be as bad as ever."
They had three monitors - one, I think, was
designated by the union; an attorney; one was
designated by the plaintiffs who brought the suit;
that was Godfrey Schmidt. There was a third. While
life was not untenable for Hoffa, he was managing?
obviously he would like to have them off his back.
749
LG: I told Bart that. I said, "I don't think you're
going to get very far." And Bart said, "As I told
you when we first met, I'm opposed to this outside
interference within unions. I think I can work
something out where Godfrey Schmidt's fee is paid;
he will pull out as monitor and I will take his
place." Well, of course, that was an entirely
different kettle of fish, if it could be made to
stick. That was the problem. I said, "Okay, I'll
talk to Hoffa again;" Hoffa indicated that if that's
going to happen, that's another story.
Ward: Substituting Crum for Schmidt?
LG: Or Schmidt getting out of it, at least. I asked
Hoffa, "What do you think of Bartley Crum?" "I
think he's a pretty decent guy; I've always liked
him; chances are that he'll follow a policy of the
least interference is the best interference." So,
I think the thing could have jelled, and that ex
plains this wire. In other words, at that point
Crum was moving very quickly trying to get the thing
wrapped up.
Ward: It's odd that he would have used the wire instead
of the telephone.
LG: Yep. I don't know, maybe it had something to do
with what happened later, but I doubt it. Well,
all this was 6/19, 1959; and then July 3, I get a
wire that 'I had been subpoenaed by the McClellan
Committee for Friday, July 10.
In between that time, I met with one of the guys
who was one of their plaintiffs; he struck me as
someone who was completely on the make; how to make
a buck, that's all. He had as much interest in
trying to clean up that or any other union as the
man in the moon. And why Bart wanted me to meet
with him, I have no idea. Maybe it was to show me
that he was still active.
In response to this wire, I went east for the
hearing. I talked to Bart Crum: "If you can make
the thing stick, all right - I think you have some
thing going; you can set up a session with Hoffa."
I had talked to Jimmy and he said, "Sure, if he
wants to come down here and talk, fine." Next thing
I knew, I got the subpoena. I went before the
McClellan Committee.
750
LG: I had met with Bart; we had breakfast together. He
said, "I think this whole thing is off. Let's
forget it." I said, "Pine."
Ward: Did he give you any reason why it was off?
LG: No, he was very, very nervous - extremely; he seemed
to be completely out of sorts. The conclusion I
reached was that Godfrey Schmidt had given him the
business, too. Might have used him as much as he
could. It could be that Bart Crum's idea was only
Bart Crum's and that he simply assumed that Godfrey
Schmidt was accepting it; and nothing of the sort
was about to happen.
The Kennedy Brothers
LG: To get back before the McClellan Committee; that
was the time I told you I met with Senator John
Kennedy.
Ward: He had an interest in the Hawaii election that was
coming up at that time?
LG: Yes, because he was a close friend of Jack Burns -
Ward: Kennedy was?
LG: Yes, Jack Burns was the delegate who fought for
statehood and made the big gamble; his political
career was on the line. He decided to let Alaska
go first, even though Hawaii had a larger population
and a much more thorough-going record in fighting
for statehood; but there was all this hostility
about the population composition. He said to let
Alaska go first; then there's no way for the Congress
to turn us down. He won the gamble and an election
had been ordered in Hawaii. Jack Burns should have
won in a walk. The Republicans threw a rather
popular and able campaigner - (William F.) Quinn
was his name - into the race and for some reason
the thing looked closer and closer ....
Ward: There was a lot of redbaiting going on too, wasn't
there?
751
LG-: Yes, a lot of redbaiting going on against the ILWU
and Jack Hall, but it rubbed off on Burns. Burns
appeared at the ILWU convention in 1959, end of
April or early May. He was one of our principal
speakers; and Burns was always a very courageous man.
Whatever he thought, he said. He said that the or
ganization that was entitled to the principal credit
for breaking the back of feudalism in Hawaii was
the ILWU. Of course, this was picked up by the
employers and they made a hey-day out of it because
everybody in town knew that Burns was a good friend
of Jack Hall's, and had been for a number of years.
My feeling was that, in view of the situation
there, all they needed was some big headline about
Hoffa, Bridges, Hall and Goldblatt in one cabal to
take over Hawaii, and they would definitely use
this in the election; that's the reason I met
Kennedy. I told the Senator, "Frankly, I think it
is a terrible disfavor to Jack Burns; he's a good
man. I'm not trying to duck this committee. I mere
ly suggest you defer my hearing for about two weeks."
Ward: Till after the election?
LG: Until after the election, yes; it was two weeks
away, as I recall. Hawaii was all revved up for
the election; they finally had gotten statehood;
for the first time they were electing their own
governor. I said, "I'll be back here; there will
be a telegram to the committee. The longshore
negotiations are going on, and it will be perfectly
plain that my time might be better spent in negotia
tions right now; and I'll be back."
Not that I felt all that jubilant in going before
that committee or any other because, believe me, all
committees are alike. When you got into one of
those committee hearings, just hang onto your balls
and hope that when you got out, they're still intact.
That's the best you can do; if you come out a draw,
you are a winner; that ain't no place for any of us.
It's not our forum.
So John Kennedy said he'd talk to Bobby Kennedy
and Bobby Kennedy, I heard, would see me the next
morning, the day before the hearing. I went by there
together with Jeff Kibre, our man in Washington at
the time. That was a very abrasive session.
752
LG-: Bobby Kennedy said, "Well, we think you ought to talk
to the committee and tell us whatever you know." I
said, "About what?" "Well, about your union, the
Teamsters and so forth." I figured there was just
no purpose getting into that kind of a conversation
with him. I said, "You know perfectly well that
our union is clean as a whistle - there can't be any
of these charges that you are talking about in the
case of other unions. You know that."
He said, "Yes, I know that; it has nothing to do
with the case." I said, "e don't belong before
this committee - that's all. My request is very
simple; I'll be back here; I think you have a tele
gram." "Yes, I have." And I said, "My time would
be better spent in those negotiations right now.
I'll be ba,ck in a couple of weeks."
He said, "Well, I'd like to find out from you
first how close are your relations with Hoffa?" "We
get along' very well, we talk to him; trade union
relations. After all, we have a lot of interests in
common, namely, warehouse, and if we can patch up our
relations there and do a joint job, we'll be doing
very well . "
In 1957 we initiated the first moves for coopera
tion with the Northern California Teamsters; that's
a story by itself -
Ward: Local 860 and Local 6 -
LG-: 860, Local 6, Local 315 across the Bay, Local 12,
Local 655, Sacramento, San Francisco; the beginning
of the Northern California Warehouse Council.
Ward: Let's get back to Bobby Kennedy.
LG-: Okay, except we'll get back to this 1957 thing
another time.
Ward: Bobby had just asked you what were your relations
with Hoffa.
LG: I told him and he said, "No - no, I want to know
more than that. What do you know about all these
legal troubles he's in and so forth." I said, "Just
what I read in the paper." He said, "Do you know
Bart Crum?" I said, "Sure, I know Bart Crum; I've
known him for a long time." He says, "What have you
been talking to Bart Crum about?"
753
LG: Some bells "began to ring; I said, "That's a matter
of a relation between a man and a lawyer - a personal
relationship. If you ask what I've been talking to
Bartley Crum about, you ask Bartley Crum." He said,
"Why don't you cut out that shit?" Just like that.
Well, that obviously was the end of the conversation.
No deferment of the hearing. More important . . .
Ward: And Burns got defeated by 5,000 votes.
LG: As I recall that was the margin; thanks to the
Kennedy brothers, yes.
Ward: Later on, he made it.
LG: Oh, yeah. Sure. He was elected maybe three times.
Ward: Is he still alive?
LG: No. Burns died around four years ago. He died of
cancer. Died on the Big Island.
Ward: Well, what happened at the hearing?
LG: Okay, that gives a background to the hearing; all
the backwards and forwards and the other crap that
was floating around. These things are very, very
distasteful, and to say you're not scared is a lot
of bullshit. And then you are likely to get into a
fight, like I did at the un-American Activities
Committee. But at least in this one, I kept my cool.
And they were going round and round on different
questions and some of them I answered.
They hadn't gotten to the questions that dealt
with the internal workings of the union. Then, all
of a sudden, I think it was Bobby Kennedy who asked
the question, "Do you know Bartley Crum?" I said,
"Yes." "I'd like to know about your conversation
with him." All of a sudden everything added together
in my mind. If you put one light on the thing which
Godfrey Schmidt, I am sure, would have done, it would
have been tampering with the courts. The monitors
were court-appointed.
The position that Hoffa took - and I agree with it
100 percent - was, what good was it paying this fee
if the son of a gun was going to stay in there? I'm
sure the coloration Godfrey Schmidt would have put on
754
LG: the thing would have "been exactly that it was a try
to bribe him to get out. Here was this upstanding
citizen, court-appointed, doing his best to clean
up the union and collecting his per diem and every
thing else. And along come these Machiavellian
characters in the ILWU and the Teamsters trying to
bribe him. Pay him off, get out.
I immediately decided this was the end of this
hearing. I didn't need an attorney to tell me that.
So, I decided to clam up and said, "That's a rela
tionship between lawyer and client. I don't plan
to answer that." Then, they started on the usual
questions: are you a member of the Communist party,
and so forth. I just fell back on the Fifth Amend
ment. No more questions - that was the end of the
line.
It was after that, I went over to John L.'s
(Lewis) office to say, "hello." I usually stopped
by to say "hello" to him when I was in Washington,
D.C. He said, "By the way, I understand some other
people have been trying to talk to you this morning."
He had a teletype there: "Yes, here it is" - a news
release, you know, had come over the wire.
I talked to him of trying to put something together
with Jimmy Hoffa to put on a real push to organize
the south. I knew Hoffa was very interested in doing
that, "But it takes somebody like you, Mr. Lewis,
to head the thing up; you're a man with prestige
and what you've been able to do in the way of organi
zing the unorganized and the south is very ripe,
long overdue."
Ward: What did John say?
LG: Oh, he liked the idea, and of course he knew the
value of flattery. He said, "Well, you don't use
your head just to hang your hat on," or something
like that, "but I'm afraid that little man has a
lot of troubles ahead." John L. knew a lot of
things that were going on.
When I got back to San Francisco the next day I
picked up the paper; there's a story about my
testifying before the McClellan Committee, and right
after that was a long piece about Bartley Crum before
the same committee.
755
LG: He didn't .lust sing; that man sang soprano, bass
and everything in between. He sang like a whole
chorus of canaries. The only really amusing bit
about the whole damn thing was that he was so
anxious to sing and so determined to give the com
mittee anything it wanted that some of the Republi
cans sitting on the committee - (Roman) Hruska was
one, isn't he that guy from Nebraska?
Ward: Yes, I think - sure, very conservative.
LG: A senator - yes, a very conservative guy; he took
over the questioning of Bart Crum and realized
very quickly that anything he asked Crum, he would
answer "yes" to; so that the record becomes hilarious
after a while.
Bart Crum goes into this whole business about
the ILWU and the way we control Hawaii; of course,
all the Hawaiian newspapers carried accounts of the
hearing because the election was going on. The word
got around very fast while this guy was on the stand.
Bart Crum pictured the ILWU and its power, partly
to give the impression that we could have put this
whole monitor scheme together.
I don't know if he actually made the flat
statement that he was offered the job as monitor,
but in effect he implied that everything else they
wanted to know was true. He didn't say point blank
that there was an attempt to buy off Godfrey Schmidt
to get him out as monitor, because that would have
made him party to the whole thing, right? I don't
know enough about the law, but he'd be at least an
accessory or probably the principal conspirator.
After all, he was the one who initiated all these
goddam meetings in the first place.
The only conclusion I could come to afterwards
was that he was reached by Bobby Kennedy and Schmidt
turned Kennedy on to Bart Crum; they really gave
him the business, and he just folded completely.
But Hruska saved the day for us in a crazy way
when he went after Bart Crum. He said, "Well, does
the ILWU control the Democratic party in Hawaii?"
"Oh, yes, from top to bottom - complete control,
just like they control the whole state - no question
about it. They have everything organized just like
in sugar and pineapple and everything else."
756
LG: "Well, if they're that powerful in Hawaii, do they
also control the Republican party?" "Yes, certainly,
the Republican party too!" (laughter) By that time,
Hruska was just having fun and he didn't give a damn;
Bart Crum, of course, looked like an utter fool.
Anyway, the net result was that nothing came out of
the hearing.
Ward: Except the job on your candidate?
LG: Yes, a smear job. I think it was a sad thing about
Bart Crum, too. He had been a good egg. I know he
ran into some difficulties with John Francis Neylan;
then he went east. He went to work for one of the
Roosevelt brothers' law firm and that didn't work
out too well. About a month or so after the hear
ing he committed suicide. I think this is a good
stopping point.
757
XIX IMPROVING RELATIONS WITH THE TEAMSTERS
(Interview 27: 19 September, 1978)
An Analysis of Jimmy Hoffa
ard: Now, Lou, you said you'd like to talk about your
relationship with the Teamsters.
LG: We wound up on the McClellan Committee with every
body on the committee figuring that Crum was a
completely unguided missile.
It was a very hectic period with a great deal of
travel, a great deal of conversation, a great many
telephone calls. I got to see Jimmy Hoffa a good
deal and I got to know him fairly well.
He was a different kind of a man; to simply try
to slot him in with other labor officials, whether
they be labor statesmen or politicians or guys on
the make, would not be accurate. He was a typical
American product; could just as easily have been a
robber baron, but he was just a little bit late on
the scene. I think he would have been completely
at home with guys like Henry Morgan or John LaPitte.
To him ....
Ward: Except he didn't have any money to start with.
LG: No, but I don't think it ever phased him particular
ly. He thought you did these things by sheer hard
work, brute strength; he was a tough little guy.
Not that he would go around fighting; he wasn't the
kind of a guy that was always in a beef.
758
LG-: A man in the rough section of Detroit organizing among
people like the warehousemen couldn't grow up without
getting to know some of the guys on the fringes of
society. To think if you lived in that section of the
world you spent your life at Sunday school picnics
would be completely unrealistic.
I don't think he ever found these people necessarily
disagreeable. I don't think he saw them as friends or
allies - they were merely people he got along with. He
probably knew early in life that you don't try to do a
job as a union man and also keep up a running battle
with these fellows, who played under a completely
different set of rules. Neither did you ever get the
impression that such men could claim Jimmy Hoffa as
one of theirs. I am sure he was never part of any of
their machines. I don't think he was a party to their
operations.
Ward: You said he was of Polish derivation.
LG-: Yes, Polish extraction - so is his wife, Josephine. I
think he met and married his wife when she was part of
a laundry workers strike, so they were of workingclass
background. He lived a modest life.
Ward: He got a big salary, though?
LG: He got a big salary later on. I think he got a small
salary when he was head of Local 299. He got a big
salary later, yet he was never a gambler. You would
never put him in the class of a high roller.
He had his own way of handling his personal finances.
I went to dinner with him a number of times, and to
lunches. I never saw him use a credit card. When the
bill came along, he just pulled out a handful of bills
and paid it. So, he operated out of his own pocket.
I think, in part, it was a business of distrust of the
whole Internal Revenue machinery; as far as he was
concerned, the source of his money was none of their
business. If he was getting money separate and apart
from his regular salary I don't know; he might have.
A lot of things go on in the union movement that
never completely surface. When people begin to achieve
a good deal of strength and power in connection with,
say, pension funds, the matter of whether somebody can
759
LG: get a handle on a pension fund becomes a very attractive
thing. Hoffa would be a member of the pension trustees;
he would not make a loan as such. The trustees would,
I suppose, once they were approved by their auditors
or financial wizards.
Sure there were all kinds of criticisms; the
government has endless documents about what they call
bad investments, and so forth. The simple truth of the
matter - and this, of course, the newspapers don't
carry - is that the pension funds are completely sol
vent. The returns on those funds are perfectly adequate
and do better than most other funds. Now, maybe they
lost a buck in a couple of real estate operations in
Florida or something like that, I don't know.
But they have so many; these are huge funds.
'Whether this was any source of income to Hoffa, I doubt,
because the way he lived didn't make that much difference.
He didn't spend any time chasing women; he didn't drink.
Ward: Not at all?
LG: Nope, never saw him take a drink in my life. If he
did, he might have had one at a dinner party.
Ward: Yery unusual ....
LG: Very unusual; he had a work schedule that would kill
a mule. Nothing for him to get started around 5:00 -
5:30 in the morning; he expected others to be there
too, and just because somebody else wanted to stay
out until two or three, that made no difference to him;
goddamit, he'd be on deck. On that score he was a
very tough taskmaster. He expected people to get paid.
I remember being there one time and Sid Zagri,
their legislative representative came in; he was
complaining. Sid spent a lot of time on the Hill and
he enjoyed it; he liked meeting with the senators,
lobbyists, representatives. He got around; that was
part of his job. By the way, Sid Zagri and Jeff Kibre
had been at UCLA at the same time.
Sid died - he was some place having dinner in one
of these topside restaurants; fire broke out, the exits
were either locked or something, and he was burned to
death. Sid did a good job and worked hard. Nothing
760
LG-: for Sid to get going in the morning around six and
keep going until around one the next day. He was
complaining that he ought to be paid more money;
Jimmy finally turned around to him and said, "Look,
we're not going to change the pay scales now. We
can't do that man by man; it won't work out. Anyway,
what the hell's the matter with you? Don't you know
how to make out an expense sheet?" - and he let it go
at that. That was the end of that conversation.
Nobody could call Jimmy a skinflint either. He
wasn't tight-fisted. The man who had been secretary-
treasurer of the union for many, many years was John
English, a real oldline Teamster, tall, slim; at one
time must have been a bull of a man; he was in charge
of the finances, and they were in good shape.
He was also the man who made the most dramatic
speech at the time of the Teamster expulsion; I mean
the expulsion of the Teamsters by the AFofL, particul
arly on the record of the Teamsters as a loyal member.
Hoffa and John English got along very well. John might
have felt that some of the beefs Hoffa got into were
expensive, but on the other hand the Teamsters were
used to spending money, if they thought there were some
results there; they had it and they didn't feel that
they had to sit on it.
I got to know Jimmy; for one thing, he trusted me.
He thought I would level with him and I did; never lied
to him; the word would have seeped back. The mocassin
telegraph inside the Teamsters union is far more effect
ive than Western Union. Nothing much happens in that
union without the word going around.
I learned a good deal about the Teamsters' structure.
While their constitution is a highly centralized
document with an enormous amount of power in the hands
of the general president and the executive board, very
little of it is really spelled out. The use of the
referendum is a rarity; practically unknown.
On the other hand, there is an element in the
Teamsters that is different from many other unions. It
is tantamount to a form of syndicalist anarchy; while
you have this centralization of structure, a lot of
power in the hands of the International, a lot of power
in the respective conferences ....
761
Ward: You mean regional?
LG-: Well, there are four main conferences. There's the
Eastern Teamster Conference, the Middle west, Southern
and the West. The West, I guess, is the biggest
geographically; membershipwise, I guess about even-
Steven with the central states - the Central States
Conference; the South, not so "big; the East, quite
large. They were like baronies in some ways.
Part of this stems back to the general thinking of
Dan Tobin of the Teamsters Union, the philosophy that
the one requirement was that the locals pay their per
capita on time and that beyond that they generally
abide by the laws. Then again, within the Teamsters
there was an enormous variation on how they operated.
Ward: Each barony did it more or less to suit itself?
LG: To suit itself; then the locals within them would not
be uniform, necessarily, in the way they operated.
Tou would find some locals where they had a heritage
of progressive thinking. For example, Harold Gibbons
and Larry Steinberg. Harold Gibbons went in for many,
many things, not just ordinary things like credit
unions; he built a very substantial housing project
for senior citizens. The union there was neck deep
in all kinds of civic affairs.
His friend, Larry Steinberg, was in charge of the
Toledo local, Local No. 20; that was a very big local
and they were a consolidated, merged local. Some of
these locals were built strictly along craft lines;
others were general locals. Steinberg's was a general
local.
Hal Gibbons' was a general local; they would have
teamsters and warehousemen. I think in the case of
Larry Steinberg they had the Cadillac Hotel workers
as part of his local; a very elaborate piece of
machinery, scattered over a large area. There he
depended in large part on a stewards' council which
became a consultative assembly which he used periodical
ly to bounce off ideas and get a feedback from the
membership .
Larry and I became friends. I liked him very much;
he was a character all of his own. He was born in the
Soviet Union and came to this country at the age of 14.
762
LG: Larry "became an assistant to Jimmy Hoffa when Hoffa
went in,. so that he worked out of the Washington office.
When I was back there I always spent time with Larry
Steinberg; talking to him, I learned a good deal about
the structure, manner of functioning, and so forth.
Ward: Well, what was the linkage between the ILWD and the
Teamsters?
LG: The actual linkage between the two outfits to begin
with was zero; remember, the background was anything
but pleasant. We had gone through some ugly fights.
Ward: Yes, but now you had this Hawaii first meeting with
Hoffa and apparently you got along fairly well in
discussion of what was going to happen and what was
not going to happen in Hawaii?
LG: Yes, in terms of Hawaii, I think Hoffa accepted my
appraisal of the Islands and what should be done at
just about face value.
Ward: All right, how did the second meeting come about? And
the third and fourth and so on?
LG: The meetings came about thereafter when he moved on
towards the- presidency. At that time the court was
stepping in, the monitors were stepping in; then the
Bart Crum thing broke; I had seen Hoffa, as I recall,
once or twice, just by going east. I dropped by the
Teamster headquarters, met Larry Steinberg and spent
some time with him.
Hoffa was always cordial. They had a lunch room
right there in the building and we had lunch together
there, and he'd ask questions about the west coast and
the ILWU. He was a very curious man with a very
retentive memory. There were some other faculties
about Jimmy Hoffa that floored the employers. I mean -
he - -
##
Ward: We were discussing how Hoffa had qualities that con
fused the employers.
LG: Oh, the employers were flabbergasted particularly when
Hoffa began to move on what was one of his prime
ambitions, namely, to pull together a national agreement
763
LG: covering particularly long haul trucking; the same
peculiar empire structure that they had in the
Teamsters reflected itself in these contracts. You
would have one type of contract, let us say, for the
drivers in the western region and another one in the
central states, and so forth.
Hoffa's idea was 100 percent sound to try to pull
the union together as an effective organization. Any
way, what the employers were flabbergasted about was
that Jimmy would come into these negotiations actually
better prepared, in terms of a genuine knowledge of
the industry, than the employers themselves. He was a
very quick reader, picked things up very fast and had
a highly retentive memory; he met all the qualifica
tions of competency. He wasn't a hack.
I mentioned several times that even during the
worst days of our conflicts with the Teamsters, we
made every effort to maintain a good relationship with
the rank and file teamster. This paid off, because
they never could really mount the kind of crusade where
their membership took part. On the other hand, the
hatred among some of our guys towards some of the
teamsters just knew no bottom.
I'll never forget a session we had at our house
here when I had a whole group of our people; oh, George
Valter was here, Curt McClain, (who later became
secretary-treasurer of the International), Paul Heide,
Chili; I raised this question that the time had come
for us to move for an effective working alliance with
the Teamsters.
/
George, who could get pretty angry, was literally
storming around the garden here like a bull; oh,
screaming, he was so angry; "The son-of-a-bitching
bastards; now is the time to raid them." He yelled,
"They're staggering around, they don't know where the
hell they're going; let's finish them off."
He was so hot, so angry; all the years of struggle,
the terrible beatings, the fist fights on the picket
lines, the undercutting, the double-crossing and
everything; it just sort of welled up. So it was not
an easy thing with our own people. Actually, it was
easier when it came to handling some of the Teamsters.
764
An Interesting Phone Call
LG-: ell, I go back into some of these things "because they
fall together. As a beginning, it was in 1957 the
Teamster contract was open, and they had a provision
in their contract whereby if they could not reach an
agreement by a certain date, the issue would auto
matically be settled by arbitration; that was the wage
issue; it was open on wages only.
The Local 6 contract was also open. However, the
Local 6 contract did not have a provision for
arbitration; in the event of a deadlock we had the
right to strike. We had climbed out of that period
of scrambling for our lives in some of the agreements
we had to make in 1951 and '53; we were in better shape,
I got a call from Joe Dillon.
Ward: Oh, yes.
LG: One of the guys that had gone over the hill. Later on
we found out that he was one of those who tried to put
together this raid on Local 6 which turned out to be a
bust. He said he wanted to have lunch with me. I
didn't know what it was all about, but I saw no reason
why not. He didn't want to eat downtown where we'd
run into anybody; that's the usual business - these
guys with the red horrors.
He wanted to meet at Julius' Castle (a famous
restaurant on Telegraph Hill) - not too early. So I
met him at Julius' Castle around 1:30. We spent, I
guess, two, two and a half hours, a lot of it just the
usual bullshit, going round and round reviewing old
times, and in most cases lying about it; and finally
we got down to the issue.
I said, "What's it all about?" He said, "Your
contract is open and so is ours, you know, on arbitra
tion." I said, "We don't think you're going to do
too good on arbitration. I've seen what the arbitra
tion decisions are around here and the kind of figures
the employers are using. They're using the standard
cost of living jazz, etc., etc., and once those
standards are set out in a single arbitration those
same figures are picked up by each guy and used the
same way, with variations and permutations."
765
LG-: So, I said, "Let's just have one agreement, and if we
can make this thing stick, we'll see what we can do
later; nothing else. I don't want to see you guys go
to arbitration." He says, "Well, how do we do that?
The agreement is plain; it says we gotta go to ar
bitration."
I said, "One of the things that can always be done
in an arbitration, or with any hearing, is to find
ways and means of not having it; not having it because
you can't get around to having it. There's no reason
why Ted White of Local 860 can't take off; he's under
the weather, he likes to play golf, and there are all
kinds of places he can go. You should disappear for
a while; the other officials should be instructed they
are not empowered to handle any of these things -
Ted White is the only guy in charge."
I said, "Just make sure that there's no arbitration,
that's all. We'll go into our negotiations at once;
we're going to take a strike if we have to, and I'm
convinced we can get -more; nobody will get less. If
worst comes to worst, we'll settle for what I know
you're going to get anyway, which will be six cents.
No reason why. we can't give it a try. My hunch is
that unless the employers can push you into arbitra
tion, we're going to do better."
He thought about it for a long time. He knew it
could be done, sure, because that's no big deal; if
you have an arbitration due on October first, you
Ward: Put it up a month?
LG: Yes. Then a day later you find out the man who is
supposed to handle your arbitration calls you up and
says, "Sorry, it's impossible; there's another case
I've taken and I don't know when you'll be ready."
So, that's another three weeks and you just screw
around and buy time; they did buy time. It never went
to arbitration. We went into negotiations and picked
up 15 cents.
Of course, as far as the Teamsters were concerned,
this was just manna from heaven. They couldn't have
gotten a nicer gift. There was no arbitration, no
cost involved, and they just picked up 15 cents.
766
LG-: As far as they were concerned they just went "back and
reported to their membership that they did it. That's
okay - no great problem.
When Dillon accomplished this, he took an enormous
amount of personal pride in putting this thing together;
this stroke of brilliance in sitting down with the
devil of the opposition - I was always in that class -
and that I was the guy who figured out these things
and that's the reason they were having troubles, etc.,
etc. The usual bullshit people develop because the
invention of devils is terribly important in this
world.
After this came about, Dillon suggested a few of us
ought to get together. I said, "That's fair enough -
the contract will be open in another year and it will
be open on a lot more things than wages." So, we
began a series of meetings; some of the guys who were
brought in were pretty good union guys, like Frankie
Farro from Local 853, the east side of the bay, Alameda
county.
Ward: The big locals on the' other side of the bay are - or
were - 70 and 315?
LG: No, local 70 is the drivers local in the east bay;
by the way, it has a long record of being a rebellious
local. That is the local where Cliff Lester was
elected.
Ward: It was taken over after Charlie Real (former leader
of local 70) got into trouble.
LG: Charlie Real got into trouble, and Cliff Lester took
it over and Cliff Lester was heaved out with the help
of the International. We were up to our ears in that
fight. Cliff was a good friend of ours. As a matter
of fact, we had big demonstrations down there because
Cliff Lester thought they were going to move in with a
lot of guys and dump him.
But Cliff Lester didn't hang on. He still had a
long, rebellious background. It's still one of the
locals where they elect the business agents - in some
of the Teamster locals, the secretary treasurer is
the key official and he appoints the business agents;
Local 70 was different, and come election time that
767
LG: street along Hegenberger Road (in Oakland) where their
headquarters are gets to be a lively place with stick
ers and signs; it's like a typical political election.
Anyway, Local 70 was a separate local. Our rela
tions with them by and large were good, but they were
not the warehouse local. Local 315 was a mixed local
of warehousemen, teamsters and everything else - a
miscellaneous local; their base is Contra Costa (county);
local 853 is confined to Alameda county.
Ward: Is that a miscellaneous local also?
LG: Warehouse local, a good sized local. From that we
started this larger series of meetings which brought
in a good many of the Teamster locals around here.
Dillon was very anxious to be part of it. Local 853
was in there, Local 860. Ted White was still there.
Mark O'Reilly of 860 was an excellent ally and support
er. Local 315 got in the act with guys like Vince
Aloise, a good man there. Fred Hoffman was in charge
of Local 287 down in San Jose; they sort of rode along,
doing a good job, sometimes" playing their own game.
And a Teamster local from Vallejo.
All of them got in the act because they felt nothing
could be lost and a good deal to be gained. The
membership in the warehouse field was almost evenly
divided between ILWU Locals 6 and 17, a total of
somewhere between 11,000 or 12,000 members; the
Teamsters had approximately the same number, so we
were talking about some 25,000 members in Northern
California. The .-jurisdiction stretched from Fresno,
where there are some warehouse locals under a guy
named (Harry) Kachadoorian, up to the Oregon border,
including some places like Eureka.
This began to flourish into joint bargaining; it
even developed into a complete set of rules. By that
I mean we set up the Northern California Warehouse
Council. The Northern California Warehouse Council
was headed by George Mock, a vice-president of the
Teamsters, headquartered in Sacramento. The local
from which he came, Local 150, was a miscellaneous
local including warehouse; they were part of the
Northern California Warehouse Council.
768
LG-: He was co-chairman together with, myself. e were the
co-chairmen of the Northern California Warehouse Coun
cil, which is still in existence to this day, starting
from that first business of the 15-cents we picked up
in place of arbitration.
After the negotiations got more complicated and more
detailed, we also began to introduce strictly IIAVU
measures. At first the Teamsters were as jumpy as a
cat on a hot tin roof because the idea never occurred
to them; their contract negotiations were really quite
simple. They would call a membership meeting, formu
late their demands. Almost anything anybody wanted
was thrown in there. The negotiating committee was
invariably the same group; officers, and where
necessary, the trustees; the basic structure of the
Teamster local.
ILWU warehouse negotiations, of course, are quite
different. Warehouse negotiations start off first
with a long series of bull sessions; these are just
informal meetings where members, stewards take part,
contract differences are aired, members have a chance
to give their own emphasis on what they think is most
important.
Then there is an attempt to sort these things down;
finally there is the Local 6 convention, attended by
five to six hundred delegates, where the contract
demands are finally formulated. Then the negotiating
committee is elected by each division - these do not
include the officers, they are in addition; an entirely
different structure.
Also in the course of negotiations, step by step,
the full committee - there might be the strategy
committee, as it was generally called, because- it also
served as the strike committee when necessary - would
get complete reports.
The teamsters would constantly make remarks, because
we'd break up a meeting, say, at 7:30 at night with
the employers; we'd have to skip dinner so as to make
an 8:00 o'clock meeting to give our reports. So, they
got to the point where they asked, "Don't you guys do
anything but meet? You seem to be meeting all the
time - you should be worn out." Of course the secret
is - nothing terribly mysterious - keeping in constant
contact with the membership so that if you do have to
move, they'll know what the hell the fight is all about.
769
LG: In the case of the Teamsters, we decided the best thing
we could do was to have a joint stewards -meeting. The
first .-joint stewards' meeting took place at Scottish
Rite Auditorium; the hall was jam-packed; not just our
own guys, "but a tremendous turn-out from the Teamsters
union. This was the first time that they had had meet
ings like this, where they would have this kind of an
input and get a full report on what was going on.
e decided we would take joint strike votes; later
on we not only took joint strike votes, we had a set
of regulations that when you settled a contract, while
the votes were taken separately in the locals, they'd
all be pooled for the purposes of counting; a simple
majority. You couldn't have just one local turning
the thing down and the others going along. The
machinery got perfected as it went along. The stewards'
meetings were very stirring affairs.
Ward: How did you work out the chairing of those meetings
and all that?
LG: Oh, we had George Mock handle the chair.
Ward: He cooperated pretty well with you fellows?
LG: Yes, as a matter of fact, extremely well. George Mock
would then call on me for the report. They had to
introduce every single one of the officials; some of
them had something to say; most of the times, they
didn't. Just a matter of Georee chairing the meeting
and turning it over to me for the report; a certain
number of questions from the floor.
The big thing that really came out was a powerful
feeling of unity on the part of the members, a thing
never to underestimate; the steam and power that comes
out of the unification of a group of workers who have
instinctively known for years that their fighting
power really lies in sticking together; that they have
artificially been kept apart, and all of a sudden it's
there!
I forget if it was the next year or the year after,
we went into joint negotiations and again a number of
things got worked out, including some improvements we
wanted on health and welfare. Some of the plans
770
LG: differed very sharply, so that you could not completely
reconcile them. In the case of health and welfare you
could fight for a certain amount of money.
In the case of pensions, their pension structure was
different than ours. They did not go backward and
forward on "benefits. In those days, anytime the ILWU
negotiated pension improvements, the people who were
retired got the same increase as those who were going
to retire. The Teamsters didn't do that. They began
to do a little bit of that later on, primarily under
our prodding.
In the case of health and welfare they had some sort
of contract language which included - as the spokesman
of the San Francisco Employers Council, Murray Parker,
used to say - "to maintain the benefits". In other
words, they would guarantee the benefits during the
life of the contract, BUT the benefits were not so hot.
It was several years before they offered their
members a choice of the Kaiser (preventive medicine
and hospital coverage) Plan, as well as the insured
plan. They were completely sold on the insured plan
because of their own thinking, or because they were
taking their advice from their insurance agent. Some
of them might have believed that Kaiser was a form of
socialism.
Ward: That was not an uncommon thought.
LG-: Yes. I spoke very openly about the advantages of
Kaiser. I said, ""Why have a pain in the ass? We don't
have these bothers with health and welfare. If some
body doesn't like Kaiser, we say that's fine; at the
end of the year, switch to the insured plan. If some
body says that the insured plan is lousy, doesn't take
care of my kids, we say you picked it; so at the end
of the year, switch back to Kaiser.
"Why the hell should I go fighting somebody, telling
our members the insured plan is better, or Kaiser is
better. I give them the plans and say, 'Go talk to
your friends, talk to your wife; think it over, you
have plenty of time. You have a month's notice before
you make your choice; go ahead and make your pick.'
That makes a lot more sense." Finally, they got around
to it, but not in a very encouraging way.
771
LG-: Different unions work differently and think differently;
it piles up over the years. One of the first things
we did was to insist on trying to get some health and
welfare for the pensioner. Initially we got a penny an
hour, which made a sufficient fund to buy - not exactly
the same Kaiser coverage as the regular coverage - a
special coverage that Kaiser was cooperative enough to
work out.
It had some sort of co-payment; didn't cover the
whole family, "but did cover the pensioner; it was a
step forward. Later on, of course, we had to keep
getting more and more money for it. Now I think it's
3-4 cents an hour, maybe more.
Ward: "What do you mean, 3-4 cents an hour? The total hours
the man had worked or what?
LG: So many cents an hour for the total hours worked in the
industry by everybody. In other words, if you had
10,000 people and they were all working 2,000 hours a
year, then you'd have a penny for 10,000 times 2,000;
that would be the number of pennies. It makes a tidy
sum, and we were able to buy some benefits for the
pensioners. One of the things I wanted to equalize,
and for which we got agreement from the Teamsters was
this pension question because they finally realized it
was a two-way street. They said, "Okay we'll go for
it," and we finally won it.
Frankie Farro (a Teamster official) was an interest
ing old curmudgeon with a bit of a sense of humor; we
finally wound up on that item and we went out for a
cup of coffee. Frank was deep in thought for a while;
finally he turned to me and said, "You know, Lou, I
know we got that penny or whatever it is for the
pensioners. I'm trying to figure out what the hell I'd
do with it."
I said, "Well, it's to buy health and welfare for
the pensioners." He says, "You knew, in my case, the
number of pensioners I've got, I think I can buy each
of them a Cadillac." I said, "How come?" "We've got
around 200 pensioners in the local; something like that,
maybe less." Well, here was a local of about 4500 people,
maybe 5,000, with only that number of pensioners. You
suddenly realize what the whole background of his union
is compared to ours.
772
LG-: One of the things the Teamsters had offered the employ
ers over the years - the thing that has made the
Teamsters so attractive to employers - was free and
easy discharge. "When a man began to push something
like 50, he sure as hell is not going to cut the buck
like a kid out of high school - nothing but piss and
vinegar !
Pretty soon the older guy was out with nothing much
to protect him, so that the ratio of pensioners
compared to the membership of his local, oh, must have
been better than 10 or 15 to one. We had a very high
proportion of pensioners; people of Local 6 stayed with
Local 6. Local 6 provided them with the kind of
security where they could stay on the job, work out
their years, and pick up a pension. Quite a difference!
Later on some of these things had to come out at
Local 6 conventions when it became even more clear that
the Teamsters were able to get things because it was
cheap to the employers. The employers, of course, at
all times were trying to find ways and means to disrupt
this coalition; some of it had a bit of an effect; at
one point, almost a disastrous impact, but we managed
to get over it.
I'm covering negotiations that went on over a long
period of time; they didn't all happen at once. There
was one set of negotiations which led to a brief strike,
around three weeks. One reason the thing fell apart
was on the question of health and welfare - -
ard: That was a joint strike?
LG: Yes. It was the first joint strike in the history of
the industry. It also turned out to be the first
strike that any of these Teamster locals had ever been
mixed up in, over all these years.
ard: They never had a strike?
LG: hy did they have to? They had somebody else doing
the striking for them. It was the kind of a strike
where we were all geared up, ready. One of the essent
ials of a strike is to make sure you get your doughnut
wagons around, just for the good will and the morale;
somebody having the pickets move around from line to
line to say "hello"; and, of course, putting out
bulletins every day.
773
LG: It got to the point where we found out we had to print
more and more "bulletins. As soon as the bulletins were
put out to the warehouses, some of the Teamsters'
warehouse guys would be over to pick up some. They
never got a word of information from their locals, which
never geared up to even put out a bulletin during the
strike. So the Local 6 bulletin was the official strike
bulletin; we came out of that strike in good shape.
We also had to work out a different technique on the
question of independent houses, something the Teamsters
had never struggled with. Those negotiations were not
predicated upon a basic struggle.
For example, in the warehouse industry there were a
whole series of master contracts. There was the master
contract with the Distributors Association, the
principal outfit we dealt with; then the San Francisco
Employers Council had a master contract that was pri
marily with Local 860, and a few other shops in the
Teamsters Union.
The Peninsula employers had their so-called master
contract; nobody ever could figure out what 'the hell
that was. The United Employers had a half-assed master
contract with Local 853; and then there was a contract
with plumbing supply houses, run by a man named Alec
Hauften. He was a rather pleasant guy, but he sure
didn't have any stomach for the kind of negotiations
which hit a tough level. Kis was more the personal
relationship sort of thing; labor relations of the
shake -hands type.
Local 6 also had a large number of independent
houses, houses that did not belong to our master con
tract. By and large, they maintained the same wage
scales as the master contract and generally followed
suit.
Well, the Teamsters for years, when they had these
separate houses plus master negotiations, would simply
let the independents sign what are called "me-too"
contracts. In other words, the contract said, "Once
the negotiations are completed with the other houses
they would automatically sign the same thing."
We decided that this was just a free ride. In the
event there was going to be a shut-down in the
industry, I saw no reason why these independents should
get off scot-free. They had to carry some of the load.
774
LG: The device we worked out in that case featured
stipulations of a different kind. If an independent
wanted to function after the strike deadline, - they
did not automatically have to be struck, but they might
be - they would have to sign a stipulation which grant
ed certain provisions in excess of some of the demands
in the master negotiations; additional items such as an
extra holiday with pay, perhaps some additional sick
leave, a higher shift differential. We put in some
higher wages, subject to renegotiation when the strike
was over. On the wage item ....
Ward: Except on the wage item?
LG: No, only on the wage item. The one thing we didn't
want to live with afterwards was disparate wage scales.
That would raise too much hell. But the fact that one
warehouse had an extra holiday with pay, or extra sick
leave or something else, we figured didn't mean a
thing; the employer, let him pay that if he wanted to
take a free ride. My position was that if every single
employer joined the Association, we were better off.
Ward: You gave these independents an incentive to get into
the Association?
LG: Right. If I could have kicked them into the Association
which you can't do - better yet. Well, this was so
diametrically opposed to the Teamster thinking that it
was very hard to get our ideas across to them. It
eventually got across, primarily because it worked.
That is the only mark, as far as they are concerned.
Ward: So, this pretty well establishes the Joint Council in
Northern California, so far as warehouse is concerned.
What relationship does this Northern California situa
tion have to Hoffa and the negotiations that began
between the International officers of both unions?
LG: Insofar as Hoffa was concerned, he became a strong
supporter of the warehouse negotiations without any
reservations.
##
775
##
Ward: You were saying, Lou, that Hoffa was a strong supporter
of the warehouse operation in Northern California -
LG: Oh, yes. Einar Mohn also "became a strong supporter of
the Northern California Council -
Ward: He was the head of the Western Conference?
LG-: Yes. He became very friendly; his office was always
open to me. I used to spend a fair amount of time
talking to him, haying lunch. However, Einar Mohn
didn't see eye to eye with Jimmy Hoffa; he was mixed
up with too many different kinds of people - put it
that way . . .
Ward: Was Einar Mohn a little more pure, might you say,
than Hoffa?
LG: Einar Mohn was a labor statesman, and not in a dis
paraging sense. He was a well read man, had a better
grasp of a lot of things than the average teamster. In
many ways, he stood head and shoulders above them. He
knew his industry quite well and was an excellent
administrator. He had various divisional councils.
The headquarters at Burlingame were very cleverly
located.
He was constantly calling in the representatives of
the various councils - Bakery Wagon Drivers, Milk Wagon
Drivers, Over the Road drivers, warehousemen, you name
it. The Burlingame headquarters were very close to the
San Francisco Airport. It was quite simple for the
members of a council to fly in of a morning, take a
cab over to the Burlingame headquarters, hold their
meetings and be back home the same evening. It was a
well organized operation; he knew what he was doing.
I recall one session; the I960 warehouse negotiations
or '63 - thereabouts - we worked all night and finally
wound up with a good agreement; Jimmy was in town. He
called up and said, "How did you make out?" I said,
"We came out fine. As a matter of fact, we're having
a meeting this morning to go over the agreement, and I
think it will be recommended by everybody - no problem."
776
LG-: He said, "I'd like to come by there; where are you
meeting?" I said, "Our headquarters, 150 Golden Gate."
And bango! up he comes, bounces right up to 150 Golden
Gate, delighted to meet everybody there. We let him
talk to the council after the report was given; he was
very flattering to the whole bunch and flattering to
our union and to me. He knew where the work was getting
done.
This did not make it easy all the time because the
Teamsters, like any other big organization, has wheels
within wheels.- On another occasion we were in late
negotiations - it must have been around 2:00 o'clock
in the morning and we were still meeting. The deadline
was the next morning; we had set a strike date after a
joint strike vote at one of these big stewards' meetings
at our longshore hall. It was hard to get large enough
halls for these big stewards' meetings.
Somebody calls me out of negotiations, saying, "It's
important; you have to take it." Jack Goldberger had
been sitting in on the meeting; he was one of the
personal representatives of Hoffa, but he also made his
own judgments; he always considered himself to be sort
of a kingpin in most situations.
Anyway, it was Jimmy Hoffa from the airport and he
said, "I get some pretty discouraging reports about the
negotiations; looks like they're going to break down.
The report I get is that it really doesn't call for a
breakdown and that there ought to be a settlement around,
I said, "By and large you're right; I don't think there
ought to be a breakdown - might be, you never can tell,
but right now, I'd say the negotiations look all right.
I think we have another couple of hours before this
thing cracks; it's moving in the right direction, but
not fast enough. "
He says, "Well, how do you feel about it?" I said,
"I think it's worthwhile going on - we can sweat it
out. We're not looking for a strike; if we play this
one to the hilt, we'll win it." Obviously he had been
goosed into this call; he didn't get one of these
reports by pulling it out of the air. Somebody had
been bending his ear; these guys felt that any situation
I was in had to be a strike, you see. After all, that
was my nature.
Ward: They were scared?
777
LG: They never did get completely unscared, which is just
as well. I said, "I think we'll manage okay, I'm not
all that worried." "Well, I'm glad you feel that way,"
he said, "Just stay in there, fuck r em." Sort of typical
of Jimmy, you see. (laughter) He "didn't have any
fear of employers.
Ward: Prom what you've told us, one would never know that up
to this point Harry had anything to do with the Teamsters
and their International, or Hoffa.
LG-: He didn't handle warehouse negotiations at all - except
later on under rather disturbing circumstances. Ware
house negotiations were strictly "between Locals 6 and
17 and the Teamsters; it was very much my responsibili
ty. Harry was mixed up at the time primarily in
Longshore and the beginning of his work on the mechani
zation agreement; that began in Portland. I didn't
attend that caucus in 1957.
During these warehouse negotiations, Harry was kept
posted; I told him where they stood, but he did not
take an' active part in them. The negotiations were
between, initially, members of an informal committee -
that's all it amounted to. Later on it became a joint
committee, which still later matured into the Northern
California Warehouse Council. The Northern California
Warehouse Council later on got power-of-attorney from
all the locals to negotiate jointly for all of them,
ratification to take place jointly.
Ward: Well, let me ask you - Harry was informed as to what
was going on in warehouse, but you used to sit in with
him on important longshore negotiations. Were you still
doing that in this period?
LG-: I sat in on the longshore negotiations in 1961, the
mechanization agreement, definitely, and got into a
very sharp clash.
Ward: With whom? Harry?
LG-: With Harry and Bodine. (Howard Bodine, an ILWU official).
While Harry didn't take part in the warehouse nego
tiations, he had his relations with Jimmy Hoffa. He
had seen him a number of times . . .
Ward: When did that begin? Sometime after you first met
Hoffa?
778
LG-: Yes. Harry spent a good deal of time with Hoffa,
particularly when Hoffa was "being plagued "by Bobby
Kennedy; Kennedy became Attorney-General and they had
the task force, and then the indictments against
Ward: Did you introduce Harry to Hoffa?
LG-: Not that I recall. The relations were pretty good.
Harry would pick up the phone and call Jimmy ....
Ward: - it started some place?
LG: Yes, I suppose, somewhere along the line there -
Ward: But you don't have any feeling of having arranged the
meeting?
LG: No. It might have been that I played a small role.
Harry spent a good deal of time with Jimmy, trying to
convince him that the right kind of a campaign against
Bobby Kennedy was a mass campaign where he went to the
Teamsters, his membership. Harry felt very keenly that
the Bobby Kennedy cabal was just a deliberate hounding
of Hoffa.
Ward: Harry was the expert on the subject of hounding.
LG: Right; he also felt strongly that Jimmy should not just
be making like a lawyer. Jimmy got to the point where
he thought he knew as much as the lawyers did, or more;
days and weeks were spent at the Teamster headquarters
with all this staff of lawyers. Then there were the
various indictments, you know, against Hoffa: that
Louisville case.
Ward: That was subornation of perjury, wasn't it?
LG: I'm not sure whether that was the case. But there was
one case where he brought in Joe Louis, (a famous prize
fight champion) just to sit there and shake hands with
Jimmy, you know, friendly. He won that case hands
down! (laughter) Jimmy had this flair for things.
Whether that was the case where he was later tried
on perjury, I don't recall. But the stable of stool-
pigeons they used against Jimmy was unbelievable;
particularly the key guy who, I guess, was primarily
responsible for his conviction - guy by the name of
779
LG-: (Edward Grady) Partin. He had a police record longer
than both your arms - assault and battery, robbery,
mayhem; all of which ....
ard: Did they use a man like that as a witness against . . ?
LG: Yes, and all these other cases somehow got washed out.
Partin was the key witness ....
Ward: He was worth a lot to Kennedy.
LG: Oh, god, yes. I don't know where in the hell he found
these rats. Then they got Hoffa on subornation of
perjury, that he tried to buy witnesses, or something
like that. But that was a different scene. It didn't
really overlap into Warehouse.
Ward: Well, do you want to go into that?
LG: Might as well.
Ward: All right, we're talking about the Teamsters and the
ILWU.
LG: We got a lot of things done. I think it was in 1967
when we had this short strike in warehouse, partially
over welfare.
One of the things we had agreed upon with the
Teamsters was that we would both take a certain amount
of reserves that, we had in health and welfare and set
up a pilot drug plan; we ought to at least try to get
drugs for our members; at that time Kaiser wasn't
offering them. I also had some ideas at the time that
maybe we ought to merge the two health and welfare
plans. I knew we'd get nothing but good results; if
for no other reason than the incidence of utilization;
our people used the plans much more than the Teamsters.
In the case of Local 6, we v/ere out telling the people
what the plan was, constantly pounding away; "The plan
is yours, use it; don't just let the money sit there."
Well, there was such a contrast between the two
plans that I thought if we could merge them things
would be better. But any major plans on health and
welfare died off; the Teamster trustees, particularly
some of those from small locals, were fearful that if
a joint plan were set up their little jobs would be
tossed out the window.
780
LG: For example, when they found out we never paid a
trustee, they couldn't "believe it. So, I guess the
merger idea stepped on too many eggs. But the joint
pilot drug plan would have been a very good thing.
Well, shortly after the agreement was concluded, the
the Teamster employers went ahead and put in a drug
plan for the Teamsters; we were left high and dry. It
was a crucial thing because we were bound to get an
awful lot of reverberations.
This came on top of a development three years ear
lier where somebody had made a miscalculation on how
much money we needed for health and welfare to make
sure that the Kaiser benefits would be covered. We
ran out of dough, and I had the extremely unhappy job
of going to the membership and telling them they would
have to pay a dollar per visit. Let me tell you,
everybody had to swallow awful hard. They took it all
right.
The whole nature of a coalition of this sort is
something that is hard to' get across to people. Number
one, there is no such thing as a substitute for
competency; secondly, you have to decide in advance
that you are going to do 95 percent of the work and
give somebody else 100 per cent of the credit.
Ward: The first time you said that you allowed yourself one
per cent!
LG: Well, okay, whatever it was. But the membership knows;
these things come through like osmosis.
781
XX NEW MM IN THE PICTURE
(Interview 28: 6 October, 1978)
A Very Smooth. Operator
Ward: Lou, I'd like to ask you what happened along in the
middle fifties when the tensions which had been
bothering everybody over many years began to die down.
Life became easier for the ILWU, and then new tensions
arose. Could you describe them to some extent, please?
For example, the advent of St. Sure into the picture?
LG: Well, the advent of St. Sure was part of a sequel to
a determination made by the shipowners after the 1948
strike that the way Prank P. Foisie and Gregory
Harrison were attacking the union was self-defeating.
If it doesn't work and the union fights back
successfully, wins hands-down in big situations such as
the 1948 west coast longshore strike and the 1949 strike
in Hawaii longshore, then another development takes
place inside the union, never to be underestimated.
There's an enormous feeling of solidarity and strength
that springs out of such a situation. It's like a
group of men who have gotten used to fighting in a
squared circle, all of them back to back, fighting off
every enemy.
It's not a question of getting any weird ideas of
invincibility, but they do develop a certain working
class confidence; they are just not goins to be taken
on and taken over; they can handle these characters!
Well, the shipowners obviously reached that con
clusion and started off with a new group which became
the Pacific Maritime Association. The first to head
782
LG: it up was Henry Clark, an easy-going guy, an older man;
whether or not he was there just temporarily, I don't
know. His place was then taken by Vic Pearson. Vic
Pearson was out of the shipping industry, an old sea
captain. Vic Pearson was a very decent human being,
easy to get along with.
Ward: I understand he got into trouble with the shipowners
because he had his picture taken with some of the
leaders of the ILWU.
LG: It could be; Pearson was one of those who testified
as a character witness for Harry.
Ward: Yes, that sort of thing too.
LG: But on the other hand, I don't think that was fake,
because there were a number of shipowners who lined
up the same way. There was Hubert Brown of Pacific
Par East Lines; Ken Pinessey of States Line, I think.
Walter Buck turned up as a character witness for Harry.
I managed to talk to most of them. Even old Doc
(Doctor) Leo Eloesser, (a prominent surgeon) turned up
as a character witness, so I don't think that made too
much difference in Vic Pearson's standing.
But Vic Pearson developed cancer and after a while
he had to resign. Then his place was taken by St.
Sure.
Ward: St. Sure had been advising them for some time, just as
a lawyer -
LG: St. Sure might have been advising them, because he had
a long background in labor relations. St. Sure for a
number of years had been the head of the California
Processors and Growers, an organization made up of all
the canneries or cannery owners.
Ward: You had had a run-in with him years before, hadn't you,
over at Santa Cruz Packing?
LG: Yes, that was back in the thirties. It was not a
pleasant run-in because he was out-and-out strike
breaking. I recall one session where I said, "Well,
somewhere along the line, we're going to get even,
I'll tell you that." He interpreted that as a threat.
It wasn't a personal threat, of course. Later on,
783
LG: Harry in one of Ms more difficult moments decided that
I had threatened to kill St. Sure - no less. One of
those things, "but the (Santa Cruz Packing) case didn't
end there.
ard: It went to the Supreme Court, didn't it?
LG-: That's right. That's why the run-in wasn't one of
those quick encounters which are just as quickly for
gotten. The Supreme Court ruled for the union on every
single score. I recall there was a substantial group
of workers who had been "blacklisted, - run out and
their places taken by scabs, who collected back pay;
but meanwhile the job had been done. The union was
wrecked at Santa Cruz Packing.
Ward: How long would the time lag be? Eight years?
LG: It was closer to five - six years.
ard: The people had dispersed?
LG: People dispersed, took other jobs; life was fairly
comfortable or a little more comfortable, they made new
friends. They were not going to gamble that away, in
most cases.
Ward: They take their back pay?
LG: Yes, that's all. They consider it a union victory,
but it's not a true union victory because the union
itself is not established full strength as it was
originally.
As a matter of fact, a number of companies to this
day follow this technique. J. P. Stevens (a textile
manufacturer) is as good an example as any. I don't
know how many times they have been cited by the
(National Labor Relations) Board; how many times they
have been found guilty. This goes on and on indefinite
ly. J. P. Stevens made the decision a long time ago
that it paid them. Keep firing people, force them
into unfair labor practices hearings, go out with the
most blatant union- breaking program.
They have their lawyers drag it out, take as much
time as possible, and then the payoff is, "Okay, so
it costs us a couple of million bucks in back pay."
784
LG: That's chicken-feed compared to what it would cost if
they had a genuine union in the place. They make
those cold-blooded calculations; nothing unusual.
That's what happened at Santa Cruz Packing.
St. Sure was a real charmer and a very bright guy;
highly competent. I recall one day we were down at
the PMA office for some meeting; it was over with and
I was about to leave. I walked by the door and he
happened to catch me and said, "Let's talk for a
minute, Lou."
He just wanted to sit down for a personal talk; he
was very blunt about the thing. He said, "I've always
wondered if you still carried a grudge about the 1935
Santa Cruz Packing strike." I said, "No, not really,
we finally won in the Supreme Court. I don't think
that surprised you too much." He said, "Really, it
didn't; but I was just hoping it was something that
wouldn't affect our relationship now."
That was a charming way of going at it. I said,
"You can assume that it won't and we'll take things
on their merits." It wasn't a love match or anything
like that, but I didn't see any purpose in hanging on
to something of that sort over all those years.
An Amazing Change
LG: Plus he was a different guy. It was a rare thing for
a guy in St. Sure's position to come out flatly against
the right-to-work laws. Getting his support became
very valuable to a lot of unions, and it was used
constantly in publicity. A few other employers came
along as a result. St. Sure knew what he was doing.
The employers themselves literally called the whole
situation on the waterfront "A new look."
Ward: Yes, I remember that.
LG: That was the title of it. That "new look" included
regular meetings with the top staff of the union to
discuss problems before they came to a head; even the
setting up of a semi-official structure designed to
head off some of the more difficult disputes before
785
LG-: they reached the stage where there was nothing left
except a confrontation. They set up what they called
a "crisis committee", composed of a group of principals,
namely, shipowners themselves, not vice-presidents or
labor relations men; the principals themselves, includ
ing the head of PMA, I suppose St. Sure, and principals
from the ILWU. In the event either party felt that some
situation was getting out of hand, trouble, the crisis
committee would meet.
Mat son Gets The Brush-Off
LG: The fact that the "new look" had a certain genuiness
to it was tested in 1949 in a funny way. Matson busted
their balls trying to get the PMA to take on the union
because of our refusal to handle any cargo going to
Hawaii unless it was cleared by the union. We had a
position that we would send certain foodstuffs and so
forth; Matson 1 s position was that we had a contract.
As to what happened at the other end, this whole
business of strike-breaking down there, that was no
concern of the court up here. That's when they went
before Judge Harris for an injunction; I mentioned the
incident where I had some conversation with Randolph
Sevier, who repeated it in court.
Well, it didn't phase Harris a hair. He said,
"I don't know about that conversation, but going back
to the merits of the thing, why don't you gentlemen
consider sitting down and talking about these things?
And by the way, what's so wrong with arbitration?
That's not terribly un-American."
Then he said, "What if I do issue an injunction?
What good will it do really? What if the men are
dispatched from the hall as they're supposed to and
never get to the ship?" Which is, of course, what
happened.
These were Matson' s efforts, on their own; PMA was
not represented at the injunctive hearings. What was
being tested was whether or not the "new look" meant
what it said or whether Matson' s efforts to get the
entire PMA lined up for a break with the ILWU would
succeed. Their technique - which had also been worked
786
LG: out with. Aim on Roth and Foisie - the retributive
technique, was that if there was a shut-down on one
ship, they would shut the entire port down.
Everybody was watching Mat son, and I will say PMA
held up. As a matter of fact, they went so far that
by the tail end of the Hawaii strike, PMA allowed a
special provision to be written into the contract -
it's still there - that in the event of a strike by any
ILWU local, we did not have to load cargo which would be
handled by strike-breakers or cargo that had been loaded
by strike-breakers. I mention these things because
with the "new look" there came -
Ward: A new man?
LG: A new man, St. Sure; and also came a situation where
the employers decided they were going to get a lot
further through a policy of gentle diplomacy, reason
able understanding. I wouldn't say that somebody sat
down and said, "Look, these guys can be bought off."
It was not a situation like some unions people read
about in the east, where somebody decides, "That guy
can be reached; give him a couple of bucks." I think
PMA decisions were made on a much more intellectual
level, and I would credit St. Sure with that.
A man like St. Sure would say, "If we act on the up
and up; when we think we're right, set our heels and
don't budge, that's that; but if there's any indication
that we're wrong, under no circumstances should we bull
our way through or try to hammer our way to a victory
regardless of the consequences. If the union raises
any issue which does not affect the basic managerial
rights of the employers, we are better off to agree
with it than to make it another issue just to be mean
and to quarrel."
It was a well designed, a well thought-out program
in the belief that effective class collaboration could
be achieved. And they turned out to be right. Gains
were made. This wasn't a business of the kind of union
you've seen develop where, in effect, the understanding
is that the employers will see to it that the union
stays in line and the membership pays their dues.
Ward: Like a dues check-off and all that?
787
LG: Yes; as a matter of fact during all that time the union
never even put into effect a provision of the longshore
contract which provided that any time we wanted the
union shop, we could have it. The "new look" "brought no
big change, but bit by bit labor relations, which had
been pretty acerbic over the years, took on an entirely
different tone.
Ward: More relaxed?
LG: Yes; everything was on a first name basis; in the main,
very friendly. To say that none of our people at the
International were unhappy with this thing would be
very wrong. Later on, this showed up in various ways,
particularly in the mechanization program where there
were some very sharp differences of opinion.
##
Pensions. Dental Plan, Housing
LG: I'll give you an example of what happened when we
negotiated the first pension agreement; we were deter
mined that we were going to get a $100 a month pension;
it meant shaking up the whole pension concept that 99
percent of industry was working under, this idea of
full funding.
Well, these employers are all of the same family;
they meet with these insurance people, they are com
patriots, they belong to the same clubs, have lunch
together. You'd think they would be highly influenced
by something of that sort. They think that's the way
the system should operate, just using that as an example,
But it didn't seem to phase them when we said, "We
think we can put together a pension that will pay 100
bucks a month." "Well, they said, "we don't know
whether you can or can't; all we can tell you is that
the total amount of money we are prepared to put into
a pension is blank." It was 15 cents an hour, the
blank amount being 15 cents.
I'm sure they must have been disturbed with some of
the contacts they had with the big actuarial firms,
insurance people they knew. They must have gotten more
788
LG-: than their share of ribbing along the street, "because
it was the general talk in the industry that the pen
sion plan would go belly-up in no time. And it was a
very odd pension plan, again, a reflection of this
"new look."
Ward: Do you recall what year this was?
LG-: Pearson was the head of the PMA at the time we nego
tiated that pension plan. I remember that.
Ward: St. Sure was already advising them?
LG: I gather so - I didn't know at
Ward: He says in his oral history that he had been advising
them for a time after the dismissal of Foisie and
Harrison.
LG: That could very well be, in that transition period
before he took over. I don't know whether St. Sure
had any problems on the question of heading up the
PMA. He was also the head of a very large employer
group, the California Processors and Growers which
set up a large scale organization in conjunction with
Vandeleur*and others in the AFofL to make sure that
they forced out all the left-wing unions, including
UCAPAWA; later on the whole thing was turned over to
the Teamsters union. Whether the shipowners felt this
was a conflict of approach, I'm not sure. Eventually,
it must have been reconciled; St. Sure became the head
of both. In addition, he had a law firm.
Ward: Well, he said he virtually gave up everything. He
began a general law business, but reached the point
that he had no time for anything else except labor.
LG: I think that would be true.
Ward: He said his law firm became almost totally involved in
labor cases.
LG: Right; he wasn't the only member of his law firm.
There were others we'd bump into now and again, most
of them reflecting St. Sure's general philosophy; not
professional union-busters, but no patsies or pushovers,
They put up a battle for their principals, but they
were not conducting a crusade against the unions.
* Ed Vandeleur, secretary, California Federation of Labor
789
Ward: Well, anyway, the "new look" really worked and it had
its effect on the ILWU?
LG: Right. It worked; people dropped their guard. Our
people found life was a lot easier than busting their
backs on two-bit issues where the employer was being
difficult, in effect saying, "You're not going to get
a goddam thing out of me unless I'm absolutely forced
to do so." So, of course, that changes the scene.
That's the reason I say this designed program in no
way resembled the other situations where the employers
feel they can reach union officials, pass money under
the table, or any crap like that.
Ward: I don't think anybody has been accused of such a thing
in that ILWU-PMA relationship.
LG-: I'm quite sure that is correct.
Ward: And whatever favors were done, they were open and above
board, weren't they?
LG-: Yes, and I don't think there were that many favors
really. It wasn't that kind of a relationship; I don't
think it even was much of a social relationship, except
an occasional luncheon.
Ward: You don't think Harry was invited over to St. Sure's
home or vice versa?
LG: If he did, it must have been a rare occasion.
Ward: You weren't invited over?
LG: No - no; which is just as well.
Ward: Well, I'm not asking you to second-guess what happened
between Harry and St. Sure, except as you saw it.
LG: Obviously, the change to the so-called "new look" put
labor relations on a more intelligent and constructive
basis. We were able to pioneer the first dental plan,
which was for children. We initiated the first one
in the country; we decided that instead of trying to
get dental plan coverage for everybody we would con
centrate on youngsters up to 16. There was a very-
elaborate system of double checking on the kids,
making sure they kept their appointments and reminding
790
LG-: the mothers. Our feeling was that if you got some
decent dental habits into the kids up to 16, they
would keep these for the rest of their lives. This
was a very novel program; I don't recall any resistance
to that. Sure, they priced it out.
Later on in the sixties I happened to get the idea
that there was no reason why the pension funds should
just be laying around being invested in high grade
securities. Later on other things happened with the
pension plan, where they decided to put some of the
money in common stock, but that's a story by itself.
I thought there was no reason why that money shouldn't
be used to build some low-cost housing.
Initially the man I tried to work with was Kenneth
Saysette, the treasurer of the PMA. He was pretty
much of the old school. He wasn't too hot to try it;
I remember dragging him down to what was part of the
old Mills Estate, down the peninsula because that land
was up in the market and I thought that might be a
natural for housing built through the pension fund.
I knew a little about what I was trying to do,
because my brother had been a builder for years. In
conversation with him, I picked up how much money was
taken off the top before a house was sold. He was
convinced that between the interim financing, for which
they really rip you off, the advertising, speculation
in terms of the amount of profit, altogether there was
at least 20 per cent that went off the top, leaving
aside profit to the guy who was doing the building.
This was all money that could be saved.
Ward: The Mills Estate wasn't a worker's neighborhood.
LG: No. The place that appealed to me a great deal more
was Tennessee Valley, right near Mill Valley, only
about a ten-minute commute to San Francisco. There was
some big acreage which would have lent itself very
nicely to a lot of individual home building; I tried to
interest Saysette in that. He dragged his feet on the
thing.
Finally what did break things through was that I was
approached by Justin Herman of the Redevelopment Agency,
They had torn down a large part of the Western Addition
791
LG-: (a nan-down district in San Francisco) - and the land
was lying there fallow for years. The more I looked
into the thing, the more I was convinced that the main
purpose of the Redevelopment Agency was to assist the
real estate speculators, builders, and contractors.
By using the power of eminent domain, they could
assemble large parcels of land for large scale develop
ment as no individual could do. When an individual
goes after a project, let us say, to assemble a square
block of land, the name of the game then is who's going
to hold out to the end; in other words, the last guy
figures he has the hammer. The outfit putting it "all
together has to have this piece of land.
There's a story about one of these huge office
developments in New York City where they simply could
never work out a deal with some little old lady who
had a small house in the middle of the street. They
finally worked out a deal with the city on the question
of air rights and built the whole damn thing right
around it. There it was - this little house.
This is the area where redevelopment could play such
a highly essential purpose. "What they were doing in
tearing down some of those slums made some sense; but
what they were not doing was replacing the slums with
anything that any of the people who had lived there
would have any chance under the sun of coming back to.
In one part of the V/estern Addition, the most
attractive part, you have Cathedral Hill and all the
churches; oh, you can get a blessing in every direction,
I think, except I don't recall any synagogue there.
Pick whatever you want, Unitarian, Baptist, the big
Catholic church. No shortage of that going on.
Well, Herman came to me and said that there was a
big hunk of land available. He thought it ought to be
suitable for low cost housing, perhaps on a cooperative
basis. He was convinced that if we put in a proposal
for building St. Francis Square, which is what it was
called, he was quite sure it would be acceptable.
I had two long sessions with St. Sure on that and
he said, "Go ahead." The trustees were generally
amenable, but a little bit skeptical. After all, it
was a financial venture; was it prudent; would it pay
792
LG-: enough returns? I thought all those bases could "be
covered, and eventually they were. It "became a compli
cated thing for many reasons. For one thing, I think
Saysette got to one of our trustees, because half a
dozen times they practically dumped the project and I
had to bail it out again.
Ward: Your trustee would?
LG-: And Saysette; they decided they didn't want to go ahead
wih it -
Ward: In other words, he was just making trouble for the
project?
LG: Yes; he had it in mind that these were going to be
instant slums. Meanwhile, I had gotten the Interna
tional to put up some seed money. It did not amount
to a great deal, something like $2, 500 'or $3,000, only
for the purpose of making a submission.
Marquis and Stoller were the architects and I had
some advice from Jack Baskin (a builder), although
later on he said he wouldn't bid on the project when
he saw the drawings. We had the idea that we'd build
cooperative housing to meet certain income limitations.
If it was a family of three or four, there was a
certain ceiling on what their income could be; if it
was a larger family it would be more.
We made a presentation, and all of a sudden (Joseph
L.) Eichler turns up in the picture, coddling up to me
at the hearing and saying, "Why do you guys want to
get into building for? You don't know anything about
it. I'm an expert on this sort of thing and I already
have plans for building these Eichler Towers out there,
and I could expand the whole project."
Just one of these things where the guy is going to
build a huge monument to himself. And I said, "No, we
thought we could go ahead; we want a different kind of
housing - we want middle income housing and low income
housing." This was bothering him, because why have
this alongside of his nice, new development? That's
where Jack Shelley (who had become congressman and
later mayor of San Francisco) lived for a while,
remember? So, the net result was a lot of hard work.
I accused Justin Herman of working with Eichler, and
793
LG: after getting us interested, doubling back and telling
Eichler that he'd better move. "If we're turned down,"
I told him, "there are going to be some heads rolled
down Market Street, and none will be mine." We didn't
get along too well; and things got more difficult as
we went along.
It did get accepted; instead of paying heavy interim
financing, I persuaded the trustees to go down to the
California Bank, which had been the fiduciary agent
for our funds. They did the coupon clipping, banking
the money, a nice profitable banking function. There
was no good reason why they couldn't give us the
interim financing at a reasonable rate, which they
did - something like 6 percent.
How To Save A Million Dollars
LG: Then the architects came along with their plans, which
did not fit the budget because the budget was built
backwards. We took the number of apartments which
could logically be built, leaving a large amount of
open area in the interior. On that score the archi
tects did an excellent job; the housing is all around
the periphery of these squares. The center portions
are like huge parks or playgrounds, and they turned
out very successfully. However, other parts of their
plans did not work out as well.
The idea was to first decide how much we could
spend for the 300 apartments we planned to build;
based on the amount that was put into the thing. Could
we then meet a certain rental or payment schedule?
These would be co-ops; there was to be an initial down
payment of $500 or $600, and then the regular monthly
payments, as you would have in any cooperative project.
Well, on that score we worked backwards.
When the architects' plans came in, Jack Baskin was
one of those who looked at them. Jack Baskin was a
man I knew only casually in L. A. - he had broken up
with his wife and decided he wanted to move north. He
was very anxious to get into something.
Ward: He was an architect?
794
LG-: He was a builder and an engineer. Very competent and
knowledgeable. When the plans came in we said, "Now
we have to put them out to "bid." He said to go ahead,
but "I'm not going to bid on them." I asked him, "Why?"
and he said nobody was going to come in at our price.
It could not be done inside the budget we had planned,
which would allow enough money both for building and
to give a fair return to the PMA on its money, which
we wanted to be somewhat higher than their average
rate of return. Also the bid would have to meet the
standards we had in mind in terms of monthly cost.
He was right; when the bids came in, the closest
one was a million dollars over what we had estimated.
So, I went back to talk to Baskin again as to what
the devil was wrong.
He said, "I could have told you from the very
beginning; the plans are over-engineered in certain
ways, absolutely unnecessary, don't make sense. It's
not my job, after all * to tell you how to do these
things. If you're interested in coming within the
budget, I guarantee some architects I know can do it.
I'll give it. to you at a fixed price." (With a very
low rate of return for himself - I think 4^- percent).
He was right; one of the architects,, Claude Stoller,
had lived in one of the Amalgamated (Clothing Workers
union) housing projects in the east - he was born in
one of them - and one of the things he thought would
be highly effective in a co-op was a huge central
heating plant like is needed in New York City; steam
heat. So, he had planned a central heating plant
from which you would pipe the heat to the various
apartments.
Jack's position was, "You have to be out of your
minds to do that here. For one thing, you don't need
that much heat; secondly, people differ so much here;
some people like warm apartments and some people don't
like any heat at all. You install wall heaters and
you build at a fraction of the cost."
A couple of minor changes, and bingo! he had a
million dollars knocked off the cost. Well, we went
ahead with the project and it was very successful;
still is. I was over there for the fifteenth anni
versary of the completion; it was finished in 1963.
795
Ward: It was pretty much your baby, wasn't it?
LG: Yes, I was president of that project. Bill G-lazier
was also a help. Everything came out to the letter;
Hal Dunleavy (a housing consultant) was acting as our
advisor: Jack Baskin knew FHA (Federal Housing Adminis
tration) - they had an enormous amount of confidence in
him "because he had "been very successful as a builder
around San Diego and they trusted his judgment.
So there was no great problem in getting the
progress payments that were required. The pension
funds got their return. A small hitch I can recall
was, at the tail end we had spent more money on land
scaping than we had anticipated.
They were going to put in specimen trees, initially;
you can't have a kid and a fragile tree at the same
time, because that kid is going to climb that tree;
you put" in these specimen trees and by the time a week
is gone, the branches are broken. : I said, "Put more
money into heavier kinds of trees," which stood up
extremely well.
And secondly, with all the designing, there was no
sound-proofing between floors, so we put a bunch of
dough into carpeting. Come the end of the project, we
had a cost overrun, somewhere around $20,000.
Ward: That's the only over-run? What was the cost of the
project?
LG: About $5,000,000.
Ward: And you only had an over- run of $20,000?
LG: A very small over- run. I didn't want to take it out
of any of the funds which were going to the PMA and I
didn't see any reason why we couldn't clean up the
whole record. I remember having a very humorous lunch
at Jack's with Pick Ernst, the (PMA) attorney, and Jack
Baskin.
I said, "We're closing up the books now, and the
quicker we get out of the thing the better." The way
the co-op rules operate, as soon as you sold off 95
percent of the units, I think it was, you could turn it
over to the co-op and get out of it completely. Then
it would be their baby. I wanted to cut the umbilical
796
LG: cord as quickly as possible; I didn't want to see the
union "be a landlord. That could become a hopeless
situation; you have a strike on and the guys would say,
"Jesus Christ, we've got to pay rent to you fellas too."
So I said, "We've got this cost over-run; let's get
rid of it here and now. I think part of it ought to
be paid for by the contractor and part of it by the
attorney." And the amount I wanted to be paid by
Baskin was somewhat more, though the allowance for
attorneys' fees in the whole budget was substantial.
Jack Baskin stood up like a champ and said, "That's
okay, I'll pay my share." Ernst swallowed a couple of
times, but finally had to go along. So we wound up
the project.
That didn't end things, however, because I later
had to go to Washington where we changed the coopera
tive laws. For one thing, the way these laws read,
if somebody got an increase in pay which put him in
excess of the income limitations, he would be forced
to move. He could sell his equity back to the co-op
housing project. The equity would be only the amount
of the down payment, less what was required for repair,
and the new tenant would move in.
Well, if you did that you would wind up with what
amounted to public housing with a down payment; plus
the fact that I thought the feeling of ownership was
essential to make the project work. So, Dick Adams,
(an associate of Dick Ernst) and I went back to
Washington and had a roundy-go-roundy with EHA.
They had become very jaundiced on cooperatives;
too many of them failed, I think failed in part be
cause they failed to tackle these problems of ownership,
a feeling of pride in the project. We made two basic
changes - one, if somebody's income exceeded the
initial limit, the interest that they would pay would
become higher than the special interest rate that
prevailed on this kind of housing.
This kind of housing was semi-assistance public
housing under Title 221-D3, part of the Housing Act,
with money from the government at 3i percent, which
of course is an extremely good buy. Rather than be
evicted, the individual would pay a rate which could
go up as high as the regular FHA rate, 5~k o r 5-3/4
percent. That money would go into the co-op, and it
would have a few extra dollars in reserve.
797
LG: Secondly, we made provision that the individual could
develop an equity in the housing project. There were
a number of changes we made along that line, which
resulted in a remarkable difference in attitude toward
St. Francis Square as compared to a place like Milpit-
as. There, a housing project sponsored by the Auto
Workers went belly-up; St. Francis Square, to the
contrary, became highly successful. As a matter of
fact, all of Justin Herman's brochures on the Redevel
opment Agency always featured St. Francis Square for
years after that; the man who practically killed it.
Ward: You had a lot of trouble with him?
LG: Oh, yes. Well, once the thing was done, it was done.
Ward: Well, then, you had the cooperation of the PMA and St.
Sure was very helpful?
LG-: Oh, yeah, his attitude was fine. He said, "That's
what the pension money is there for."
Ward: What return did the investment pay to PMA?
LG-: I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of six
percent.
Ward: For those days, that was a good return.
LG: Well, the average return for the fund in those days
was somewhere between five and five and a quarter.
I was determined that it would be something in excess
of that, so . . . .
Ward: It gave PMA a good deal?
LG: Yes, and St. Sure's attitude in the deal reflected a
very shrewd approach to labor relations. He said that
the pension money wasn't there to see whether we could
make a bank rich or buy a lot of stocks in big corpor
ations; the pension fund was there to pay pensions.
Ward: So, you gave 300 families a city living at comparative
ly low cost?
LG: Oh, yes, the lowest cost in the city, and all in an
ideal location; if you were working anywhere around
the Civic Center, you could walk to work. The bus
service there is excellent. The project turned out to
798
LG: be so successful that it became a showplace for visi
tors from other countries; to show that this wasn't
an all-capitalist country; here was a cooperative
housing project.
Going by the Square one day I heard a group talking
and I couldn't make out the language exactly. It
sounded Russian, so I stood behind and listened to them;
somebody from the State Department was giving an
explanation about St. Francis Square. It turned out to
be a group of Poles.
The last group from abroad that I met there was a
group of Chinese, about forty of them, who were with
Luxingsha, the tourist agency. They were over here
in preparation for these large-scale travel arrangements
between the United States and China. They asked me to
come by just to talk to them. It was just before Terry
and I were taking off for China. They were all fas
cinated by the Square; it has become quite a show place.
The composition of the Square continues good; one-
third white, one-third Asiatic and one-third black; a
good mix. Something over a hundred of the cooperators
have been there from the day one.
So, it was one of the best things we ever did,
although there was a lot of sniping; Howard Bodine
spread rumors around that my brother had made a piece
of money off the project. I finally nailed my brother
down and said, "Did you ever have anything to do with
the thing?" "Yeah, Jack Baskin was trying to buy a
whole bunch of doors and couldn't make contact and I
knew some guys in L. A. who wanted the work and could
make them up in a hurry for him. So, I put them in
touch with him; big deal." (laughter) That sort of
crap.
This sniping went on; the only way I can figure it
out is that even within PMA there were people who were
not accepting this new look the same way. Guys like
Ken Saysette. Anyway, the project went through.
Saysette was very anxious that we move into common
stock, something that I opposed bitterly and not
completely successfully, but at least avoiding those
insane portfolios whereby 50 per cent of the money was
put into common stock. Our portfolio never did go over
ten or eleven percent, primarily on account of my hell-
raising.
799
LG-: I mention St. Francis Square because it was an indica
tion of what St. Sure felt about these things. I think
he had a more positive vision of the project than
Harry himself. Harry, for some reason or other, got
very jaundiced on the whole thing, even though a number
of warehousemen lived there.
It's true that not all the longshoremen were eligible
because their income was too high, but the "B" men were;
a number of them moved in. Leroy King,*who lives out
there still was an original cooperator, and was chair
man of the board of directors.
Ward: Doesn't he make too much money for that?
LG: Leroy? No. He then paid the higher interest rate. I
remember him bringing a new manager by and introducing
him to Harry. Of course, this man was very impressed.
Harry's immediate reaction was "Well, that's the last
goddam one like that we'll ever build." He got bugs
on these things, some of which I gave up trying to
understand.
When they tried to impose the regular tax rate on
St. Francis Square, I appeared on the co-op's behalf
before the Board of Supervisors on the tax appraisal.
I said, "You can't use the same measure on a co-op
housing project that you can, let us say, on a
condominium."
##
LG: And the reason for that was very simple - it was not
like a condominium. You couldn't go out and sell it
in the open market. If you wanted to sell your
apartment you had to sell for whatever you had in it;
you couldn't make a nickel profit.
How in the devil can you put a co-op owner in the
same class as someone who bought a condominium for say,
$30,000, and now you appraise it at $60,000, a so-
called "fair market value." There is no such thing as
a fair market value on this. It has nothing to do with
the market; it has to do with the rules of the co-op.
*Leroy King, secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 6.
800
Ward: So how much of a cut did you get on the Square's tax
rate?
LG: It was quite substantial. I recall Harry getting
terribly indignant because he had to pay his taxes
on fair market value and here were these guys getting
a free ride on the union! Of all the petty things!
Completely ignoring the question of what you do about
the tremendous need for low-cost housing.
Ward: I wonder if that accounts for one of the differentia
tions St. Sure made between you and Harry, that
apparently Harry's vision was strictly trade union,
whereas yours want beyond trade union into housing,
health, dental care . . .
LG: Yes, I got mixed up in all these things -
Ward: Old age; he felt that these things were not strictly
trade union affairs?
LG: St. Sure realized that I thought union resources, union
strength and union funds, including joint funds, should
often be put to work in ways that were different from
standard "business unionism." There was no reason why,
if we had a pension fund, we must turn it over to an
insurance company to have fun with; no reason why we
couldn't handle things ourselves.
Ward: But obviously this honeymoon with St. Sure, at least
as far as you were concerned, didn't last forever?
LG: It didn't break off, either. Oh, it got tough at
certain stages with the mechanization agreement; that
comes in '61 and in '66 and '71; those were different
scenes. But at the period I'm talking about, these
were not conflict points.
St. Sure knew perfectly well how I felt about these
things, like the pilot dental plan for kids. I thought
it was very good. Harry helped carry the ball on that;
Goldie Krantz (director of the ILWU-PMA welfare fund)
of course was very helpful, and the trustees were sort
of going along, although I got a feeling that they
didn't hear any marching music with it; the same thing
was true of housing.
Later on I helped set up this Council for Health
Plan Alternatives, a broad scale organization. We had
just about all the key unions in the state engaged in
801
LG: an attempt to see what we could do about the scanda
lous increase in health costs; we sought the promotion
of more (Health Maintenance Organizations) HMO's or
things similar to Kaiser. Einar Mohn was the chair
man; I was secretary.
It also had another interesting aspect; here was
the ILU, considered to be a left-wing, maverick
union, almost a pariah, and yet suddenly we became
part of a very broad coalition. Well, I think that's
part of the job of the leftwing, not to throw away
your principles, not trying to be a good guy by show
ing you're just as much of a bum as the next guy.
Hang on to your principles and at the same time try
to find focal points where you can develop united
activity that would do everybody a lot of good. I
still consider that to be the secret of successful
leftwing trade unionism. The Teamsters always knew
that; it was not uncommon for us to get into lengthy
discussions on everything, foreign affairs and what
have you.
"Conformance and Performance"
Ward: Well, you said yourself that St. Sure came to exert
a very powerful and very unfortunate influence over
Harry Bridges. How did that begin to manifest itself?
LG-: Well, it manifested itself in a number of ways. First,
there was the program launched by the employers - I'm
sure directed primarily by St. Sure - that they called
"conformance and performance". It was a very clever
program for which you couldn't fault them, as employ
ers. They said, "Look, we're not arguing about the
agreement; you think there ought to be more money
there, we'll take this up when the demands are open.
If you think there ought to be other things in the
agreement, we'll take those up."
Bear in mind, we were making good progress in all
these agreements, picking up wage scales, good
pensions; had done extremely well in health and welfare;
had proliferated in the whole field of vacations,
eventually even getting some holidays with pay.
802
LG: St. Sure said, "We made a deal and we'll pay. The
least we're entitled to is that there be conformance
with the agreement and performance with the agreement."
For example, one of the issues which became a
subject of continuous discussion at caucus after
caucus was the system that had developed during World
War II, I think, which was called "four on, four off";
that was a system whereby if you took a gang of say,
eight men in the hold of a ship, four guys would work
the first four hours, the other guys taking it easy
and then the other way around.
Then, many of the locals began to perfect this in
their own way. They had an understanding among them
selves; okay, you guys get the first four hours - these
guys would come down and work four hours, then knock
off. They didn't even stick around the job after four
hours. This was particularly true of night gangs,
because there is less supervision; it's one of the
reasons that some guys like to work nights. By one
o'clock the guys were making the last drinks at the
bar, and they're supposed to be at work and they are
being paid the full eight hours 1
Ward: At overtime, too!
LG-: At overtime; so "four on and four off" became a big
issue. In some places it never was a sticky thing;
in Portland there was a different attitude; the idea
of the guy walking off the job at the end of four
hours was not accepted. On the other hand, in places
like San Francisco this became just a standard method
of work. In Los Angeles, they were the ones who began
to perfect the business where at the end of four hours
you were finished for the day.
Those, obviously, were legitimate beefs by the
employers. St. Sure was smart - he knew they were
not issues where the union could tell him, "Go to hell;
if you're screwed, you're screwed."
Instead you had the countervailing situation with
the union picking up gains, the relationship improving
with the employers, the fact that we were making a
number of changes - you would feel a certain obligation
to get these things straightened out. In other words,
not to give the employer a great big break, but at
least give him what he paid for. So "conformance and
performance" became an issue all by itself.
803
LG: When it came to the question of performance, in many
cases our 'guys developed rules that took no end of
imagination and invention. For example, in Los
Angeles, the gangs that worked around the docks - a
truck would come in and unload a lot of cargo on the
floor of the dock. They'd have to make up the thing
on pallet "boards, so they would have dock gangs for
that purpose; but then in other cases the pallets
had to "be discharged and put into loads or high-
piled for storage on the docks.
The guys invented rules to divide the work. If a
guy was in a palletizing gang, he would not do depalle-
tizing. (laughter) Now, all these things were pure
inventions. What they amounted to, really, were
devices for featherbedding; taking it easy and making
the job as comfortable as possible.
Bear in mind, they were also doing a lot of hard
work, because most of the work was still being hand-
handled, that's all; and handling longshore cargo, no
matter how you cut it, is still rough work. It could
well be that four hours of that work at a steady pace
is plenty. Frankly, my own feeling about the "four
on - four off" set-up was actually in some respects
a setback for the men. Eight men working together
at a half-way decent speed is really much easier on
them than four men working at one time and trying to
meet the hook, working at high speed.
Ward: Well, the way I've seen it in the hold of a ship, the
guys in the gang have 30 minutes on and 30 minutes
off. The guys who were off would just lie around and
get out of the way. In that way, the guys who were
working really put out.
LG: Well, that was just another variation of four-on and
four-off. Half on and half off, that had all kinds
of names. But I'm not actually sure the guys were
doing themselves a favor. On some jobs, where a good
deal of machinery was being used, like fork lifts in
the hold, maybe I could see where that could work out
very comfortably and make the job very easy.
Meeting the hook was still what the employers would
be watching, namely, the hook cycle to determine how
much cargo was going in or out. Where you have to be
humping cargo all the time, four men trying to meet
the hook where eight men could do it much more easily
and at a better pace would have made more sense, I
think; but habits and practices of work develop, and
nothing much you can do about it.
804
Ward: Well, did this campaign of St. Sure's, starting out
with what you call the legitimate complaints of the
employers, did it get into complaints that were not so
legitimate?
LG: Every once in a while, but there you never got a feel
ing that St. Sure was pushing too hard. Individual
employers might try that, yes, but you never got a
feeling that St. Sure was breaking his neck on it. He
was very shrewd, he knew what the limitations were and
he knew when he was on firm ground; he knew that on
the question of conformance and performance, he
definitely was on very strong ground.
All I'm trying to put together here is a framework
to show how the thing developed ....
Ward: Very gradually, very ....
LG: Right, and very cleverly. I'd say that St. Sure as a
person would not feel that he was doing anything wrong.
Here was this man, J. Paul St. Sure, son of a Federal
judge, eminent attorney in his own right, a very
bright negotiator, an effective administrator. I don't
think he ever sat down and said to himself, "Now I can
take over that union through a series of devices and
techniques for corruption and undermining, wooing them
and then screwing them."
I don't think any characterization of St. Sure like
that would be correct. I think it would be more
accurate to figure that St. Sure felt that this was
actually a more intelligent way of conducting labor
relations. He knew that the ILWU was a very tough
union and that even with all the camaraderie which was
developing in the new relationship, still by and large
there was a very tough core in this union that couldn't
be pushed around.
Ward: In other words, then, you seem to be saying that St.
Sure was being honest with himself ', when asked if it
was true that he had corrupted Harry Bridges, St. Sure
replied, "No, I don't think so."
LG-: I think that was a perfectly honest answer.
Ward: But still you think he had a bad influence on Bridges?
805
LG: I don't think he corrupted Bridges; I think that
there was a stage when Bridges went along with his
program. In other words, it sort of was bound to
mature that way. That's harder to put your finger on.
Ward: Who was it said that the road to heaven is downhill?
LG: Or hell is paved with good intentions. But more and
more, there came a feeling on the part of the men that
- not that the union had sold out, that wasn't it -
the union was getting different, that it was becoming
more and more of an administrative body, an elaborate
contract body.
Here you had a contract covering about 15,000-16,000
men up and down the Coast, two full-time Coast Commit-
teemen; in addition, Harry was a Coast Committeeman
when he sat in on it, also other officers would parti
cipate, as assistants; an elaborate piece of machinery
for a single agreement.
The agreement became more and more complicated - I
met a chap in L.A. from Local 13 when I went down there
awhile ago, and I asked him how things were working
out. He said, "There's nothing wrong with the
agreement as such - the money is good, the money is
good - but Jesus Christ! this agreement is getting so
complicated to administer. I don't think we can afford
to go with this two on, two off anymore."
What he meant by that is that they have a rule in
Local 13, the same as Local 10 and most other Pacific
Coast longshore locals, that when you are elected to
office, you can serve only two years and then you have
to go back on the job. And his point was very simple.
He said, "Christ, it takes about a year to learn the
agreement, with all its ins and outs for administrative
purposes - not just the ordinary way of learning it on
the job - and by that time, if you run for reelection
and get reelected, you figure, why bust my ass?" He's
getting to the end of his term anyway.
Something has to change, because more and more the
union has become an administrative body. On the other
hand, if you look at the thing historically, maybe you
also have to accept the fact that this was inevitable.
In other words, that dynamism, the concerted and almost
daily militancy that was the name of the game and was
806
LG: characteristic of the industry between 1934 and '48,
oould not go on forever* Bear in mind, Poisie and
Harrison gave it their "best shot in 1948 and couldn't
win it. The other employers were a lot more intelligent
about the thing and were getting a much better job
done, particularly when it came to making a major
transition to containerization.
Ward: Well, now we ride on the lip of that one - shall we
leave it for now?
LG: Might as well leave it at that point.
807
XH THE MECHANIZATION PROGRAM
(Interview 29: October 10, 1978)
Velvet Glove On Steel Hand
Ward: We were talking about St. Sure and his relationship
with the ILWU; the fact that he had been very coopera
tive in the beginning years of that relationship.
LGs Yes; as a matter of fact, he sort of continued in that
role during the time he was the head of the PMA. I
forget exactly what year he died, some time I think in
the late 1960s.
Ward: I think so; '69, I believe.
LG: As I recall, somethiig happened in the sixties which I
guess was a pretty bad blow to him. He had been the
head of the California Processors and Growers for years.
It was a multi-employer group of canneries that had
worked out the arrangements with Ed Vandeleur (former
head of the California State Federation of Labor, AFofL)
at the time of the UCAPAWA and the transition they made
into the Teamsters. Well, all of a sudden, the cannery
people dropped him.
What the internal politics were I'm not sure; whether
this was a palace revolution or that the line he was
taking with the ILWU was so different from the one they
would consider to be correct for the California Proces
sors and Growers.
I do know that he took this development very person
ally. He had spent so many years putting the thing
together and holding it up. The implications were that
808
LG: toward those later years his primary concern was with
the ILWU, rather than with any other groups, although
his law firm handled any number of employer accounts;
their primary interest was in labor relations.
It was during St. Sure's period that a number of
changes began to take place in the ILWU contract;
became a bit of a handle for the employers. I mean
it's not that I think that all employers are alike;
that when they come home at night, the first thing
they do is kick the dog, whack the kids and then beat
up the wife. Some of them can be quite pleasant and
amenable.
Then there's some degree of difference between the
people who represent employers and the employers
themselves. The employers keep their nose on that
dotted line all the time, watching the financial
operations from day to day. The more competent labor
relations people for the employers have a somewhat
broader vision.
There's no doubt in my mind that St. Sure's apprais
al as to what ought to be done in the case of the ILWU
had a good deal more breadth than that of the other
employers. He was dealing with a complicated industry,
much more complicated than appears on the surface.
The shipowners are really the principals. They are
the ones who invest the big money in the ships and the
long term leases on piers and terminals. You've always
had the stevedoring contractor; all he does, basically,
is to sell a longshoreman's work. This was particul
arly true during the earlier days of stevedoring
operations before the advent of new machinery, the
forklift, various types of machines such as the one
called the robot.
All a stevedoring company needed to go into business
was a couple of save-alls, some rope slings, maybe a
couple of pallet boards, perhaps one forklift or a
jitney and they're in business. The stevedoring
companies were always shrewd enough to stay fairly
close to most of the unions.
It was not uncommon to get rumbles back from the
waterfront that yes, the shipowners were opposed to
this, that and the other thing, but not the stevedoring
809
LG-: companies; they were prepared to go along. In some
cases, I think they were entirely happy to go along
because when they are selling somebody else's labor;
the more of it you have to sell - and you figure a
certain amount of override - the more you get.
It's one of the reasons I'm convinced that during
World War II, certain changes in working conditions
developed on the waterfront which became well nigh
irreversible because the army and navy, and various
branches of the maritime commission that were handling
shipping for the War Shipping Administration practical
ly didn't give a damn how much of a cost the stevedor
ing company ran up; it made no difference to them.
As far as the stevedoring company was concerned, it
it wasn't a damn bit interested in how fast the job
got done, either. If the company had a job that
ordinarily would be done in four days and the company
stretches it out to five or even six days, that's just
a little more money to him. So why bust his neck on
these things?
Well, it isn't too long before. any longshoremen who
know their business - and they know it inside out -
get a grasp of what's going on and they figure fine,
if this is a merry-go-round, we'll take a ride too.
I think a lot of things such as the four-on, four-
off and other work practices developed during that
time, some of which they were able to recoup and some
which they never could. But four-on, four- off became
an invidious practice; just pure invention.
They were able to get by because, as far as the
stevedoring contractor was concerned, that didn't
bother him a great deal. Sure the stevedoring contrac
tor had to deal with the shipowner; that was the man
from whom he had received his contract.
On the other hand, the stevedoring company could
sort of play it both ways. On the one hand, be
friends with the union and say, "Look, we can get alone:,
fellows," and at the same time tell the shipping
company, "G-oddam it, there's only so much I can get
done with these guys; they won't work any faster and
we can't do any better than that. We'll just have to
live with it."
810
LG-: So, you had these contradictions. I think that with
the setting up of the Pacific Maritime Association,
they even began to change the voting rights in many
ways, so that these stevedoring companies did not
have that much of a voice on the whole question of
policy, contracts, and so forth. Anyway, these were
complications that St. Sure had to find his way through.
Ward: In his oral history he complained about several thousand
alleged violations of the contract on the part of the
ILWU. I suppose that is what you're discussing.
LG-: Yes, he figured that each one of these things was a
violation; four-on, four-off by a gang is a violation.
That's one violation and the next gang is doing the
same thing, so that's two violations. If you start
counting that way you count up pretty fast.
Ward: Then there were other things too.
LG: Right; for example, there was the question of unneces
sary men. These are some of the things that later on
led to the mechanization agreement. We began to develop
in effect what amounted to "observers" on the job. Let
me give you an example: at one time, scrap iron used
to be handled in the hold of the ship where they have
huge clam shells that would take the scrap iron, dump
it in the square of the hatch; then the men would have
to haul it back to the different sides of the hatch to
try to get a level load.
Later on, they developed a scheme whereby instead
of using a clam shell, they used a huge magnet which
dropped a tremendous amount of scrap iron at one time.
They began to use huge bulldozers to push the stuff
around and level it off, but that did not change the
minds of our guys; they still required the regulation
gang, eight men in the hold. The other men just stood
around. There were actually some humorous examples;
I recall one instance - I'm not sure that anyone did
this seriously - where the employers maintained that
the union men demanded a television set on the job
because when the men had to sit around, they wanted
something to do.
811
Yarns Of The Docks
Ward: That sounds like the story of the longshoreman and the
nine pairs of women's panties.
LG-: Yes, you always have a certain amount of that. Of
course, when you get into stories of pilfering on the
waterfront, they go on and on -
Ward: And the grand piano and all that ....
LG: That's right; grand pianos and Sullivan with the
Japanese silk, which I think is still the classic
story. Banana Nose Sullivan was working in a gang
discharging bolts of Japanese silk. It was getting
towards holiday time and he said, "This is exactly what
my wife would like - she could make herself some
"beautiful dresses and some for the kids."
The question was, how do you get the damn thing off
the ship - you can't just throw it over your shoulder
and walk off; guards around all the time. He finally
figured that just before the shift was ready to "break,
he took off his clothes and had the guys wrap him up
in part of a "bolt of silk; maybe not the whole bolt;
that would have been too big since there was an awful
lot of it.
Then he got his clothes back on and with the help of
the guys got up the ladder all right. He starts
walking down the dock and the guys notice he's turning .
a very deep purple. Apparently, what happens is that
once you wrap something in silk, the silk begins to
bind, getting tighter and tighter. And somebody sud
denly realized either they unwrap Banana Nose Sullivan
in a hurry or he is finished!
So, you had the sight of these guys stripping off
his clothes and unwrapping him right in the middle of
the dock, before he left this world entirely! (laughter)
There are all kinds of yarns like that and a lot of
them are very colorful, but we can't just go back into
all these things.
Anyway, it was a different atmosphere. When it came
to a lot of the issues I guess the employers must have
taken a certain amount of heat. I'm sure when they
812
LG-: went to their own private clubs they belonged to, they
must have gotten plenty of flack from the people in
the trade.
"When it came to the business of launching a pilot
dental plan for kids, their attitude was good. St. Sure,
by and large, was the one who stood up best on the
thing. I don't think he had that kind of support among
some of his staff people, who preferred to do just the
ordinary day-to-day pencil pushing, and the less work
the better. St. Sure's attitude on these things was
good; at the same time, I'm sure he felt that along
the line these things would all pay off.
He was one of the few people who came out against
the right-to-work law, a referendum he spoke out against.
I think he had a feeling that it was the right thing
to do, partially, I'm sure, because he knew this would
bring back day-to-day guerilla warfare, which would be
the way any self-respecting union could survive.
He was far more of a complicated character than would
appear on the surface, yet to put him in the classifi
cation of a missionary who decided that his objective
in life was to see what he could do for the downtrodden
would be a serious error -
Ward: You seem to be saying that he knew what he was doing,
and the time was coming when he wanted some favors in
return.
LG: I think he felt that sooner or later that would come
along. To pinpoint any particular development in the
relations between Bridges and the Coast Committee and
St. Sure, and to say "there was the turning point,"
would be a mistake. There was a transitional period,
there was a good deal more confidence in each other.
They didn't have their fists up all the time.
Ward: Were you a member of that Committee?
LG-: No, but I generally took part in negotiations. I was
a member of the negotiating committee -
Ward: I see, but not the Coast Committee.
LG: Not the Coast Committee. No, the Coast Committee was
elected separately; during that time Howard Bodine was
a member a good deal of the time; Thomas was later on.
813
Ward: Those two men had the reputation of being on the
conservative side in the ILWU, didn't they?
LG-: Not particularly. L. B. Thomas was more of a maverick
and an individualist, I'd say. Howard saw nothing wrong
with simple straight unionism. Why not do this or that
if you get something out of it?
Ward: Well, that was going on then in this transitional
period, just naturally?
LG: Right; it was falling in place. I remember some pretty
violent arguments we got into around the mechanization
program; while the philosophy was pretty well identical
at the start, it began to diverge on the question of
what sort of rights are retained for the workers, what
sort belong to the employer.
In other words, some felt whatever conditions had
been built up over the years were all for sale at the
right price. Well, the mechanization program arose
primarily because of the advent of the container. The
container was coming in.
Ward: As early as '59, that was obvious, wasn't it?
LG: As early as 1959 but actually, I think, a little ear
lier. In 1957, the longshore caucus in Portland, was
where it v/as first discussed. In 1959 the union and
the PMA negotiated an agreement that contained the
first down payment, so-called, on the mechanization
program. That was a down payment of a million and a
half dollars.
The first full-blown mechanization agreement was
negotiated in 1961, a five year agreement, renewed in
1966 for another five years. That's the one that ran
out in 1971, at which point there was a strike that
broke out all up and down the coast, when St. Sure v/as
no longer around. Whether that would have made any
difference, I have serious doubts. By that time a
number of things had happened within the longshore
ranks; the mechanization agreement broke down on some
very fundamental issues.
Ward: Well, in '61 and '62 there were groans and moans from
all over on the west coast about the mechanization
agreement, weren't there?
814
LG: Not particularly; but there were a few things where
there were moans and groans, yes. One of the things
that happened in the '61 agreement was agreement
abolishing unnecessary men; so you were bound to get
moans and groans where the men are accustomed to work
ing with certain gangs, a certain group of men, and
suddenly they find this cut down.
There were moans and groans because there was
language in the contract to the effect that any new
or changed operation would mean that the old 2100
pound sling load was no longer applicable. If a fac
tory load came down, let us say, instead of having
2100 pounds, it had 3,000 pounds, then all of a sudden
the men were seeing a 3,000-pound load -
Moans And Groans
LG: Well, the moans and groans you heard in '61 had to do
with the fact that there were many changes. In other
words, the men were used to working a certain way and
of course making changes is always a difficult thing.
Ward: And the sling loads and things like that.
LG: Now, I might be getting into an area here - sometimes
it looks like hair-splitting, but it's not; there are
much more important considerations.
Fundamentally, I think that the idea of the
mechanization contract was sound. We were not going
to be able to keep witnesses on the job any more
successfully than the railroad firemen were able to
keep their witnesses on the job; no longer required
because of the diesel. Legislation finally cut
through that whole thing on behalf of the railroads
and to all intents and purposes legislated these guys
out of a job.
With containers coming along, what do you do, break
down a container after it hits the dock and fill it up
again? A container is putting somewhere around twenty
to forty tons of cargo into the hold in one crack; when
815
LG-: your crane is operating efficiently it does so within
a four and one-half minute cycle. When they are con
tained in cells, there would be sort of slides called
runners on which the containers are dropped into the
hold. Once the cycle is begun, let's say a container
ship comes in from another country, they empty out
one cell. Then they start a process where one comes
in and one comes out, so that the cycle is four and
one-half minutes . . .
/
Ward: Taking one in and one out?
LG-: Usually empty out; a full one in. Well, the turn
around on vessels like that changed the whole industry ,
Ward: From ten days to a day or two, huh?
LG: Many a ship could be turned around in 18 hours, like
the Matson ships. The total number of man-hours on a
regular ship might be 10,000; on a container ship,
several hundred, by the time you got through. Highly
revolutionary changes, bound to disturb the men. A
job to which they would be accustomed for many, many
years .
Let us say, oh, a ship from Hawaii comes in with a
load and taking a load of general cargo going back;
you pretty well figure that there would be three or
four days of discharging and another four days of load
ing. So, you had a job of about eight days on the
ship, and the practice was that the gang which started
the job finished the job.
Well, these changes, while they might appear subtle
at first, were deep-going; even more deep-going was a
feeling on the part of the guys that the conditions
that were built up over the years, such as the 2100-
pound sling load, were going down the drain.
I recall, for example, Bjorne Hailing storming up to
the office; he was just fit to be tied. Bjorne was a
very good longshoreman; the guys always called him a
working fool. He believed when you worked, you worked;
none of this four-on, four-off ; he generally worked in
the hold.
And there was fire shooting out of his eyes, scream
ing at Harry, "Three thousand - no, 30 sacks - on a
goddam sling load; a 3,000 pound load, and then they
816
LG-: were belly- packing them on top of that." Harry said
something would have to "be done about that. Something
was finally done; they had to put them on rollers, or
what have you.
This was a breakdown on conditions, as the men saw it,
These unnecessary men might be unnecessary on one job,
had an easy job for one day, but the next day they
might be on some other cargo where they were humping
all the time; they were digging constantly because it
was much tougher work. They might be shoveling copra
or handling hides or cement, so they didn't see the
thing the same way. In other words, I think too much
of it on our part was a quick approach and missing the
mark.
The basic idea of the mechanization program would
have been all right limited to that idea and not
extended into other peripheral areas which finally
resulted in much more fundamental changes, some that
have gone very deep. The basic idea saw the folly of
resisting a machine blindly and in effect conducting
a Luddite program of seeing that the machine does not
go into effect.
The Japanese longshoremen were doing just that;
when they were building grain elevators there - a much
more efficient and intelligent way of handling grain,
by the way, instead of by hand, sack by sack - these
Japanese longshoremen tore them down whenever they
could.
Well, those things, we knew, had a limit, so the
basic idea was of accommodating to change, but making
the employer pay for it; of getting a good, substantial
hunk of the machine. That, in my opinion, is a perfect
ly sound thing.
(Editor's note: The following vignette is an after
thought of the narrator's, inserted here as a colorful
sidelight on the problem of mechanization. It is not
voiced on tape.)
817
An Evening With Chaplin
LG-: Speaking of the Luddite philosophy reminds me of a
time, after Charlie Chaplin came out with his movie,
Modern Times, when I had dinner with him. I had a
friend from college days, Dan James, whom I used to
visit at his home at Carmel. "Well, he was working
for Chaplin on The Great Dictator, and one day Dan
called me and said Chaplin would like to talk to
Harry and me. So we fixed up a date and Harry and
I went down to Los Angeles and had dinner with him.
His wife at that time was Paulette Goddard. She was
at the dinner table with us, but disappeared right
after.
'While talking about The Great Dictator, Chaplin
would jump up every now and then and act out appoint
he was making very comical. After listening and
watching for a while, I said, "I get the feeling
it makes me wonder if there might be some kind of
Luddite thinking behind "Modern Times."
Chaplin replied, very proudly: "I am a Luddite. 11
I shut up, but sometime later in the conversation
I just had to make another remark: "But don't you
realize that if Luddite thinking had prevailed in
the world, there T d be no such thing today as motion
pictures?"
i
The comedian's instant retort was: "That would be
just as well!" Never blinked an eye, (End of Insert)
As a matter of fact, I put together a book on
Men And Machines - a photo story, done primarily by
(Photographer) Otto Hagel; I worked on the text and
the editing, making the point that there were certain
fundamental things we got out of the mechanization
agreement.
One was the concept of shrinking the work force
from the top; that as mechanization came along you
can't apply seniority in the usual way. On most jobs
if a machine comes along where out of a half dozen
workers you displace two people, then the two guys on
the job most recently are the ones who go. Seniority
818
LG: is terribly important, because you have to safeguard
the older guy; otherwise he would be out on his ass
first. Seniority has been one of the fundamental
things that workers fight for from day one.
In the case of mechanization, our idea was that the
way the worker shares in the saving of the machine is
to shrink the work force from the top; let them retire
with a substantially higher pension, as well as a
cash- out.
A man could take an earlier retirement at age 63;
he'd have a bit of bridge that would carry him over
from 63 to 65 the bridge being the amount of money
that he would be short of Social Security; then pick
up the Social Security at age 65. This was the pro
gram of shrinking the work force from the top; I think
the program was eminently sound. It gave the older
men a chance to retire; it gave the younger guy a
chance to move up into some of the more skilled posi-
ti ons .
A guy might have been working in the hold of the
ship for years waiting for a crack at a job such as
a winch-driver or a fork lift driver. That wouldn't
come to him until one of the older guys retired,
because the general principle on the waterfront is that
the older men are the ones who get the jobs which are
a little easier.
It was a well-kept tradition, and enforced. The idea
of some young guy coming down to the waterfront and
spending a half a year on the heavy work and then
getting a softer job; no way - he couldn't get by with
that. There was a kind of self -discipline among these
men.
Even the grievance machinery, under the contract,
is administered by the union. If the employer is
unhappy with the result of the union grievance mach
inery, he then can make an appeal; otherwise it just
sits; the union makes the determination. The
fundamentals of the mechanization program, if
confined to this, was 100 percent sound; plus the
fact, as to whether you got enough or didn't get
enough, as long as you have a union around that's
tough, that's something you bargain out later.
819
LG: Okay, so you got 29 million dollars out of the first
mechanization agreement - or whatever it amounted to -
and you found out later that it wasn't a good bargain,
the next time around you come in and ask for more;
that's how simple it was. As a matter of fact, we
did ask for more, but it took different forms. I
recall the '61 negotiations which ended up as fishbowl
negotiations, where the entire committee was in the
Santa Maria room. You remember that room at 150
Golden Gate?
Ward: Seated about 200.
LG: Yes. Well, the committees sat across the table from
each other; then all the delegates sat in; a very
healthy thing because we were discussing something
very new and different, and the mechanization
agreement, when discussed in those terms, was very
sound.
But to give you what might appear to be a very
miniscule thing, there was a provision in the
agreement, that in the event the employers happened
to load outsize loads, something over 2100 pounds,
the slingload limit was kept in the contract.
In other words, if something were done in the
traditional way, cargo comes in and is put on the
skin of the dock, then along comes a longshore gang
and has to make up a sling load that goes in the
hold of the ship; that would be a regular slingload
and the limit was supposed to apply.
But there was a provision that if there were any
new or changed operations, such as a pre-fabricated
load or a pre-palletized load, it could go into the
hold as is, with an additional bit of language
designed for our protection which read that if the
men were forced to work under onerous conditions
they could stop work until the arbitrator made a
ruling. This provision was almost never exercised.
One of the things I do know is that the average
longshoreman has a tendency to meet the hook. If the
sling load comes down at a certain speed, he's going
to meet that. So, a 3,000 pound load is coming down -
thirty 100-pound sacks, instead of 21 100 -pound
sacks; he's going to try to meet that load; the
necessity to maintain that cycle is built into the
nature of his work; to meet the hook. He's going to
try to meet the hook regardless.
820
LG: Howard Bodine's attitude was absolutely contemptuous.
He said, "You don't know anything you're talking
about; you haven't the slightest goddam idea. "What
you don't realize, Lou, is that these employers add
men and machines in their own interest, they do it
in their own interest to get that ship out faster. "
I said, "That doesn't apply if the men are going to
meet the hook anyway. They are going to work harder,
that's all."
That gets back to Bjorne Hailing. Mechanization
has broken down all the conditions the guys had
known for years. They don't care whether this goddam
load has been made up at Pillsbury Flour Mill, or the
dock. All they know is that the load had 30 sacks on
it instead of 21 sacks; weighed that much more; plus
they had the job of belly-packing. Some were even
screaming that some of the loads were so goddam high
they could hardly reach up to get the top cases.
These things all make a difference in terms of the
day-to-day conditions of the men. That's where you
heard this rumble about what had happened on the
waterfront. Not on the mechanization agreement per
se; on the idea of early retirement; increased pen
sions; the guys by and large were happy with that.
ard: This difference of opinion between you and Bodine,
how did that affect Harry?
LG: Harry just sat through the discussion; nothing changed.
Ward: He didn't take sides?
LG: No, but the language was left as is, including the
reference to "new and changed operations."
Ward: St. Sure approved of the change, of course.
LG: Of course. St. Sure knew perfectly well what he was
doing. He accomplished two things: one, getting rid
of unnecessary men; two, loads must be accepted as
they come in.
Ward: Big things!
LG: Those two things in themselves would be a radical
change, because all other things trail along behind
them; even before the steady-man beef came along;
821
LG: an issue that developed later on and "became a big
thing. Steady men wasn't so much of an issue in 1961
as it was in 1966, "because by then containerization
had come along quite a ways. There is no question
about it but that a container crane is a big invest
ment ...
Ward: You can't handle those weights with the shipte winches?
LG: No - no. Usually, ship's gear has a jumbo boom that
will take some heavy loads when properly rigged.
Ward: Couple or three tons, maybe?
LG: No, it can handle 20 or more, but it works much more
slowly and doesn't work the whole ship. On a con
tainer, you work the whole ship. Ship's gear is not
going to have any thine: like the container cycle.
Taking a good sized container ship, two container
cranes can handle that ship moving back and forth
from hatch to hatch. There's no question that the
investment in a container crane, even in those days,
would be at least a million dollars ...
Ward: Then the ship had to be either rebuilt, or ...
LG: Cranes were built to suit the ship. You had one type
of container crane built for the Matson ships for use
in Hawaii and on the mainland; fundamentally, the
same crane, handling a 24 foot box. Later on the
standard container became 40 feet.
As a matter of fact, there was all kinds of
hassling and haggling going on in Washington, D. C.
in an attempt to get a uniform size container box
all over the world; the one that has finally been
pretty well established is the 40-foot container.
That's the one you see on the highways; they carry
a lot of tonnage, and then the cellular structure
within the ship is built accordingly.
You have a ship built to take 24 foot containers,
and that's a different story from 40 foot containers;
they don't adapt themselves that easily. They tried
to get some that were adaptable, but Matson, in their
case it didn't make too much never-mind; they had
control of both ends of the line, anyway. It wasn't
822
LG: as though they were running into docks or ports
somewhere else where there was a whole variety of
container ships requiring different kinds of gear,
different kinds of cells, and so forth.
Matson had a tight-knit operation and was doing
"beautifully on the container ships. They made
tremendous inroads into the longshore work force,
here, and even "bigger ones in Hawaii; there, for
all intents and purposes all shipping was Matson.
You had the changeover from sack sugar to bulk, all
ships "being loaded "by "bulk; also the changeover from
piece-by-piece cargo handling to containers. Before
long you saw a work force in Hawaii that had been
over 2,000 men shrink to less than a thousand.
Ward: as that about the same percentage of loss as on
the west coast?
LG: I'd say it was higher ....
ard: In Hawaii? Well, for instance, Local 10 in San
Francisco had about 8,000 members - how many has it
now?
LG: When you're using the figure of 8,000 members you're
talking about an unusual period - you're talking
about the period during the war. That was a complete
ly artifically inflated thing. I'd say before World
War II it would be 4,000. Now, I'd say they have
about 2600 jobs.
In Hawaii, a port like Hilo, which had a certain
amount of general cargo because it serviced all the
Big Island, its only export was sugar, dropped from
600 men to something less than 80; places like
Kahalui went down to a handful. So, those are drastic
changes that went on.
Ward: Were there any other problems that affected relation
ships with St. Sure?
LG: Not particularly; fundamentally our attention was
directed towards the mechanization concept per se
which I thought was good. I thought we ought to
concern ourselves to make sure that we had all the
necessary men and secondly, when it came to the
business of accepting loads in whatever form, I
thought the question of conditions to be fundamental.
823
LG-: Those are the areas where we got the first kickbacks
on the agreement. Of course, G-leason's crack was
partly wisecracking, a technique of sniping at the
I1WU to make the ILA look a bit better. He said,
"Aah, you don't have a mechanization agreement, you
just sold the Rule Book."
Ward: "Who said this?
LG: Gleason, Teddy G-leason from the ILA; just being snide,
but his crack about the Rule Book to some extent was
correct. "When it came to the question of putting
the emphasis where it belonged, you allow for certain
changes, but you don't allow for basic changes that
affect the work patterns of men, the workload of the
individual man.
Now, the contract reads that the men had the right
to stop work if they consider the workload to be
"onerous"; in other words, if they're putting in
extra heavy loads and the employers don't add men, so
that it's an onerous work situation, the men can
stop work; in this case an arbitrator is called down -
the men don't leave the job - and takes a look.
If he considers the work onerous, he directs a
change and the men are paid for time lost. If he
doesn't consider it onerous, he can direct the men
to go back to work and they don't get paid for time
lost. But at least there was some attempt at fight
ing back on the question of the onerous work.
Now, you can say that these things become theoreti
cal; they do, in the sense that as the containeriza-
tion spreads, the old work form disappears complete
ly; it isn't as though they have a load that is made
up in a different way; it's in a container, period.
What kind of a load goes in that container? What
the hell difference does that make to anybody? In
many cases containers are not loaded on the docks or
anywhere near the docks; some of them not even at
container stations; they are loaded right at the
factory.
Containers have enormous value to employers. You
take an employer who is shipping electronic equipment,
a lot of it fairly delicate - doesn't want to see it
bounced around, wants to make sure it is packed
824
LG: correctly, doesn't want to get a lot of claims on
"breakage. He finds it a lot "better to have a
container delivered to the factory and have it loaded
there in his way, with the necessary padding. He
gets a good tight load and is also protected, not
only in terms of damage, "but also in terms of pilfer
ing.
So, these things are bound to happen and some
sound theoretical, "but you can't overlook the residue
of anger that this "built up. The guys knew it was
an end of an era; "break "bulk cargo was going.
The average man knew he wasn't going to "be able
to stop the container indefinitely; to go down there
with a bunch of bunsen burners and destroy them as
they came down wouldn't work; nothing else would work,
Eventually the employers would take the bugs out of
any attempt to screw it up.
Comparisons With The ILA
LG: The ILA insists that when they have container
operations they still have a full longshore gang; and
the rest of them just watch it; take turns in the
operations. Just how true that is, I don't know; you
get different accounts. "While today the problem
becomes more and more theoretical as the container
comes along, at that time it wasn't.
ard: Are you saying you are not sure whether the ILA got
better conditions under mechanization?
LG: I don't think they did - no.
Ward: That's the general belief, I gather.
LG: The general belief was that when it came to the
guaranteed annual wage they got a better deal than
we did at first. It's no longer true. Initially
they got a guarantee of a 40-hour week, 52 weeks out
of the year, and they got a system through which a
lot of the men really didn't have to work. They were
.lust riding the gravy train, because under their
dispatch system through these waterfront commission
825
LG: halls they had men classified in different groups -
A, B, C, D, E and P. Well, let us say a guy was in
the A group; the guy in the P group would be called
first, and he would be the one who had to take the
job. If the guy in the A group knew there wasn't
going to be any job, he just went and checked in at
the hall and drove his cab for the day. At first
that looked good but a lot of it has been
straightened out.
I guess the other feeling that developed around
the west coast waterfronts was that with all these
changes coming about, and with the union leadership L s
willingness to give up on some of these things with
out more of a battle - there was a determination not
to accept everything.
The G-uaranteed Annual Wage
LG: I think there was a developing feeling that things
were going by the board too easily. The mechanization
program was good, but some of the things that were
let go were not good. This became more distinct when
later on the mechanization program was changed over
to the guaranteed annual wage, which prevails right
now. The mechanization program per se is different.
You have early retirement at 62. The pensions are
high; a good pension.
Ward: How much is it?
LG: Pour hundred and fifty dollars and Social Security.
I guess they still have the bridge between 62 and 65,
so it isn't as though they haven't made progress.
But something else has happened. I think people
didn't read the membership right, because while there
were a number of workers who felt that the guaranteed
annual wage was a big deal, many of them - and I think
this is still true of the vast majority of the long
shoremen up and down the coast - don't want a
handout; they would rather have the work. With some
people the idea just never sat right -that in order to
pick up your guaranteed annual wage, - your pay
guarantee, PGP, as they call it - you also have to
pick up your unemployment insurance, where a port had
826
LG: unemployment. San Francisco was a good example.
Also there were some men who had a completely differ
ent attitude toward work. If they never worked a
day and picked up the pay guarantee, that was fine
with them. And then they might pick up another little
job if they wanted a bit more money. With the pay
guarantee pushed up to somewhere around $12,000,
$16,000 and $18,000 now, they figured if they never
did any work it was okay with them.
There would be a lot of manoeuvering to get on
"dead boards", boards that rarely moved, like a night
dock board. Those would be men hired for dock work
at night, whereas in most cases the dock work is done
during the day. A guy on a night dock board might
not be dispatched once a month. As far as he was
concerned that was okay. The employers didn't like
the idea, either because they wanted to force the
people to work or force them out of the industry.
They began to think of all kinds of schemes to force
these men off the dead boards.
Then you saw another thing happening: the guy who
wanted to work, but there wasn't enough work around
in some ports. These days things have improved a
little bit, but then men were lucky to get three days
a week. Well, the man who got three days a week was
not eligible for the pay guarantee. He was guaran
teed 36 hours a week; if he got 3 days a week ....
Ward: Twenty-four hours?
LG: No. They get nine hours pay for eight hours work,
and they are guaranteed nine hours pay. Three days
a week would be 27, and four days would be 36 hours.
If a guy found his work diluted because they were
dissolving a dead board, then he was all out of shape.
He would say, "I don't eive a goddam if that guy
doesn't want to work, that's his business; let the
employer pay for it. I don't want him diluting what
ever work opportunity I have. I don't feel like using
this. guaranteed wage. Most of us looked at it to
begin with as something simply to fall back on in case
of a crisis - and that's all." Instead it became a
vay of life. There are some ports where the pay
guarantee, if it is used at all, is so rare that it
is almost unknown. In ports like Portland and Los
Angeles, it is rare. San Francisco has had a very
827
LG: bad siege, a very substantial decline in work. I
don't think it's because the shipping lines are
passing up the port. It could be just traffic
patterns, where the cargo is emanating from and
where it is going.
It might be that San Francisco no longer carries
the same prominence as it did before. A lot more
cargo these days is moving through Los Angeles.
Portland, which everybody figured would die because
you have the long haul up the river, instead is
prospering, doing extremely well. I think the
situation warrants study.
Then other problems grew up; under the '66 agree
ment the employers were allowed to have steady men.
The employers were arguing that these new cranes
were expensive equipment; they didn't want green men
on the crane on account of the possibilities of
damage .
A great deal of damage could be done, particularly
if somebody failed to handle a container right, or
it wasn't properly slid into the cell. They wanted
what they called steady men and the union agreed,
based on whatever deal the employer could make with
the individual man. In other words, the individual
man could bargain for whatever he could get. Natur
ally, it would have to be above the union scale.
With the advent of steady men something else took
place, the dilution of work opportunity for the other
men in the hall. Let me just give you an example:
Portland has container piers now and they do a lot
of container work. They are all convinced that no
man should work steady for an employer. So the
crane drivers are all rotated through the hall; all
competent men and they all do a good job.
Ward: Any member?
LG: No, not any member. Men who are qualified crane
drivers; to be a qualified crane driver you take
training and pass a test. No, no, you just can't
walk in and say, "Okay, put me on the crane driver's
job." It has to be a qualified man and they maintain
this rotation.
828
LG-: The same rotation took place in the port of Seattle,
where the employers broke through in a vicious and
terrible way which does a lot of harm. There's no
way of looking at it happily, even though you might
understand it. They got a group of black members to
go steady as crane drivers - some ten.
That became a rankling issue in the local. Here's
a union that fought all its life for racial equality,
particularly in the business of promotions. The
union had a big battle in getting blacks into the
skilled categories; getting blacks, for example, to
be hired as walking bosses -which we had done .
These are big accomplishments and here the employers
use the blacks as steady men in conflict with the
rest of the guys. It is an issue that rankles.
Of course, the black man could say with just about
equal right that he's been screwed out of these jobs
for years; here's a chance to finally go steady and
get a better break in life, and he has the right to
take it. I don't think the logic holds up. I think
it is far more important that he remain a good solid
comrade to the guy in the hall, even though it can be
said that okay, the black man still has to carry an
extra burden.
I think he does, yes, because the fight isn't done
until you achieve basic equality. The conflict
around the steady man issue resulted in dumping the
last contract just a couple of months ago in the port
of San Francisco; but the ports voted for it as a
whole. In the northwest local it won handily, and it
passed in Los Angeles by a small majority, but San
Francisco voted against it. I'd say the main reason
that vote took place was because of this issue -
what they call 9.43 steady men.
Veil, the steady man issue became a highly symbol
ic thing to the employers. I can understand where
they need steady men, but its real deep-going
implication to the employer is that once you're able
to get a steady man, this would amount to the same
situation as the preferred gang before the union
started.
Once you have a steady man, the loyalty of the
man goes to the employer first and not to the union
first. I think the men smelled it. At least, a few
829
LG-: changes were made in the new contract which ought to
improve the situation. They are forcing the employer
to double the number of steady men and perhaps triple
it, so as to dilute their hours. Of course, if you
made every crane driver a steady man, no problem
then, everything would be even-steven.
The whole principle of equalization of work oppor
tunities is what it amounts to. We don't have
equalization of earnings under the contract; we have
equalization of work opportunity, the basic idea
being that under the system of rotary dispatch a man
took his job as his turn came along. Come the end
of the year their earnings in each category would be
approximately the same.
Obviously, the winch driver would have an earnings
differential; but a hold man or a dock man, come the
end of the year, his earnings would be the same as
the others in his category. With the advent of
steady men, the concept of equalization begins to go
out of the window. The split is most dangerous
because the men are pitted against each other, with
some of the guys attached to the union and some of
the guys attached to the employer.
As some of the union guys put it, "Christ Almighty,
the men in the union hall are the overflow guys, and
when the employers need some men in addition to the
steady men, they go to the union." Quite true; there
aren't that many steady men. The total number in San
Francisco can't be more than 200. It sure raises
hell; that's when the guys began to feel that what
they called conditions ....
##
What Are "Conditions"?
Ward: You were just about to mention something else as the
cause of complaint.
LG-: Well, the longshoreman's idea of conditions is quite
different from that of the average worker. The
average worker feels that conditions on the job mean
he's not worked too fast, he gets a decent coffee
830
LG: break, an adequate lunch, time, there are clean rest
rooms, and supervision isn't looking down his neck
all the time. The longshoreman was much more
independent. There is a whole background and tradi
tion to this; an awful lot grew out of the '34 strike
and the victory and all the battles that went on
afterwards.
Mien St. Sure talked about all these so-called
violations of the agreement, he wasn't so far off by
his standards, but the longshoreman wasn't all that
upset by it. He didn't figure it was a violation of
the agreement. He said, "So, what the hell, we final
ly got some decent conditions; the employer is making
his money, we know that; he passes it along."
Conditions included working when you pleased. If
you wanted a day off, you took a day off. If you
didn't feel like working that morning, so you didn't
turn to. The next day you'd plug in; the low man out
system, you'd take your turn if you worked.
e had guys who for years never worked the week
when the horses were running; they'd work Friday
night, Saturday and Sunday - figured they made them
selves a paycheck with three days at overtime. Come
Monday, they were down at the race track. Their way
of living, that's all, and the waterfront meant that
to them; other guys would work all the time. There
weren't many who were mavericks to that extent.
In some of the things written by Eric Hoffer
(a longshoreman whose writings have been widely
published) he talks about life on the waterfront.
Eric Hoffer was always a good longshoreman and a hard
worker. He had a practice that before he left the
job, he would build a load for the next gang; that
was his token of transferring the work, rather a
comradely custom. About longshoring, one of the
things he wrote about was the beauty of the freedom.
"When he wanted a day to think, to walk through Golden
Gate Park - he was writing all the time - he just
took a day off to do it. This feeling of liberty is
not necessarily important whether you exercise it;
it's whether you have it.
So, these are the things a number of the guys saw
slipping away from them. It became more and more the
underlying cause for the flare-up in 1971, when the
contract ran out; the strike was inevitable.
831
"Ward: ell, did Harry "blame you? Who got the blame for
this loss of conditions?
LG-: It pretty well centered around Harry and the Coast
Committee. e had some bad explosions in 1961 or
1962. I think it was in 1961 or 1962 when the ILWU
agreed with the PMA on something concerning workers
at the east bay marine terminals - Encinal, Howard
Terminal, Parr and Richmond. The workers belonged
to Local 6 and they had been organized back in 1934
and '35. At that time the longshoremen didn't even
want them because they were getting less than the
longshore rate of pay.
Terminal workers are sort of warehousemen, and
the Local 6 guys did a hell of a job in organizing
them; they brought their contracts up to the same
rate of pay as the longshoremen, except for the eight
hour day instead of the six. The terminal operators,
on the other hand, were having themselves a picnic
at the expense of the shipowners, passing the bill
along to them all the time. The shipowners had to
use the terminals because those were where the ships
went in; the areas that had the biggest dockside
storage, both for assembly and discharge of cargo.
The Coast Committee made an agreement when I was
out of town, or something. "When I got back I found
out the Committee had agreed to turn these terminal
workers over' to Longshore. So, I said to Harry,
"Turning them over to Longshore might make sense;
fundamentally they are longshoremen and have been
for years; they have their pension fund, they have
their dowry, the mechanization fund. But on the
other hand, I'd be much opposed to turning them over
unless every single thing they presently have in the
way of conditions and rights, such as seniority
rights and so forth, is guaranteed."
Harry said, "ell, if you don't go along with the
agreement, we'll just send the longshoremen in there
to do the work." And I said, "Oh, no, you don't!
That's not going to happen because those longshore
men are not going to go through the terminal workers
picket line; I think you know these terminal workers.'
They're a very tough group - a very loyal group.
Christ, you could have a beef anywhere in Oakland and
whistle and all those terminal workers would be off
832
LG: the job in five minutes. Bob Moore and Paul Heide
worked down, there. So did Chili. Anyway, I wasn't
going to get pushed around by that. I met with Chili
and the others and said, "What do you guys think of
this?" Veil, they were disturbed and upset.
Ward: It's a hell of a thing, right in your own union, to
get into a mess like that.
LG: Plus the fact that the terminal workers were guys
who not only stuck with the union but had taken on
every beef you could think of. I remember the time
we had that big battle at Gal Pack ....
Ward: Was this Harry's idea, or was it St. Sure's idea?
LG: It was St. Sure's idea; he wanted the terminal
workers . . .
Ward: And Harry went along with it?
LG-: Sure, he went along with it.
Ward: Veil, what did St. Sure have to gain by that?
LG: They wanted to get rid of the terminal operator -
oh, the terminal operator could still operate the
terminal. The employers wanted to have those guys
in under the Longshore contract so as to have a
degree of control over them.
Ward: The conditions were a little more favorable too
from the employer's point of view, under the Long
shore agreement than under the Warehouse agreement,
isn't that so?
LG: The Warehouse agreement set down rules that were out
of this world in terms of conditions. If, for example,
a few cases had to be picked up somewhere, you'd
have your forklift driver; then a warehouseman would
go along with him to load those few cases on, and a
clerk would go along at the same time to check them.
Even when it came to discharging trucks, they had
complete control.
The truck driver was given ten feet from the tail
end of his truck, you see, and that's where the stuff
had to be left. He couldn't move all over the place
833
IG: and drop his cargo just anywhere around the dock,
whereas in longshore they were watching these
teamsters bring down their own fork lifts, in effect
using the entire dock area as their own.
Big differences there, Mg changes. The terminal
workers had really maintained conditions over the
years, so this became a very sharp point of conten
tion. I said, "I'll take charge of the question.
The issue is not whether they move over; let's get
that one out of the way. I'm not going to have that
kind of a fight, although if you try to force it,
there will be a fight." I said, "The only thing
I'm concerned about is that these men be protected."
And I drafted a four- way agreement. I wouldn't
recommend it to the terminal workers at all until
it was signed by both the ILWU and the PMA, by Local
10, by Local 6 and finally ratified by the terminal
workers; it had to be a four- way agreement so nobody
could chisel out later.
Ward: It was signed by all four of them?
LG: Yes; it gave the terminal worker full seniority
rights as though he had been a longshoreman from the
day he started as a terminal worker. If he had twenty
five years on the terminals, he went in to Longshore
with 25 years.
That also meant that if there was an opening in
the (ILWD Ship) Clerks - and that is also based on
seniority - if he had enough seniority he could have
a crack at the job. I remember later on getting
some flack, completely unwarranted in my opinion; I
think a lot of it was just straight Warehouse baiting,
because guys like Smitty were just plain insane.
Smitty (Carl Smith) would say, "We don't want those
men - we just want their work." I said, "You're out
of luck, that's all."
Ward: Were these black longshoremen who were bumped down on
account - - ?
LG: They weren't bumped down: it just meant there was
somebody in ahead of them, yes. That was the
agreement made by the PMA and I was going to carry-
it out to the letter - not just any vague language,
"men and machines may be added," or any crap like
that. There was going to be firm, tight language.
834
LG: The document is still around and it protects the
terminal workers, including setting up a terminal
"board.
Ward: It's almost as though you were discussing a merger
between two separate unions.
LG: Damn near; I'll never forget, Harry and the Coast
Committee were working on something or other and I
said, "Well, I'm leaving for this meeting on the
terminal workers." Harry or somebody had been talk
ing to St. Sure, because he turned around to me,
terribly angry about something, and said, "Don't you
try to fuck St. Sure around on this sort of thing."
I said, "Oh, he can take care of himself." I went
right ahead. I don't think I was ever quite forgiven,
because Harry was that way. It was one thing, if
you disagreed with him and later came back and said,
"I made a mistake," and kissed his ring which he
carried in his back pocket.
Ward: Was that the first serious time you crossed Harry
on St. Sure?
LG: Yes. That was the first time I really crossed him.
At the opening of the 1966 negotiations we got into
a clash. I was going to make a motion before the
Coast Committee and Harry was inviting me to make
the motion, because he knew that I might get a
second to it, but that it would be voted down.
St. Sure took a position in the second negotia
tions in 1966 that they had already paid for the
mechanization agreement in '61 and they "weren't
going to pay for the same refrigerator twice"; that
was it. So, I took the position, "In that case,
tell the employers the negotiations are finished,
that's all. We'll go the hard way."
Ward: And you made the motion?
LG: No, I didn't make the motion. Harry said, "Why don't
you make the motion?" But then it would have died.
To make a motion that is lost, then you're worse off.
That's the internal politics of the situation.
835
LG-: I felt keenly about it and I said, "We told you at
the time that nobody knew whether we got too much
out of the agreement or too little; we didn't know
whether the employers got the better end of the
stick or the short end. That's the reason contracts
are around and that's the reason they're open once
in a while."
ard: I've heard the explanation of Harry's position on
the '61 mechanization agreement; he didn't realize
something that St. Sure very well knew: the vast
extent of the containerization program, how world
wide and how important it was going to become.
Would you say that's so?
LG: That could be so. I really don't know. I don't
know whether St. Sure knew, but I do know what
happened.
Ward: Well, what happened?
LG: The containerization program just bloomed all of a
sudden. I mean whoof !
Ward: Once they had the agreement.
LG: I don't think it had anything to do with the agree
ment. I think it had more to do with top-level
decisions that were being made all over the world
by different shipping companies in Norway, in Germany,
in the United States. They were being made where
all kinds of shipowners were making decisions, some
of which had to be made years in advance. They're
constantly making decisions; this ship has a certain
number of years of life. In making a decision ten
years before a ship is finished - or its normal
utilization is finished and you're going to sell it
off as a tramp - the decision then is what is the
new vessel you order? You're not going to order a
Liberty any more; is it going to be a C-3 or a
container ship?
Ward: Now, you were on the negotiating committee in '61?
Weren't you?
LG: Yes.
Ward: Now, did you personally have any idea of the world
wide scope of this planning you have been describing?
836
LG: No, I did have a feeling that mechanization was com
ing along and there was nothing could stop it.
Ward: But you had no idea of the scope?
LG: No; for example, the principal mechanization we saw
in '61 was Matson; questions arose in our minds.
I know that I started reading a lot of stuff to find
out whether or not containers could "be introduced in
Japan.
A number of people who knew a good deal about
Japan said, "We don't think so, because their high
ways won't take it; the streets are too narrow: how
in the hell are you going to manoeuver a container
around those streets?" They were quite wrong;
containers were introduced in Japan on a big scale.
Everything coming from Japan now is in containerized
vessels.
Ward: Well, all right, so you weren't aware of the scope.
Would you say it is safe to assume that St. Sure was
aware of the potential scope?
LG: He might have known more - yes; but a labor relations
guy for the employers isn't necessarily privy to all
their executive discussions. Shipowners in many
ways are very cagey. They go to great efforts to
keep certain trade secrets away from other employers.
For example, somebody came along with the idea
of the LASH ships. That's sort of a big barge
aboard ship. It's not a barge in the small sense
of the word; it carries about 800 tons. The barge
is loaded, the ship is enormous. I don't know how
many feet it runs, but it must be well over 300 feet.
It has two huge lifts at the ass end of the ship.
These barges come alongside, are pushed in by a tug
and picked up with these lifts. They go inside the
ship on rollers, one barge after the other. I went
down there not too many years ago when PPE (Pacific
Par East) had introduced the LASH ships, and I
happened to be talking to Bob Pfeiffer, head of
Matson, a very smart shipowner and operator. I
asked, "What do you think of the ships?" "Yon
couldn't give them to me," he said.
837
LG: Here was an outfit that had been in containers all
these years; they were not too happy with their 24-
foot containers "because they could not be made
universal. They had ventured into a joint understand
ing with the Japanese. They taught the Japanese the
container method, at which point Mat son thought they
would be operating out of Japan.
Only one small thing happened; Matson discovered
that the cargo disappeared. Japanese employers are
so goddam tight that once they had picked up the
container technique - and they were very friendly
about all this; I'm sure they thanked Matson and took
them out to dinners - when it came to soliciting
cargo, the Japanese went to Japanese. All Matson got
was a lot of experience and nothing more . . .
Ward: And a lot of dinners?
LG: And a lot of dinners. Whether St. Sure knew the
proportions of ...
Ward: Well, what I'm trying to get at is whether he withheld
information deliberately to insure his success in
negotiations; anything a little bit tricky.
LG: Yes, let's say he knew all that. I would not expect
him to tell us all that across the table.
Ward: If Harry ever suspected that he did, art least Harry
didn't resent it?
LG: Oh, on that sort of thing I think Harry had an
intelligent approach to negotiations. He didn't see
negotiations as the employers coming in with a Bible
on which they had to take an oath of honesty. He
figured they were in there to do the best job they
could; and the union's job was to do the best job we
could.
If the employer happens to take a screwing, well,
that's our good luck; the other way around, well,
win some, lose some. It's a much more salutary way
of looking at negotiations than this business of
getting morally indignant because the employer is
being a bad man. What is he anyway, an angel?
Ward: But I got the impression a while ago that you were
saying "Well, if we didn't get enough in '61, we'll
do. something about it in '66," and here is St. Sure . ,
838
LG: That's the reason I got so pissed off in '66 when
they said they were not going to pay for that
refrigerator a second time.
Ward: He didn't pay for it the second time, did he?
LG-: Oh, they had to pay for it another way ....
Ward: Miat other way?
LG: The first mechanization program provided a fund of
$29,000,000, which included the so-called "down
payment" prior to 1961 of $1,500,000. Of the
29,000,000, a portion was set aside for pensions
and a cash payout to pensioners of $7,900. By 1966
the wage guarantee portion of the fund, not having
been used, was divided among the "A" men, with each
man getting $1,300. The 1966 agreement included
improvements in pension, as well as an increase in
payout on retirement. But later we phased out the
cash payout and moved into the pay guarantee plan.
So they did have to pay for the refrigerator again.
But, as to whether they paid enough, is another
story. A lot of the members felt the employers had
never paid enough, which is understandable. Here is
a group of longshoremen; they see a vessel and they
know that ordinarily it was an eight-day job, or
something like that, with regular handling of cargo.
Now they see the cranes and everything else and
know that that ship is going to be turned around in
less than 24 hours. It'll be in and out, and then
there's the next job to be looked for. So, there's
bound to be a very deep-seated feeling that the
employers have gotten an awful lot out of this thing;
and no matter how much the men get, it's not enough.
I think that is a by-product of change. I don't
think you're ever going to completely change the
thinking of people on that score. You might under
a socialist society, where the benefits come in other
forms - and they do come in some other forms.
Other things happened, too, in other words, some
of these things - these freedoms longshoremen saw
going down the drain because of the pay guarantee.
You had to be available, be down at the hall, work
or no work, a certain number of days. A lot of the
839
LG-: men resented the loss of freedom of movement; taking
off days, working when they pleased. It was more
difficult in a place like San Francisco, where the
work was slim pickings. If you were going to pick
up a pay guarantee, you had to be down there every
day. No longer could you take just weekends or four
days; the work was not as easily available.
There was what really amounted to surplus men, in
the case of San Francisco. e registered far more
longshoremen in San Francisco than was necessary. A
lot of the guys, particularly the old-timers, felt
that this was something that was done because St.
Sure wanted it. The employers wanted it, so we
registered that many more men.
Ward: Did Harry have any control over it or was that Local
10' s business - the extra registration?
LG: No; actually the Coast Committee has a lot to do
with it, because when a longshoreman is registered
now he gets coast-wise registration.
Ward: I see, so then Harry did have something to do with
it?
LG: Yes, he did; he went along with the idea. They
registered 750 men at one crack; you remember the
lines; my god, some 5,000 applicants turned up.
Everybody wanted to be a longshoreman; big pay and
good work.
Ward: And you say that this was part of St. Sure's program?
LG: Yes, he wanted the extra men. At that particular
time maybe the work was good. It was for a little
while, but it fell off. Other ports handled -the
thing much more wisely and much more slowly - they
didn't agree to so many registrations, the net result
being that they are not as badly off.
In other words, internicine quarreling takes place
the moment work is short. If work is good in any
port, the mechanization agreement doesn't mean much.
If work is plentiful and good, the guys are fairly
well satisfied.
840
ard: It's interesting; I can see why St. Sure wanted it,
but I can't see why Harry went along.
LG-: I don't know why he went along. At that phase of
the game, Harry was pretty well going along with
every thing St. Sure wanted; at least it struck me
that way.
ard: I've heard you say that so far as Harry was concerned,
St. Sure could do no wrong.
LG: Just about. St. Sure could charm the birds out of
the trees. He was a very likeable scoundrel.
ard: Well, do you think we have fairly well covered that
relati onship?
LG: I think so. To Harry, the pay guarantee was one of
the biggest achievements in the world. He can't
understand, for example, how anybody can object to
that last longshore agreement. Most of his remarks
were "How can anybody object?" Look at what the pay
guarantee is going up to; it's a substantial hunk
of dough.
Ward: About 018,000 now?
LG: Yep; well, he kept saying, "How can they object to
that?" I think what Harry is missing completely
is while that may be acceptable to some of the guys,
there is a hard core of simply unreconstructible
militants. These are guys whose philosophy of life
is leftwing, anti-capitalist. They may have to
adjust to the system because that's where you get
your paycheck, but they sure as hell don't think
with it in any manner, shape or form.
And they know the other things that go on. They
see that pay guarantee as a control on their freedom.
If the longshoremen were angry about something, they
walked off the job; if there was an un-American
Activities Committee in town that they figured was
ripping up our union, all of a sudden there were
3,000 longshoremen in front of City Hall. I don't
think that made the un-American Activities Committee
very happy.
Ward: This way of thinking and acting is not confined to
American longshoremen; it's pretty much world wide
and has been for hundreds of years.
841
LG: It's a chronic trait among longshoremen all over the
world; longshoremen are a lot more internationally
minded because they are in contact with international
workers all the time; seamen from different parts
of the world . . .
Ward: That was how you won the '48 strike . . .
LG-: Yes, the '48 strike was a "big thing, but the show
down you're referring to came in Washington, B.C.
in 1946.
Ward: That's right - '46.
LG: Yes, and all that support from all over the world.
You're right; it's a very common thing.
Like that funny incident; my wife and I took a
trip on an Israeli ship. We had to pick it up in
Montreal and I was way under the weather and was
taking some time off. I managed to grab this ship
because it was going to Israel and I wanted to spend
a few days looking around.
Well, we left Montreal late, towards winter, so
we were stuck there about a week. Luckily the
skipper on the ship turned out to be a guy I'd met
before; he was both translator, friend, chess
companion and guide - a great guy named Aaron Stark.
Ward: He was the guy who helped you out in Genoa?
LG: Yes, so I asked him one day, "I'd like to have some
of the longshoremen for lunch." He said, "Great,
bring them here for lunch. Anything we can do, you
know, to make friends with these guys . . .
Ward: What port was this?
LG: Genoa. So, we bring them down to the ship and
they're all sitting with their backs to the port
holes and I'm sitting together with Stark and Terry.
The longshoremen are a sort of a tri-partite group;
the leadership is divided between Social Democrats,
Communists, and people who are neither.
One guy, very tough, obviously the Communist of
the group, knew a lot about the operation and I told
him, "You know we were tied up in the stream there
842
LG: for three or four days." And he said, "Well, it's
your fault; you could have sent us a telegram and we
would have sent a "boat out." I asked, ""Why was the
ship tied up?" "Oh, we had a little bit of a strike
on." ""Why?" "Well, mostly it had to do with the
men working nights before the holidays; they wanted
holiday time." I said, "Is everything straightened
out now?" He said, "Oh, yeah, sure; there are no
problems of any kind and the port is working fine."
And I'm looking out the porthole and there they use
gantry cranes on the dock. It's not yet 12 o'clock -
nowhere near it, about 11:30. We were having drinks,
about to have lunch, and I see the guys climbing
down the gantry cranes; one after the other, they're
stopping.
And I turn to this guy and I say, "Everything's
settled now - everything is fine?" "Oh, yeah, yeah."
I said, "Well, how come all those guys are walking
off the ship?" He turns around; he knew what was
going on, clear as a bell; these guys had some
beef which hadn't been settled yet, and all the
union officials were aboard our ship. "Okay, fellas,
now do you understand what we're saying?" (laughter)
843
XXII END OF AN ERA
(Interview 30: 17 October, 1978)
Conventional Operations Disappear
Ward: Lou, when you were discussing the effects on the
longshoremen of the Guaranteed Annual Wage you had
something more to add to that.
LG: Yes, I mentioned some of the side effects; part of
it, I think, was done with honest intentions but
without recognition of a certain basic fact - the
work habit of the longshoremen in meeting the hook
in regard to the size of the load. I think there
could have been much more stringent protection of
the men in conventional operations: it's true, ,
however, that the conventional operations were also
disappearing very quickly. As a matter of fact, as
of this time, conventional operation is an exception,
not the rule.
One of the other factors that arose before long
was not just a question of availability. A whole
series of disputes arose; some of them were resolv
ed so that in the event men walked off the job - as
they had done before because they felt the work
wasn't being handled right or because it was unsafe -
they could walk off rather than, continue and risk
life or limb. In matters of safety there were
certain improvements.
There was a provision written in the contract
on onerous work; if they considered the job onerous
they could work around it until the arbitrator got
down there and made a ruling.
844
LG-: But if the men walked off a ship or stopped work
for whatever reason, initially the employers would
attempt to penalize the entire port. I think it
has been narrowed down so that the penalty doesn't
apply to all the longshoremen, but it does apply
in terms of eligibility for the pay guarantee of
the men involved.
Well, when work in a port is good, that doesn't
make much never-mind, because they're not going to
draw the pay guarantee anyway. If there is a lot
of work in the port and for one reason or another
they have to stop for some protest or demonstration,
they're just going to stop; the work is there any
way and they're going to earn more than the pay
guarantee would provide.
However, where work was not good, where men
were getting three days a week, or four at the
most, then penalizing them could be a very heavy
deterrent to taking any stop-work action.
Ward: I think you said that stop-work for any cause had
virtually disappeared from the waterfront, compared
to what it used to be.
LG-: Yes, there are still the stop-work meetings; those
that are provided for under the contract.
Ward: But not the spontaneous things?
LG: The spontaneous walk-off s, the demonstrations. I
recall when we had this big mass meeting in front
of the Federal building at the time of the bombing
in Birmingham. Such things became more and more
of a rarity, practically unknown. Some of the
actions taken by the longshoremen, like the refusal
to handle cargo to Chile after the assassination of
President Allende, were a bit difficult to implement
because of the penalty provisions involved.
It's understandable; the employers were insis
tent on that for obvious reasons - they were not
going to pay a guarantee to men and have them off
for several days during a political demonstration.
As to how you weigh these things; what it does
to the whole historical background of the long
shoreman, the tradition of the equalization of work,
845
LG-: the high degree of democracy, the willingness to
walk off the job and exercise their economic power;
as to how you measure these things over the long
pull, I guess the "best way to judge is to see how
things change as the years go by.
But it is a new era; longshoring is just not the
same as it used to be. The container has made
unbelievable changes, and also in the handling of
large pre- fabricated loads, such as lumber. The
industry was bound to change; whether these changes
would result in a kind of work force that was more
highly subjected to discipline, more comparable to
an ordinary factory job, would be an important
determinant.
How you measure that is hard to say. Some of
the old timers just simply say, "Well, it's the
end of an era - that's all." Their right to walk
off the job; in many cases the discipline was
moderate or almost non-existent.
Ward: Well, the contracts didn't give them the right to
walk off, did they?
LG: No.
Ward: They didn't penalize them, either?
LG-: Not to speak of, particularly where the union felt
that these walk-off s were called for. Sure, some
of these things might have been done with a bit
of ....
Ward: Whimsical?
LG: No, not whimsical. In some cases you had that,
yes, but when you had all these scrap iron beefs -
those were not whimsical at all. Sure there might
have been an understanding; the Chinese understood
very quickly because they realized if there was a
picket line down there, the men wouldn't go to work,
That didn't take a lot of communication or convic
tion of anybody; the way the Chinese community felt
about the Japanese invasion was so strong, you were
bound to get these demonstrations.
Whether these things were by-products of the
nature of the industry as it was constructed at
that time is another question. Were they an
846
LG: aberration in the history of American trade union
ism? These are questions that are hard to weigh;
it's also a serious question, open to discussion,
as to whether all the emphasis should have gone as
it finally did to the question of pay guarantees -
PGP.
It's true, the hourly rate had gone up very
substantially, particularly in the last contract,
a good contract, by and large. On the question
of steady men, I think the union has begun to find
the road back.
##
LG: During those years - 1957 and 1958 - as I recall,
there were very intensive discussions. As a matter
of fact around one of those contracts - it might
have been the 1957 contract or ' 58 - there was a
sharp division in the union on just cutting the
workday down from nine to eight hours.
The way the longshore gangs were handled up and
down the coast up until that time, it was generally
assumed they worked a nine-hour shift. During the
day you worked six hours straight time and three
hours at overtime; at night it was a nine-hour
shift, all at overtime. That's the way the long
shore contract reads - there's only six straight
time hours in a day; that was the maximum.
After hectic discussion in negotiations and with
our own committee, there was general agreement that
the main push ought to be to cut the workday and
the first move had to be from nine to eight.
During this period Harry kept hammering, I thought,
very correctly and with good sound trade unionism
behind it, that the important thing was to cut the
workday.
Ward: That was also because you had the surplus member
ship at that time, didn't you?
LG: Not particularly. There was a problem of surplus
membership for a short while in San Francisco at
the end of World War II, but that problem had been
resolved. The ratio between the size of the work
force and the work was in a fairly good balance.
847
Ward: Why were you cutting down the hours of work, then?
LG: That's where I think Harry was very much on the
beam. What had happened, particularly during
wartime, was that the guys had gotten accustomed
to getting in a lot of overtime work; a lot of
overtime pay. This can become a real, insidious,
habit-forming thing where, in effect, the guy is
living on overtime. He assumes that overtime is
part of his paycheck.
I recall discussions in the longshore caucus
where good guys - like Gordon Giblin from Los
Angeles - were arguing, shortly after the war, that
the men couldn't afford to take vacations at the
regular 36 or 40 hours pay; they were accustomed to
making much more. He said, "Why, just to cover our
regular bills takes more than that."
This can become a real sickness, you know. It
can eat into the whole psychology of guys, particu
larly where you start chasing that buck, with the
emphasis we have in this country on material things.
These were serious arguments.
A night man - they used to be called "sun dodgers" -
was accustomed to working nights all the time, nine
hours every night; sometimes an extra hour, because
a ship had to sail or shift. That man at the end
of the week has worked five or six days; all over
time hours.
You then talk of his vacation; one of the things
we always fought for was that when you got a
vacation, you took a vacation. You were absolutely
prohibited from working longshore. You got these
rumbles all the time, "Look, I've got a hardship
case; I need money. Why can't I just collect my
vacation pay?"
r
These were things the union fought against very
strenuously. So, it was either in '56 or '57,
thereabouts, when the contract provided finally for
cutting down the normal work day - with certain
exceptions - from nine to eight hours. The coast
wise vote on that was very close - it passed by
only a few hundred votes. To the guys that meant
a cut in pay, even though we got a pay increase
848
LG-: at the time. Maybe it didn't quite make up every
nickel of the loss, "but it approximately did.
The Shorter Work eek
LG-: Harry's position was that cutting the hours of
work is an issue that should be handled on merits.
The slogans that you see around such as "30 hours
work with 40 hours pay" are really misleading.
Anybody is in favor of that; anybody who is working
a regular job, 40 hours, eight hours a day, just
raise the slogan "let's cut back the hours to 30
hours"; unless the man is out of his mind, why
should he want to work 40 when he can work 30 and
be done?
But that's not the way it works out; the moment
you put the issue in that form then you in effect
say that you've got to get the 40 hours pay before
you can cut the number of hours of work. If the
labor movement had followed in that direction in
definitely, I doubt if the work week would ever
have been cut.
In the initial eight-hour day movement, the
program was eight hours work, eight hours rest,
eight hours leisure; a cut to eight hours. From
a trade union point of view, once you cut the hours
of work, they just automatically take care of
themselves; there's bound to be a push to get that
lost money up there so there is an adequate income
at the end of the shorter work day.
In longshore we also got what was called a
"short shift"; where the employer wanted to get
more than 16 hours of work out of a day, he could
call in a short shift. That was a shift that
worked for five hours from, say, 2 a.m. to 7 a.m.
and then got paid for nine hours work; in other
words, a rate slightly higher than even the over
time rate.
Ward: They must want to have the work done pretty badly
to pay that kind of wages.
849
LG: Only when they wanted to ship out in a hurry, you
see. Fundamentally, as far as the employer is
concerned, that ship only makes money when it's on
the high seas. Once in port, it's losing money,
so the turn-around speed on a vessel is very
important.
I haven't kept close track in recent years, but
I would say the cost of keeping a vessel in port
an extra day must "be somewhere at least between
seven and eight thousand dollars; so that the bit
of additional money in wages in a short shift, to
save that seven or eight thousand dollars didn't
make much difference.
In 1958 there was a big push up and down the
coast; a lot of discussions - stop-work meetings.
There was a stop-work meeting in San Francisco and
the guys were all asked to bring their lunches with
them. This was a .joint meeting of ship clerks,
longshoremen and, I think, walking bosses, where a
program was finally adopted that the big push would
be for a six-hour day and a 30-hour week, plus a
substantial increase in pay.
Ward: And no normal overtime?
LG: The whole objective was to just cut the workday.
Ward: The 30-hour week really meant the 30-hour week?
LG: Initially, back in 1934, this was said to be a
dream of the longshoremen. If you could get 30
hours of work a week, that would be great; if he
could get a buck an hour, which was the demand,
that meant $30 bucks a week; he had it made. But
things corrupted themselves; the employers kept
the men working eight hours, with two hours over
time. Pretty soon, in one of the contracts, once
a man was put to work, he had to be given eight
hours; so you had compulsory overtime.
Ward: Then, it was nine hours after that?
LG: Then the work shift became nine hours by custom,
not by contract; the employers wanted to keep the
nine hours because then they got 18 hours of work
on the vessel.
850
ard: Well, talking from the employer's point of view,
the longer the day the less the productivity of
the man, isn't it? That last hour or two, I would
think the productivity would be low.
LG-: Some of the studies have indicated that; and some
don't necessarily "bear that out. Let me explain
why - a lot depends on the cargoes you are handling.
Let's say it's containers; productivity is not
going to differ the last hour from the first hour,
because the crane is doing the work. It's all by
machine. Sure, there might be a bit of a slowing
down, putting those containers under the crane,
but by and large it wouldn't make that much differ
ence.
The fact is the workday cut was excellent, a very
worthwhile and educational thing.
ard: Well, what came out of this thirty -hour week meeting
you had?
LG-: They adopted unanimously a program for a 6-hour day,
a 30-hour week and a substantial increase in pay.
Ward: And how long ago was that?
LG: 1957 or ' 58 -
Ward: But they are still working eight hours?
LG: Right. It fell by the wayside later on. The more
we looked into the thing the more we found out;
all right, we can't cut the work day to six hours,
why not cut it to seven? You would think there
should be an appeal, even to the employers, for a
seven hour day. Let me explain why. If you are
working say, three seven-hour shifts, that's 21
hours. You allow a lunch hour for each shift
because working through without lunch, in my opinion,
is absolutely impermissable -
Ward: I think it's against the law, too.
LG: Well, no, you have certain penalty rates the em
ployers have to pay in the event they work more than
five hours without a meal. I think the whole
principle of working seven hours without a meal is
851
LG: very bad business, very bad on the man and very bad
in terms of the psychology of the industry. But
if you had three seven hour shifts, each one taking
a lunch break of an hour, that would make 24 hours.
You'd say, "Now, that is the most logical thing in
the world - why don't the employers support some
thing like that?" Three seven-hour shifts. The
ship then would get the maximum number of hours of
operation.
But we found out that there were other factors
involved which don't meet the simplicity with which
I put the issue. To the employers, this meant
additional supervision; hiring a whole additional
crew for supervision.
It also met with a great deal of resistance
among the supervisors because people like the
walking bosses or super-cargoes got considerable
benefits in the extended work shift. Even today,
with the general eight hour day, they get overlap
time - an hour before and an hour after. Coming
to the transfer of work from one crew to another,
there could be a good deal of resistance from that
end too; those workers also are in a fairly high
income bracket.
It also meant adding supervision all the way up
the layers, and that might have been one of the
major factors as far as the employers were concerned.
"Whether it also extended as far back as the offices,
and to what degree, I'm not sure.
I'm sure it had some effect as to the teamsters
and delivery of cargo; as to whether one part of
the cargo movement could be placed on a straight
seven hour day while other sections were not.
There might have been other problems as well.
The resistance continued by the employers and
the eight-hour day did not come easy; eventually
the drive for the six-hour day fell by the wayside,
which I think is unfortunate. In more recent years
there hasn't been much talk of the six-hour day.
A number of guys were prepared to fight for the
seven-hour day and the three seven-hour shifts if
necessary, but three seven-hour shifts with the
852
LG-: limitation of work to seven-hour periods. That would
be a distinct counter-balance to mechanization. Very
clear; you simply have to add another shift; you have
to add one man for every two men.
If you have two shifts, each working an eight with
an extended hour, say nine, eighteen hours of work,
then you don't necessarily add more men.
The moment you go on straight three seven-hour
shifts, then the only way you can do that, if you
don't allow doubling back - a gang coming back and
continuing on another shift which, unfortunately, is
still being done in a couple of ports like Tacoma -
then the extra shift literally means adding addition
al men. You're putting the tax on the machine for
adding additional men to the work force and for
cutting the work day, which obviously ought to be one
of the things to come out of mechanization.
The retirement plan is a good plan, the "mech"
agreement, I think, basically was sound. The lump
sum payment was perfectly sound; the reduction of the
normal retirement age down to 62 is a good thing; the
"bridge", an additional amount of money between age
62 and normal retirement at 65 for social security
factors - all these things are good.
The one thing missing in the whole picture - and
I think it not only applies to longshore, but
eventually to all industry - is the length of the
workday. My own observations are that the drastic
change in the productivity of the individual, the
enormous stepping up of capital investments brings
on the result that at this moment I doubt if you
could put everybody in this country to work on an
eight hour day, 40 hours a week. The productive
capacity is so enormous, I don't know where that
total output would go.
I think that the fight for the shorter work day
is without question the highest priority of the
labor movement. The break-through hasn't come,
except in a very few industries.
The Auto Workers have tried to tackle the issue,
with longer vacations and sabbaticals; they figure
that instead of trying to fight through - which I
853
LG: had hoped they would - on the shorter work day, they
shifted the fight to the shorter work year. I don't
think it has any impact at all when it comes to doing
something about unemployment.
The only thing I know of that the trade union
movement can do in the field of putting people to
work is to cut the work day. Here is something that
is within its economic power. Anything else is just
a makeshift arrangement; sort of a stop-gap, a CETA*
program.
Sure, there are other ways of providing employment.
Some of the recent studies done on the amount of money
spent on military - leaving aside the moral questions -
show that the amount of money spent on military does
not provide the kind of work opportunity or the hours
of employment that the same money would provide in
other areas, which are equally essential: "building
hospitals, "building roads, or what have you.
This is what is "behind what are called "transfer
amendments" in Washington, D. C.; the object is to
transfer a certain amount of money out of the
military budget into the kind of work that is pro
vided for through federal taxation, but which is far
more labor-intensive.
These are some remarks on the by-products of the
mechanization program. The fact of the shorter work
day, as of this moment, appears to be in hiatus. In
my opinion, it will pick up again, although it's a
very hard thing to fight for in periods of inflation;
every hour of overtime counts; certainly the guy
needs it. It is quite different from the ordinary
period where the worker sees, through union's
strength, a gradual picking up of the standard of
living.
Ward: But if we get a touch of deflation, then?
LG: Then you might have some talk about it, a lot more
push. But for the moment, there's no question
that the inflationary pressures create a certain
"Comprehensive Employment Training Act
854
LG: atmosphere within the labor movement that makes it
very rough to fight for shorter hours. We've even
had debates with some of our own members in Warehouse.
Somebody was telling me about a big argument that
went on at National Gypsum, one of the places we have
organized, where the employers wanted to add a third
shift and the guys were opposed to it. Why? Because
they were getting about 11 hours on each shift; sure
they were making pretty good dough, but they were
sure busting their ass to do it. And a lot of that
is hard work.
Ward: Gypsum is rather heavy stuff, as I recall?
LG: Sure, it's heavy stuff, although a lot of it is
handled by machine now. Oh, when we're talking about
a place like National Gypsum, one of their main
products is gypsum board, the stuff you see used in
housing. Almost all present housing doesn't use wood
panels anymore; they use gypsum board.
Ward: Warehousing is more akin to factory work than long
shore work?
LG: Much more; part of warehousing these days is factory
work, the part that's not the traditional warehouse.
A few places are; Woolworth's is a traditional ware
house, where you are constantly order- filling, shipping
the stuff, carrying inventories, and what have you.
Genuine distribution warehouses, public warehouses,
there are only a few of them left.
A good deal of warehouse organization these days,
particularly in areas like coffee, are all production
or semi -product! on warehouses. A place like Best
Poods is a production warehouse; the gypsum plants
are; so that the nature of the membership itself
begins to change. More and more of it is factory.
Blake, Moffitt and Towne, an old-time paper house,
or Zellerbach's, are still traditional types of
warehouses.
Ward: I wonder if it is worthwhile going back a minute to
discuss the difference between the '61 and '66
mechanization agreements. You indicated, I gathered,
that you didn't quarrel too much with the employers
on the '61 agreement, primarily because of the
understanding that if you obviously deserved more
855
Ward: money than you got in '61, you could raise the
question again in '66. And then in '66 Mr. St. Sure
said that he didn't want to pay twice for the same
refrigerator, and at that point you took umbrage at
his position, didn't you? How did that express
itself?
LG: Oh, I think I mentioned to you that at one meeting
I was just about to make a motion saying that we
just break off negotiations.
ard: Is that the one where you couldn't get a second?
LG-: I could have gotten a second. The motion was never
put - rather than come out on the short end of the
stick.
Ward: In making that motion - in even thinking about it -
you were in effect opposing Harry, weren't you?
LG: Pretty much so, because Harry felt the thing could
be negotiated out. I also felt that some of the
things we had coming under the '61 agreement had not
been forthcoming. For example, one of the things
as I understood the '61 agreement - and I believe
the committee did too as a whole - was that once we
agreed to permit the introduction of mechanization
and the elimination of unnecessary men, we would
retain other protections.
One Crucial Word
LG: There was some disagreement on such issues as what
happens to extra large loads; whether men or machines
"may" be added or "must" be added. Even though it is
only one word, there can be a very fundamental
difference. It might be giving the employers too
much of a free hand, which I think did materialize.
There was an awful lot of cutting of corners by the
employers.
We agreed to the modernization of the industry and
the advent of the container. Perhaps we didn't judge
exactly the speed or the degree with which it would
take place, the rapidity ....
856
Ward: The scope of it?
LG-: The scope has "become universal, arid applied not only
to containers but even things like logs, where you
have cranes that can pick up 45 tons of logs. Even
though we might not have measured that perfectly,
there was still a "basic understanding that whatever
work was left on the docks was to "be longshore work.
That is a very fundamental thing, one of the
reasons around which the terminal workers had to be
switched over; which became another source of con
tention, separate from the agreement itself.
Under the '61 agreement, as I recall, even the
loading of a truck had to be in a certain specified
area like on an apron outside on the loading dock;
any use of the forklift around the waterfront would
be longshore jobs. Some of it sounds jurisdictional
and some is; you can say that this is make-work;
well, some of it is and some of it isn't.
I recall lengthy discussions with the Teamsters,
because by that time, I began to know them quite
well because that had begun earlier, with my initial
meetings with Hoffa which go back to 1956 in Hawaii.
Our attitude was that if the Teamsters figure that
they're going to lose out on any work because of
these palletized loads - a truck could be discharged
very quickly by using a forklift - then they should
move for a mechanization program. You could take a
load off a flat-bed truck in 15 or 20 minutes with
ease.
We were determined that we would keep the work for
longshoremen because it was work that was being done
around the dock. Talking to Teamster guys like Ted
Merrill, who led the fight against the Longshore
agreement, I said, "The only thing for you guys to do
is to just catch the employers at the other end; in
other words, this mechanization is not just affecting
us. The palletized load that is made up in the
cannery and goes into that truck - bang, bang, bang!
is going to come off the truck the same way -
palletized loads, all made up that is not going to
affect just the longshoremen, it means the teamsters
too." That means that the teamster's rig can be
loaded in 15 or 20 minutes at the warehouse or the
cannery or wherever he's going.
857
LG-: He can make that -many more trips a day; that's big
money, of course, for the guy who owns the truck.
Our attempt was to pressure the Teamsters into fol
lowing a similar program of making the machine com
pensate for some of the impact of mechanization on
the men affected.
But the Teamsters never quite went that way.
Hoffa made one move in that direction when he put a
tax on trucks that were piggy-backed; piggy-backs
came into operation at that time. In other words,
there was a whole revolutionary change in material
handling; it was not limited to one aspect of the
industry.
Many employers found it more profitable to take
the whole chassis, including the load of freight on
it, and shove it on a freight-car; even if they were
big ones, two could get on one flat car; you would
see these strings of a hundred freight cars going
cross country. I'm thinking about the piggy-backs;
they figured that in terms of wear and tear, drivers
and everything else, the cost compared to transporting
cross-country on piggy-back was profitable. That's
where Sea-Land went into the whole area of container-
ization.
"What happened was that there were some sharp
arguments, after the '61 agreement, with the Teamsters,
There were some stoppages of work in San Francisco,
particularly around the coffee operation. They
maintained that making up the load of coffee on the
dock was their work, including putting the pallet
board on the truck, so then they would bring down
their own forklifts.
I recall a meeting we had with Einar Mohn over at
the Palaee Hotel on this issue. I recall Harry was
there. I'm sure members from the Coast Committee,
both Howard Bodine and L. B. Thomas, were there. I
maintained, among other things, that the real beef
from the Teamsters was not coming from the drivers . . . .
ard: Coming from the lumpers?
LG-: Right; and the lumpers are a breed of their own.
Even in Warehouse we found ourselves in some pretty
serious clashes. I recall during a crisis stage in
858
LG: one of our negotiations some of the business agents
of Local 85 i the drivers* local, were going around to
the warehouses telling the employers they must hire
a lumper to load that truck.
That was work we were doing. If a driver wanted
to load himself, fine. If the driver wanted help,
the warehouseman would help him. In some cases, if
the driver just left the chassis, then the ware
houseman handled it, the attitude of the warehouseman
being that if the driver just drops the chassis, let
us say, to pick up another load and drive it somewhere
else, then we considered it to be the same as a freight
car.
It was there, stationary, without a driver connect
ed to it; that was warehouse work. There, the
Teamster warehousemen were completely united with us
in telling Local 85 to back off. They were just as
tough as any of our people in their determination to
maintain their jurisdiction. The employers tried to
use it; there are all kinds of angles on this thing.
In the case of longshore, a number of these things
were eroded very quickly -
Ward: Under the '61 agreement?
LG-: Right. In the session with Einar Mohn I kept
emphasizing, "The real beef coming here is from the
lumper. The moment work slows up a bit they go
shopping around all over town looking for any kind
of a job they can pick up from somebody else; that's
just the nature of the thing. Then they go back
screaming to the business agent - they have nothing
else to do and they are the ones who sit around the
Teamster hall screaming at the business agent, 'Look,
you s.o.b., why don't you go out and get work for
us?'" So, the pressure is there from the lumpers.
Ward: The pressure is that the labor force is greater than
the work need.
LG: In the case of the teamsters it was; the lumper
literally did extra work. The way he picked up a
pay check, he might hang around one of the big
warehouses or the docks where some of the long-haul
drivers come in. A guy comes in with a big load;
he ' s been on the road eight or ten hours -
859
Ward: And there are a couple of guys waiting for him . . .
LG: And he wants time off and here are a couple of guys
who say, "Don't you think you ought to have a lumper?"
If they think they hare to pressure the guy, they
pressure him. The teamster at that point wasn't
particularly opposed to having a lumper; why should
he be? He wanted some rest, he wanted coffee, a
drink, anything; just some time off, his kidneys had
been banged around for eight hours. That's how your
lumper started making a buck. Later on they attached
lumpers to some places permanently; they were there
all the time.
These things were by-products, and a lot of them
disappeared with the container, which by-passes all
these operations. The container comes down to the
dock and is taken off with a special piece of
equipment that is run by a longshoreman. A straddle
truck is used; sometimes they pile containers one on
top of the other if they don't have the space, and
they move the containers on a special chassis under
the hook. Of course, when an operation like that
comes along, all these other things I'm talking about
disappear. Instead of these things materializing,
full blown, they were whittled away.
There was some blame put on the San Pedro (ILWU)
local because they backed away from the issue by
observing a Teamster picket line, not against their
employers but against the longshoremen.
So, I remember Einar Mohn's attitude was, "ell,
I guess we'll have to give them absolution." Einar
Mohn was a little more far-seeing; he realized that
the day of the lumper was a hangover of times long
gone.
So, the '61 agreement achieved certain positive
results in the mechanization agreement, and at least
was an attempt to meet the issue of mechanization
without fighting a completely defensive fight until
it destroyed you, as happened to many other unions,
like the Railroad Firemen.
There was an attempt at least to grapple with the
issue and use union power to get a piece of the
machine. I think those aspects of it were good, but
the degree of change which we allowed was excessive;
we did not get all the things we thought we were
entitled to under the agreement.
860
Ward: You seem to be saying that the agreement advanced the
cause of the employer more than it advanced the cause
of the worker.
LG: I don't know how you measure those things.
Ward: In other words, the union lost something?
LG: I think the union gave up more than it should have;
it did not get all it was fundamentally entitled to,
such as recapturing all work on the waterfront. The
failure to keep a rein on conditions to the degree
it could have done created real havoc among our
people. On that score, I was looking forward to the
'66 agreement as the time where we could make a lot
of changes.
As a matter of fact, there was a period where we
went through the whole matter of .jurisdiction and
work on the waterfront. There were some major tie-
ups. The whole port of Portland went down and stayed
down. The whole Columbia River went down.
There was an attempt on the part of the employers
to lease off a part of the port to some sort of auto-
handling. The attitude of the longshoremen up there
was simple; it's inside the longshore area, the work
is ours, and that's the way it will be. Well, in
some places they made it stick; in some places per
haps not to the same degree.
This became a big issue and was still kicking
around as late as 1969; by that time we were under
the second mechanization agreement. Of course, there
was also the shift over then from the mechanization
agreement to the PGP, the pay guarantee plan, as well
as a change in the pension agreement.
Fundamentally, I don't think the guys lost anything
as against the cash-payout on the mechanization
agreement and the new pensions they secured. But my
general feeling in '66 was that we just didn't get
enough and some of the things we were supposed to get,
we didn't get.
Ward: Well, did that change your relationship with St. Sure?
LG: Not particularly.
861
Ward: It wasn't "buddy-buddy at any time?
LG: No - no; I got along all right with St. Sure.
ard: Well, you said you didn't think it would be fair to
say that St. Sure's program was deliberately intended
to destroy the Longshore union. In view of all you
have described here, would you now feel that it would
be fair to say ....
##
862
##
2HII THAT CHARMING SCOUNDREL
A Bigger Share Of The Pie
Ward: Would it be fair to say that St. Sure, with the
cooperation of Bridges, had with some success
attempted to amend or reform the Longshore union
more according to the needs and desires of the
employers?
LG-: What I was trying to get across at that point, Estolv,
was that St. Sure had decided, either because he
was on top of the '48 strike or he learned his lessons
extremely well, that any effort in the direction of
trying to destroy the union was a basic mistake.
Secondly, I think he figured that the whole at
mosphere that prevailed prior to 1948, a running
battle with the employers, was a mistake. I think
St. Sure was determined to see to it that the contract
was lived up to; that his attitude towards any
employer trying to chisel on a contract would be one
of considerable impatience.
What St. Sure proceeded to do, I'd say that he
accomplished, to some extent. What he did succeed
in doing was to create an atmosphere in which it was
easier to deal. If ever there were indications that
the union was right, in many cases he would give it
the benefit of the doubt.
I might have mentioned such an issue as in-lieu
worktime where the men would put in a claim for work
that they should have performed that was done by some
over- ambitious sea captain who decided to uncover the
hatches before the ship got into port so he could
863
LG: save a little time and a little money for the ship
owner. Claims of that sort were generally honored.
On all those scores St. Sure followed a very consistent
policy.
This at the same time led to something else which
doesn't make St. Sure out a scoundrel per se but led
to a situation where he could say, "Look, we're hold
ing up our end of the bargain - now there are some
things to which we're entitled in the way of
'bonformance and performance," where his objective
really was to push the union into a more acceptable
mold.
I think I began to tell you something that is
really my philosophy, not necessarily related direct
ly to St. Sure. Somebody in our office had taken a
poster put out by the AEL-CIO and put it in the
conference room where negotiations were going on, so
that all the guys would see it.
It was one of these posters put out by the JLFL-CIO
and it read, "We don't want a bigger share of the
pie; we just want the same share of a bigger pie."
Many unions figure their job is to get as best they
can their share of the general increased productivity.
Well, that is not my thinking. I always thought the
job of a union was to get a bigger share of the pie.
I think St. Sure knew that.
Ward: I think you said that the union provided an
acceptable legal way of sharing the wealth.
LG: The main job of the union is to redistribute the
wealth. You can say it's one of the few legal ways -
we're not going out and using a gun - but the power
to strike, organize effectively and build a rank and
file union that under stands the issues and is willing
to fight for a larger and larger share is something
that you do have the right to do; that's legal.
I still feel that's part of the job of a union;
namely, to re-distribute the wealth. When people
used to ask me "What's your job?", I'd say "My job
is to redistribute the wealth." I recall some chap
on a plane who asked me that question, and he said,
"Oh, you're with Internal Revenue." (laughter) And
I said, "No, not quite."
864
LG: My philosophy still remains the same; otherwise you're
saying that the worker has to reconcile himself for
ever to exactly his status in life. In other words,
he is a junior partner of the economy and that's his
role; there are many labor movements which think just
that way, in this country and abroad.
That was one of the things that bothered me about
the union people I bumped into in England. I finally
figured out that they are too docile; the one thing
about the American labor movement that is so distinc
tive and so beautiful is that it has a certain element
of rambunctiousness.
It has a tendency, once in a while, to kick the
slats out of the playpen. I used that remark once
up in Montreal. The Teamsters have a tendency to
invite some of the employer representatives to some
of their big conclaves. "Whether this is part of
their general policy of getting along with the
employers or figuring that it's a good thing for the
officials to hear all sides of the story, they do it.
Some chap had spoken in Montreal, representing the
trucking interests of Quebec; he had a long peroration
about the Teamsters overreaching themselves, asking
for too much. I was called upon to speak the next
day and I said, "Before I make a few remarks about
what's been happening in Warehouse, I just want to
say something about what this chap has to say yester
day.
"All he's saying there is that he's a bit irritated
with you fellows for kicking a couple of slats out of
the playpen. He thinks he has it built just right
for you and that's the way it's going to be and even
if the union has grown up a bit, that playpen is not
going to get any bigger."
There was a Catholic, a Monsignor from Temple
University, yes, and he and I got into quite a
discussion before the delegates; he was addressing
himself to the same point. I just decided I would
take off and give him my own philosophy about the
American working class and what I thought about it;
it had certain anarchistic trends to it. It also had
things that were very distinctive and never to be
sold short - a willingness to fight and to take on
long battles.
865
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
LG: Quinn was his name! That's it, Francis Quinn. Well,
later that year I got an invitation from him to come
back and speak at his commencement exercises!
(laughter)
Well, apparently, you and he didn't disagree too
much?
No, not too much; he knew at that time ....
Did you go? Did you accept?
I didn't go, no. Next time I saw him, I said, "That
was a very flattering invitation and I appreciate it;
I sent you a letter and told you as much." The
substitute he got for me was the Secretary of Labor.
Quinn was one of those in the Catholic Church who
supported the Farm Workers; he knew I did. As a
matter of fact, even though here I was working very
closely with the Teamsters, I was an outspoken
supporter of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers.
It doesn't mean that you take on every beef and
every cause blindly or stupidly; and it doesn't mean
that you never back up. Sometimes you have to re
treat; I told you the story about taking a wage cut
at a Hawaii plantation. Phil Murray used that as an
occasion to tee off on Harry.
But on the other hand not to reconcile yourself
to just the same slice of the pie. I think once
a union has done that, it's bound to lose some of
its real makings.
Ward: Well, I think you would say that St. Sure was a
shrewd, effective employer's representative.
LG: And St. Sure never made any bones about the fact that
he represented the employers. He never sat across
the table and said, "Look, I'm doing this for your
good"; none of that jazz; none of this business you
get out of some employers, "Well, I'm an old time
progressive." They're the worst ones to deal with;
impossible! St. Sure was an employer's representative
and a damn effective one.
866
Ward: Well, I'm thinking "back to the comparison he made in
1957 of the difference between Goldblatt and Bridges.
He said the employers as a rule would rather deal
with Bridges - found him easier to get along with. I
presume you felt at all times that St. Sure was
getting the most he could for the people he represent
ed and you on the other hand were getting the most
you could for the people you represented?
LG: That's right - that was my job.
Ward: So obviously that would bring ideological and funda
mental clashes here and there between you and St.
Sure, wouldn't it?
LG: Yes; on one occasion I remember mentioning to St.
Sure, "Look, I don't want to kid you or anybody else.
I know there's so much money in the pot and I know
what we don't get, you take; and that's how simple it
is." George Valter used to be much more outspoken;
he had this heavy Russian accent, and he'd get angry
in negotiations and turn to the employers and say,
"You got it, ve need it and ve gonna get it!"
Fantastic Economic Power
LG: It also means that you have to reconcile yourself
to some things that are not all that easy, and some
of them get to be rough decisions. For example, from
1958 to 1960 on, when we began to drive harder and
harder in Warehouse to lift the wage scales and to
get some very basic and big improvements in the
contract, I was aware that once you negotiated a
contract, you had to figure on a certain number of
casualties, because it was different than shipping.
The shipping industry has a feature that should
never be underestimated - the economic power of the
longshoremen is fantastic compared to most workers;
the amount of economic leverage they have. How does
a shipping company run away from you? If they don't
like the conditions in San Francisco, they'll build
a port in Salinas? Take those ships over the
mountains somehow? In other words, it's a captive
industry.
867
LG: How is cargo going to move if it doesn't move by ship?
I'm not talking about a handful of flowers from Hawaii
or a couple of small automobile parts that have to be
shipped from Detroit; of course, those will be air
freighted. I'm talking about the big movements of
cargo, everything from grocery supplies to lumber and
and sugar.
The amount of economic power you have in longshore
is fantastic; it's an industry, for example, where
fundamentally you cannot store inventory. Let us say
the steel industry plans on a shut-down or they are
going to take on a beef. They can get orders ahead,
they can work a lot of overtime, they can fill those
orders.
In shipping they can do that only to a very limited
extent. They can divert cargo in a few cases, but
basically they can't do the same thing that other
employers can do - storing up inventory, and figuring
well, instead of having a shut-down in September this
year, they'll have one when the contract comes up.
So, it's a different thing, and consequently, the
relationship of bargaining is different.
In places like Warehouse you might figure that in
a small warehouse either the employers pay the going
rate or it's too bad. If you start negotiating every
contract predicated on ability to pay, then you are
going to get down to a point of diminishing returns.
It's not true, for example, that we can get every
body in Warehouse around here up to the master
contract rate. We have been organizing a number of
industries that have been unorganized for years; the
rates of pay are extremely low - three bucks an hour.
The chance of pulling those people up to the contract
rate of pay overnight is impossible. We're aware of
that.
Some people call them sub-standard houses. They
aren't sub-standard. Many of them are borderline
industries, some of them fly-by-night, some of them
the unorganized type. All need organizing very badly.
They form a large reservoir of unorganized workers;
that takes a lot of hard work. When you do organize
them, if you can get them a basic increase in pay,
fairly substantial, and a few things such as seniority
868
LG-: rights, vacations, holidays with pay, and particularly
health and welfare, the workers themselves say okay,
they'll settle for that, for the time being.
You can't go "back and tell them, we're going to
pull you out on strike for the full master contract;
they themselves wouldn't believe you, and they wouldn't
be prepared to take on that kind of a fight. So you
have to do these things. That does not get me away
from what I still think is the basic concept about
that pie.
Ward: Yes, well, as I said, a man like St. Sure and a man
like Lou G-oldblatt are bound to meet and there are
bound to be clashes. Apparently, this was true of
Harry at one time, but not later. As you said, he
was very amenable to any suggestion St. Sure had to
make.
LG-: Well, that is a hard one to measure. I'm not making
any secret that I disagreed with Harry on a number of
things, and later on some of the disagreements got
to be pretty sharp. But unless you see the thing in
its proper perspective, frankly, I don't think you
do Harry .justice; and I'm not here as an apologist
or anything.
Look at the foundation of the Longshoremen's union,
broken in the '20s and started again in the '30's;
the '34 strike; then a running fight that went on
endlessly to 1948; and combine with that all the other
things that impinged at the same time, the continued
trials of Harry Bridges, the falling out with the CIO,
the Cold War and the redbaiting, the Association of
Catholic Trade Unionists and the raiding.
Finally, the employers make a decision to enter
into a new era - call it an era of semi-class
collaboration; they're going to try to make it look
attractive. Well, what sort of reactions do you
expect from someone like Harry, then, who has been
battling for all these years?
Finally, the employer says, "Okay, the fight's
over. If there's any justice in a grievance, it's
yours. We're not going to see how difficult we can
make life for you. We're not going to take the
attitude of a man like Gregory Harrison."
869
LG: I think I told you of the incident in the 1948
negotiations. The item on the table was when the man
who has earned a vacation happens to die, does his
widow get his vacation pay? Gregory Harrison's
reaction was, "hat for? He's on permanent vacation."
Then you get a situation quite the contrary where the
employers are in a position to come in, in effect,
with clean hands.
Pretty soon the Coast Committee finds the employers
are amenable to straightening out most beefs. But
then the committee decided the men are wrong in some
cases; that's a question of values, and even more
important, procedure.
I start off - at least I did all my life - with
the assumption that the workers are right. Not to
say that they are right all the time, but I'm not
going to start off by saying they are wrong. If I
then find out they are wrong, it's my job to go con
front them and say, "Look, you screwed this one up,
but good; lay off. You have to straighten out on
this."
*
I don't believe in a policy of just continued
job actions and what have you. I think that is self-
defeating. At a certain point you lose your own
people on that program. Also, it becomes too handy
a manoeuvre for all kinds of individuals, completely
self-serving. You could tell when somebody was about
to run for office; all of a sudden grievances piled
up, there was screaming and yelling going on, special
stop-work meetings.
Some locals start to play games - like some of
them holding back on ratification of the contract
until they see the contract is going to be ratified -
then they vote "No." "Why would they vote 'No'?
Because the guys who advocated voting 'No' would have
a campaign issue when they ran for office; they were
against the contract all the time.
So, those are things that happened. Maybe some
of it was an inevitable by-product of a democratic
union. There is no question that a democratic union
at certain points is going to border on anarchy; but
do you stop it at any cost? That's the point! Once
the guys figure that members of the Coast Committee
870
LG: are wrong before the workers have had a chance to
make their case - that doesn't have to happen more
than a couple of times ....
Ward: They figure the Coast Committee is wrong?
LG: Look, I'm paying you, fellow; yep.
Men's Opinions Of Each Other
Ward: Ah, yes. We have reached the end of that particular
question, the influence of St. Sure on the union,
haven't we?
LG: I think so, there are dozens of specific examples on
it, but I think we have covered it. I really don't
know how much more can be gained. I think the job is
really somebody else's, who has done an interview
with St. Sure, to figure those things out.
Ward: Well, I've read the interview with St. Sure.
LG: I never have; I didn't even know there was one around.
Ward: Incidentally, it might interest you to know the ILWU
librarian showed it to me.
LG: Who was that?
Ward: Carol Schwartz, and I read it. Very interesting and,
I think, quite important. I noticed the date and the
name of the interviewer, a woman named Corinne Gilb.
This woman interviewed him for the U.C. Department
of Industrial Relations in '57. I asked Carol,
"Where did it come from? How did you get it?" And
she said, "Well, when we cleaned out Harry's office,
this was one of the things that came into the library."
LG: That's news to me; I wasn't even aware of such an
interview.
Ward: St. Sure had quite a bit to say about things I have
already told you; he went into considerable discussion
about the differences between Bridges and Goldblatt.
This was in '57. He redbaited you a little; he said,
"His opinions, his motives may be communist, maybe
not, I don't know." That's the way he put it.
871
LG: Well, I never made it any secret of beine a left-
winger.
Ward: I know; it was Ms way of giving you a little red
paint. He didn't say you were a "bad man. He told
the story of questioning you one day about your
motivations. He said, "Well, when the revolution
comes, I'll bet you'll find me on the workers'
committee." And he quoted you as saying, "I don't
think you'll make the workers' committee - I think
they will have shot you by that time." Yes, that
interview was a little gold mine.
(Interview 31: 26 October, 1978)
Ward: All right, Lou, you have some further comments on
St. Sure?
LG: Yes; you mentioned some statements he made. I went
back and read that transcript you were referring to.
Obviously, he was in error when he used the number
either 25 years or 35 years he said he's known me.
The tape was done in 1957; if the number of years he
v/as using was 25 years that brings us back to 1932.
I didn't know St. Sure in '32. I was still at the
University of California at Berkeley. I was not
at that time a member of the ILWU.
And I frankly don't recall that conversation he
alludes to. I'm not saying it could not have taken
place; he does mention the fact that we met in
conjunction with a big warehouse strike we had over
in Alameda. I do recall that strike - that was a
consolidated warehouse operated by Gal Pack or a
number of the canners.
It was a major shipping depot which we had organ
ized. The company in that case signed a backdoor
agreement with Vandeleur of the State Federation of
Labor. I do recall a major confrontation there,
where the whole Alameda police force was called out.
Ward: Is that the one where the guys with the shotguns
were shaking?
872
LG: That's right - yes; and that's where Ralph Dawson
had a complete map worked out how we were going to
re-man those picket lines, "but .... There were
a number of guys hurt in that beef and the thing was
broken up pretty badly.
Ward: Well, St. Sure was definitely the villain in that
case, wasn't he?
LG: I'm sure that he was connected with the employers.
We did not win that strike. We didn't have the
power.
Ward: Was this before or after your tangle with St. Sure
on the Santa Cruz Packing thing?
LG: The Santa Cruz Packing thing had taken place earlier;
that case went to the U. S. Supreme Court. They
ordered a whole group of men reinstated with a lot
of back pay. But I don't recall any specific conver
sations with him in regard to Santa Cruz Packing.
There might have been some concerning this consoli
dated warehouse in Alameda.
Ward: But didn't you tell me that when he came back into
the ILWU picture as president of the PMA, he called
you aside and said that he hoped you wouldn't have
any hard feelings because of the early row with
Santa Cruz Packing?
LG: Yes; and perhaps he was referring also to the one
at Cal Pack.
Ward: But apparently he thought he had met you at Santa
Cruz Packing?
LG: Or in conjunction with it later on, perhaps. It
could be. Oh, there's no question that he was in
the scene there.
Ward: And he was much more militant on the side of the
employers then than he became later?
LG: There's no question about his program in terms of
pulling the employers together and making a decision
that they were going to make book with the State
Federation of Labor. Later on, I think the whole
thing was turned over to the Teamsters; no question
of his attitude there.
873
LG:- As to his particular reference to me and Ms brag
that in case of a revolution he might "be serving on
some workers' committee, I may have said that he'd
"be hung "before then, or shot, and that I said it
without a smile - it could very well have taken place,
I don't consider it terribly important anyway. It
only had some importance later on, in 1961 or '62,
during that time when they made the agreement that
would have shifted the terminal workers over to
Longshore. That was the time that I entered the
picture very aggressively on behalf of the terminal
workers, who were a very strong and loyal group; a
lot of them came from the west side of Oakland, now
almost an entirely black ghetto.
And it was during those negotiations that Harry
made some remark which rang very peculiarly in my
mind - something like "Don't try to pull any fast
ones," or not to take advantage of St. Sure. My re
action was to shake my head ....
ard: The indication was that you were trying to take
advantage of St. Sure?
LG: Something like that; only when I read the transcript
now do I get what must have happened. Somewhere
along the line St. Sure must have mentioned some
confrontation with me.
Harry would figure, I guess in his own way, that
I was trying to even up scores or something. Which,
frankly, was not true; plus the fact that the reason
I shook my head was because I was just puzzled. I
didn't know how anybody could take advantage of St.
Sure. This man was a seasoned, tough negotiator
who knew exactly what the employers' interests were
and where he was going all the time.
Ward: Well, I've heard - and this seems to be apropos -
I've heard that at one stage of the game, Harry said
that during Santa Cruz or this East Bay Terminal beef
you had threatened St. Sure's life.
LG: Right. . Now that I see the transcript, there's only
one place he could have gotten it from -
Ward: St. Sure?
874
LG: Obviously; couldn't suck it out of Ms thumb! So,
I'd say that St. Sure was a charming, competent
scoundrel. I guess I mean it that way - maybe not
in the ordinary dictionary sense of the word. I'm
not saying he was guilty of any peculations . . .
Ward: But to blow up a normal incident into a threat is
not being very truthful, I'd say.
##
LG: Yes, and to finish up on his being a charming
scoundrel, there's no question that he was a maverick.
Perhaps some of our thinking or Harry's thinking
rubbed off on him. Those were changing times; St.
Sure's general attitude towards unions was quite
different from the open shop employers.
His feeling that straight open shop campaigns were
fruitless and self-defeating, I think is a very
accurate appraisal. I think he had learned a great
deal from what had happened in that era from 1934 to
1948.
Ward: I nearly fell over in 1944 or early 1945 when I walked
into the California Labor School to find Paul St.
Sure conducting seminars on labor relations. Some
thing had happened to the man in between.
LG: It wouldn't surprise me. On that score I think he
was a good deal his own man. One of the things in
later years, not too long before he died, that did
him a lot of injury was when the California Processors
and Growers decided to make a change, either because
they felt they wanted to adopt a different line or
that St. Sure was devoting too much of his time to
the PMA.
Ward: He indicated himself that he was pretty well absorbed
in the PMA.
LG: It could be, but they made a shift and let St. Sure
go. I think he considered that to be quite a
personal blow.
Another example of what a maverick he was: do you
recall the incident in 1959 where Kruschchev came to
the west Coast? Tou remember the greeting he got in
Los Angeles where the mayor was very hostile?
875
Ward: Where they wouldn't let him see Disneyland.
LG: Well, he never got over that one. We in San Francisco
decided that we ought to do everything possible to
see that his visit here was in complete contrast to
L. A. George Christopher was mayor.
Ward: Yes, and George went down to the airport and met him.
LG: Right. The hospitality here was entirely different
than Los Angeles. There was a warm reception here,
with a "big turnout at the Palace Hotel when he spoke.
We invited him to the Longshore hall. Of course,
all of us were quite excited about the prospect of .
his coining; the word we had gotten was that he would
try to make it.
I happened to be down at the Longshore hall talk
ing to some of the guys in the event he did get there.
We figured it would be around the noon hour, and if
so to try to get the guys when they knocked off work
to drop around and have a chance to meet him.
Somebody suddenly rushed into the hall and said,
"Look, Mr. Kruschchev is outside in a car!" and I
walked out and met him and his wife. They had driven
by the hall to take a look at it and apparently he
had already made up his mind to come by there.
Well, St. Sure was one of those who joined with
Harry to invite Kruschchev in to visit the Longshore
hall. Kruschchev did come in. The man with Krusch
chev from the State Department was Lodge -
Ward: Henry Cabot Lodge? The State Department was lousy
with Lodges ....
LG: . Or from the same family. I remember when Kruschchev
came in the hall Lodge seemed to be quite concerned
and I said, "There's nothing to worry about."
Kruschchev walked into the hall, and one of the
longshoremen handed Kruschchev his white cap which
the Russian promptly put on. He then said a few
words to about 500 guys from up and down the front
gathered there to welcome him. It was a warm
reception; nothing untoward, no hostile remarks -
quite the contrary. I know he was quite impressed.
876
LG: The State Department man and the police who were
assigned to protect Kruschchev remained as incon
spicuous as possible; no attempt was made to keep
people in some segregated sections. It was like the
usual thing at the Longshore hall. St. Sure would
see this as something that, if he felt like doing it,
he'd do it.
Ward: We were somewhere in Europe and we read all about
this, probably in the International Herald Tribune,
including the incident of the white cap; and also the
incident which showed Nikita Kruschchev being shown
through Pacific Heights with its mansions and so
forth. He turned to Christopher and asked very
cynically, "These are workers' homes? I'd like
to see a worker's home."
Christopher said, "Maybe." Kruschchev turned to
the policeman who was driving him and said, "I'd
like to see your home." Right then. And there was
time, so the guy said, "Do you mean it?" "Sure."
"Well, just give me ten minutes to phone my wife!"
And by God that's what happened - they went to the
police sergeant's home, saw the kids and his wife.
LG: That sounds very much like Kruschchev' s visit here.
By and large, I'd say that San Francisco made an
excellent impression. When you look at the fact
that this was the city where the UN (United Nations)
had its initial session, it's a very colorful chap
ter. I never had a feeling that St. Sure had the
Red horrors.
Ward: No, I don't think so. You read his quote in the
transcript about possible Communism in your back
ground, but he didn't say it in an unpleasant way -
LG: Oh no; this wasn't in the tone of the times that it
was part of a grand conspiracy to destroy America
or anything of the sort. Now, on the other hand,
I don't think he ever lost sight of what the
employers wanted.
Ward: And he got a good deal of what they wanted.
LG: I think so. Frankly I think so.
877
XXIV CLASHING PERSONALITIES
Changes In The Union Membership
Ward: All right, let's change now if you like to the
situation that during all the years of the employer-
government attacks upon Harry, he was pretty damn busy.
Those hearings and trials took his time and energy
and in the meantime other people would tend the store,
primarily you, because you were the second in command
of the ILWU.
When the BRS case was finally won and Harry had
time to relax and look around, there had been a big
change. What had originally been a union that was
90 or 95 per cent longshore and the rest warehouse,
had become an international union in which longshore
was in the minority of the membership. The newer
membership with which Harry did not have close contact
was west coast warehouse and particularly Hawaii.
It was the majority of the union; Hawaii itself
was damn near half the union - just that one local,
amalgamated Local 142. This, I gather, led to certain
changes in Harry's approach, particularly to you and
those who had had helped you. Can you comment on that?
LG: Oh, there's no question that the union had begun to
change. It was changing even prior to the 1949
indictment of Bridges, Robertson and Schmidt, which
was a renewal of the onslaught against Harry, a lapse
there of some ten or eleven years since the first
trial. Meanwhile the warehousemen had been growing
very rapidly. We had begun organization of Hawaii
on a large scale. Harry was down there during the
pineapple beef in '47. He was down there in the '49
878
LG: longshore strike, particularly where it reached the
national level, both in the Congress and with Cyrus
Ching, the Federal mediator with the Chinese name.
Harry did a good job on it, the kind of a job where
he is very adept. I think it was in the meetings with
Cyrus Ching where he put forward some ten or eleven
proposals on settling the Hawaii thing, all of which
in one way or another would have accomplished pretty
much what we wanted.
Harry saw the growth in Hawaii; numerically he
could see the thing was changing. True, during the
war, the longshore division also grew very rapidly.
I forget the exact number of longshoremen they were
using in San Francisco.
ard: Didn't you say that at one time it had reached a
peak of about 8,000 -
LG: Or more, yes, because of the enormous movement of
cargo out of here. Bear in mind that during that
time all cargoes were being handled in the old
conventional fashion so that they required a very
large work force. A great many men were added to
the work force, and the longshore division played a
very strategic role.
But in terms of the changing composition of the
union, Harry was thoroughly aware of it. I think
that Harry's reaction to it was that once some of
these things were out of his hair, he would become
very, very active where he had not been in prior
years, particularly in Hawaii. He began to make more
and more frequent trips and participated in some of
the developments in the Hawaii scene, some of which
worked out and some of which were not the happiest
things in the world because relations between him
and Jack Hall were not the best.
ard: Harry and Jack did not get along?
LG: Right - but that was not in '49; I don't recall it
becoming that much of an issue in '49. I thought
that during the '49 strike, the role of the west
coast longshoremen was absolutely essential. Had
they not dropped the anchor, I think the chances of
winning that strike would not have been good.
879
LG-: But later on between Jack and Harry .... Harry
made some references where he said maybe Jack was in
his cups - could be, Jack liked to drink - and that
he and Harry got into some hard words. This was
sometime in the 1950s, I believe.
In the initial stages of the 1958 sugar strike in
Hawaii I recall Harry being there. Jack started off
handling those negotiations entirely on his own. I
was sort of drifting out of the picture, or trying,
to a good degree.
In many ways, the guys in Hawaii had never really
become genuinely autonomous and able to handle their
own affairs. There was always "Big Daddy" coming
along. You can't keep holding their hands forever.
I recall some lengthy sessions down there, partly
by the prodding of Harry; he kept saying, "Jesus
Christ, these guys have got to begin to start hand
ling some of these things themselves," And I was
inclined to agree.
We had some sessions with the leadership down
there; we said, "Let's try to break up some of this
responsibility. Maybe you have to have back-up
teams by the International in some of the major
negotiations like sugar; there will have to be some
direct help from Longshore. On the other hand, you
have dozens and dozens of other smaller contracts.
Let the guys get going on these things. Handle
them on the local level, on the specific island. Let
the regional director step in there. Let the region
al office act as a sort of a backup, if a guy gets
stuck, even before you call the International."
To some degree, this worked out. There was the
beginning of a transformation. Today you have local
business agents who handle all negotiations; you
have divisional directors down there who handle con
tracts. True, on some of the major contracts, the
International continued to play a major role, but
that's to be expected; that's the role of the
International, longshore on the west coast, sugar in
Hawaii. The geographical location doesn't make any
difference.
880
The 1958 Sugar Strike
LG: In ' 58 I was getting deeper and deeper into warehouse
again. But in '58 there developed a very lengthy
sugar strike, I think 128 days. For some reason
Harry thoueht that Jack was running the guys around
the track exercising them; or maybe he was trying to
assert his own leadership.
During the initial days there were sharp exchanges
"because Harry was absolutely convinced that there
was an agreement around. Jack, I thought, was quite
patient about the whole thing. Some genuine efforts
had been made to try to deal with the employers, and
Jack kept pressing guys like Boyd MacNaughton
(president of C. Brewer) to make an offer. He and
his friends had been going around talking their heads
off to groups like the Chamber of Commerce, announc
ing that a strike was inevitable.
It was all part of their publicity facade, trying
to hide the employer position. Their idea was you
go through the motions; you make what you consider
to be your proposal; then you just sit until the
union cracks. Well, that wasn't about to happen.
The employers put something like a four cent offer
on the table and they just wouldn't budge ....
Ward: What were the sugar workers asking?
LG-: Twenty five cents! It didn't necessarily have to be
in one year, but as a matter of fact that's the way
it later worked out. We got what we wanted, spread
out over a couple of years. I didn't like the feel
of the thing. I didn't like the feel of Harry that
somehow Jack, or Jack with my assistance, was running
the guys around the track just to exercise them.
Ward: You didn't feel that the strike was unnecessary?
LG: If the employers refused to budge, I felt that the
strike was inevitable. After a good deal of struggle
on the goddam thing, we finally set up a meeting with
the principals. I told you that the Hawaii employers
maintained this fiction that the principals would
never meet with you.
881
LG-: Sure, you might see somebody from Castle & Cooke,
but you wouldn't see Alec Budge; or you might see
somebody there from C. Brewer, but you wouldn't see
MacNaughton; or you might see someone from American
Factors, but you wouldn't see H. C. Eichelberger;
or Sandy Walker, or whatever his name was, the head
of American Factors. Eichelberger, I think ? came
later.
But, we finally did get a chance to meet with the
principals. It was downtown somewhere, at the
offices of one of the Big Five. Jack was there,
Harry was there, I was there. There was a painstak
ing explanation to the Big Five that we were not
there looking for a strike and that this propaganda
flack - which after a while could become a self-
fulfilling prophecy on the part of the employers -
just wasn't true.
We got nowhere - they had made up their minds.
This was a lengthy strike, over 120 days. We got a
lot of support from the mainland, the longshore
locals in many cases voting $5 or $10 assessments.
They came through very big, and so did warehouse.
The strike was finally won. But again, the suspicion,
and Jack's obviously impatient reaction, even though
he tried to keep his cool - and I think he did.
We went through all these efforts to try to clear
the air, so that the union would be united. What
could be worse, going into a strike of those
proportions against a powerful foe like the Big Five
and the sugar industry and to have the union divided
within itself? Particularly where one of the top
officers was not in agreement that' the strike was
warranted; that's the kind of strike you lose. So,
in retrospect, I think the efforts were worthwhile.
The fact that these things leave scars is
unfortunate. I don't know what the hell you can do
about it. The only guys who seem to manage these
situations are professional fighters. I'll never
forget the remark made by Archie Moore, remember him?
"Ward: Yes.
LG: A grand old man; he finally got a crack at the
heavyweight title years after he was over the hill.
For years he couldn't get a fight at all, unless he
882
LG: was willing to tlirow it, and he wouldn't. I recall
Archie Moore fighting a Frenchman and watching the
fight on TV; a French-Canadian who was as tough as
a mule; Archie Moore must have "been knocked down
five or six times in the course of this fight.
For a while you'd think this fight was over with -
but no, it wasn't; Moore won the fight "by a knockout,
He was interviewed at the end of the fight and to my
amazement he said, "Well, I hope everybody enjoyed
the fight as much as I did. It was a hell of a good
battle." (laughter)
Ward: That wasn't the way with Harry and Jack?
LG-: No. But people can't all be built that way, can
they? And this was not Jack's reaction to it, I'm
sure. It's too bad. I was deeply involved in the
situation itself, but I was partially outside of the
personal situation. While some of these things
affected me directly, I obviously had quite a differ
ent reaction.
Ward: Well, when you are talking about what happened 30
years ago, that's something else.
LG-: Right. Or when you are talking about a situation
twenty years ago, and you look back at it histori
cally and see that it was worthwhile doing.
There was nothing wrong with Harry saying, "Do
we really have to take a beef here; have we explored
everything?" I see nothing wrong with that. But if
you are personally involved you might say, "Well,
that isn't the real reason you're raising this ques
tion. The real reason is to cast aspersions as to
my ability or honesty."
Ward: And you wonder if it is the real reason?
LG: Yes, because you're so deeply involved individually,
you have so much at stake: your own credibility,
your own role in terms of leadership; whether it's
being abused, whether it's being handled stupidly,
your own competency and devotion. It's different;
you can't see it the same way as Archie Moore did
at the end of that fight.
883
LG: So, all I can say is that when I look "back at 20
years ago, it was worthwhile doing these things.
There's nothing wrong with an international official
coining along and offering a warning. Striking is the
easiest part, in many cases; winning a strike is
quite a different thing.
You're never sure of winning when you strike, no
matter how right you are or how strong you are and
even if you have covered all the bases. It's a lesson
many of us learned very early. It's hard for people
to "believe these days.
During one set of office workers negotiations,
with our own office staff, here they were with a
string of demands longer than your arm. And I said,
"You don't have that kind of bargaining power, and
you simply assume that every time a union asks for
things that they win them." I said, "And we lose
strikes too. I just came away from Sacramento -
we just lost our ass in a strike, where Frank Thompson
thought he could win one up there."
Well, there's some guy from the Teamsters I bumped
into and-he told me, "You know, this is tough country
up here -I'm not sure you can lick that guy." Some
big guy by the name of Gerry Stiefyater who ran this
big plant that processed nuts, by the name of
Continental Nut Company. Prank Thompson- figured he
could win a strike there; well, we lost it.
I go back and say that the fact that these ques
tions are raised doesn't necessarily imply that there
is all this motivation that has nothing to do with
the strike itself; in other words, asking; why Harry
would raise these questions. The fact that you cover
these bases, including meeting with the principals
- a very unusual thing - was worthwhile; it's just
one of the things that had to be done, that's all.
It should be done, or attempted. It's not the way
Jack reacted; no two ways about that.
Ward: Wasn't there a rumor around that Jack was making
noises like running for the presidency of the ILWU
against Harry?
LG: I don't know; you hear all kinds of rumbles.
ard: At least you don't think there was much to it.
884
LG: No; I don't think Jack ever made statements with that
intent.
Ward: You knew Jack quite well?
LG: Yes, we were very close friends from when I first
went down there.
Ward: You got along well together?
LG: Yes, -
Ward: Even if you disagreed, you disagreed in a friendly
way?
LG: Oh, yes; we had our disagreements and we could "be
up half the night arguing about these things, but
the working relationship was good. It stayed good
until the day he died.
Ward: I suppose there were occasions when this difficulty
between Harry and Jack inevitably caused you to take
one side or the other?
LG: Not particularly; I thought in 1958 that Jack had
done a competent job. Perhaps I had been in closer
touch with the situation than Harry had been. The
employers had taken this position and launched that
kind of a campaign.
When I saw all the clippings with the speeches
being made by people like Budge and MscN aught on, I
knew how to interpret them. I knew enough about
the Hawaii scene by that time so that I did not
feel that Jack was walking in blind; nor did I think
he was trying to run the guys around the track.
Neither one of those statements was correct.
I thought Jack was competent and patient. After
the '58 strike, I'd say that the employers in their
relationship to Jack Hall were a heck of a lot more
constructive; at least they laid off going out on
these an ti -union crusades, or this business of just
laying down their position and seeing if they could
make it stick.
There was a good deal more give and take in
collective bargaining, and there was a good deal
more acceptance of Jack. I'm trying to recall when
the Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Jack's case.
885
Ward: I think it was '58, wasn't it?
LG: I think, yes, it was January, '58 when they threw
out his case. The sugar strike was shortly after
that.
##
The sugar negotiations were going on prior to that.
They had started in late 1957 with the contract
running out, I think, in February or March. The
strike took place later on in the year.
I don't know whether the employer position had
jelled "before the appellate court ruled, or whether
the decision had come along and the employers decid
ed that Jack was out to show that now he could even
up all scores. The strike finally wound up with
two wage steps to make 23 cents, plus classifications
and a uniform 40-hour week for the whole industry.
It was the only agricultural field in the country
that was on a 40-hour week.
Ward: It was a very nice gain.
LG: Yes - very good gains. In other words, all the
exempt weeks were eliminated; up to that time we
had exempt weeks on some of the plantations; weeks
where the employers could work 48 hours without any
payment of overtime.
Ward: Did this change or amend Harry's original skepticism
about the strike?
N
LG: It did not in any way alter unmitigated support by
the rest of the union. The Longshore division alone,
I know, brought in an awful lot of money to help the
strike; much of it came out of a whole series of
Longshore caucuses in that period, and this could
not have been accomplished without Harry's support.
Ward: So he supported the strike?
LG: Oh yes, he supported the strike; his skepticism
. might not have had the implications that Jack
attributed to them. We're back to that same point
again, that the skepticism might have been simply
one of the techniques used to exhaust every avenue
for a constructive solution without a strike.
886
Whispers vs. Facts
ard: I got the impression that fundamentally Jack Hall
felt that Hawaii was his apple.
LG-: Yes - no question, he felt that way. Bear in mind
that Jack had "been very active in attempts to
organize Hawaii before the ILWU made its push. Jack
was in the '34 strike.
Ward: Even though there was a story that he had scabbed in
the '34 strike.
LG: That's another thing which is really awfully sad; -a
pure invention, terribly unkind and completely un
called for. No reason for it at all.
Ward: Except that Harry maybe was just striking back at . .?
LG: No, this was quite a bit later on, much later on.
Ward: Well, the situation didn't improve?
LG: No, it was in the late sixties.
Ward: That was at the convention of . . . .?
LG: No; Harry never made the statement in the convention.
I don't think he ever made the statement in writing,
or made it publicly.
Ward: It was whispers?
LG: Whispers, yes, and naturally unwarranted. I chased
it down; I even called Morris Weisberger on it - he
was the head of the SUP then. "That story got back
to me too," he said, "Absolutely untrue. Jack Hall
has complete clearance on the strike, did picket
duty, the whole shebang. The only thing that is true
is that Lundeberg made Jack a member of the 99 year
club."
When Lundeberg didn't really like somebody - this
was after '34 - he would expel him for 99 years.
They had a group of guys who called themselves
887
LG-: the 99 year club. "That was uncalled for and I
finally straightened that one out." In fact,
there was a nasty scene one time up in Canada. Eddie
De Mello was a member of the ILWU Executive Board
at the time and he had been a very good friend of
Jack's. Eddie was from Hawaii, the Big Island.
Eddie's dead now. He was our legislative represen
tative, quite a competent guy. I recall a confron
tation in British Columbia.
Unfortunately, much of it was my own mistake. I
should know better than to argue with Harry when he
starts having a few beers and I'm having a few
drinks. Somehow the subject of Jack Hall came up
and I made the statement to Harry, "This crap has
to be stopped, this business of Jack Hall scabbing
in 1934." He said, "ell, maybe he didn't scab -
he finked." A very fine definition: a scab is one
who takes a guy's job, and a fink is a guy who re
fuses to come out on strike.
I'm not sure if Jack was still around - I think
he was. I'm sure Jack heard these stories before
he died, unfortunately. Harry said, "I have the
proof." And I said, "Well," - George Martin was
sitting there too - "here's G-eorge Martin and here's
Eddie De Mello, an old friend of Jack's, both
sitting here, and if you have the proof, show it."
"No," he said, "we'll do it at the right time" - the
usual business. "I've got it right here." (Tapping
his pocket). And I said, "That's a goddam lie."
I had no business saying that.
Ward: What did De Mello do?
LG: He came away from there shocked to the gills. Eddie
De Mello was very close to Jack and very loyal. As
to whether Jack felt that Hawaii was his kuliana -
it's a Hawaiian word.
Ward: What does it mean?
LG: Kuliana is like your province - your jurisdiction.
It's also your headache. In other words, it's an
area of your concern where you are in charge. There
is no question he felt that way; and from the time
I first met Jack, which must have been around 1944,
the first trip I made down there .... I felt the
same way.
888
Ward: You recognized Ms feelings?
LG-: Not only recognized Ms feelings, but I also felt
that if there was any guy who had a grasp of the
thing, deserved to have something named his kuliana -
not that I believe in private ownership - in terms
of his work and his ability and responsibility, he
was entitled to it. I didn't feel that he was any
carpetbagger.
Ward: You were rather careful not to trespass on Ms
province?
LG-: I felt that I shouldn't ....
Ward: You were helpful, very helpful?
LG-: Yes. That's quite different. I did not feel that
he had quite the same contact with the longshoremen
that he did with the sugar workers.
Jack met all the qualifications of a really
competent union guy, not only the devotion of work,
which is essential. He wasn't afraid of work. Jack
thought nothing of packing a bag and going out to
the islands such as Kauai or Maui, Hawaii - the Big
Island - and just spending days going from planta
tion to plantation, going to the fields, talking
to the workers, spending the eveMngs with them.
He had the faculty of keeping an open mind until he
got a real reading.
Ward: He was a good listener?
LG: He was a hell of a good listener, and came closer
than most people in personal rapport with indivi
duals on the work level; I relied on him very, very
heavily in things like the sugar negotiations; on
how far we could go and what we could do; his
judgment was good.
Secondly, Jack was fantastic with figures. He
had an amazing capacity to absorb them, whether it
was just reading financial reports or keeping notes
and working out the math erne tics and cost elements
of a contract. He was extremely good at that.
Jack also knew the industry, the whole inter
locking structure and relationship. He knew a
great deal about the people of the Islands, not
889
LG-: only the workers; also lie had a faculty of picking
up and understanding what was going on at the
managerial level. Not in all cases, "but a good
many. He was extremely akamai, as they say - that's
another Hawaiian word. In talking about Jack,
Hawaiian words fit. A K A M A !E is an Hawaiian word
meaning "not just having knowledge," - it's a
combination of knowledge, understanding and a feel
for something.
Ward: I think you put it once that he knew where all the
handles were.
LG: And a guy who is really akamai is on top of some
thing - he can actually smell where it's going.
When someone is akamai it does not mean that he just
has smarts, like we use the expression, "He has a
lot of smarts." It doesn't mean that he is merely
learned on a subject; akamai , he has something more
than that - very much a feel for it.
I thought that if Jack felt this was his kuliana,
he was correct. This was reflected in the way I
worked with him; it didn't mean I never disagreed
with him - you would know better than that; I'm just
not a hinge-head. It doesn't mean to say we didn't
argue, sometimes quite loudly; we hashed out a lot
of things. Some times it took days, but this never
interfered basically with a very solid working
r el at i onship .
From the very beginning in Hawaii, although I
played a very active role, any time it came to
issuing a statement, very rarely would I make a
mistake by talking about what was going on there;
only when a reporter would catch me coming off the
plane, or something like that. In the main I saw
to it that any statements on the union's position
would go out on behalf of Jack and the officers of
Local 142; that's the way it should be.
So that the locals down there would not feel -
'at least that was my position, and it still remains
the same - that the International comes in and pre
empts their authority. The membership should not
feel that way. After all, the local people are the
ones who have to live with the situation when you
leave. If they're going to take responsibility for
an agreement, let them take it.
890
LG: You don't make the agreement and then walk away and
say, "Okay fellow, you live with it." I don't
"believe in that; take some of the bounces as you
can, but bear in mind that it's still the local
people who wind up with the day to day work, who
have to keep the confidence of the membership. This,
I think, was reflected in my relationship with Jack.
Ward: It must have exacerbated whatever other difficul
ties you had with Harry, as time went on.
LG: He didn't like it particularly, I can tell you that;
he once made a funny crack that somebody ought to
talk to Yoshiko - "Oh, what the hell, Lou goes down
there and spends half the time at your house."
Yoshiko 's reaction was, "Veil, at least we get to
see him that way, and Jack does too."
As a matter of fact, Yoshiko felt it was a
terribly important and worthwhile relationship. I
recall she was talking to me and she said, "In some
respects, it's very good when you come down here.
Jack has a tendency to become very involuted."
She used the word in a very interesting way;
Jack had these long spells of introspection, and
after some of the battles were done, including the
'58 sugar strike, he might have gotten more so. I
think it was easier for Jack when the battles were
on, the organization, all the contract negotiations,
and the constant struggle.
I'm not saying he enjoyed these attacks, any
more than you'd enjoy having an ulcer - that would
be a very peculiar form of enjoyment - but there's
a difference between those days of turmoil and what
happens when that particular period is over with.
Jack struggled mightily to branch out into addition
al fields, to have the union become deeply involved
in political action something that always
fascinated Jack.
He knew the political scene very well. And of
course, he had a long personal relationship with
Jack Burns. He began an effort to get some low
cost housing. He spent a good deal of time on it,
which unfortunately never came to fruition. Also,
he was interested in some plantation housing over
on the Big Island.
891
LG: He felt a need for the union to move beyond the
immediate realm of the contract. That might "be
what Yoshiko was referring to.
Ward: What prompted the removal of Jack? The Halls moved
to San Francisco some years ago before he died;
health, or what?
LG: No. He decided to run, after Chili died, for
vice-president. Bob Robertson was retiring; that
was 1969. And it had nothing to do with his health,
although Jack had had a siege of illness.
Ward: Diabetes, eye trouble . . . ?
LG: Well, the eye trouble must have been congenital,
I think, because he always wore heavy lenses. This
did not interfere with his reading; Jack read
prolifically. Whether he could have driven or not,
I don't know. He didn't drive, but he could have
driven a hell of a lot better than most of the
people you saw on the road.
Ward: Well, if he came here and thought of running for
vice-president, that must have disturbed Harry,
because the enmity was very sharp by that time?
LG: He didn't like it ....
^
Ward: Did he fight it openly?
LG: No - that's a chapter we'll have to go into. It
has to do both with Chili dying and the ambition
of Bill Chester (then a regional director) to
become a vice-president; Harry's support for Bill
Chester; Jack's decision to run. I don't think
that Harry would have cared for a confrontation
between Chester and Chili ....
Ward: But between Chester and Jack?
LG: He might have, yes. I take the responsibility for
deciding that a conflict between Jack and Chester
was not a good thing for the union. We would be
better off to have two vice-presidents.
Jack and Chester ran too. Two vice-presidents
instead of one. We'd had two vice-presidents
before, then we went back to one. I decided that
892
LG: rather than have a contest, it would be better to
have two.
Ward: You worked it out that way?
LG: Although, Jack's attitude was, if Chester wants
to run, fine. Jack's attitude was like that of
any candidate - when you go, you go.
893
XXV COOPERATION WITH THE TEAMSTERS
(Interview 32: 31 October, 1978)
Formation Of The ILWU-Teamster Joint Council
Ward: Lou, you were going to get some dates on the
development of the Teamsters ILWU Joint Council.
LG: Yes, in 1957 we were going into Warehouse negotia
tions. The Teamsters were pretty well locked into
arbitration and the understanding I had with Joe
Dillon was that they would at least spin their
wheels until we had a chance to give our
negotiations a whirl. Local 6 warehousemen had
the right to strike.
We came out okay; the Warehouse agreement ran
for three years, until 1961, the first two years
covered by a fixed increase, which was a good deal
more than we thought we could have gotten in
arbitration. The Teamsters were quite happy with
the result.
Then it was in I960 when we put on a major push
in conjunction with the Teamsters, including a
joint program to strike if necessary; we managed
to get the most substantial wage increase that we
had had for many, many years 21 cents across the
board, which in those days was quite a hunk of
dough.
Out of that grew the formal machinery which
later matured into the Northern California Ware
house Council, ILW-IBT (international Brotherhood
of Teamsters). Joe Dillon was the co-chairman,
894
LG: and later on it became G-eorge Mock, a vice-president
of the Teamsters. I believe he is now first vice-
president. Our working relationship was good, the
important thing. And there began to emerge some
other developments in the labor scene, previously
mentioned, not to be taken too lightly.
If there were things going on within the trade
union movement which were not in keeping with
certain sound principles of trade unionism, or were
somewhat off-color, the way to handle these things
was not through expulsions and suddenly the labor
movement trying to adopt this mantle of super-
respectability; these are problems within the
family of labor to be argued out and fought out
within the family of labor.
Sure, to say the unions are 100 percent clean
is misleading; but on the other hand, they sure as
heck don't have the degree of peculation that goes
on among bankers. As a matter of fact, there was
an interesting statement, I think by John L. Lewis
before one of the committees where he pointed out
that there were a heck of a lot more bankers in
jail than there were labor leaders accused of
racketeering.
The laws were on the books and if anybody was
guilty, it didn't require special laws; neverthe
less the AZL went through this business -of
conducting its own respectability clean-up, and the
ILA was one of its first targets. It started off
with the ILA and it was not too long thereafter
where the union headed by Dave Beck was under the
gun of the APofL; eventually the Teamsters were
expelled.
Old JohnEnglish, who was the secretary of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a big
lanky Irishman and a fairly tough trade unionist
in his own way, made speeches to the effect that
they never were going to go back to the APofL, not
after the way they were treated. They had been
loyal members; they paid their per capita on time;
they observed the rules and the regulations.
Sure, they might have had some domestic prob
lems but those were their own problems and they
would take care of them. They didn't need anybody
895
LG: sitting in judgment on them. Within a short period
of time the ILA had "been expelled, the Teamsters
had been expelled; there had been some other work
ers, the Laundry Workers, and so forth.
As soon as we were fighting our way out of the
period of harassment of the ILWU, we launched a
pretty intensive program around the question of
labor unity; we held that nothing was settled by
unions fighting unions, by unions being expelled.
It wasn't as though we were scrambling to try to
get back into the AEL-CIO ....
Ward: It was an extension of the idea behind the Maritime
Federation, behind the CMU?
LG-: Exactly. What was essential was that the unions
try to coordinate their efforts, stop the inter
necine warfare, stop the cannibalism, stop all
these stupidities; all they were doing was
destroying themselves. The employers, of course,
were perfectly happy to sit on the sidelines and
say, "G-o at it, fellows, you're doing a great job;
although we just remembered there are a couple of
other people in this other union you haven't gotten
yet." They would be glad to sit back and point
out targets for you.
Of course, the politicians moved into the scene;
the McClellan Committee, with Robert Kennedy as
counsel and Senator John Kennedy as one of the
members of the committee. That became a political
instrument in the campaign for Senator Kennedy;
election to the presidency. There's no question
what role Bobby Kennedy played; it was the fore
runner of the passage of the Kennedy-Landrum-
Griffin bill. Senator Kennedy is the one who
later on ....
Ward: His name doesn't appear on it, though.
LG-: That's right; he fought valiantly to have his
name taken off, after the fact.
896
Dealing With Jimmy Hoffa
LG: Well, our support of the Teamsters had nothing to
do with what was going on in the internecine affairs
of the Teamsters' union; that was their business.
The Teamster-Kennedy clash became one of the most
unbelievable chapters in the attempt at interference
in the functions of 'the unions. Bear in mind,
Hoffa took office somewhere around the -
Ward: Late fifties, wasn't it?
LG: Around December of 1957, thereabouts.
Ward: That would be about a year after you first ran into
him in Hawaii, wasn't it?
LG: Yes, right; but by 1957 there were all kinds of other
problems in the Teamsters; -that was when the suit
was filed by a group of so-called rank and filers
against the convention, against the way it was
called, against the way Hoffa was elected.
These monitors were set up. I believe the judge
who handled the whole thing was named Judge
(Dickinson) Letts. A battle took place within the
monitors; Godfrey Schmidt; I told you his role and
the testimony of Bartley Crum.
Bartley Crum went so completely out of his head
at the McClellan Committee hearing that he even
accused Edward Bennett Williams, chief counsel for
the Teamsters and a prominent Washington lawyer,
of trying to bribe him to get him not to appear.
Crum also accused some general who was head of a
public relations firm in Chicago, to the point where
the Washington Post issued quite a blast against
Bartley Crum and the use of the McClellan Committee
as a forum for every kind of irresponsible accusa
tion, where a witness couldn't be held to account.
Bartley Crum looked like a complete fool by the
time he got through - that, combined with this
other testimony that I mentioned to you.
897
LG: Later on, Schmidt was removed as a monitor, and
there was an attempt to put in another monitor who
had been with the FBI; the Teamsters could show that
he had played a prominent role against the Teamsters
Union, so that all the struggle to get impartial
monitors didn't work out.
Hoffa was trying to hold a special convention in
I960, as I recall, while this battle was going on,
particularly with Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy even
set up a special bureau of the Department of Justice
when he got into office as Attorney-General, a
special team which was out to get Hoffa.
Finally the monitors were shook loose by the
Teamsters; they had their convention in I960 and it
was finally okayed by an appellate court where
Judge Letts was over- ridden, and the thing got back
on the beam. There's no question in my mind that
there was a combination of Bobby Kennedy, the Mc-
01 ellan- Committee, the forces that were behind
Kennedy-Landrum-Griffin and the AFL-CIO, to do a
job on one man and on the Teamsters Union.
Ward: So Hoffa found a friend in the ILWU?
LG: Yes. I don't think it ever meant that Hoffa changed
his thinking. I recall a great deal of time was
spent trying to convince Hoffa that he might do
better figuring out ways and means of going directly
to his own membership than to rely entirely on the
manipulations of the lawyers. At- one point it got
to the stage where Hoffa was out-lawyering the
lawyers. He had a whole staff of these people back
there. Harry met with him a number of times on the
thing. I discussed it, but I wouldn't say with a
great deal of success -
##
Ward: You were saying that you were trying to persuade
Hoffa to go more to his rank and file -
898
Men With Brass Balls
LG-: And to go to the public. As far as I could see the
accusations against Hoffa were unfounded. I'm not
saying he didn't know some of the people with the
brass balls - the ones I described to you. There
were some very admirable things about him.
t
His move toward a national contract did not mean
that he intended to do any of the things for which
he was being accused. There was an atmosphere that
the McClellan Committee and Bobby Kennedy were
trying to build up where the objective of Hoffa was
to have a quickie strike of all the trucking indus
try.
Hoffa discussed these things very frankly; he
said, "That would be damn foolish. I'd be better
off, in the case of a showdown, to take these things
conference by conference, rather than going to a
national showdown." He understood leverage, parti
cularly in an industry like that, which is quite
complicated. He managed to put it together; the
national conferences of warehouses, conferences in
the areas of airlines; in the various divisions of
the Teamsters Union - 16 different divisions - so
that he was doing a job of building up their
bargaining structure.
When we talked to him about a transport federa
tion he was more than a little receptive - he saw
this as a natural in terms of the general bargaining
power of the unions involved, their ability to make
substantial gains, not necessarily by arduous or
expensive strikes; in other words, the ending of the
jurisdictional battles, the pooling of the bargain
ing strength, would get very salutory results.
I think he had visions of a transport union not
too different from the Transport and General Workers
of England, which encompasses trucking, porters, as
they call them, and longshoremen all together in
one union.
899
LG: There were a lot of sessions with Hoffa. Hoffa was
more than receptive about sitting down with "both
the ILWU and the ILA with the general objective of
seeing if some sort of a rapport could be establish
ed; some machinery to consider some of the juris-
dictional problems that were looming as a result of
c ontaineri zati on .
There was a session in the fall of 1958 at the
Teamster headquarters. Both the ILA and the ILWU
were invited to attend. It is true that later on
Hoffa sort of soured in his relationships with the
ILA, making the remark, "Please don't ask me to put
together another session with these guys." He felt
that they did not have the proper kind of independ
ence nor the same degree of reliability in keeping
their commitments.
Ward: Did you agree with him more or less on that?
LG: I didn't completely agree. Maybe because we're a
more persistent bunch; but you couldn't argue with
what he was saying.
Ward: It was easier to deal with Hoffa than the ILA,
though?
LG: Oh, no question about that. It could also be that
he smelled something that turned out to be pretty
accurate; the primary push on the part of the ILA
would be to go back in the AFL, which they eventual
ly did. They were in a position to say, okay, now
Ryan is out; we've cleaned things up.
The New York Port Commission had moved in with
the waterfront hiring hall, or the Waterfront
Commission as they called it - the Bi-State
Commission of New York and New Jersey. As a matter
of fact, the Waterfront Commission moved in and by
a tax on the industry - I forget how much it was -
got the funds to set up waterfront hiring halls,
which are still in operation to this day, even
though the ILA wanted to shake them loose and tried
to take over direct hiring themselves, like we have
on the west coast.
That was a typical example of what happens when
bureaucrats have a chance to build themselves an
empire. They moved in and stayed there, that's all.
900
LG: They got the head of the camel in the tent, and the
camel has been there ever since. These things were
used by the ILA to clean up their credentials for
re-admittance into the APL-CIO.
In the case of the ILWU, things moved very quick
ly with Hoffa; he didn't stall around. For example,
when it came to setting up some machinery to try to
coordinate our mutual interests and to take care
of overlapping jurisdictional problems, the machinery
was set up on the west coast ....
Ward: The Western Conference?
LG: Right, with Einar Mohn; the machinery on the west
coast was set up in 1958 to take care of some of
these problems; the committee was supposed to meet
quarterly. No matter what the accusations were
about any hanky-panky in the Teamsters anywhere
else in the country, they sure as heck didn't apply
out here on the west coast.
It might have. been one of the reasons why Einar
Mohn felt very keenly about having an insured
pension plan; his huge pension plan on the west
coast is still insured by Prudential. It is not a
trusteed plan, even though I think insured plans
are on the heavy side, a bit expensive, and not
nearly as responsive to the needs of an industry as
a trusteed plan. It could very well be that was
Einar Mohn's way of walking around problems which
had arisen in places.
The McClellan Committee: what bothered us was
that they knew perfectly well what kind of a union
we were, and that they were making cooperation
. sound like corruption, solidarity sound like sin.
We said, "Sure, we have dozens and dozens of
overlapping problems; in the case of longshore, the
problem of jurisdiction; who does what work around
the waterfront."
We had made painstaking efforts in that regard,
not all of them completely successful. Particularly
when the 1961 agreement was first launched, there
were problems with the Teamsters, and we tried to
resolve them. I recall spending a lot of time with
Ted Merrill; he was with the Teamsters in Los
901
LG: Angeles and was chairman of the Teamster side of
this joint committee. I was trying to convince him
-later on it had a little bit of success- to go
for something similar to what the longshoremen have
gotten. I said, "You want a piece of the machine."
Ward: The savings created by the machine?
LG: The savings created "by the machine. They made a
bit of progress later, when they began to tax some
of these piggy-back trucks, a truck body on wheels.
I don't know whether you've ever seen these strings
of freight cars going across country sometimes; a
hundred at a time. The trucking companies dis
covered that was a lot cheaper than driving the
truck all the way to the east coast; simply roll
them on to a flat bed freight car and there they
go-
The Teamsters finally did impose some kind of a
tax, but that's as close as they came to something
like the mechanization that we launched on the
waterfront.
Bear in mind, these were all unions that were
not affiliated with the APL-CIO; the ILA, the
Teamsters, the ILWU. I think that in many ways
Harry identified with Hoffa's problems. In other
words, it was just another effort to put away a
union guy who was a pretty effective leader. He
had a lot of charisma. Even the papers like The
Wall Street Journal ran stories to the effect that
the best they could find out, at the peak of the
McClellan Committee action against him, was that
certain poor investments had been made by the Central
States Conference.
Ward: I think it is fair to say that nobody ever called
Harry a crook.
LG: No.
Ward: And no one ever called Hoffa a Red.
LG: Yet, as far as the System is concerned - and there
I use a capitalized letter, System - in its own
crazy way crooks and Reds wind up in the same bag.
902
LG: Sure, the people who make the accusations approach
things from different ends of the spectrum, but if
you take a look-see at the net result in terms of
whether a union has the right to elect whom it
pleases and to change whom it pleases, you get down
to the fundamental issues, the rights of the union.
In a crazy way all of these efforts really add up
that it's another way of saying that the membership
is not competent to run its own affairs.
I know all the arguments on how tough it is to
make changes at times, and I know how tough it can
be, too. I'm aware that there are times when good
solid progressives like George Andersen resorted to
some court action because of the "B" membership of
the Boilermakers (Union) for black members during
the war.
Yet in the long pull, I can't see where these
courts, Landrum-G-riffin or Taft-Hartley, have done
a damn bit of good. I subscribe in full to what
Lewis said before the McClellan Committee; by the
way, that was his swan song, I guess. I think it
was 1959 or '60 when he appeared before the McClel
lan Committee, or this alter ego of theirs - I
forget the name of that committee. He held forth
for about three hours on what was wrong with the
McClellan Committee in its efforts to police labor
and he did a fantastic job.
Lewis had that qualification; without notes, no
prepared statements, and yet every sentence complete
ideas, complete thoughts. Lewis was also quite a
dramatist; a forum of that sort was perfect for him.
The fundamental issue, the point he kept driving
home, was that all these efforts were to take over
the affairs of the unions because the natives could
not handle things themselves,
ard: Well, why didn't the rapport between the ILWU and
the IBT spread beyond the warehouse situation?
LG: There was an attempt; in the initial west coast
committee set up with the Western Conference of
Teamsters, the efforts were to resolve problems
around jurisdiction, because of the container mov
ing in on the waterfront. It is true that the
longshoremen did not have the same immediacy of
rapport with the Teamsters Union that the ware
housemen have.
903
LG-: The longshore contract could pretty well stand on
its own feet. It was a separate document, not
necessarily contingent on joint operation with the
Teamsters. An understanding with the Teamsters was
very important, not just to resolve any problems of
overlapping jurisdiction, "but also in the event of
any kind of economic difficulty, to insure support.
It did not mature into the kind of full-blown
organization the Warehousemen developed for obvious
reasons; in the case of the Warehousemen, the nub
of our relationship with the Teamsters was right
here in the bay area; here, of course, we had as
many chips on the table as they had.
ard: Doing the identical work under identical conditions?
LG-: Yes, and in many cases overlapping contracts; in
some cases dealing with groups of employers where
even though the employer groups might be somewhat
different, fundamentally they were all dealing with
warehousemen, one way or another. Warehouse, of
course, was bound to have more possibility for direct
contact.
For example, it was in the sixties; Harry was
under the weather, very bad cold, and the Western
Conference of Teamsters was meeting here in San
Francisco; I came down to address them. Here were
a lot of the guys against whom we had gone into
battle, but the reception was cordial.
We never stopped our efforts to get along with
the Teamsters' Union, although it's true that
things got sticky, insofar as the Teamsters them
selves were concerned, with the renewed attempts to
get Hoffa which finally wound up with his indictment
and conviction; then, of course, (Vice -Pre si dent
Frank) Fitzsimmons took over.
Ward: Did he attempt to carry on with these ideas?
LG-: Yes, we did try to carry them out with Fitzsimmons.
He was, and has continued to be, very friendly with
the ILWU. No great headache in that regard. I
began to attend the annual meetings of the Teamster
Warehouse Division, and I was there as secretary of
the ILWU. There was a good deal of admiration on
the part of these Teamsters for the job being done
in warehous e .
904
LG-: The master agreement was something new to them, in
most cases. e noticed that many of their agreements
were separated by industrial groupings. In other
words, public warehouse agreements might "be one
agreement, sometimes separated by locals, dependent
on the size of the area. Los Angeles, for example,
your grocery warehousemen were in one local, while
the public warehousemen were in another local.
Our working relationship was good. Even after
we set up the Northern California Warehouse Council,
on several occasions we would foray out and give
locals in other parts of the coast a hand. They
would be primarily Teamster locals; we made appear
ances in places like Seattle and Portland when the
contracts were reaching a deadline. Where we needed
Teamster help in the case of warehouse negotiations
in L.A., invariably we could get some help from the
Teamsters Union.
I'm not saying it was easy; it takes a great deal
of patience. In the 1950s the Teamsters in some
organizing campaigns would put out leaflets alleged
ly by the ILWU. Later on I used to rib them and
say, "If you're going to put out leaflets in our
name, at least check the copy; we might not have any
objection at all."
During those years, the forties and the fifties,
the Teamsters would organize because they were
going to save the employers from that dreadful ILWU.
It required a good deal of patience; you just had
to keep your eye on the main goal, that we were
able to get results out of the ILWU-Teamster alliance,
particularly in Warehouse. Never got quite as good
results in Longshore, true ....
Ward: So the cooperation existed on the west coast where
both unions had warehouses, but really didn't go
beyond that?
LG-: There were efforts to go beyond that. Again I have
to go back to the atmosphere of the time, and
particularly Hoffa's role. I mentioned Hal Gibbons;
he was at that meeting of the Western Conference.
Hoffa was there; Einar Mohn was chairing the meet
ing. We had some headache with the office workers
around the warehouses; Hal's reaction was to support
905
LG-: us on it, although there again you have this anarchy
within the Teamsters where sometimes leadership can
"be applied and sometimes it can't.
Another example, where the Teamsters in the
course of one of their Executive Board meetings,
must have had a discussion of the whole role of
warehousemen in the loading of trucks. There had
always been this problem around warehouses; we had
taken the position that if a truck was left there
without the driver, then it's no different than
freight cars and a warehouseman loads it.
In some places, the Teamsters put on quite a
drive to put lumpers on the docks; lumpers origin
ally were just part time labor. Sometimes they
became regular workers around the docks working
for the trucking company. This became a running
dispute in some cases. By and large the Teamster
Warehouse locals supported us around here, including
some very trying times.
But it was during that .time when there was a
discussion of the same issue in the General Execu
tive Board of the Teamsters Union. Hoffa took the
lead that any member of the Teamsters could load a
truck - a Teamster warehouseman or a driver. Around
here that would be perfectly okay, if it did not
exclude the ILWU.
About two or three weeks after that I got a copy
of a letter that had been sent out by the San
Francisco Employers Council: they were soliciting
members from among warehouse employers, including
warehouse employers who had contracts with the ILWU,
and the main sales argument they were using was that
if they joined up with the San Francisco Employers
Council, through their relationship with the Team
sters their warehousemen could then load the trucks.
I remember taking a trip to Washington with a
copy of this and taking it up with Hoffa. I said,
"Look, see what they're doing here - the employers
are using it to raid the ILWU, or to encourage
raiding." Hoffa didn't hesitate a hair to clear
that one up. He called in his secretary, dictated
a clarification and gave me a copy.
906
LG: "I just want to make it perfectly clear that anything
referred to in the General Executive Board as to
what Teamster- Warehousemen could do in loading a
truck, applies equally to ILU Warehousemen," he
said. So, the guy could be very forthright and
very quick and very direct.
Because of Hoffa, in 1958 or '59 - there was an
attempt to resolve the running battle that had been
going on between the ILWU and the Teamsters in Haw
aii. That was the struggle between Jack Hall and
Arthur Rutledge. It must have been in I960 because
we had won the 21 cents wage increase, which really
stood out very sharply.
Larry Steinberg, who was an assistant to Hoffa
and an old friend of Harold Gibbons, went out to
Hawaii to hammer out an understanding with Rutledge.
Einar Mohn had a much more constructive attitude
than anybody could automatically expect. His
attitude, for example, on Rutledge was that it was
a waste of time - his wearing two hats. He wore
the hat of the Teamsters Union, and he also wore
the hat of the Hotel Workers Union.
I pretty well had a good understanding with
Steinberg and also with Einar Mohn and Harold Gib
bons, although none of them were very successful
in getting across to Rutledge. This crazy anarchy
goes on in the Teamsters Union; at times there's
an enormous amount of autonomy; at other times
they can impose a fair amount of discipline.
But the point I kept hammering over the years,
was, "We've got certain rights here in Hawaii in
terms of the pioneering of organization in all
these outside islands.' Let's leave Honolulu alone
for a while, but the people who did the organizing
in sugar and pineapple over on Maui, or Kauai or the
Big Island were members of the ILWU."
Now mechanization is coming alone;; mechanization
which is the result of the ILWU pressing for higher
and higher wage scales. I discussed this at great
length with Jack early in our campaigns; we felt
there were to be enormous changes after the war,
and those did take place.
907
LG-: Out of World War II came all kinds of new equipment,
new machinery, the sort of things they were using
in the South Pacific. Pretty soon, these were being
adapted to mechanical harvesting; roads were being
built, huge turna haulers were being introduced.
Instead of the cane going on little tiny railroads
or on flumes, it was being hauled by trucks up to
40 tons.
The industry was being revolutionized to the
point where all handcutting of cane disappeared and
enormous amounts of mechanization took place. My
point to Steinberg, Einar Mohn and others in the
Teamsters Union is that we are the ones who pioneer
ed in the organization of the outside islands.
Hotels were coming along and our people would be
looking for jobs. There's no other place to work,
because on most of those islands the work available
to people is negligible.
Ward: Plantations and/ or hotels, huh?
LG-: Right now, for example, you take a look at an is
land like Maui; if you eliminate sugar, there's a
pineapple plantation - Maui Pine; there are two
sugar plantations, HC&S and Pioneer Mill; you
eliminate those - the tourist industry is not an
industry, it's a service - and you have eliminated
90 percent of the work force.
Obviously, the push on the part of our people
would be that if these jobs opened up and the jobs
began to shrink on the plantations, this is where
they would be looking for work. A lot of our
people were phased out on a plantation like Kohala
on the Big Island. A good many of them found work
at the big hotel, the Moana Kea, the Rockefeller
hotel on the Big Island. So, they understood this.
The man who would never accept this was Rutledge.
After a while it became manifest why; the Hotel
Workers Union had what they called certain top-
drawer deals. The top-drawer deals were with
outfits like the Sheraton and with Hyatt House;
maybe with the Hilton, too. So, there's been an
understanding between that union and these big
chains that as new ones open up they almost auto
matically get recognition.
908
LG-: I suppose that the employers were not going to
"bargain for any trouble with the union in other
places, though to what degree they would have had
any trouble is another story; but Mohn and Steinberg
never saw it that way. They thought that the posi
tion the ILWU took was pretty logical. All kinds
of attempts were made to straighten things out with
Rutledge, but they didn't work out.
ard: He still has the Hotel Workers?
LG: He still has the Hotel V/orkers, although he lost out
there in an election. Somebody else got elected.
He still has the Teamsters Union there. I recall
one trip; Mohn was down there when we met with Rut-
ledge; Mohn was saying, "Look, if you don't move,
Honolulu is going to settle down into an open shop
town like Los Angeles. You have the chance to move;
the ILWU is willing to work with you, set up a joint
organizing committee," - which we did for a while.
But the moment it was convenient for Rutledge to
jump the traces, he did. Just start at the airport
and work your way down, organize every damn thing
in sight. The Teamsters don't have even all the
teamsters organized. Mohn's attitude was very
constructive.
Ward: Harry got along with Rutledge pretty well?
LG: No; when it came to these basic issues of organiza
tion, he didn't fundamentally disagree with Jack
(Hall). Maybe Harry wasn't too happy about the
organization of the hotel workers, but he could see
why we were moving there, or why Jack did. He liked
some of the successes that were picked up; places
like the Moana Kea Hotel, big places like the
Kanapali and a number of hotels we have under con
tract right now in other sections of the tourist
industry.
However, the running feud with Rutledge has not
done any good. In -some cases like the project in
Wailea, it's Inter-Continental under a contract
with Alexander Baldwin, it just stays open shop.
That's what happens when you get this kind of
conflict.
909
LG: All I'm pointing out is that it was a very rapid
development, the cooperation with the Teamsters
there .
Teamsters v. Farm Workers
Ward: Wasn't there a period when ILWU cooperation with
the Teamsters got in the way of any help the ILWU
might have otherwise given to Cesar Chavez and the
Farm Workers?
LG: Yes and no ....
Ward: Harry was supposed to have "been pretty opposed to
Chavez and the Farm Worker movement at one time.
LG: That's at a later date; unless these things are
seen in time sequence, I don't think it holds up.
While it is true that he was hostile to Chavez for
a while, sonje of the accusations made were com
pletely unfounded and uncalled for ....
Ward: You mean that Harry made against Chavez?
LG: Yes; but I maintained a friendly relationship with
Chavez during all that time -
Ward: But were Harry's accusations against Chavez based
on his relationship with the Teamsters or what?
LG: No, I don't think so. Frankly, I don't know what
they were founded on. I recall a session over at
Harry's house with Cesar Chavez. At that time,
both Harry and I were telling Cesar that he might
do much better working with the Teamsters, or even
as a division of the Teamsters.
He was in the AFofL and he was on the move; I
think they had started that peregrination from
Delano to Sacramento.
Ward: Oh, yes, it was to wind up in Sacramento on Easter
Sunday, and Governor Pat Brown wouldn't attend.
LG: Pat Brown was
910
Ward: He was having Easter with his family someplace else.
LG: Or down at Palm Springs with Fraik Sinatra. But I
recall at that session, Harry was very cordial with
Cesar, very friendly. Cesar's attitude at the time
was "Well, we could do with two ILWUs." Interesting
formulation. In other words, a Farm Workers Union,
somewhat along the same principles and ideas and
policies of the ILWU, would be a good thing.
But that gets into another scene. During those
periods when Cesar started organizing, I was seeing
a great deal of the Teamsters. Einar Mohn was very
cooperative in setting up the Council for Health
Plan Alternatives, where we were able to get the
entire labor movement encompassed in a program for
some alternative to the existing method of deliver
ing and charging for health care.
Mohn was very helpful there. Stuck with it for
a long time until it ran out of money. But at that
time, there also emerged the Alliance for Labor
Action. Do you recall the time when Reuther (Walter
Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers) left
the APofL in the sixties?
Ward: Oh, Reuther, yes.
LG: When Reuther left he set up the Alliance for Labor
Action.
##
LG: I was very outspoken in my support for Cesar. I
went so far as to try to set up machinery with the
Teamsters, the Auto Workers and the ILWU to act in
consultation with Cesar Chavez and to try to avoid
some of the jurisdictional problems that were crop
ping up, particularly things like moving packing
sheds out into the fields, one of the developments
going on for some years and changing the nature of
the industry.
But it's true that there were times when I might
have been the only person who insisted that I was
going to maintain a relationship with both the
Teamsters and the Farm Workers. I don't recall its
ever resulting in a real beef with the Teamsters.
I don't think they were too happy about it.
911
LG-: Mohn never felt that keenly about the organization
of Parm Workers, "but I think he went along with it.
He was a little bit irritated about the role of the
Catholic bishops; he thought they would be doing
better just taking care of our souls. I'll admit
there are some things in the Parm Workers which are
a little bit hard to handle, like the Lady of
G-uadalupe .
On the other hand there's no question that Chavez
was doing quite a job in making a breakthrough when
nobody else could. As a matter of fact, the ILWU
tried, sometime in the fifties or early sixties. We
had a man named Lou Krainack. He had some experience
with farm workers and we had him on our payroll for
a while to see what could be done, but he couldn't
find the handles to make it move.
Ward: Let me see; there were before him some attempts,
three or four, to try to get somewhere, but they
didn't really jell.
LG: That's right; none of it jelled. The Packinghouse
Workers; then UCAPAWA tried; they settled down and
tried to get something done in the canneries. We
made a bit of an effort and got no place. But
Cesar found the handles.
What's more important, though, I don't want to
get off of Hoffa. This was a period of very rapid
movement there in '57, '58; these developing alliances
and understandings with the Teamsters Union; our
attempts to work things out with the ILA, even to
get a common expiration date. At one point we had
the longshore contract so written that we could
shift the expiration date and provide a common
expiration date with the east coast. But none of
this ever panned out with the ILA.
Ward: But the ILA contact ended with the Hawaii convention,
didn't it?
LG: I think so.
Ward: It seemed to me rather dramatic; the decision not
to get along.
912
LG-: Yes. I felt the ILA thing was stumbling all over
the place long before then. I was one of those who
recommended that "Velson be pulled back from the
east coast because I felt that it had become strict
ly a brain picking operation. He was able to help-
out in some regards, but in terms of getting anything
fundamental done, even a simple thing like coordin
ated bargaining or a common expiration date - not
even reaching the maturity of the Northern California
Warehouse Council - we weren't coming anywhere near
it.
The closest we ever got was joint action in
Washington, D.C. around the Longshore and Harbor
Workers Act, even though we had given them unstint
ing; support. It just didn't jell. We came fairly
close in 1955, but it kept sliding. With Hoffa in
the picture, perhaps it could have shifted.
Ward: Would you say that Hoffa's conviction and incarcer
ation was damaging to attempts at rapport with the
Teamsters?
LG: With our rapport to the Teamsters? Or cooperation?
Well, the California Warehouse Council remains
intact to this day ....
Ward: But on a national level -
LG: But on a larger level, yes, I guess it stumbled
somewhat, yes. It didn't have the same amount of
drive. If Hoffa had been in charge, it might have
been a different story.
That brings us to a different era. I'm talking
about this period of very rapid development and
cooperation with the IBT, the efforts on the part
of Hoffa to pull together the ILWU and the ILA and
his concurrence with the idea of a transport
federation, something that would be very effective.
These days, there's a more apparent need for it
because your seafaring unions are not doing too
well.
There are enormous inroads by mechanization as
in the case of longshore; so it's a common alliance
that makes a great deal of sense. Hoffa stood four
square for it; so did Harry; but the ILA dragged
913
LG: its feet. It could never get beyond a conversation
between ourselves and the Teamsters, and that wasn't
quite enough to do it. As to whether the seafaring
unions would come along, that's all retrospective;
there's no way of measuring that.
ard: Well, can we move on to the time when you actually
discussed affiliation between the ILU and the ILA?
LG: Okay, an attempt to wind up that whole era and
mention a couple of things that happened during
this time. In 1958 we were making gains when most
unions were not. In 1960, which was generally
classified as a lean year for labor, we did very
well. The Hawaii statehood battle finally was won
in 1959. I've already told you how the McClellan
Committee helped Quinn win out in Hawaii over Burns,
even though, by and large, the election should have
been a victory for us.
Not too long after the election of Quinn, he
appeared before an II WU convention and made a
pretty shabby attack on the union. I guess part of
it was just grand- standing, bearding the lion in
his den. He came before an ILWU Local 142 conven
tion to tell us that we had done a great job but
we should keep our noses out of things like foreign
policy, war and peace, and what have you.
I figured it was my job to answer him, so I dug
up some of our convention proceedings; I think it
was in the 1963 or 1965 convention where we adopted
a ten point program on peace. Each of these points
might have been premature, but right just the same.
So I took a bit of time there at the convention to
answer him and we got some good reactions on that,
and the delegates at the Local 142 convention
promptly adopted a statement of policy reaffirming
our position on all these things.
Harry was subpoenaed by the un-American Activi
ties Committee some time in April of 1959, and the
counsel for the committee suggested that perhaps
we wouldn't get visas to Japan. He was partly
right - I didn't get a visa. The All-Pacific and
Asian Dockworkers Conference took place in May of
that year in Japan.
ard: That was because of your trouble in England?
914
LG-: I don't know. I think it was a matter of them just
looking for any excuse; they had one handy in my
case. What do you call it? Token diplomacy? So,
these were some of the developments. It was in '59
when Kruschchev visited the Longshore hall; both
Harry and St. Sure were there, I mentioned that.
This is where you get into this odd dichotomy in
St. Sure's character, you see, which I'll admit you
can't explain all the time. I think he still felt
that as an individual he could do thinars, even
though he was there primarily to represent the em-
ployersjand still to me the guy was a fairly decent
guy on some scores, which he was on things like
civil liberties, but he was not going to do a bum
job for the employers either, and he finally did.
In regard to the first mechanization agreement
in '60, which went into effect in 1961, I want to
make one correction. I made a statement about "men
and machines may be added in event of - "
Ward: Oh, "may" changed to "shall"?
LG-: It wasn't exactly the way the thing was written.
It was finally written that "if the workload was
onerous, the employers would add men or machines". -
The employers could always decide it was not oner
ous; that was the problem. And that became a long
controversy by itself, because the guys could see
this as a breakdown of conditions.
But by and large, the mechanization agreement
was adopted by better than a two to one vote of
the longshoremen. Later on, we began to get a
little feedback when they realized how the employers
could implement it.
How Kennedy Beat Nixon
LG-: In I960 there was a joint mass meeting of the
Teamsters and the ILWU over in Oakland, the Oakland
Auditorium, sponsored by the educational committee
of Local 70 of the Teamsters. Hoffa was supposed
to speak, together with Harry. Harry spoke.
915
LG: At the last minute the McClellan Committee sub
poenaed Hoffa for the following morning on that
running goddam debate of theirs so that he could not
make the meeting; he had to address it by telephone.
The afternoon he was supposed to appear, McClellan
put his committee hearing over a month.
Ward: It was just so Hoffa couldn't come?
LG: Yes. Harold Gibbons spoke in place of Hoffa. When
Chili was around he got along with Local 70 of the
Teamsters very well. He always had a close personal
relationship with a number of the officials in the
Teamsters Union; part of the Portuguese group. I
guess if anything we were driven further together
by Kennedy. When John Kennedy ran for President,
in a speech he made in Salt Lake in I960, he said
that an effective attorney-general would get rid of
Harry Bridges and Jimmy Hoffa. That effective
attorney general later took office and ....
Ward: He tried hard - Bobby Kennedy - and he got Hoffa.
LG: Yes, he got Hoffa, but he missed when he came to
Harry. In I960, early in the year, we had an
enlarged Executive Board meeting on the question
of political action and where we were going; the
general reaction was that we weren't going to sup
port anybody who had been constantly teeing off on
us or on Hoffa, and that the McClellan Committee
was a real disgrace; that everything that came out
of it, like the Landrum-Griffin Act, was just
another set-back for labor; on top of Taft-Hartley,
now Landrum-Griffin. None of these things would
accomplish anything in terms of the basic purposes
of trade unionism.
Ward: Could you round out the fifties?
LG: I'd say they ended with the Kennedy election. We
refused to endorse Kennedy or Nixon. The only part
of the International which went its own way was
Hawaii. Hawaii endorsed Nixon. Jack Hall felt that
keenly about the attack on the Teamsters, the attack
on Harry. I was in Hawaii when Nixon turned up there
to speak as a candidate.
Ward: That was the election where Kennedy beat him by a
hair.
916
LG: Yes. That election warrants further investigation. '
The first results out of Hawaii were that Nixon won.
I think that when they saw the results nationally,
there might have been a quick recount. It's very
funny how that got shifted around.
When Nixon appeared down there, somebody called
Jack and asked him whether he wanted to meet Nixon.
I happened to be there at the time, and I came by
Jack's house, talked about it and agreed that if he
was going to meet Nixon, why not give him a document,
We drafted a document simply trying to give him
some kind of a labor policy that if elected he did
not intend to play around in the camp of organized
labor; that he intended to handle labor issues
impartially, and do the job which the Department of
Labor was assigned to do and not be party to any
witch-hunts.
Actually, I think that's the closest we ever came
to electing a President. If he had adopted that
policy .... it didn't take many votes - either
Illinois or Pennsylvania.
Ward: Illinois, I think. Well, there's always been a
belief that (Mayor Richard) Daley in Chicago swung
the election to Kennedy by virtue of the Chicago
machine .
LG-: Both of these states had large union memberships,
and we felt that there was a lot of hostility on
the part of labor to the McClellan Committee.
Ward: Did this meeting with Nixon take place?
LG: The meeting took place; Jack handed him this envel
ope -
Ward: Did you go along?
LG: No. Jack just met him, shook hands and gave him
this envelope. The newspapers kept asking Jack
what's in the envelope. Jack said, "If Mr. Nixon
wants to release this, it's entirely his business;
it's just a private memorandum." And he left it
there; of course, we got ten times more publicity
that way.
917
Ward: Did Nixon ever do anything with it?
LG-: He never released the contents. If you look back at
the I960 election campaign, never did Nixon have any
kind of a labor policy. It was never mentioned
during the entire campaign.
Obviously, when we entered the Kennedy era, it
was not with a great deal of jubilation. Our union
came out with this no endorsement position and I
recall the thousands of mailings we did; we would
take every fifth doctor and every fifth dentist, say,
and point out what Kennedy had said, that the next
attorney general would get rid of Harry and Hoffa.
So, that rounded out that era.
Ward: I see. That winds up the fifties.
LG: I think it does.
918
BRIDGES-ILA v. GOLDBLATT
(Interview 33: 7 November, 1978)
Sharp Disputes Among The Leadership
ard: We were going to get into the sixties and the
question of Teamster affiliation.
LG: Let me go briefly over some things that were happen
ing during the sixties.
"Ward: Very good.
LG: I tried to get across the idea that the end of the
fifties began to see quite a change. The harassment,
while not completely over, was pretty well gone.
There was still some running guerilla warfare, like
the attempt of the government to impose a fine by
Internal Revenue; all the monies collected on behalf
of the Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt Defense were
personal income to the defendants, and they owed
income tax on these funds.
Of course, none of them had ever seen a dime of
this; the defense committee had to work on a shoe
string half the time. The attorneys were paid very
little. Some of our members said, "To hell with
that noise; if anybody owes anybody money, it's the
government that owes us money - we had to dig into
our jeans and pony up the dough on a lot of harass
ment that didn't make a damn bit of sense."
I recall the Internal Revenue case being; settled
for some token amount, which as far as we were
concerned was no admission of ffuilt or agreement
919
LG-: with the government; it just turned out to "be an
awful lot cheaper than having still another case in
court.
*
So, these things continued, as well as a number
of moves against the unions who were friends of ours,
like the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. As a
matter of fact, there were a series of Taft-Hartley
cases, including conspiracy cases. There was the
endless campaign to destroy the Marine Cooks and
Stewards, which finally was done.
Ward: That was before the sixties -
LG: Late fifties or early sixties. Come the end of the
fifties, a lot of this had changed and a number of
possibilities opened up, including some form of
cooperation with the ILA. It sort of stumbled and
staggered along.
Ward: Climaxed in that Hawaii convention, didn't it?
LG: It really climaxed earlier, because we couldn't even
get the most elementary, simple trade union under
standing with them, such as a common expiration date.
Ward: If that's true, what was the point in bringing these
east coast ILA leaders out to Hawaii and having them
sit up there and have Teddy Gleason make a speech to
the convention, and all that jazz?
LG-: I personally became quite jaundiced with the whole
operation.
Ward: Well, some people blamed you for dumping the ILA,
isn't that true?
LG: Yes, some people did that - it's this business of
looking for witches. I don't think that I had to
do that much. The union as a whole was very cool
to the idea; a few supporters, one or two people in
L. A., a young man who is dead now, pretty outspoken
in support of the ILA. I don't think he had that
much following in the membership.
There might have been a little vestigial support
among some of the locals which had been members of
the ILA, even long after we had become part of the
920
LG: ILWU; some up at Port Angeles. Well, I would say
there was not that much support even in longshore
for the ILA. There was no way for the men to see
any real progress in this direction.
Whatever progress there was we had to pump into
it; blowing up little things, especially some joint
legislative work around something that obviously
was of mutual interest. But when it came to any
trade union steps, the most preliminary steps . . .
Ward: You mean questions like wages, hours and working
conditions?
LG: Yes, around contracts, around expiration dates -
I'm not even talking about joint bargaining. There
are all kinds of intermediate steps short of a
complete joint bargaining structure.
None of these things materialized, so if you ask
why do they appear at the ILWU convention in 1971,
the only conclusion I can reach is that notwith
standing the fact that these things did not material
ize, Harry was still more and more determined,
particularly toward the end of the sixties, to see
whether reaf filiation could be implemented.
In those latter years in the sixties, he was
speaking repeatedly of the offer on the part of the
ILA that we could always go back as District 38.
District 38 is what we had been on the west coast
prior to disaf filiation from the ILA.
Ward: Part of the sentimental value, I suppose.
LG: This is where you get into a difficult area for me.
When I start going through that period, I can't help
but go through an awful lot of introspection. At
what point did certain things begin to shift and
change in the internal feelings within the ILWU,
particularly as to how Harry felt about certain
things and how I felt and which later wound up in
a very abrasive situation, an attempt by Harry to
impose retirement at age 63 at the 1971 convention?
Ward: Which was aimed directly at you.
921
LG: It was as clear as a "bell - a man would have to be
blind drunk for the whole convention not to know it.
Ward: Well, that was more or less within the union, except
for gossip. As this thing got worse, Harry is quot
ed in The Chronicle, without retraction, when asked
who was going to succeed him, as saying, "Anybody
but Goldblatt." That's getting pretty rough, isn't
it?
LG: Sure, but he was quoted in an L. A. paper where
somebody asked Harry if he might be retiring and
would I be running for president, and Harry answered,
"Over my dead body."
Ward: Well, that sort of statement has a background?
LG: Exactly. That's the reason it gets so difficult
for me to come to grips with it. Not that I can't
come to grips with the facts because they're there;
they speak for themselves.
Ward: Well, instead of trying to analyze the facts, simply
state them and let whoever studies this stuff in
the future draw his own conclusions. I think that's
the proper thing to do.
LG: Maybe so - but -
Ward: But, look -
LG: I mean people don't need - that's very simplistic
on your part, by the way. People don't give up that
easy on questions -
Ward: You mean that -
>
LG: It's not just a question of me .... I think that
that when you have spent your life at something and
when you've had such a tight and effective working
relationship around a good militant program which
I thought was very much in keeping with my own
fundamental beliefs as a socialist; my beliefs that
the role of a union went beyond the question of hours
and wages; that if you see the thing begin to un
ravel and schisms develop, then you can't help but
think "How did this take place? When did it take
place? Why did it take place?"
922
Ideologies?
Ward: When you speak in ideological terms as you've just
been doing, I've heard it said by people who should
have some inside knowledge on the subject that Harry
was never really a leftwinger; he was an anarcho-
syndicalist. Would you subscribe to that?
LG-: A lot of people say that. I'd say he was more of an
anarcho-syndicalist than he was a Marxist. On the
other hand, there's no question about his conviction
that the Soviet Union is the first socialist country
in the world. This was something that had his
genuine adherence.
To say that he had no political bent is mostly
wrong because that is anarcho-syndicalism plus;
it's to another power or with an added ingredient;
that I think would be more accurate.
A lot of people - and they have used it in
discussions with me - talk about him as an anarcho-
syndicalist or .lust a plain syndicalist. Some of
the things to which he seemed to become more and
more adherent, particularly in the late sixties,
were definitely in this anarcho-syndicalist field:
constant perorations against intellectuals ....
Ward: Anti-student, anti the '64 thing (the Free Speech
Movement) in Berkeley ....
LG-: Right - right. So, these are things you start
looking at and you begin to wonder .... Well,
perhaps I just refused to recognize certain things.
I felt I stuck by Harry like glue all through the
period of harassment and all the personal diffi
culties he had. Perhaps I didn't catch all the
implications of his remark about St. Sure. It's
one of the reasons why I would constantly turn over
in my head, "Well, what's going on?"
Ward: You mean in the Terminal situation, when he made
that crack about your taking advantage of St. Sure?
LG: Yeah.
923
Ward: You still didn't see what the background was in his
thinking?
LG: I refused to accept the idea that St. Sure had got
ten to Harry; or maybe the changing times or what
ever it was ....
Ward: Well, you mentioned the well-known fact that Harry's
lodestar, in one sense, was the Soviet Union. If
there was any one man who was responsible for the
creation of the Soviet Union it was Lenin, who was
an intellectual; he certainly wasn't a worker.
LG: But this has nothing to do with Harry's thinking.
Ward: Well, it indicates a very confused thinking.
LG: Right and it's a terribly confused thinking. Harry,
for example, is an omnivorous reader - always read
a great deal; and yet, these constant perorations
against intellectuals. What its source, I don't
know.
Ward: You're generally rated as an intellectual.
LG: Well, it almost took the turn that if you read a
book, you were an intellectual; if you had any ideas
other than the most simplistic trade union ideas,
you were an intellectual. The reference to the
Free Speech Movement in Berkeley is very accurate,
because at that point I began to recognize that
something strange was going on. Now, these things
could have had something else to do with a combina
tion of personal factors. Harry was getting along
in years; in '64 he must have been ....
Ward: Sixty five then.
LG: No, I think he was born in 19 ...
Ward: When I first knew Harry I was four months older
than he was; then I got to be two years older than
he, somehow.
LG: I recall that. Why that was important to him, I
don't know, but on some trip to Australia - -
Ward: He discovered a different record in some birth
certificate.
924
LG: Right. I think I made a mistake in another respect -
Ward: Lou, you were just completing a sentence in which
you were saying that for a long time you were
convinced that Harry was one of the few people who
had absolutely no boiling point. Now what do you
mean by "boiling point"?
LG: The way he managed to go through the trials - the
expulsion from the CIO - the attempted raids - the
1948 longshore strike - yet maintained his integrity
all through that. They could never drive him into
redbaiting.
If you glance back, the tone of The Dispatcher
remains the same in its devotion to issues; out
spoken against the arms budget; it took on Kennedy;
it took a good position on the Cuban missile crisis;
it kept fighting off the redbaiters; kept plugging
away at both China and Cuban trade; sent a delega
tion to Cuba; support of the Mine-Mill people when
everybody else had walked away from them; the tone
of the paper, the tone of the union remained the
same.
All of these things convinced me the man had no
boiling point. As a matter of fact, even when he
and Nancy (Bridges' second wife) split up, my
reaction was that it was because Nancy couldn't
answer the bell for the fifth round; that somehow
these things had gotten to her.
When it came to trying to help as best I could
during that period, I was making a trip back east
and Harry asked -me- to talk to Bob Lieberman who was
Nancy's brother-in-law. It was to carry a message
that if there was any beef about the whole business
of the break-up, it wouldn't do much good and could
do a lot of harm . . .
Ward: To whom?
LG: To Nancy. And Bob was fond of Harry and Nancy. As
a matter of fact, Harry used to spend a lot of time
at Bob's home when they were in the east. I don't
know whether I lost Bob Lieberman 's friendship,
925
LG: which had "been a lone: friendship. In those things,
you know, people drift in different directions. I think
that was where I made a mistake.
ard: Well, how could you lose by this talk between Harry
and Bob Lieberman?
LG: I talked to Bob Lieberman; Harry asked me to talk
to him.
Ward: Well, then, you weren't doing it on your own?
LG: No; but if you do those things, you're party to it -
Ward: So, it may have cost you something in your rela
tionship with this Bob?
LG: It might have, yes. I don't know as to whether that
would have been too material because when families
break up that way, they're messy. There's no way
to account for what people do -
Ward: Well, my father used to say - he was a lawyer in
early life - the reason the law won't take the
testimony of spouse against spouse is that nobody
in his sane mind can understand the relationship
between any male and female human being.
LG: Well, he might have been as accurate as anybody on
that. If humans have learned more since, I'm not
sure. And I don't think that est or rolfing helps
any, either. I think perhaps where I made a mistake
was that maybe Harry might not have had a boiling
point, but he had a cooling point.
Ward: I was thj.-nlri.-ng that a turning point might have been
a sharper definition than a boiling point.
LG: This, I think, is what began to happen. I find it
difficult to handle these things because I simply
refuse to accept the idea that there could really
be that much of a deep-going change. I refused to
accept the idea of Harry's being hostile to me.
Sure, I disagreed with him at times; that happens.
Towards the latter part of the sixties, Christ
Almighty! I'd sit down in an officers' meeting and
he'd produce notes with ten different indictments
926
LG-: scribbled out about my actions. And all of them
meaningless. Was I secretly supporting the Black
Panthers? Sure, I didn't feel terribly hostile
toward the Black Panthers. I thought they were
wrong; I think this reliance on guns is self-
defeating.
Ward: Well, you were a supporter of Jack Hall; maybe that
had something to do with it?
LG-: It might have had a little bit to do with it. Jack
Hall was pretty outspoken. I told you about Jack
Hall and what I thought was his kuliana.
Ward: Also, the fact that when you came into the ILWU,
Harry was president of the whole works. By the
time of the late sixties and seventies, a membership
showdown would have been something else than what it
used to be.
LG-: Sure, it would have been - there's no question about
it. Harry might have felt abrasive, but if he felt
that keenly about things there was an easy way to go
at it. It didn't require this artificial nostrum
that he was looking for - compulsory retirement at
63, which was patently designed to be aimed at one
person; a sort of ILWU bill of attainder. The easy
thing for him to have done was to have nominated a
candidate against me. There's no question he could
have gotten somebody to run. He had enough of a
loyal following among the longshoremen. He would
have had great trouble in warehouse, and I think he
would have had just as big trouble in Hawaii.
Ward: Well, I think he was as well aware of that as you
were. You weren't an Alvah Bessie or a Bill Glazier
or Line Fairley or any of those ILWU employees who
could be controlled like that.
LG-: I don't think he ever controlled Line Fairley just
like that; Line retired because it was his compulsory
retirement date.
Ward: I know, but just the same -
LG-: Right. But Alvah Bessie was another thing.
Ward: Sid Roger (former editor of The Dispatcher)?
927
LG-: Sid Roger was another thing; much more clear. That
stems from one of those crazy things that happened.
You try to figure out what the devil is going on and
how does it make a little sense. Sometimes you tell
yourself "Don't try to find rational answers for
irrational things."
But no matter how often you tell yourself that* '
it's like trying to hit a golf ball right. You say,
"You've got to keep your head down and swing through
the -ball." You know exactly what you're supposed to
do - it's oust a question why don't you do it all
the time.
Even though you have a rational answer, which is
not to try to explain all irrational things, you
can't resist the pressure on you to try to find
something. You're looking for that turning point.
What happened? Perhaps you flounder; I know I do.
Could it be age? Could it be ego? But we all have
that. To say that I have no ego, or that you don't,
would be the biggest line of bullshit the world ever
heard.
Ward: You have a threshhold somewhere?
Back To 'The Womb?
LG: Right. Or could it be that here was a determination
to round out a chapter of labor by having it begin
and end with one man? We know that the person who
was responsible in the main for the formation of the
ILWU on the west coast was Harry. Is the whole
thing rounded out by returning to the fold after it
is all over?
Ward: Back to the womb?
LG-: I don't think anybody as yet has an understanding of
the geriatrics of people or of institutions. That's
a sociological study for the future.
Ward: I'm going to try to lead you back to the '71 conven
tion in Hawaii. Why, in view of the failure to agree
between ILWU and ILA, were those leaders invited to
that convention?
928
LG-: They were invited by Harry. I was talking to Freddie
Field, a man I have always been fairly fond of, and
they still had the standing proposition that we should
come back into the ILA as the old District 38; I guess
as far as Harry was concerned, that was adequate. It
just wouldn't sell; I guess he might have felt that
at the '71 convention maybe it would, but nothing of
the sort happened. I heard a rumor that the ILA guys
thought I was getting instructions from "Pete King."
I said, "I don't know Pete King. Who is he?" Turn
ed out "Pete King" was Brooklynese for Peking.
Ward: It was supposed to be you who was getting the in
structions?
LG: Yes. My feeling was that it was sort of a last
desperate try; never give up.
Ward: Well, suppose the attitude of the convention had been
different; suppose you had re-affiliated with the
ILA, what would have happened to his position and
to your position? He would have been somebody and
you would have been out, is that it?
LG-: Oh, no. He kept insisting there was room for all
of us, and the ILA kept making that noise too;
later on there was a big '71 strike, where he was
still plugging away for ILA.
As a matter of fact, the whole longshore commit
tee of which I was a part went to New York City to
meet with the ILA in December 1971 or early January
1972; I think it was early January. It was winter;
we couldn't meet at the hotel they had because all
the water mains were broken.
Harry was very frank when our committee met by
itself before we met with the ILA. Harry said point
blank to the committee, "One reason I'm back here is
that I think we belong back there in the ILA." There
the effort was to get the ILA to give us the token
support of tying up some of the container ships like
the container docks over in Elizabeth, New Jersey;
perhaps only for a couple of days, in support of our
strike. Even this could not be accomplished; Gleas-
on told us as far as he was concerned, it was one
down, all down; he had a leader from that local who
announced there was no way of tying it up.
929
Ward: This conference in New York took place after the
Hawaii convention of '71, after they left with their
tails dragging?
LG: Not with their tails dragging.
Ward: But it must have "been quite a "blow when they got no
support on the floor of the convention.
LG-: Oh, they got a couple of supporters, but they knew
perfectly well, as Johnny Bowers put it, "Well, I
guess we laid an egg." But that doesn't mean any
thing in Harry's case, where he's hell bent for
something. The guy has unbelievable persistence and
endurance. Christ, he'll hang in with a committee
until the cows come home.
Ward: Well, here you were in New York and Teddy Gleason
wouldn't ....
LG: As a matter of fact, while we were there the ILA
was in negotiations with the employers in the same
hotel where we were meeting. Gleason would shuttle
back and forth, upstairs to meet with the employers
and then come down. They wound up in agreement -
the ILA did pretty well. I'm sure that the fact we
were back there might have given the ILA a bit of
a leg up, and the least he should have said was,
"Thanks, fellas, for coming back and giving us a
hand - that's okay."
Instead, he gave us a lecture on how to bargain,
which is one thing Harry did not need; or some of
the others of us. The lecture being, you put the
employers in a small, smoke-filled room and wear
them down, you see. Your fellas can get in another
room which is light and airy and so forth.
I remarked to Harry as we walked out of there,
"I guess you realize that Teddy Gleason .just got
through pissing in your shoes." (laughter) He
wasn't happy about that remark, although he realized
we were getting absolutely no place at all. We came
back from there empty-handed, but I could read the
handwriting on the wall on that one long before.
930
LG: Gleason was talking on how they pushed the Teamsters
around; he always talks very tough. And I said,
"Veil, you know, our relations with the Teamsters
are q-uite good." And he says, "Well, ours are good
too - if we have to be!" So, I made the point very-
sharply, "You know, we have a good working relation
ship with the Teamsters Union and we don't see any
good reason for a battle with them, particularly in
warehouse."
He said, "Oh, no - no, that's fine, that's fine."
So, it was sort of all over the place, you couldn't
get a clear answer. I think the committee realized
sure there had been years of effort trying to get
things together with the ILA, but they were coming
a cropper.
This was not true of our relations with the
Teamsters. The economics of the situation, the
bargaining relationship, the source of strength, the
protection and the advancement of the interests of
the members of your union, require a cold-blooded
approach.
I said, "If our membership is going to consider
any kind of affiliation, the logic of the situation
would indicate that the Teamsters make more sense
x to us than the ILA." I maintained this reservation:
I said, "As far as our membership is concerned, at
least at this stage of the game, I don't think they
have any interest in any affiliation. They love
the ILWU and they believe in it."
It may not be a big union, it may not be making
as much progress as some other unions. I know the
general theories in the labor movement right now
that a union has to be somewhere around a million
members these days to effectively operate as a
national organization. They're smitten with this
Big Is Beautiful business.
Ward: Who did you express these opinions to? Harry and
the committee?
LG: Harry, our own committee, the executive board, a
series of workshops. Later Harry switched around
and said, "Okay, let's talk about affiliation with
the Teamsters." I said that so far even minimum
efforts to get cooperation out of the ILA has not
worked out.
931
Ward: But the ILA showed some willingness, didn't they,
to get the ILWU back into the ranks?
LG: Yes, but again as District 38 under their constitu
tion, but that constitution had changed in the
interim. That's what I kept pounding away at Harry;
I said, 'You're looking at a constitution that's
back in 1934. If you read their new constitution
it's another story.
"Yes, I know what arguments you can make on the
longshoremen, and they're appealing arguments; you
can bargain for all coasts at one time; you can
bargain with all shipowners at one time; if you shut
down one ship, you shut them all down for the whole
nation."
Those arguments have a certain power; it's the
natural feeling of workers in any industry that if
they are united in that industry, they'll be better
off. On the other hand, our chance of bringing this
about was almost zero. All that was being proposed
was that we go back in there as the old District 38.
As to what would happen to other large sections
of the union which were now the majority, Warehouse
and Hawaii, how can anyone show where there is
anything to be gained?
Bridges Makes A Switch
LG: At the end of the sixties and the beginning of the
seventies, Harry was pounding a line that the ILWU
was going no place; it had gotten to the point where
it was time to join the main body of labor, to get
into another organization. At least the Teamsters
Union had a little bit more logic to it.
The warehouse alliance is an obvious one, and the
dominant union, nationally as well as on the west
coast, is the Teamsters Union. Of course we also
had a certain bloc of strength, some big chips in
that game; there we had seen in our personal
experience with Teamsters around joint bargaining,
notwithstanding a lot of problems, it had been made
to work.
932
LG: In tlie case of the sugar workrs, pineapple workers,
the other people we had organized in Hawaii, at
least there the Teamsters had done something. They
had the cannery workers on the west coast; they had
some of the beet sugar refineries, even though the
beet sugar plants are split up, some in the Team
sters union like Great Western up around Utah;
maybe some in Minnesota. Then some of them are in
the Liquor and Distillery Workers which are out here.
In various efforts we made to pull together joint
action around the Sugar Act, the Teamsters were able
to muster the Distillery Workers to go along. To
get much work out of them was quite another story.
But, at least you had some contiguity of interests.
Ward: Could you give me the approximate time when Harry
said, "Okay, let's drop the ILA idea and think
about the Teamsters." That would be '71 or '72?
LG: Late '71 or '72, somewhere in there. Hack again to
the economics of the thing. One of the biggest
problems confronting the longshoremen was the
question of containers? there you have the direct
overlap with the Teamsters. At least there was
some-possibility of straightening that out; a joint
ILWU-Teamster committee had -been set up in the six
ties to function on a coast-wise basis.
True, we never managed to get the Teamsters to
go along with the concept of getting a piece of the
machine. So, the logic there was a great deal
stronger than anything that you could present on
behalf of the ILA.
Ward: Who made the pass when Harry switched from ILA to
Teamsters?
LG: I think Harry went back and talked to either Fitz-
simmons or Hoffa - no, I think Hoffa wasn't around.
After our '69 convention, there was an important
longshore caucus that took place primarily on the
question of containers and whether all work around
the dock area would be -done entirely by ILWU members;
that was one of the by-products of the mechanization
agreement. In some cases the PMA upheld us, like on
the business of cranes; in other cases, no dice.
Employers went their own way, they also went to court;
933
LG-: the net result was that we could not successfully
resolve the container beef.
Fitzsimmons came out and spoke at the '69 con
vention. It was also the time that the Teamsters
and Auto Workers had formed the Alliance for Labor
Action; sort of a brief-lived affair. I thought
we ought to join and we 'arranged a meeting while
Pitzsimmons was here with our executive board on the
ALA. Of course, he was anxious to see us in there;
anything to expand the organization.
I thought at least it wasn't a rival labor
movement. At least it indicated unhappiness with
the existing structure of the API -CIO and the feel
ing that something ought to be done other than making
like there is nothing wrong with the world, no matter
what. Reuther, I'm sure, was directly responsible
and perhaps got the Teamsters to go along with it;
at least Fitzsimmons was going along at that time.
I don't think it's around anymore.
Ward: The ALA?
LG: No, I think it died; however, I saw this thing as
something fresh, a place where the union could
spread its wings. Again, I go back to the opening
of all these possibilities of working with the
Teamsters and with other parts of the labor movement.
934
BCVTI A MINUET WITH THE IBT
Definite Affiliation Negotiations
LG: We were making steady progress in the warehouse
group. It was not confined to warehouse. There
were numerous efforts on the part of the Teamsters
to iron out the jurisdictional headaches in Hawaii.
God knows how many of the Teamster officials gave
it a whirl. Steinberg tried it down there; I recall
Gibbons being down there. Einar Mohn gave it a
whirl. At one point, I recall Hoffa being so ir
ritated with Art Rutledge that he said, "I'm just
going to yank his charter, that's all." I remember
some conversation with him either out here or back
in Washington - my remark was "Look, you have plenty
of headaches."
Ward: That was because Rutledge wasn't getting along with
the ILWU?
LG: No matter how many agreements you signed with him
(Rutledge) they were never adhered to. The first
time there was a chance to jump the traces and make
a separate deal, away he went. There was also this
running headache with him where he was wearing these
two hats.
Ward: Well, anyway, so Pitzsimmons came out here and then
there were some definite negotiations.
LG: There were lengthy negotiations with the Teamsters
and a number of documents exchanged. The one thing
that was constantly adhered to was that the long
shoremen would have their own division in the
Teamsters Union; could maintain their own caucus
935
LG: structure in the ILWU; elect their own Coast
Committeemen; manage their own pension funds and
things of that sort; conduct their ov/n strike votes;
and they would also have the right to determine
their own jurisdiction.
Ward: This was the ILWU's position?
LG: Right.
Ward: That created the situation, I believe, where Fitz-
simmons was quoted as saying, "The ILWU wants to
join the Teamsters, but not to join them."
LG: I felt that any discussion with the ILWU members
which did not guarantee them their autonomy would
fall on absolutely deaf ears. This is something
that cannot be overlooked - I don't give a damn who
it is; you can't wipe out years of history.
People who grew up in this union not only love
the union but it has become a way of life. The
basic internal democracy of the ILWU has not changed.
Sure, in some places it stumbles around a bit; you
might not get the kind of attendance you want at
union meetings; you might not get all the partici
pation you'd like to see in the daily work of the
union, but fundamentally the basic rank and file
democratic structure remains; periodic elections;
simple things like the recall petition, where 15
percent of the members in a local can automatically
recall an officer and then he has to stand trial;
the business of being elected for only two terms and
then returning to the job, which can be both good
and bad.
The good feature of it is the fact that it makes
every officer highly responsive to the members. On
the other hand, as contracts get more complicated
with pensions and health and welfare plans and
dental plans and vacation plans, there's a heavy
reliance on experts. One of the reasons it can be
done is because on a coast-wise level they have
other machinery that has a good deal more continuity,
like the Coast Committee and certain staff personnel.
936
Problems With The ILWU Constitution
Ward: And then you have the International officers too.
LG: Right, and staff personnel.
Ward: That part of the two-year rule started off with
Harry.
LG: Correct. And other things in the constitution which
resulted in all kinds of difficulties in the union,
some of them extremely unfair. I recall when I first
joined the union there was a provision in the
constitution where you had to "be a delegate from
your own local to run for office.
Well, some locals had a regular practice of
electing, in many cases, very competent men and
waiting for two years to deliberately knock them out
of office by not electing them as delegates, a sort
of peculiar anarchy; a business of defiance and of
telling the International "That's the way we like
it." Just make people bounce and jump.
And I remember a whole series of casualties out
of the Portland local. .Cole Jackman, who had once
been a member of the Coast Committee and a very
competent man, lost out because of the delegate
rule. Roscoe Craycraft, who had been secretary of
the International for a while, lost out for the same
reason.
Matt Meehan, one of the first secretaries of the
International union, the same thing. Matt Meehan
was a tower of strength. And this was a regular
practice until finally the constitution was changed,
where if a man was in office, he had the right to
run to succeed himself. Union democracy can take
many forms, and it can raise a lot of hell, too.
Ward: Well, now, the Teamster negotiations; how long did
this minuet with the Teamsters continue?
LG: For several years; Nixon was still in office when
the thing was called off. I recall Pitzsimmons was
out here. I think that Fitzsimmons might have
937
LG-: continued serving on the Nixon Wage Stabilization
Board, do you recall that? There was this pay
"board established right in the middle of the long
shore strike in 1971. Part of the wage increase
that we had won was not okayed by the pay board
even after a big presentation back there by Harry
and others who went back. It was turned down.
I know that at this meeting it was quite apparent
that whatever discussions had taken place were not
going to get much further. Later on I found out
that there were a lot of wheels within wheels going
on; one of which I thought we had effectively an
swered. Let me give you an example: under the
Teamster constitution all locals in an area belong
to the Joint Council.
There had been a steady, on-going battle in the
Teamsters Union in the Seattle area on the question
qf leadership. How much policy was involved, I don't
know, but this battle had been going on for a long,
long time. One feedback that I finally picked up -
##
Problems With The IBT Constitution
Ward: You learned something about Fitzsimmons, you were
saying.
LG-: He was getting a lot of flack from the northwest.
We have a lot of small locals up there; you have
ports, let us say, that are 30 to 40 miles apart,
a local in Bellingham, a local in Everett, a local
in Port Angeles and other locals around Seattle,
Olympia, another one in Tacoma, another one in
Raymond, .another one in Aberdeen. I gather that
under the Teamster constitution each local is
entitled to five delegates -
Ward: No matter what the size?
LG: That's right, to their Joint Council, and some people
up there decided that it could be bad business for
them to admit us because they weren't sure how our
people would vote; this would be the admittance of a
large block of votes which made them a bit unhappy.
938
Ward: It might upset somebody?
LG-: Upset the apple cart. I recall one conversation
with Fitzsimmons, or whomever I was talking to
where I said, "e can resolve that one; in the case
of small locals, you could have five locals combine
or three locals combine to elect their five dele
gates."
In fact, I didn't think it was of any importance
because our reaction is always the more the merrier;
the larger participation you can get, the better it
is; the more you can broaden the educational forum,
whether it be a Joint Council or a Labor Council,
no harm done at all.
This was bothering them, but I figured it was a
rather minor thing. That apparently was one of the
elements; a number of people were needling Fitz-
simmons. The Teamster constitution leaves a lot to
be desired.
The Teamster set-up is something that's worth a
lot more study than people have given it. In many
respects I think it might be one of the most
characteristic of all American unions. Here's what
I mean about "characteristic"; it reflects the
peculiar dichotomy within our sociological structure,
the idea that big is good; a conviction on the part
of a great many workers that if you're going to
match employer strength these days you have to have
large and powerful organizations, and at the same
time a lot of local autonomy.
Ward: Well, I gather it's a sort of a mesh, a democratic
facade in a functional benevolent dictatorship; the
typical American trade union constitution.
LG: I don't think it's a functional dictatorship; I think
people are wrong in their appraisal of that. I'll
admit that you can run into all kinds of problems
which are a by-product of the anarcho-syndicalism
that is ingrained in the American labor movement.
In other words, it's not confined to one indivi
dual. It's a reflection of anarcho-syndicalism,
together with a sort of fierce independence that you
still get on the part of the average American
939
LG-: worker; on that score he's a. much more independent
character than his counterparts in Europe. I've
never thought that the American working class is
nearly as docile as the British.
Ward: I wouldn't call the French and Italian workers
docile, from my personal experience.
LG: Well, I'm just making a comparison with the British;
the Germans, too, not from personal contact but
from reading and talking to people. Without an
understanding of some of this, then it's hard to
realize what can "be done in a situation.
How Not To Conduct A Strike
LG: Look, the bay area right now has been going through
this long, drawn-out grocery warehouse strike.
There's a long background to that, which reflects
some of the peculiarities of the Teamsters Union.
It's a business of understanding them and learning
to live with them.
At one time we had a number of the grocery
warehouses; most of them have folded up or gone out
of business, like Purity and Associated Foods. Some
of them have moved out from under us - Safeway did,
although we still have a Safeway warehouse up in
Sacramento, and they are out in support of the
Teamsters, as well as a couple of other Safeway
plants. United Grocers decided to get out from
under our union by moving to Richmond and they made
a deal with the Teamsters.
A few years later, the guy from United came to
me and said, "You know, my company is really getting
worked over now by the Teamsters. We sure would
like your help." I said, "You're talking about
United Grocers, aren't you?" He said, "Yes," and I
said, "No matter what the Teamsters ask, it's not
enough. You double-crossed us; you made your bed
and you can sleep in it."
Something else happens in that situation. The
kind of discipline and unity and adhesion that you
get under a master contract is taken apart when you
get fragmentation. In some of the discussions I
940
LG: was having with. Teamsters, they had headaches with
the grocery warehouses. Why? Because they had
"become a free-wheeling outfit - they were not think
ing in terms of how you do the most for everybody
involved, including all warehousemen, "but how do
you do the most for me.
Safeway was tabbed as an outfit that would never
take a beef; they always paid before they took a
beef, the reason for that being that in the case of
a grocery warehouse you are not servicing the whole
public trade; you are not selling to the general
public.
I think the Teamsters made good gains, but to have
gone blindly onward, year after year, figuring there
would be no point at which the employers wouldn't
try to recoup, was a terrible mistake. And then,
the peculiar autonomy of the locals can take on
funny turns. You suddenly find attempts to build
rank and file negotiating committees and everything
else overnight. It doesn't happen in one fell swoop.
Jim Mclaughlin is with the Retail Clerks, and I
asked him, "G-ee, what's going to be the relationship
between you and the Food and Drug Council?" The
Food and Drug Council is an organization made up of
Retail Clerks, Teamsters, Butchers; we belong to it
in Southern California; I think we attend some of
the sessions here. I said, "What effect is this
going to have since the clerks went back to work?"
I know it was a mistake for the Teamsters to
picket the retail outlets almost immediately after
going on strike; again, it's bad strike leadership.
If you're going to spread a strike you first put in
your own muscle and all your energies for a period
of thirty days, at least.
It's only when you've gotten everything into the
strike and when you can convince other workers and
other unions that the employers are not going to
settle on reasonable terms, or that they are
determined to break the union, then you start asking
for support. During the interim period you pound
away on the issues of the strike, so that you have
some real basic grass roots support before you ask
others to pull out. I was asking Jim what was going
to happen now that the Retail Clerks voted to go back
to work -
941
ard: They went back?
LG: Yes, they went back a month ago. He said, "Veil,
our relations with the Teamsters are still good.
I don't know whether you know this, but things have
gotten pretty hopeless there." "Wha-t do you mean?"
I said. "Well, in their negotiations they started
to have rank and file committees, but - you go to
one meeting and here's a committee, say, of five
representing the membership; then at the next meet
ing they are no longer there. They bring on a new
committee of five."
This is not really a rank and file committee.
It more closely resembles undisciplined anarchy;
you can't win a strike that way, without discipline;
now the thing is riding rough.
Ward: It looks bad.
LG: These are by-products of the situation I was mention
ing in terms of the Teamster structure and constitu
tion.
Ward: I'd like to end up the Teamster thing; what happened
to break off the negotiations? What can you tell
me about it so that we can conclude the Teamster . . .?
LG: I'd say that the negotiations quietly collapsed,
really. In other words, they ground to a halt with
Fitzsimmons taking the position, "Well, we still
have our general constitution and we can't go around
changing it." I know there were some people in the
Teamsters who felt very keenly that he had either
lost patience or was yielding to some of the pressures
he was getting. We did not press the thing; I know
I didn't, particularly.
Ward: Would it be fair to say that the Teamsters felt they
had two million members and the ILWU was a tiny little
thing, comparatively speaking, and who the hell were
you to tell them what to do about their constitution?
LG: There was an element of that, but not as much as you
put it. For example, it was a very minor element in
Hoffa's thinking. Sure, he was proud of numbers;
two million members are a lot of members, and it's
a pretty effective piece of machinery if you can get
it all together. Sometimes it's together and some
times it isn't together - sometimes it goes its own
way.
942
Ward: Well, that does it for now - what are we going to
take up next time? Newspaper Guild?
LG: Oh, we can take up the Newspaper Guild, but I think
what I'll do is go over some of these developments
in the sixties. I think it "began to drive home
that things were not exactly the same ....
Ward: Oh., yes. In other words, the boiling point had been
reached.
LG: It wasn't a boiling point - it was a cooling point.
943
XXVTII EVENTS OP THE SIXTIES
(Interview 34: 16 November, 1978)
In Historical Period
Ward: Okay, Lou, you wanted to discuss certain events in
the sixties having to do with what you call "the
turning point."
LG: Why don't I just give you some of the highlights
of the sixties, which was an historical period in
sofar as it impinged on us as to national affairs,
international affairs, and local matters.
Ward: I think of Vietnam and student uprisings.
LG: There were the student uprisings, the enormous
push on civil liberties; there was the Vietnam War.
Ward: We became painfully aware, just about then.
LG: That's right; we were actually involved in the
thing earlier. As Eisenhower pointed out in his
own papers, the U.S. didn't permit the election
to go ahead on the reunification of North and South
Vietnam because we felt the United States would
lose it. You had civil rights, the movement of
the students and the Vietnam War, all of which
dovetailed, overlapped, and enfolded one another.
I say the greatest culmination of the sixties took
place in Prance, not here, and that was in 1968
where it was the student movement that triggered
the general strike.
944
LG: I mentioned those three elements. There were also
some things that developed that were more specific
to the west coast, and particularly California.
One was the big farm worker movement; it was the
period during which the farm workers organizing
. drive really "began to take shape. The "boycott of
grapes was initiated during 1965 or thereabouts,
picket lines to stop the shipment of grapes around
the docks and warehouses.
During that same period, I helped launch the
California Council for Health Plan Alternatives
in conjunction with the Teamsters Union; later ex
panded so that most of the AFL-CIO unions began to
participate.
I mention each of these things because there was
a definite drifting apart within the union. I'm
not sure it was all ideological; some were just
personal reactions to the people who were involved
in some of these movements. A feeling which I knew
was very strong in Harry was that you might latch
up with other groups at various times, as we had
with the American Committee for the Protection of
the Foreign Born; but at the same time we had a
very strong feeling that the number one base of the
ILWU was the unions, and that in many cases there
should be no movement at all unless we could get
other unions to go along.
Lessened ILWU Activity
LG: This could also become a position which results in
no movement. My feeling was that if the ILWU felt
keenly about something, we should go ahead and do
it; if others come along, they'll come along.
After all, it was not too uncommon for us, from
the initial days of the organization, to strike
out on our own and launch all kinds of things;
dive into certain issues even though other unions
were a bit slow.
This was true on everything from our standing
policy of fighting on things like redbaiting,
racial discrimination, the organization of Hawaii,
945
LG: the agricultural workers, to the formation of
steward systems. I felt very much identified with
a lot of these things. You or others might have
gotten the impression that there was a continuous
running battle inside the organization; that was
not true, really.
ard: Not at that time, anyway.
LG-: No; oh, I'll concede that come 1970 other things
began to happen that directly affected the internal
structure of the union and had its impact, I
suppose, on the allegiance of workers.
Ward: Some members say that it reached the point of a
complete stalemate; the union couldn't do any
thing because of the divergent ideas; when one man
said, "Yes" the other man automatically said, "No".
LG: That would not mean that the union couldn't do
anything. It might mean that you did some things
under much greater difficulties; that somebody else
was stepping on your heels or making life a little
bit on the complicated side, but it didn't stop
you from doing anything. Even when things got
pretty exacerbated I never felt that it stopped the
union from going ahead.
It might have acted as a deterrent on the part
of a number of people becoming more active. I
think one of the by-products was a tendency to
discourage the kind of things that are so essential
to the life of the union, such as broad collective
leadership, the frequent calling of meetings of
secondary leadership and rank and filers to hammer
things out. A continuous discussion of opinion was
always one of the characteristics of the union, and
it did a great deal to promote its growth. That
might have been seriously dampened.
One feature of the union which obviously was
neglected was the constant effort to develop and
build new leadership. Bear in mind, the sixties
also saw the passing of some of the old guard.
This didn't limit itself to staff; Morris Watson
retired; Line Fairley got quite ill during the
sixties and luckily had an assistant, Barry Silver-
man, who began to function and before long took
946
LG: over. People like Henry Schmidt and Jerry Bulcke
retired during that period. There was a changing
of the guard. Bob Robertson retired in 1969, and
there were some developments in that regard which
created some pretty hard feelings, particularly
following the 1965 convention in Canada. So, these
things caused injury because anybody could see
that the searching for new members and new leader
ship would become a high priority. All you can do
is speculate as to whether this caused a feeling
that nothing new was to happen after Harry.
"Ward: It's the sort of situation where the old guard
doesn't see any need for new blood; that's frequent
ly the case.
LG: Right. One of these days somebody has to do a
study on the geriatrics of leadership and the
geriatrics of institutions. There's no way of
short-changing anybody like Harry. His contributions
were enormous. The kind of battle he put up, not
only for organization in '34, but also against the
attempts to deport him; the things he did in terms
of the rights of resident aliens, amount to a
chapter in the history of this country that can't
be lost.
Ward: Well, his brave stance was not only helpful to him,
but the union, too; it made the members fight for
citizenship rights and to have this alien or whom
ever they wanted for their leader.
LG: Correct. An interesting aspect of that was that
one of the things that developed under the Kennedy-
Landrum- Griff in bill was the attempt to enforce a
provision that anybody who had been a member of the
Communist party in the previous five years could not
hold any official position in the union.
Well, we had a known member of the Communist
party who was a member of one of the committees in
the Longshore Division, Archie Brown; he never made
a secret of his membership. He ran for the publicity
committee and was elected. The government filed
action against him; there are certain criminal
penalties. The union decided we would take on that
section of Landrum-Griffin; eventually we had that
section nullified, I think by an appellate court.
947
LG: I think the Supreme Court denied certiorari Well,
we fought that issue through; certain issues
retained a "basic consistency with the union.
On the other hand, the refusal to participate
in some of these other developments meant that
there was a certain pulling in; in other words, a
tendency to live in a smaller and smaller shell.
Later on, of course, it was put in another way,
particularly during that period when Harry was
pushing very hard for affiliation with the ILA.
It was around the principle that the union was
going nowhere, wasn't growing, and that the time
had come to merge.
I felt that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To say that it nullified the activity of the union,
I think is incorrect. Where I think it did its
basic harm was in the tendency toward a policy that
was practically ingrown instead of constantly
branching out, of constantly identifying with the
underdog, of constantly seeing within such movements
the important aspects of their cause. These things
were gradually being hindered or nullified.
Yet, during that same period, in a few specific
situations the union showed up in excellent colors.
There was a huge civil rights march in San Francisco,
one of the biggest, around 1964 or 1965 , with the
ILWU doing a great deal in the preparation of the
march up Market Street and the meeting which took
place at the Civic Center. I recall spending a
great deal of time and the union putting a good
deal of energy and some money into that.
I recall the parades in Selma, Alabama, and the
big civil rights movement. There were beatings at
the bridge in Selma; the bombing of that church
where the little girls were killed. I remember at
that time pressing, and we finally called a stop-
work meeting at noon time with longshoremen, ship
clerks and warehousemen coming off the .lob and
getting a number of other trade unionists there at
the federal building. We jammed the whole street;
they had to block it off.
So, it isn't as though we didn't respond to
these things, yet it was a response of only a cer-
, tain form. On the other hand, when there were
948
LG-: sit-ins at the Palace Hotel and the automobile
dealers, the tendency was to walk away from it.
Harry, for example, became terribly suspicious of
a guy like Matt Burbridge -
Ward: Who?
LG: Matt Burbridge - he was the head of the NAACP
(National Association for the Advancement of Color
ed People); he was a scientist who worked, I think,
at the University of California laboratories. I
believe he was a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) He
did a lot of work on the study of sharks.
But he became very involved in the civil rights
movement. He was a man who had personal difficul
ties, no question about that. I saw quite a bit
of him, just to see where the devil we could give
them a hand.
##
Ward: You were going back from the NAACP man to other
issues at that time.
LG: Okay, I'll mention a couple of highlights. There
was the Free Speech Movement in '64. My immediate
reaction to it was "wonderful". I had given it a
whirl back in the thirties with only limited suc
cess. History comes around and meets you once in
a while. When I went to Cal, we had these meetings
at Sather Gate. Sather Gate then was outside the
campus.
Ward: You left your footprints there on the balustrade,
didn't you?
LG: I don't know if we wore it down that much, but we
spent a good deal of time standing there, right.
Some years later, Clark Kerr was head of the
university when the student demonstrations took
place.
Ward: Yes, I know that very well.
LG: Whether that broke his back or not, I don't know.
Ward: He didn't last long after that -
949
Tackling High Medical Costs
LG-: No, but tie was still there when we formed the
Council for Health Plan Alternatives, which was
formed somewhere around '65 or '66. Einar Mohn
was chairman of that. I was secretary. Later on
it was helped by fairly good financial contribu
tions matched equally between the Auto Workers
and the Teamsters Union. Other unions contributed
some money; we contributed a nominal amount. I
think it was something like $3600 a year. For
some reason or other, Harry was completely jaundiced
about the thing; he would have no part of it.
One of the things the Council did was to set up
a meeting with Clark Kerr. The idea was to see what
could be done by the unions, who were the single
biggest purchasers of health care in the state.
When you take the union members and their families
the amount of money which we funnel into the health
care structure comes by far from the largest or
ganized group which has some influence to bring to
bear. How could we do something to make sure that
there was good medical care, and to do something
about the escalation of costs.
One thing that was apparent to us who had done
some study on the thing was that we had become
collection agencies for the hospitals and doctors.
On that score we were better than any collection
agency that ever came along.
As soon as the contract was negotiated - and
most contracts were for two or three years - most
unions forgot all about health and welfare until
the contract ran out. Then they would talk with
their so-called consultants, 95 percent of them
being insurance companies or plans like Blue Cross,
which are the same thing, really a
Their consultants or brokers would tell the
unions the costs and say, "We're awfully sorry,
but the costs will be that much more." Well, the
one thing the unions could not take was a revolt
950
LG: of the membership by cutting benefits, so the next
thing was to put the hammer on the employer and
collect the additional fees; they became a collec
tion agency.
What could be done to stop this escalation? We
were very much in support of the Federal government
idea that came along during that period, or a little
bit later, called HMO - Health Maintenance Organi
zation; Kaiser is a part of that. Mohn finally got
around to realizing that perhaps only something
like Kaiser, or the plan of Dr. (Russel Van Arsdale)
Lee down the peninsula - the Palo Alto Clinic -
were the only things that made any sense and gave
some sort of control on this monster.
There is literally no end to the appetite of the
doctors or the hospitals. I'm not talking now
about bad doctors, but there wasn't any necessary
relationship between how much money was being put
out and what kind of medical care people were
getting.
Before long we had all kinds of people, like
Milt Rohmer from UCLA, Arthur Carstens from down
there, Lester Breslow, who was head of the
Department of Public Health for a while in Califor
nia, all very good people; they participated and we
had a tremendous amount of assistance; people
prepared to do all kinds of studies. We had a
series of meetings with some of the medical societies.
One of the plans we launched through the ILWU
was the San Joaquin Medical Plan, and that was done
because the doctors around Stockton were convinced
that if they didn't move into some sort of pre
payment plan, Kaiser was going to move in.
We told them point-blank, "Sure, and if Kaiser
moves in there, we'll be urging all our people to
join Kaiser because we have no control over you
guys." They sat down and put together a plan.
G-oldie Krantz was very influential in that; she was
head of our health and welfare department at the
time; the plan amounted to paying through the
medical society - they set up an association there.
I think all the doctors in that area, except some
five or six, became participants. They were paid
so much a member and they disciplined themselves.
951
LG-: In other words, it wasn't as though the thing
couldn't be done. If enough economic pressure was
put on, it could be accomplished. We met with a
whole series of these medical societies, trying to
encourage them to do the same tiling, with only
moderate success.
We also needed certain technical help with the
idea and somebody said, "Look, you have the Univer
sity of California at Davis, practically a branch
of the farming industry in California. They do all
kinds of research for the farmers. The University
of California ought to be doing the kind of research
that we want." People like Don Vial at Gal, Bruce
Poyer, were very active with the Council for Health
Plan Alternatives.
So we set up a meeting with Clark Kerr; I recall
Einar Mohn and several others from the Council and
myself went over and talked to him; George Johns of
the San Francisco Labor Temple was along. We put
forward what we wanted and told them that certain
research ought to be made available to us, the same
as those that help the farmers through the Univer
sity of California at Davis, and we thought the
trade unions were entitled to the same help.
Well, he was a bit vague but generally implied
that he would look into the thing and perhaps help
out a bit. We got a little bit of help, but not a
great deal. I had a feeling that Mohn wasn't too
happy with the reaction he was getting from Clark
Kerr; he felt he should get a more positive response,
with people specifically assigned right then and
there, certain commitments made.
Toward the tail end of the meeting Clark Kerr
decided to try to give the session a little more
levity; he turned to the group and said, "I want
to tell you about the first time I met Lou here. I
was studying at Stanford and I had a friend at the
International House (in Berkeley). I was visiting
him and he asked whether I would like to go down
and hear some of the rebels on campus. So we went
down there and that's the first time I heard Lou
speaking at Sather Gate."
952
LG: This meeting with Clark Kerr was after the student
upheaval had taken place, part of which was won
hands down, namely, the right to meet on campus,
set up their card tables, the right to distribute
literature. In the thirties, we couldn't even get
a meeting place on campus - we met at the "Y" through
Harry Kingman; if it hadn't been for him I don't
know where we would have met. After Clark Kerr got
through telling the story there was a bit of laugh
ter about the whole thing.
Ward: He was an arbitrator in a lot of labor cases?
LG: Oh, sure. He -had something to' do with our beef at
Pioneer Mill - he was down there as the arbitrator,
I think designated by Nate Peinsinger.
So, as we were leaving the meeting, the whole
group standing around, I said, "Well, Clark, at
least there's been one change since the time you
heard me." He said, "What's that?" "They're
doing the speaking on campus now." (laughter)
The Free Speech Movement
LG: But back to the campus beef. Two of my daughters
were at Gal then: my daughter, Ann; her husband
was also doing graduate work in marine biology.
Eventually, the idea was to try to find something
that would be a substitute for all these toxic
poisons used in farming; something that would ar
rest the generative process of insects.
Ward: Make them infertile?
LG: Right. Well, it made a lot more sense than DDT; he
was a very good scholar. Ann was there, and my
daughter Lee was there. She had gone to Oberlin
for two years and then decided she didn't like that
and wanted to come back to the west coast and to
Gal. Lee was very involved in the whole free speech
movement; she was one of those who took part in the
sit-in at Sproul Hall.
Ward: She got down to Santa Rita, (the Alameda County
pri s on farm ) , th en?
953
LG-: So, she wound up at Santa Rita. As a matter of fact
when I heard she was in Santa Rita, I called a
friend of mine, a bail bondsman and a union guy.
I said, "I guess you will be handling some of this",
and he said, "Sure." So, I said, "Veil, make sure
that you don't let my daughter sit there indefinite
ly."
I think she was one of the first ones out. I'm
not sure she was too happy about that, either;
after all, there's such a thing as solidarity that
you have with the other kids at a time like that.
But she was very active in the whole thing and
working her head off.
I decided this was something I was definitely
interested in, wanted to see if we could do
something about it. It's true, they wanted some
ILWU speakers there. As a matter of fact there
were some union guys who did speak there, George
Hardy and Dick Groulx from the Alameda Council
spoke there.
When I mentioned that to Harry, he said, "Aw
well, George has a hard-on for the university be
cause he can't organize its workers and get a
contract." But the fact that Hardy spoke there, I
thought, was a damn good thing. We did not get the
kind of union participation we wanted but we got
some of it through our people in the ILWU. You
recall those hearings before the Berkeley City
Council? They had to do with ordinances and the
question-of free speech. Bill Burke appeared from
Local 6 - a good, solid guy, one of the business
agents.
What was obvious to me was that the university
couldn't take this position of no tables on campus,
no meetings on campus, no literature on campus.
That one was lost by the university. The only
important thing was the attempt of the university
to exercise reprisals against some of the kids who
had taken leadership. The university was prepared
to concede all these things, except there were four
people whose scalps they wanted, as I recall - Mario
Savio,
Ward: Dolph Weintraub ....
954
LG: And a guy named Art Goldberg - there four of them
all together. Anyway, after some looking around
and making inquiries I talked to the head of the
U. C. Labor Relations Institute at the time. I
talked to him, and while he was generally sympathe
tic, he didn't do too much about it.
Then, I ran down an individual who held one of-
the top posts with the university structure. Try
ing to get to Kerr was just about impossible; by
that time he was caught in the crossfire - the
students on one side, and all the reactionaries
screaming at him, "Get those animals back in the
cage." I bumped into Wayne Horvitz, who had worked
for Matson; he was their labor relations man. He
was a curious guy; he's now head of the Federal
Conciliation and Mediation Service.
I always liked Wayne. His dad had been a labor
arbitrator. I guess he felt that should have been
his field, but he wound up instead in personnel
work. He dealt with the Mine Mill and Smelter
Workers Union or UE somewhere in the east. American
Cable Company - that was it. I'd met him a number
of times, particularly around the mechanization
program.
He was pretty much a straight labor relations
guy. He thought a lot of St. Sure. St. Sure did
a thorough job representing his people, and pretty
much the same thing could be said about Wayne
Horvitz. Wayne tried to separate that from his
personal beliefs; to what degree he succeeded, I
don't know.
I think he felt that it was important to get the
university back on its feet and give the youngsters
what they were fighting for. I felt that the
demonstrations they had were mighty effective. I
used to go over and attend them; at least walk
around, see their picket lines. I thought the most
effective thing they did was using these big IBM
(International Business Machines) cards for picket
signs; the names on them; the Free Speech Movement.
We had a number of sessions with this chap, try
ing to get the thing worked out, but the one thing
he couldn't handle was just clear reinstatement;
in other words, no retribution.
955
Ward: That didn't happen?
LG-: No, the situation reached a deadlock; there was a
half-assed arrangement, finally. They went "back
there on some sort of an odd settlement ....
Ward: Savio didn't get back for a year or two.
LG: Yes; the holidays came along; then they started up
all over again; it went on and on. That's where
the university made a terrible mistake, because the
longer it went on, the more it was clear that the
university was yielding to the pressure of these
reactionary forces; they had to have some heads,
like that of John the Baptist.
Ward: I was told that Harry refused to speak. There was
one hell of a mass meeting at night in the spot
where the Zellerbach Auditorium now stands. It was
some old athletic practice field at that time. Izzy
Stone (I. P. Stone, famous leftwing writer) was one
of the speakers, if not the main speaker. I was
told Harry was invited and he refused because Paul
Jacobs (an anti-Bridges activist) was also invited.
LG: That could be - I don't know. I know Paul Jacobs
was mixed up in the thing; something that wouldn't
make me happy. I didn't think much of Paul Jacobs;
he's just a self-appointed fink.
Ward: Paul Jacobs wouldn't be the issue, I would say.
LG: No; but I hung in there with the beef and did what
ever I could. Wayne helped out a bit.
Protests v. The Vietnam War
LG: Finally, it worked itself out, but that ran into the
Vietnam battles in 1965. You might remember the fam
ous teach-in there. As a matter of fact, as far as
Berkeley and the students were concerned, Harry used
to make the remark, "Okay, we'll support them - we're
not going to take any ships into the port of
Berkeley." Because there are no docks there!
Ward: He never heard of Ocean View.
956
LG: No.
Ward: That was the first wharf in San Francisco Bay; it
was at Berkeley.
LG: I don't know, Harry might have thought the thing was
humorous. I doubt that the students thought so.
I know I didn't think so. I wasn't too happy that
the union wasn't doing what it could do; I felt it
was a good beef. I've always felt that alliances
with other parts of society are so essential, as a
trade union and in terms of moving ahead some of
the wheels of progress.
To just draw into a little shell and be complete
ly isolated and keep declaring that the working
class is going to lead all changes, with everybody
sitting around there waiting for the signal, that's
not going to work. "What will work is identifying
with these other groups; then, in case of crisis,
whether it be a trade union crisis or a social
crisis, the allies are around; something we've al
ways recognized. During real times of crisis you
make an effort to reach people.
Oh, there might have been some differences of
opinion; just a lone effort on my part. Whether
this nettled Harry, I don't know. Of course, I
don't want to underestimate how difficult I can be.
I can be very, very stubborn; when I feel something
is important and I'm determined to do it, I'll some
times break my neck doing it.
Ward: You said your mother was like that, too.
LG: She was very similar, yes - so was my dad. I would
not back away. That might have had some repercussions
that didn't manifest themselves at the time.
In '65 the ILWU convention took place in Canada;
Vietnam was beginning to peak. By that time, the
Tonkin Gulf resolution had been passed; two people
had voted against it: (Senators Ernest) Gruening
and Morse. We invited Gruening to our convention.
Morse had spoken a number of times before us.
"Ward: Gruening was from Alaska, wasn't he?
957
LG: Prom Alaska, with, a fascinating history, you know.
I think he was an M.D. ; he had "been the territorial
governor of Puerto Rico, for a while. I believe at
one time he edited the New Masses (a Marxist
magazine).
Ward: I didn't know that.
LG: Yes, interesting; this guy was no youngster. He
was well into his late seventies. I recall him
arriving because it was fairly late at night, around
11:30 or 12:00. I didn't think it was right for
him to just arrive and have some of our local men
looking after him; I went out to the airport to
meet him, came back to the hotel, and we went up
to his room.
I asked him, "Do you want something to eat or
something?" He said, "No, no, I had some food on
the plane; how about a drink?" I said, "I think
the bars are closed by now, I'm sorry, Senator."
He said, "Oh, that's no problem." He carried a
small brief case with a couple of bottles. He pulls
out a bottle and wants to know about the convention,
about the delegates. I told him as much as I could.
He was particularly interested in who was down
from Alaska. It wasn't too long before I said,
"Look, I've got to be on deck first thing, you're
due to speak early in the morning, too." So, we
finally called it an evening.
Gruening made an excellent presentation. He was
a very thorough man - he had quite a volume of
stuff, a lot of documentation on Vietnam and its
background. After that we took up and adopted a
resolution that has stood us in good stead. It was
the first resolution I know of adopted by any union
calling for getting out of Vietnam, calling for a
cease-fire and letting the people settle things
themselves.
Ward: What position did Harry take on it?
LG: Harry's position was in favor of the resolution. He
thought that a lot of the introductory stuff was
unnecessary, but he supported the brief resolveds
at the end: "Stop the killing, cease fire, get out
of Vietnam; let the people settle it themselves."
958
LG: Of course, that left many unanswered questions, like
"Do they get elections? Will they ever have elec
tions?"
At least it was the correct thing to do at that
particular stage of the game; a position not too
unlike the one for settling Korea, which we didn't
win at first but eventually "became the position
which was adopted. I won't say that the convention
was unanimous on the Vietnam resolution. By the
time it hit the floor, a lot of the objections had
been answered. The general reaction was not too
bad, but a number of our members felt very keenly,
"Look, the country's at war, what the hell can you
do about it? You stick with it, do your share."
It was later on that some of our guys began to
be much more outspoken on the Vietnam question;
wonderful guys like Paul Keady. He was a fine
longshoreman from Newport, Oregon; one of these
fellows who wears suspenders and a belt; typical
north we sterner; he had worked in the woods, gone to
sea, then into longshoring.
He made a very dramatic speech at a caucus or
a convention, where he took responsibility for the
fact that his kids had gone to war. They had asked
him what did he think; should they go when they
were drafted, or shouldn't they? He said, "I was a
coward for telling them to do whatever they thought
was right; I should have told them, "Don't go."
So, the guys began to come around. Well, later
on that year, still 1965, they had the Vietnam teach-
ins over at Gal. Remember, they went on for about
a week; some of them went all day and some of them
went late into the night. G-ruening came there as a
speaker. We were invited to introduce Gruening;
I talked to Harry, as to whether he wanted to do it.
He was very much opposed, and he was also opposed
to me doing it.
I saw no reason why I shouldn't; after all we had
had Gruening at our convention. The only way I can
figure that one out is that it was part of his
feeling about the students; he was just not friendly,
Ward: You did introduce Greuning, didn't you?
959
LG: Yes. Anyway, well, that's just one of those things
I can't figure out. In 1968 there was a trade union
conference in St. Louis. Hal Gibbons was part of
that meeting; as a matter of fact, it was held at
his union headquarters. Emil Mazey (of the Auto
Workers) was chairman. A number of the unions were
there; Jerry Wurf of the State, County and Municipal
Workers; and the UE was there, (James; Matles and
(Albert J. ) Fitzgerald.
We had a pretty fair representation from the
II WO. What was the name of this woman, I think
from Detroit or Chicago - Myra Wolfgang - Hotel and
Restaurant Workers, a good progressive person; she
was around. Leon Davis and Moe Poner were there
from the Hospital Workers, so the representation
was good. Harry was at that meeting. By and large
it was a good session, yet his reaction to the
students was absolutely negative.
Of course, student movements are not the easiest
thing to work with, because they don't have dura
bility. After all, the student movement is built
around the life span of the student's time at school,
so that it is a constantly changing situation; it
doesn't take the same form as any kind of stable
organization. It can also be that there was a feel
ing that when students get rolling, they move in
many directions at the same time ....
Ward: They're liable to go to extremes?
LG: A lot of it is very tangential. But that's the
nature of student movements; just because they're
students doesn't mean that suddenly they are out
casts from society or hermits. Neither one is true,
and for a union or anyone to be part of a process
of isolating them, putting them in educational test
tubes
Ward: That seems a little odd, Harry's attitude; I recall
very vividly he had no hesitation whatever coming
over to the academic world in Berkeley to progress
ive people's homes during the late thirties,
particularly in regard to Spain. I know that when
a progressive Berkeley hostess was going to give a
cause party, if she could get (Dr. Robert)
Oppenheimer that was good; if she could get Bridges
960
Ward: that was big; "but if she could get both of them, she
had the world by the tail.
LG-: Yes. He'd speak at these things. I remember him
speaking at San Francisco State (University) when
he was in a running battle with (Dr. Fred) Schwartz
of the Christian anti-Communist crusade; this
Australian who made quite a profession of redbaiting.
I remember Harry speaking at State. I remember also,
there was a debate with Schwartz at the Fairmont
Hotel.
There you got a good picture of Harry and how
he handles himself in these debates. The guy has
a lot of individual courage, you know; no hesitation
to go after the other guy's jugular or gonads, and
quick.
Ward: He was better in a fight than just making a set
speech.
LG-: As a matter of fact, I remember him speaking to a
Local 6 meeting, a big meeting in the Civic
Auditorium. Somebody sitting on the platform said,
"Jesus Christ, Harry doesn't seem to be awfully
interested in the meeting," until some guy got up
and made some crack attacking Harry. All of a
sudden he really heated up; then he took off with
all engines. He had that real fighter's instinct,
no question about that. Don't underestimate his
capabilities.
Ward: Well, was there any retribution on Harry's part
when you went ahead and introduced G-ruening?
LG-: What do you mean by "retribution?"
Ward: Well, I mean afterwards did he show resentment?
LG-: Oh, sure, he wasn't happy about it. More and more
he got a feeling of "This guy (me) is going to do
what he thinks he ought to do" ...
Ward: "iVhether I like it or not".
LG-: That could be true. I'm not the easiest person in
the world, either. Those might have been contri
buting factors in building up friction.
961
Supporting The Farm Workers
LG: The Farm Worker thing was somewhere around that
period. I think it was in 1966; it was the year
that (Governor) Pat Brown ran for a third term
against (Ronald) Reagan and was defeated. It was in
'66, at the time of the Easter recess; for some
reason or other Harry got the idea that the whole
purpose of the Farm Workers' demonstration was to
embarrass Pat Brown.
Ward: Oh, yes, that was the Easter Sunday thing.
LG: Well, nothing could have been further from the
truth. I mean, these guys had been on this long
peregrination as they call it; a march which started
somewhere around Delano -
Ward: All the way up the (San Joaquin) Valley ....
LG: All the way up the valley. I don't know how many
weeks they had been on the road, getting a little
help in some places, hooting and booing in other
places. It was a real mobilization for the Farm
Workers, a pretty dramatic thing.
Ward: Catholic bishops along and a cross or two, and all
that sort of thing.
LG: And they had the Lady of Guadalupe; I'll admit, it
puzzled me.
Ward: That would have bothered Harry.
LG: Well, I don't see how it could have bothered Harry
more than it bothered me.
Ward: Well, the only time he was in Rome- I think the
only time - he scandalized the Italian comrades
because he wouldn't go to St. Peters.
LG: Yes. Well, I went to St. Peters as a matter of
historical interest, that's all, just as I went to the
Sis tine Chapel. I did not go to the Sistine Chapel
because the cardinals met there. I went to the
Sistine Chapel to see the paintings.
962
Ward: Wasn't that a little too much for you?
LG-: No - because of the murals there - Michelangelo,
that was the important thing.
Ward: I broke my neck, too, at the Sistine Chapel.
LG: But I do recall there was a longshore caucus in
town. I'd been asked to speak at the rally in
Sacramento and I told them I would; after all, our
basic policy was in support of the Farm Workers.
Sure there are all kinds of funny -currents in
the Farm Workers. You had the AFofL-CIO with some
organizational set-up. I don't know whether the
Teamsters were directly involved; I think they were
indirectly. Fundamentally, Cesar Chavez and the
Farm Workers had done the job; they had gotten it
off the ground. Up until that time all kinds of
people had tried but they hadn't succeeded.
As a matter of fact, we had tried. I think I
told you that we had a man named Lou Krainack in
the field for a while, but there was just no way
of moving it. I felt very keenly that we should
have been neck deep in the farm workers; we'd had
a lot of experience, primarily through our work in
Hawaii. While the farms in California are not
identical, there are a lot of large farms here.
I thought that some of our Filipino leaders in
Hawaii would do an awfully good job with the farm
workers here, particularly the Filipinos. As a
matter of fact, the Filipinos were one of the first
allies of Cesar Chavez; people like Larry Itliong.
Bear in mind, too, that a number of these Filipino
farm workers were also Alaska Cannery Workers, and
when the cannery season came along, they took off
and went up to work the fish. The balance of the
year, they would live around Stockton and many of
them would work in the fields. Almost the entire
asparagus crop was cut by Filipinos.
Ward: Well, so this Easter Sunday arrival in Sacramento . .*:
LG: Anyway, there was a longshore caucus in San Fran
cisco. I guess it was lunch time and Harry walked
out all of a sudden with me. He said, '^E understand
963
LG-: you're going up to the Farm Workers." And I said,
"Yeah, they've invited me." ""Well, you shouldn't
do it; I'm going to take it up here at the caucus."
I said, "Well, I'll stick around." I stuck around
there that afternoon, "but he didn't take it up.
So, I took off and went up there and it was a
good rally. What I did was simply tell them the
position of the union, the same thing that I did-
in the case of G-ruening; I read the ILWU resolu
tion there, and that had quite an impact. We were
the first union in the country that had come out
and said something about the Vietnam War other than
"kill 'em all."
I was able to hammer away about this pounding
that the newspapers had been doing on the organiza
tion of the farm workers, claiming it was an
impossible thing because of the seasonality of the
crops. I said, "That is just an enormous lie." I
mentioned the Little Wagner Act that we had had
passed in Hawaii, which gave us the right to have
elections among farm workers. Sure, we hadn't used
the thing a great deal, but we cracked through with
it once and that was enough.
I said all this propaganda about the inability
of this industry to be subject to union organization
was a complete lie; I think that made a contribution
to the meeting. Eventually they did get a
California agricultural representation act, like the
Wagner Act. This was a field in which I thought we
should be interested.
As a matter of fact, in the period after that, in
the course of discussion more and more of this
business came up that the union wasn't getting any
place and it was time to be merged. I kept arguing
that one of the reasons that we didn't develop new
leadership and were not going any place is that we
didn't get mixed up in enough things. There was
much feeling in support of the Farm Workers within
our own union.
964
Ward: You were saying, Lou, that there would "be no trouble
getting through, an assessment on behalf of the Farm
Workers.
LG: Yes, we could get something like a sustaining fund
of 50 cents a month. We didn't have a lot of
dough in the ILWU, but with that we could have
supported a group of organizers to go out in the
fields and give the farm workers a hand.
Ward: In other words, the cause of the farm workers was
popular with the membership of the ILWU.
LG: No question about that; obviously very popular with
the guys in Hawaii because of the common ties there
with the sugar and pineapple workers. It would be
popular with groups like the longshoremen in Los
Angeles, because you have a large percentage of
Mexican-Americans there; help would have been forth
coming.
Ward: Did you make such a proposition to Harry?
LG: Sure, but he was just not interested. Later on,
his attitude was that we were not going to get
mixed up in a beef between the United Farm Workers
and the Teamsters; after that, at a later date, the
Teamsters did enter the field.
Ward: That was when they organized Bud Antle's place,
wasn't it?
LG: They had the Bud Antle place for many, many years.
That was one of their claims to the organization
of farm workers. The Bud Antle thing was an odd
arrangement. It dated back ....
Ward: It was a sweetheart thing from start to finish?
LG: It dated back to the thirties; at one time the
Teamsters had given Bud Antle national assistance.
They had an agreement, and as to how fond the
workers there were of that agreement, I don't know.
It was in Salinas, during the lettuce beef;
the Teamsters were there in force and working very
closely with some of the growers who said they were
prepared to be unionized, but the one guy they
965
LG: would never deal with was Cesar Chavez; shades of
what we had heard time and again! While I didn't
feel we ought to get into an open breach with the
Teamsters, on the other hand, I knew of all kinds
of odd things that were happening. During that
Salinas beef I recall talking with some of the
Teamsters I had gotten to know through the Northern
California Warehouse Council ....
Ward: And you had good relations with them?
LG: I had good relations with them and that included
some of the men from around the valley; they, too,
would take part in some of the council meetings and
it didn't do them any harm; they had a number of
warehouses; they were members from general locals,
which also represented the drivers and packing
sheds. Their general reaction was, in some cases,
"Maybe we don't belong there, we're having trouble
communicating with those people; they are not really
home guards, they are moving around and you don't
know where they'll be next week."
*
I think some of them figured it was more of a
headache than it was worth; on a couple of occasions,
people were saying why in the devil doesn't the
ILWU step in there? My reaction was always the
same; number one, we didn't have the wherewithall
to do it; and secondly, I wasn't going to get into
a beef with Cesar Chavez.
Sometimes walking that line was awfully rough;
I would not back away from my support of Cesar, and
I was not about to get into a death quarrel with
the Teamsters over it, and I recall sessions we had
with the Teamsters with Chavez present and the Auto
Workers, With the general objective to set up some
sort of a joint council to reconcile some of the
jurisdictional problems the Teamsters were concerned
about; their stake in places like packinghouse.
Unfortunately, the Farm Workers, and these are
things that happen with new organizations and people
who get angry, went around making cracks that if
the Teamsters didn't lay off, they would move into
the canneries. They had about as much chance as a
snowball in hell, but the reason they thought they
could do that, and the reason the Teamsters would
take it as a serious threat, was that the canneries
966
LG: had acquired such a high proportion of Mexican-
Americans. The obvious advantage of Cesar Chavez'
troops was they could communicate with those people;
the cannery workers in many cases were highly
sympathetic with what the Farm Workers were doing.
So, it's too "bad that there was not a close
working alliance, or even affiliation, between the
Farm Workers and the Teamsters. That was a natural
nexus in terms of exercising all of the economic
power you could muster to make those farmers meet
and talk. After all, getting the stuff off the
farm is one step; it has to be transported. In many
cases, it has to go into a packing shed or a cannery,
or as produce to the city; there it is handled by
the produce workers, again, members of the Teamsters
Union.
So, this whole circle of economic power lay
around the farm workers, plus, of course, the other
advantage that there was hardly an area where the
Farm Workers were trying to get under way that did
not already have Teamster locals. My hopes were
that something could be worked out. I also felt
very keenly that the ILWU could play a part and it
would be a great thing for the labor movement.
With the wave of organization which had taken
place one group of v/orkers was never really touched,
the group that goes all the way from farm workers
to those working at minimum wages. They're still
the big residue of unorganized workers in America,
so that an effective organizational push around the
farm workers would make an enormous difference in
the life structure of the union movement.
I had the feeling that it would inject the kind
of a spirit which every organization needs periodi
cally. I thought that the farm worker organization,
particularly with its enormous bloc of workers and
the expanse they cover throughout California,
because we're an agricultural state, would have been
very worthwhile.
I recall this meeting where we tried to set up
this liaison machinery. It was a friendly meeting;
I was asked to give my reactions and I told them I
thought that with the Auto Workers, the Teamsters
967
LG: and ILWU working together with the Farm Workers, it
could be a group that would at least try to iron
out some of these jurisdictional problems and see
that organization goes ahead.
I said that as far as I was concerned the Farm
Workers and Cesar were the ones who had done the
sweating and the sacrificing and they had earned
recognition. That didn't make everybody happy, but
on the other hand, neither did it create a breach
with the Teamsters. In '67 the Teamsters had
announced openly that they were going after the
farm workers, and had actually signed some contracts,
Some people came into one of our conventions
with resolutions blasting the Teamsters, because the
support for the Farm Workers was pretty high inside
the ILWU. I felt that those resolutions ought to
be tempered; I thought the time would come when the
Teamsters would decide it wasn't worth it.
Actually that did happen; one of the turning
points for the Farm Workers was the DiG-iorgio (farm)
election. I was able to play a role in that because
I was talking to Einar Mohn and he knew that I was
in touch with people like Cesar and his assistant,
Dolores Huerta. Mohn said they were prepared to go
for an election; he was getting pretty well fed up
with the whole thing, anyway.
A lot of money was being spent; some of the
people who were on the payroll, he thought, were
complete incompetents. Almost any guy who could
speak Spanish could get on the payroll, even though
all of his Spanish speaking was to friends in the
bar, and never to a guy in the field. Mohn did
not like this sort of thing; if you were paid, you
worked .
I was able to give a hand and to see to it that
the election finally took place; the Farm Workers
won, as I recall. Anyway, quite a bit later on,
the Teamsters decided to get out of the field.
Ward: The public was turning pro-Farm Worker so strongly
that the Teamsters felt it?
968
LG: That, and I think the Teamsters felt a lot of money
was going down the drain for no good purpose. I
don't think Mohn was all that concerned about the
pressures; when the bishops committee that Cesar
had working with him kept talking up, Mohn could
be pretty blunt. He'd say, "Why don't you take
care of their souls? We'll try to take care of the
economic situation." Although he's a religious
man - not a Catholic; a Lutheran, I'm pretty sure.
Ward: He's a Lutheran?
LG-: I think so, yes. Lutherans generally are not that
fond of Catholics, but Einar had certain character
istics I thought were good.
Ward: Anyway, the Teamster effort didn't work.
LG: Right. And I'll admit we had to walk a certain
line. There were enough cool-headed guys in our
union who, even though they felt very keenly about
the Farm Workers and were contributing money all
the time, gave me good support. We had a lot of
guys who belonged to a $5 a month club they set up
themselves; the Ship Clerks for example; Morris
Watson's son, in particular, spent all his spare
time helping the Farm Workers.
Anyway, it didn't result in a rupture between
the ILWU and the Teamsters, although how Harry felt
about these things, I'm not sure. His reactions to
Cesar initially were very negative. Maybe they're
better now, but then they were very negative.
Ward: He didn't like to be crossed. Isn't that the fact?
LG: Crossed by what?
Ward: Crossed in the union structure.
LG: Well, Harry didn't mind being opposed, if after
wards you said he was right and kissed his ring
which he carried in his back pocket.
Ward: Well, let's see, we've covered events in the sixties,
Is there anything left in those years that . . . .?
LG: Well, just let me give you another example about
the Farm Workers. During the midst of the grape
boycotts the arbitrator ruled against us, mainly
969
LG: that we could not observe the picket lines of the
Farm Workers. Our guys would walk off every time
they saw a Farm Worker picket line; they were all
in support of the Farm Workers. But Arbitrator
Kagel ruled that it was a secondary picket line.
I guess technically he was correct. I don't think
Sam's feelings were that much opposed to the Farm
Workers, but he was going by what the contract
read.
But apparently Harry had spoken to an attorney
helping to represent the Farm Workers. I remember
bumping into him at Original Joe's at lunch and he
wanted to know if it was true that Harry was going
to insist that the Farm Workers make good on any
damage suits that might be filed against the ILWU
for observing these picket lines.
I just shook my head. Frankly, I don't know if
Harry just goosed him, or what. I told this guy
that I hadn't heard about it. Why this feeling I
don't know; maybe it was just something Cesar had
said. He saw unionism pretty much in the same way
we did, although it had all kinds of other over
tones, some of which I found a bit uncomfortable,
particularly the religious ones.
But they were using whatever forces were around;
frankly not too different from us. I made the
crack several times, "Well, okay, so he's working
with the church." We always made the crack that
we'd work with the devil if we thought that would
help the cause. So, okay, he was working the other
end of the line.
Ward: Do you feel that you have fairly well covered the
background to the turning point?
LG: Yes; it's so hard to tackle some of these questions.
You're pulled by a couple of things; one is that
you're pulled by this business of saying "What the
hell happened?" I guess it's like you lost an old
friend, you're suddenly aware, "Why doesn't the
son of a bitch ever call?" I mean, what the hell
ever happened?
Ward: You made some remarks along that line in the
970
LG: These things were "bound to concern me, plus
something else happens which is not a good thing;
I start to speculate too much. Why? Because the
answer is not at hand; or it's an answer I don't
want to accept.
971
XXIX THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPER STRIKE
(Interview 35: 21 November, 1978)
Rank And File Discontent
Ward: Lou, you wanted to discuss an incident that occurred
during the 1966 Longshore negotiations.
LG: It really wasn't an incident as such, Estolv, but
I'd mentioned some of the things about the "mech"
plan that I thought were really pretty much a
mistake. One of the things that was noticeable
in the 1966 caucus, before the negotiations, was a
series of demands around this question of onerous
work.
While the contract provided that the men had the
right to stop work if they thought the work was
Onerous and they could stand by - in other words,
work around it - until the arbitrator came along
and gave a spot ruling, that only worked in rare
cases. By and large the men when they are on a
job will have a tendency to meet the hook.
There were a whole series of demands around that
and they did get an arbitrator's decision that they
didn't have to belly-pack sacks, which means taking
a sack from the pallet board and then walking it
say twenty feet, thirty feet, whatever, and throw
ing it into place.
Ward: That was onerous work?
972
LG: That one they won an arbitration on, but the out
size loads kept coming down, and this was obviously
a big issue at the caucus; the demands reflected
that. Not a great deal came of that, other than
general language to the effect that if these large
loads came in the employers were supposed to add
men or machines. But the language was not that
tight so as to actually compel the addition of men
and machines.
\
It was a demand that made a lot of sense. If
there was to be a mechanization program where the
men got a part of the machine, a by-product clearly
should not have been that the men just simply work
harder or take bigger loads without the machines.
That would be a circumvention of the contract, a
clear violation of its spirit. Some of this feel
ing must have been reflected, even though the
members renewed the contract in 1966 for another
five years.
Three of the major locals voted against the
contract, even though it carried by a majority up
and down the coast. That was the first indication
that the contract was going to run into more and
more difficulty; eventually it did, and by the time
the contract expired in '71 a strike became just
about inevitable.
Ward: That's something we should discuss next, isn't it?
LG: That's at a later stage. Incidentally, some of the
things where I pretty well went off on my own were
not contrary to union policy, but they didn't make
Harry particularly happy.
Ward: Well, I gathered that; you made it quite clear.
LG: Right. As for example in trying to give the
students a hand in the free speech movement;
appearing with Cesar Chavez and others at Sacramento;
the civil rights sit-ins; the Palace Hotel incident.
Just let me mention that meanwhile all the
regular work in the union was going on from day to
day; contracts expiring, heavy negotiations in
Hawaii and in San Francisco and up and down the
coast. I spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, on
issues they had there; helping out on some of the
tough problems they had in Sacramento -
973
ard: Well, all along you were the nuts and bolts guy,
weren't you?
LG-: No, not necessarily; Harry was back in the saddle.
His trials were behind him and he pitched in on a
lot of these things. But in almost all the things
other than longshore, a good deal of the responsi
bility would fall to me. And other things were
going on simultaneously, like our efforts to spread
our wings and make contact with every part of the
labor movement.
Re-affiliation, as far as I was concerned, was
never that important. It had become far more of a
liability than a value because you automatically
take on the restrictions of the new structure,
whereas we had a certain independence and freedom
of movement.
There was no problem with the ILWU working
with groups like the International Typographical
Union in the Phillips and Van Orden strike in 1964,
which was important. There was no problem working
with the Teamsters where our relations were good.
In 1961, I think it was, Larry Steinberg appeared
at our convention in Hawaii. In 1963, Jimmy Hoffa
was the principal outside speaker at our convention.
In 1965, Harold Gibbons appeared in Vancouver,
Canada>at our convention. In 1967, as I recall,
Einar Mohn appeared at our convention in San
Francisco. In almost each case they kept referring
to the specific things that had been achieved in
the Teamster-ILWU relationship. That was in the
warehouse field, which was catching an awful lot of
attention nationally, throughout the Teamster Union
and other unions as well.
Helping In The Printers' Strike
LG-: An example of this manifested itself in 1964. The
Typographical Union, one of the oldest unions in
the United States/ had at one time broken with the
AFofL on the issue of the CIO. In 1964, the
printing companies had begun to build up a group of
974
LG-: trained, professional strikebreakers. These were
fairly skilled men who moved from place to place
wherever they had strikes; they were the guys who
were used to help break the Portland Oregonian
strike.
They were the ones who were used later in the
strike of the Herald Examiner in Los Angeles; I'm
sure that they were also the group that in more
recent years broke the back of the trade unions at
the Washington Post. This was a sort of trained
pit of cobras that they transported around the
country.
I think it was around this group that you had
a lot of the agitation going on to prevent the
importation of strikebreakers from outside a state
or a city. There was a big movement in San
Francisco for similar legislation, and in the state.
But in 1964, the ITU had a strike against Philips
and Van Orden, a big publishing house, whose head
quarters were off China Basin along Channel Street.
They had the juiciest printing job in San Francisco,
the telephone book; that is year around work,
making changes and so forth; a very big job. Later
on, I think the establishment was shifted around,
with part of the printing going on in San Jose,
part of it in San Francisco. This strike had gone
on for some time and they had run a lot of strike
breakers.
Well, while most of the unions were supporting
the strike and observing the picket lines, one of
the unions - I forget which one; it might have been
the Printing Pressmen - maintained that there was
a jurisdictional overtone in one of the strike
demands of the ITU, so that the Labor Council,
while it did not attack the strike or condemn it,
did not give it wholehearted support.
Yet, it was obvious to many of us that the much
more overriding issue was not one of these little
jurisdictional hangovers; it was the use of
professional strikebreakers, changing a whole
pattern in this city. One of the things we had
managed to establish over all these years is that
you don't move in strikebreakers.
975
LG-: The ILWU had a handful of people involved in the
strike in a very indirect way; we had some ware
housemen in one of the printing establishments that
was struck. There was a whole group of plants
being struck, but it was Phillips and Van Orden
where the move had been made to use the strike
breakers. We had some warehousemen, either at
Crocker or at Schwabacher-Frey, which also had
printing establishments.
The ITU asked for help and we began to get some
guys off the waterfront. Jack Shelley was mayor,
and he was not too unfriendly; the cops weren't
that anxious to protect professional strikebreakers.
One afternoon there was a fairly good sized
demonstration, just as the shift was ending; some
of these professional strikebreakers who had gotten
pretty bold, got rousted around. The papers played
it up as a big riot; it wasn't anything of that
proportion. Sure, some of them were run down the
street and a few of them might have gotten bruised,
but no big deal. Anyway, the mayor promptly
called a meeting up at his office. I went up there
primarily out of curiosity and also because we had
a few men involved.
Well, this is simply an example of our having
contact with all these unions. Here were all kinds
of guys I'd known, including men I knew from as far
back to the Labor Council days in San Francisco in
the thirties.
They decided they ought to elect a chairman, so
they elected me chairman. I found out later why.
They said, "If we pick any one of the other guys,
some of the internal quarrels had gone on so long,
two-bit jurisdictional beefs and internecine
quarrels, it wouldn't have worked. You are the
nearest thing to a completely neutral party who
could be trusted." So, I wound up as spokesman
for the combined unions.
Ward: For the ITU?
LG-: For the ITU and the other unions who were involved
in this strike.
##
976
##
LG-: So we all wound up in the mayor's office; the office-
was jammed with people. He had called the employers,
and in they came. They were represented "by art
organization- called Graphic Arts Association - some
fancy name - an employer body; the mayor was
emphasizing that the thing had to "be settled, he
didn't want to see violence.
We didn't try to discourage this kind of speech.
As a matter of fact, we were spreading rumors around
that if something wasn't settled why we would just
shut down around the warehouses and the waterfront,
and march up there and see what happens.
Nobody wanted that, and we didn't want it either,
but there was no harm in having this word spread
around. I happened to be sitting next to the chief
of police, whatever his name was at the time. Maybe
he knew me from the Palace Hotel beef, but anyway
we kept chatting and he said, "This thing ought to
be settled," and I said, "Sure, and it can be settled
it's not all that difficult; the number one job is
that the professional strikebreakers from out of
town have to go - there's no compromise on that."
And he said, "I agree with you, this is no way to
settle things."
Jack Shelley was doing very well in emphasizing
the need for people to sit down and work out their
problems, but he suddenly announced that he had to
go to a luncheon. So, I inquired around from his
aide, who says, "Well, it's a little luncheon he
promised to go to near Aquatic Park." "That can't
be much of an affair," I said.
So, I told the police chief that if Shelley left,
this meeting was going to blow apart; nothing was
going to come of it. He went over and whispered to
the mayor. The mayor said, "You'll pardon me for a
second." And he went and cancelled the luncheon.
Finally a small group of us wound up in that
little ante-chamber that Jack Shelley had, a sort
of a private little room where he had a built-in
bar and some lounge chairs to sit around in.
977
LG-: The head of the employers association says to me,
first crack out of the box, "What the hell are you
doing here?" I didn't answer him and Shelley said,
"Look, he's been elected chairman of the strike
committee here, or the negotiating committee^and if
you don't like it, it's too bad; we're not asking
you what you're doing here."
Of course, Shelley as an old time trade unionist
knew his business about things like that; unions
have the right to pick who they please and the
employers to pick theirs. This finally wound up in
a settlement; all the professional strikebreakers
were run out of the place. The strike was settled,
basically, on that issue. As to what happened on
the tag-end jurisdictional beef, frankly, I didn't
even pay any attention.
I thought once the basic issue was resolved and
the unions recognized the importance of pulling
together, the other things would fall in place. The
man who was in the area from the ITU, international
representative Milt Lomas.,was very good, very help
ful, so we cranked out a settlement. The only
reason I mention the '64 ITU strike is that it
reflected our ability to retain our contacts over
the years.
Ward: Harry didn't object?
LG-: Of course not; as a matter of fact, Harry made it a
constant point in discussions that while we might
have been unaffiliated, we were not isolated. Sure,
there were some who got the Red horrors; who began
to duck for fear of contamination.
Ward: You said there were times when George Johns crossed
the street rather than have to say "hello" to you?
LG: Yes.
Ward: He was the secretary of the San Francisco Labor
Council?
LG: Right, yes. This comes up in a peculiar way later
on, but when you think of people like Dan Del Carlo,
who remained a strong, powerful and loyal friend
over the years. Old man Joe 0' Sullivan, great old
978
LG: guy from the Carpenters Union. He'd been, I'm sure,
an ex-IRA man; if he's still alive he's still
fighting the Irish Rebellion. Guys like Joe Murphy,
Ed Rainbow ....
Ward: You're talking about the old Wobblies?
LG: Many of them were old Wobblies; solid 'trade union
ists.
An Assist In The Guild Strike
Ward: You were speaking about the theory of the union,
keeping up the old ties with former allies, no
matter what branch of the labor movement they
belonged to. Harry was in favor of your action
in the Printers' strike in 1964. I have the im
pression you were very helpful to the Newspaper
Guild in their strike in 1968 and that Harry didn't
approve.
LG: That is not correct.
Ward: Let's talk about that strike.
LG: Yes. There was a point at which he thought I should
pull out of it; I had done enough. The '64 thing
was really only an incident in many years of work,
but it has a correlation in that these same unions
I was talking about in the printing trades would
all also be involved in the 1968 newspaper strike*
with very few exceptions.
As a matter of fact, the only exception was the
Warehousemen; they would not be involved in any kind
of a dispute with the newspapers because those
employers were the same people who ran the San
Francisco Newspaper Printing Company - you know, a
separate company.
Ward: San Francisco Printing Company.
LG: The two newspapers (The Chronicle and The Examiner)
didn't merge, really; they merged circulation and
advertising and printing and formed the San Francisco
979
LG-: Printing Company. It is owned fifty-fifty by the
two outfits, so that it "becomes a joint printing
establishment, both automatically involved when
those negotiations took place. The '64 strike has
a bearing on what happened in '68. In 1968 there
was a strike at the San Francisco ....
Ward: It started in Los Angeles, didn't it?
LG: No, there was a strike against the Herald-Examiner
in Los Angeles. That was quite a unified strike,
which might have begun with the Newspaper Guild and
the Mailers. The Mailers are an affiliate of the
ITU. All the unions respected the picket lines
there, even though the plant was in the same snake
pit I told you about; the professional strike
breakers were moved in and eventually the Herald-
Examiner did begin to print.
After that strike had been on maybe two or three
weeks, there was a strike here in San Francisco by
the Mailers. Part of it might have been a feeling
of solidarity with the guys in L. A., but the
balance of it was that they had gone almost a year
without a contract.
Sixteen Unions Involved
LG: The Mailers Union in San Francisco was maybe 180 -
190 people, but when the Mailers walked out,
everybody respected their picket line. The whole
business went down, the Mailers, the Web Pressmen,
Photoengravers, Stereotypers and Printers, the
Newspaper Guild and the Building Service Workers,
who have the janitors. There were 16 unions in the
newspapers.
The strike had been on about thirty days, maybe
a little more; I had been getting some very peculiar
rumbles, because I've always made it my business to
keep in touch with guys in the union movement when
there are strikes.
There are certain stages in these things where
other unions ought to try to lend a hand, because
sometimes the Labor Council would be of help and
980
LG: sometimes it wouldn't. In this case, the Labor
Council seemed to "be playing no role at all. I
found out later it was because some of the unions
had no patience with George Johns.
-Anyway, some of the rumbles I was getting were
very bad; that the strikers planned to go down and
picket one of the newspapers down the peninsula,
the Palo Alto Times. Here was a newspaper where
all the typographical workers were organized and had
a contract, but the drivers didn't. These are aber
rations; they don't help particularly and sometimes
they can be enormously ....
Ward: It thins the ranks, too.
LG: It not only thins the ranks; you get serious ques
tions raised by the workers involved as to whether
this is imposing something on another union because
of reciprocal assistance. The basic issue was, can
you win a strike in San Francisco? Mayor (Joseph)
Alioto had just taken office and in a few days the
newspaper strike was on, so that he couldn't have
been terribly happy about the whole thing.
I was at some dinner party; I think it was at
the Pike's house - Esther Pike, Bishop Pike's wife.
Herb Caen was there and we were talking. He made
a remark that bothered me, "Some of you guys better
take a stronger look at this strike.
"Right now, it looks all right, but I don't like
the sounds I hear among some of the newspaper men.
They feel they don't want to get stuck with an
endless strike and they fear after what happened
at the Oregonian and at the Herald Examiner, maybe
it was now their turn to get the business." But I
had already been looking into the thing and I said,
"Well, I've been poking around on it and I'll try
to find out a bit more."
So, I spent a bit of time, mostly just by myself,
figuring out what if anything might be an assist.
Yfell, there were a couple of things that were a real
help to me. I recalled a highly successful joint
strike conducted in Hawaii, primarily under the
leadership of Jack Hall, when they struck the
Advertiser or the Star Bulletin or both. That was
981
LG: a completely united strike. The question of
separate "bargaining around specific issues that
concerned just one group of workers was secondary
to the question of the entire group of workers
sticking together as a unit.
The other thing that occurred to me was that we
might have a real break in San Francisco if we
stopped to analyze the fact that we had two pub
lishers who were not necessarily pulling in the
same direction.
The Hearst paper would obviously feel that it
was struggling not just against the unions here,
but also struggling in solidarity with their own
chain, -as manifested by^what was going on at the
Herald-Examiner in Los Angeles. The Chronicle was
a horse of a different color; it prided itself on
being pretty much a domestic paper. It's always
been locally owned by the Theriots and Camerons.
ard: A family paper.
LG: A family paper, pretty much. Also, I had e-otten
to know Scott Newhall (former editor of The Chronicle)
quite well, but not in connection with the newspaper.
I had gotten to know him as one of the people who
was working with Frank Oppenheimer and me to get
the use of the Palace of Fine Arts for the
Exploratorium. Between Scott Newhall and Mayor
Alioto and Scott Newhall 's wife, Ruth, we were
making quite a bit of progress in that direction.
There was an -occasion to go over to Scott New-
hall's one day - I think it was a Sunday - and as
we were leaving, Scott says, "Well, what about this
newspaper strike? You know, that damn thing is
murder." I said, "Well, I think there might be an
answer around."
Anywav, to my mind things began to fall in place
pretty quickly; some device had to be used that would
accomplish two things: first, in the event an idea
was proposed that made sense and it was rejected,
it would not be the kind of an idea where the
rejection in itself could weaken the strike. It
would have to be the kind of an idea where a
rejection would automatically strengthen the strike.
982
LG-: If, on the other hand, it were accepted, things
would begin to fall in place. In other words, it
could not be a one way street; you couldn't be an
unrequited lover in a situation like that. If you
make a proposal which may sound fair but dees not
strengthen the strike, all you've done is to
indicate weakness, the fact that you are beginning
to run. The thing that occurred to me was liter
ally what we had done in Hawaii, except that in San
Francisco this would be much more complicated.
I started checking over the agreements that the
local newspaper unions had, just by calling in
dividuals; these agreements expired over a span of
time that ran around sixteen, eighteen months. In
other words, the newspaper publishers never got
through negotiating. They would no sooner be
through negotiating the ITU, then it was the Mailers;
when they got through with the Mailers, they would
be negotiating with the Stereotypers.
When they got through with them, it would be the
Photoengravers, and then they're negotiating with
the Web Pressmen. Next they had to negotiate with
the Newspaper Periodical Drivers; then the Bui-lding
Service Workers - the janitors and everybodv - and
then, of course, there was still the Guild. It
was an amazing round robin.
Getting The Crafts Together
LG: And then I thought something else was happening in
the newspaper unions, one of the end results of
narrow craft unionism; I think they realized it's
got to go. Even at the present moment there is
talk of merger between the Newspaper Guild and the
ITU, the Typographical Union.
They have had endless discussions between the
Typographical Union and the Pressmen, a logical
merger. There's no reason why lithographers ought
to be a separate union. Part of this is the old
craft psychology, and it goes back to damn near
the medieval guilds, I guess. It sure as heck does
not meet the modern industrial method of getting
work done.
983
Ward: It's an interesting situation that you've posed
here. What kind of proposal could you make that
even if rejected, could still strengthen the strike?
LG: It would have to be a proposal that would take away
from the employer the one and only anti -union
argument that could have a "bit of validity; that
was that he was just plain sick and tired of having
to negotiate sixteen months in a row, being con
stantly whipsawed, constantly in a roundy-go-roundy,
never assured of stability or the ability to print
from week to week. It was very common for some of
those unions to open a contract and have it hang
fire for four months, five months. By the time
that wound up, they were overlapping another contract.
Incidentally, it wasn't doing any union that much
good either; in that kind of bargaining what often
happens is that you lose sight of v/hat is a good
agreement because the measure of the agreement is
whether you did better than the other agreement, so
a guy can go back to his members and say, "Fellas,
you may not think this is an awful lot, but just
remember one thing: we got one-half cent more than
the other group." Well, of course, all this is
meaningless dribble.
So, the thing that occurred to me was to have a
plan whereby you have joint negotiations and a com
mon expiration date. That would result in several
things; one, those unions who were merely observing
the picket line would promptly get a stake in the
strike. Even a union like the janitors, the
Building Service Workers, whose contract had another
fourteen months to run, would have a direct stake
in the strike.
Those other unions that were in a supporting
position, their members would feel they had something
in it. If the employers then turned it down, you'd
have proof perfect that they were not interested in
getting common negotiations and a common expiration
date and getting rid of the -big headache they kept
prating about all the time - the endless negotiations.
Their end purpose would be shown to get the same
job done that they'd done at the Oregonian and other
places, to break the union. Once that issue could
984
LG: be driven home to the rest of the labor movement,
the strike would be strengthened multi-fold. It
is around something like that that you can pull in
other unions and get mass participation. Well,
reaching that conclusion in my own head was only
part of the job . . . .
Ward: To sell the other guys?
LG: Then, there was the question of going around; in
some ways this was hilarious. You don't do that
by asking people to the office. I just wandered
around the picket lines and chased down people I
knew. Of course, I was bumping into a lot of the
guys that I'd known for many years, including those
who had been mixed up in '64.
I decided I would first go to the ITU. They
knew me best; they were the group which had been
under the gun at Phillips and Yan Orden. I said,
"Look, I think the answer is to pull all the unions
together and make some proposal that would put
the employers over a barrel; they either negotiate
or if they say no dice, you haven't hurt yourself;
if anything you have strengthened the strike."
They said, "What do you have in mind?" I said,
"What I have in mind is to announce that the unions
have gotten together and have agreed to immediate
negotiations for all unions and a common expiration
date. Not joint bargaining; parallel bargaining,
all at one time." Leon Olson of the ITU, his
reaction was "Well, I'll go along; your advice
sounds okay, but you're not going to get anybody
else."
I went down to see Jack Goldberger. He played
an important role, and he was very anxious to
maintain that role. For many years he was sort of
the labor liaison person with the publishers; he
knew them personally. Jack Goldberger 's reaction
was very much the same as Leon Olson's, "I'll go
for it, but you're just beating your brains out;
you don't know these unions." "Ah, what the hell,"
I said, "it's just costing the ILWU some of my
time; it's not costing you anything." He said,
"Sure, go ahead - try."
985
LG: And I said, "Well, will you join the thing? That's
what I want to know." "Oh, yeah, yeah - but you
can't get the others." I think it was Harry Rice,
a photo-engraver or stereotypist, an old-timer, who
said, "It's a good thing, Lou; I'll go, but I don't
know if it will work." The Web Pressmen were easy.
They're old friends of mine and they thought like
the HWU in many respects.
Ward: They were always pretty good - Dan Murphy and . . .
LG-: They were always pretty good. The old guys were
gone, but Dave Ratto of the Web Pressmen was around
and the other guy, a red-headed guy; they went
along fine. I stopped by to see Fred Fletcher of
the Newspaper Guild. Fred was all in favor of it;
I think that he knew some of the rumbles in his
own ranks. As a matter of fact, I remember bumping
into Charlie Raudebaugh (a veteran Chronicle report
er) whom I had known for years; he was very active
in the strike, working his tail off, putting in
all kinds of hours on the picket line.
Ward: That was the strike where (the television show)
"Newsroom" came in to being on KQED?
LG: Right; by that time "Newsroom" was on the air.
Guys like Bill German, Jim Benet and Dick Meister
set up "Newsroom." Some of them stayed with it,
and some of them went back to the Chronicle. I
think they were all Chronicle people on "Newsroom."
Anyway, finally, I thought I had talked to
enough of them so as to start calling them in; we
began some sessions in my office, and they went on
for several days. I didn't have every single one
of the unions there. I didn't bother much with
the Building Service Workers. I knew them very
well, and they of all groups could not be hurt at
all. If anything, they would pick up the gravy.
After three or four days of this kicking around,
I said, "Okay, why don't we call a meeting at one
of the hotels and ask all the unions to come in?"
And we called all the unions together at the Sir
Francis Drake.
986
A Plan That Succeeded
LG: I said, "Everybody here knows exactly what I'm
talking about; the idea is that we approach the
mayor and tell him that we have a plan which calls
for a common expiration date and joint bargaining
and that this basic issue about stability in the
industry be resolved; that the unions are prepared
to sit down right now. We think the mayor ought
to designate somebody who can act as his personal
representative and get the thing under way." The
mayor was very anxious to see the strike settled.
But meantime I had been thinking, who do I get
to act as the personal representative of the mayor?
I didn't want to do that myself because I'm not a
conciliator, I'm not an arbitrator; my role was
strictly as a partisan. If it fell apart then the
monkey would be on my back. The unions would say
okay, no harm done, but now let's get some other
things done. We had to start drawing up other
forces and begin to align the rest of the labor
movement to give them a hand.
So, I got in touch with Sam Kagel. I knew that
he'd been active in newspaper negotiations and had
arbitrated many times for them and had acted as a
conciliator on some of the contracts. He knew the
field and he knew the publishers. I asked Sam if
he would act as a personal representative of the
mayor if he were so assigned, and did he think that
the publishers would sit down?
Well, I got a call back from Sam the very next
morning saying that he was walking down the street
and bumped into Phil Knox, the chief of the pub
lishers negotiating committee. Just accidentally
he bumped into Knox and Knox said, "Oh, heck, if
they can pull that together, which I doubt, I'll be
glad to be there; that would be one of the great
solutions." So, there was no question that the
door was open.
987
LG: Anyway, we finally sat down at the Sir Francis
Drake and I drafted this telegram to be sent to
Mayor Alioto. We decided it was "best that we not
send it by wire but to deliver it by hand, and the
right man to do that would be Jack G-oldberger.
So, Jack bounced up there with the telegram and
we waited around. Finally the mayor called the hotel
and I talked to him. I had met him before during the
election campaign and he said, "It's a great idea,
but who did I suggest he designate as his represen
tative?" And I said, "My suggestion would be Sam
Kagel." He said, "I've never met him." I said,
"Well, I will introduce you to him - he's standing
right here." I introduced Sam over the phone and
he got designated, (laughter)
It was at that point that I told Harry what had
happened; it looked as though things were going all
right and Harry said, "Well, you've done your share
on this thing; you might as well duck out of it now."
I said, "I'm prepared to duck out, but I don't
think I ought to duck out until I go back and tell
the guys." He didn't object to that, but he
assumed it was time for me to get out.
Well, I went back and told them, "Well, okay,
fellows - it's under way now. Before Kagel gets
going, we should spend the rest of this afternoon
hammering out a program, so these don't become end-
-.less negotiations. I know each one of you has
demands - some of these demands can be endless. My
suggestion is that each union here pick out two key
demands which they must have."
I think it was mainly the conversion of any kind
of gains to their seven-hour day, as well as the
amount of money involved. Some of the unions like
the Web Pressmen said, "We don't have anything to
speak of." I said, "Now if you have any additional
items of grievances, those can be handled, but the
two key demands are the ones on which to concentrate.
You're not going to be able to negotiate jointly.
I suggest we also figure a rotation as to how we do
this.""
I wanted an outfit like the Web Pressmen to go
first, because they would be settled in fifteen,
twenty minutes or half an hour. Then we went right
988
LG: down the line. I think the Building Service
was last; my God, they picked up a hunk of money,
and this was 14 months before their contract expired.
One thing we insisted on was that everybody had to
get something, because there was no purpose in hav
ing a common expiration date and then having to
bargain 14 months later.
With the common expiration date it made no dif
ference when the contract expired. If it was the
Mailers contract that was open, so you negotiate
now. And if the contract of the Building Service
Workers was due to be re-negotiated 14 months from
now, you pull it up and it has a new beginning date
and a new expiration date, the same as all other
contracts; otherwise the thing can't work.
The order was worked out and Kagel was in the
picture; the employers were up in some room in the
hotel and I announced - by that time things were on
a very friendly basis, though it was costing me the
drinks, because these guys were on strike -"Okay,
it's time for me to step out; I've got my own work
to do."
And one man got up; it could have been this guy
from the Web Pressmen. He said, "Well, I don't know
about some of the other guys, but we all appreciate
what you've done, Lou. I want to talk my mind and
this is no bullshit; if you step out of here right
now, this thing is going to fly apart." I said,
"Why?" He said, "We've spent so many years quarrel
ing with each other, that all those quarrels are
going to break loose again, so you stick around."
I said, "Look, I don't have a single member
involved here. The ILWU doesn't have a personal
stake in this thing." He said, "Well, I'm just
telling you what I think." And another guy chimed
in, so I was stuck down there most of the time for
almost two weeks, while these endless discussions
were going on with the publishers.
It finally fell in place and the thing wound up
in good shape. I was asked to go to some of the
meetings, but the only meeting I attended was with
the ITU at the Labor Temple on a problem with the
contract. I guess I could have gone over to the
Guild that afternoon but by that time, I was pretty
989
LG-: pooped. It had been a long, long stretch. There
was one man from the Mailers Union who was a tower
of strength - a guy by the name of George Duncan;
he was part Indian and he stuck with me like glue
.all through this thing. He had a lot of confidence
in what we were doing. He was also very proud of
the outcome.
The only rumbles we had afterwards had nothing
to do with the settlement. We had a meeting of all
the unions the day we were to ratify, or it was all
going to ratification, on a Saturday or Sunday; we
had the full union committee there - not just the
individuals who were on the various negotiating
committees - and I had drafted a statement saying
that the settlement was an example of what could
be done and obviously it should be used as a pattern
in Los Angeles and other places; and that this
settlement was only the beginning of the battle
against the L. A. Examiner.
It would include, if necessary, a national boy
cott of the entire Hearst press, at which point some
of the newspapermen - I think the Examiner - began
to bridle a bit and there was some grumbling. They
didn't think that this was appropriate, but it
passed. Whether they carried through, I don't know;
they did in some cases. But that was the only
grumble; not a single one against the basic idea,
which, by the way, is still being used in the news
papers. That's an interesting chapter.
One of the amusing sidelights, when talking about
Harry: I bumped into Art Hoppe (a Chronicle
columnist) a month or so later. It was at one of
the get-togethers that Margaret Fabrizio gave; she's
the harpsichordist; used to play with the (San
Francisco) Symphony. She had an annual Bach Birth
day party, and they were great affairs. People
would bring their own bottles of wine, or some
food, and the party would go on all day long.
Musicians would drop in from all around the bay
area; some would play chamber music, others would
play more elaborate things, depending on how many
pieces they could put together. I remember running
into Art Hoppe at one of these things and we were
talking and he says, "That was a good job on the
newspaper strike; I talked to Harry and he said he
assigned you to it." I didn't say anything; it was
Harry's feeling, I guess, that nothing could happen
as far as the ILWU was concerned unless he was party
to it.
990
Ward: Sort of, lie was the ILWU,
LG: There was a good deal of that feeling, -unfortunately.
Ward: I guess, during the course of the years, it would
"be pretty hard for him not to feel that way. It
would take a man of unusual philosophical "bent -
after all, he knew damn well that he was called
the "Great White Father," "the Nose" and "the Limey";
these rather affectionate terms.
LG: I don't find those things too bothersome, because
I developed my own frame of mind that you couldn't
let these things bother you or prey on you. If you
did, you would start eating yourself alive. I went
a different route; maybe that didn't contribute to
the highest degree of harmony. In other words, we
were not always singing in tune.
The route I went was that I had certain work
that was pretty well carved out for me, particularly
Warehouse. That, without any question, was one of
my main responsibilities. My contacts with Local 6
and the master contract were very much my responsi
bility. Contact with the Teamsters Union became a
steady and consistent thing, where a lot of time
was spent.
Ward: Let me tell you a story; it happened at a recent
meeting. Len DeCaux, who was the first and
principal speaker at that meeting and the author
of the book on the Wobblies which has just come
out, had just come back from a trip to Hawaii. His
comment on the trade union situation as he found
it over there was summarized in this statement:
"Harry wasn't as popular in Hawaii as I would
have thought; Lou is the hero to the Hawaiians."
LG: Well, I'd say, he didn't talk to enough people,
because the guy who really carries the greatest
affection among the Hawaii people is Jack Hall.
Ward: I thought that, from what you'd said previously.
But, however, here's one man's reaction coming
from over there completely cold and talking to
whoever he talked to.
991
LG: Look, I like Len DeCaux, but his observations in
a situation like that can be just as accurate as
somebody bringing back the foreign policy of a
country after speaking to a cab driver.
Ward: ell, anyway, it was his reaction and I took it for
meaning something.
LG: Veil, that could be for other reasons -
##
992
##
XXX MORE ABOUT THE SIXTIES
A Very Tough. Clash.
LG: In the latter years in Hawaii, particularly around
the sugar negotiations, things did get to reach a
very tough clash, a very tough clash, yes.
Ward: Do you mean to say where Harry openly disagreed
with you?
LG: Openly disagreed, openly threatened to fight
certain settlements and went directly to the
leadership of the union there in opposition to
some of the positions I had taken and some of the
agreements that had "been reached. But that skips
a few years and gets us to 1974 and later.
Ward: Well, did he feel you hadn't gotten enough?
LG: Oh, it's a process that would warrant a description
all by itself; it involves the technique of
turning somebody's left end. We'll get to it
another time.
Ward: Now, we're talking some more about little incidents
in the sixties that are important.
LG: Yes, it would be a mistake to leave out a couple
of things. I had mentioned from time to time that
there was a growing cooperation with the Teamsters;
1967 was one of the peak years for the Northern
California Warehouse Council. By that time it had
matured pretty well.
993
Cooperation Works Well
LG: My own feelings were tliat the Teamsters were a
group that could "be worked with. I've read all
the stories about some of the things that go on
in the Teamsters in other parts of the country.
Frankly, I don't think they are applicable to the
west coast. No question that the Teamsters have
a tendency, some times, to come on very hard; when
they feel they have certain jurisdictional rights
they'll go to great lengths to enforce them.
We're familiar with their movements in the
canneries; in the case of the Farm Workers, I've
already mentioned the odd position I found myself
in where I couldn't agree with the Teamsters, yet
I wasn't about to break with them. It meant
walking a careful line, making it quite plain that
I supported the Farm Workers and Chavez, including
giving them all kinds of information which came my
way, as to what was going on among the employers
and helping out as best I could. As a matter of
fact, I was down at Cesar's headquarters last
Saturday. I spent the day down there at La Paz.
Ward: Were they negotiating something?
LG: No, they were having a meeting that had been going
on for days of a group of young people who are
being trained to help them handle negotiations. I
didn't want to go so far as to say that there are
no secrets, but in some ways they think there are
things there that aren't there - special techniques.
I made it plain there are no magic tricks; you
don't pull rabbits out of the hat. I emphasized the
importance of doing your homework; once negotiations
are under way or the battle is under way, it's too
late to do your homework. That means knowing the
workers, knowing their demands and how far to
travel with them; knowing what a couple of loud
people will say, and also what the rank and file
thinks .
994
LG: In other words, there are a whole series of things
which have to "be done which I consider to be purely
homework, "basic work. I think we as a union have
established a good deal of skill with things like
caucuses, bull sessions in warehouses, contract
conventions. It's awfully important to get that
reading of the membership so as to know how far to
go, because that's realy where your strength lies.
I told them the obvious things; that the
employers will scream and yell and tear their hair,
"You're coming in with more demands; we're going to
go broke," and so forth. They always put on this
hysterical act but it doesn't mean anything.
But '67 became a focal point in warehouse; we
had built up to it for a long time. There were
beginnings of inflation, which meant that we
required substantial wage gains. Mind you, there
had been a period where the labor movement was semi-
dormant; a number of lean years.
ard: You were saying the Warehouse Council had reached a
high point?
LG: High point, yes; the liaison with the Teamsters
Union was pretty deep-going and it wasn't confined
^ust to Warehouse. We found that we did square
away jurisdictional problems pretty quickly.
We even had a formula that applied in the case
of mergers of two warehouses. For example, if a
company had a branch in San Francisco and another
branch over in Oakland and the two merged, we didn't
bother with elections or anything of the sort. If
they had more people in that warehouse than we had,
our people transferred with all their rights
protected. The other way around would apply to us.
As a matter of fact, Chili Duarte used to take
pleasure in needling the daylights out of me,
particularly if there was a gang around, when we
worked out a merger. A small plant of Durkee's
(Durkee Foods) merged with their major plant in
San Francisco which was under I1WU, and the whole
thing was moving to San Jose under another name;
Shed Bar tush, I think it was called. We decided
that people who belonged to the Teamsters would
995
LG: come into the ILWU, but so that nobody would get
hurt we would "sandwich" seniority; in other words,
we would take their man with the longest seniority
and put him in, say, under our man with the longest
seniority, if our guy had more seniority.
Well, the net result was bound to create some
peculiarities; in one case it resulted in a guy who
I think was 30 years old, being given 35 years
seniority. Chili would have no end of fun with this
one. He'd say, "I'd like to know how that could be
worked out; how can I get 35 years seniority when
I'm 30 years old?" I kept telling him we'd have
no problem; he wasn't 30 any more. The thing
basically worked out without a lot of friction.
All of these things had been going on. The '67
negotiations were intense. A good deal of hard
work went into the thing. The employers had made
proposals that came a long ways from what we wanted;
there had been some attempts for some reason or
other partly - I guess because the atmosphere of
the Vietnam War and the national atmosphere were not
good in those days - to take away some of the things
we had in the contract. We wound up with a stewards'
meeting at the Longshore building that was literally
jammed; must have been 1800 there, and this was a
joint stewards' meeting.
Ward: 1800 stewards!
LG: 1800 stewards - ILWU and Teamsters. Prom that we
took a strike vote. , As a matter of fact, we went into
a new type of strike vote where all the votes would
be pooled and counted together; in other words, the
majority would govern. We gave power of attorney,
before negotiations, to the Northern California
Warehouse Council.
We also decided we would observe some of the
rules the Teamsters had, because as far as we were
concerned they made some sense and in our case
would not be bothersome. For example, they have a
provision in their constitution that if a contract
is ratified by 50 percent it's a contract, but
before they could strike, they would have to turn
it down by 75 percent : Most people would look at
that and say, "Hell, that doesn't make any sense.
It's not democratic."
996
LG-: The question as to whether it is democratic or not
is really unimportant; the important thing is, what
sort of a rejection do you need to conduct a
successful strike? Well, the rule of thumb we had
was if you couldn't get an 85 percent strike vote,
your chances of winning were awful slim.
If you have 85 percent prepared to walk out
you're going to lose some of that the first two
weeks, the first time they miss a pay check. That's
going to go down to 70 or 75 percent. Then,
depending on how long the strike went, a few more
will be lost; with a hard core of 60 to 65 percent
you're damn well off. If you could maintain any
where between 75 and 80 percent then of course you
have much better chances of winning. You had no
guarantee of winning, but then you never have a
guarantee of winning any strike.
If you go into a strike with 51 percent, insofar
as I'm concerned, the chances of winning are about
as much as a snowball' in hell. All the employer
has to do is simply sit and measure that point at
which the 51 percent gets to be 49 percent and then
he starts demanding a vote either on his last
proposal or one that's even worse yet. So some of
these rules did not bother us.
The idea of having joint votes didn't bother me
for other reasons. I had confidence in our ability
to mobilize our membership and get out the vote, so
that pooling the vote, if anything, would be a bit
of an edge on our side. These rules began to have
an impact in making the whole machinery a lot more
cohesive; the '67 negotiations finally wound up in
a strike. It lasted three weeks - about - but
was very effective.
As a matter of fact, I think it was the first
time some of those people had ever been on strike.
Strikes had not been new to our people. They had
gone through them in past years. There is an
interesting thing where many of the Teamster ware
houses would not be too far from the ILWU ware
houses, but the bulletins and news on the strike
that they got all came from the ILWU bulletins,
because we were putting out a bulletin almost every
day.
997
LG: Publicity committees are one of the keys to the
organization of a good strike. All these things
developed the only kind of genuine working class
unity that counts, the unity down below. People
get to know each other and help exchange pickets,
coffee wagons; if theirs didn't get around, ours
did. Great spirit developed out of the thing.
Negotiations finally wound up with quite a success
ful agreement; it was ratified overwhelmingly: 80
percent or thereabouts.
The meeting was held at the Cow Palace; there
were some 5,000 people there; a joint meeting and
the contract was presented jointly. George Mock
chaired the meeting. He did a good job and he
believed in the Warehouse Council.
I presented the report, but in one stage we had
a couple of rambunctious characters who walked up
and seized the mike. He said to me, "Look, why
don't you handle this part of the meeting?" These
characters were getting to him. Well, it wasn't
much of a problem really. I could tell by some of
the people at the mike which way they were going to
lean on the thing, so it didn't amount to a great
deal. The meeting went off very well and we came
out with a very good contract.
A Sociological Lesson
LG: There were other things in the sixties which go to
make damn clear that we were not out of the woods
as an organization. It was in the early sixties
when a strike we had against Colgate Palmolive in
Berkeley lasted almost ten months.
But there, interestingly enough, we got the help
of the Teamsters in New Jersey - not the workers in
the plant. These workers were in an independent
company union.
Now there is a national council of Colgate work
ers - it meets regularly; they do a certain amount
of coordinated bargaining. The help we got back
there was out of the Teamsters Union; they shut down
deliveries for several days. These things helped.
998
LG-: Paul Heide and Ole Fagerhaus were a two-man boycott
team wnich travelled all over the country, labor
councils and everything else, getting literature
distributed and so forth. As a matter of fact, it
was during that Colgate strike that I learned a
sociological lesson that had nothing to do with the
strike.
Ward: Like what?
LG-: Well, I think the strike was about six months old
and I had gotten a copy of the Colgate financial
report. They had branches in around some 45
countries around the world, and it is a big inter
national conglomerate. The report was fairly
accurate. It said they had lost some money in the
United States because primarily of a lengthy strike
in Berkeley, but when taken in conjunction with all
the other operations, the corporation as a whole
did all right.
When I saw this thing I just kept grumbling all
day long, grumbling so badly that when I got home,
Terry said, "Look, you're in no frame of mind to
sit around the house and have dinner. Why don't
we just go out and drive around maybe for a while
and we'll have a bite to eat in Tiburon or some
place."
So, we're driving around and we drive out past
Paradise (scenic Marin County spot) out to the end
of that peninsula where the Nike site is; we know
some people who live around there and we passed one
of these places where they built a big marina. I
started saying something like "Oh, that's where all
these sons-of-bitches live we're dealing with at
Colgate. Here they are, living high off the hog
and they don't give a shit what happens to our
people." Terry said, "You're not fit to talk to."
I said, "You're absolutely right - I'll see you
later." So, I got out and said, "I'll see you."
And she drove away. I started walking and figured
it would be good for me. I must have walked at
least a mile or so - it's a long peninsula - and I
was still wearing the same clothes I had on at the
office - shirt, tie and jacket.
999
LG: One of these local cops passed me and examined me
very closely, but he didn't stop and say a word.
So, I just kept walking; then about 15 minutes
later, he passed me again. I'm still walking, and
I suddenly realize why he's looking at me. I'm a
stranger and the way I was dressed, I either had an
assignation up the street or I was going to visit
a neighbor or something.
You don't stick your nose into that sort of
thing; you can get yourself in wrong with some of
the people who live in that neck of the woods. The
last time around, he had a guy with him, a witness
or something; he finally stopped and said, "Where
are you going?" "Taking a walk out here, obviously."
"Well, where do you live?" I said, "In Mill
Valley." He said, "You're going to walk all the
way there? Why? That's miles." I said, "No,
no, I'm just going as far as Tiburon." He said,
"You want a lift?" I said, "Fine." I was pretty
tired anyway. I had been walking about an hour and
a half. So, he gave me a lift down to Sam's (a Tib
uron restaurant).
I suddenly realized that the only reason he didn't
stop and hard-time me was because of the way I was
dressed. If I had been wearing some beaten up
shorts and a broken down shirt, I would have been
rousted. So, you can learn some of these lessons
awful fast.
We had long strikes like that because there was
still this feeling on the part of the employers
that we could be taken. Another thing that should
be mentioned is that during this time it was not
just around the warehouse contract that we were
getting results. There were also joint committees
set up between the Teamsters and the ILWU on the
questions of riurisdictional problems. I'm talking
now about problems relating to the waterfront.
These unfortunately, did not get results anything
like what we had in Warehouse.
I recall for example during that same period, we
wanted to do something about the Sugar Act and the
manner it which it was being administered; the
Sugar Act was in the hands of the sugar employers;
1000
LG: while it was in the sugar division of the Department
of Agriculture, they held these hearings that were
mostly junkets. The hearings v/ere for the purpose
of establishing fair and reasonable wages, and what
ever the employers were paying was fair and
reasonable.
We finally got them shaken up enough so they
once made one change in the case of Louisiana, some
improvement. In the case of beet sugar, the farmers
have a great deal of political influence; in the
case of Puerto Rico a fair and reasonable wage was
35 cents an hour - unbelievable!
We decided to set up a joint lobby to go to
Walter Freeman, who at that time was Secretary of
Agriculture under (President Lyndon) Johnson; there
I suggested that the Teamsters give us a hand be
cause they had some of the beet sugar plants. Sid
Zagri was assigned, and the Packinghouse Workers
had Charlie Fisher there. The Liquor and Distillery
Workers had a few beet sugar plants here on the
west coast; they took part. We formed a joint lobby
to pressure the administration to do something about
the Sugar Act, so we had cooperation.
Health Plan Alternatives
LG: Towards the later part of the sixties I had gotten
to know Einar Mohn quite well and I talked a good
deal to him about this business of health and
welfare and the escalating costs of medical care.
With his help we formed the California Council for
Health Plan Alternatives. The latter became a very
broad organization, with the Building Trades in
there, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers, Joe
Belardi; even the IATSE.
Ward: A pretty smelly outfit.
LG: Right. Al Erickson from that. The Operating
Engineers, and their record is not one that will
ever be terribly distinguished. But the AFofL
joined in. Ziggy Arowitz was in from the L. A.
Labor Council - a good guy. Einar Mohn was chair
man and I was secretary. The financing got to be
1001
LG: fairly good, particularly when the ALA. was formed -
Alliance for Labor Action. That was "between the
Teamsters and the Auto Workers.
Ward: Yes, you talked about that -
LG: I recall attending a meeting in Monterey of the
Alliance for Labor Action; many of the things they
were doing were worthwhile. I thought it would
have done us some good to get in there and see what
could be accomplished. It didn't last all that
long. I don't know if it was a question of finan
cing falling out or that Reuther died.
The ILWU made an annual contribution to the
Council. It wasn't very big, but it was an issue
on which Harry became more and more nettlesome; yes,
nettlesome, including inventing stories that we
were trying to interfere with the direct collective
bargaining of unions on health and welfare -
Ward: He didn't like that?
LG-: No, now as to why I'm not sure. True, the organiza
tion might have been a bit before its time. But
the issues were correct, to try to do something
about the terribly escalating medical and hospital
costs and to promote something like Health
Maintenance Organizations or group plans like Kaiser;
to get some sort of a grip on medical costs.
Now it's become a national issue. I don't expect
a great deal to be done under present circumstances,
but we got considerable response, a lot of assistance
from people, not just in the unions but from outside
the organizations, people who felt there was just
no grip by the consumer on what was going on for
medical care. All I'm saying here is that this era
encompassed the medical cost problem.
Hoffa Goes To Jail
LG: Then, other things were going on in the Teamsters,
some of which, of course, were very disturbing.
Jimmy Hoffa went to jail in 1967. Incidentally
Earl Warren, the Supreme Court Chief Justice,
1002
LG: dissented on sending Hoffa to jail. Earl Warren
was very disturbed by the government's reliance on
this professional stoolpigeon whose testimony sent
Hoffa up; this guy Par tin.
Partin had been convicted of several felonies;
he was up on charges on everything from Mann Act
to burglary, to falsification of records, to steal
ing dough from the union; you name it and he was
charged with it. All of a sudden none of these
charges were being pressed.
And he wormed his way into the confidence of
Hoffa, who was easy-going on that score. If some
body could even pretend that he had done Hoffa a
favor, that was enough for him. I think he made
some bad mistakes; sure enough, Partin was the guy
who turned up on the witness stand as the prime
witness against Hoffa. Fitzsimmons was sent in
(as Teamster president); he was assistant to the
president, or general vice-president, set to take
Hoffa's place in case he went to the clink.
The ILA thing was an up and down sporadic affair,
and all over the landscape. It was spread all over
the place like a mad dream.
1003
XXXI INTERNAL POLITICKING
(Interview 36: November 28, 1978)
The Fight For Vice-President
Ward: Lou, you want to discuss a couple of more items in
the sixties?
LG: As quickly as I can. A couple of things developed
internally in the union which have some significance
later on. One was that around 1965 Chili was
anxious to run for vice-president and director of
organization. I gather that either he or George
Valter at the time talked to Bob Robertson. Bob
had done a good job over the years, but organization
had slowed down just about to a walk . . .
Ward: And he didn't play any role in Hawaii?
LG: No major role. He came down there a number of
times, but not in the fundamental sense of
organization. Jack was primarily responsible and
I gave him a hand, plus other people like Matt
Meehan and Prank Thompson and others who pitched
in and did a good job; a number of staff people
went down there, Martha Ezralow went there on
assignment; Teddy Kreps was there, so there was
constant help from the International during the
Smith Act period. Morris Watson, for example, was
* . .
Ward: Let's get back to Chili.
1004
LG-: Chili; anyway, Bob Robertson had indicated that if
he could pick up a pension of $500 bucks a month,
he was thinking of hanging it up. I think the
pension was voted him; it could very well have been
in 1965 at the convention in British Columbia. We
had Teamster representation there; I believe it
was Harold Gibbons who spoke at that convention.
Hoffa couldn't make it.
Well, Bob did not up-s takes at that time. Chili
made up his mind that he was going to run in 1967,
regardless. Well, sometime, I guess it was in late
1966 or maybe early in 1967; I was about to go to
lunch and Harry said, "I'm having lunch with Chili
and George (Valter); come on along." So, we sat
down at Original Joe's and Harry was very blunt
about the whole thing. He said, "If Chili decides
to run against Bob in 1967, I'll go all out to
campaign against Chili." This was quite a blow to
Chili, because he had always considered himself an
unquestioning supporter of Harry.
The net result was that Chili didn't run against
Bob. Later on, there was a further session when
Bob indicated he was going to leave in 1969; and
Chili said in that case he definitely intended to
run.
Harry's attitude then was "Well, times have
changed; I've changed my mind. I think Bill Chester
is the man who ought to run for the job." The
reason for all this, I'm not sure myself, other
than perhaps a feeling on Harry's part that with
Chester around Harry would feel that the balance in
terms of the officership would be such that he would
have no problem, particularly if I continued to be
a bit of a pain in the ass, which I was ....
Ward: You would have two warehousemen up there?
LG: Well, there had been two warehousemen over the
years; Bob Robertson was a warehouseman. This did
a great deal of personal damage to Chili. He was
pretty well determined to run anyway, but to get
into a rivalry of that sort would have raised a
lot of hell; you would have had a black-white
thing, as well as ....
Ward: It would be very divisive.
1005
LG: Yes, although I believe Chili would have won. He
had good support in Hawaii; Local 6 had made very-
strong alliances with Local 142 in the Islands,
with a good deal of mutual assistance in almost
every beef. But none of this was to come to pass.
Chili died in January, 1969. He and his wife were
up in Reno taking a few days vacation; he had a
heart attack and passed away.
This created a different crisis within the
union. I think for a while Chester felt he had a
clear field. On the other hand, Jack Hall by that
time felt that most of his work in Hawaii was done.
Ward: Lou, you told about the possibility of a contest
between Jack and Bill Chester. And it was partly
solved by reopening a second vice-presidency.
LG: Right - which we had had before. Jack's attitude,
when Chester announced he was going to run, was
well, help yourself. Jack was confident of his
ability to take the election, that's all. Notwith
standing,' I didn't feel that was a good thing -
Ward: Yes, black vs. white.
LG: True enough? as to whether there would be enough of
a load for four people, a lot depended on the degree
of internal organization and the division of labor.
Almost every union job is what you make it. The
title doesn't mean a hell of a lot, except to some
people; basically you can make a lot of work out
of it, or you can figure out ways and means of
doing nothing. Some people are called good
administrators because that's the expertise of see
ing that nothing stays on your desk. Somebody else
gets the responsibility for it.
It was my judgment that we were better off not
to engage in an internecine fight. And mind, all
during this time, there was nothing fundamentally
wrong with the general union program. But the Chili
thing was an almost open breach with Warehouse. It
was another way of saying that that period was
finished, even though there is a tremendous amount
of logic in having somebody like a warehouseman as
director of organization, because there is where
the organizing has to be done.
1006
Ward: The longshoremen were all organized?
LG: The longshoremen had all been organized. If there
were bits of organization still to be done, my God,
they had the machinery and the strength to do it.
Cine of the things Jack did was to urge the longshore
locals to get out and organize a lot of the unor
ganized workers around the waterfront. For example,
people who work for the city, if it was a city
harbor like in the Port of Tacoma, performed work
in the main that could be done by longshoremen
themselves. There was no need to add organizers.
Warehouse, of course, was still the big potential.
Anyway, all these things came to a head at . the ' 69
convention. That's when Jack Hall was elected, and
so was Chester. What Harry's reaction was to Jack
Hall I'm not positive, but it was very short of
being cordial.
Ward: It was not cordial?
LG: No. As a matter of fact, Harry began to make
statements that maybe there ought to be physical
examinations before somebody could run for office,
because Jack had been sick in Hawaii.
Ward: He had diabetes and poor eyesight?
LG: He had diabetes; the eyesight was no major handicap.
He couldn't drive a car, that's true, but that's no
great problem for an organization director. When
he's traveling it's always invariably by plane; one
of the staff meets him, and generally they have to
go around together anyway, so that was no great
handicap.
Jack had also had an attack of appendicitis
which developed into peritonitis. Some of the in
sulin treatments taken for diabetes apparently can
cover up a lot of things, so that before they
diagnosed the thing as appendicitis, the appendix
had already broken, and the net result was that
he'd had a very bad siege. There's no question but
that beginning into 1970 Jack's health went down
hill. He developed what might have been Parkinson's
disease.
Ward: The last time I saw him I noticed the tremor.
1007
LG-: Right. But his doctor wasn't sure whether it was
that, or that somewhere along the line Jack had had
a minor stroke. But Jack was alert and he moved
over here. Still and all, he functioned fairly
well. True, his sickness did become progressively
worse. At one stage, where we were holding work
shops up and down the coast, he required an escort
to make sure he got back to San Francisco all right.
On another occasion when he was in Hawaii, the guys
were concerned enough that they had one of his old
friends, John Kelley, ride back to San Francisco
with him.
Ward: Well, it looks to me that Harry had hisf buddy and
and you had yours.
LG-: Well, no - I didn't think of it in that fashion. I
never felt that any of these things in terms of
union policy can really be settled by taking a vote,
like two against one. I never felt that this made
union policy. The way you made union policy was to
argue the thing out; sometimes it might take hours
or days.
Eventually you reach a meeting of the minds by
just hammering away at the issues until you get
consensus. I believe we followed this procedure
pretty consistently in the executive board and in
the enlarged executive board meetings, so that a
question of composition of leadership might have a
different construction. Harry might have seen it
that way, I don't know. I didn't see it that way.
I did think it was important to have somebody as-
direct or of organization who would feel that or
ganizing was important.
It could very well be that something else was
going on, namely, this growing conviction in Harry's
mind that the union had run its course, that the
time had come for it to go back in the ILA, or
something like that.
Ward: How did that conviction demonstrate itself?
1008
The Membership Questionnaire
LG: It demonstrated itself more and more sharply in an
interesting way. During the latter part of the
1960s, I thought it would be a good idea to do a
survey of the membership and find out what they
thought of the union; I think we were the first
and only union which has ever sent out a question
naire to every single member. In other words, we
took all the names on The Dispatcher mailing list
and sent them a copy of the questionnaire. The
survey started in the end of 1966 and was tabulated
in 1967.
##
Ward: You were saying you received a pretty substantial
return on the questionnaire.
LG: I think the return was better than 25 percent; quite
good, considering that a lot of people won't sit down
and take the time to write out what they think.
But here was a questionnaire which asked people to
speak their minds. They were unsigned.
Ward: Oh, they were anonymous?
LG: Anonymous, yes. Did they think the meetings were
too long? Do the officers take up too much time
speaking? Too many resolutions? Do we spend, too
much time on foreign policy? On foreign affairs?
Should there be more time on domestic affairs?
Were grievances handled promptly? Were they buried?
Do you feel the business agents are doing a good
job? In other words, the kind of questions that
most officials would rather not have an answer on.
There was a full page to write out additional
comments; to write out in longhand what they
thought about what the union should do. The thing
that came through most clearly to me was that no
one was talking in terms that the union had -run its
string, had done all it could, that its hey-day was
over and it was time to merge with another organi
zation headed someplace else. None of that was 'in
there .
1009
Ward: Was the question put in the questionnaire?
LG: No, but you could tell very quickly when you asked,
"Where do you think the union ought to go?" Copies
of the questionnaire went into The Dispatcher, plus
summaries of the replies. There were any number of
suggestions as to what the union ought to be doing.
We asked the question, "Do you think the union
is doing as well or better than other unions, or
just as well?" Invariably, what came through was
that there was an intense degree of loyalty to the
union itself; that by and large the membership loved
the union. They didn't think in the terms that
Harry kept expressing, namely, that the union had
run its course.
We did something else, beginning in the sixties,
which I thought was very constructive. We began -
holding a series of workshops, and these were un
usual affairs. Anybody could come to the workshop,
practically. There was no pay for time taken off.
In other words, a man might have worked that week
end but went to the workshop instead. He didn't get
paid for that. If he had to travel to the workshop,
like Coos Bay, we'd pay his room and meals - the
exact amount.
So, it attracted an awful lot of people who
really wanted to go. There were no holds barred;
the group made up the agenda; discussed what they
wanted and in any direction they wanted. Of course,
it would take a little while to loosen up, but most
of our guys are pretty vocal and they don't mind
saying their piece.
So, during these workshops some of these things
began to come into focus and I guess in part they
developed into something close to a debate between
Harry and myself - they didn't come for a floor
show. Obviously there were differences of opinion
on whether or not the union had run its string. I
recall one workshop where Harry came on sort of hard
on this, and I said, "More and more I'm convinced
that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy; you repeat
something like this often enough, after a while you
believe it. After you believe it, it has to come
true." So, ....
1010
Ward: Maybe he was confusing himself with the union.
LG-: Could be - I don't know.
Ward: Old men come to the conclusion quite frequently
that there isn't any point in going further.
LG-: Yeah, I know that happens. Those workshops took
place in Canada, Seattle; we had one in Portland,
one in Southern Oregon, Northern California,
Southern California. We had two very successful
workshops in Hawaii, big ones; they resulted in
what I thought were good exchanges of opinion. The
same thing came through to me that the membership
was not terribly interested in going anywhere else.
They were far more interested in strengthening
what they had.
Of course, there were all the other problems
that were climbing up our backs. You found a great
deal of hostility against the Teamsters, particul
arly by the longshoremen, on account of these con
tainer beefs. As a matter of -fact, the container
issue became a sort of a inake-or-break issue in
1969.
Ward: That container mechanization cost a lot of jobs to
the longshoremen?
LG: No question about that, not talking about a
manufacturer's load, a container that's made up at
the plant, General Electric or RCA (Corporation),
where they load the stuff just the way they want
it, including all the insulation and packaging and
safeguarding of the material. Those containers,
obviously, you can't screw around with; they should
go on board ship just the way they are. If it's
a similar container going directly to a manufacturer,
the same principle would apply.
With the containers there sprang up all kinds of
little container freight forwarders who were doing
this work with almost anybody. Over in the east
bay there were furniture workers stuffing containers;
other places, teamsters; other places just non-union.
Over in Hawaii, you'd be driving around and see
a container near somebody's house. In other words,
a guy and his kids were unloading that container
and .making deliveries. This was the work we were
1011
LG-: concerned about. We felt it should have remained
on the waterfront, because that was the same as
making up a longshore load or taking one apart.
Ward: They were palletizing jobs?
LG-: Right. In some places, we did reach freight sta
tion agreements. We had a container freight
station agreement in Hawaii. We eventually had one
here on the Pacific Coast; we worked on an eight
hour day, rather than the six and two. The wage
rates were very close to comparable. These, of
course, had to be steady men because they had to
know the container facility and everything else;
but the hostility still continued.
In some cases it becomes easier to attack some
worker than to figure out ways and means of forcing
the guy who really has the brass balls, namely the
employer, to get the problem corrected. Later on
we got a container agreement, but a good deal of
that was invalidated by the courts; including
taxing the container that came in and was not
handled by our people.
All this notwithstanding, there still was no
feeling on the part of the guys that the ILA could
do much good. Yes, there was general talk,
constantly, that if there could be a single union
or at least single bargaining of all longshoremen
around the country that would be added bargaining
power, but the economics and logic of the situation
didn't quite meet the bill, leaving aside the
question of the structure of the unions or the
manner in which they operated, which in many respects
were like day and night.
Our direct relationships here, in terms of any
one economic group, would be the Teamsters, because
it would be the Teamsters with whom we would have
to reach complete understanding so as to get the
container thing straightened out on the west coast.
The ILA couldn't do that for us.
Anyway, the workshops were good things; I thought
they would help clear the air on some of this stuff.
They did and they didn't.
1012
Ward: Well, with. Harry going around talking about maybe
the union was washed up, how did that sit with the
people at the workshops? Or did they pay any
attention to it?
LG: They paid attention to it but they weren't buying
it. Harry has been known to go off on some of
these tangents; sometimes the guys figured, okay,
it made sense; or he's just trying out an idea,
that's all. It might have had a little bit of an
impact, but nobody was carried away by it - no
marching music, believe me. You didn't hear any.
Total Polarization
LG: In 1970, though, I don't know what the devil was
going on. It could have been a combination of a
number of factors. It could be that Harry had
decided that the .time had come to dive into this
Warehouse thing. Remember, never sell Harry short
in his boldness or his ability or his perseverance.
The guy had it and still does, and also a very
quick and inventive mind.
Ward: Well, I gather that by 1970 it had become clear,
at least to you, that Harry was more or less anti-
Warehouse.
LG: I don't think it was anti-Warehouse; what had
become clear to me was that Harry had reached a
stage where if I were in favor of something, he was
against it. As a matter of fact, he made that
crack one time about Jack Hall: "If Jack Hall is
in favor of something, I'm against it." I was
trying to brush the thing off lightly when I said,
"Well, look, Jack's probably in favor of sex, and
do you have to come out in opposition to that too?"
That levity, though, didn't get anywhere.
Ward: You say he apparently made up his mind to do some
thing about Warehouse in 1970.
LG: Right. Because during the 1970 negotiations, we
felt that the 1967 Warehouse victory should pay off
for at least another contract or two; the employers
1013
LG-: realized that we could pull the ranks together. In
other words, '67 was a sort of a test where this
was no longer palaver; it wasn't being done by mir
rors and it wasn't just being done by joint stew
ards meetings.
There's no question that those things packed an
awful lot of weight; '67 was a test as to whether
or not we and the Teamsters would all go out
together and shut things down, and while we might
have had a very brief strike in '61 for three days,
or '64, 1967 was quite different; we really did go
out. That head of steam was still there. And we
had a series of proposals ....
Ward: '70 now, you're saying?
LG-: In 1970; none of them were really that earth-
shaking, but they were fairly substantial proposals
because of inflation, which was beginning again.
True, it wasn't the easiest of times, because the
Vietnam War was still running along and, if anything,
intensifying. As a matter of fact, I think it was
around 1970 that the United States invaded Cambodia.
In the 1970 negotiations, I began to get rumbles
back that Harry would talk to people like Leroy
King and to others - Leroy King was our regional
director - and complain that he was kept completely
in the dark by me; that I never spoke to him or told
him what was going on.
Well, that was not true, because every few days
I'd stop by his office and tell Harry, "Here's
what's going on; it looks like it's going to be a
bit rough." When we got an agreement to work day
by day after the contract expired on June 1, I said
that we've also got a guarantee of retroactivity.
He said, "You mean you have a guarantee of retro-
activity even if you strike?" "That's the way I
read it," I replied.
"That can't happen," Harry said. "I've been
around long enough to know that once you're on
strike all bets are off; they can say, 'Oh, yes,
we did talk about giving you retroactivity, but
now that you're on strike, forget it,' and it
becomes another strike issue, that's all." I said,
"But we do have retroactivity nailed down." He
wouldn't buy that.
1014
LG: Then later on I find out that he's making bets; he
made a bet with Bill Burke, one of our business
agents, a $5 bet that we wouldn't get 85 cents, or
something like that. . . .
Ward: That's what you were asking?
LG-: We were asking a buck in wages plus a series of
fringe benefits that would run the thing up to
about a dollar and a half.
Ward: I think you said $1.40 once.
LG: $1.45 -
Ward: And Harry was betting that you wouldn't get more
than 85 cents?
LG: Yeah; then, he made a bet with Sid Roger. I think
Sid made a mistake making the bet.
Ward: He made a mistake collecting it!
LG: That I'm sure, but the big mistake was making it.
I finally asked Harry, "Now, look, you keep saying
you're not being informed, you don't know what the
score is on negotiations. I suggest we have a
session on the thing and raise these questions with
the commit tree." So, we called the committee in;
that was primarily the officers. I didn't want to
make it a public airing before the whole membership;
if you began to bring in a lot of the stewards and
board members, you'd go round-and-roundy.
Ward: But you had the business agents and people like
that.
LG: Yeah, they were all there and perhaps a few more.
By that time Curt McLain was president. He had
taken over the presidency of Local 6 after Chili
died. Harry went into a discussion - which I've
always been somewhat in favor of - that before you
actually head into a strike you look at all the
alternatives. I still agree that the easiest thing
is to call a strike, but winning it is another
story. Well, Harry went around and around on this
thing; what would be wrong with a settlement on
wages for around 80 cents or say 90 cents? Back
and forth, and back and forth.
1015
LG-: The committee by that time had its heels pretty
well set. We knew that we wanted a buck in wages
for the three-year span, and needed major improve
ments in the pensions and health and welfare and
a number of other items that were important to us.
We kept emphasizing that. We said, "The package
is going to have to be somewhere around $1.40, or
she's going to break down." It was at that session
where Evelyn Johnson, a black woman, business agent
over in Oakland, finally turned to Harry and said,
"Look, we've heard two hours of bullshit now as to
what we should do and what we shouldn't do. What
do you suggest?"
The meeting ended on sort of a bad note. In
other words, nobody felt it was a constructive dis
cussion. Even guys who were loyal supporters of
Harry, guys like Joe Lynch, who still is, came out
point blank. Joe said, "I think you ought to
understand what we're telling you, Harry; we ought
to get a buck forty and that's what the hell is in
the cards."
Well, he began to turn up at some of the en
larged meetings. We would report back constantly
to the full negotiating committee which included
the strike committee, the stewards, and so forth.
Somebody asked Harry, "What are you doing here?"
And he said, "I'm here to protect the pensioners";
that we weren't doing enough on pensions.
Of course, one of our demands was to do something
substantial on pensions. Later on when Bill Burke
collected on the bet, Harry said, "Well, I
accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, but just
let it go at that."
Ward: How much did you get?
LG-: What did we get? $1.45.
Ward: And Harry thought 85 cents would be enough?
LG-: That's what he bet on. I guess he was turning the
thing upside down, saying that if he argued this,
then I would have to get more; one of those weird
double-think rationales; or triple -thinks.
1016
LG: Obviously he was completely skeptical about it.
He was so determined to find something wrong in the
negotiations, to see that the leadership that was
being exerted was not adequate.
One meeting, held down in Burlingame fairly
early at 9:30 in the morning, Harry turns up. He
starts off by saying, "Well, I want to make sure
we don't make some of the same mistakes we made in
1967." Well, in 1967 one of the things that had
happened was this. I was hoping that out of the
1967 negotiations we could at least get the begin-
mings of a drug plan, in addition to the regular
Kaiser coverage.
Ward: Oh, the drug plan?
LG: Yes, prescription drugs. We had reserves in the
Warehouse welfare fund and I never believed in
maintaining heavy reserves. I think welfare plans
have to be predicated on planned poverty; in other
words, you spend the money for benefits, not sit
there and husband that money and see how much you
can put in the bank. Anyway, we had put in some
money from the reserves and so had the Teamsters;
we had set up a pilot plan, maybe not the most
comprehensive plan, but at least the beginning.
Well, this thing fell apart afterwards because
the San Francisco Employers Council - which
represented most of the houses which dealt with
the Teamsters Union, led by Murray Parker - decided
to try an end run, one perhaps that could be a
fatal blow to the whole Warehouse program. On
their own they initiated a -irug plan, but just for
the Teamster warehousemen.
I knew better than to double back and ask the
Distributors for it; for one thing, you don't ask
favors, and secondly, I knew what their attitude
would be. I don't think they were any more
enthusiastic about the joint negotiations than the
Employers Council. There was a lot of discussion
among the warehousemen; they felt this was a double-
cross and why in tie hell didn't the Teamsters
stick by their agreement?
This was what Harry was referring to. Well,
George Mock was sitting next to me and I was coming
to a steam because I knew damn well that we had
1017
LG: nothing to do with. that. George Mock suddenly
turned to Harry and said, "Now look, Harry, I know
what happened; the I1WU wasn't responsible for that,
We were, we did it. We made that mistake."
Inasmuch as Harry had started on that issue and
it fell flat on its face, he had nowhere else to
go, so he went back and talked to Einar Mohn. Then
later he said, "Well, I talked to Einar Mohn and he
said that things are under good control; that's
fine." But when he came back in the meeting again,
he must have been up all night thinking about this,
because he fell sound asleep at the conference
table. The employers weren't there, just the
union. But that was his last appearance at the
Warehouse negotiations.
We finally got a fairly good agreement. We got
the retroactivity which we had been promised, but
then a few weeks later some odd things happened.
Harry apparently called J. Hart Clinton, the head
of the employers; Harry didn't take my word for it.
I told him, "Here's what the package is; this is
how much we got in wages, forty, thirty and thirty
which made a buck; and here's how much money we got
for pensions, here's for health and welfare, and
so forth. We picked up an extra holiday with pay
and also firmed up the day after Thanksgiving as a
holiday. Yes, and some other improvements, like
the shift differential."
In most of our negotiations we don't play too
much with figures; that's the employers' game be
cause they have different techniques on how to
measure a wage increase. For example, the employ
ers will measure a wage increase by saying, okay,
we work such a percentage of overtime; grant you
a dime in wages across the board which is really
15 cents in overtime; maybe 20 percent of the work
day is overtime and you have to weigh out the whole
thing to get the figure. Also, obviously, there
are certain automatic cost-related questions that
go with wages.
In other words, your wages go up 20 cents an
hour, your vacation pay is up by 20 cents an hour,
your sick leave pay is up by 20 cents an hour,
and so forth. Some employers literally force
1018
LG: negotiations into that pattern, "but we never have.
In Warehouse we just stuck with the straight
"business that you can stop talking about overtime
because as far as we're concerned, we don't work
an hour of overtime. There's nothing in the
contract that says they have to give us overtime.
As a matter of fact, we would prefer it if they
didn't, so we would just brush off those arguments.
But Harry called J. Hart Clinton and said, "How
do you figure this package measures out?" I guess
this was part of his paying off his bets. Clinton
told him about the same thing I had told him -
$1.45 or thereabouts. I thought that would end it,
but Harry's not satisfied with that, so he calls
Pres Lancaster. Pres Lancaster was a statistician
and research man for the Pacific Maritime Associa
tion.
He was a very straight guy, a technician - did
his work and did it honestly. As a matter of fact,
I think that he and Line Fairley developed a great
deal of respect for each other: Line had to work
with him and Line felt that he was trustworthy in
his figures. But in the case of the PMA, in
computing the cost of anything they used this system
of roll-up.
Ward: That was because it was in the contract - 6 and 2?
LG: Yes - 6 and 2 automatically put it in the contract.
You had a six hour day with two hours overtime and
you were guaranteed eight hours. When you were
called in to work you were guaranteed two hours
overtime unless there was no work, in which case you
got paid eight hours straight time. That had been
written in the contract earlier.
Ward: It was logical to figure it out that way under
that contract, but not under the Warehouse system?
LG: Oh, I don't know whether it was or wasn't. They
computed in everything, not just the two hours
overtime. They computed in the amount of work on
Saturdays and Sundays, for example, because a large
percentage of longshore work could be night work;
that's all overtime work. Consequently they use
this roll-up, as they call it. People call it
1019
LG: "the creep"; there are all kinds of names for the
technique where the employers balloon up their
cost. Pres Lancaster said they had done some
computations - they keep track, of course - and he
figured that the cost of our Warehouse settlement
was about $1.65, so Harry wasn't picking up any
satisfaction in those directions. The thing that
became clear in the 1970 negotiations was that in
sofar as trying to sit down and hammer out a
constructive program and consider how you bring
the whole union and the maximum amount of strength
into play to pick up the best possible gains, that
was becoming more and more difficult, because Harry
just didn't think that way.
Then there was a very bad blow we suffered right
in the middle of those negotiations - it was
terrible. George Valter, secretary of Local 6, died
in June, 1970. So, here was Chili gone, and George,
two real stalwarts. As a matter of fact, we began
to lose a lot of people during the sixties: Bulcke
retired, Henry Schmidt retired, Dick Lynden died,
so the casualties were beginning to tell.
I guess the union was getting older. Anyway,
that was a bad blow. The only thing we did that
could best commemorate George was, to add another
demand on pensions. You see, we didn't have the
regular widow's pension, but we threw a demand in
there that if a man died between the ages of 60 and
65 and had put in his years of service, his widow
would get half of his pension. It's still called
the George Valter pension.
It's not a great deal in exchange for a loss
like that, but at least it was something for George.
The only humorous thing there was that we had one
B.A. who was not the brightest guy in the world;
a good, honest guy, but he didn't know the
difference between just sitting still or passing
a note and speaking; when we finally had just about
hammered this thing home, he turns to me and says
in a voice that could be heard clear across the
table by the employers, "Now, this will cover
George Valter, won't it?" It's not that we were
trying to be that devious, but I think the employ
ers themselves understood what we were shooting
at.
1020
The Hawaii Hotel Negotiations
LG: Shortly after that Jack Hall died; the day after
New Years in 1971. Prior to that I had to go down
to Hawaii, and again that was an odd scene and I
couldn't help but feel that Harry was going his own
way; I had become persona non grata, for what reason
I don't know. But there had been a hotel strike
going on there for a long, long time.
ard: Rutledge's "business, wasn't it?
LG: No; it was a hotel strike "by the HWU. We had some
two or three thousand people out; all the hotels
we'd organized on the outside islands, like the
"big Mauna Kea hotel, Kaanapali hotel, a number of
them. We had this hotel strike on and Eddie Tangen,
who had been working with Jack, was pretty much in
charge of the strike.
The strike was tight and solid, people were very
loyal. Even the tour drivers, many of whom belonged
to us, wouldn't drive up in front of the hotels.
There was a bus coming from the airport with a load
of tourists, like at the Kaanapali; they'd drive
them to the public road and that meant these people
would have to take their bags and walk all the way
across the golf course to get to the hotel.
Well, by and large, the strike was fairly
successful. We were having a meeting in British
Columbia, as I recall; there was snow on the ground
when that meeting broke up. One of the things that
worried us was that if the struck hotels managed
to sit out the Christmas season, which is usually
very profitable in Hawaii - in those days there
was still a good deal of seasonality; a very high
season around Christmas time, and another high
season around the summer months, with a lapse after
Christmas - they could take the strike for another
couple of months.
That concerned us and we had a good deal of
discussion about that in Vancouver. Finally, it
was agreed that Jack (Hall) would call Jack Burns.
1021
Ward: Burns was then governor?
LG-: Burns was governor then, yes; to tell Burns that
the union had made a decision. We were not going
to sit by and let the hotels starve those people
over the holiday season; if necessary, we would
find ways and means of spreading the strike where
it could do some good, because after all a number
of the Big Five were also mixed up in the hotels.
C. Brewer had a couple of hotels - Volcano House
and one other; American Factors was up to its ears
in the big Kaanapali development, near Lahaina. We
figured that if necessary we'd go down and talk to
the sugar workers. We had been building up to
that; we were getting a lot of them to appear on
the picket lines when they had time off, which -was
a good solidarity action; it could also be pre
liminary to spreading the shutdown. These were our
friends, and the governor wanted to know if Jack
would be down there.
Jack didn't feel up to traveling. I think it
was during the Vancouver meeting where he said one
of the things he had to do as director of organi
zation was to take a look-see at Alaska and the
organization work done there. Harry was making
remarks that going up to Alaska in the winter time
was a junket. And Jack knew that he was getting
very sick, and made some remark, "Maybe it will be
just a one-way trip."
Jack suggested that I go to Hawaii and give the
hotel guys a hand. I went down there, and I didn't
spend much time talking to the employers the first
few days. I just talked to our own committee,
sorting out the issues.
What was evident was that the biggest stickler
in the negotiations was that the employers wanted
a master contract, which was fine. They didn't
want one hotel played off against the other. They
were prepared to give some money in wages, but
they wanted everything evened out. That meant that
in the case of hotels where we had provisions bet
ter than other hotels, the latter workers would
have surrendered some things. In the case of the
Mauna Zea Hotel, we had a fairly good sick leave
1022
LG-: clause and a better vacation clause. The employers'
demand would mean that these people would lose
certain fringe benefits in exchange for a master
contract.
Well, after getting all that dope together, I
then deliberately wandered around town dropping
hints. People were asking me, "What the hell are
you doing down here." I said, "Figuring out ways
and means of shutting down as much as we can around
the Islands. We're not going to let them starve
out these people in the hotels; they're a loyal
bunch. If this thing isn't settled soon, all kinds
of things are going to happen; at least all kinds
of things that we can help make happen."
Then I spent a lot of time talking to McElrath,
who had taken Jack's place as regional director.
McElrath knew about the issues in the strike,
although he wasn't playing that much of a role;
Eddie Tangen was handling it.
Finally I came up with an answer that I thought
would make sense. I said, "Look, I know exactly
where you are frozen. You're frozen on this busi
ness that you're not going to give up anything,
and we're right on that one. On the other hand,
the employers are equally convinced that we're
determined to smash their organization, and I think
to some degree there is truth in that."
In other words, they felt that some of the hotels
would crack, and an unravelling process would start
among the employers. I said that issue had to be
dropped completely; any idea of seeing whether we
could make the employers fall apart has to go out
the window. "We've got to give the employers
assurances that they have just as much right to
have a union as we have." With that behind us, I
thought there was a formula which I could work out
that would handle this problem.
Well, we finallv met with the employers; it was
an odd scene because on the one hand, there was
Bob G-runsky, who was head of the Employers Council
and supposedly the spokesman. I gather the employ
ers weren't completely happy because they had also
brought Phil Maxwell, who had formerly been head of
1023
LG-: the Employers Council, out of retirement to help
in the negotiations. Phil, obviously, was thorough
ly irritated with Grunsky. G-runsky had a very
difficult habit; it was pretty common for him, when
he got excited in the course of negotiations, to
get up and pace "back and forth behind the employers'
table. It finally got to the point where we'd say,
"Why don't you sit down for a while so that we can
talk to you?" And one of the things he couldn't
stand was any levity in negotiations; no sense of
humor.
Anyway, I laid out our position. I said, "I
want to put one thing to rest right now; we are
not a damn bit interested and will be no part of
any program - and it's my job to see to it -
which has the intent or design to break up the
Employers Association. You're entitled to it and
this is not part of our objectives. We're going
to stick with the issues. Neither are we going to
surrender any of the things we presently have in
the interests of common bargaining." I said we
would work out something that could resolve both
problems. Well, G-runsky for some reason or other . ,
##
LG-: He was so cranked up that he couldn't hear and I
said, "There will be a solution here and it can be
worked out if you can just be patient and give us a
chance to spell the thing out."
Well, the guy I had been watching closely during
the negotiations was the man representing the
Mauna Kea hotel, the big hotel, the Rockefeller
hotel. He obviously was very interested the moment
I mentioned that there was no attempt on our part
to rip their association, and that there was a
solution in sight. But Grunsky obviously was on
this tear.
Maxwell was trying to interrupt the meeting;
Phil Maxwell, from the employers side. Finally, I
said, "You know, Grunsky, you remind me of something
that an old friend of mine said; he had come from
the northwest and he said, 'You know, I don't like
that man and I'm going to straighten out my accounts
with him; I'm going to do it by the code of the
west - shoot him right in the back. ' "
1024
LG: Then I said, "Why don't you guys just think about
what 'I said and we'll meet with 'you this after
noon," I "broke off the meeting.
Then, I sat down with the committee and said,
"Look, I'm not going to advance any proposals until
I've cleared it with the committee and I want to
find out exactly how you feel about it. How many
issues do you have left?" They had 32 issues left.
I said, "The strike has been going on this long -
you've been having meetings and you haven't
squared away anything?" No, they never could get
to the main issues because all they did was just
concentrate on this one thing, nobody was going to
take anything away from them. That's an easy
rallying point, but it also means that you can get
your feet stuck in concrete and can't pull them
out.
I said, "Why don't we do this? We'll take these
hotels and we'll have two agreements. One will be
a three-year agreement, which will cover the things
that are common to all the hotels, like the wages
we're asking for. V/e'll straighten out these other
demands, and you'll have to get through them in a
hurry.
"Then we'll have a five year contract on those
three or four items which are superior in some
hotels to the others. The other hotels have to
catch up to those within a span of five years, so
we will have a two-fold agreement: one for 3 years
and one for five. No one loses anything and the
others pick all those things up in that span of
time, either by progression over the full five
years, or in the last two years." Everybody said
that was fine.
So we got back there that afternoon and somebody-
had cooled Grunsky; Maxwell started doing the talk
ing. I think someone had said, "Let Phil talk."
He and I at least always had a talking relationship
where there wasn't all of this shouting, or this
marching back and forth.'
He said, "Okay, what do you have in mind?" I
said, "Here's now simple it is; we recognize your
association, and there will be no attempt whatso
ever to break it. The bigger you can make it, all
1025
LG: the hotels you can encompass, the better we'll like
it. Of course we'd 'like it a lot better if they're
all in the ILWU, but we realize those are not the
facts of life."
The hotels in Honolulu proper were mostly under
Rutledge, and they later tried to encompass the
whole thing into a single association, but Rutledge
managed to break it up because he had some sideline
deals with either the Sheraton or the Hilton.
I said, "Secondly, we are not going to let you
carry the strike through the holiday season and
then just starve the people out. We'll do whatever
we can to spread the thing and bring up additional
support. Lastly, there's a formula here to settle
the whole thing, although you will still have to
bargain out the minor items; and I spelled out the
combination of the three and five years." Well,
it was no great big stroke of genius, but it met
that situation right on the nose.
The result was that by 3 or 4 o'clock in the
afternoon, we had basic agreement on the principles,
and I said, "Okay, I'm getting the hell out of
here; I don't know enough about some of these
individual grievances, but I suggest that you start
working your way through as fast as possible." Of
course, once the main things fell in line, then all
the employers ....
Ward: It's like a log jam - once the key log is ....
LG: Right! Then all the employers began to fall all
over themselves to get the thing finished. The
thing worked out just fine.
Well, one morning while these negotiations were
going on I was going for breakfast at the Ala
Moana Hotel and Harry was sitting there; I didn't
know he was in town; he didn't ask me to sit down.
I sat down and had breakfast by myself, but I was
a bit taken aback.
I thought, what the devil is he doing here? And
how come he didn't call me? I couldn't quite make
out what it was all about. For one thing, Harry
didn't have any use for Eddie Tangen and it could
very well have been that he was there to do a
1026
LG: salvage job on a situation that Eddie Tangen had
blown apart. But it didn't work out that way. As
a matter of fact, a day or so later, they had
ironed out the other issues. I was at the union
building, either dictating some notes or some
letters or having a talk with some people. When
I went back, everything was settled; they had just
signed, and they were all sitting around having a
drink in the second floor patio with everybody
feeling a lot better about the whole thing.
Then for the first time Harry talked to me and
said, "Gee, these employers tell me you've got the
best goddamned contract in the country now. That
was a good job." Mind you, this when it is all
over with. Not at any time, coming along and say
ing "Okay, where does the thing stand, what ideas
have you worked out? Is it moving? Can it be
moved?"
The end of that little chapter was that the word
he was taking as to the agreement was the employers!
Thev were the ones who told him it was a good
agreement, (laughter)
These were some of the things that were happen
ing. And I guess that's enough for the 1960s, and
actually the beginning of 1972, because 1970 was
the warehouse thing. Then I doubled back to the
hotel thing which was in 1969. That just about
takes care of that.
1027
XXXII THE LONGSHORE STRIKE OF 1971
Bridges Snubs The Alliance For Labor Action
Ward: Very good. All right, what next? Do you want to
talk about the 1971 Longshore strike? Or is that
important? In '71 the mechanization contract ended
again, didn't it?
LG: Yes.
Ward: And there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the
conditions?
LG: Yes, I think that early in those negotiations it
became pretty apparent that nobody could stop the
strike. Things were blowing up; by that time
Harry's feelings toward me were amply apparent.
Ward: He had reached the point that whatever you said, he
said the opposite.
LG: Oh, in '71 he knew perfectly well how I felt about
the ILA. He never discussed it with me or the
other officers, as far as I know. About inviting
the ILA guys, he just invited them. I don't know
why. Well, in Hawaii somebody came over to me and
said, - I don't remember who it was - "You're not
going to lead a walkout, are you?" This was when
the ILA guys got up to talk. Harry got the idea,
or somebody did. I wasn't going to lead any
cheering section; that was definite; nor was I
going to lead a walkout.
Ward: You were getting your orders from "Pete King" that
time?
1028
LG: That's right; I was getting my orders from "Pete
Zing." Then, of course, the move he made to have
compulsory retirement by age 63, would have left me
with one term in office.
Ward: Oh, yes - that was at that convention too. You said
something about negotiations in Hawaii in '73 and '74
where Harry was troublesome.
LG: Yes, that goes over to '74 and ....
ard: Is there anything in between '72 and '74 that you
want to discuss?
LG: Well, there were a number of developments. Inciden
tally, one of the speakers at the '69 convention
was Pitzsimmons. As a matter of fact, he appeared
primarily at Harry's urging. During that time, the
ALA was also beginning to function.
Ward: That's the ....
LG: Alliance for Labor Action, which was started by
Reuther and Pitzsimmons. I recall talking to a
number of UAW guys like Jack Conway and Paul Schrade,
who were curious about how our Northern California
Warehouse alliance was operating. I gave them as
much detail as I could and I said that when you
dealt with the Teamsters it was a different kind of
a league.
Most unions are different. They're not all the
same; the personalities are different, the struc
tures are different, the lines of authority vary;
all these things have their own character. I felt
that getting together with the ALA would be a good
thing for us. Pitzsimmons met with our Executive
Board; we had a special meeting with him and he
invited us into the ALA.
Harry said that we would take it under considera
tion, but he had no use for it. Why, I'm not sure.
He distrusted Reuther - oh, not without good
grounds. Reuther had a rather distinctive career
of his own, you know. He'd make these annual
pilgrimages v/here he spoke to all the Social
Democrats in England, Germanv .... Anyway, any
tie-up with the ALA didn't materialize.
1029
Ward: Oh, yes, Reuther was the great socialist who once
went to ' the Soviet Union - he and Victor, his
"brother. Didn't they work in some factory there?
LG: That's right.
As a matter of fact, a newspaper reporter in the
Soviet Union -Ynri Kutnetsov accompanied our group
that went to the Soviet Union in 1959. I did a long
series of articles on our trip, both the visit to
Czechoslovakia and the visit to the Soviet Union . .
Ward: For The Dispatcher?
LG: For The Dispatcher, yes. I guess it was the first
attempt at a comprehensive study of the Russian
trade unions. I was quite impressed with most of
the guys I met. The Russians are good people. I
have a lot of "beefs with their foreign policy, like
Czechoslovakia, "but the Russians as a people are
warm, hardworking and the system operates. Yuri
Euznetsov was the reporter who accompanied us on
the whole trip. I remember picking up an issue of
Trud, the newspaper, and it had a full page on our
delegation and some places we had visited, some
child care centers, and I asked him to translate
parts of it for me. And I said, "Gee, I never said
that." He said, "I know you didn't, but I had to
fill up the page and I knew you wouldn't mind."
(laughter) So, I guess like everybody else, they
have to make their mark; a reporter is a reporter.
But it was he who told me - "You remember that
story about Reuther getting married in the Soviet
Union, and it had never been reported, and neither
did he ever get a divorce?" I said, "Yes, I saw
that in an American paper." He said, "I'm the one
who dug it up. How much of an impression did it
make?" I said, "None; those things don't carry
as much weight with the American worker as you
might think; it isn't any big thing, you see."
But apparently, Yuri was the guy who had dug up
that story.
Ward: It was a scandal?
LG: Yes - to him it was scandal. A lot of our overseas
guys get married, sometimes for one night.
1030
LG: In 1971 the high point was the convention that
year and the expiration of the Longshore contract.
The Longshore thing was shaping up into a strike,
no matter what happened. I think it was a com
bination of a number of things - one, the
mechanization program travelled too fast and made
too many changes, without adequate protection.
The men saw jobs evaporate, and nothing coming in
its place.
In the case of San Francisco work had still
been good because this was still part of the
Vietnam War movement; a number of "B" men had been
added. Actually, it turned out that far more were
added than were really necessary. This really
became a headache, because work opportunities
dropped off pretty fast, primarily in San Francisco,
Then in the T 66 negotiations, part of the
monies were divided, you know. The first mechan
ization agreement in effect allowed for something
like five million dollars a year, two million
dollars of which was earmarked for a pay guarantee
program. The balance went into this pension
program.
The idea of shrinking the work force was very
good. The money had not been used by 1966 and
the result was that the caucus voted to just
divide it up and pay it out to the "A" men, so
that all the "A" men got something, around $1300
apiece.
The '66 contract finally did establish a new
mechanization fund and also the institution of
the pay guarantee plan: 36 hours for "A" men, a
lesser amount for "B" men; now 36 hours for "A",
24 hours for "B" , which can go to 30 hours. This,
however, resulted in certain availability rules.
These things created major changes in how the
locals would have to function, part of it being
the attachment of the worker to the job.
In other words, there was the question of
steady men. The men who work casual also had to
report five days a week in order to be eligible
for the pay guarantee. In addition, the pay
guarantee was supplemental to unemployment
1031
LG: insurance, this to be worked out the way unemploy
ment insurance operates, with a one week waiting
period; then you're eligible for unemployment
insurance.
It became a combination with some of the men
never liking the idea at all. You still had a
great many guys who said, "Look, I'm not down here
to collect guarantees or unemployment insurance;
I'm here to work." A good deal of independence,
a general feeling that they didn't want to be
trapped.
Now, in retrospect, you can say, "Well, could
anything else have been done?" Maybe it could
have been done much more slowly, with more safety
valves, more protective forms; but whether the
container itself could have been stopped indefinite
ly, that I don't believe, any more than the
Luddites were successful in smashing the machines.
Ward: What was Harry's position on the strike? Did he
support it?
LG: Oh, yes, he supported it. You might recall that
Nixon came along with his pay board late in 1971,
when the strike had been on several months. There
had been some offers around from the employers.
George Martin had taken Jack Hall's place by then,
having been elected at the 1971 convention.
George and I both felt, no great harm in going
back in negotiations and perhaps nailing things
down before the pay board became effective, but
Harry was determined that there be no such thing.
When we suggested meeting with the employers,
he said, "Go ahead and meet, but it's without me."
When the pay board came along, Harry took a
strong position; he said no governmental body was
going to tell the membership what the hell it
should or should not do. It was up to the
membership; they would vote as to how they felt.
Then, about that time the government got an
injunction against both the ILA and the ILWU.
i
In early 1972 Congress passed a piece of
legislation which empowered the President to
order workers in marine transportation back to
work.
1032
LG-: As a matter of fact, Nixon was so anxious to sign
it that he did it while he was over in China.
But during this period, some people feel that
Harry in effect had decided "Okay, you guys didn't
like the mechanization agreement; or you felt it
was too long; or you didn't get enough of this,
that and the other thing; and you insisted on
striking. You're going to get a strike you'll
never forget."
Ward: Did he tell them that?
LG: No. The Dispatcher is a house organ and you don't
report a suspicion of that sort; it has no place
in the paper. You're there to try to win things.
The strike finally ran its course, I forget how
long it was.
Ward: What was the main issue?
LG: The main issue was wages, pensions, container
jurisdiction - some of which was cleared up but
which was later nullified by the courts - the
pay guarantee plan, a combination of all these
things.
It was in January of 1972 that the entire
negotiating committee, 18 of us altogether, flew
back to New York City; That's when we met with
Gleason. Harry had a column in The Dispatcher
in which he advocated re-affiliation and when he
went back there, he repeated the same thing: "As
far as I am concerned, I came back here to get
help and work out affiliation as well." So, he
was pretty well out in the open about the whole
thing. Well, Harry never had a chance to get
these things done because ....
1033
(interview 37: 8 December, 1978)
Bridges Renews Affiliation Plea
LG-: Even prior to the committee going back there to
meet with the ILA, Harry had been writing a number
of columns and I recall his making a report to
our International Executive Board.
Ward: That was his column "On The Beam", wasn't it?
LG: Tes, and also in his report to the Executive Board
Board the question of merger with the ILA or the
Teamsters was raised by him. It was during the
course of preparations for the longshore negotia
tions, or perhaps the strike was already under
way. The Executive Board's position was that they
accepted Harry's report unanimously except for the
question of any merger or affiliation. That was
to be taken up as a separate matter.
Later, when the strike was on, his "On The Beam"
column would be a full second page of The Dispatcher
because a lot of it was devoted to the strike and
strike strategy; a good way of keeping the member
ship informed as to where we were going and how we
were trying to get there. In that column he was
pretty sharp about anybody who was critical of the
idea of merger, critical of these people who
attacked the ILA or George Meany, and so forth.
If you look back at his earlier columns in
The Dispatcher. I doubt v/hether any kind of
invective in describing the functioning of the
ILA had ever been omitted. But in '71 - '72, the
point he kept driving home was that somehow a
merger with the ILA would resolve the container
question.
The problem of jurisdiction was big; the total
work impact of the advent of the container took
on enormous proportions. The only areas where
there was no change might have been the handling
of logs in the Northwest; those log shipments had
1034
LG-: to be handled pretty much, in the traditional
fashion, although there were a number of
improvements on that score, too.
When it came to general cargo movements, it
reached the stage where every major shipping
company had moved over to containers. Where
some of the foreign lines might have lagged a
bit, eventually they, too, moved whole hog into
this area.
I suppose in part the fault lay with ourselves,
that even with the initial mechanization agree
ments these things were not nailed down without
any escape patterns. A distinction could have
been made, and eventually was made, between a
shipper's load and the container freight stations.
The container freight stations didn't own any
containers. The guy who ran that operation,' all
he had was just a shed, a couple of employees and
a bookkeeper; and, I suppose, somebody out hustling
freight. He would be concentrating on those
shippers who couldn't use an entire container;
because more and more the containers moved to the
40-foot size and carried a substantial amount of
cargo. Then he would have these dribs and drabs
of cargo brought into container freight stations,
and that's where the load was made up.
Finally we did get an agreement with the
employers on a container freight station contract.
The employers were to set up container freight
stations where our guys would do the work, the
basic thrust of our argument being that the ship
owner who owned "the container also had control of
the container.
If a shipper decided to send less than a
container lot, he could drop it at pier so-and-so
where there's a container freight shed. He would
get a receipt stating what container it's going
to go on, the same way you would deliver other
cargo for shipment. However, much of this con
tainer freight station work had already become
entrenched in the Teamsters or other unions. I'm
convinced the employers were heavily in collusion
with some trucking companies.
1035
Ward: A lower wage scale was involved, wasn't it?
LG: The wage scale was not that much different. I'd
say the single biggest difference would be the
speed at which the men would work. You wouldn't
get any of our longshoremen working at the tempo
the employers were able to get ou-t of some of the
other unions, or some of the non-union operations.
And of course they had a money interest be
cause they could maintain the container freight
stations, as well as the haulage and everything
that goes with it. There were a good many court
cases, including court cases against a tax on
containers that had not been made up by the II WU
within a 50-mile radius of the dock.
Ward: That was thrown out by the courts?
LG: As I recall that was successfully challenged by
some of the employers, and was heaved out.
Anyway, for some reason Harry thought that the
thing could be solved in conjunction with the ILA.
The strike on the west coast in '71 began July 1,
the day the agreement ran out. We were still on
strike at the end of September, at which point
the ILA walked out on strike.
Nixon then moved toward a Taft Hartley injunc
tion. So we were under the injunction and forced
to go back to work some time in the first or
second week of October. The injunction was for the
usual 80-day cooling off period and that would go
through October, November, part of December, end
ing with a vote on the employers' so-called last
offer. Well, that last offer was made and there
was no change from what they had proposed across
the table; it was voted down by a very substantial
margin.
Ward: This time the guys voted?
LG: Yes, it wasn't like 1948 when they boycotted the
thing. The vote was somewhere in the neighborhood
of 93 per cent to reject. The strike on the west
coast resumed again in January, but even before it
resumed we went back to meet with the ILA.
1036
LG-: Even though there had been some joint press
conferences by Gleason and Harry where they
announced a willingness to go along with a common
expiration date, a common container program, and
so forth, this turned out to be all verbiage as
far as the HA was concerned.
We weren't even hammering on the question of a
common expiration date. We merely asked that if
we sent pickets back there, they would shut down
the Sea.T-Land operations. Sea-Land was one of the
big container movers on the west coast; there
could be the logical -position taken by the union,
notwithstanding Taft-Hartley and secondary boycott
provisions, that this was a primary strike against
the same employer, and we could at least try to
nail down Sea-Land with the kind of container
agreement the ILA had, including the container
tax.
G-leason's attitude was, "That's not our position
back here; we follow the policy of one down - all
down. We shut down one company, we shut down the
whole port." He modified it to say, "Well, if
you send a picket back, we'll shut it down, but
it won't do you any good; it will be enjoined and
it will just be a grandstand play."
In substance they made it mighty clear that
there was not going to be any help forthcoming.
As a matter of fact, when G-leason was upstairs
meeting with the shipowners on his own contract -
and they did reach agreement during the period we
were back there - some of our guys said, "Okay,
more power to them, if our presence helps them
get a contract, great; but at least they ought to
acknowledge it." Which they didn't.
During the period when G-leason wouldn't be
there, he had with us several of their business
agents, particularly from the New Jersey side
where a lot of the containers are handled. These
men carried the ball and made it as plain as day
that if we had any idea of pulling down those
installations in support of the ILWU, the answer
was "No."
All we wound up with was a lecture from
G-leason to Harry on how to negotiate. So that
I'd say when we left there, to all intents and
1037
LG: purposes the tries for cooperation and re-affiliation
really produced nothing. The most you can say was
that on a couple of occasions there was some joint
activity in Washington D. C. on improvements in
the Longshore and Harbor Workers Act.
Another Try At The Teamsters
LG: It was shortly thereafter that Harry initiated
some correspondence with Fitzsimmons on the
question of merger. Fitzsimmons replied that -
it was a sort of "bifurcated thing - if there was
any action on our part to try to get the container
work, he didn't think it would succeed.
On the other hand, he offered an affiliation
where the longshoremen would have a separate
division of the Teamsters union and would be able
to define their own jurisdiction. This obviously
would include the right to define the container
jurisdiction, which was Harry's main concern.
Well, there was a good deal of work put in on the
thing. Charlie Velson, who was assistant at the
'time to the officers, spent a great deal of time
drafting different documents; nothing came of it;
eventually the thing just sort of faded out.
Ward: Yes -
LG: And the workshops and the questionnaire we put
out both indicated very strongly that the member
ship was not thinking in those directions at all.
Ward: Could we say that we end the discussion of
affiliation with anybody at this point?
LG: Yes, I think we might as well.
i
##
1038
##
XXXIII VIETNAM AUD OTHER PROBLEMS
The Full-Page Ad
LG: I might have gotten a couple of dates mixed up;
that Hawaii hotel strike was in October, 1970,
and the warehouse negotiations we talked about
were in mid-1970. The hotel strike was settled
in January, 1971.
Ward: In 1970 you reacted to the President's Cambodia . .
LG: Yes, when Nixon started to win the war by invading
Cambodia. I forget what the excuse was at the
time. Remember, all during those years, regard
less of expulsions, jurisdictional beefs;
regardless of whether we were in the APofL or out
of it, or the CIO, we managed to maintain close
relationship with the rest of the labor movement,
whether it be the Printers or what have you. And
what we did in -this case is draft this ad ....
(showing a full-page newspaper advertisement).
ard: This was an ad blasting Nixon for the invasion of
Cambodia?
LG: v Yes; in contacting individual officials, the people
in the ad had to be individuals who had some
official post in a union, such as executive board
member, president of a local, secretary of a
local and so forth. You see the list of names;
451 names at ten bucks apiece. When you look over
this thing, it is like a roster of trade union
officials in the bay area. The response was
amazing.
1039
Ward: This is a full page ad in the Chronicle?
LG: Yes; the response to the ad was all good.
Ward: How did this show itself?
LG: I'd say it stepped up the whole campaign of
putting pressure on Nixon to get out of the war.
Petition drives were started in various locals.
There was signing of petitions to the President
"by individual members. In other words, it got
past the resolution stage.
Ward: This was coincidental with the student unrest,
too, wasn't it?
LG: Yes, no question about that. I forget the exact
time of the teach-ins and ....
Ward: Kent State?
LG: That's right. When did the Kent . . . .?
Ward: Kent was May 4th - right in there. When was the
date of this ad?
LG: Monday, May 18th was the date of the ad. And,
I'd say it was by far the most effective thing
done nationally by the labor movement. Sure, the
position of the AFofL-CIO hadn't changed any.
Meany's position was still the same. Incident
ally, some things happened; you might recall the
incident when some hardhats beat the hell out of
some kids in New York.
Ward: Yes, and led by the guy who later became Nixon's
Secretary of Labor.
LG: I think so, yes; the guy who was president of
the N. Y. City and N. Y. State Building and
Construction Trades Council, Peter Brennan.
Ward : That ' s the one .
LG: And some of the characters from the ILA took part
in that attack on the kids. Here, in complete
contrast, you had an ad of this sort signed by
450 trade unionists in the Bay Area.
1040
Ward: All right - you say the reaction was good, in
fact I think you said, "amazing". What did the
people do after they read the ad, that you know
about?
L&: A good example, I think, was in Local 6 where
they led letter writing campaigns right out of the
warehouses, signed petitions and forwarded them
to Nixon and their Congressmen. Congressmen from
this area - and Senators - "began to see things.
This ad was mailed to every one of them so they
wouldn't miss it. As a matter of fact it was
entered in the Congressional Record, I think "by
(Senator Alan) Cranston; either he or (Congressman)
Philip Burton; or maybe they "both did.
Ward: Was Cranston a Senator that long ago? It certain
ly wasn't his predecessor.
LG: No, of course not. (laughter) But I remember the
thing being entered in the Congressional Record,
so that at least it was offsetting some of this
other stuff. It was offsetting this intransigeant
position of Meany in the APL-CIO Executive Council;
his success in silencing most of the members of
his Executive Council. And I'd say it was the
single thing done by the trade union movement that
packed weight with these Congressmen.
Ward: Whose thought was that for the ad? Who dreamed it
up in the beginning?
LG: It was my idea.
Ward: I thought so. What was Harry's attitude?
LG: Harry went along with the idea, yes. As a matter
of fact, I got a lot of these people to move on
the ad over the telephone. I took it down to
Einar Mohn because I wanted the Teamsters on
there and I knew that if Einar Mohn approved it,
automatically you would get a lot of the Teamsters
to sign. He was a little bit concerned about the
wording; he thought maybe it was too sharp, so I
told him, "Well, I don't think we can go back and
change it, we have so many people who've okayed it
already. And if we start doing redrafts, we'll
be at it forever and never get a complete consensus
on every word." He said, "I can see you're right -
it's okay."
1041
LG: And he did succeed in getting a lot of people. A
number of Teamsters were on there; these were men
who, when their names were read back east, there
must have been all kinds of funny reactions,
(laughter) What the devil is going on?!
Ward: This is interesting, particularly because there
wasn't any redbaiting coming out of this.
LG: A lot of this redbaiting crap kept going on all
through the sixties and even into the seventies.
Ward: Well, it was getting a little bit old by this
time, wasn't it?
LG: Yes, but, for example, there had been a conspiracy
case against the officers of the Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers charging that they had conspired
to sign the non-Communist affidavits falsely. That
was thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1969 or
1970. And during the early part of the Vietnam
fracas, I don't have to tell you how violent the
redbaiting was.
Ward: But as far as you were concerned, you got this
idea, and if you had ever been in any way influenced
by the Communist party that had long since passed.
LG: I'm not sure what you mean there.
Ward: Could you say that long since you had done your
own thinking, and if the party happened to agree
that was fine?
LG: Oh, I'm sure that as far as the party was concerned,
they would think it was one hell of an ad.
Ward: I would think so, but it didn't originate with
them, it was with you?
LG: That's right. You see, people like Phyllis Mitch
ell, a careful official and head of the Office
Workers Union, Local 3> and Susan Modell, vice-
president of the American Federation of Teachers -
we had a lot of teachers on there - Einar Mohn,
head of the Western Conference of Teamsters; Lou
Celaya of the Office Employees, Local 29.
1042
LG-: The mix here is fantastic. The ad is worth read
ing, if for no other reason than to see T how
potentially effective the trade union movement
can be on key issues of this sort, if they just
get off their ass and do things.
I'd say some of these guys might have had a bit
of trepidation but afterwards, heck, they were all
proud of it. It made points. And if anybody wants
to share the credit, that's fine. I just wanted
to show you that ad. I think it was the high
point of the ILWU in a consistent policy of being
more than just a bread and butter union.
Ward: That's what St. Sure said about you. That you
were more than a bread and butter trade unionist.
LG-: Yes, but that was true of the union as a whole. As
a matter of fact, if you look at The Dispatcher,
there are certain things that show up as consistent
issues. The question of relationships with the
Soviet Union, problems of the atomic bomb and in
support of the Stockholm Petition, having people
like Linus Pauling at our convention, getting
people like Morse and G-reuning, the only two men
who stood up against the Tonkin Gulf resolution,
a consistent policy on the recognition of China,
the importance of establishing formal relations
and trade with China. There was no backing away
on these issues.
Ward: In World War II, wasn't the ILWU interested in the
opening of the Second Front? That would have been
a progressive position at that time.
LG: Yes, as a matter of fact, I think that was used
later on as one of the examples given these commit
tees that were set up to conduct these so-called
trials resulting in expulsion from the CIO; the
parallelism theory. Here was the Communist party
position and here was the ILWU position. What was
deliberately omitted were the positions that were
either not the same, or where we might have taken
a position long before anybody else took a position,
Ward: Well, we hadn't mentioned the Second Front before,
and that's part of it.
LG-: That's right; among other things, we were in favor
of that.
1043
Ward: I suppose that is one of the reasons why the ILWU
was accused of parallelism?
LG: I think so. There's something of a fine feeling
in picking up the paper and reading that ad. I'm
sure most everybody in the unions around here read
it.
More Internal Friction
LG-: However, we had internal difficulties, particularly
the friction that developed for reasons I never
could figure out. I mean, like the Warehouse row
in 1970 which made no sense at all, and Harry's
attitude on Jack Hall.
Ward: Could I ask a question? People remark every now
and then that at one stage of the difficulties
between Harry and Jack Hall, Harry openly redbaited
the guy. This is a prevalent story in some circles
around the west coast.
LG: I'm not personally aware of it. No, Harry did some
thing else.
Ward: The allegation that he scabbed?
LG: Which of course most of us would take far more
seriously than any charge of redbaiting. Just
being redbaited, well, most of us were pretty well
used to that. I never felt it was a great dis
honor being thrown out of England or refused
admission to Japan.
There's no question that the clashes inside
Longshore between some of the leadership and the
leftwing did get to be pretty intense, particularly
around the mechanization program. Archie Brown
was very outspoken against it and fought it violent
ly. As a matter -of fact, I understand that - I
haven't seen it - there's an article in Political
Affairs (a Communist publication) this year by
Archie Brown, and what's his name, the man who is
the head of the CP here now?
1044
Ward: Mickey Lima?
LG: Yes, Mickey Lima; that there's a piece in Political
Affairs attacking the agreement signed in 1978, so
that has been a running "battle and I'm sure that
at times it took the form of something closely
resembling redbaiting. That invariably happens
when an individual has taken a position that is
unpopular and somebody else wants to make points
against him; if he figures redbaiting is going to
help him, he just chucks it in; I'd say that these
are aberrations; they are things that happen in
volving personalities? some of it is just the
geriatrics of organizations.
Ward: Well, after '71 Jack Hall was dead; Harry lost an
antagonist. No point hating a dead man.
LG: No, although whether that stopped him from peddling
that stuff about Jack's 'scabbing in 1934 I don't
know.
Ward: Well, Harry played some role in '73 and '74 in
Hawaii which may have been a backlash of this
antagonism towards Jack Hall, wasn't it?
LG: I don't know. It could be that there just was an
accumulation of things. In '68 I recall the settle
ment we worked out in the case of the newspapers;
Harry being very laudatory about it, and parti
cularly about the job I had done. In 1970-in
Warehouse we get into this crazy roundy-go-roundy,
including him making bets against his own team,
which is an odd way of supporting it. In the fall
of 1970 I was assigned by our International
Executive Board to go down to Hawaii on the hotel
strike, which had dragged along for some three or
four months.
Ward: How did that work out?
LG: Harry suddenly appeared there, no "Hello", "Good
morning", "Kiss my ass"; no sitting down and saying,
"Okay, how are things going?" Yet, when the
agreement was made, again, he was very flattering
about the job I had done in working out a solution.
All I can do is grapple for answers; sometimes
you find them and sometimes you don't. It could
very well be that Harry came down there because he
1045
LG: had no use for Eddie Tangen. Jack Hall was the
one who insisted on bringing Eddie Tangen into
Hawaii. Even Bob Robertson was opposed to it.
But Jack wanted somebody who could tackle the
hotels and knew something about them. He figured
Eddie Tangen was available and he brought Eddie
down and Eddie did a good job.
I think in the strike there were some mistakes
made, but they weren't the kind that were going
to be fatal if you grabbed hold of them soon
enough and began to wrestle them into shape. So
that there was, oh, this peculiar sort of thing
going on. No question, Harry wasn't fond of Jack
and he figured that Jack was a supporter of mine
and I was a personal friend of Jack's, which I
was. I made no bones about that.
Ward: Now what year was it that Harry tried to push the
age 63 thing?
LG: That was in 1971.
The 1974 Sugar Strike
LG: Now, something happened in '73 - '74 in Hawaii.
In '74 in Hawaii, the sugar contract was open.
After Jack died, George Martin took his place, but
he was not in a position to take on the same kind
of duties as Jack Hall.
Jack, when he decided to run for vice-president,
met with the officers down there and took the
position that he would recommend whomever the guys
agreed to succeed him. Well, after some internal
politicking and discussion, they finally agreed
on Bob McElrath, who had been down there a long
time and very good, an excellent record as a
union man. He'd been one of the earliest members
and one of the earliest on our staff in Hawaii;
put out the radio program and was quite competent.
Ward: Let's see, McElrath was the guy who tuned in on
the FBI.
1046
LG: The FBI propositioned Dave Thompson to go to Jack
Hall, and Bob was the one who planted the mike
and sat in the basement down below recording.
Ward: So, they got Bob McElrath.
LG: They got Bob McElrath. Bob used to make the crack
every once in a while, "I'm the regional director
nobody wanted,"
Ward: He still is, isn't he?
LG: No. Bob retired and his place has been taken by
a very bright guy, a local boy - Tommy Trask. And
Tommy Trask comes out of pineapple, used to work
at the Dele Pineapple Cannery -
Ward: That's a haole name.
LG: It's a haole name, but he's a hapahaole - part
Hawaii an o The Trask family is a big family in the
Islands. I'm sure that the Trask name is probably
a haole name, but then again you find many haole
names among the Hawaiians. Tommy is a good man
for the job, a very hard worker and he picks up
quickly.
But the difficulty was that after Jack died, I
found myself with more and more of a load insofar
as Hawaii was concerned. I had begun to phase out
of the thing and Jack had begun to take over a lot
of the duties. But Jack died and I found myself
down there for both the sugar and pineapple nego
tiations.
Ward: And the hotel . . . .?
LG: And the hotel strike as well. I don't recall
taking part in any hotel negotiations after that.
Since then hotel negotiations have been pretty
smooth and on a constructive level. I was down
in Hawaii in '74; the sugar agreement was open;
negotiations ran into a complete deadlock with the
employers. We weren't getting anywhere, although
it wasn't as though we had any overwhelming
demands.
We finally had a strike in '74. Well, I forget
how long the strike lasted - five, six or seven
weeks. A medium long strike, but seen in the
1047
LG-: light of some other strikes we've had dov/n there,
it was short. Some interesting things happened.
During that strike, Harry came down there, "but
did not spend much time in Honolulu talking to the
committee. He decided that he would go out direct
ly to the plantations, in every place making a
strong pitch in support of the strike and taking
a very logical position that with sugar it was like
having gold in the ground; it wasn't a damn bit of
good to the employers until they got it out, until
you harvested that sugar and ground it and sold it.
Without the sugar workers "back at work, there was
just no chance of getting that gold.
It was a good position. He also made some
statements that he had never seen a better organized
strike in his life. Those guys were doing a good
job on organizing in the traditions of 1946, which
still carried over. These units in every community
set up the most elaborate kind of machinery, even
though it was simple, in the sense that everybody
has an assignment, very detailed, because it ranges
all the way from picketing to publicity, transpor
tation committees, growing your own vegetables,
hunting, fishing, soup kitchens, going out and
working out deals with small farmers; if they could
pick up stray cows for the farmer who had lost them,
then they would get one cow.
All these things, as well as taking care of
matters such as what happens to the school lunches
for the kids. Harry stayed a while there and then
he returned to the mainland. Around two weeks
after that the employers began to fold and we
reached what we felt was a pretty good agreement.
The price of sugar was moving up, incidentally.
'74 was when sugar reached a fantastically high
price, but that came later in the year. The price
of sugar moving up must have had some bearing on
the employers willingness to settle. But after
we announced the settlement, Harry came down; so
did Chester, so did George Martin - all three of
them. Harrv came down with a long pitch that the
settlement ought to be dumped. This was an
interesting business of what you call "turning
your left end."
Ward: Was this after you ratified the agreement?
1048
LG-: No, we hadn't ratified the agreement; we held it
up, as I r e call ? and notified Harry that if that's
how he felt about it, he should come down there
and talk to the workers.
Well, unbeknownst to me, one of the two guys who
went out to meet him at the airport was Herbert
Vierra, from the HC&S (Hawaiian Commercial and
Sugar Company) plantation on Maui, the big one. A
very outspoken guy and also a little bit of a
demogogue, the self-appointed protector of the
underdog as against the craftsman. He and Constan-
tine Samson, vice-president of Local 142, an old,
old friend of Harry's, went out to the airport to
pick him up.
Completely unbeknownst to me, they spent all
their time on the trip back to the union building
from the airport telling Harry not to buck the
agreement; that the guys thought it was a good
agreement; that it was worthwhile and ought to be
taken. So Harry first met among the officers
when he got there. Chester, the self-appointed
mediator, was trying to tell me, "Why don't vou
simply tell the employers that we're reconsidering,
not turning it down - we simply want to reopen it."
I said, "I don't work that way; if you want to
turn it down, just turn it down clean; if you want
to repudiate, repudiate it; that's okay, doesn't
bother me. I'll step out and you have somebody
else step in. But none of this flim-flam. My name
isn't Rutledge and I don't play those kinds of
games."
So Chester was getting no place with me. Harry
had a long string of notes; according to Martin he
was going over these notes on the trip down here;
George finally escaped it by getting a set of ear
phones and watching the movie. We had picked up
something like 75 cents in wage increases over the
two years.
Ward: Seventy-five cents an hour?
LG: Yes, in increases over the two years - a fairly
healthy increase in sugar, particularly when you
look into the background. Bear in mind, we'd gone
through some rough days in sugar. As a matter of
1049
LG: fact, in the 1971 convention, Kohala had announced
they were going to liquidate and they tried to pull
that plantation out of sugar "bargaining. When I
spoke at the convention I said that as far as we
were concerned, those workers had to "be taken care
of; we were not going to permit Kohala to pull out
of negotiations.
We were going to make provision for these people
in terms of their housing and locate them in other
jobs. I used the expression there which the
employers kept repeating, thinking it would be em
barrassing to me - which it wasn't. I said, "We
are going to hold the industry hostage until
Kohala is settled." We finally worked out a fairly
good deal for Kohala.
I guess it was in the '72 negotiations when they
were taking the plantation on the island of Kauai
and splitting it up between two adjoining planta
tions, owned by different agencies, American Factors
that is Lihue - Alexander Baldwin - that was
McBride. There again, we took a position that
until every one of those workers is taken care of,
we'd get no place in these negotiations.
ard: What's the name of this outfit?
LG: Grove Farm. We took care of every single person as
to where he would move: depending on what was clos
est; if he wanted to take early retirement or
special retirement, he would get substantial
severance pay. By the time we got through, every
worker on that plantation had been completely
protected in terms of seniority, pension rights,
vacation, sick leave, you name it.
So, we were doing a pretty good job there, and
in '74 we felt we were entitled to a hunk of dough
which we finally did get. But Harry decided to
buck it; he was on one of those kicks where the
only way to describe it was that he was going to
turn the left end of the committee.
It was the best strike he had ever seen, nothing
better organized. But, the employers had a lot
more money around, the price of sugar would go up
indefinitely and so forth and so on. I decided I
wasn't going to get into any big argument; let him
bounce it off the committee.
1050
LG:
Anyway, by the time he talked to the officers
there, the full negotiating committee had been
called in; this being the representatives from all
the plantations. That usually makes up about 75
to 100 people, whereas the working committee has
about ten or twelve, something like that. The
full committee was there, and when all the palaver
was over, Harry went along with the agreement.
As a matter of fact, the next day when the
ratification vote began, he went out to Waipahtr,
one of the plantations close by Honolulu, and -
they were dedicating a little hall they had just
fixed up - he spoke of the fine agreement, one of
the best ever in sugar. This was after all his
arguments that the thing ought to be dumped. Well,
that's only part of the '74 chapter; that was a
two year agreement; it covered
came open again in 1976.
'74 and '75 and
Well, the price of sugar kept climbing. Sporadic
things happen in the sugar market. Economists
have done a lot of work in this area, and sugar
is an inflexible commodity. If there's a shortage
of 10 percent in sugar, the price doesn't just go
up by 10 percent; there's a constant bidding for
that sugar, and it's bid up by a good deal more
than 10 percent. In the same way, if there's a
ten percent surplus, it doesn't result in merely
a ten percent drop in the price of sugar. That
surplus is constantly being offered on the market
and it drives the whole market down. A lot of it
has to do with the crazy economics of the sugar
industry.
Ward: Well, okay, so it was going up and up.
LG: Yes; so comes September of that year - the strike
was in February and ended up sometime in March,
April - and I decided to get some vacation time.
This was in 1974 and I found that I needed more
vacation time, particularly after the heart surgery
in 1972 -
Ward: Oh, that's right, we haven't discussed that yet.
##
1051
##
2XHV THE $28,000,000 POKER GAME
But First, Open Heart Surgery
Ward: Your heart surgery took place about when?
LG: November 27, 1972. It was Terry's birthday when
I went in there and the surgery took place the
next day. It was done by Dr. Norman Shumway down
at Stanford.
Ward: You had a valve and a by-pass?
LG: Yes, they had to put in an aortic valve. I knew
I had a bad valve because of a doctor who was a
very good heart specialist; I suppose he's the
successor of Paul Dudley White in terms of standing
in the profession.
Ward: A friend of yours from Boston?
LG: Boston, yes; he's the one who invented the cardio-
vator.
Ward: And he had been treating you for heart problems
for quite a long time?
LG: He was out here at some convention, and Asher
(Dr. Asher Gordon) had been looking at me. I wasn't
feeling well; he decided that I had a heart murmur
and he wasn't sure what was causing it. And he
asked me if I would come down to his office on
Sunday and I said, "Sure, if you want to work on
Sunday,," And he said, 'Well, I think that's the
only time I can get this friend of mine to look at
you."
1052
LG-: Th.is man came down to Asher's office; a modest
little fellow, a very good man., born in Lithuania;
came over here at the age of 14 or 15.
ard: I see, so you had something in common right there.
LG-: Yes. He studied me for a long time and later on
he ordered a lot of X-rays and he reached the
conclusion that I had an aortic stenosis. He asked
a lot of questions about whether I had many ear
aches when I was a kid, which I did. Apparently
this is one of the signs of rheumatic fever, which
I guess, when I was a kid, they didn't know much
about. What you did was go to bed for a few days.
I recall doctors coming in to puncture the ear
drum and drain it. Apparently it was rheumatic
fever, and one of the by-products of rheumatic
fever is permanent damage to the aortic valve, un
less there is complete rest. Now, they know how
to treat it ....
Ward: And you hadn't had much rest for many years?
LG: No. He said there was no question that I had had
it; the thing to do was to put off the surgery as
long as possible, but not too long - then they
just pick you up off the floor. He kept track of
me whenever he came out here, or if I happened to
be in the east, I would stop by to see him. A
wonderful guy and a real friend. To this day I've
never had a bill from him.
Well, anyway, I had the surgery. As a matter
of fact, I refused to go into the surgery until
the doctors at Kaiser checked with Bernard Lown,
this doctor in Boston. By that time they had
taken an angiogram and all that and they sent some
of that stuff back to him to look at.
I was at Kaiser because they thought I was about
to have another attack. He finally called me at
Kaiser and said, "Look, if you can have the thing
done tomorrow, do it at once. The longer you wait,
the more difficult it's going to become. I don't
think your general physical condition would be
better when you finally have to have it." So, I
worked things out with Kaiser that if I could go
home for Thanksgiving, I'd come down to Stanford
the next day. So, that's when it was done; Shumway
did a good job.
1053
ard: How long were you off work?
LG-: I was off work from the end of November, December,
January and February - three months; althousii I
was advised to take six months.
Ward: I would think so, particularly that you developed
pneumonia.
LG-: Yes, the pneumonia I got after the surgery. I
guess I was pretty well knocked out by all the
drugs they use; they used tremendous dosages of
valium and everything else under the sun. I
remember being moved from Stanford by ambulance
and looking out the window and saying to myself,
"There's something fishy about this," because
there's snow all over the ground. It was that
winter when they had that heavy snowfall.
Ward: You thought you were hallucinating?
LG: Yeah and later on I did hallucinate pretty badly.
It could be that en route I picked up the pneumonia
because they put me in intensive care in Kaiser;
my temperature began to rise out of sight. They
sure did a competent job of bringing it down in a
hurry, but the combination of the drugs they used
did make me a bit whacky.
I remember talking to the nurse one evening. I
thought I was being completely rational and I said,
"Why does the hospital keep moving every day?"
She said, "Really, where has it been?" I said,
"Well, yesterday it was around Redwood City, as I
remember, and now you're up to South San Francisco;
why doesn't the hospital stay in one place?"
So, pretty soon she had somebody up there with
a white coat who wanted to take all kinds of tests
including electrodes, encephalograms, but there
was nothing wrong, really. Just crazy hallucina
tions. They told me I should take six months off.
They figured it would be three months to heal and
most of the time I would have to spend on my back.
I lost an enormous amount of weight. By the time
I went in for surgery, I had gone down to about
140 pounds.
Ward: That would be very light for you.
1054
LG: Yes, very light. I was skin and bones even though
I was eating five or six meals a day. But I should
have taken another three months after that, to
"begin to exercise, and get the system back in
shape. You have this funny feeling that the
moment you walk you're going to tear the whole
thing apart.
Ward: I know that feeling very well. Why did you go
back after three months instead of waiting out the
six months? Was there any pressure for you to go
back?
LG: Well, there are two reasons I went back, really.
One, the Local 6 convention took place in March . .
Ward: And you just couldn't stay away?
LG: Yes, that was in 1973; the negotiations also took
place in that year, so it was an important
convention where they would formulate their demands,
That was one reason.
The other was that the International convention
would be taking place somewhere around mid- April
or early May.. A certain amount of work had to be
done for that. And I guess part of it is also
psychological, because if I didn't go back to work
I'd be throwing in the towel. I guess those are
psychological things; there's no way to explain
them other than that you're going to fight your
way out of it.
Ward: Were people calling you up and asking you ques
tions. When are you coming back; can you do this
or that?
LG: Oh, people were very nice to me. Most were just
get well letters and notes, some signed by whole
warehouses; things like that; and chipping in and
buying gifts - a television for me. Nobody was
trying to put any pressure on me. But I thought
I should get back, which I did.
Ward: Well, all right. So we get back to 1974, after
the sugar negotiations; you wanted to take a
little vacation.
LG: Eight.
1055
Ward: Because you damn, well needed one?
LG: Correct. What was going on in Harry's head, I
don't know. For the entire time I was in the
hospital or at home afterwards he never called me,
which wasn't surprising. He called once, before
I had surgery, not to talk to me "but to talk to
my doctor to ask how I was. My doctor was fairly
shrewd and said to him, "He's really fine." I
think Harry was getting ready to make an appoint
ment. Things were going on.
Ward: Oh, he was thinking in terms of a successor to you?
LG-: Oh, yes. While I was recuperating one day Newton
Miyagi came by from Hawaii; Ernie Arena drove him
over, and just out of the blue, he says, "Look,
Lou, I just want to make it perfectly plain I have
no intention of running against you or anything
like that. At one time, they were talking about
me when they thought you wouldn't be able to come
bapk." Sp r obviously, the shopping was already
going on. Newton was just going out of his way,
and I think ....
Ward: Just tipping you off?
LG: No, I think he was perfectly pleasant about the
whole thing. As far as I was concerned, he was
a supporter of mine. He wasn't all the time - I
knew that; but he was telling me what was going on.
It doesn't take any brilliant mathematics to figure
out what was going on; one and one adds up to two,
and no more. That's just one of the side things.
Back to '74. In September of '74, Terry and I
decided we would take some vacation time in Hawaii.
Once before we had taken a bit of a vacation in
Hawaii and that was when we stayed with the (Sook)
Moons over in Punaluu.
This time we got a small condominium out past
Lahaina on the island of Maui, right on the beach.
It was an attractive place, a good place to rest;
the only problem there was that you couldn't walk
all the way along the beach because of rocks and
things, so that when I wanted to do some walking,
I'd do it on the road. Almost every time I'd be
1056
LG: walking along the road some guy would stop and say,
"Where you going, Lou?" You know, one of our guys,
saying "What the hell are you doing - walking?"
An Important G-olf Game
IG: While I was there I got a call from Edwin Wong; he
had been chairman of the sugar negotiating commit
tee; he said, he understood I was vacationing
there, and would I like to play golf. I said,
"Sure, I play golf whenever I have a chance." Some
of the local guys I knew played golf on their off
days. Also, a man I knew who had been with Kaiser
Gypsum was living in Maui, so I played with him too.
I kept busy playing a round of golf here and there,
always borrowing clubs from somebody because I
didn't bring any down with me.
Anyway, our Hawaii executive committee is made
up of the division directors and the three officers
of Local 142 and they were meeting somewhere in
Lahaina; Maui Surf, I think it was. They were
having their meeting and I stopped by there.
One of the main issues they had was whether or
not they endorse Jack Burns; this guy Prank Fasi
was running against him. George Martin was down
there to make sure there was no endorsement of Fasi.
Anyway, that was taken care of all right.
Then I said I'd like to raise a question with
them: "I know that we signed an agreement a few
months ago after a brief strike; it was a good
agreement, overwhelmingly approved, but the price
of sugar has been going up steadily. "
I said we ought not to tear the agreement up;
that would be a mistake, but I did think it would
be advisable to tell the employers that we had gone
through some rough days in the industry, as well
as some good ones, and we now wanted a piece of
the action. "We want a hunk of money, and not a
turkey at Christmas time, or a ham. We want a
substantial piece of money."
1057
LG-: I said I didn't think we ought to beg for it; we
should simply tell them that they could tell us
"No," and that's the end of the conversation. No
further argument, but we're going to keep track
of how much we think you owe us, and that's going
to be the first demand when the contract expires
in February of 1976.
The reaction I got was fine. The executive
committee said that was great. "Why not ask for
a bonus? if we get anything, it's all right." I
said, "No, I don't think so; if they offer us some
manini little bonus, we'll just tell them to keep
it. It has to be either substantial, or forget the
whole thing."
They said, "Well, how do you want to handle it?"
And I said, "Ed Wong just called and wants to play
golf with me. If you guys give me the authority
to tell him that if we don't get it, they have
themselves an automatic strike, they can know that
at least . . . ."
Ward: Now, Ed Wong is one of the guys you told me a
who became an employer representative?
LG-: Yes, he's a vice president of Alexander Baldwin.
And he and Don Nicholson were very close friends.
Don Nicholson had a similar position with American
Factors. So, to get back, I said, "I'm going to
play golf with them; the question is, - if it's
okay with you, because I doa't want to do any
begging; I'm opposed to it - I think we ought to
tell them that we're not going to break the con
tract, but that we have this dough coming. If they
say 'No,' that's that."
The executive committee said, "Go ahead, you
have our authority." I said, "Well, just remember
what I'm telling you. We are in effect telling
them that they have an automatic strike unless we
get something substantial, as soon as the contract
runs out." They said, "Sure, we understand." And
I said, "Okay, just so long as it's all understood."
Well, we played golf that day and we took a
luncheon break after nine holes. The local pro play
ed with us and I was teamed with him, playing against
1058
LG-: Wong and Nicholson. Luckily, I was hitting a fair
ly decent golf ball that day; most times I don't.
Well, we sat down at lunch and I said, "One of the
reasons I wanted to play golf was to see the course
and the new hotel they had opened in Wailea" - it's
a beautiful place - "and because I wanted to raise
this question of sugar. I know we finished up a
strike, got an agreement and we're bound by the
contract, but what we want is a hunk of money; we
think we're entitled to it in the form of a bonus,
and no manini bonus."
Manini is a Hawaiian word for small; there's a
fish called manini, too. I said, "It can't be a
manini bonus." So, they thought for a while and
said, "We're prepared to discuss that with you; we
think you're entitled to a bonus and it won't be
manini , it will be substantial. But there has to
be some quid pro quo."
Well, the moment they mentioned quid pro quo,
bout; it
I knew exactly what they were talking abou-
wasn't the worst thing in the world in terms of
giving us leverage. The quid pro quo, as far as
they were concerned, was to get an extra year on
the contract. That meant that we would be bargain
ing with considerable additional strength. Anyway,
I said, "Okay, we'll meet later in the year." This
was September; I went back there again, I guess it
was October some time.
We started these discussions on the question of
a bonus, and sure enough the quid pro quo emerged
at once. There was an offer of $750 a man for
1974 plus another bonus, a smaller amount - they
were talking about something like $500 - for the
next year. In exchange for that they wanted an
extension of the contract for one year.
I said, "You can't buv an extension - forget it;
also the money you're talking about is manini . "
Well, they finally got the thing up to $1,000.
And I said, "Okay, that will settle it for the year;
give us that and forget everything else." "No,
there has to be a quid pro qu o . " "Look," I said,
"you haven't the money to buy it; there isn't that
kind of money around. "
1059
LG: "What are you talking about?" they said. I said,
"Well, the 1975 "bonus has to be the same amount as
the 1974 bonus - one thousand dollars; but you're
going to have to buy the extension. That's
separate." Well, they chewed on that one, and
chewed on it, and they finally said, "Okay, we will
give you $1,060 the first year, $750 the second
year and a 25-cent increase and the extension."
I said, "Well, give us the $1,000 per sugar worker
in 1974 and we'll call it a day."
The Ante Goes Up
LG: It was one of the most interesting poker hands I
ever played. So, they finally came to $1,000,
$1,000 and 30 cents, something like that. "I was
afraid of that," I said. "Well, I didn't think you
had enough money to buy it and you don't have it,
that's all." But by that time, of course, that
additional year was so important to them, and I'm
sure they had already convinced their people that
this was a quid pro quo they were going to get.
Well, we had the committee in there, of course.
The committee felt that two $1,000 bonuses: that's
not bad money. They had never seen anything like
that on the plantations. I told them I was con
vinced that there was more money there, and the
committee went along. They said, "All right, you
came this far and your appraisal was correct; give
it a shove, that's all."
So, we met the other side again and I said,
"We'll give you the price now; there isn't any
purpose in haggling; otherwise let's just break
these talks off. Give the guys $1,000 bucks apiece,
we'll just shake hands and you'll get that much
good will out of it, and just chalk it off to that.
It's either that or you're going to pay the money
to Uncle Sam in taxes. Or the price will have to
be a thousand bucks in '74, another $1,000 in '75,
an extension of the contract one year, '76, but with
that extension an increase of 50 cents across the
board, plu-s another amount of money - approximately
20 cents - to take care of classification headaches
that have to be settled somewhere along the line,
and this would be the time to do it."
1060
Ward: So that was 70 cents all told?
LG: Yes, 70 cents.
Ward: For the one year, not for the three?
LG: We already had another wage increase coming in '75.
Ward: All right, when would the 70 cents apply? Just for
the third year.
LG: Yes; the contract rates went u-p. We get a $1,000
"bonus each year, '74 and '75 -
ard: And 70 cents the third year?
LG: Fifty cents across the board and another 20 cents.
They finally got to the point where they said,
okay, you'll get the $1,000, $1,000 and 50 cents,
but that's as far as we can go. I said, "Okay,
then we'll just call it a day and chalk the whole
thing up to experience, wish each other a Happy
New Year and see you another time." No, they
didn't want to break it off.
Finally, the two of them went out and huddled,
came back and said, "All right, we'll give you the
fifty cents plus a dime for the classifications."
You can do an awful lot with a dime because a dime
for all the workers as a lump sum can then be
applied to classification corrections for some
workers. In other words, if it's a top labor grade
you might apply 60 cents, and the lowest labor
grade, nothing. So that a dime an hour can go an
awfully long way for classification adjustments.
Our committee had some sort of a luncheon
prepared and said, "Do you want to go to lunch?"
I said, "No, we want to huddle." The committee
said, "Look, if you can get more, fine; but don't
let go what -you got. If that is as far as they'll
go, $1,000 - $1,000 and 50 cents, and 10 cents,
don't let it go."
The employers asked if I was going to lunch with
the committee and I said, "No." They said, "We'd
just as soon talk to you; how can we settle this?"
And I said, "Well, give us the 20 cents and settle,
that's all." Finally, I said, "Well, make it 15
cents and you have a bargain."
1061
LG: That was it; we wound up with this hunk of dough
that ran to twenty-eight, twenty-nine million
dollars when you added the whole thing up. And as
I was telling a friend of mine, Kuni Arakaki, a
guy who loved poker - he was talking about my
retirement - and he said, "Gee, Lou, you shouldn't
retire - we had good results in sugar, you know,
you've "been with us all the time." And I said,
"Look, can you think of a better way of retiring
than having a chance of playing one hand of poker
for $28,000,000?' Anyway, the deal went back to
the rank and file and was warmly accepted.
Ward: I would think so.
LG: We had to do a lot of juggling so as to give each
man $1,000 because apparently there's something in
the law there about the application of bonuses
that relate to your wages, you see. So, if some
body makes more money, he gets more of a bonus.
And we wanted no part of that. We wanted each
worker, no matter where he was - Labor Grade 1
in the field, or the First 'Grade Mechanic - to get
the same amount of dough.
There were a few little squawks about that, but
not much. They had to work out a whole series of
brackets. They worked the thing out and they all
got the thousand bucks and it worked out okay for
the next year.
Bridges Rocks The Boat
LG: I thought that would end it. Instead we called
the full sugar committee, telling them the results
of the negotiations - by that time they knew the
negotiations were going on because the guys had
been going back to the plantations and reporting.
Harry gets on the phone and says, "The thing ought
to be dumped; it's a cheap deal. The price of
sugar is way up there and it's going to go higher
yet. There's a hell of a lot more money than that
around. "
Ward: He was calling from San Francisco?
1062
LG: Yes. So, I put Carl Demaso on the phone. I said,
"Carl, you talk to Harry; he doesn't apparently
put much stock in what I'm saying." Harry went
round- and- round with Carl. Carl said, "Look, Harry,
you keep telling me these things; are you prepared
to give me a guarantee that the price is going to
go up? Or that it's going to stay up? We know
what's happened in sugar all these previous years;
all these crazy fluctuations."
Harry says, "ell, I'm just sure of it - that's
all." Finally, Carl got to the point and said,
"Look, Harry, we can't go on this way over the
phone; we'll hold the caucus over for a day. You
come on down and present your position." Harry
says, "No, I can't - I'm too tied up with things
here; I'll send a letter instead."
Carl said, "Okay, we'll wait for the letter;
get it off at once, and we'll report back the
conversation exactly as we can recall it." We
reported back the whole thing to the committee;
then, when his letter got there, we read the letter
off. I guess it's one letter he wishes he had
never written because every single one of his
prognostications turned out to be completely wrong.
Ward: Sugar went down, huh?
LG: By 1976, when we got that additional extension,
sugar prices just slid. They slid down in '75,
and kept going down in '76. By the end of '76,
the farmers and everybody were screaming their heads
off about sugar supports and everything else.
This was just one of those crazy things with
Harry. All I could figure out, at that stage of
the game, was that he had reached a frame of mind
that no matter what I did, it had to be wrong.
Ward: Also, you know Harry's reputation as a poker play
er?
LG: No, I don't.
Ward: He's a consistent loser.
LG: That could be.
1063
Ward: You ought to talk to the guys in the San Francisco
Press Club about the game he had with them during
the Landis hearing. They took him.
LG: But it doesn't quite end there. In the 1977
convention, in Seattle, when Harry and I and
others were retiring, we drafted an officers' re
port; in it one of the things that was reported,
of course, was what happened in sugar; not only
what happened on the strike, but also what happened
on the contract extension, the amount of dough we
got for it and the two bonuses.
We had had some headaches in between the con
tract extension and this report, and again, caused
by this funny game Harry was playing with Vierra.
It also backfired on Harry.
Vierra kept saying that after we got the 50
cents and the 15 - which I made plain, and the
committee understood it that the 15 was to be
used on classifications - Vierra, who had become
sort of self-appointed guardian of the interests
of the lower paid workers, said, "Look, if they
don't like it in the mill there where they're
working, they can get out in a hot field like me
too, you know." He worked a roto-tiller, something
like that. He demanded, "The 15 cents ought to be
across the board."
I knew there had to be a showdown on the goddam
thing; of all things, Harry decides to have the
union pay Vierra 's way over to San Francisco.
Newton Miyagi comes along to try to convince Vierra
to change his mind. Vierra is not going to change
his mind; why should he? He figures that he's got
himself a hot issue going; he got himself a free
trip.
We know perfectly well how a guy like that
handles a situation of that sort. When he gets
back, he becomes more of a hero. "You know what
they did? They paid my way all the way to San
Francisco to try to make me change my mind - and
I don't change my mind; when I'm with the rank
and file, I'm with the rank and file." Well, we
were able to finally get that fifteen cents worked
out so that the least that any worker got was 9-4
cents across the board, and then the balance of
1064
LG-: the money was used for adjustments in some of the
upper labor grades. This was after a Local 142
convention in 1975, because we had to make a
determination. The union could do whatever it
wanted with the 15 cents - either use it entirely
for classifications, entirely across the board,
or any mixture thereof. It was entirely up to us.
Harry was down there for this convention and so
was I; we had to make a decision as to what we
were going to recommend at the sugar caucus which
met after the convention on the classification
thing. I had worked out the formula pretty well,
in terms of spreading it around from 9- cents on
the bottom to some big increases at the top.
Vierra hadn't changed his tune a bit. Harry, in
stead of supporting all the officers there, waffled
around; he wasn't going to fight Vierra.
That's the closest I came to just walking out
of the meeting. I had all the stuff in my brief
case; I finally slammed the brief case shut and
picked it up, and then realized I had better sit
down. Let the guys handle it. And they sure did;
it went through the caucus okay.
The only plantation on which they said the
vote went against it was at HC&S. Apparently what
Vierra did - it was a small meeting hall - all of
his supporters in the lower labor grades got there
first and the craftsmen were outside, so they
didn't have a chance to vote. The only question
he put to the membership there was "All those in
favor of having the 15 cents across the board,
say 'Yes'."
On the rest of the plantations it was a godsend,
because some of those classifications were just
getting too far out of line with the wages in
town. Sure, they are not going to get paid the
same as the building craftsmen, although some of
our men are just as good. In year-round jobs you
have all kinds of benefits.
Anyway, back to the 1977 convention report.
Mien we reported on the sugar thing, Harry insert
ed a note there, "I dissent." Well, the officers'
report goes before the officers' report committee,
which is a big committee. In our convention all
1065
LG: delegates are assigned to a committee. But a lot
more than the committee were there; apparently
they figured there were going to be fireworks.
For some reason or other, the sugar guys figured
that I was not going to say a word because I was
sick and tired of the whole thing. They had lined
up a whole group of their own speakers. At the
last minute, Chester came to me and said, "Don't
make an issue of this sugar thing; Harry's not
going to say anything; it'll just die, and the
officers' report will be accepted." I said, "Well,
that's okay with me. I don't give a damn. I'd
rather see the convention unified and kept that
way."
But that didn't happen; Harry took the deck and
went on and on, trying to tear apart the whole
agreement. Then we had a break for dinner, and
came back in, so I told the sugar guys, "I don't
know if you have any guys planned to speak, but
I intend to talk." They let me have the floor
first. So, we just had a first class shoot-out,
that's all.
I went over the whole background, and particul
arly hammered away on this question of whether or
not the workers in Hawaii had the right to make
their own decisions. What did all this autonomy
mean? Including these constant statements we made
that the workers even had the right to be wrong.
"Where had we ever violated the principles of the
membership taking part in ratifying any agreement
and having the committees to do the negotiating?
Keeping in constant touch with people - no back
door deals?
It was unanswerable. The longshoremen were
sitting there too, and they were just shaking their
heads. Some one told me afterwards, "He better
not fuck around like that in Longshore"; they
wouldn't stand for it, you see. They had this
long history.
I gave the committee a view of the economic
facts of life and said, "We're just damn lucky the
sugar contract isn't open right now." As a matter
of fact when the contract opened up in 1977 the
price of sugar was very low and the Sugar Act had
been allowed to expire. There was no Sugar Act.
1066
LG: We found ourselves in the position where we had to
extend the contract as is for six months, to a
November date. I had promised the members in Hawaii
that I would hang with the sugar thing until we saw
it through.
I had to spend August back there in Washington,
because they were talking of certain sugar legis
lation that was so designed that the one part of
the industry that is organized, Hawaii, would take
a kick in the ass. And the other parts of the
industry would get the benefits of the legislation
they were talking about. It was all a by-product
of the terrific in-fighting within the industry
itself, a cat-and-dog industry. We got the results
we wanted back there with the help of (Congressman)
Phil Burton and the progressive caucus.
Ward: Well, what did the convention do?
LG: The convention? Oh, the delegates supported the
officers' report the way it was written.
Ward: And rejected the dissent?
LG: Oh, sure.
Ward: I see. Do you want to say anything further on
sugar in Hawaii in '77?
LG: No, that was my last go-around. Actually, I was
officially retired somewhere around May -
Ward: Both of you were?
LG: That's right; this confrontation took place in May
or whenever the convention was held. I will say
one thing; ^he guys from sugar did themselves
really proud. Theyhad their facts marshalled;
they knew what they were going to talk about.
Then we finally got these results out of Wash
ington which took Hawaii off the hook in many
respects. It was nothing like the sugar price they
wanted, but if some of the amendments had gone
through that were being pushed by people - I
forget the names - Hawaii would have^been cut out
of potentially perhaps $60 to $80 million dollars
in sugar subsidies.
1067
LG: e defeated that. We went back into negotiations
with the employers then; they tried the technique
once again of so-called distressed plantations.
They claimed that three of the plantations, not
withstanding all we had done, were still in bad
shape
##
(Interview 38: 12 December 1978)
The Political Economics Of Sugar
Ward: I believe you want to talk further on sugar.
LG-: Yes, there is one aspect of sugar that should be
cleaned up, even though it culminated after I was
no longer officially an officer of the ILWU.
The contract we negotiated in 1974 was for two
years through '75; we extended it for one year;
that means it ran through February, 1977. By that
time a couple of things had happened. The Sugar
Act under which the industry had been operating
for umpty-nine years, as far back as the Roosevelt
Administration in the '30s, was originally called
the Jones-Costigan Act. I think primarily as a
gut reaction, or consumer reaction, all of which
was warranted, Congress wiped the Act out, refused
to extend it any further, when it came up for re
newal in 1974. There was no Sugar Act, as such,
around.
In effect, the U. S. became a general open
market for sugar. The concept of quotas and every
thing else went out the window. This action of
Congress, in my opinion, was completely understand
able because sugar prices had soared. Also, one
of the fundamental difficulties with the Sugar Act
was that it did a certain service for the growers
but gave only lip service to the workers, who were
supposed to be treated fairly and be given their
fair and reasonable wages.
Time and time again we appeared at hearings
around the Sugar Act and got no place with this
special division of the Department of Agriculture
1068
LG: which had this responsibility for the wage deter
mination. Well, it did make a change in the case
of Louisiana wages.
The main thing we accomplished was to knock off
their hearings in Hawaii, "because those were just
junkets; whatever the boss chose to pay was right.
For example, it was "fair and reasonable" to pay
wages of 33 and 1/3 cents an hour in Puerto Rico.
The Sugar Act was really a meaningless piece of
legislation, as far as the workers were concerned.
But it did accomplish something for the growers,
and for the bulk of industrial users who were
dependent on the industry in terms of having a
continuous flow of supplies for a certain price.
I'm talking about outfits like American Sugar,
many of whom had holdings at one time in Cuba.
These holdings went out the window with the coming
of Castro.
While the Sugar Act provided a floor under
prices, which was their primary concern, there
actually was no provision in the Act about any
kind of a ceiling; the sky was the limit, if they
could get away with it. Consequently, because of
a whole series of international factors, the prices
did soar in 1974 and the reaction of Congress was
to knock off the Sugar Act. It is interesting to
note that I think we had the only group of sugar
workers anywhere in the world who got any benefit
at all out of this enormous price windfall.
There were also some damn interesting things
that happened later on and which contributed to
the price collapse. Some governments and the em
ployers are alter egos, one and the same people;
the Philippines, a substantial sugar grower, is a
good example. There they had (President Ferdinand)
Marcos declare some sort of a national emergency
and seize the sugar crop in the national interest.
Nobody could figure out what he was talking
about, but everybody knew what he was after. He
wanted to breach a number of contracts where
interests in the Philippines had sold sugar in
advance at a certain price; in other words, selling
futures. A lot of industrial users will buy sugar
as long as six months or more ahead of time for
delivery at a certain fixed price. Marcos decided
1069
LG-: these were to be "breached; then buyers had to deal
with the government.
Ward: He was able to take advantage of the price rise?
LG-: And plus, he got too greedy. So greedy, as a
matter of fact, that he began to hold back sugar
because he thought the price was going up still
more. The net result was that the Philippines
were left with a backlog, an inventory somewhere
in the neighborhood of 250 thousand tons of sugar.
Then they had to start dumping it on the market.
Beginning around 1976, and particularly in 1977,
they were selling sugar every which way, under the
table, over the table, on the market. The Philip
pines, as I recall, made arrangements with a big
outfit called Godchaux-Henderson. That's a mill
in Texas. There the arrangement was that they
simply turn the sugar over to the company, the
company refine the sugar, package it and sell it;
and then give the Philippine owners their net
return.
You could imagine what the situation was when
an outfit like Henderson goes on the market with
that sugar. They've gotten their money out of it
in terms of the refining costs, what we term the
"laundering" costs. Really, that's all the re
fining operation is, processing and making the
sugar white. They don't give a good goddam whether
the net return to the Philippine grower is two
cents, ten cents or whatever.
The market was in complete havoc, where there
were all kinds of demands for action. A special
international trade commission that has to deal
with these things made an appearance in San
Francisco. There was a very large attendance from
farmers in Hawaii; a lot of independent growers.
There still are many independent growers in the
Islands, including sons of our members.
The employers, of course, were out in force.
e appeared too, and other people like the Louisiana
growers and others were there. That led to some
sharp altercations about the whole business of the
nature of sugar. A group that I recall was parti
cularly noisy, just wanted things to be let alone.
1070
LG: As long as the price is low, the industrial user
can see nothing "but benefits to him. If he can
keep buying that raw material at the lowest possible
price, he doesn't give a damn where it comes from.
I recall they were after me* asking what did I know
about the confectionary industry; bakery and con
fectionary is their group, I think. I said that
I didn't know anything about them. I wouldn't
recognize them if they were in bed with me. All
I did know was that when the price of sugar was
jumping, they'd raise candy bars from a dime to
twenty cents apiece. Now that sugar was way down
in price, I didn't see any reduction in the price
of a candy bar. That was enough for me to know,
because since then they've gone up to 25 cents.
I notice that Carter and this ingenious economic
advisor in that brilliant coterie he has, have
figured out that based on their guide lines and
also by the use of contorted manipulations of the
famous machine that was concave and convex, that
25 cents was their right price.
The legislation that appeared in Washington was
an attempt to put some sort of a minimal floor
under the price of sugar by subsidy payment direct
ly from the government to the domestic grower, or
in the case of off-shore sugar by a combination of
tariff and import quotas; primarily by tariffs.
Whoever drafted this legislation was also neck
deep in the internal political fight within the
sugar industry. The sugar industry is not a homo
genous or harmonious group. They battle like cats
and dogs in the market.
>
Ward: Even in Hawaii?
LG: Not in Hawaii because there is no way for them to
compete in Hawaii. If Hawaii had to depend upon
the people in Hawaii consuming the sugar they
produce, you could buy back the industry tomorrow
and they would be all right. Just leave one small
plantation; the total consumption in Hawaii is
somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 thousand, may
be 65 thousand tons of sugar.
The amount of sugar they turn out in Hawaii
exceeds a million tons, so of course the vast bulk
of the sugar is processed and marketed mostly on
1071
LG: the west coast, which is their main market. Then
you have the big conflict market around the mid
west, what they call the Chicago market. That's
where they run head-on into each other: beet sugar,
Louisiana cane sugar, Puerto Rican sugar that comes
through from New York refineries, and particularly
the big beet sugar interests, they all come into
clash in the Chicago market.
Ward: Where does your Philippine sugar go mostly?
LG-: The Philippine sugar in the main would be sold to
the refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. They don't
have any sugar refineries on the west coast any
more, other than the one at C&H. They did have
one years ago in San Francisco, Western Sugar,
which we had organized, but that was bought by
C&H, primarily for the purpose of liquidation. The
mill was completely antiquated anyway; the only
thing that held the plant together was the pipes.
It was the place that George Valter came from.
Whoever devised the proposed new legislation
put in an interesting kicker, that in the interest
of saving the American consumer and the fact that
farm legislation should concern itself with the
small farmer's welfare rather than the big farmer,
any kind of federal assistance, either by purchase
forms or loans, be confined to those employers who
grew up to 50,000 dollars' worth of sugar; in other
words that would be the ceiling on any payment to
any one company.
If you're talking about the beet sugar industry
that's not unreasonable, because even a good sized
beet farm won't produce much more than 50 thousand
dollars' worth. In the case of Louisiana where
you still have a good many small farmers, pretty
much the same would apply. I don't know whether
it applies to Florida.
The only outfit that would get really hurt, and
it was obviously designed for that purpose, was the
Hawaii interests, because the average plantation
there produced more than 50 thousand dollars' worth
of sugar. Some of the big ones, like HC&S on the
island of Maui, produce over 100,000 dollars'
worth of sugar a year.
1072
LG: Well, you can pretty quickly figure out the net
result if the law is applied and the actual price
falls "below 13^ cents, which was their target
price - for a while it was down as low as ll
cents. Then of course the loss to Hawaii would
"be enormous.
What galled us more than anything else was that
these internal "battles among these employers -
and they could fight among themselves as much as
they want to; that's their business - were tak
ing the form that the one group of workers who
would really get hurt in this she-bang - and they
had never gotten any benefit from any Sugar Act -
would be the workers in Hawaii. They would be put
at a real disadvantage when it came to any kind
of bargaining.
It was under those circumstances that when the
contract expired in '77, we extended it until
November of that year, even though November is a
very bad expiration date. We prefer the February
date, like we have now. It was in August when
Eddie Lapa and myself went back to Washington.
He's the vice-president of Local 142 and he's from
the sugar industry. Pat Tobin was back there, of
course, as our Washington representative.
We spent over a week of very intensive campaign
ing before the vote came up on this piece of leg
islation, particularly to knock out this 50 thousand
ton limit. We managed to put together a very
effective coalition. The urban progressive coali
tion led primarily by Phil Burton; the black
coalition led by Congressman Ron Dellums; and there
was some help from the Hawaii congressmen.
We managed to muster enough votes to defeat that
particular provision. I had to make our problems
plain to some of the other unions which were there,
because some were people representing the beet
interests. The Teamsters were very helpful in
our campaign. Their legislative representatives,
Bartley O'Hara and Dave Sweeney, were assigned to
work with us full time. On several occasions they
had worked with us on the Sugar Act.
1073
Corn Sweeter Than Sugar?
LG-: Then, however, the corn sweetners had come into
the market. The corn sweetner is a new process
that has been developed, but not as yet in the
form of domestic table sugar. They produce a
sweetner out of corn, through some chemical
process that for industrial purposes is more
effective than any other kind of sugar. I'd say
that some time in the future the corn sweetner
might take over the bulk of the industrial market.
On the other hand, the corn sweetner problem
is one of getting the price up to a certain point,
because it's a newly developing industry; they
need to get the price to a point where they can
put in the capital investment to make it go. There
was a whole melange in the Washington situation,
but we decided to cut through it, get our job done
insofar as Hawaii was concerned, and leave the
next morning. We had accomplished exactly what
we had gone back there for, and we didn't want to
get neck deep into the internal politics of the
sugar industry.
There was a push by some of these other unions
who represented different kinds of growers to see
if we could sit down with the sugar industry as a
whole and work out a common program. We felt
this would be quite hopeless, and frankly we did
not want to get trapped into it.
Outfits like the Packinghouse Workers still had
a long-standing grudge against the Louisiana
growers because they had taken a beating when they
started to organize the field workers in Louisiana.
I don't see how they really would have gone along
with anything like a common sugar program, even
though Arnold Mayer, their legislative representa
tive, went along with us on our drive to knock out
the 50 thousand ceiling.
During the time I was in Washington and in the
following negotiations, I was no longer Interna
tional Secretary. I had retired, but I had made a
1074
LG: committment to the members; they had asked me
specifically "before the convention election.
Ward: So then you went to Hawaii for those negotiations?
LG: I went to Hawaii for the negotiations in November.
The negotiations didn't last very long: the em
ployers had put together what they considered to
be an attractive offer: a moderate improvement
on pensions, not too bad; an improvement on some
other elements of the contract; an offer on wages,
not the worst in the world - 30 or 35 cents an
hour. All we were talking about was a one-year
contract, because we didn't know any more than
they did where things were going.
But then they added a hooker concerning three
plantations. From day one we had fought to main
tain industry-wide bargaining, even though we might
make special exceptions for a plantation because
of a drought or something of the sort, giving them
a bit of time to catch up and finally reach a
regular wage line.
Their attitude in '77 was that nothing could be
done; that these three plantations were having a
lot of trouble. Two of them were C. Brewer planta
tions and one belonged to American Factors. Well,
what puzzled me during the negotiations was that
there had to be some sort of basic, internal
contradiction among the employers, operating as
they did under the unit rule, where they have to
reach unanimity. Had C. Brewer decided it could
run a fast one? And, in effect, take care of two
of their plantations which had been having trouble,
caused primarily by their own, premature consoli
dation of mills without taking sufficient pre
cautions in terms of expanding capacity and so
forth.
That was their own headache, even though they
had merged a couple of these plantations like the
ones at Maunakea and Kau. The plantations close
by Hilo, such as Maunakea sugar, had swallowed up
several of the other small plantations, which is
understandable; they were small twenty- thousand-
ton plantations and their days were limited,
because of requirements for heavy equipment and
so forth in the new industry that had developed
in Hawaii.
1075
G-oldblatt's Swan Song On Sugar
LG: I couldn't shake loose of this conclusion that
there had to "be a contradiction there. Castle
and Cooke were sitting at the negotiations,
representing only one sugar plantation; they had
liquidated Kohala, where in 1971 we had decided
we'd hold the industry hostage until we cleaned up
the situation. In 1974 we had to do the same
thing in the case of Grove Farm where we did work
it out.
Castle and Cooke, for example, had only one
plantation located atWaialua, a very profitable
plantation on an extremely productive piece of
land, adequate water, excellent irrigation; I guess
one of the most economically operated sugar planta
tions in the world. Castle & Cooke 's interests
have shifted away from sugar into the whole food
area.
Castle and Cooke now includes things like Bumble
Bee Products, Hawaii Tuna Packers, Standard Fruit
bananas. They've opened up Idaho potatoes; they've
gone into some canning operations. ' You name it
and they seem to be in it.
I couldn't figure out what the devil could be
in it for Castle and Cooke to take a strike over
these plantations. Then there was -Theo Davies.
Theo Davies never had highly prosperous plantations,
but they got by and they were doing quite well;
they were on the Hamakua coast. They had become
part of this international conglomerate - this
British concern called Jardine Matheson.
I couldn't figure out where they were getting
hurt; how did they get sucked into a fight of this
sort? Alexander Baldwin had several plantations,
including HC&S, the big one, a very profitable
plantation. They also had McBride, where they had
recently worked out this proposition on Grove Farm
and were anxious to get going. The only outfit
that puzzled me was American Factors; they were
asking the same thing as C. Brewer; they wanted out
as far as any improvements were concerned.
1076
LG-: Tiie plantation they were talking about was Oahu
Sugar, which is very close by Honolulu, on the
island of Oahu. I finally decided in my own mind
that they went along for the ride. American
Factors had been doing extremely well.
They had gone into still another branch of
American enterprise, the field of merchandizing:
the Liberty Stores, I. Magnin, and lots more.
These were all part of American Factors, in the
same way that Alexander Baldwin, for example, now
owns Mat son.
Anyway, our discussions before the strike
broke must have gone on in our strike committee
for at least two days. There was a pretty sharp
difference of opinion, not so much about whether
we shut them all down or not, but the feeling of
some people that maybe we were walking into a
trap if we did shut them down. Maybe these three
were being set up as decoys so that in the event
we shut them down, one of the agencies would
announce they had plans to liquidate a plantation,
and that the union had driven another part of the
sugar industry out of business.
Bear in mind that over the years since we had
organized, a great many changes had taken place in
the industry, including a lot of small plantations
being swallowed by bigger ones, and in some cases
just out and out liquidation because the planta
tions were so located as to make them unprofitable;
outfits like old Waianae plantation, Waimanalo
plantation, Kahuku plantation, went out of business;
Waiakea Mill became part of Olaa, now Puna Sugar.
These things took place over the years, and in
the main they were taken in stride and were hand
led pretty well. The liquidation of one of the
major plantations would have been much more of a
headache. Liquidation was also a mote in the eye
of everybody down there, because the pineapple
contract had been opened in 1974, and one of the
big problems we had was that Dole Pinapple and Del
Monte Pineapple announced they were going to wash
out their operations on the island of Molokai.
That's the only industry on Molokai, just the
growing of pineapple. Del Monte decided to stay
on, not only stayed on but even increased some of
their acreage. Dole did get out.
1077
LG: e spent hours in negotiations on a series of
provisions to help those workers get located in
other pineapple plantations, until it suddenly
occurred to me that I had "better go over and talk
to the people involved. When I talked to them I
found out: "Forget it - just no way." They put
it very simply: "We were born here and we plan
to stay here; we'll get by somehow."
Anyway, this problem of the three plantations
took care of itself in a peculiar way. When the
strike deadline was reached, we had sent out no
permission for any plantation to operate, al
though in general discussions there had been sort
of tacit agreement that we might let the three
plantations operate, just so we could not be
suckered into a trap.
But these members walked out, and they walked
out in a way which forced me to do a lot of double
thinking. For example, traditionally every time
there had been a strike in sugar, one of the pre
conditions was a clean and efficient shutdown. In
other words, all machinery was brought in to the
mill yard. They didn't leave it out in the field
to rust. Some machinery, unless it's oiled, and
so forth, is going to deteriorate very badly if
you're striking. You still plan to go back to
work at the plant; you ought to be around if you
want to be able to do a job.
But in this case, the guys were so angry about
the whole thing, and particularly, the discussions
that were going on about these three plantations
being carved out of the industry, that they just
abandoned their machines, sometimes leaving truck-
loads of sugar right on the highway and going
home. I decided we had better sit and think about
it a few days.
Pretty soon I had only one conviction there:
trap or no trap, it was better to go along, whether
you had unanimous agreement on a program that might
not be 100 percent right than to get a divided
union on a program that you considered to be 100
percent right; better off to settle for something
that could be partly wrong; take your chances.
1078
LG-: We learned from the workers in that case, not the
other way around. So we shut them down. I under
stood the best thing for me to do was to get the
hell out of there. The Sunday I was leaving
Bernie Eilerts, the head of the Hawaii Employers
Council, said he wanted to come "by and talk to
me. So, I said "Sure" and called some of our loc
al officials and said, "Eilert is coming by and
says he wants to talk to me privately, but I
suggest you be there and sit at the next table."
(laughter)
They put a lot of stock in this business of
man-to-man conversation, most of it bunk, a lot
of hogwash. And Bernie Eilerts spelled out their
position and I said, "Prom what you're telling me
the three plantations have to stay out of the new
contract; there might be a little bit of room on
something, a few small issues, but no fundamental
change in that position." He said, "That's right."
And I said, "Well, in that case, the strike is on;
whenever you get ready to negotiate, you notify
our committee and I'll be down."
The strike didn't last very long, two or three
weeks. Finally we got a call that they wanted to
sit down and negotiate, and the negotiations v/ere
really quite easy.
We just sat there and said, "Look, you're the
ones that asked for the meeting. You know per
fectly well that we're not going to carve out
these three plantations; they'll get the same as
everybody else. We want some other improvements.
You've convinced us you can pay more money by the
kind of offer you put out."
So, we picked up a bit more money on wages,
and something on pensions. The three plantations
stayed within the industry bargaining unit and
that's the way it wound up, in good shape. That
was my swan song, insofar as sugar was concerned.
Ward: Yes, you got a very nice letter after that was
over.
LG: Yes, I got a very friendly letter -
1079
Ward: They wanted to buy you some golf clubs.
LG: Yes, as a matter of fact, the committee asked me,
just before I left, to go out and buy myself a set
of golf clubs and send them the bill. So, I did.
I got a check back saying, "We know you need the
golf clubs, but chances are you'll need some
lessons as well, and green fees are not cheap."
So, they sent back a gift that amounted to $2,000
bucks to cover the whole business.
It was a very fine gesture on their part; there
was a feeling that we could handle the employers,
even when they were trying to run one on us. I
can't blame them. After what had happened on the
bonuses and so forth, I could see why the employ
ers would figure .that it was time they picked up
something too.
This Consultant Business
Ward: You evidently know a hell of a lot about the
sugar industry. Could that be the reason why
Dave Jenkins says that you could make a pot full
of money if you went to work for the industry as
a consultant?
LG: Oh, I don't know. I'm sure that if I had any
real interest in acting as a legislative consul
tant or as any other kind of consultant to the
sugar industry, they would definitely be interested;
but, my God, whatever I've learned and whatever
ability I might have, the union did that for me.
Ward: You can't visualize yourself on the other side of
the table?
LG: Oh, no, no way!
Ward: Some guys have ....
LG: Some guys do. No, I can't see it, even in the
legislative field, where you're not connected
with the collective bargaining process and when
my feelings have been that there may be a few
points of identification between the interests of
1080
LG:
ard:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
the sugar industry and the union in a piece of
legislation. I guess that applies to something
like sugar "because it is such a highly regulated
and complicated industry.
I'd be much more interested in doing something
in conjunction with an international movement of
sugar workers; that would make a lot more sense to
me; particularly on setting some sort of inter
national base rate for sugar, something I've
believed in for a long, long time. I do know a
fair amount about the sugar industry. I've done
a good deal of study on it, beginning many years
ago when I first got interested.
Dave's ideas of how you value services are his;
I have mine.
Well, what kind of a salary did you wind up with
and further, what kind of pension did you get when
you retired from the ILWU?
My final salary was $25,000 a year.
The pension is what, 50 percent?
No, the pension is slightly over 50 percent; it's
$14,000 a year.
These days, that isn't wealth.
No, it isn't wealth, but neither do we miss any
meals.
I don't see any signs of starvation around here.
No, and there is something in the refrigerator if
you're hungry. I think it's a generous pension.
Yes; then you get Social Security too.
The Social Security is separate. Medical care is
covered; very important, particularly when you get
to my broken down stage. I have a real anger, as
well as a contempt, for people who pick up their
skills and whatever they know about an industry-
through the union and then go peddle it to the
employer.
1081
Ward: A lot of the guys in the Railroad Brotherhoods do
that.
LG: I know, I know.
Ward: Even in Hawaii, some of the guys did it.
LG: I don't recall in Hawaii ....
Ward: Well, didn't Ed Wong? Wasn't he . . . .?
LG: No, he never was a sugar worker. There was a guy
in pineapple who led some sort of a two-bit revolt
during some of those redbaiting days - (Robert)
Mookini was his name. He went to work for the
employers for a while, and I think they found he
was as much use to them as he was to us; good
riddance to him.
Ward: Well, then your philosophy is that you don't change
shirts, or coats.
LG: No, I don't see it, that's all. For the same
reason, I don't buy this role of consultant. I
understand the need for consultants in certain
areas. The unions have gotten into a whole series
of bargaining issues which might have been a
mistake in the sense that they really don't belong
in the union realm as much as they belong in society
as a whole.
Here's what I mean; whether union pensions are
a good thing as compared to a push for improved
pensions nationally - that's one I think is really
open for debate. You can get that down to the
lowest level, that of the individual. Take a man
who's busted his balls all his life trying to get
a union in some area up in the northwest: he's
never made it. They might have formed a union once
but they got their back broken.
He doesn't desert the field; he stays in there
and keeps fighting. This guy winds up finally
with one pension; whatever he manages to get from
Social Security. Here's another guy who might
have gone through a battle somewhere and says,
"The going is a little bit too rough here. I'm
going where things are a little bit easier." Now,
1082
LG: if he was one of the rebels who had been heaved
out by reactionaries and run out by the un-American
Activities Committee and so forth, where you help
supply a haven for these people, that's one thing.
But if he's somebody who says, "I oust don't
want to take that much of a beef and I understand
San Francisco is a good union town; there might
be a job open on the front." He walks in, and come
retirement he has himself a substantial union
pension. The first guy I mentioned, busting his
neck, he winds up with what the bird left on the
limb . . .
##
LG: Well, in a field like pensions, whether we like it
or not, we're in there. V/e're in there because
government pensions are so damn small that there
was a big push to get something over and above
that. Same reason that even though Medicare may
be around, it sure as hell doesn't do much good
for the average family or the working man; or Medi-
Cal, where you have to be an indigent to qualify.
So, we've gotten into fields now like health
and welfare and pensions. There I can understand
the need for specialists, people who know their
business when I can call somebody and say, "Okay,
we're thinking in terms of so much of an increase
in pensions of say an extra $2 or $3 a year,
after a year of service; what do you think that
would run? Our present costs and the age population
and the number of guys who would be retiring ..."
They do this work all the time; they are very
competent with the figures and they can run these
things through for you quickly.
Ward: They specialize in these things - -
LG: And they do a good job. I think we have been lucky
with some of the people we have used in the ILWU;
they have been very good. Sure, there are times
when we do it ourselves, like I've told you of the
incident in Hawaii. That was for bargaining
purposes only.
Ward: You acted as a consultant in this last sugar situa
tion in Hawaii, you might say.
1083
LG: I really wasn't; I was acting as Secretary-Treasurer
Emeritus, specifically assigned to this job.
Ward: Oh, somewhat similar to these retired judges who
are asked to step in?
LG: And primarily to fulfill an obligation, a promise
I had made before I left office. I can't see my
self as a consultant on a lot of other things;
some people say, "Why don't you act as a consul
tant in collective bargaining? You know a fair
amount about that." And I guess I do.
Ward: How many contracts have you had your finger in?
LG: Oh, I don't know.
Ward: A hundred?
LG: Oh, at least, yes. Figure out there are all kinds
of contracts I've taken part in in L. A. from
Globe Mills to the wholesale drug group. I used
to go down for years to help them handle their
contracts. Thrifty Drug Company down there;
negotiations around here. Not just with the master
contract, but individual contracts like the one at
Crockett, and some of the other contracts we've
had around this area.
In the northwest on some contracts. In Hawaii
not just sugar, but pineapple, hotels; I don't
know, I've never kept a score sheet. I don't think
they maintain that kind of a score sheet like they
do for baseball or football.
Of course, it would be an impossible score sheet
to devise, because negotiations are an animal all
by themselves. That's the reason I don't think
you can be a consultant in negotiations, except in
a very rare situation; the Newspaper Guild thing
was an example of that. That wasn't so much a
matter of consultant as going in as a friend and
saying, "Look, this thing is going to blow apart.
Some things ought to be done and here is a solution
that I think might work out."
But for me to go in and try to represent the
Newspaper Guild, represent the printers - what the
hell do I know about their problems, really?
1084
LG: Those are the problems of the guy in the factory,
the guy at the machine - he's familiar with those
things. What does a consultant do? He just sits
around and acts smart, figures out a smart piece
of language like lawyers do. It's like the people
who get the idea that negotiating is something like
pulling rabbits out of a hat; a whole series of
magician tricks, and all of a sudden you say, "Ah,
that's it; gottcha that time."
I don't buy the consultant's role. Fundamentally,
I'm a partisan, the first thing you have to know
is who are the people you represent and what do
they think, what do they want, how far are they
prepared to go; not just what they would walk out
on, but how much of that percentage are you going
to lose. You're going to lose some.
Who'll be the remaining core, who will stick it
out, are the measurements you have to make before
you can really be an effective negotiator. With
out that, I don't know what a consultant adds,
except as to some of the qualified technicians.
I guess my definition of a consultant is like
that of an expert. My definition of an expert has
always been the same - the s.o.b. from out of town.
1085
XXXV ISRAEL AND THE ARABS
(Interview 40: 9 January, 1979) ##
The Israeli Groupings
Ward: Lou, we were going to insert in the appropriate
place in the oral history some of your remarks
about the trip you took in 1976, along with other
prominent Jewish people, to Israel.
LG: They weren't all Jewish. Nancy Swadish and Barbara
Krantzler weren't.
Ward: Well, what was the bond between the members of this
group? What was their objective?
LG: The group had been invited either by Mapam itself
or one of its offshoots.
Ward: MAPAM?
LG: Yes. Let me explain very quickly some of these
distinctions so we don't get lost. The governing
labor party had been in power in Israel from its
institution, as far as I can recall, up until the
time of the elections in 1977 when Begin and the
Likud Party won out.
Mapai was this governing labor party - M A P A I,
it's an acronym. Histadrut is part of Mapai in the
main; not all of the members, because some of them
belong to other political parties. Basically, it's
supposed to be a labor movement; it also has many
offshoots.
1086
LG-: As a matter of fact, for a long time they talked
about two governments; Mapai was a government and
Histadrut, this labor organization, was a sort of
second government. Histadrut claimed seniority
in the sense that they were in business and
operating as an organization before Mapai came
along after the 1948 War of Liberation; so the
Histadrut is primarily aligned with Mapai.
Within the Histadrut, there's a system of propor
tional representation. It is a very democratic
system. There are people who run from Mapam.
Mapam is basically a socialist group; although
Mapai also says that it is sort of socialist, but
obviously dominated by the commerciantes, the
people who are concerned with industry, trade,
t ou ri sm .
In other words, Mapai think very much like the
average American industrialist, but Mapam can still
run candidates and they still get elected to some
of these spots in the Histadrut. We met a few of
the people who were from Mapam and were also with
Histadrut. Mapam, though, is a socialist group;
the principal basis of the Mapam is the kibbutz.
This is what has to be understood.
The kibbutz organization is a forerunner of
everything, because the first Jewish settlers who
returned to Israel were determined to return to
the land. They weren't going to Israel to open
up a shop. Their primary interest was to return
to the land; to be completely self-sufficient
people and to do everyting from garbage collection
to being the cops. In other words, they were going
to build a society around the whole concept of the
land.
A kibbutz is a very genuine commune in the true
sense of the word. There are different forms of
agricultural structure there; in the case of the
kibbutz, the land is owned by the kibbutz as a
whole. Working in the kibbutz and being a member
of the kibbutz gives you certain rights in terms
of your health care, your right to work, your right
to get fed.
Most of the kibbutzim are quite prosperous now;
the right to housing, the right to schooling. For
example, many of the kibbutz movement people who are
1087
LG: part of the Mapam, the leftwing socialists, would
not even trust the public schools with their
children, so they put an enormous amount of their
annual income into setting up their own school
system. This was "because the school system, in
many cases, was dominated by the religious people;
people on the kibbutz are largely non-religious.
The Mapam is worthwhile studying and seeing;
no question, it has become highly successful.
There are also things called the moshiv which is
more like a cooperative; and some call these a
kibbutz, but they are not in the true sense of the
word.
What has to be borne in mind is that while
Mapam has its initial footing and ground work in
the kibbutz, it still has a certain amount of
following among the industrial workers; but ob
viously most of its attention is paid to kibbutz
problems.
Kibbutz Artzi is a central operating office for
the kibbutz or kibbutzim as a whole. In other
words, it is a central purchasing power, a central
place to make loans, a central place from which to
arrange for the buying of equipment or what have
you; and it has branched out and done a number of
other things.
There's no question that the Mapam had differ
ences among its members, some of them very sharp
differences. After the 1967 war they voted to
join what they called an alliance, sort of a
national front; and even that vote was around
60-40. In other words, they were not too enthu
siastic about it.
I'm sure that there are members of the Mapam
who to this day are still looking back and figuring
it was a mistake, that they had no business
identifying with the Mapai because while it was a
so-called labor party, it was also dominated by
people like G-olda Meier and others whose policy was
generally directed towards the growth of indus
trialization, the growth of commerce, with their
foreign policy completely oriented toward the United
States.
1088
LG: In the Mapam, for example, and in the kibbutzim
which are connected with the Mapam, you still find
a very strong feeling that there also ought to be
alignments with the Soviet Union. They don't get
into the screaming drill about the Soviet Union
that some of the others do. This distinction has
to be made.
A third - there are about ten parties there
altogether and we won't try to cover them all -
large group is the Likud, made up primarily of people
who are right-wingers, both in their political
thinking and economic thinking.
There was also a division in the Communist party -
they are both very tiny parties - primarily around
the whole question of the Arabs and the relation
ship that Israel ought to take toward the Palesti
nians. I'm trying to give you this background
first, because without it you'd get lost.
Ward: The purpose of these people who went, including
yourself, was to accomplish something, as I recall.
LG: The group was going there on the invitation of the
Kibbutz Artzi and Givat Haviva, an Arab-Israeli
Institute; they were directly connected with the
Mapam. Mapam is also the central financial support
of the excellent magazine called New Outlook.
I joined the group a day or two late because I
was tied up with something else. Their objective
was to show us around the kibbutz movement, and
around Israel as a whole; spend some time in Jeru
salem. On our own, the group made a trip down to
Masada, a fascinating trip all by itself.
We spent a good deal of time around Jerusalem,
including the eastern section, now under the control
of the Israeli government, although it is the Arab
section. I spent an extra day or two primarily
with one of the men who was connected with Kibbutz
Artzi. He was from New York City and had migrated
there. I visited him and his wife there at his
kibbutz - lovely house, lovely place; an apartment
rather than a house. I had dinner with them,
beautiful dining room, a tremendous amount of food
right off of their own kibbutz. I mean they lived
well, they ate well.
1089
Ward: You added a syllable to kibbutz?
LG-: Oh, Kibbutz Artzi - that is just a central organ
ization of the kibbutzim. So, we had a chance
to do a lot of talking and see a lot of things.
A series of things stood out and I'll try to
mention them as best I can.
Peace Or Land?
LG-: I made a trip with Hannan Conn, the chap from New
York; very outspoken guy, a very good man. The
two of us drove to the Golan Heights; it was
interesting going through that set of fortifica
tions the Syrians had built there. And you could
see where they could really harass some of the
kibbutzim in the farms right below. They are
within lobbing distance of a medium range gun; you
could understand how some of these feelings grew up
over the years, particularly with the Syrians
insistent on keeping this row alive.
To me, the thing that stood out most at the
Golan Heights is that this is a huge area. We
could see a town which I think is called Kenetra,
on the Golan Heights in a part that was Syrian.
I'll get some of these names wrong because you
can't remember them all. It's a town that was
pretty thoroughly bombed out by the Israelis, but
the land is now being worked.
I asked, "Who's working this land?" Hannan
said, "Well, members of the kibbutz, the younger
people who decided they're prepared to go out
there. That's the way some of these kibbutzim
grow; younger people decide to go out and set up
a new kibbutz." Well, the place looked lush and
in excellent shape in terms of its handling and
management.
I asked, "What happens if you do have peace with
the Arab countries?" At that particular moment in
many cases people, when you talk to them about
peace with the Arabs, would say, "Well, just no
way; you can't talk to them; they won't talk to
you and you can't talk to them." I would reply,
1090
LG: "Well, somewhere along the line there will have to
be some discussions. My feeling is that Israel is
making a terrible mistake in not returning all the
lands taken in the '67 war."
Hannan's reaction was not completely opposed to
that; he said, "Yes, there ought to be a couple of
minor border adjustments which both could agree
upon and would make sense. Other than that, the
land should be returned", he says. "There is still
a great deal of undeveloped land we could work our
selves. We don't need this land, and of course,
peace would be far more important than having the
land."
And I asked him, "Look, these people who are
now in Golan Heights, they've worked here - it was
1976, so they had worked there for at least 8 or 9
years - and they have put in a lot of back-breaking
work; they have done a hell of a job. They've
raised families there. How are they going to feel
about moving out?"
His reaction was "They'll move; peace is more
important." I hope he's right. I just hope he's
right. That's all I can say.
Ward: These people wouldn't be of this deeply religious
sect that's going ....
LG: You're talking about another group that's called
the Gus-Emunin. I mentioned that about the
Golan Heights because it is significant. In the
last issue of New Outlook there's an odd remark by
one of the writers that even some of the people
in the Mapam, or in the kibbutz movement, are
having second thoughts about some of the West Bank
area; when they talk about the West Bank area
they're talking about the Golan Heights and the
whole she-bang.
It's one of the difficulties that is bound to
arise when you have endless occupation of a country.
My thinking was that the longer Israelis occupy
the Arab lands, the more difficult it will be to
make the changeover. So, that was one incident
that occurred. While we were in Israel, of course,
our main source of information was the people we
were going around with; and also the Jerusalem Post;
1091
LG-: anything in English. During this time there was an
act "by this arch-religious group called the Gus-
Emunin. Hannan Conn said of them, "Well, they're
just fanatics, that's all - crazy." As far as he
was concerned, he was non-religious. I think that
in many of the kibbutzim, however, they would
celebrate the Jewish holidays as holidays.
"While we were there a group of these fanatics
went to a lower court and got permission from some
judge, who obviously didn't know what the hell was
doing, to go ahead and pray on the Temple Mount.
Well, the Temple Mount contains the third most
important locale of the Arabs. There's Mecca,
Medina and the Temple Mount. There are two temples
there, one of which contains what they insist is
the Rock of Abraham.
You are so overwhelmed by the history of the
place, and by the fact that these Muslims all
maintain the same ancestry as the Jews. They're
all children of Abraham, they're closer than cousins.
They're direct bloodline, as they put it, because
they too are children of Abraham.
They have the Rock where Abraham supposedly of
fered to sacrifice Isaac to God. They also have
the rock from which Mohammed left by horse, you
know, to the heavens. Oh, I mean, it just wallows
in religious background - the whole place does.
But here were these youngsters, part of the Gus-
Emunin, who got a ruling that they could go pray at
the Temple Mount, which they did. Promptly, of
course, this caused a riot in which the Arabs were
heaving rocks and everything else; battles going
on all over the place. A higher court stepped in
a day or so later and said, "Forget it." Because
this is, without question, the holy place of the
Arabs.
As a matter of fact, there's an interesting sign
just above the Wailing Wall, which is part of
Solomon's Temple. The sign is on a wooden plaque,
written in English, which quotes the Bible to the
effect that only the high priests of the Jewish
religion were permitted on the Temple Mount at the
time of the Temple.
1092
LG: The stories there! How much of these are true and
how much of these things grow up over the years,
you don't know. There were stories that when the
Chief Rabbis would go up there to pray, they could
not "be accompanied. Consequently they would tie a
rope around the rabbi, just in case he passed out
or something, they could pull him back down from
Temple Mount without entering it.
You have no idea of how steeped in religion some
of these places are until you visit them. This was
one of the incidents that give you such a strong
feeling that the Jewish handling of the Arab situa
tion must be changed; otherwise it will continue
as a violent thing for years to come.
Also during the time we were there, it was
announced that in the case of certain lands that
had been in the hands of Arab families for many
generations, hundreds of years, the government
had decided these lands were to be put to a better
use and was, in effect, moving in to expropriate
them; make payment, and so forth.
They always kept telling us, "Look, we make
payment;" but the Arabs didn't want any payment.
They wanted to keep their land. Yes, they might
have been using it for grazing goats, for all I
know, or maybe not doing a goddam thing. This was
in the Valley of Galilee. Most of that is very
good agricultural land. Here was the government
just moving in and taking over the land.
Still another thing was going on while we were
there. I think we got the results while we were
there or a day or two after we left. A series of
elections were taking place in a lot of the Arab
communities. They were electing local councilors
who were still controlled, of course, by Israeli
occupation; they had a certain number of house
sheiks, if you want to call them that. These were
the guys that got along with the Israeli government,
You get an idea of how strong the PLO (Palestine
Liberation Organization) was because they put up
candidates in all these little towns and when the
election returns finally came in, I think they won
in 90 percent of the cases.
1093
Ward: As against these ....
LG: These house sheiks - these guys who had gotten
along with the Israeli government and were taken
care of.
Ward: The ELO guys were less likely to get along with . .
LG: This was a direct and outright repudiation of
everything the Israelis were doing. So, I mention
these things as incidents of provocation and what
I consider to be real stupidity in the way of hand
ling the Arabs; a certain degree of arrogance.
Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic vs. Arab
Ward: I get the notion that your up-and-coming Israeli
feels superior to his Arab counterpart; there's no
reason, as far as his education ....
LG: Yes and no. It is true that by and large the
government of Israel up until now has been an
Ashkenazi government. The Ashkenazi s are the
European Jews as against Sephardic Jews. Those who
come in from Morocco, Algeria and so forth are
Sephardic. The Ashkenazi Jews in the main have had
the advantage of a much better education, a pretty
rich background in many fields. They are good ad
ministrators, good businessmen, the key people all
through the administration there.
In other words, straight line of all the people
we're talking about, like Golda Meier, (Premier
Menahem) Begin, the man who preceded him, (Yitzhak)
Rabin; they are all part of the Ashkenazi line.
Their attitude toward the Arab was that they were
just a lower people.
Incidentally, to think there are no tensions in
Israel between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazis,
you'd be all wrong. The Ashkenazi Jew feels he is
far superior to the Sephardic Jew. He comes from
a different background, in many cases one which is
much more literate; he knows a great deal more about
business and what have you. You get all these
1094
LG-: currents. I mention these things because you look
for things to support the things you believe in.
I felt that the '67 war was justified; I think
perhaps the biggest mistake was the United Nations
removing its forces at the request of Nasser
(President G-amal Nasser of Egypt).
##
Ward: We were discussing the 196? war, the Nasser request
and all that.
LG: And I fundamentally felt that the Israeli govern
ment did the only thing they could do in that
situation.
My parents were strong supporters of this place
called Birobidzhan, which was an area set aside
in the Soviet Union; they supported it with a couple
of bucks here and there, although I don't think it
ever made it, really. The locale was such that
there was not much of a willingness to migrate
there.
I think the strong Jewish groups in Europe that
wanted to move out after all the pogroms and the
persecution under the Czar thought more in terms of
getting into their own homeland with which they
identified, primarily for religious reasons, as the
old Palestine.
While I am not a Zionist, I've come to the con
clusion that the presence of an Israel is actually
essential; a home for people who felt they were
being pushed around; being evicted from the socie
ties they live in. Whether I thought it was a good
idea or a bum idea before World War II, to my mind
became only theoretical and terribly unimportant;
the important thing was that with the Nazis and the
Holocaust, Israel became a fact of life.
Bear in mind, the total population of Israel
prior to WWII must have been very, very tiny. It
was primarily the Zionist kibbutz movement. Those
were the people who worked the farms and in many
cases did a really heroic job, draining swamps,
taking land that hadn't been used for years - just
allowed to let go - and turning it into a very
fertile area.
1095
Ward: Well, Israel really became an entity in 1948, didn't
it?
LG-: 1948 - right. But the Holocaust and the determina
tion by whatever remaining Jews there were to get
the hell out was completely understandable. On that
score I felt that providing for an Israel made a
lot of sense. And the '67 war made sense to me,
but not the '56.
As a matter of fact, Terry and I made a brief
visit to Israel a few years after the 1956 Suez
Canal incident - that was the time when Egypt
seized the Suez Canal and the French and the British
moved against them. Then, the Israelis decided to
get the thing, too. And in visiting one of her
relatives, Terry drooled over a book of photographs
showing the effectiveness of the Israeli armed
forces when they moved into the Sinai.
People like that, when they are cranked up, if
you try to tell them that Jews bleed too, it doesn't
mean much. Even then I felt the Israeli attitude
toward the Palestinians was so negative that they
ought to be making overtures for peace in every
possible way. I said, "The Gaza Strip is going to
become a bone in your throat." They said, "Look,
the Arabs have all kinds of land."
Ward: Let them go somewhere else?
LG-: "Let them go somewhere else; they have all kinds of
land and we only have a little piece of land."
When I talked to one of their kids who was driving
us around, a nice youngster, I said, "What happened
in 1948?" He said, "Well, I was around the port
of Jaifa at the time; it's close by Tel Aviv.
Terry's family name comes from that; her family name
is Jaffe.
He said, "All of a sudden, the Arabs were flood
ing down to the port to get aboard ship." I said,
"Why?" He said, "Rumors were going around that they
were all going to be killed." I said, "Well, did
anybody do anything to try to stop it and tell them
to stay home?" He said, "No, I guess, if anything,
we helped a little bit."
1096
LG: Yes, it is this feeling that Israel is a Jewish _
state, although there are enormous numbers of
Arabs within it, even right now. Leaving aside
the West Bank, leaving aside the Gaza Strip and
just talking about Israel itself, there's a large
number of Arabs who live there, or come in to
work.
On that score, Israel is changing a great deal.
Arabs, for example, are now doing a lot of the
heavy work. This is in spite of the fact that Jews
have always been good building tradesmen. As a
matter of fact, in this country at one time there
was the Jewish Building Trades in New York City.
Ward: I didn't know that.
LG: Yes, there were locals of plumbers and electricians,
carpenters. I guess they spoke Yiddish; it was
easier. They were part of the so-called Jewish
Building Trades. They have always been good crafts
men and good builders.
But by the time we made this last trip, a lot of
the building trades work was being done by Arabs.
The Israelis will tell you, "We pay them much better
wages than they can get anywhere else." There is
trade that goes on all the time from the West Bank,
including agricultural -commodities; they say the
Arabs get paid better that way. All of that I think
can be true. The unfortunate thing is that does
not give a people the kind of independence they
strive for.
Ward: It creates a class differential?
LG: A class differential. It gets to a point that,
while it is not the same thing as saying, "Look,
we treat our slaves very well," it has the same
kind of connotation.
But, to wind up this Israeli bit, there were a
lot of things we saw there that were just fantastic.
I think a trip to that part of the world without
visiting Masada is a terrible mistake; it's a
fantastic place. It was built by the zealots, a
Jewish group which was determined that they would
not submit to the Romans; they would not convert
and not give up their Judaism.
1097
LG-: They built this place on the top of a butte off the
Dead Sea. The butte must stand about a thousand
feet, I'd say, with these tiny trails so that only
one person can walk up at a time. They built their
store houses there and they had the most ingenious
system of catching water from the rain and storing
it in large cisterns and wells; store houses for
grain and everything else. And they were convinced
they could hold out for a period of at least five
years.
Well, it didn't work out that way. The Romans
attacked it with five Roman armies. Imagine sitting
out there right off the Dead Sea. Finally, the
Romans built a ramp up one side and assaulted Masada.
The Jews had a pledge among themselves that no one
would take them alive. And I think there were
three people found alive; a mother and two child
ren.
The whole concept, the kind of ardor and belief
that had to have gone to the idea of establishing
this place! I mean, where all the food had to be
brought in, to build these store houses, and to
be able to survive on top of this butte. These are
places that have to be seen; things like the Valley
of Gethsemane are fascinating. You take this trip
of the stations of the cross or whatever it's
called, you know; that's the usual thing.
Although on one occasion when we were visiting
the Arab section, I was walking with a man who used
to be with the NMU years ago and now he's with OSHA
(Office of Health and Safety Administration). He
turned to me and said, "You get the same feeling I
do?" These shutters were coming down; they have
these metal shutters on small shops - this was in
the Arab part of Jerusalem, tiny little streets
thousands of years old.
I said, "Yeah," and he said, "I think we better
walk a little faster." We did, and sure enough
about a half hour later a riot broke out, with all
kinds of rocks being thrown. I mean, the hostility
there was so deep; how they're going to overcome
it, I don't know, except by a real effort by the
Israelis to recognize that there is a Palestinian
people.
1098
Angry Discussions
LG: That's one thing the Israelis won't accept. I was
talking to Dave Jenkins a while back and asked him
to read this last copy of New Outlook. It had an
article which made the most sense, that the posi
tion being taken by Begin is that Sadat (President
Anwar Sadat of Egypt) must break with the rest of
the Arab world and say, "Look, the Palestinians
are on their own, you Arabs do as you please; we
hope you don't do too badly."
The Egyptians can't do that; impossible. For
Sadat to do that would result in such chaos in the
Arab world and within Egypt that things would begin
to fly apart. These are really the things they
are arguing about on this question of why can't the
peace treaty be completed.
It has nothing to do with the Sinai; it has to
do with whether or not they take the initial steps
toward some sort of genuine autonomy for the Pales
tinian people. Meanwhile, people like Begin and
others, particularly this arch-religious group,
I mean, can think of nothing but colonization of
the West Bank. They don't call it the West Bank;
they call it Judea and Samaria. Judea and Samaria
were part of the old Jewish kingdom -
Ward: On a religious basis?
LG: Strictly on a religious basis. They say they have
the original deed; it's right there in the Old
Testament. You look it up there; there's a copy
of the deed.
Well, our trip down there wound up in a peculiar
way. A day or so before the rest of. the group
lef t - I left later - Avram Yedidia's sister, who is
married to somebody in the government or an attorney
and lives in Tel Aviv, had a gathering at her house.
One of the visiting group
1099
LG-: There were some interesting people there, a couple
of people who had "been with the ambassadorial
staff. One of them, I know, had "been stationed in
South America for a number of years; a couple of
lawyers, all apparently fairly high up in the
government structure.
We got into a long discussion on these things;
I was very blunt. I said, "I don't see any answer
around here. You're asking my opinion about
things. You go back to your 1967 boundaries,
that's all." I said, further, that the 1967 war
was justified, but the continued occupation of
another country's land is imperialism, no matter
how you cut the goddam thing. "Oh, no - no",
they said, "how about our defense?"
I said, "De-militarize the goddam thing. How
about the Golan Heights, when they can shoot right
down at you? They have missies that go 100 miles;
they have cannon that will shoot five miles. The
only security is de-militarization; return the land
and de-militarize it. Why shouldn't the whole Sinai
be de-militarized? No harm in that. The Palesti
nian people do have to be recognized. You cannot
continue this policy of colonization." "Well, we
paid for the land," they said.
We got into some pretty sharp arguments. One of
them raised the question, "Would the United States
come to the defense of Israel?" I said, "You're
asking my opinion, I'll give it to you. I don't
think you could find a single American guy to do
it. There might be a few ardent Zionists, maybe,
who will pick up a rifle and go out and help; I
guess even people like myself, if they felt it was
such a dire danger, would do the same thing.
"But if you're talking about the Americans as a
group, going to war in support of Israel, I think
you're making a mistake. We've been burned in
Vietnam. We went through something in Korea where
we had no business either. You are not going to
get the American people involved. That's all there
is to it."
1100
LG: A few years later, I made a similar remark to the
Chinese when I was asked a similar question: Why
don't the Americans do something about the Russians
moving into places like the Horn of Africa, into
Ethopia and Eritrea? I told them the same thing;
right now you are not going to get the Americans
to go to war anywhere. They're just not interested.
They would vote "No".
Of course the whole thing in Israel ended up with
"You're not really a Jew! What's your name?"
"Goldblatt! I haven't changed my name." Finally,
one guy said, "Where did your parents come from?"
I said, "Lithuania," Some of the Ashkenazi have
always felt the Lithuanians Jews are a group
slightly apart; they challenge things. They also
produce a lot of rabbis, and they also will argue
with you all the time.
It wasn't a happy meeting. When they wanted to
know whether I was a Zionist, I said, "No, I'm not
I have never been a Zionist. If I were a Zionist
I'd be here living in Israel. It's just that simple
to me. I believe in Ben-Gurion's definition of
Zionism - if you were a Zionist, you lived in Israel
and you got there somehow. If you were not, you
were living in the diaspora. " I think you call it
the galut, being an outcast. So, I said, "I'm not
a Zionist; if anything, I'm an internationalist."
Ward: And you got out of there alive?
LG: Yes, as a matter of fact, Peter Mazey remarked to
me afterwards, "Well, I can't do anything but
admire your tenacity." I wouldn't back up a step.
They started going round and round on these ques
tions, but I had told the group in advance, "One
of the things that's going to happen, mark my words,
unless it's just having tea and biscuits it's
going to be put on a basis of 'You're either with
us or against us'." Sure enough, that's exactly
what happened.
* Another member of the visiting group,
1101
XXXVI THE LAST WAREHOUSE PROBLEM
(Resuming Interview 38: 12 December, 1978) ##
New Man Talks Tough
Ward: Okay, Lou, you wanted to talk about the '76
warehouse situation.
LG-: I'll try to pick up a couple of items we skipped
over - we bounced around the 1970s, taking
items issue by issue.
Ward: Yes, instead of chronologically.
LG-: We wound up with a good solid agreement in '73.
'76 was a different kettle of fish, partially,
I believe because of a change in personnel on
the part of the employers. J. Hart Clinton was
no longer the head of the San Francisco Distri
butors' Association; they changed the name of the
S. F. Distributors to the Industrial Employers
and Distributors Association or something like
that. Anyway, it's the same basic group, and
they began to branch out to handle other groups.
Ray Smarden had been an assistant to Clinton.
He considered himself an able guy. I think that
he figured that Clinton was not tough enough, and
early in those negotiations, he went into a spiel
about if there was a battle in the industry, he
was convinced that the employers could hang tough
for at least three months; that there would be
casualties, he would lose some members, but he was
sure he had a hard core of people that would stay
with him.
1102
LG: Well, I couldn't quite understand the nature of
his pitch, other than to try to set an atmosphere
that in effect said, "All right, if you insist on
going to a beef, you'll win some and we'll win
some, but things won't be the same." I think he
knew better than to make the flat statement that
he could hold his whole group together.
Word got back to me; I'm trying to remember from
whom. I think it came from some employer who
talked to one of the Teamsters, who got hold of
me and said, "'There's quite a rhubarb in the
Distributors. A lot of the employers are yelling
their heads off, saying 'What does Smarden mean,
talking about a three or four-month strike? If we
can work something out that makes sense, we'll
work it out.'" I don't think he had been in office
long enough to have that much confidence from his
own people.
Clinton on that score had been quite good. He
knew the value of covering his own bases all the
time, and he made no pretense as to what he was,
publisher of the San Mateo Times, a wealthy man
and an Irish Catholic. I'm sure that somewhere
in the back of his mind he had a real hatred for
the British. I doubt if he had much sympathy for
the IRA, but he had very little sympathy for scabs,
or the whole idea of traitors.
Ward: Not too difficult to work with, then?
LG: Very honest and forthright. One advantage you -
had with Clinton was that he had done his home
work before he got there. You didn't get into a
continuous situation where he'd say, "Well, I
have to think about this," or "We have to have
some time," causing another of these roundy-go-
roundies. He knew the importance of getting his
leeway, understanding his latitude and how far
he could go. And when he took a position, that
was it.
Ward: Smarden was different?
LG: Well, I guess there had been a palace revolt or
something inside the Distributors. I think
Smarden led it by getting some of the employers
1103
LG: to push. Clinton as to whether or not he would "be
full-time for the Distributors Association.
Clinton's primary work was as an attorney, "but
he was also the head of the Distributors Associa
tion; he figured that with a staff he didn't have
to be there full time.
I think he was the kind of a guy who was not
going to be bogged down full time, either. He
had other interests; I gathered that even to this
date he loves to write editorials for the San
Matep Times. I don't think they're going to fall
in the same class as some of Heywood Broun 1 s
writing, but ....
Ward: It was also his paper! (laughter)
LG: So, I personally liked Clinton. Now, maybe if he
were dealing in a direct employer-employee re
lationship, let us say, with workers at the San
Mateo Times, it might have been another story.
You never can tell, but insofar as his relation
ships with Warehouse were concerned, I'd say that
he was a pretty straight guy; his word, once
given, was good.
Ward: Yes, but what was the outcome of this?
LG: But this time around, Clinton was no longer in
the picture; he had been eased out. Smarden
decided he would strengthen the employer team.
On that score, I guess, he did think differently
than Clinton.
Now, I'm just speculating, because Clinton
went along with the job of joint negotiations;
but frankly, I don't think he trusted some of the
employer groups. They were creatures of conven
ience. Their primary job was to hold their
little leagues together, carve out a small empire,
get along with some of the unions by gentlemen's
understandings. No question, when it came to
the details of negotiations and so forth, some
of them had almost no interest in a lot of the
things which we would consider to be very impor
tant; and so would Clinton. So, I don't think
he had too much respect for some of the other
employer groups.
1104
LG: Smarden, on the other hand, decided that if he
could toughen up the other employer groups that
would "be of some help in terms of his own tar-
gaining situation. Well, while it might have "been
of some help to him, I think it was of more help
to us, "because some of these same employer groups,
even during periods of difficult negotiations in
the master warehouse contract, somehow would al
ways keep in touch with their corresponding
numbers in the union.
It was not too uncommon to bump into them
having lunch together, someplace in the middle
of negotiations. In the 1967 strike, we found
a whole group of them meeting up at the Town
House in the bar, led by Sam Beard, who was just
a complete character.
Ward: Well, what was the outcome in '76, then?
LG: In '76 there seemed to be almost absolute refusal
to meet any of the issues. They were the kind of
negotiations where you were bogged down from day
one.
Ward: Oh, Smarden wanted a strike, then?
LG: He talked that way, although, as I said, we got
word that there was serious doubt as to whether
his own people wanted it as badly as he wanted
it. Now, maybe Smarden figured, okay, here's
his chance to earn his stripes in one fell swoop.
That could very well have been, because when we
finally did get a proposal from them it was such
a picayune offer, so miniscule, that it was turned
down automatically.
A Short, Sweet Strike
LG: We took a strike vote with the Teamsters and it
was overwhelming for a joint strike. We had some
very big stewards' meetings; one at the Jack Tar
Hotel. It was the only place we could get. The
place was .jammed. The feeling was there that we
were going to get ourselves a good hunk of money.
1105
LG-: Money and pensions were "big issues. In health.
and welfare, we needed a lot of dough because
prices were escalating.
There was a three week strike; everything went
down and stayed down, Teamster warehouses as
well as ILWU warehouses. We came out of the
negotiations with a very good contract; 45 cents
each year, plus an additional cost of living
allowance that could go up 25 cents a year,
which it did.
Our anticipation on that score was correct.
It ran to about 70 cents a year. We picked up
improvements in pensions, although we did not get
the same amount of pensions backward and forward.
We got a certain increase for prospective pen
sioners, and half of that amount for those who
were already retired.
Ward: What happened to Smarden?
LG: He survived it; he's still there. Not an easy
man to deal with. He's recently been making
remarks to the effect that after all the warehouse
industry is changing a lot and some of the big
outfits he represents might feel that the Associa
tion is not the place for them.
Now, these may be incitements to guerilla war
fare. True, we are living in a different era;
there's no question in my mind that a series of
ballots conducted now would not be like the ones
in the thirties, where the question of the master
contract became almost an employer demand because
the leverage was on the union side, and so were
the mobility and the initiative. It might not
be quite as true today; this may be part of his
conditioning process, trying to lay the ground
work for new negotiations.
Ward: Anyway, so he had his little strike.
LG: We came out of it in good shape in '76 and those
were my last negotiations with Warehouse--
1106
XXXYII THAT DELEGATION TO CHINA
The First Inquiries
Ward: Okay, let's talk about the China delegation
problem.
LG: Sometime in 1971 or in early 1972, I was in New
York and by that time the People's Republic of
China had been admitted to the U. N. One of the
men who represented China at the U. N. was named
Tang Min Chao. Tang Min Chao, by the way, is an
old friend of a number of people from Berkeley.
He was in Berkeley at the time some of us were
there, around '30 and '31. I know he was a close
friend of Edith Jenkins, Hazel G-rossman. I had
met him a couple of times. He left Berkeley and
went to New York. He set up a small leftwing
China language newspaper.
Here was Tang back in the United States,
representing the People's Republic of China at the
U. N. So, I called him and asked if I could come
by to see him, reminded him who I was, and he
said, "Sure, just come on by at 11:30," or when
ever it was. I went by to see him and he said,
"We'll have lunch together." So, we went down
to the dining room; I gathered he had not been there
very long.
Ward: At the U.N.?
LG: At the U.N.; the maitre d' there is picked because
he must have a computer memory of everv single
delegate and where he's supposed to sit; the goddam
protocol.
1107
LG: This was an occasion, because here was Tang Min
Chao, you see. "Oh, yes, yes - we have your
table for you," and all this business. And Tang
was funny; he said, "Order anything you want,
there's really only one good thing about this
job." I said, "What's that?" "I don't have to
pay any taxes." (laughter)
So, I asked Tang whether or not a delegation
from the ILWU would be welcome in China. He said,
"Sure, but I'm not the person to handle it. It
doesn't go through my office. It goes through the
liaison office in Washington. My suggestion is
that you write to the All-China Federation of
Trade Unions proposing such a delegation, send a
copv to the liaison office, and send me a copy."
I'm sure he must have followed through with it.
Before long, we had an invitation from the
China People's Republic inviting us to send a
delegation of six or seven to visit China. During
that time there had been a lot of discussion in
the ILWU Executive Board. Harry kept making the
point that we had our overseas delegations.
These are rank and filers, and under our con
stitution they are sent through a separate fund
which cannot be used by any Executive Board
member or any official of the ILWU. In other
words, if an official of the ILWU goes overseas
the expense is paid out of the general treasury,
while the overseas fund can only be used for the
specific purpose for which it is earmarked.
The general feeling of the Executive Board
was that, inasmuch as we would probably be the
first trade union delegation going to the new
China, it ought to include at least a couple of
officers.
Ward: This was for the purposes of "face," if nothing
else?
LG: Yes, of giving the thing proper status. So, the
idea was that we would try to get two officers,
two members of the Executive Board and two rank
and filers; a mixed delegation.
1108
LG: Well, a lot of tilings happened in 1972 - '73. In
1972 we were invited. I think it was at a meeting
up in Vancouver, an Executive Board meeting, that
I made the announcement that I intended taking
Terry along, and paying her way myself. I didn't
expect the Chinese to pick up that tab. Harry
said, "Oh, that's a form of free loading." I said,
"I don't think so; I think that once in a while
it is a good idea. I'm sorry I haven't had a
chance to take her some other places."
Wives - A Strange Question
LG: For some reason, he was fit to "be tied about the
idea of Terry going along. Then, he said he was
not going to go, period, at which point one of
the board members suggested that Bill Chester go
along. Harry changed his mind and said, "Well,
I think I will go. And I think I'll add Nikki
(Bridges 'present wife) too,"
Next there was a proliferation of the delegation
with some additional wives; I think it got up to
thirteen. Harry suggested adding George Roth, an
M.D. who lives in Mill Valley, as a personal phy
sician. This struck me as another way of telling
a country that they couldn't take care of us if
anybody got sick.
Then, he wanted Kathy to go along, his daughter.
Then, he thought Ah Quon from Hawaii (wife of Bob
McElrath) who was born of Chinese parents. I
don't think she was born in China, but she might
like to visit the graves of her ancestors. So,
he kept piling it up. At one point he mentioned
taking Matt Connolly from the Apostleship of the
Sea along, because he wanted to go. He had been
to China at one time as a missionary. My feeling
was that he was loading it up to the point where
somebody would say, "Enough is enough."
Ward: Then somebody said, "Enough is enough"?
LG: Yes, as a matter of fact, I told George Roth that
and hurt his feelings very badly. I said, "George,
this is supposed to be a trade union delegation,
1109
LG: and whether you know it or not, I think you are
being used just to help load this thing down to
the point where somebody just throws up his hands
and says, 'Impossible. 111
Meanwhile, two other things happened which were
not very happy. One of our overseas delegations
was sent to Taiwan. Madame Chiang Kai Chek is no
fool. She is without any question the original
Dragon lady of the world. While our delegation
was there she had her photograph taken shaking
hands with them. This turns up in The Dis-patcher;
quickly there's a wire from the Chinese saying
that their official policy is that Taiwan is part
of China and they don't accept the idea of anybody
having similar relations between Taiwan and the
People's Republic of China.
We sent a long and detailed explanation to the
All-China Federation of Trade Unions that our
overseas delegations went everywhere. We didn't
necessarily approve the philosophy of any country
they went to; it was their job to simply observe
how people lived, their working conditions, and
so forth; and that under no circumstances did this
indicate political approval of Taiwan. Quite to
the contrary, we were opposed to the two-China
policy, and always had been. We were opposed to
what was going on in the way of militarv aid to
Taiwan; Taiwan was an internal problem for China
to solve.
They accepted that and the invitation was still
okay. But then, of course, towards the tail end
of 1972 I couldn't have done anything about it
anyway; I was in no shape to go. The invitation
was not taken up at that time.
Ward: That's right, you were in the hospital.
LG: In 1973, the issue came up in the most peculiar
way. The delegation was still an acceptable
thing to the union as a whole, but he brought it
up to the northern California caucus.
Ward : Harry?
1110
LG: Yes. You have caucuses of each area to place your
nominees for International Executive Board and
also to make your endorsement on the Internation
al officers. Harry said he wanted to make it
plain, he was not going to take Nikki on any China
delegation, and as a matter of fact she was
standing outside waiting for him and he was going
to tell her that. He "believed that was a form of
freeloading and shouldn't be done.
Well, at that point, Archie Brown - that's the
only time I realized he had any sense of humor,
really - gets up and says, "Harry, if the Chinese
are in that bad shape economically, I suggest we
pass the hat at the convention and give them a
couple of bucks."
Harry was so determined that it wasn't going
to work out that at another point when the
delegation was supposed to leave, we were at an
International Executive Board meeting and Harry
announced that there was a great crisis in Long
shore coming up. He said the emergency was of
such importance that there was no way of schedul
ing this trip.
Harry suggested a secret ballot vote be taken
that the visit of the delegation be postponed in
view of the fact that this crisis was looming in
Longshore - one that never did develop and around
which no caucus was ever held. Well, the secret
ballot resulted with the board voting with him.
Bob Peebles, one of our delegates from Canada, a
pretty blunt-spoken guy, says, "Heck, if there is
a crisis coming up in Longshore, you don't give
anybody a chance to vote. There's no need for it.
There's no question of what the hell I have to do. 1
Then Harry wrote a column for The Dispatcher
on China in which he quoted a HongSong watcher, a
New York Times reporter, who announced he had
information that the trade unions in China were
being reconstituted. Harry put it, "This is
great news."
Well, when the Chinese got that they flipped
their lid completely. This business of relying
on a Hong Kong watcher! Hong Kong watchers are
the source of 90 percent of the bullshit
1111
LG:
that comes into this country. That killed the
delegation; the Chinese cancelled the invitation.
In 1974 Harry went before the Executive Board
and said, "Let's withdraw our invitation," and one
of the guys made a motion to withdraw our request
for an invitation. That was rather silly, here
the invitation had "been cancelled, and now we
don't want to go.
Finally, The Trip To China
Ward: Well, this is as good a time as any to ask: you
and Terry finally did go to China?
LG: Yes.
Ward: But that was ....
LG: Yes, Terry and I finally did go to China - in 1978,
We went at the end of May and spent something over
three weeks there. The Chinese figure things out
for themselves, and I think they realize that I
had nothing to do with screwing up that delegation
and dumping it.
i
I wrote to them in late 1977, and told them my
wife and I would like to visit China and that I
would also be happy to pull together a trade union
delegation. I thought I could get together a very
good group of rank and filers to make the trip and
I'd like very much if they would invite us.
Well, we heard nothing and I wrote to several
people, including an old friend of mine in New
York who had just come back from China and who had
stayed at our house for a week when they got back;
Irving Kaplan and his wife. They had been there
for about five weeks as guests. He's a close
friend of Frank Coe. Prank Coe has been living
in China for a long time, and as a matter of fact,
one of his children was born there.
Then I also wrote to Tomitaro Kaneda, head of
the Japanese longshoremen - or was, but he has
been ill and lost part of his leg to diabetes -
1112
LG: and asked if he could give me a hand, too. I'd
say that between these people enough word got to
the Chinese that they were convinced that some of
these things that happened sure as hell could not
be attributed to me.
The net result was that they made no mention
of my suggestion for a delegation. A letter came
saying that "You and your wife are invited to
spend two or three weeks in China in May or June."
e decided to go at the end of May, hoping to avoid
the hot weather, which we did; we really had an
amazing three weeks in China.
(Editor's Note: The following account of the
trip to China is excerpted from a formal report
written by the Narrator and inserted at his
request. It does not appear on the tapes.)
As to where we wanted to go and who we wanted to
see and talk to, our requests in the main were
met. We went to many places any visitor would
want to see, such as the Great Wall, the Ming
Tombs, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace
of the last Empress, including the marble boat
she had built with the appropriation for the
Chinese Navy.
We saw a number of archeological spots such
as the Peking Man Caves, the digs at Sian and the
2000 year old, remarkably preserved old lady at
Changsha, and a fine dig and restoration of a
neolithic village which lived under a matriarchal
society. We understood their powerful historical
sense. They have a different time concept than
ours - a combination of persistence and patience
in what they set out to do. Very little of "I
want it done yesterday", or "What have you done
for me lately?"
We saw factories, schools, communes (the domi
nant agricultural structure), industrial exhibits,
rest and recreation areas in Hangchow, the docks
in Canton and Shanghai.
1113
No Inflation
Prices are rigidly controlled, and they are the
same throughout the country. There is no infla
tion - the standard of living is not high.
It is a hard working, very hard working society,
8 hours a day, 6 days a week, 7 holidays a year .
There are no private automobiles - they are
owned by the State, and assigned to various
agencies and institutions. The heavy reliance
is on mass transportation - railroads, busses
and bicycles. The bicycle traffic in the cities
is unbelievable. Mornings you hear the constant
honking of horns outside the hotel. There are
not that many cars, but they are honking to manage
their way through the thousands of bikes. I
couldn't help but think that when they manufac
tured a car, they built the horn first and assemb
led the rest of the car around it.
Safe Streets
There is no tipping. Cab drivers carry a meter
and insist on giving you exact change, together
with a receipt. We were told that drug traffic
was stamped out and that prostitution, once a
major industry, especially around the seaports,
is gone. The streets are safe - you can walk
them day or night, although the main problem of
moving around on your own is of course the
language.
Hotel doors are left open - we didn't bother
to carry around our passports or money. Drinking
does not seem to be a major routine.
The atmosphere in the schools was encouraging;
classes are not small - about 50-60. The teach
ers work hard, command good respect, and problems
of discipline, it is said, are infrequent. Gen
erally there is a quiet confidence among them,
and you get the feeling they will get the job
done. It's an old society, and does not shake
easily.
1114
Industry Has Far To Go
In industry you see everything from modern petrol-
chemical plants for gasoline refining, and the use
of the oil base for every kind of by-product, to
people pulling loaded carts by hand. That's when
you get the full impact of how far they have to
go. They have rapidly developing industries in
coal, iron, steel, oil, automobiles, textiles and
machine tools. There is still an enormous amount
of hand work and a large handicraft industry,
some of which,, such as the manufacture of porcelain,
has been partially mechanized.
The work on general cargo vessels was the
standard hand-handling. There are no containers,
although they had container terminals planned for
Canton and Shanghai, and the foreign lines will
probably keep pressing for them. There were bulk
operations for grain and ore - a number of them
quite modern. Some machines were in use in the
dock area although they were not utilized in the
ship's hold, or to the extent they could be in
truck discharge. The unit load or palletized
load does not seem to have been introduced. Long
shoremen are made up into gangs, other than dock
or terminal workers, and from all indications
work 8 men in the hold, 2 winch drivers, plus
hatchtenders and frontmen. They seem to be paid
somewhat better than many other industrial
workers .
In their economic structure they work under a
system of central planning where decisions are
made on a national level for the allocation of
capital investments to resources, industry, agri
culture, educational, cultural institutions and
so forth. Wages at the work level are divided by
labor grades of which there are generally eight,
ranging from 35 to 40 yuan a month to start, to
80-90 at the top, depending on age, experience
and skill (a yuan is worth somewhere between 65
and 70 cents, U.S.). In talks about wages, they
follow what they call a "low-wage" policy. This
must be a facet of rapid capital accumulation.
1115
Improving the standard of living is seen as the
country moving upward as a whole, so that while
improvement is slow, it is spread more evenly.
Target Date Is A. P. 2000
They have general economic goals, some with ter
mination dates in 10 years to 1985, and the main
target date the year 2000. By then they plan to
be a modern, industrialized country, developed by
highly improved agricultural methods, trained
scientists and technicians and strengthened nat
ional defenses. Again you feel their time sense.
One aspect of the trip that didn't work out was
my effort to see and talk to the leaders of the
All China Federation of Trade Unionists in Peking.
They had not functioned as an organization for
almost 12 years. A National Congress was planned
for October 1978, and the reason given for the
inability to arrange a session was that they were
busy preparing for the Congress.
Revolutionary Problems
On the provincial level we spent a lot of time
with trade unionists. Provincial trade union
congresses were being planned to be held prior to
the national meeting, so that policy, program and
personnel to be recommended at the national congress
were still being debated. But the question arises,
how is it that the All China Federation of Trade
Unions didn't function for a period of 12 years?
and to what extent did the same thing happen at
a provincial or local level and for what reasons?
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was
triggered by Mao Tse Tung in 1966, and although he
turned it on, apparently no one knew how to turn
it off. There was talk as early as 1969 that the
job of overhauling the work ethics, fighting bur
eaucracy and arrogance, revamping the social sys
tem and institutions and combatting tendencies
toward what they call bourgeois methods had been
1116
adequately debated; however, the upheaval didn't
stop but rather continued in many places through
1976, as in the case of the re constitution of the
All China Federation of Trade Unions, which they
planned to put together again later that year.
During this period there were major changes in
in the work-place. These were not uniform. For
example, in some provinces, such as Hunan or the
city of Shanghai, many of the unions within the
plants didn't function to all intents and purposes,
for a span of five to ten years. In most cases,
revolutionary committees took over on the plant
level, committees made up of workers, technicians
and the Communist party.
In the case of schools and universities, the
revolution took the form of putting ideological
loyalty and revolutionary understanding in top
priority, with education second. For instance it
took the symbolic form of a student turning in a
blank exam paper.
*
At the factory level it had the powerful pull
of egalitarianism and syndicalism. This of course
is a deep seated feeling among workers everywhere,
and not too different from what we ourselves are
familiar with, where large numbers of workers
feel that the top managerial structure, together
with their lieutenants, have themselves a soft
job, and don't know as much about the operation
as the workers.
In a number of places, both the unions and to
some extent the Communist party structure were
replaced by the revolutionary committees. In an
effort to find out more about what had gone on,
I decided to ask individuals with whom I talked
as to what happened to them during this period.
In some plants the leadership of unions went
back to the work bench. Anywhere from 5 to 10
years. In another plant, the director went back
to work for some 5 years, although they then
decided he was a fairly competent man and he
returned to his post. In another city - Canton,
for example - changes did not take this form in
unions, and the factory structure remained pretty
much intact. Now they are in the process of re-
gearing the various institutions, and in the main,
reverting to more traditional types of organization,
1117
As I stated above, the Great Proletarian
Revolution extended for a much longer period
than I had originally understood. It merged into
a struggle against what was considered to be a
bourgeois managerial line. It merged with a
political struggle that continued well into the
1970s, and which they refer to as a fight around
the "Gang of Four". There is no question that
the whole leadership were getting along in years.
Three of the great old-timers died in 1976 -
Chou Enlai, Chu Teh, and Mao Tse Tung. It could
be that the question of successorship had begun
to shape up.
"When I asked if this whole period of upheaval
was worthwhile, the answer was immediately, "Yes".
Chairman Mao had launched the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, yet if pressed on the issue-,
they will tell you the -country will be going
through a period of re-evaluation and review.
There was undoubtedly a lasting impact, and some
of the benefits will be better communications
between party people and workers, greater sensi
tivity to peoples' needs, and a keener awareness
of the dangers of bureaucracy or arrogance at the
top.
How could a country absorb this upheaval so
shortly after the liberation, and the taking of
power by the new government in 1949? After all,
shortly after liberation they were involved in
the Korean War, which went until 1953; after that
there were some 13 years of construction, to 1966 -
and then the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
got under way, and in some cases lasted as much
as 12 years. However, they took it in stride,
and are back building their society.
Role Of The Unions
It is my feeling that the role of the unions has
not been completely defined or worked out. Of
course, unions in a socialist country play a
different role from ours in this economic system.
When you question specific functions, they em
phasize the welfare of the individual worker,
1118
education undertakings, including classes and
political understanding - to some extent sports,
and a number of things we would ascribe to welfare.
Under their constitution, workers have the right
to strike. In matters of safety which can't be
disposed of quickly and where someone would be
endangered - such as faulty running gear on a
ship - they have the right to stop work.
Questions such as wages and other benefits that
would accrue from productivity in the workplace
are planned at the national level, although they
insist there is a good deal of debate, including
feeding the plans or ideas down below, and then
reviewing the issues constantly until there is
general agreement, so that the wage question as
such is not a matter of bargaining.
Perhaps the most encouraging word about the
unions was the statement that there will be a
period of re-evaluation of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution. I don't see how some of -
these developments can be lost in any way. Ob
viously the impact on individuals who went back
to the work bench for a number of years will not
be readily forgotten. On that score it seems to
me the re constitution of the unions by some re
tooling might very well be called for.
Use Of Incentives
Another thing that became evident is that there
is a lot of discussion and even varied planning
on the institution of incentives* or the way it's
put, "moral encouragement and material rewards."
For example, in Canton we had a long discussion
on incentives with the trade unionists, including
those in the harbor. They plan to put them into
effect where the range could be anywhere from 70
yuan a month to 120. The present average wage
they say is around 80. As in most countries I
visited, longshoremen are somewhat higher paid
on the whole than other workers. Under the
incentive plan, if effectuated, a worker might
get as much as 10 yuan less than the previous
1119
average under some circumstances. On the other
hand 9 through incentives he could earn as much as
an additional 50 percent over the base - 120 yuan
a month.
I mentioned some of the rather well known pit
falls in incentives, namely the tendency of longshore
gangs to segregate by young men and older men,
conflicts Between workers on the job, and almost
continuous dickering on incentives - very common
in England and France - encouragement of speedup
and taking shortcuts even when they are hazard
ous. They said they were aware of these problems,
but thought they could be handled.
I asked what supervision was getting, such as
walking bosses - brigade leaders - and they said
around 80 yuan a month. When asked what would
happen to them if the workers in the brigade were
making the maximum, far in excess of the brigade
leaders, they said they would have to "cross that
bridge when they got to it" or take it up at the
end of the year.
In the port of Shanghai they obviously are
making plans to introduce incentives with a slight
ly different approach. In that case they said
the average wage was around 70 a month. Under the
incentive plan they have in mind the worker would
not get less than his base nor would he have this
wide range of payments which could go up to 50
percent of base, as in Canton. In Shanghai they
thought the maximum incentive bonus would be
around 12 yuan a month. It could be they intend
to try out both plans and see which one works
better.
In Shanghai we spent a long time talking about
the use of forklifts around the docks, and I
promised them some material from the west coast
on fork lift utilization in dock operations, ware
houses and the holds of ships, as well as at
manufacturing plants for the loading of trucks.
This seems comparatively simple, readily intro
duced, and which can be standardized throughout.
1120
No Grievance Procedure
In the area of grievances I was quite stumped in
my efforts to find out what would be done about
grievances on the job, such as classification,
rate of production, etc. The best I could deter
mine was that these could be resolved with the
director of the plant. There was no mention of
any formal or regular grievance procedure. It
could be that in the light of recent years, com
munications are such that they can be taken in
stride. It does strike me, however, that over
any period of time the failure to have grievance
machinery could well build up a backlog of serious
dissent.
I came away with the strong feeling that our
union policies over the years toward China have
been sound and worth pursuing; 900 million people
aren't going to disappear or go away. China is
a proud country, standing on its own feet. In
keeping with ILWU convention policies on the
People's Republic of China, everything that can
be done to bring about normalization of relations
- recognizing also their basic sovereignty over
the province of Taiwan and the promotion of trade
and friendship - is sound, and should be pursued.
This was a fascinating trip. Naturally I
appreciate the hospitality and consideration ex
tended to my wife and me. It was a great oppor
tunity to see many new things and to learn something
about another part of the world.
(End Of Insert)
Ward: Does that wind up the China situation for the
moment , then?
LG: Well, while Terry and I were in China we were
asked by one of the people who was taking us around,
a Comrade Pu, whether I could pull together a
small leadership delegation from the American
trade union movement; a broad group, if possible,
and not a very large group, to visit China.
1121
LG-: I said I would try to do so. Since I've been
"back that is one of the things I've spent some
time on and at the present moment there is a
group which is prepared to go. I'm making sure
that it goes at the right time, and whether that
turns out to be feasible, I don't know.
Ward: Tou want to tell who?
LG: Yes, the group that would go would be William
Winpisinger, the national president of the Mach
inists Union, a very outspoken man; I think he's
one of the real bright lights on the labor
horizon; or Eugene Glover, their national secretary-
treasurer; Stan Jensen, vice-president of the
Machinists on the West Coast, and a good man; Tim
Twomey, vice-president of the Service Employees
International Union or Keith Johnson, president
of the IWA (international Woodworkers of America);
Jim McLaughlin, Vice-President of the Retail
Clerks Union, which is now merging with the
Butchers; and Tony Ramos, who is head of the
State Council of Carpenters. This group has
agreed to go if we can get the date set for May
18. So, I have written the All-China Federation
of Trade Unions for its reply.
1122
XXXVIII THE AGE LIMIT PLOY
(Interview 39: 19 December 1978)
The 65-Year Rule
Ward: Lou, we were going to talk about the 65 age limit
proposition.
LG: That's right. I have already told you about the
attempt in 1971 to impose a 63-year age limita
tion which could be interpreted by the convention
in only one way; a proposition which died lousy.
Then, in Hawaii, Local 142 at one of their
earlier conventions had adopted a 65-year rule,
namely if a person was under 65, he could run
for one more term, even though it extended beyond
the age 65, but then he could no longer run for
office after that. The Hawaii delegation came
into the 1975 convention in Canada with this
proposition and asked the individual officers
how they felt about it.
There was a good deal of inner controversy,
particularly in Warehouse. Warehouse people -
Curt McClain was the most outspoken - were
opposed to any kind of 65 year rule, feeling that
it was a phoney and would do no good in the long
pull. If somebody was equipped to do a job, they
ought to be doing that job and should be there
even if they were 65.
I understood what they were saying: you don't
measure those things by just chronological age.
When it came my turn to respond to the question
1123
LG: raised by the guys from Hawaii, I told them I
favored the 65 year rule; there had to "be times
for changes of leadership, when new blood moved
into the union and into leadership; that the
65 year rule to my mind made some sense and was
entirely different from the manner it had been
posed in 1971; I would go along with it.
Notwithstanding what I had to say, some still
voted against it. But it carried, just by voice
vote. The 65 year rule was adopted. The conven
tion was somewhere around April or May, and my
birthdate is in June. The motion was adopted
that insofar as the present officers were
concerned, they could run for one more term. And
of course this would apply to Harry and myself.
Ward: And what about the vice-presidents? Did this
apply?
LG: Right, but in the cases of George Martin and Bill
Chester, they were not under the gun. The in
teresting developments that occurred were around
the 1977 convention, because prior to that
convention a lot of things had happened, particul
arly the sugar bonus beef. This had become a
difficult and open dispute between Harry and my
self, one which he wouldn't let go of, no matter
how overwhelming the facts which showed that his
position had been wrong. If we had followed it
we would have made a major mistake.
I guess some of these discussions became more
than just nettlesome to some of the Hawaii guys.
They thought they were being booted around by
this kind of a controversy. They decided they had
done the right thing, and after all they did have
local autonomy like everybody else. This business
of somebody constantly chewing at them after they
had made their decision, after they had gone
through all the democratic procedure, all this
stuff was in complete violation of the things
that we ourselves had told them.
In some of the crazy machinations when Harry
made the rounds of some of the plantations in
1974, before he decided to oppose the 1974 strike
settlement, he had a strong personal friendship
with one individual on a single large plantation
1124
LG: on Maui, Vierra, the self-appointed leader of
the rank and file. Harry, apparently, decided
to invite Vierra to come to San Francisco when
the sugar caucus met in 1976; and he did so with
out consulting the local leadership or the
committee.
That really got under the skin of the Hawaii
guys. Here were the good, solid, loyal guys who
had worked as a disciplined group through the
negotiations and had stood up on all the issues.
They are the ones who stay in Hawaii, and the guy
who is given a trip to San Francisco is the man
who raises the most hell. You see, the squeaky
wheel gets the grease.
Comments were coming "back to me; a guy would
say, "Christ, any time you want a trip to San
Francisco, all we have to do is raise a little
hell. Just take a negative position for a while
and then be invited to San Francisco to have our
minds changed." These remarks were not "being
said in good humor. The whole thing had a bad
turn to it.
As a matter of fact, later on in those nego
tiations Vierra was giving all kinds of examples
that there had been incursions on our work by
the plantation sub-contracting out certain small
jobs. He made the thing sound as though it was
a genuine grievance. e finally said, "Look,
before we settle, we're not going to let these
things go away; they are important; we'll do this
with on-the-spot committees."
The first place the committee went was to the
plantation where Vierra worked, and when it came
to giving specific examples, he fell flat on his
face. They were mostly things from the top of
his head, things so miniscule that no one could
put a finger on them.
Finally, a lot of things were going on at the
same time. Prior to the 1977 convention -
although some of this stuff occurred after the
'77 convention - like the strike - I got a call
from Hawaii from Newton Miyagi and Carl Demaso -
Demaso is the president of the local and Miyagi
is the secretary - saying that they had changed
their minds.
1125
LG: They thought the ruling on age 65 ought to "be
changed; that perhaps a mistake had been made,
and it ought to be changed for at least another
term. What did I think about it? I wasn't sure
myself whether this was a Tinker-to-Evers-to-
Chance ....
Ward: Oh, that's the old baseball play -
LG: That's right; whether Harry had changed his mind
about retirement and had gone to Local 142. But
that was not terribly important to me - I thought
that the 65-year rule should be enforced, not
because the rule per se was such a good thing,
but if the situation continued in the Interna
tional our union could only go down hill.
Harry's determination to wash the union out,
either by merger with the ILA or in some fashion
bringing it back into the APofL, was so blatant,
one which he kept hammering away at constantly.
He became more and more outspoken that the union
had no place to go. Frankly, I'd really had it in
terms of just plain fatigue; fighting the employ
ers, the government, other enemies of the ILWU;
that in itself is ....
, /
Ward: Quite a chore?
LG: Is a chore. But not nearly as tough a chore as
fighting under circumstances where somebody is
constantly needling you or stepping on your heels,
breathing down your neck, or putting out a foot
now and then to see if he can trip you up. The
combination was a bit more than I wanted.
I could have gone another four years, but I
didn't feel I really had the same amount of steam.
How much the heart surgery took out of me, I don't
know. Psychologically it does take out a lot, no
question about that. I don't think I was the
ideal patient when it came to taking the right
amount of time off or following a routine of
exercises.
So I asked the Hawaii guys, "Well, what does
Harry have to say about this?" "Harry says he's
waiting for your answer; that the local has the
1126
LG: right to do whatever it pleases." So, I said,
"Well,, I '11 think about it. I'll write you a
letter instead of talking on the phone." So, I
thought about it for a few days, and decided the
wisest thing to do was to send . . .
Ward: Send a letter to Hawaii - not to Harry?
G-oldblatt Calls The Turn
LG-: To Hawaii - right. I wrote them a letter saying
that as any autonomous local in the ILWU, it
had the right to change its mind. However, there
was all the difference in the world "between chang
ing one's mind and arbitrarily coming in at the
next convention and without giving any reason
seeking to reverse the 65-year rule, because they
have a lot of votes.
There's no question Hawaii had the votes to
carry it, for as far as Warehouse was concerned,
the chances were a good majority would go along.
I thought that the obligation which really rested
on them was they they allow an opportunity for
other locals to review the thing with them on a
completely friendly basis.
My suggestion was that they ask for the con
vening of an enlarged executive board meeting,
not an uncommon thing in our union. We've had
enlarged executive board meetings periodically,
either on crisis situations or presidential
nominations.
What happens is that the executive board and
all the major locals , and the smaller locals who
can afford it, are invited to come to the meeting.
Nothing done at the enlarged executive board
meeting is final or binding - it is merely a
recommendation back to the locals.
I said, "An enlarged executive board meeting
will give the other locals a chance to ask
questions as to why you changed your mind, why
you think there ought to be a switch in this
policy. When it is all over with you can thank
1127
LG: them all for listening, but you've changed your
mind, and you're going to go ahead and try to
change the rule. No harm done."
I said that then the feeling wDuld be that
they weren't being yanked around; it would be
within the democratic structure of the ILWU as
we have always known it. Harry wrote a brief
note to them simply saying, "You have the right
to do as you please." Well, anyway, they decided
they did not want an enlarged executive board
meeting because at such a meeting other things
were bound to come out.
Ward: Like what?
LG: Like the whole thing that happened on sugar, and
so forth. Sugar finally emerged at the convention
anyway, through Harry dissenting from one section
of the officers' report. But the enlarged execu
tive board meeting was never asked by Local 142.
Ward: Well, if that change had been made, that would
have meant that Harry and you could have con
tinued on in more or less whatever fashion you
wanted?
LG: Yes, that's right.
Ward: But you thought this would be disruptive to the
uni on?
LG: I didn't see anything to be gained by it, really.
It wasn't a business of sacrificing myself on
the cross. I didn't feel I had the strength and
energy that ought to go into the job. I thought
the combination of circumstances were more than
was warranted. I'm a hard worker and I believe
in people working hard, particularly union offi
cials; coasting the job is something I have
nothing but contempt for.
Ward: Well, I've heard it said by Warehouse guys that
they have felt for a long time that whatever
you said, Harry vetoed; and whatever Harry said,
you vetoed, and that the International had been
stuck in the middle.
1128
LG: It didn't work out that way, really. There were
sharp differences, of course, but you couldn't
say he exercised a veto power in the true sense
of the word.
He did on many issues, yes. When it came to
things like getting mixed up in the youth move
ment, then of course he could exercise consider
able veto power, because a great deal depends on
what the individual issues are going to be. A
lot of individuals might do something, might
adopt resolutions, but as to how much steam the
union leaders put into the thing is another
story,
I can cite, for example, the Vietnam Day demon
strations - the time that Harry was invited to
speak at the demonstration which wound up at
Kezar. He decided he didn't want to talk there;
we finally got Chili, who spoke there instead.
We were invited to have a speaker at the huge
parade that wound up at the Polo Grounds, a very
big and effective demonstration. There was a
good-sized turnout from the ILWU and they invited
Harry to speak, and again he refused. Later on,
he justified his action on the grounds that one
black speaker had made some pretty wild statements
about Nixon.
So, in other words, that becomes a veto form
if you want to put it that way, but when it came
to basic union policy, there was no veto. True,
when I was participating in the Council for
Health Plan Alternatives and the question came
along of making some small contribution - I think
it was $3,600 a year for maintenance; we didn't
get much dough from the unions to keep the thing
going - Harry would speak out against it.
But it invariably carried in our board over
Harry's opposition. So, you can't really say
it was a veto thing. When it came to Warehouse
negotiations there was no question as to my role;
I had responsibility for Local 6, and also I went
down to Los Angeles to help them in the Warehouse
negotiations with things like the Wholesale Drug
Company and Thrifty negotiations. When it came
to my relations with Hawaii, there definitely was
no veto power.
1129
Ward: You mean Harry had no veto power there?
LG-: No. Harry had influence with the guys. After
all, nobody would forget that not only was there
support for Harry when he was convicted in the
1950 trial, there was a shutdown in Hawaii.
Everything was shut down in protest. They don't
forget things like that, and they don't forget
the kind of support they got from the west coast
longshoremen. There was a close, really warm
fraternal relationship between the west coast and
Hawaii .
So you can't say that he had no friends there.
But when it came to basic policy over the years,
I'd say the guys listened primarily to Jack Hall.
Without any question he was the sort of indispen-
sible participant in the whole thing.
In negotiations and a lot of the tactical
questions involved, some of the theoretical
problems as to where we were going, then in all
cases I would be consulted either by phone or by
mail, and I would take a trip down there. But I
wouldn't call that a veto power, any more than I
had veto power in Longshore negotiations.
Ward: But you had influence?
LG-: That's right, I would attend and I would sometimes
be in opposition to Harry, like take the case of
the containers, where I felt all of our attention
was in the wrong direction, because fundamentally,
it was the employers who decided which way the
work was done. Of course in some areas there were
some very serious clashes, particularly on what I
thought was a complete washout on the attempt to
get some unity with the ILA.
Ward: Well, to summarize, it seems to me that by point
ing out some of the difficulties involved in
Hawaii's attempt to change the 65-year rule, you
and Harry were bowing out in the 1977 convention.
LG: Yes, I called the turn.
Ward: Well, I guess there isn't much more to say on
that phase of leadership conflicts.
1130
LG: Yes, I guess we have pretty well covered that.
The Office Boss
Ward: Now, insofar as your role as an employer is
concerned, I've heard staff members say that
they liked you personally, but you were a son-
of-a-bitch to work for.
LG: I don't know what they meant about "son-of-a-
bitch to work for," or an 's.o.b.,' when it came
to labor negotiations or a stickler on getting
the job done. That all depends on ....
Ward: Well, one who said that was Virginia Woods. I
wonder if the brown rice situation in Hawaii had
anything to do with her opinion?
LG: No, I think I told her the whole story; she might
have gotten a little bit upset about it. It was
an interesting sidelight, and fundamentally I
thought Virginia was right. As a matter of fact,
I thought brown rice was a better food than white.
That worked out all right. I don't think there
was anything bad.
As a matter of fact, Virginia was very easy
to work with - very competent and very hard
working. And she was with us when it just seemed
to be one crisis after another, during the forma
tive days of the State CIO.
Ward: Virginia could have made that remark, not so much
about you as about the pressures of the office.
LG: Yes, that could be true; the pressures of the
office were enormous. I don't think we even
thought in terms of overtime pay. The whole
attitude in terms of what you were paid and what
hours you worked was quite different than today.
Ward: There was a cause involved, too?
LG: There was a big cause involved, a tremendous
driving movement; nobody was watching the clock.
You did the work that had to be done, that's all.
We didn't have a big staff, you see.
1131
Ward: Did you run into the problem of the working woman
who has to go home and cook dinner or something,
and the boss comes in at quarter to five with two
hours worth of dictation?
LG: I had a tendency to do that; on that score I wasn't
a very good employer because it was quite common
for me to start trying to clean up my desk by
dictating a lot of letters. The daytime is taken
up with telephone calls, meetings and what have
you. So, you do have a tendency to let those
things drag, and you do take advantage of the
office staff, probably. Where I got the reputa
tion as a difficult and impossible employer was
in negotiations with the Office Workers Union.
Ward: I was going to ask you about that.
LG-: The office workers decided to organize, which is
okay with us, of course. I thought they should
belong to the ILWU, but they didn't want to; it
would be a company union. And at one time, I
think they tried to join Local 3 of the Office
Workers Union and I don't think Local 3 wanted
them. Local 3 - Phyllis Mitchell - that's a sort
of tight little outfit.
Ward: Yes, she was a pretty anti-liberal, anti-left?
LG: Yes. They went into the Oakland local, Local 29,
and George Kinnock was the head of this local.
The greatest objective they had in the world was
to see how good a contract they could negotiate
with the ILWU.
Ward: They figured the union would be a soft touch, of
course.
LG: I was very cold on the thing and I guess what
used to drive them up the wall, partially because
I was up the waUrl myself and I was going to make
sure they got there too. I said, "I refuse to
play the role of the employer, because I'm not."
At that time they had joint negotiations; they
represented the office workers in the International
office, in Local 6, Local 10, and Local 34. I
said, "It's true that I sign the paychecks, but
1132
LG: I'm not an employer. I am the custodian of the
membership's money; that's your employer. I'm
not going to "be put in the same spot as an
employer. "
Ward: You didn't profit from their employment?
LG-: Correct. There's not going to be a direct re
lationship between v/ages and the International
officers. I said, the question of the officers'
salaries is -determined by the convention. If the
union has no dough, we'll have to continue pay
ing the office workers even though we cut off
the officers.
When it comes to hiring people, our attitude
is that we have to pay the going rate. When we
hire a newspaperman like Morris Watson we have
to pay him the rate that is called for the job.
Ward: They wanted more than the going rate; wasn't that
part of the problem?
LG: Well, the technique on their part was that (a)
because we were a union, we ought to pay more;
(b) if we paid more it would set a good example
for other workers to join. I replied that they
should give us the going rate of the Bank of
America, v/hich we knew they were trying to organ
ize, or give us the going rate down at Metropoli
tan, which they tried to organize, and we would
compare these.
No - no; they weren't interested in that.
They claimed that other union offices were paying
more. Whether this is true or not, I don't know.
I felt our union tried to pay above what the
general rate of office employees and the so-called
union rate; also working conditions of our general
structure ought to be better, and they were.
When it came to the question of benefits, vac
ations, sick leave and accumulation of sick leave,
things of that sort, there I thought we ought to
pay more. But this was never quite enough; they
had to win something. Finally I said, "Look, if
you bargain on that basis there's nothing much to
bargain. To bargain in a case like that, you walk
in to the employer and say, 'I'm not going to
1133
LG: spend any time here telling you; we're just
tough enough to get it.' If you are you can walk
out and keep things shut down."
Ward: There was some strike talk at one time, wasn't
there?
LG: Yes, there was some strike talk, and a strike
that was over some crazy mix-up that had taken
place somewhere else, but then it spread to the
entire outfit. And during the strike, our posi
tion was very simple. e intended to continue
our work as officers, didn't intend to replace
any of them with strikebreakers, or anything like
that.
We would do our own work, plug in the telephone
and take the messages. If we can't type a letter,
we'll just handle it over the phone. And that is
the way it was. As a matter of fact, some of the
guys were bitter because they had struck. The
office workers felt that their weapon of settling
a strike was that the uni'on could never stand
that kind of publicity; the ILWU, this great
progressive union, being struck. In some ways,
it really did get under my skin, pretty bad.
Ward: How about little things like day to day . . . .?
LG: When it came to day to day work, I don't believe
in strong supervision; I believe in good workers.
Once I felt we had a competent worker, I never
saw any need for close supervision. Somebody
like Martha Amyes, a very competent office
manager; the amount of supervision she had from
me you could put in your eye; as a matter of fact,
there 'was too damn little, if anything.
I would get together with her maybe a few
hours at the time the financial report had to be
made to the executive board, or when we had to
put together the financial report for the
convention; or when the question arose as to
whether or not we needed per capita increases.
Other than that she was pretty much in charge of
the office, handled things her own way.
1134
LG-: I did think people ought to report on time.
Every once in a while I'd say, "Put up a sign
up sheet;" "but most of the time, I didn't bother
to have the sign-up sheets around. 'When it came
to people taking time off, sick leave can "be taken
if one of the children is ill or the husband is
home ill and there is no one else to take care
of him. On that score I don't see where we had
any beefs.
The work week was a 35 hour work week; they
thought it ought to be less. And I said, "Look,
you can have less than that when the prevailing
work week in San Francisco gets to 35 hours a
week. "
Ward: Yes, I remember that - I don't remember what I
was doing - I was in 150 Golden Gate one morning
before nine o'clock. I was coming down the
stairs and you were coming up the stairs exactly
on the nose at 9 o'clock, and noticing that there
were no office workers around. You were checking
up on them.
LG: Well, I thought the office should be opened at
nine o'clock. For a long time we conducted a
schedule which was 9:00 a.m. to 5:30. Officers
didn't necessarily come in at 9:00, depending on
late meetings. Generally, we worked until 5:30,
sometimes until 6:00. I wanted the switchboard
open from 9:00 to 5:30 because you invariably got
calls after 5:00.
There were certain things about the office
which I insisted upon, and on some scores I got
into some rather crazy situations at the office.
'There was this whole big battle for equal rights,
as though the IIWU needed a special lesson in
that. One of the women in the office, Ernestine
Gatewoodr worked in the mailing room, She was a
clerk, filing, mailing, mimeographing; she
decided she wanted to be a secretary.
There was an opening for secretary and she
applied for it. I said, "Well, could she take
shorthand?" Yes, she could take shorthand. Her
word was not enough for me; I decided to give her
a test. I didn't talk at my usual rate of speed,
which is pretty fast, but I cut it down to a very-
moderate rate of speed, something like 60 words a
minute.
1135
LG: I came down on a Saturday morning and gave her
the test, so that there would not "be any pressure
of the office around. I had her type it up; hell,
she could take shorthand about as well as I could.
So, I said, "I'm sorry, but the job isn't yours,
that's all."
Christ, she carried this thing into the party
and all kinds of places. Let me tell you one of
the hilarious sidelights of the situation. She
later turned up before the un-American Activities
Committee in San Diego; that was where she came
from.
Ward: Was she black?
LG: Yes, black, and she talked about this thing and
that person. They asked her about the ILWU and
was I a Communist? And she said, "Hell, no, he
won't take orders from anybody - he's impossible!"
(laughter) All she could remember was that she
never got the goddam job. So things like that
do occur - situations where people would sort of
rock along on the job. We had some rather nice
people work for us.
Ward: We were talking about Martha and people not com
ing to work on time - things like that.
LG: You couldnJt say that about Martha - Martha was
always very prompt. But I think we were always
very lucky when I look back over the years; we
had people like Virginia Woods, Florence Atkinson,
Gladys Hare, Nellie Walsh.
Ward: Nellie was there a long, long time.
LG: Yes; she was out for a while when she was raising
some kids, and then she came back; even people
like Jean Gundlach. We had a very good staff,
very dedicated, in the main.
Ward: I'm curious about Ella Hutch (a member of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors). How do they
work that? Does she work part-time?
LG: She v/orks part-time, yes.
1136
Ward: She became a public figure while you were still
active in the union.
LG-: Yes, although there was a bit of a run-in with
Ella Hutch. She ran for BART (Bay Area Rapid
Transit) board of directors and got elected.
There was no love lost between her and Bill
Chester. Bill Chester had been appointed to
BART, but he decided not to run. Hutch did run
and she got elected.
Ward: I heard that he made it difficult for Ella to
get time off to attend BART meetings; and that
he established some sort of a rule which would
keep her from attending.
LG: If she wanted to attend a BART meeting, that was
no great problem. But there was a caucus in
town, and she said something about having a BART
meeting. I said, "Well, you'll have to forget
it today because the caucus is meeting and you
never know when they might want a resolution
mimeographed at once." The customary thing is,
a guy gets up and makes a motion and then some
one says, l 'I don't want to vote on it until I see
it in writing. 11 Then we had to send it over and
get the thing mimeographed, get copies made.
Next thing I know I'm leaving for lunch and
here's some reporter from KQED (the local public
television station) asking me "What about Ella
Hutch?", and I said, "What about Ella Hutch?" He
said, "Well, you're opposed to her serving on
BART," and I said, "I don't know what you're talk
ing about. I have a caucus on - forget it." And
later on, here's a picture of Ella before the
building making a long speech that her work had
been done, and so forth and so on.
I caught Ella that afternoon; I figured some
thing fishy was going on. I said, "Look, Ella,
the family problems we have, we settle them here.
When you start saying that you had all your work
done to go to a BART meeting . . . ." As far as
I was concerned her ILWU job came first. If her
BART job came first, let her take a full-time
job with BART. I never get that overwhelmed by .
1137
Ward: What did Ella do? What was her function? She
was on the switchboard a good deal of the time,
wasn't she?
LG: She was on the switchboard part of the time and
she also ran the mimeograph room. And she was a
competent person when it came to running the
mimeograph room and doing jobs of that sort.
Ward: She was not a secretary?
LG: No* Harry made a big to-do about the thing. He
wanted the phone yanked out of her office, which
he said she was using on private calls, and he
did not want her on the switchboard any more,
even though it was a switchboard where nobody
could listen in on all kinds of things. I just
set my heels and announced I wasn't going to join
in anything of that sort; I wasn't going to let
this thing proliferate into a bigger beef than it
was.
That was a cheap hit, no question about that;
this crappy business of having some guy from KQED
with the empty chair, you know; the horse with
the empty saddle - chicken-shit stuff. So, it
didn't mean all that much. You know, you can so
on and on about office workers. Right now they're
plotting the revolution down at the union. I wish
they would fight the revolution some place ....
ard: And organize the Bank of America?
LG: Right.
1138
XXXIX THE FOND FAREW
The Dinner For Harry
Ward: Okay, let's talk about the farewell dinners. I
remember attending - as a guest of the (ILWU) law
firm, which provided the tickets for my wife and
myself at $50 a crack - Harry's banquet, and I
remember seeing you sitting up there like you had
been frozen solid in a seated position at the
speaker's table.
LG: Yes, as a matter of fact, I was sitting next to
Monsignor Connolly of the Apostleship of the Sea,
and Dick G-ladstein was seated on the other side.
My feelings about the dinner were that Harry
was entitled to it in many ways, but it was a
funny way of getting a lot of people, including
the city itself, to apologize for a lot of previous
injustices, a lot of name-calling, a lot of red
baiting and everything else. It was not a dinner
that I thought really was a working class dinner;
what surprised me most was when I saw this program
that was put out.
Ward: I think everybody blushed at that thing.
LG: That thing was just plain embarrassing.
Ward: Greetings from Joe Bananas (nickname for an
alleged Mafia member) and ....
LG: Over the years we've known all about these prog
rams. ...
1139
Ward: The shipowners, this firm and that firm.
LG: And they are the kind of things where some of the
PR (public relations) guys in town can make a
buck on Labor Day. I don't know if you recall the
periodic special Labor Day editions that we used
to have in every newspaper, and particularly in
the county labor journals, where these guys would
go out and sell ads. How much they took off the
top I don't know.
Ward: I gather that the people who organized the ban
quet on Harry's behalf made some arrangement for
the professionals to ....
LG: There was some professional outfit; I think it
was from Nevada. I mean, this was just one of
those typical shake-down programs; all the ship
owners here and there.
Ward: The shipowners and some firm owned by Joe Bonnano,
who is a racketeer.
LG: Well, I didn't even look at the thing that close
ly. I guess what bothered me the most was the
tone of the whole thing. This was not a labor
dinner in any sense of the word. People like
Helen Bentley (of the Federal Maritime Commission).
When she started talking I remember turning to
Father Connolly and saying, "My god, she should
have come in on a broomstick!" And he said, "Yes,
it would have been more appropriate." The whole
tenor pf her remarks included some of them in
very bad taste, about how Harry discussed his
personal problems about his children.
And then the politicians, the big wheels. I'm
trying to recall whether he had anybody from the
ranks, or any of the old-timers. Chester was
chairing the banquet. Jimmy Herman talked, yes . .
Ward: Jerry Bulcke was there - he was the only '34 guy.
LG: Yes, Jerry was there but he didn't say anything.
I don't know if Frank Hendricks was there; I
think he was. I thought the saddest part was
when Harry, for some reason or other, started
asking for Henry Schmidt to stand up. Henry was
not liiere. Joe Murphy, who is an old friend of
ours; he wasn't there.
1140
LG: And then the windup of the thing was like a
Fellini movie, with somebody wheeling in this
automobile and honking the horn on the goddam
thing; all the people from Ed Flynn of the
employers to others, presenting resolutions of
appreciation.
Ward: Some of those ads from the shipowners saying,
"Thank you, Harry" really split me.
LG: I don't know; I just walked out of there and I
shook hands with Harry and I said, "Well, you
wanted the dinner," and he had the most quizzical
look on his face. I think he knew the whole
thing laid an egg.
Ward: Well, financially, quite a lot of people were
there; one hell of a crowd.
LG: No question about it, one hell of a crowd.
Ward: But not really many real labor people.
LG: No. The way they got the labor people was that
they sold a lot of the tickets and said, "Look,
if you're not using the tickets, just send some
of them back, as long as we get the price for
them." Then they gave them to some of the guys
like the pensioners. I saw a number of the
pensioners there.
Ward: It's somewhat similar to the way I got there.
LG: To tell you the truth I didn't buy a ticket;
there were that many floating around. It was a
sad occasion in some ways-
Ward: Harry's speech; I paid closer attention to Harry
than to the other speakers. He said, "People say
I've changed - I learned something." Then he
gave credit for his learning to Paul St. Sure,
who was his alma mater, so to speak; that was
interesting.
LG: A logical outcome. Maybe that was an appropriate
dinner. I've always felt there's only one guy
for whom there ever should have been a labor
dinner, but never was; that was Jimmy Higgins.
1141
Ward: Well, anyway, also I noticed that aside from the
fact that Nikki Bridges sat at the speakers'
table, there was no mention made of family.
LG-: I think he did make some mention of the family.
The Affair For Lou
Ward: Well, some time later there was this affair for
you at the Irish Hall. I remember Dave Jenkins
moaning about the fact that you called up and
said, "Now, look Dave, if you are organizing this
thing, I don't want you to have politicians or
any employers."
LG: Yes; when the guys came to me about having an
affair, I said, "Well, it might be a nice idea
in many ways; I have a lot of friends who'd like
to come." But I did not want any affair at one
of the hotels; as far as I knew I had paid all
my bills at the Mark Hopkins or the Fairmont and
I didn't owe them anything.
Secondly, I didn't want any politicians; and
third, I didn't want any employers. Some employ
ers did turn up, like Smarden from the Distribu
tors Association and Murray Parker from the
Employers Council, but what I wanted were the
people I knew, friends of mine.
Ward: One thing that was noticeable was there was no
speaker's table, as such; there was no dais.
LG-: I didn't want any of that.
Ward: Everything that happened, happened right from the
level with everybody else; that was deliberate,
I suppose.
LG-: Yes - I didn't want any of this fancy horse-shit.
The speakers I hoped for were there, although one
of them got there too late; but people like Karl
Yoneda, because of my background with him and the
Japanese internment centers; Edith Jenkins, an old
friend; Curt McClain and Keith Eichman were
speakers, Local 6 members and warehousemen; Indian
1141-A
LG-: Joe Morris turned up there, who had this picture
painted for me "because he was very fond of me.
During the time these Indians were having this
beef on Alcatraz, I was helping them out as best
I could. So, he turned up, and Al Costa from
the Teamsters Union; members of the Northern
California Warehouse Council. I thought the
whole thing was a very comfortable affair.
Ward: There were people there, of course, that I didn't
know, but it was pretty obvious that these were
shop stewards and their wives, or husbands as the
case may be. People were there who were a bit
younger than you or me - a lot of folks from the
shops, from the houses.
LG: Oh, yes; from the Warehouse local in the main;
some from Local 17,' Local 11.
Ward: And Hawaii.
LG-: Yes, there were a couple of people there from
Hawaii, but there was no effort to bring in
people from all the locals; I didn't see any need
for that kind of thing.
Ward: Your family was there.
LG-: Yes, almost all of the family was there; my
brother, my sister, my sister-in-law. Lee and
Ann were there, and even David King, Ann's ex-
husband, was there; he wanted to be there. Harry
Kingman was there, and I was delighted to see him,
Well, it was that kind of an affair. The one
speaker who didn't get there on time was Dolores
Huerta of the United Farm Workers. Curt said,
"She's late as usual, so we'd better forget it."
By that time, there had been enough speakers
anyway.
Ward: Do you remember the speculation in Herb Caen's
column prior to your dinner as to whether Harry
would attend?
LG-: No, I don't recall that.
Ward: Yes, he had a squib in there saying that due to
the well-known unfriendliness between you guys
it was questionable whether Harry would attend.
1142
LG-: Oh, he was there; Chester was there, the two of
them, together with Henning, (of the California
Federation of Labor) were sitting at one table.
And I thought Curt McClain handled the thing with
very good taste; like in the case of Harry and
Bill Chester, what Curt did was have leis
presented to Nikki and to Ethel Chester and to
George Martin's wife, Dorothy, which I thought
made a lot of sense.
Ward: Oh, yes, well, I had a nice feeling about it; I
felt the place wasn't papered.
LG: No, it wasn't papered.
Ward: I know we paid for our own tickets and everybody
else did.
LG: Oh, yes, there might have been a few pensioners
there. Oh, I remember the crack in Herb Caen's
column; not about that. Herb called Terry; he
wanted to talk to me about something but I wasn't
home; he asked Terry, "How come it's at the Irish
Cultural Center?" And Terry said, "Well, it's
across from the Zoo and if people don't like it
they can go over and see the other primates."
Ward: I remember that crack. Well, is there anything
else about your banquet that you want to talk
about?
LG: No, except that it provided enough money so that
Terry and I could take the trip to China. The
members of the committee said, "How do you expect
to get an automobile with $25 tickets?" I said,
"Well, let's settle for a motorcycle."
Ward: The fact was that the tab was within reach of
the ordinary worker. It was a good thing, I
thought, and your speech was - you didn't have
to say "I've changed." - which to me was very
important.
LG: I didn't think I had to.
1143
The Daughters
Ward: Okay, let's talk about the family for a minute.
Here you had all these girls growing up, and it
was pretty much Terry's job, wasn't it?
LG: In the main, yes, because I was away a lot of the
time; as a matter of fact, the kids were quite
hostile about it, after a while.
Ward: Wh
