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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 -
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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.
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Ward: You seem to be saying that the agreement adva
