00:00:01.460 - 00:00:17.479

OK, the red lights on, so I guess we're set. Can you give me, can I pause for a minute? Sure. You start off. Uh, I'm wondering the history of Level 912 just before the strike and your own association with it. I mean, you've been with, uh,

00:00:17.489 - 00:00:46.299

secretary you you're a business agent for a long time, hadn't you before before the strike. I um I volunteered my services to local 912, 1970. 71 to 72 when I got hired. I um I saw the need for um the membership who even at that time,

00:00:47.270 - 00:01:10.230

was probably 80% Hispanic. And um And yet, none of the officials, the representatives, We're bilingual in Spanish. So I, I got involved in the union. I became a shop steward when I was working for the milk plant, Meadow Gold was the name of the creamery, became

00:01:10.230 - 00:01:26.489

a shop stew, got involved with the union, caught the fever, fell in love with unionism. And I used to go to the local union and translate. For my fellow members, uh, with the officials so they could take care of their grievances. And I was hired in

00:01:26.489 - 00:01:59.750

1972. And uh in 1985, When the strike began, the strike began in uh on September 9, 1985. Uh, 2 months after that. Uh, Richard King. Announced his retirement and I ascended to his post. As secretary treasurer, which is the principal officer with local 912. And I,

00:02:00.709 - 00:02:25.520

I held that post until um 200 the middle of 2001. I'm really young. Um, during that period before the strike. One of the first people I talked to in doing this was Chuck Mac, and he described how uh Dick King called them up really kind of

00:02:26.539 - 00:02:42.320

How for help, you know, it's like more conso is doing all this stuff we're not prepared to deal with it. We need, we need to step in. Um, was there any indication before those negotiations began from your point of view, uh, that suggested that they were

00:02:42.320 - 00:03:19.669

going to try to push some givebacks on you? Oh, I believe so. Um, in 1972, uh King allowed Watts Vulcanning. To get to gain a 40 cents an hour advantage. Over the Shaw plant, the Richard A. Shaw plant. Um, Dick King. Allowed the company to bargain

00:03:19.669 - 00:03:43.919

directly with the, with the employees, in my opinion. Uh, board council and um And his um Upper management people. Uh, spoke to the, the employees and said that they, they were, uh, claiming poverty, that they, they couldn't stay in business any longer unless they got a

00:03:43.919 - 00:04:05.279

concession from them, and they convinced the members to accept 40 cents less per hour. I'm bracket 5, which is where 90% of the, uh, the workers uh were the bracket 5 is that the predominant bracket the the the bottom bracket. It goes bracket 4 all the

00:04:05.279 - 00:04:24.820

way to bracket 1. Bracke one being the highest speed of mechanics and all that. So the largest population of workers. Uh, was concentrated in the bracket 5 and that was 40 cents per hour. So the workers, uh, and Richard King, you know, I don't like to

00:04:25.070 - 00:04:42.549

speak ill of the death, but, um, you got company. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's um I haven't heard much about him. That's direct bargaining with the employees, and he allowed that. He should have filed a charge or he should have negotiated for them and take

00:04:42.549 - 00:05:01.019

the leadership and said, no, this is not good for you, or yes, I've looked at the books and if you don't give this, but he, he should have known. That any disparity within an industry is going to cause some problems. So Richard A. Shala was telling

00:05:01.019 - 00:05:24.760

Richard King and Loco 912. A year or 18 months before the strike, the, the situation was untenable for him. More counsel when he gained that advantage, he moved away from the, the office that his father had held at that company at Was Canning and moved his

00:05:24.760 - 00:05:48.470

offices to Penny Lane. Uh, it was called a Taj Mahal. They had very, very ostentatious offices. I never was there, but I was told that by uh Don Miller. The reporting for the sentinel that it was, they were really, really plush. And um so anyway, Danny

00:05:48.470 - 00:06:07.420

bought a jet uh before that, the poor guy only had a uh a turbo jet. And then, uh, but he had a When he got his concessions, he got, he was able to buy himself a full jet. And And I, I don't even, I was never

00:06:07.420 - 00:06:30.500

on it. King was, I was never on it. Um, So then, um, uh, Shaw kept telling Uncle 912, this disparity is not helping me at all. More counsel is going to my, my customer base and saying, buy from me, I'll sell it to you cheaper. I've

00:06:30.500 - 00:06:56.350

got a, I've got a wage advantage. So I will sell you your product to you cheaper. I was taking customers away from Shaw. Shaw was livid and I couldn't blame him. So Uh, one of the things actually. Alex, he brought lots to talk to me actually

00:06:56.350 - 00:07:08.540

for the better part of a day. He's the one person I've had a really extended interview with, and he was saying that. When he first was sent down there by Chuck Mac, the first thing he realized that Shaw should not have been struck, that Conso really

00:07:08.540 - 00:07:31.510

was the guy, you know, the evil genius behind everything and. His objective was to kind of try to get a settlement at Shaw. And then concentrate all the forces on console. That was your assessment as well, yeah, um. When the strike first started, um, can you

00:07:31.510 - 00:07:50.549

review for me what the Shah and were basically making the same wage demands, weren't they the same they were demanding they went to the bargaining table with the same agenda. Pretty much, um, Shah had to learn this lesson. And uh whatever proposals uh Wat Kenny would

00:07:50.549 - 00:08:17.329

give us, they would match. And they were not to be stung again. So, what exactly were they demanding? Or they decimated the contract, they, they actually implemented a 66%. Reduction in wages. Took away seniority rights, took away sick leave, took away uh. Um, the vacation plan,

00:08:18.329 - 00:08:50.030

uh, this is as soon as the contract expired. Yes, so it was actually before the strike actually started. Well, yeah, the contract expired. Um, June 30th. And we didn't strike until September 9th. And the strike started on September 9th, 1985. Was there uh a big controversy

00:08:50.030 - 00:09:01.109

over whether to have a strike or whether to have a strike vote or anything like that, or was this, I mean, how can you break down for me how the, the process by which the strike actually started after the old contract expired? Well, that strike was

00:09:01.109 - 00:09:23.260

not hard to sell to the people. I mean, the people were, um, by this time, By the time the strike happened. The people unfortunately have lost all credibility or king had lost all credibility with membership. So they used to come to me primarily and uh. And

00:09:23.260 - 00:09:36.960

as to what I thought of the proposals, this is my God, what, what is there to think about. The, the, it gets worse and worse and worse. They're picking a fight with us. They want us out of the street so they can replace us. We have

00:09:36.960 - 00:09:59.419

to think carefully about what we do. Until they implemented their proposals. When they implemented their proposals, And reduce wages and benefits. We, we had no, my biggest problem, the local union's biggest problem was keeping the people at work. They wanted to work, walk out immediately. They

00:09:59.419 - 00:10:18.200

were so angry. With the company, so then we had a situation where I was, uh, I spent 100% of my time going around watchca and shock convincing people not to go on a wildcat strike. Because you want to have a strike vote first or uh well,

00:10:18.239 - 00:10:33.070

we needed to do it correctly in order to strike, get the strike benefits from uh the international. And I kept telling the people that we needed to have a meeting. So I could explain to them what a strike was all about. Had you ever had one?

00:10:33.659 - 00:10:50.619

Uh, yes, but not 1800 people. Yeah. There were two plants, one had 1000 people. The other one had 800. But you said there was one before. How many did that involve? Oh, the Martin Martinelli plant that was probably uh. Uh, 60 people, 80 people, I mean

00:10:50.619 - 00:11:04.280

they're all the same. I mean, uh, we had a lot of strikes. I mean, granite construction, granite rock, uh, there's been the local been through a lot of strikes, but never of this magnitude, but the people at Washingtonville County, this is the first time they've been

00:11:04.280 - 00:11:18.030

out on strike. Yes, yeah, yes, had had very many of them had experience with this sort of thing. No, none. They thought that they could draw unemployment insurance I says there's a lot I need to explain to you, and I, I can't explain it to you

00:11:18.320 - 00:11:38.849

one by one. I'm gonna tell King that we need to have special meetings and you must attend. And, um, lo and behold, they did, they attended the meetings. Uh we had meetings, uh, joint meetings, the Shah and the Washington can people in separate meetings. And um

00:11:38.849 - 00:11:57.169

there were times that we had 1500 people there. It was pretty amazing. Of course, when it came down to a vote, We took a vote from the Shaw people and of course from the Watson Acadon people separately by secret ballot. Um, But I, I explained everything

00:11:57.169 - 00:12:19.510

to the, to the workers, you know, you get no unemployment insurance. You get 35 $45 a week from um Um, the international, and that's all. And explain the law to them that you're walking away from your job and the employer has the right to hire scrapbreakers.

00:12:19.760 - 00:12:39.510

They're protected by law. They couldn't believe that one. And um so when they walked out, they were pretty well educated as to what to expect. But they were so angry and so helpless. They really had no choice. They took away holidays. I mean, they did everything

00:12:39.510 - 00:12:57.830

but grab the people by the by the uh. The color of the shirts and tossed them out on the street. I mean they literally pushed them out of the street. They were so flagrant in in their in in their um. Well, what I call, uh, you

00:12:57.830 - 00:13:10.530

know, I mean, they, they just, they, they, they, they underestimated the people to the point that they, they said, look, we need to teach them a lesson. These people have ever been on strike. A lot of them are buying their homes. They're buying their cars and

00:13:10.530 - 00:13:31.989

all that. All we have to do is prepare ourselves financially, talking about Watson Buchanning. Um, Prepar us financially to withstand a strike maybe for a couple of weeks, and they'll come begging back. They'll accept whatever we offer them. That was the strategy. And they had gotten

00:13:31.989 - 00:13:52.539

the $160 million line of credit from Wells Fargo right before the strike, so they were pretty well funded. They never imagined it was never in their plans that this thing would last for 18 months. It was just Something that, that was, well, I mean, who, who

00:13:52.539 - 00:14:19.640

could predict that? They miscalculated that. How far they went to insult and step on and walk on those people and uh they picked on the wrong bunch. Yeah. Did you and uh Did King have any discussions at this point about how to respond to the, you

00:14:19.640 - 00:14:47.750

know, they basically you know unilaterally implemented these terms after June 30th, break them down for me once again real quick. Um, They um God, I, I don't remember the exact figures. It's been probably look them up, yeah, yeah, but I believe that um. The bracket 5

00:14:47.750 - 00:15:26.890

was lowered to 5:15 an hour, I believe, or 4 515 from what had they been getting before uh 706. They um The seasonal workers had to work 2000 hours to qualify for vacation for it and it had been 1400 hours to qualify for vacation. Um, I

00:15:26.890 - 00:15:43.440

think it was probably, it was, I think it was probably worse than that because uh a normal work year is 2080 hours. I think they were, I think they raised the, the qualifier to like $2200. In other words, nobody gets vacation type thing. Yeah, no, the,

00:15:43.469 - 00:16:09.390

the season generally lasted how long? Um, at Washington County, um, The, the, the workers, a lot of them, the majority of them worked all year around. The, the peaks, the peaks were um The normal workforce would be around 6 to 700 workers. And they would go

00:16:09.390 - 00:16:52.299

all the way up to 1200. Um, early spring and, uh, Uh, early spring and early Paul. Shaw and uh Watsonvillean were handling basically the same product, right? Yeah, broccoli. Cauliflower. Zucchini Um, okra. Um, spinach. Uh, carrots. And they would just sort of do these in sequence

00:16:52.299 - 00:17:08.839

as the crops came in, yeah. Just, just because I don't know too much about the um. This aspect of the business, I mean, the, uh, how long would the seasons be for each crop, how quickly would the crops get into the uh But they pretty much

00:17:08.839 - 00:17:30.300

had a system that they would, they would run, uh, broccoli, for example, simultaneously they'd be running a cauliflower or zucchini. Um, I mean they always made room to to run the uh the products that that came on season, but primarily broccoli and cauliflower were the were

00:17:30.300 - 00:17:48.359

the staples. Are they still growing those things in this area? That's all going down to Mexico. There's only one, there's only one broccoli, uh, producer now that I know of. Uh, well, actually two. There's Del Mar Foods who's, um, producing, doing some broccoli, I believe, for

00:17:48.359 - 00:18:06.760

Green Giant, and the other one is a non-union plant. It's farmers processing. They're still doing broccoli. These are, these are growers and these are, uh, processors, processor processors, but the grower community, I don't, I don't know what they're doing. See the. The frozen broccoli, processing broccoli

00:18:06.760 - 00:18:25.969

industry came about because the growers. We're saying, my God, whatever we can, we, we don't send to the fresh market for whatever reason. Go to waste. We have no outlet for this product. So then along came the entrepreneurs and said, Well, why don't you freeze it.

00:18:27.449 - 00:18:47.030

Or you know, if, if when this thing takes off, you can grow specifically for frozen, uh, for the frozen food industry. But what time are we talking about now? What year? When did, when did Washingtonville become the frozen food capital of the world? Uh, Oh God.

00:18:47.930 - 00:19:22.900

Actually, Bor Council's father, Eddie was one of the pioneers. And um That's probably the early To my 50s. Early 50s. What did he, do you know anything about his history? Um, Self-made, um, incredible and. Entrepreneur, very decent man. Um, Just the employers loved him. Pro produced

00:19:22.900 - 00:19:49.040

an abominable offspring now. he became that way. He became that became that way, yeah, see, I. I don't know what happens to people. I, sometimes I blame more more than I blame King. Other times I, I blame King more than I blame more counsel, but each

00:19:49.369 - 00:20:15.849

one. Each of them were guilty of the same sin. Richard King Believe, got to believe. Learn to believe that more counsel. Who was like a son to him. He used to say, he used to call him my son. would never betray him or his political career.

00:20:16.540 - 00:20:30.810

In any way, shape or form because his dad and he was really close friends and this young man, uh, took over the reins of that company when he was 24 years of age when he was going to law school and had to quit law school because

00:20:30.810 - 00:20:48.380

his dad passed away and he he had to give up his uh. Law school uh career and came down to run this plant. So K was always in awe of the kid, 24 year old man. And uh He just, they were kind of like family, he

00:20:48.380 - 00:21:09.469

king forgot the rule. The rule is that employers, there's Look, employers are not evil. They're not all evil, there's some good, there's some bad, there's some worse. But by and large, employers are basically good people that want to make a profit. But they, they are never

00:21:09.469 - 00:21:28.880

like a union. They always, they will always see a union as a threat. But they will never become your friends, they'll only tolerate you. It is the degree of tolerance that they have for you. That King forgot. He actually came to believe that he was special,

00:21:29.319 - 00:21:58.770

that the employers actually liked him and adored him for all he had done for them over the years. That was his opinion. More conso got to believe. That in his later years, King was weak. He was drinking more and more. And he, he thought that through

00:21:58.770 - 00:22:18.060

Richard King, The sin that he committed was just reversed. He says, well, as long as I have the leadership in my pocket or or seeing things my way, I can do whatever I want with the people. Well, he was wrong. Because any union is not the,

00:22:18.670 - 00:22:41.880

the union is only represented by the leadership, but the union is the people, the workers. At More Castle got to know Richard King and thought, thought he knew him. And probably did, totally and completely, but he didn't know his own workers. That was the mistake that

00:22:41.880 - 00:23:03.439

he made. He didn't know. What the workers were capable of if he was If he was to try to abuse them to the point that he ended up doing. He thought that Richard King could just wave his magic wand and say, well, you guys will have

00:23:03.439 - 00:23:18.949

to accept this. He really thought they were gonna eat it when they. Implemented that wage cut. He did not expect to strike to that. Did he figure he might just clean them all out and hire a new workforce? I mean, um. Do you think that was

00:23:18.949 - 00:23:37.479

his strategy? I mean, I realized, uh, yeah, I think he just, I think they wanted to get out from under the union contract completely. They were, they were out to break the union. So he didn't really what happened to Dick King at that point. And that

00:23:40.540 - 00:23:58.800

that King's heart. Do you think that was a factor in his decision to resign? Absolutely, yeah. I gather he didn't have a whole lot of credibility at that point with the workers. Well, when, when the workers were on strike, the, um, for the three months that

00:23:58.800 - 00:24:23.849

he was there, he wasn't around. He was out, uh, drowning his sorrows. I'm sorry. He was out drowning his songs. Well, I heard stories like that during the strike, you know, but he just wasn't there. Um, One of the things that Alex told me was that

00:24:23.849 - 00:24:38.020

really for some time that you and Leon Ellis had been doing most of the heavy lifting, you know, in terms of running the local anyway. And you couldn't very well do anything without King's approval, but you had to do the groundwork, you know, yeah, make sure

00:24:38.020 - 00:24:58.180

the work got done. Rather a thankless job, I'd say. Well, but it's um It may be thankless, but, uh, under the circumstances, I mean, if you really believe in unionism, like, like I, I still believe in and they, when I was working and my God it

00:24:58.180 - 00:25:13.630

was my everything was my religion, it was my way of life. It was that's all I wanted to do. And um it was very difficult for me to uh got to be a union rep, but when I became a union rep, when King hired me as

00:25:13.630 - 00:25:37.800

an organizer. Um, For the 1st 3 years or 2.5 years of my career. Um, I decided that I was going to learn that uh the system, the inner workings of the union. Better than, uh, better than he did. Because uh I finally gotten the opportunity and

00:25:37.800 - 00:26:01.010

I was against all odds because there were not very many Mexicans in the union movement back then. How old were you when uh when King hired you? Oh, let's see, so true. 431 years old. Yeah. Had you been working in the industry for a while or

00:26:01.010 - 00:26:17.469

was this fairly new? Well, I was, you were a teenager when you came up here, right? Yeah, when I came from Mexico, I was 15, um. Well, actually 13 and I went back for a couple of years, came back when I was uh 15. Uh, then

00:26:17.469 - 00:26:36.839

I got married when I was 17. Um, Did our jobs. And when I became 21, I went to work for the Waterfront bar, which was owned by Richard King. Which is 2 doors down from the office where the office used to be. So I became a

00:26:36.839 - 00:26:56.229

bartender and got to know Rich King and what he did. And actually his sister ran the bar. But I used to see how he Um, would meet with employers, would meet with, um, the workers right at the bar and I saw how, and he was a

00:26:56.229 - 00:27:20.199

dynamo when I first met him, 1962, that would be. And he was loved and revered by the people. He was very powerful. And he was full of them and vigor. He was very eloquent. He was very compassionate. Of the workers I thought. He was a very

00:27:20.199 - 00:27:37.729

effective leader, and I just fell in love with that idea. And at the bar, I used to translate for him. He was already running a local at that point. Yeah, well, no, he was #2.2. He was #2. Hansen was his boss. When I took, when I

00:27:37.729 - 00:27:55.109

took the local union over there, there had only been 3 secret treasures. Con Hanson was the first one. When he retired, Richard King became the 2nd secretary treasure, and I became the 3rd. And now, uh, Secretary now is what uh the fellow who took over after

00:27:55.109 - 00:28:12.619

you retired was what's his name, um, I left the union to Pam Cheney, right? She was the vice president. And business agent. So when I retired, I left the logo to, to her. And then she lost the election two years after, but that one term and

00:28:12.619 - 00:28:33.189

then um when she come out for reelection, she was beat by him. Uh, kind of um Brad, uh, Sterling, Brad, right, you know, he's the one whose name crops up on the locals website now him and I guess, well, the president is uh Lydiaerma's son, Santos,

00:28:33.250 - 00:28:47.280

yeah, and he took over for uh. Well, Joe Fahey was the president of the union for a while, wasn't he, while you were there? Yeah, I'm supposed to talk to him on Saturday actually. Yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to it. Is he coming down here?

00:28:47.569 - 00:29:01.949

No, he's he's actually coming out from Milwaukee. He's gonna be in the valley. But he told me to meet him in Dixon. So I got to drive up there, but uh it's a lot easier than a phone interview and you know. One thing, you know, I

00:29:01.949 - 00:29:15.680

had a few phone conversations with him and he told me that he'd really rethought a lot of things about the strike over the years, so I'm curious as to what I'll say, but you, you guys worked together on the NAFTA, uh, stuff, I gather. Uh, we

00:29:15.680 - 00:29:34.810

did, we did, and uh we did a lot to, um, I mean, we We've lived what America we lived 25 years ago what America is going through right now. Uh, the loss of jobs to foreign countries and we were sounding the alarm. We can't let this

00:29:34.810 - 00:29:53.479

happen. We can't let this happen. We, we fought, uh, a good fight. The country of origin labeling prominent on the packages of Americans would know what they were eating and where the product was coming from. We produced a video tape. Um, it's called um. What is,

00:29:53.569 - 00:30:17.599

what is it called? Um Duty Duty business or something like that. Well, I could probably find it. I do have, I guess, some documents in an article that Joe that still circulates on the internet about what's happened to Watsonville as a result of the migration. One

00:30:17.599 - 00:30:32.420

question I don't want to get back to the strike after that. My sense is that the market for frozen vegetables is not what it was 20 years ago in any case. It's just. Is that correct? I mean, I know in the, in the 50s and 60s

00:30:32.420 - 00:30:50.689

when I was a kid, every, every dinner was made with frozen something. I don't really know that um that it has changed. I, it probably has grown. I don't think Americans give a damn. I don't think that, and even if they. If they did care where

00:30:50.689 - 00:31:05.170

the product is coming from, they don't have a choice because it's all coming from Mexico. But are they, are frozen vegetables still considered? Is there a big market for frozen vegetables generally the way there was you know, in the 50s, people just more apt to try

00:31:05.170 - 00:31:20.099

to I'm not qualified to answer. I really don't know, but I would imagine that, yeah, they haven't suffered much of anything. It's still a big business. It's just that it's located in Mexico now, right? But still owned by American corporations just that they do there. No,

00:31:20.310 - 00:31:40.579

no, no, there's, uh, there's a lot of, um, uh, um, well, we sent to Fox, for example, the former president of Mexico, it's a big, um, he has 22 or 3 plants in Mexico that produce the vegetables. Marra, I think is the name of one, and

00:31:40.579 - 00:31:59.709

his, his brother Cristobba uh about two others and uh they have uh they're big down in Mexico. I mean they, they have huge amounts of uh. Uh, product to, to this country. They're private label packers such as Watanning and Dick shower where they'll put Green Giant's

00:31:59.709 - 00:32:13.479

label on it and they'll put Bel Air's label on it, they'll put, uh. Whatever label, you know, signs up with them, they'll they'll grow the products, put the label on it and send it back. It's always been done that way, right? I mean, Green Giant is

00:32:13.479 - 00:32:27.630

just like a not like they have their own plant. They just contract with various, uh, processing plants. I, I believe that Green Giant no longer has their own plants anymore. They just have code packers, people that coat pack for them, so they got out of the,

00:32:27.660 - 00:32:43.239

the, the production business. All they do is they have a label and they sell their product. One thing that Alex told me was that even at the beginning you were saying the Teamsters really need to start organizing in Mexico. Did you, did you raise that a

00:32:43.239 - 00:33:09.920

lot, uh, and who did you raise with? What kind of response did you get? Well, before I, I didn't get anywhere when um Well, when I was making that uh. Request Um, Until Ron Kerry. Yeah, uh, came into power, came into office. You were part of

00:33:09.920 - 00:33:26.030

his administration, weren't you? I didn't end better. I know I was disappointed a lot of people, I think. I know and um I, I, I fell in love with the guy. I love him to this day, although he's dead. Um, he just died a couple of

00:33:26.030 - 00:33:47.180

months ago, didn't he? Yeah, about 3 months ago. Did you happen to know uh Tom Leadom from Portland? Yeah. Uh, I actually, uh, I've been working with jobs as justice around health care reform issues up there. Our big gun, you know, our committee. I mean, he's

00:33:47.180 - 00:34:02.819

the guy you can always put on the air in front of a microphone and stuff and you'll have a great rap on it. Um, haven't really talked much Teamster history with him, you know, it's mainly healthcare stuff. Very capable guy. I mean, very articulate, extremely articulate.

00:34:03.310 - 00:34:23.060

Is he still an official with the union or he's running his uh his, he's running his um. He runs this Taft-Hartley, you know, health plan, which he says this is a model of how single payer would work. And you know, initially he kind of Unions have

00:34:23.060 - 00:34:34.610

negotiated plans like this, so if we're going to give this up, we better give it up for something better, which is why he's not going to settle for any kind of a piecemeal reform. It's like either everybody gets it or there's no point in doing it,

00:34:36.300 - 00:35:09.790

and that's always been his position. Tom Neha, uh, is a very capable guy, um. Although I blame him. For Not continuing Ron Kerry's um agenda. Because when Ron Kerry was taken out by the federal government, uh, Tom Needham, the entire slate picked, uh, agreed to get

00:35:09.790 - 00:35:34.699

behind. Um, I forget his name. He, he headed the negotiations with, uh, Joe, no. He headed the negotiations with Ron Kerry. Ken was the first name, I believe. Um, he was the, um, Uh, the UPS director, the, uh, small, small package, can, I can't even, you

00:35:34.699 - 00:35:50.979

know, don't let it happen to you. Don't get old because you lose your memory. But anyway, we all got behind because that's who Ron wanted this guy was with me in the trenches. He, he was negotiating with me. He's the guy you want. He, we had

00:35:50.979 - 00:36:09.729

a meeting. And Ron Kerry came in and he says, uh, yeah, I mean for whatever it's worth, my opinion, my recommendation is goes to Ken. We all said, OK, we'll, we'll go to work on it. Everybody except Tom Leadam. Tom Leadam said, no, I'm not gonna

00:36:09.729 - 00:36:26.129

do that. Then he goes and huddles with TDU, and he runs against Hoffa, falls flat on his face, never had a chance to win. Oh, I get it, yeah. Or we, we could have, we could have been the wrong, the wrong Kerry Slade. We could have

00:36:26.129 - 00:36:45.010

been together again with Ron Kerry helping us and all that endorsing the, the other guy's candidacy, and we probably could have stayed. This is fascinating me that it's off the topic, you know, I haven't, I haven't. I actually got a liberal education and, you know, internal

00:36:45.010 - 00:36:58.959

politics from Alex. I mean, um, the stuff that went on behind the scenes around the, you know, the, uh. The boycott during the strike and the kind of stuff that was necessary to do to get the international behind that. I mean this is stuff that I

00:36:58.959 - 00:37:16.699

didn't have a clue about, you know, when it was actually, did he, did he tell you that Chuck Mac threatened to recommended to put the trusteeship? Yeah. Did he tell you about that? No. Chuck recommended 12. I had no idea. Nobody told me that. Was it

00:37:16.699 - 00:37:31.939

during a strike in front of Alexi Lassa. I had no idea. I when, when was that? Oh, I don't know exactly, but it was, uh, it was, uh, this maybe a year into the strike. I mean, Chuck back at the work from the international. This is

00:37:31.939 - 00:37:53.629

going on too long, too long, too long, gonna put an end to it. It was just before the recertification. Yeah. The recertification boat was in June, as I recall, June or July. I, I'm not really, I, uh, you know, uh, uh, you're Pete, right? Pete. I'm

00:37:53.629 - 00:38:15.479

not really sure, Pete, what had happened, but, uh, I was summoned. Uh, to go to Jo Council 7's office and meet with Chuck back. And um They wanted me to ask for voluntary trusteeship. And I, I do that. Alex may have mentioned that. I want to

00:38:15.479 - 00:38:31.489

go back and look over my notes, and I said, fuck you, he says, well, if you don't ask for voluntary trusteeship, I have no choice but to recommend. Because the general President Jackie Presser to put your local entruseeship says do any fucking thing you want. I

00:38:31.489 - 00:38:53.429

says, but Chuck, I wanna see how you handle 1800 Mexicans out of strike. This would have been after the Shah settlement but before uh the, the vote, I mean, it seems like after that vote. Turn things over. Moon had Working for him behind the scenes, he

00:38:53.429 - 00:39:08.919

had Andy Anderson working. Yeah, that story I heard. OK, you know about that blew me out of the water, yeah, I know about that. And when we were done, we were finished, flat on our backs, no money, not a dime. When King left office in 1985,

00:39:09.090 - 00:39:32.850

the local union was completely broke. Or $85,000 in the hole. Uh, in the, in the 3 months that during the strike, not only that, the strike take its toll on the local union. Uh, expense wise, But King saw to it that I inherited nothing but debt.

00:39:33.959 - 00:39:55.500

And was spent, he bought new office equipment, new typewriters, he bought. New desks and all that for the office just so that I wouldn't have any money to spend at all because he felt that I pushed him out of office. And, and all I said to

00:39:55.500 - 00:40:17.239

him was, Richard, I just want you to know nominations are coming up and I'm here to let you know. It doesn't matter who the people nominate. You can be. Yeah, somebody had to tell them, you cannot beat whoever the people nominate. There may be multiple nominations.

00:40:18.479 - 00:40:40.840

But whoever is nominated, is gonna beat you. You're not gonna win. And he says, OK, you ungrateful son of a bitch, you son of a whore. But let it be done, Leon and Sergio, you didn't run me out. I quit. I decided that I'm gonna retire.

00:40:42.530 - 00:41:06.120

And then he began to take his vengeance out of me by calling the bank Wells Fargo and saying uh. just, you know, we've had a long relationship, blah blah blah, and uh I just want you to know that local union not uh. Not um. A solvent

00:41:07.830 - 00:41:25.989

Entity. And uh so, you know, you've been good to me. You've been uh floating my check, cashing checks, you know, even though there's been insufficient funds, but I'm leaving the office. Um, I'm retiring at the end of the year, so after that, you know, you can,

00:41:26.000 - 00:41:45.010

you do whatever you bank because in other words, he sounded the alarm to the bank and the bank. They said no more credit. I remember during that period around the time of the election. You were portrayed in some quarters as like basically continuing Dick King's regime.

00:41:46.469 - 00:42:02.429

I gather it was a bit more complicated. I mean, you didn't have a very good relationship with him at that point. Not at all, not at all. I mean, I didn't, I didn't have a good relationship with King. I, I was trying to keep um TDU.

00:42:03.929 - 00:42:24.850

Um, Turn them into allies because they were here during the King regime to tear down the local union, take it out of his hands. And during the strike, Um, I wanted you to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, but anyway, you're gonna

00:42:24.850 - 00:42:37.520

be talking to Joe amply about that. Well, the more takes I get on this, the better, you know, the better round of the picture I'm gonna get because I remember a lot of the. Arguments back and forth and from a distance you can usually see this

00:42:37.520 - 00:42:52.459

stuff a lot more clearly. You know, you can at the time. Um, and I, I do intend to ask Joe a lot of questions about this. Well, yeah, but I mean, yeah, even Joe probably now has come to understand a lot of the things that he

00:42:52.459 - 00:43:15.870

did during the strike that he probably wouldn't do today. After he, he's gained experience. But I had to. Fight with TDU often times because they thought, like you said that I was nothing more than an extension of Richard King and his policies. Um, I had to

00:43:15.870 - 00:43:31.050

fight with the international. I had to fight with a joint council. I had to fight with the workers because the strike was going on and on and on and on and I am in sight. Um, I had to fight with the banks. I had to keep

00:43:31.050 - 00:43:54.469

the local unit afloat. And I was on the constant, constant. Um, vigilance, they have people, the international and people down here Alex Barlasa, JC Landvi, Eddie Rodriguez. They were just here supposedly to give help and advice. But they were really here to just let that little.

00:43:55.699 - 00:44:19.389

Let that little Mexican guy slip one time, and he's gone. He's in trusteeship. So it was hell. It was It, it was a nightmare. It was You know, uh, it can burn people um up. Um, It can shorten one's career going through something like that. I

00:44:19.389 - 00:44:37.310

never lost faith in God. I never lost faith in the people. But it was, it was very, very, very difficult. Physically, mentally. Did you, how do you feel about the international's role when you look back, I mean, uh, But when they once they started the uh

00:44:37.310 - 00:44:53.870

after the convent the national convention, when they started the, when they put through the boycott campaign. Do you think that their role became more positive at that point? Well, actually, there, there were so many good things that happened during that scrap and so many bad things.

00:44:54.030 - 00:45:17.590

Uh, yeah, I mean, um, John Blake and Alex Barassa, they engineered that that resolution at the convention. They had no choice, the international but to honor it, although. They didn't, they didn't really put an awful lot of money or time into it. Mhm. They just went

00:45:17.590 - 00:45:36.870

through the motions, but at least they were off our backs and Uh, they were considered friends instead of enemies at that point. Although the general president was just beside himself that they had sneaked that resolution in. And didn't know the consequences, didn't know what was going

00:45:36.870 - 00:45:49.919

on. How long the strike had been in the, I mean, he was a, he didn't know anything about it. So when he found out about it. The fuck is going on here, you know, and, and that's what he wanted, he wanted the local trustee. This is

00:45:49.919 - 00:46:08.000

gonna end. You know, and this is what part of, you know, I'd love the teamstudio. I'd love the teamsio with all my heart. But the teams succeeding under before Ron Kerry, um, it was run like a business. They're in the business of taking money in. And

00:46:08.000 - 00:46:27.510

uh they don't want to spend money on a strike that really has no end in sight, so they just want to walk away from the $100,000 or so they were spending per week. In, in benefits. It's like a business. You know, the profit and loss statement

00:46:27.510 - 00:46:43.439

was still coming in every week for them. We're spending all this money and there's no end in sight. And that little guy that said, you know, as long as he's not, as long as we keep paying the benefits, he's not gonna care. Well, my God, what

00:46:43.439 - 00:46:56.800

do you mean he, he's not gonna care, you know. And you know what the reasoning was. The reasoning was simply this. In order to receive strike benefits, the workers have to pay union dues. If you don't pay union dues, you're not in good standing. Therefore, you

00:46:56.800 - 00:47:12.639

couldn't get any benefits. And I thought, my God, here are these people, they were at $180 a month and we're gonna take 12 to $15 out of their checks for union dues. I thought it was wrong, but I understood the rules. But they use that as

00:47:12.639 - 00:47:31.520

a, well, Sergio is never gonna end the strike. He's never gonna, because he's gonna build him a membership. And now it's not only seasonal, it's year round. There's a, I mean, they used any and all arguments against the local union. They wanted to end the strike.

00:47:33.050 - 00:47:58.189

Because it was costing them money. I mean, I understand it. I mean, you, you But I, I never understood why they were so quick to try to end the strike and so slow. So slow in trying to help. There were more um You know, I'm sure

00:47:58.189 - 00:48:15.669

that Alex probably has a totally completely different opinion of what the international's role was. I know he loves Chuck Bank dearly. I love Chuck Bank. I think he does. I dislike. No, no, I mean, I love it, but I, but I can tell you that Chuck

00:48:15.669 - 00:48:31.739

and I had, have had a differences that I just told you, and you can verify that with Alex because you're sitting right there. When he says I'm recommending right now that you put you're not gonna be put in trusteeship. Alex came to followed me, uh, to

00:48:31.739 - 00:48:45.290

the local the next day says talk to Leon, this is Leon, talk to Sergio. If it doesn't do that, they're gonna take the local over. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. And then almost coincidentally, I was working on David Gill,

00:48:45.899 - 00:49:05.449

uh, to, it was right towards the, the settlement. That I that I got through David Gill right at the end he was gonna buy the, the, the plant, you know, away from more council and all that when the the loco was. Doomed. It was doomed and

00:49:05.449 - 00:49:26.330

right about the time when they were going to lower the hammer on me on local 912 is when I was able to reach the, the, the would be the new owner, David Gill, the, the guy that bought Norcal from uh North coo, the bank. And then

00:49:26.639 - 00:49:42.419

there was light at the end of the tunnel. I was meeting with him secretly down in King City. And uh convince him that uh he, he would be better off with the uh union than without a union. I saw him, but I didn't have to tell

00:49:42.419 - 00:49:56.600

him that the the workers that were out on the picket line were the only ones that could make a success out of this new venture because they know the inner workings of that plant that they had made money for uh the councils and they could make

00:49:56.600 - 00:50:12.830

money for him. And he knew all the nuances of the strike and the reasons why he was one of the creditors that Morcaso had. Morecaso owed him millions of dollars in broccoli that he never paid him. So part of the settlement, he got that plan. That

00:50:12.830 - 00:50:25.629

he got was because of the, the money that he was the millions of dollars that he was owed in product that he had delivered to O County for for production that he never got paid. Was this before or after Gi took over the the company before

00:50:25.629 - 00:50:43.989

or after, before, before council declared bankruptcy, right? You were talking to Gill, and he was already thinking about buying the plant in order to collect the debts, and so when, when I. So they put, they gave me an ultimatum that the the joint council and uh

00:50:43.989 - 00:51:03.590

the, the internationals, you're God, kid, we're gonna take over the local union. You went, you're gonna put in trusteeship, and we are gonna end that strike. That strike is gonna end. Now they never specified whether they would sign. That contract If the local was in trusteeship

00:51:03.590 - 00:51:27.149

without the consent of the people or not which they could do Gil Gil never specified no, the international, international, yeah, no, no, they, when they, when the international threatened me with, with uh trusteeship. Um, Gil was not in the picture yet, right. Very, very shortly after.

00:51:29.239 - 00:51:49.469

When, when the international was preparing. To put local nightclub and trusteeship. is what I made, I was able to make contact with David Gill. Started talking with him. And then I let the International Joint Council know there was light at the end of the tunnel that

00:51:49.469 - 00:52:09.290

the strike would end successfully because I was making contact. Immediately, Chuck begs, my God, you think this is possible? I mean, you know, Chuck. And oh man, it's You're gonna hear the, the wheels turning. My God, after all this time, you really believe this is possible?

00:52:09.449 - 00:52:31.669

I says, well, I'm talking to the guy. And then they call their dogs off because they recognized that they could have a triumph. Um, in their hands, cause they would take all the credit, who gives a shit? I don't care. Uh, instead of a defeat, they

00:52:31.669 - 00:52:50.379

would have a triumph instead of a defeat. Then they got really interested. Well, this is interesting. This is a, uh, you know, This is something I haven't heard before. I sort of operated on the assumption that the economic sanctions that the union is doing against Wells

00:52:50.379 - 00:53:06.979

Fargo Bank, they were pulling back their credit that they were extending console, and that's pretty much what made him go bankrupt and that once he went bankrupt, then Gill could move in and take over. You were talking to Gill even before consul declared bankruptcy then and

00:53:06.979 - 00:53:21.520

you were doing it mainly. One of the ideas is to head off a possible trusteeship so you can go to the international and say, look, we might have a break here. This guy Conor owes him a ton of money. If we can get him to take

00:53:21.520 - 00:53:46.739

over the plant and pay for his debts, we can settle the strike. That was your. Did you talk to anybody else in the union about about that approach? Was this something you pretty much came up with on your own? Uh no, that was I didn't even

00:53:46.739 - 00:53:55.500

tell Leon. I didn't tell Alex. I didn't tell anybody. I mean that I was working on um you know before the, before the strike? You had any prior relationship with him? What gave you the idea to go talk to him? Well, I heard from uh sources,

00:53:55.540 - 00:54:19.370

other employers who were close to Gill. I heard the rumors that he might be interested in, in uh in uh making a deal like that. And uh So I, it took me some time to find him. And after several phone calls, he finally agreed to meet

00:54:19.370 - 00:54:44.100

with me. Of course, in total secrecy, not in King King City where he lives. And uh we started talking about it. About the possibility if it takes the, the plan over to have to assume the union contract. Which, which contract was that just basically the, the,

00:54:44.120 - 00:55:00.919

the bargaining relationship, not the contract in terms of what had been implemented by consul Well, the, the what left open out of the, uh, the settlement in principle was that he would recognize the union as the bargaining agent and then so he would agree to bring

00:55:00.919 - 00:55:22.889

seniority back. He would agree to reinstate the pension plan and the holidays and all that. The wages was the open issue. They were to be negotiable. But certainly he would have to agree to the Shaw contract that was already in place. And here again, the settlement

00:55:22.889 - 00:55:48.199

had to be In Perry with parity, to have parity again in the industry, to have All the contracts be the same. And not repeat the mistake that uh King had made and give David Gill a better deal so he would sign. No, no, it's gotta be

00:55:48.199 - 00:56:02.889

the same. Well, maybe we should back up and talk a little bit about the Shaw Settlement because I know that was a really crazy. The meeting where it was ratified. I remember there was a lot of ruckus there. I mean, Alex suggested the consul had a

00:56:02.889 - 00:56:17.229

stooges in the plant disrupting things. You know, uh, I know that there was a big set to with the police after the, after the vote was taken. I remember reading about it. Can you fill me in on that? Well, there was a lot of, um, and

00:56:17.229 - 00:56:35.100

rightfully so. There was a lot of controversy over the settlement. Um, The company showed us the books. We looked at the books. They were verified. He was genuinely in trouble. He was, I mean they, and now the, the international, the joint council, they looked at the

00:56:35.100 - 00:56:57.540

books and I mean it was, uh, we called it the bishop's office out of, uh, honorary diocese. So he was definitely in trouble. Um, Nevertheless, he had to fight human nature. Uh, whenever you go to people and say, we recommend that you accept this contract that

00:56:57.540 - 00:57:16.360

we negotiated, negotiated and negotiated. And this is the best we can do. You're gonna take one hell of a hit. The settlement will be, the bracket 5 will be at 585. Some of the other brackets are not gonna be um The cuts are not gonna be

00:57:16.360 - 00:57:34.080

as severe. Because there are more skilled jobs to know the mechanics and all that who who who would walk. Uh Or who would find other jobs, they didn't get the hit as as hard. But we were, we, we preserved the pension plan, the seniority rights, the

00:57:34.080 - 00:57:52.139

um The holidays, the vacations, pretty much like they were, uh, the only thing that we gave up was, um, a cut in the wages, which is, uh, of course what hurts the workers the the most. I mean, the workers, it's only human nature and common sense.

00:57:52.350 - 00:58:11.820

You go out on strike to better your contract, not to go back in for less. But you know, when we were satisfied that Shaw had actually been, that he was not lying, that he had actually been hurt and could prove. To the diocese of Monterey, to

00:58:11.820 - 00:58:30.860

the bookkeepers and all that stuff that he had actually been hurt and was close to being bankrupt himself by The advantage that Watson Kenny had gained on him. You know, and, and there was no end in sight with, uh, with Way Menny because Consul didn't want

00:58:30.860 - 00:58:51.239

to settle. No, he was, you see, Conso figured that stupid Shaw. There he goes again. 585. He signs with it and he keeps the union contract intact. I'm going to outlive this. I'm going to punish this workers so they'll come begging back to whatever the minimum

00:58:51.239 - 00:59:02.840

wage is, and they, here I go again. I can still keep after Shaw. I continue to beat the shit out of him, and I'll do the same thing in a different way, but I'll be right on top again. He just wanted to be on top of

00:59:02.840 - 00:59:24.129

the son of a bitch, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, yeah, um. And, and so at the meeting I explained all of that. Yeah, I explained all this is the reason I'm recommending this contract to you is not because it's a great contract, it's a settlement contract.

00:59:24.620 - 00:59:38.820

We actually do know that your employer has been hurt, yada yada yada yada. I know you don't like it. I don't like it. We have no choice. What kind of arguments were made in that meeting? And was it really as out of control as Ale suggested

00:59:38.820 - 01:00:00.810

when I talked to him? Well, there was, there was almost fisticuffs, yeah, yeah, there was a lot of pushing and shoving, and then. It was, it was a hot meeting and um Um, But they voted by secret ballot to accept it. It was a fairly close

01:00:00.810 - 01:00:12.719

vote, wasn't it, right? And then after it was over, just people went out and Remember talking to somebody on the phone who was on the scene and just said, I said, can you describe what happened to him? He says, Yeah, it was just crazy. That's all

01:00:12.719 - 01:00:32.580

I could say, I guess there was a You know, we, we had a No. An assessment, $5 per member during the strike. And when the shop people went back to work, they never paid. One time of it, we try to collect it from them and this

01:00:32.580 - 01:00:47.500

is why I blame Joe Fahey. They said, no, it's not a good contract. I wouldn't pay it. Um, they wouldn't pay an assessment to support the, the Watson volcanic, yeah, and you would have thought, and I used to go there and says, you know, you guys,

01:00:47.909 - 01:01:02.949

you already forgot you were out on the street for 5 months. Your brothers and sisters still out on the street. Why don't you pay your assessment? No, we're not gonna pay it because we got screwed. We got screwed. So why should we pay more for for

01:01:02.949 - 01:01:20.300

we're having to do with less? It wouldn't pay and then Joe Fay. I would tell him, I wouldn't pay it. I wasn't in agreement with that settlement. So he's fucking Joe, I'll tell you, you know, I'll ask him about that, you know, I gather you guys

01:01:20.300 - 01:01:34.800

have had words about this since then, you know, but I, I, I mean, I, I like Joe. I mean, he, he, he's a good man, very intelligent, very eloquent, very, but he's fucked up a few times, and that's one of the times that he's fucked up.

01:01:34.969 - 01:01:55.469

Well, I'm a struggle that complicated. I imagine everybody's gonna fuck up at some point or other. Sure, I mean. No way to play all your cards right, you know, and that many balls in the air. Um, I'm mixing my metaphors here. Well, um. After, I mean,

01:01:56.399 - 01:02:18.040

There was no question about sanctions being withdrawn or anything that the Shah settlement wasn't accepted, was there? There was later on when the volcanic settled. I knew that. No. There, there were no no threats, you know. To actually I like to borrow lots. Uh, Tony Lark,

01:02:18.199 - 01:02:37.199

Eddie Rodriguez, they were really helpful. At that point they were really helpful. It was They wanted yeah, because that was in the infancy in the beginning of my administration. I, I think there was some compassion. There was some, some uh. Understanding by joint counsel and uh

01:02:37.199 - 01:03:01.219

Chuck Bank's influence with the International. They were actually uh, they intended to help the new administration, uh, deal with this horror problem that it had a, a local union that was broke. And uh I just was threatened with extension. So they were really, really helpful. Uh,

01:03:01.350 - 01:03:15.909

I didn't at that point they were allies. I had no problem with the international or joint council. Later, as time went on, time goes on and on and on and on and on and on. They keep paying the benefits. They say ouch, this thing has got

01:03:15.909 - 01:03:29.629

to end. That's when the troubles began. I'd like to talk a bit because we still have about a half hour or so before I have to leave and I think I'm going to want to. Follow up on this if you're open to it. I'm learning a

01:03:29.629 - 01:03:47.699

lot. I want to talk a bit about the strikers Committee. Which is one aspect of the strike which I think most people who looked at it says is really unusual. Um, and I know your relationship to it changed over time. I know, you know, as it

01:03:47.699 - 01:04:00.239

went on they were meeting in the hall with, you know, your active support and so forth, and initially it was more of an oppositional kind of a thing that that was my perception anyway at the time. Is that, is that correct in your opinion? Um, I,

01:04:00.679 - 01:04:28.520

well, All expenditures had to be approved by them. Um, I didn't have any power or authority to veto power or, or, I mean, uh, only to the point I, I attended all the meetings. Um, because, uh, I wanted to make sure that the, the The union

01:04:28.520 - 01:04:51.889

didn't cut a check that could be found, uh. That was paid for illegal purposes. As Secretary of Treasury was your responsibility. Your responsible for union funds. They did spend union funds from the beginning, and they did that with your You basically every dollar they spent had

01:04:51.889 - 01:05:09.979

to go through the general fund. It had to be a form of a charity. Um, when they first started that committee, what What was the impetus for? Why did it start? I believe that it started because of the uh the distrust that the, the, the membership

01:05:09.979 - 01:05:42.550

had for Richard King. And um Even though We were, we were the ones that actually sold. The, the strike committee idea um they were distrustful. Of King's hands on the money. So that's why we said no, all strike related expenses. That are uh Other than the

01:05:42.550 - 01:06:06.120

normal expenses that the local would normally incur. Uh, have to be decided upon and voted on by the, uh, distractors Committee. We, uh, we, we, we made a mistake. We actually thought that we could set up a uh A separate bank account and that is not

01:06:06.120 - 01:06:24.000

legal under the Teamsters Constitution. Teams not legal for Teamster regulations, not legal under the law. uh Teams regulations, well, it's probably the law too that everything has every dollar has to be accounted for and it's got to be run through the general fund. You can keep

01:06:24.000 - 01:06:40.780

track of it separately. And give an accounting of the, the money that was taken and put in and, and taken out. But everything, everything had to be paid by check, a local union's check. So when the workers found out that it was not to be that

01:06:40.780 - 01:06:56.389

we go into the general fund, they said, oh, here we go again. God damn it, you know, they're gonna make, you know, they're gonna um Um, they're gonna have access to the money. I said, no, no, no, that's the way it has to be, but the,

01:06:56.429 - 01:07:14.070

the strikers committee will decide on what expenses can, should be approved or not approved. But according to the bylaws of the international, the guidelines of the international, you can have multiple bank accounts unless you have a, you know, CD accounts or savings accounts, but you can't

01:07:14.070 - 01:07:33.020

have, uh, uh, multiple bank accounts to spend the local union's money. So anyway, uh, there was controversy about that. But they did a lot more than cut checks. I mean, they planned tactics. They organized rallies, I guess they did a lot of the mutual support work

01:07:33.020 - 01:07:58.360

and they got everybody back for that certification vote in June. I mean, it seems like they took on an enormous amount of responsibility as time went on. Well, You know, that, I'm not, I'm not sure that the strikers committee can be um OK Uh, I, I

01:07:58.360 - 01:08:18.020

am not convinced. Apparently you are that the strikers Committee are the ones that, uh, did all that. I, I don't, I'm not ready to give them the credit for that. Um, This practice committee was a separate issue from all the activity that went on outside of

01:08:18.020 - 01:08:36.878

the local union. You have local people like Frank Bartay, Joe Fay with the TDU ties. You had Oscar Rios, people that came in from the city, uh, you were one of those, yeah, I mean, uh, Cherry Tang and all of those people, they came in. And

01:08:36.889 - 01:08:56.950

they started working with the people directly and not with the leadership and some of those realities and some of those things were organized by outsiders, not the strikers committee and not the leadership. And you know, depending, depending on your opinion, some were good, some were bad.

01:08:57.089 - 01:09:21.850

What was bad from the beginning is that people made it their business to make local 9 strike, a labor strike, a um. Um, A point of where or a target where they could expand their ideas and philosophies, political philosophies or leanings or tendencies or or whatever

01:09:22.399 - 01:09:44.359

and That was to me very unfair to the people because the people were being manipulated in one way, in a different way, that angle, this different angle, and um everybody was advising the, the workers on what to do and they were saying. My God, your union's

01:09:44.359 - 01:10:03.310

not taking care of you. They're not doing for you. They burned my car down to the ground in front of the union hall. They firebombed my house twice. Jesus, when was it? When did this happen? the strike, I mean early on or? Yeah mid to late.

01:10:04.799 - 01:10:20.270

Yeah, so you know that TD you had a fall, uh, I mean, we asked Joe about the my fire bombings. Ask him about that because I believe he knows who did it. It was some TVDUs that did it on that. I do know that for a

01:10:20.270 - 01:10:39.899

fact. And so the people would, uh, I mean, nobody wanted to, to work with the leadership. I don't know why. I mean, all these outsiders that had, they weren't paying dues, they were not being affected by the strike. They came in just Stick their nose into

01:10:39.899 - 01:10:59.959

our business and people that are in need, people that are suffering, they'll listen to anybody, but they were being manipulated in so many different ways they didn't know how to what to believe anymore, but thank God the majority of them. And I believe the great majority

01:11:00.319 - 01:11:15.750

still believed in me enough to stay with me until the end. Well, I mean, there's no way they would have wanted without the union. Well, I know, but, but Joe, Joe, Joe tried, tried, try to get them not to uh accept one of the, the guilt

01:11:15.750 - 01:11:32.919

settlement. Uh, because of the pension plan issue, and, um, The people were ready to go back in. So Joe came to this house and he says, Hey man, you know, the people are, uh, the mechanics are going back in. Can you please, if they go back

01:11:32.919 - 01:11:48.609

in, it's all over. The mechanics, the floors all the key people were gonna go back in because he had seen to it that that that that vote went down. So he came to this house, Joe Joe Fay did, and would you please sign this letters I

01:11:48.609 - 01:12:05.720

already drafted it for you and I will distribute it to the mechanics and all the key people so they don't go back in and turn this triumph into a defeat. And of course I will, you chicken shit asshole. You know, So anyway, wow, you lost me

01:12:05.720 - 01:12:24.470

there. I mean, Joe had you sign a document. you had a ratify we had a ratification that Joe went against. You know, I did talk to him briefly on the phone, and he said he wasn't so much opposed to the terms of the settlements as the

01:12:24.470 - 01:12:36.959

fact that it was being rushed through. That was the way he put it to me. He bet his business to tell people that I had been 18 months out on strike to wait longer and change it. And I said, Joe, how did you, why did you

01:12:36.959 - 01:12:52.549

do this? Because I had confidence in you, Sergio, that you could do it, that you could change it. I said that's an awful lot of confidence. That's an awful lot of confidence to place in one person that's gonna affect the lives of 1200 people. At peak,

01:12:52.649 - 01:13:12.520

and he says, well, you know, I said bullshit. You're following your TD philosophy, you're following what Ken Path is telling you, and you're not thinking of Locoano. Joe, always think of Loco 912, not your own personal philosophy or Ken Pas or TDUs or whatever other flag

01:13:12.520 - 01:13:29.029

you you follow or salute. So anyway, we used to have those uh quasi-intellectual discussions. I remember it was a very tough, you know, there was a lot of back and forth. It was about a week before the guilt settlement actually was ratified. And he originally wasn't

01:13:29.029 - 01:13:49.810

gonna have health benefits in there, then they got stuck in afterwards after they had that march on their knees or whatever. I mean, I. Were you Can you give me your take on that, that period, that week? Well, that's Um, I, I'm not sure exactly the

01:13:49.810 - 01:14:10.979

timeline, the timeframe, but it was right then. Uh, it was during that, that period of time that Joe Fahey primarily was the one that said, don't vote for the settlement. And the people listened to them. They voted it down. They voted to postpone it, postpone it.

01:14:12.770 - 01:14:34.330

But some of the uh mechanics, some of the key people. Some of the Irreplaceable people. Or say We're not following TDU's lead. This, uh, line workers want to follow TDU. They can be our guests. We're going across the picket line. We're going to cross. We're going

01:14:34.330 - 01:14:55.649

to go, we're going to work without a union contract because these guys want to follow TDU. We're done. So that's when Joe came to my house and had a letter. Drafted That it was a uh What the letter said was something I, Sergio Lopez, uh, ask

01:14:55.649 - 01:15:11.160

you, I'm pleading with you not to cross the picket line. Please give us more time to negotiate and make things better for you, blah blah. Sign Sergio Lopez, not Joe Fahy, and the workers did not cross the picket line. Not you one you did sign it.

01:15:11.490 - 01:15:27.680

I did sign it, yeah, I did sign it. But it was drafted by Joe. I can't take credit for that. But what, what changed in the course of that week is originally the health plan had been eliminated for the part-timers and then it was restored in

01:15:27.680 - 01:16:11.689

the final contract. Was that what it was? Have I recalled that correctly? Um, It wasn't eliminated. No, it wasn't. What was, what changed in that that extra week of negotiations? What happened? I think you're right. I think it, it was something. You know, um, I, I

01:16:11.689 - 01:16:32.180

don't remember, uh, it has something to do with medical coverage that I knew, um. And then for some reason, my, my, my bell is ringing that It was pension benefits and we traded one for the other in the end or or we adjusted some to in

01:16:32.180 - 01:16:46.899

order to uh get the other but right now I'm Pete, I'm I'm, I'm drawing a blank. I, I, you know, you, I'm being recorded so I don't, I, I don't wanna tell you something that that I'm guessing at and, and, and I just don't remember. I

01:16:46.899 - 01:17:03.189

gotta double check everything anybody tells me anyway, so, so I, I'm not, I'm not sure. Uh, I mean, I Once again, I wasn't down here. I was hearing about stuff secondhand what was going on, but I remember a very intense period. I remember. They set up

01:17:03.189 - 01:17:19.750

that camp, you know, some of the women did. They set up that tent city and then they marched to the plant on their knees or something like that. Are you sure? Positive. It's OK for me to smoke. It's your house. Well, let me open the door

01:17:19.750 - 01:17:41.600

so you don't. You're probably you know, I, I have to get out of here about 15 minutes. I hate to leave. Well, actually, now that you mention it, I think um that That March, I believe in the hunger strike, I think Shari Teng participated in that,

01:17:41.609 - 01:18:07.629

yeah, but the Shan and some of the women from the strikers, Gloria and uh. Right, uh, Gloria and um that one who's now an officer in the in the local. Um, I'm supposed to talk to her Sunday evening actually, her and Gloria. Uh, that'll be interesting.

01:18:08.569 - 01:18:23.350

That I'd like to be a flying the wall for that. See, they don't know anything that I told you about the inner workings of, uh, you know, how the international was out to get us, and, uh, they really had no idea. Well, that's just it. I

01:18:23.350 - 01:18:36.629

mean, I, I mentioned some of the stuff Alex told me. To a few people says, God, I would have given my right arm to know that was going on during the strike, you know, because nobody was really privy to what was happening at the Teamster convention.

01:18:36.680 - 01:18:51.490

I know that there were a bunch of Watsonville strikers who were at the convention. But uh I've been doing enough union conventions myself to know that that's not where the decisions get made is on the floor, you know, I mean, no. I'd like to think my

01:18:51.490 - 01:19:05.930

union is fairly democratic that you, you know, you know, uh, that's what I said. It would be easy for me to, to, to lie and say, oh, I organized this march and when the people were marching on their knees. That was not me. That was not

01:19:05.930 - 01:19:30.959

me at all. The outsiders came in, some did good, some did not. Um, Cherry Tang was uh tied in with, uh, Manuel Diaz. Uh, Oscar Rios wasn't, uh, up to a point Manuel Diaz, um. He always tried to work with the leadership and so she retained

01:19:32.160 - 01:19:46.120

up to a point. Uh, of course her agenda was, I'm sure you know all about that is different. I know, I know Sheri it's different. I mean that, I mean she beats to a beat of the drum that I have no desire to beat. She's, I

01:19:46.120 - 01:20:00.339

think she became an attorney, right. Is she an attorney now? I'm not sure what she's doing now. I mean, I, I like Cheri. Yeah, very charming. I like Cheri, uh, and she did some good. She has some, like I said, she has some off the wall

01:20:00.339 - 01:20:28.529

ideas sometimes, but, but, but she was more willing to work with the leadership than others. Um TDU's agenda was never clear to me. They were just like The Republican Party, say no. Did they Have an active presence in the canneries before the strike. They did. It

01:20:28.529 - 01:20:43.459

was mainly, I mean, I know Joe and I know Frank Barking. Those are the only TDU people really that I know of in Watsonville. They really, you know, not really involved directly in stuff. Frank, I think he was. I, I don't really know. I think behind

01:20:43.459 - 01:20:58.319

the scenes he was through Joe working through Joe, yeah, but Joe was the guy who was active in union and who ran for office, right, right. Well, so sorry, Frank, Frank ran against, uh, Richard King. Really? I had no idea. Frank Bar ran against Richard King

01:20:59.160 - 01:21:08.540

and lost by 200 votes, a very close election. This was when this was this was not during the strike. This was the earlier election. 2 I believe. I had no idea he came 2 you think Frank would have told me that I'm very proud of it.

01:21:08.979 - 01:21:41.549

200 votes of Richard King. What saved Richard King is, uh, I had been sent to, uh, to work in, uh. Over by Fresno, what the Sanger, California. I organized the uh frozen food plant and we had a strike there that went on for 9 months. And

01:21:41.549 - 01:22:00.810

um unfortunately it didn't go well, but the plan, something happened, the plan burned down so they were out of business and then um. But anyway, when we came back, when I came back from that, uh, No problem. Richard King called me back and says. You know,

01:22:00.850 - 01:22:20.390

if they take me out, you're going with them. And I said, well, What's going on? Well, there's a new group and done it's called TDU, blah blah blah. So that's my first exposure to TDU and I already knew Frank somewhat. But I didn't realize what a

01:22:20.390 - 01:22:41.279

foothold they had gained a local when I drunk. I was gone. Pretty much for three years. I was working for Logan 912, but loaned to the to the Western Conference who wanted to organize this place. So during my absence when TVDU got its foothold at local

01:22:41.279 - 01:23:00.689

912, big time, big, big time. And To their credit, a lot of the things that they said about King was true. He was not paying attention to business. He was drinking too much. He was too close to the employer and um. He sent away the one

01:23:00.689 - 01:23:19.910

guy that the people identified with. He loaned me out. He sent me to organize for local 912, and uh the people here were pissed. And you couldn't blame him. I mean, Leo was a good guy, but he couldn't speak Spanish. Never made an attempt to learn.

01:23:21.399 - 01:23:38.040

So when I left, there was no one that they, they could talk to really. It was back to square one, and I guess Frank had had some background in the UFW, so he had some experience. And I believe that he, he told the Joe Fraigy, but

01:23:38.040 - 01:23:50.020

Joe can tell. Thank God I didn't win. I don't know what the fuck I would have done. I believe. I believe he said that. I'm sure he said that. I don't know what the fuck I would have done if I, if I'd won. Thank God I

01:23:50.020 - 01:24:12.089

didn't. Well, I'm surprised he didn't tell you that. Now see, Frank Barrack is someone I respect. He's a straight shooter. He's as lefty as they get, but he'll tell you exactly where he's going and why. Yeah, that's true. No, I, I, he doesn't sneak around and

01:24:12.089 - 01:24:28.410

stab you in the back. He tells you he comes right. You know, right up front of you, this is wrong and I'm gonna change it, right? I says, well, that's true. Well, uh, You don't really get elected to union office that way, but it's a useful

01:24:28.410 - 01:24:46.890

quality to have. Uh, if you just tell the truth, you know, hey, I'm taking you on, OK. There's your quarter. Here's mine. The bell rings we'll have at it. Well, I, I've known him for years and years. I mean, I actually took a class with him

01:24:46.890 - 01:25:01.149

when I was a kid at San Francisco State, you know, back in 19, when was it 1667. Uh, the main thing I remember was a story he told about a friend of his who was an auto mechanic, had a fellow drive into his shop with a

01:25:01.149 - 01:25:13.129

brand new Lincoln Continental complaining about a rattle. They just made $300 for this car and there's a rattle in it. Mechanic looks the car in perfect condition. The guy drives away and 5 minutes later comes back. I know where the rider is. It's in the door.

01:25:13.859 - 01:25:24.049

Well, it's impossible. It can't be in the door. He says, No, I swear it's in the door. I can tell. Mechanic takes the panel off the door. There's a Coke bottle inside of the note that says, So you finally found the rattle, you rich son of

01:25:24.049 - 01:25:45.859

a bitch. That's, that's the, that's what I remember about Frank's class as he told that story. I forget what point he was trying to make that occurred. They brought TDU brought a because he ran on the TDU banner uh they brought a guy by the name

01:25:45.859 - 01:26:06.049

his last name is Siegel. I, he's an attorney out of Oakland. Oh yeah, uh, Dan, Dan Siegel, Dan Siegel. They were here the night of the, the election with a, with a subpoena to subpoena all the records so we to seal all the records and nothing

01:26:06.049 - 01:26:20.950

could be taken out of the office. I mean, Dan Singer was involved Iran up to his eyeballs in it and um. As time went on, Dan Siegel, I guess, turned the he left those leftist tendencies and became city attorney for the for the city of Oakland,

01:26:21.779 - 01:26:37.509

something like that. And now he's a complete, he's 180 to the right, right where he did 180 to the left, uh, and, uh, what, what I, what I, what I, what I used to see part he I used to rub that in his face is, hey,

01:26:37.660 - 01:26:57.390

how's my friend Siegel. So that the election you're referring to, was that the one in Uh, 85 when Dick King stepped down, you left it was the one before when Frank, yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't surprise me, another old Berkeley, you know. Frank's still in there.

01:26:57.410 - 01:27:15.549

What what's happened to him? What's happened to Frank? Is he still in town or I'm sorry, is Fred still in town? Yeah, I believe he is. I don't know where, but I, I called him last night and asked if he was available for an interview. Got

01:27:15.549 - 01:27:25.870

a deadline to meet. He's got to get a book manuscript in before the end of July, so he says, Well, I won't bother you that I might be in that situation myself at some point, you know, let's talk after you're done. I talked to him a

01:27:25.870 - 01:27:40.620

lot. I used to argue with him all the time. I should probably turn this off our living quarters and still have room for our kids. There's a couple of queen size beds down there. OK, we are now recording. This is Mike Johnston. Uh, You were about

01:27:40.620 - 01:28:05.319

to say something. Um, yeah. I was gonna say that the That whole concept, the penine concept of no retreat, no surrender. Uh, the, the thing that you were talking about, about Ray Rogers saying that one of the successes in Watsonville was keeping the union on their

01:28:05.319 - 01:28:29.569

side. Um, To me, that was the biggest. One of the biggest critiques I had of TDU at that point and their role in that stuff. I remember a rally in the Crossetti building at the Watsonville at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds outside of Watsonville. Um, Uh,

01:28:30.549 - 01:28:47.240

in support of the strike, it was probably 4 to 6 weeks into the strike and It was one of the first big events where a whole bunch of people were brought down. Uh, distinct from the marches and such that happened in town, this is a few

01:28:47.240 - 01:29:07.430

miles outside of town, and I remember there were some banners on the wall. That had to do with pushing. The TD would put up there that had to do with pushing the international to raise the strike benefit. At that point, the strike benefit was I may

01:29:07.430 - 01:29:24.640

be wrong. My recollection was it was $45 a week for like the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the strike, and then it bumped to $55. Yeah, I think it started at $45 and then bumped up after a week or two and Uh, TDU had a position

01:29:25.229 - 01:29:53.089

early in that strike. That uh that wasn't enough to live on and that the strikers that that should be doubled. The strikers should get $110 a week. And it was classic. It was The the organizational interest. In Exposing the um The the the International Union in

01:29:53.200 - 01:30:17.970

in in exposing their critique of the International Union. Um, In a sense, was trumping. The needs, the workers' needs and the needs of the strike. Um, because it, it struck me that Then all along through that strike. There was a need to, on the one hand,

01:30:18.620 - 01:30:38.390

push the local leadership at times, certainly early and and even later on at times, although when Sergio came in, there was certainly they had more of an investment they had a need to win it too, um. And push the International Union for support and intention. And

01:30:38.390 - 01:31:03.899

at the same time, there was an absolute need to not um Fracture that relationship to the point that support would be withdrawn because those workers did not have the power to win that strike. Um, the strike, like more than one. Rural food processing strike I've been

01:31:03.899 - 01:31:23.669

involved in. The workers had the ability to lose the strike. Um, they didn't. And they had the ability to fight the employer to a draw, but And and maybe I'm being too dogmatic on this, but I don't, I, I don't think in that situation they had

01:31:23.669 - 01:31:45.689

the power to win against a, an employer that was A personalized situation, a a an individual owner, not shareholder, who, who had really his own. Identity and masculinity on the line. You know, uh, they didn't have the ability to win. Uh, I, uh, and And certainly

01:31:45.689 - 01:32:03.319

they didn't have the ability to even fight him to a draw if they pissed off the international enough that it withdrew support. That then they just went down the tubes and The $55 a week strike benefit was set in the IBT Constitution, and in order to

01:32:03.319 - 01:32:29.310

change that and to double it for Watsonville, canning and Shaw workers, you'd essentially have to uh You know, between their every 5 year conventions, get the Teamsters to decide to. Either amend their Constitution, which there's there's not really even a mechanism for, or To somehow decide

01:32:29.310 - 01:32:44.109

to treat these workers differently, which wouldn't have flown. In other words, the demand, it wasn't, it was it was it was a demand totally and completely designed to expose the moral bankruptcy of the Teamsters Union, which was not a need, a need that the national organization

01:32:44.109 - 01:32:56.959

had and that I think some of the local people felt very strongly about, but it was not a need that the strikers had. I want to ask you who. Who was Watsonville TDU at this point? You were in it when the strike broke out. Well, I

01:32:56.959 - 01:33:22.640

was the regional organizer for TDU and I how long have you been doing that? In 1982, uh, I left my job at uh at at Del Monte Cannery in San Jose where I've been working for 8.5 years, um, and, uh. I working with TDU we had

01:33:22.640 - 01:33:46.729

secured a grant. To from the Campaign for Human Development, which was the Catholic bishops Conference. Uh, to build, we basically secured a grant to build a cannery workers network. Uh, and that network essentially was comprised of Cannery workers committees in San Jose and Sacramento. It was

01:33:46.729 - 01:34:09.600

called the Human Development Project, the Campaign for Human Development. It's the, it's the. The, the, the, the charitable giving arm of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and I believed in supporting organizing. I had hit them for Several 3-year spans of funding before for Cannery Worker

01:34:09.600 - 01:34:26.509

Service Center in San Jose and for one in in the church as a kid. I was in the seminary, brother. You were a seminary. Praise the Lord from the seminary. Well, I was studying to be a missionary. So hey, you have the connections. Um, no, that

01:34:26.509 - 01:34:40.899

was like my freshman and part of my sophomore year of high school and I spent the rest of my sophomore year, my junior and half my senior year at another Catholic high school, and then I left school forever, never to return. Um, And ended up in

01:34:40.899 - 01:34:53.839

the cannery a few years later. So, um, I actually left to go work for the Farmers Union, then I ended up in the cannery. So did you know the farm workers? No, I didn't. I was, I spent 6 months in the Farmers Union standing in front

01:34:53.839 - 01:35:11.290

of Safeways and Bos in Southern California at a time when we had probably, I don't know 300 people on staff doing that in Southern California, and Frank was here in Watsonville doing field stuff. He'd been shipped down here by the Revolutionary Union. That's part of their

01:35:11.740 - 01:35:35.270

entering the proletariat program, I believe, um. So, um, Uh, I, I left, I, we, we had, we had secured money to set up this project, uh, and while the project was basically to build a cannery workers network, um, and this was the, this was the inception

01:35:35.270 - 01:35:57.819

of the Canary Workers project. Um, that Oscar ended up working for Manuel and then Oscar. Um. Uh, I basically worked halftime as an organizer for TDU doing their West Coast work, and halftime doing this cannery workers network. Um, And so it was TDU chapters in the

01:35:57.819 - 01:36:20.910

canneries in Stockton and uh. And uh uh. Watsonville In Cannery locals in Stockton and Watsonville and Cannery Workers Committee chapters, which was an indigenous organization in the Teamster Cannery locals in, uh, in Sacramento and San Jose, was the, was the root of it. Um, so I

01:36:20.910 - 01:36:40.200

was a regional organizer coming in and dealing as an outsider with Watsonville TDU, providing them support. And assistance Um, rather than an integral part of it. I know when I hear about Watsonville, I think Frank and I think Joey. I mean, were there people and actually

01:36:40.200 - 01:36:57.740

Joe drove for UPS, right? Joe drove for UPS, so he was a TDU member at UPS. Frank had been a lumper in the in the uh. Some of the different on the some of the different docks at frozen food plants where he had actually worked in

01:36:57.740 - 01:37:18.589

the plants and he knew something about it. He had worked some in the plants. He had not been like a regular, you know, long term worker in the plants, but he'd worked in different places there and there was. I got rid of that file quite a

01:37:18.589 - 01:37:43.549

while ago. There's probably, they could probably count on a good. dozen people that were their core de paying members. Maybe, maybe even 15 or 20 total. These were $25 a year. It was not a high bar. And probably a good, if I came down to a

01:37:43.549 - 01:38:00.370

meeting, there'd be 4 to 8 people there. Unless it was really something intense going on, Jose Lopez was one of them. I don't remember a lot of the other names. Alex actually described Jose Lopez to me as a thug. Unless I'm thinking of the wrong person,

01:38:00.779 - 01:38:16.589

was he the guy that the senator was named after, or was it somebody else or were there two guys with the same name with the same name? OK, Jose Lopez. Um, We might describe as more lumping, yeah. You wouldn't use the word thug, you would use

01:38:16.589 - 01:38:31.549

the word lumpen. He was. If I were an employer, I'd probably use the word thug. There was a strike going on and there was a lot of nasty shit that happened. Um, Sergio told me something I hadn't realized was that his house was burned and his

01:38:31.549 - 01:38:49.470

car was trashed, that kind of thing. Uh, I know that uh. I've, I've been told, and this may be apocryphal, that Leon Ellis had a Big truck with expensive tires and he had all 4 tires slashed and. The union bought him new tires and he tossed

01:38:49.470 - 01:39:07.270

the tires in his front yard and that there was a whole pile within a few months. How early on. I don't know. I don't know because I was pretty peripheral to the day to day goings on here and because I wasn't at all tied into the

01:39:07.270 - 01:39:22.580

folks who were who were doing that. I mean there were some more organized stuff you were in the unit, weren't you? I was living in San Jose and so I was in the I, at some point when the Watsonville unit was set up, I was, I

01:39:22.580 - 01:39:41.310

was in the Watsonville unit, but living in San Jose and the latter part of this and for much of it working in Stockton. So I did a lot of driving, yeah. I, in, in, in January of '87, I went to work for the. For the Stockton

01:39:41.310 - 01:40:08.509

Cannery local. Um, and, um, that was right before the strike was settled. That was the strike was settled and I stopped working for TDU in about August of July or so, maybe 8. But By that time, the relationship had completely broken down between TDU and the

01:40:08.509 - 01:40:24.129

Can Workers Project. Did you um I did email you that letter I sent Tom, didn't I? Yes, yeah. Did you get a chance to look it over? I did. I looked it over late last night and I don't remember anything late the night before last, I

01:40:24.129 - 01:40:47.319

don't remember anything that was in it. Because you know, I, I remembered. I was gonna ask Joe about this too. When I talked to him. My recollection was that You had pushed hard for. Some kind of relationship between So you can cheat you. That um You

01:40:47.319 - 01:40:59.479

don't mind if I record this to you that you felt that it would be kind of a win-win thing that they needed to have some kind of contact, some kind of a base in the in the Chicano movement, and then we needed kind of whatever TDU

01:40:59.479 - 01:41:13.629

had to offer as a sort of national organization with some credibility in the labor left. And you know that there was a lot of initial resistance because PDE was such kind of a white trotty sort of a thing, but eventually, you know, it broke down. It

01:41:13.629 - 01:41:28.560

was a white trotty thing and and they totally mistrusted me because they knew where I was coming from. That was not. They hired me and and there was much back and forth in the organization. As to whether it made sense for me to do that, that

01:41:28.560 - 01:41:46.509

was not, that was a collective decision, not an individual that was a TDU decision or the organization that was a league. Yeah, I remember that discussion and it was really. Interesting to me, you know, about, uh, Because I, I remember thinking, well, that'd be kind of

01:41:46.509 - 01:42:05.899

cool, you know, you always want to build new bridges and they're a broad mass-based organization, their leadership, their leadership was kind of old style, somewhat conservative trots, um, international socialists, but, um, that was a pretty small cadre of people that had started and the organization was

01:42:05.899 - 01:42:32.799

way bigger than that. Mhm. I mean it's a legitimate mass organization um. They certainly wanted to to broaden out past they wanted to get into the aspects of the, yeah, and, and, um, so people on both sides went into it with their eyes open. Um, It,

01:42:33.899 - 01:42:56.660

at the end of the day, You know, I was getting it from the cannery workers on My board that I had put together are active as cannery workers from these different locals. Because they didn't like TDU or uh. They didn't dislike TDU. They felt like. Their

01:42:57.149 - 01:43:14.629

interests weren't all that aligned. I, I'll give you a couple of anecdotal stories that are a little bit off point from the, but brief. One is a conference in Long Beach shortly before the 1986 Teamsters Convention, uh, which was in Las Vegas, and, and you were

01:43:14.629 - 01:43:32.120

at that convention and there were a bunch of Watsonville people who went to that. There were, uh, but I don't, I don't have much of a memory of that because I was basically, I was basically doing. Kind of more national TV stuff at that point at

01:43:32.120 - 01:43:56.350

that convention. And I mean actually to hear Alex tell it that's when He was able to sort of take advantage of the rift between Jackie Presser and Anderson, you know, and get the boycott thing through, and you know he was out of that, that was the

01:43:56.350 - 01:44:11.370

sort of stuff I thought you would know about it happening now, but at the time, no, I was completely out of that. What I was doing at that convention was uh I had been working hard on getting a petition of 150 Teamster local. Officers and business

01:44:11.370 - 01:44:33.450

agents in support of direct election of international officers. Which was a, a big issue at the time. I think the resolution went down. 4000 to 28 or something, whatever the numbers were. It was a big issue after it was ordered in with a consent decree and

01:44:33.450 - 01:44:44.850

we had an election or two, no one could ever run for office in the Teamsters without supporting that now, and I'm not so sure it's a good idea, frankly, because it's kind of like running a California Senate race to run for office in the Teamsters. You

01:44:44.850 - 01:45:03.189

have to run this like huge national campaign, um, but be that as it may, that's what I was working on there, um, and um. At the, at the, the thing we did shortly before that in Long Beach, I was down there with some uh food processing

01:45:03.189 - 01:45:19.339

teamsters from Stockton and a few other places and I remember. Walking to lunch with a group of, of folks, one of whom was a truck driver from Long Beach, from the Long Beach Truckers local. Yeah, well, it was kind of a general local that has LA

01:45:19.339 - 01:45:35.609

cafeteria supervisors and bus drivers and LA Unified, bunch of stuff in it and he was. He was real glad to have us there and very open and friendly. He was talking about his local and he was talking about the decline of the freight industry, and he

01:45:35.609 - 01:45:50.330

was saying, you know, word to the point in my local that probably only 30% of the local is actually teamsters. And in his mind, Teamsters was synonymous with the truck driver and that was part of it. The other part of it was as people started in

01:45:50.330 - 01:46:09.830

some areas to make some electoral gains in these cannery locals, um. Uh, you know, their, their issues that they were fighting was to build a cannery workers movement, to, to, to, you know, aggressive representation, race and sex discrimination, and they didn't want the baggage of the

01:46:09.830 - 01:46:25.870

national wars with TDU. You know, and and the IBT, they didn't want to have a target on their back, you know, they wanted to be able to to to to to kind of the same way that the strikers committee folks didn't really want, they wanted to

01:46:25.870 - 01:46:40.910

win their strike more than they wanted a war with the IPT. I heard that story actually that when Manuel first got into town, somebody came up to him. Sounds like Gloria to me and said, uh. Are you here for us, or are you here for TDU?

01:46:42.270 - 01:46:58.100

And that pretty much resolved the question of the league's relationship to TDU right then and there. Oh yeah, no, and so this strike really, really sharpened the contradictions quickly between the Cannery Workers Project because here I am. I'm a member of the league. I'm working for

01:46:58.100 - 01:47:16.939

the Cannery Workers Project. I'm working for TDU as Mozart said, they all look so lovely. What a pity I don't have three heads. And, and, and they, and, and, and, you know, TDU has in, in Watsonville has a political line that was quite a left line

01:47:16.939 - 01:47:33.439

as to where the strike should go. Um, and didn't have much base among the actual strikers. Their base was kind of scattered throughout the local, um, and you know, the strikers Committee, uh, had a line I agreed with much more a kind of a united front

01:47:33.439 - 01:47:51.540

line as to how to win the strike, and, um, and you know, my And and the democratic centralist organization I was in was on the on the united front side and what I was hearing from the other workers that I was dealing with and other locals

01:47:51.540 - 01:48:07.169

on my board was, you know, we don't dislike these guys. We've been to some of their conventions. They were real nice to us. But that's not really what we're trying to do, you know, we're not trying to change the National Teamsters Union. We're trying to, to.

01:48:08.060 - 01:48:28.259

We have some very specific fights against discrimination and and to change the way things work in, in, in these, in our communities, in these small towns and these food processing locals. And so we set in motion a principled secession from TDU for the Canter Workers Project,

01:48:28.339 - 01:48:43.560

which just freaked out TDU especially because I was doing it. On their nickel as well I was I was in a position it occurs to me. I mean, Sergio was talking about what a tough spot he was in when the strike broke out and you know,

01:48:44.200 - 01:49:01.890

associated him with Dick King and he. You were in a much worse position, it seems like. Um, but, uh, so from very early on from, I mean, the first few weeks of the strike, it was all hunky dory because everybody was pushing, but once those contradictions

01:49:01.890 - 01:49:24.640

started to emerge, that emerged with the formation of the strikers Committee. Yeah, um. You know, as, as they got sharper, I, I not only was I aligned organizationally. You know, through the league, but I, I really firmly believed and, and would say the same thing again

01:49:24.640 - 01:49:41.680

now. That the, the, you know, that kind of left view of how you take on that strike as part of a national struggle against the Teamsters, no socialism in one country, you know, was wrong and was not in the workers' interests. So no, it was very

01:49:41.680 - 01:49:56.049

difficult. So I left, I left TDU right after the, I stayed through the Teamsters convention, and there was not such a contradiction for me to work on their national issues. You know, that didn't impinge itself, but at the same time, we were going through a process

01:49:56.049 - 01:50:17.479

of seceding from them, which put them in a very difficult position because they could hardly say no. But they weren't happy about it. So they basically invented their sling on the league presumably which had instigated it all. And on me and on me and I've got

01:50:17.479 - 01:50:27.930

I should have dug those letters out, but that's a kind of a thing to the strike, but it really came out of the strike. I'm not I'm not, I don't know if we want to put that in the book or not. I mean, you know what

01:50:27.930 - 01:50:49.359

I mean. I remember Joan Walsh coming to town and writing that God awful. Peace in these times, you know, which Was that classic kind of smug. Social democratic. Oh, these, these lefties are just so busy fighting amongst themselves, and she spent so much time discussing the

01:50:49.359 - 01:51:09.100

rift in loving detail that she barely paid any attention at all to the strike in her article. The differences were very real, and the differences were crucial to You know, the winnability of something like that. I mean, those are not, those are notes. I've led strikes.

01:51:09.759 - 01:51:23.180

You know, since then, much more than I had any role in leading that one, and those were not, those were not isolated questions. It was a little unusual in that they were being fought out by different factions of leftists, no, no question. But, but, but the

01:51:23.180 - 01:51:38.714

fundamental underlying political questions. To what extent you will lie with the leadership that you have some stuff in common with and some stuff not, you know, how hard you push them, where you draw the line between pushing with them and keeping them, not allowing them to

01:51:38.714 - 01:51:55.339

slip out of your grasp, you know, um, uh, uh, you know, those were very real questions. Now at the same time, you know, I have to say some of the TDU folks were some of the people that were doing. That were kind of the most involved

01:51:55.339 - 01:52:08.359

with the with the workers who were as well as some of the strikers committee folks, I would, I would dare say they were, they were both jointly involved in some of the very nasty violent stuff that came with enforcing the strike. What are you talking about

01:52:08.359 - 01:52:27.680

now? Uh, I think folks from the TDU side and from the strikers committee side were involved in that stuff, um, you know, which, which meant, uh, you know, there's, there's, you hear that they're picking up scabs over in Gilroy or over in San Jose, and half

01:52:27.680 - 01:52:41.580

a dozen people show up, you know, uh, with sticks and bicycle chains and try to run the scabs off before they can get in the van, you know, or break all the windows of the van, um. Uh, you know, that kind of stuff, that was, I

01:52:41.580 - 01:53:04.160

think, fairly general. In terms of a wide range of the strikers, not certainly not all of them, uh, supporting that kind of activity and Um, And I don't think that was a place. Well, I don't think either. I can't speak for TDU because I wasn't locally

01:53:04.160 - 01:53:18.660

connected to the leadership, but I don't think that and certainly I, I don't think that the league, I don't think that the TP was particularly involved in leading any of that stuff. I think that was organic and spontaneous, but I think it crossed those lines. That

01:53:18.660 - 01:53:39.240

wasn't the political difference was how hard do you push these the company. Now, The strike started on September 9th. A month later there was a big rally, a big Solidarity Day rally, which I believe I missed. Um, I think I missed it too. I think I

01:53:39.240 - 01:53:57.810

was in um. I was at the TDU National Convention with Manuel and with somebody else from from or maybe Manuel didn't come, I forget, and somebody else from one or two of the strikers came. Well, the way it was summed up was that TDU basically brought

01:53:57.810 - 01:54:15.000

in all their friends from Berkeley or whatever, you know, UC Santa Cruz and Um, they basically ran the show. And would not permit strikers to get up to the mic and speak, and the strikers were so incensed at the way they were being treated, they thought

01:54:15.000 - 01:54:29.879

we need to come up with our own organization to do this. I have a letter. I mean, I'm curious as to whether that's an accurate narrative or not. I don't know. You don't know, you weren't there. This was a march or a rally. I'm trying to

01:54:29.879 - 01:54:52.919

think of solidarity. Yeah, I'm trying to think if this was I remember going to a march where the strike a couple of weeks later where my parents told me I need those brain cells. Yeah, well, you lay off. Yeah, um, the one I went to, uh,

01:54:53.009 - 01:55:07.330

I think was in mid October. That was my first trip to Watsonville, and was that a march. It was a march, and what I remember was that there were cops were out in force and the strikers linked arms to separate the crowd from the cops, and

01:55:07.330 - 01:55:21.759

I remember riding back to the Bay Area on a bus with some Ernest Berkeley Trotsky telling me that the strikers didn't that he cited the fact that they had their backs to the police to indicate they did not understand the nature of the state power under

01:55:21.759 - 01:55:39.410

capitalism. And You know, and I, I think, is that better than having your back to the workers? Well, I think what I said to him was, you know what you remind me of, you remind me of somebody who's invited as a guest into somebody else's house

01:55:39.410 - 01:55:54.060

and then criticizes the fact that this that the kitchen sink is not spotless. You know, shut up. This is not, you know, they're in a much better position to judge how to handle stuff than you are. They don't need to be lectured about the, the viciousness

01:55:54.060 - 01:56:13.790

of the police, you know, they've been dealing with it. I was, you know, I mean, I remember. I went to one of the later marches and I, and I was at. This rally early on at the fairgrounds, which may have been the solidarity day. Um, I

01:56:13.790 - 01:56:37.439

don't remember the controversy over who spoke. I do have a letter somewhere from um. From uh uh Karen Osmundsen. Well, I don't know. Uh, Joe Fahey's ex, roundly lambasting me for some criticism I had made of how they'd handled the speaker stuff, so that I should

01:56:37.439 - 01:56:59.660

be able to find. Um, let me just grab a box. I'll put this on pause. I always had figured that the cannery Workers Project was something that was regarded by TDU as a kind of a weak thing. And that it was a, you know, uh. I

01:56:59.660 - 01:57:26.140

know that you were associated with it. Manuel was associated with it. Um When did the Cannery Workers Project affiliate with TDU? Can Workers project affiliated with TDU in When I went to work. Well, the Canter Workers project was formed. What existed in San Jose before the

01:57:26.140 - 01:57:48.740

Cantor Workers Project formed was the Hold on a second. I'm just, so you were asking when the Canter Workers Project formed. I was Can Workers Project. Well, when it affiliated with CDU. It was formed in conjunction with TDU the cannery workers. There was a Cannery Workers

01:57:48.740 - 01:58:10.799

Committee in San Jose, that there were canner workers committees, let me back up, that were formed spontaneously at about the same time, some of them with that name and some of them with a different name. In San Jose, Hayward. Oakland, Sacramento. And somewhat in Modesto in

01:58:10.850 - 01:58:35.479

probably about 72 or so uh as a response, I think, to the whole general civil rights movement. They were indigenous organizations of Of, uh, uh, cannery workers who were frustrated by the, uh, uh, the system in the canneries that prevented women from going into year-round jobs

01:58:35.709 - 01:59:08.279

and that overwhelmingly blocked Latinos from year-round jobs, um. And um Uh, they had in various areas, participation from different. Latino Chicano nationalist forces, and, and leftist individuals. Uh, uh, affiliated and unaffiliated in different places. Uh, in San Jose, Fred Hirsch, who was in and around the

01:59:08.279 - 01:59:27.250

Communist Party, I think he was still in at that point, participated. Ted Smith and Mandy Hawes, a couple of lawyers were participating there who were kind of unaffiliated, uh, uh. Tony Estra Mayer and Jaime Gallardo there who were like young Chicano kind of nationalists, kind of

01:59:27.250 - 01:59:47.689

around the CP but not in lawyers, uh, Sacramento. Andy Noguchi, who had been around Yoon, was participating, uh, no, uh, East Wind, uh, as well as the Royal Chicano Air Force, I think, which is kind of a nationalist group up there. So, uh, variety of folks,

01:59:47.770 - 02:00:15.520

but basically driven from within by cannery workers, and they, um, Uh, I joined that in '74 in San Jose. Um, And um so there was a loose knit network of those and as canneries closed, it kind of boiled down to Sacramento and San Jose. Uh, and

02:00:15.520 - 02:00:40.669

some contacts down in the Salinas Valley in Hollister. And um Uh, by Uh, 76 or so. Uh, we were contacted by TDU, which had folks in the Bay Area. And so I went off to their. The convention where TDU and prod merged to form the new

02:00:40.669 - 02:01:05.490

TDU back in '76, I think, 76 or so. And, and so then we had a loose relationship with them from that point forward in uh in '82. Late '81. Uh, uh, I made the decision or we made the decision to seek funding for this cannery workers

02:01:05.490 - 02:01:34.580

project as an amalgam of these two cannery workers committees in San Jose and Sacramento and two TDU chapters in Stockton and Watsonville. And we had the contacts with the funding because I had gotten Catholic Church funding. For To for a 3 year run of a cannery

02:01:34.580 - 02:01:46.979

worker service center or I helped them get it in Sacramento and 23 year runs they gave funding 3 years up to 3 years at a time. It wasn't supposed to go longer than that in San Jose, where we've kind of done a lot of community organizing

02:01:46.979 - 02:02:05.790

around the Cannery Worker Service Center. And um So we had these contacts with the Catholics. We went. Got the money. Your car's ready. Oh goodie. OK, let's, let's do that. Can we figure we'll do that tomorrow morning? OK, or before 6. OK, let's see when you

02:02:05.790 - 02:02:27.120

get back. OK. Um, I'm taking the dogs because I'll go for a walk. OK, cool. And then um So when the camera, so and then I got like, it was nice seeing you again. I will probably, you probably will be gone or maybe we're just warming

02:02:27.120 - 02:02:51.100

up here. Yeah, I know how it is, Michael, Michael, it doesn't take much. For him to be Well, we're trying to reconstruct really more than 18 months here. Um, OK, talk to you in a little bit. Um, So, um, you know, we, we, we had, we

02:02:51.100 - 02:03:11.839

had buy-in from the cannery workers committees to form this regional thing. Um. It started eroding pretty quick because there were, you know, there were, there were some folks who were more comfortable with it than others in the Cannery workers committees and in in San Jose, particularly,

02:03:12.270 - 02:03:40.529

um, and, and ultimately, um, you know, as I said, it kind of, it, it fell apart by 3.5 years in. We just, we, we, we, the, the cannery Workers commit project. And the, and, and National TDU were just not on the same page. So this is,

02:03:40.580 - 02:04:01.939

these are contradictions developed even before the Watsonville strike down. Yeah, they were already developing, but they, they were really sharpened by the, by the Watsonville strike because in the Watsonville strike, we had, we had the local chapter. And the national organization in agreement on what should

02:04:01.939 - 02:04:27.189

be happening. And we had the um the national staff in the area, me and the, the Campaign for Human Development had required us to set up a separate uh uh leadership body. A separate board. And that was uh um Uh, that was, uh, uh, you know,

02:04:27.950 - 02:04:46.549

on a whole different page than the local leadership. So it was a real, you know, that, that was a real sharp contradiction that was already developing, but, but what really, really flushed it out was, um was the, the, the Watsonville canning strike and the differences uh

02:04:46.549 - 02:05:24.149

around how to proceed. So when when the strike. Manuel actually was um. Did he have a long standing association with the, with the, the project? Well, Manuel had been. Uh, a community activist in San Jose, I got here, I, I. Got him working in the cannery

02:05:24.149 - 02:05:53.390

probably in. Oh. 1980 or so, he started working in the cannery, the same cannery I was working in. Uh, in San Jose, Del Monte, and then, um, he, uh, He was on the board of the Cannery Workers Project. Uh, and then when I left. I, at

02:05:53.390 - 02:06:17.140

the time that, that we officially divorced the Canner Workers Project in TDU. In Mid 1986, uh, I left the project. Uh, at that point. Uh, uh, the decision I was undertaking was to go keep on doing Teamster work but work with white Teamsters instead of brown

02:06:17.140 - 02:06:36.859

ones because, uh, the analysis was that, you know, there was only so far I was ever going to go as a leader of uh Latino cannery workers. This was, this was your analysis or this was what? Uh, this was a combination of, I think, my analysis

02:06:36.859 - 02:07:03.169

and the league's analysis. There was, there was, as you can imagine, much discussion on that. And so I basically handed the, the, uh, the cannery workers project over to Manuel, which by that point was, uh, was an independent uh uh organization. And uh I went on

02:07:03.169 - 02:07:33.229

to uh uh I went on to, uh, in theory, to go be a member of the Teamsters, truck drivers local in San Jose, which I started doing. And um, Ended up uh uh. Late that year. Uh, Uh, getting involved in, um, in running a campaign, uh,

02:07:33.740 - 02:07:54.680

uh, to, uh, uh, To elect somebody that I had met who was a part of the TDU group in, in uh in, in Watsonville, excuse me, in Stockton, he got elected and I went to work for him. So, uh, uh, that, at that point, the cannery

02:07:54.680 - 02:08:25.419

Workers project was when well was the sole staffer instead of me being the sole staffer and subsequently, uh, it moved from um Uh, it moved from, uh, Uh, from that, from Manuel to Oscar. Watch the tape recorder when you do this. Oh, it's gonna show up

02:08:25.419 - 02:08:52.649

on tape. This is fascinating. You don't need this. I haven't seen this for years. Uh, if I wanna see it probably not. Um, Well, tell me about that because I know that they figured prominently and I know that was Manuel's mom. It was Reyna, right, basically.

02:08:52.990 - 02:09:08.549

I know she was around a lot in the early first couple of months of the strike and there was a lot of mention of her in the unity coverage of the strike. Uh, well, yeah, Manuel's mom was around, Manuel's sisters were around. Manuel's niece, Arlene was

02:09:08.549 - 02:09:31.939

around. That's a big family, um. And they were all from San Jose. They were in Watson from what they were, they were all from um. Oh, looky here. They were all from uh um Mountain View, from where? Mountain View. Um, although, Most of them are now

02:09:31.939 - 02:10:04.399

in San Jose. I saw, uh, Arlene and Diane. Diane is Manuel's sister. Um, And uh I saw them at at Rena's funeral and subsequently at Donna Taylor's funeral. Um, And uh So they're actually accessible and I recall there were some, they had some issues too. It's

02:10:04.399 - 02:10:24.580

like I think her kids had some issues over how they were told what to do in security for the cannery workers' marches. But in any case, Rosso Sea, Rosso C was a San Jose community organization. Um, the key people in organizing it were Rayna, Jorge Gonzalez,

02:10:25.240 - 02:10:50.160

and Elisa Gonzalez. Um, who at the time were married, now they're not, uh, they both continue, Jorge and Lisa both live in San Jose still and are easily accessible, um. And um So they were mobilizing community support basically in San Jose and also playing a role,

02:10:50.209 - 02:11:04.250

I think I think they were some of the folks, Rayna in particular who had some time on her hands, playing a role coming down and talking to workers. So she talked to them a lot before the strikers committee was formed because I know that they, when

02:11:04.250 - 02:11:17.600

they were interviewed in Unity, they mentioned that Reyna from Rota was telling us, well, who's who's taking care of this, who's taking care of that, and I realized I didn't have any answers to any of them. Her questions The impression I got is that they were

02:11:17.600 - 02:11:41.759

taking a lot of leadership from her. Reyna Reyna was a matriarch, an extremely solid fundamental community organization, community organizer. She really was a lifetime leader of the, of the Chicano community in Mountain View, you know, going back to the 60s when People had to organize to

02:11:41.759 - 02:11:57.370

get stuff done and get stuff changed to schools and stuff like that. She was, she was kind of the center person in all that stuff, uh, long before she was a communist, Manuel kind of ran into leftists at Stanford and ended up recruiting her and other

02:11:57.370 - 02:12:23.770

people, uh, to the league, but she was a, uh, she was just a strong. Smart indigenous leader who knew how to make things happen and did she start tay? She and Jorge and Elisa did. And how, how long had it been around? I'm guessing it had

02:12:23.770 - 02:12:38.799

been around a couple of years by that point and and it probably lasted a couple years after that and then sort of faded away. They continued to do support work though after the strikers Committee was formed. They continued to bring people to those rallies and work

02:12:38.799 - 02:12:53.669

with Lou Gray and that kind of thing on the food banking stuff and so forth. That's a question. I don't know. I, I would guess so. It was a priority of the organization and that was of the, of the league, and that was an organization that

02:12:53.669 - 02:13:14.799

the league's folks had started and ran, yeah. And I mean all of those people whose names I listed were in the organization. Um, I think Bill Flores had something to do with Rossy for a while too. Yeah. And a lot of You said that you were

02:13:14.799 - 02:13:27.470

driving, you were in the Watsonville unit at the time the strike broke out, but you were, it wasn't at the time. There was no Watsonville unit when the strike broke out. Nobody was here in Watsonville. OK, Manuel went down there initially when the strike first broke

02:13:27.470 - 02:13:46.640

out, and then Oscar went down. Cherie went down and a whole bunch of people came in fairly late in the game and we had Siyo yeah Sio on your list, Bill Segal. I ought to be on your list. She's easy to find. She lives locally. She'll

02:13:46.640 - 02:14:04.350

she's, there's no reason she wouldn't talk to you. Um, I would at least talk by phone to Jorge and Elisa. I don't have Sio's contact info. Oscar does. Uh, I gather they're no longer married. I'm not sure if they, I don't think they were ever married,

02:14:04.919 - 02:14:28.560

uh, but no, they're, they are not together, but they are not unfriendly. Um, well, she was a good buddy and roommate of my sister's sister-in-law, Donna. Um, Before she went down to Watsonville, she lived on Larkin Street in San Francisco with Donna. Anyway, OK, Jorge Gonzalez.

02:14:30.750 - 02:15:15.470

408. This is home 295. 0656. Email Jorge, J O R G E. Dot Gonzalez with two Z's in it. At SSA. SCCG.org. You better break down the letter F as in what. SSA. Santa Santa Clara County. He's a mental health worker in the county. He ended

02:15:15.470 - 02:15:30.259

up as the head of the San Jose Unified School Board. Is he the guy you um. Are we talking about the guy, I think we're talking about, he, he, he was associated with the paper for a while, small guy, slender, very gentle. I think he wrote

02:15:30.259 - 02:15:48.910

poetry occasionally. Could well be. People sometimes call him Jay. Yeah, yeah, OK, I know who you mean. Yeah, a very sweet man, as I recall, and his wife Elisa. That's right. She did an interview in the paper and Somebody asked, you know, at one point the

02:15:48.910 - 02:16:11.589

interviewer asked her, did you guys meet and doing political work, she says, oh God, no, we met in a bar. Uh, actually, Jorge married uh Heidi and I, and I knew Elisa from the time that we were about 12. Uh, Let's see. Elisa, Elisa Marina Alvarado.

02:16:13.640 - 02:16:53.289

Uh, 408. 929. 3118. Is home and work is 408. 272. 99. 27 OK and they were in San Jose and she's now running a the uh Chicano theater company San Jose. So they were in San Jose, they were Ross C along with along with Rayna.

02:16:55.519 - 02:17:15.080

Um, And I don't know much about the support work they were doing. I was at the time the strike started, I was in a random unit. I was in a San Jose labor unit that was the um Most demoralizing place I was ever in in that

02:17:15.080 - 02:17:35.798

organization. It was uh Eric and Leanne. Yeah, Tracy. Uh, Laura, uh, so I had some months of sitting in on meetings of what was going on in Watsonville while being in that other unit, and then at some point a Watsonville unit was formed and at some

02:17:35.798 - 02:17:51.019

point subsequent to that, late in the game, I ended up being part of it, but it was all sort of irrelevant because by that point I was like working over in Stockton and. You were just driving around a lot. Yeah, I didn't really mean to get

02:17:51.019 - 02:18:28.809

into the You know, the internal stuff so much it's just getting a sense of like. My sense was just from the synopsis of Silver's film, you know, which I haven't seen you in touch with him by the way? No, he's around. I know. Oscar buddies now,

02:18:28.820 - 02:18:42.149

but I, yeah, Heidi in a group with him with his wife. I can see that um. Anyway, my, my, um, Losing my train of thought here. You didn't mean to get into the internal so much stuff so much. I, I didn't, no, I mean, I, my

02:18:42.149 - 02:19:03.758

sense was that after The strikers Committee was formed. The way John Silver represents it is that TDU basically ceased to be an important factor. In the struggle. that they were pretty much marginalized and that therein lies the tragedy of the strike, you know, that they opportunists

02:19:03.758 - 02:19:29.518

took over or conservatives put over or whatever or moderates took over. Well, it's true in a way. I mean, there, It seemed to me that Um, TU played a key role in helping the strike to start. In helping the workers to figure out. How they could

02:19:29.518 - 02:19:54.509

transform their Gut reaction against what was coming down. Oh, here's see in these Times article. Yeah, let's not even look at it now. Go, keep going. And letters of response. Yeah, I would like to see that actually. Here's one from Gloria Betancourt. One for me, Manuel,

02:19:54.700 - 02:20:25.120

and Joe. Joe Fay, yep, good, yeah. And one from Pedro Negura, Nancy Skinner, Gay Seidman, and Patricia Vattuone, none of which were printed, I suppose. That is a matter of record. I don't even remember the article. I remember being furious when I read it. Um, So,

02:20:25.469 - 02:20:45.400

where were we? Well, the question was TDU's role early in the strike and were they in fact marginalized. Oh yeah. Yeah, I think TDU played a key role in helping the workers figure out how to um how to really Organize themselves and vote this thing down.

02:20:46.740 - 02:21:06.950

to their credit vote down the, the uh contract uh offer. This we're back at the beginning now. We're back at the beginning of the strike. Let me interrupt you here because Sergio's account was that there never was a contract offer basically the old contract expired. And

02:21:07.040 - 02:21:27.599

uh. The, the old contract expired and and uh uh Conso and Richard Shaw pretty much unilaterally imposed a wage cut and cuts in the pension and so forth and people just want to spontaneously walk out. Sergio said he spent a lot of time in the plant

02:21:27.599 - 02:21:41.110

telling people you can't just walk out. You won't be able to collect unemployment. You have to have a strike vote and get sanctions from the international union, and then they had to then get benefits, and he had to kind of familiarize himself with the procedure, but

02:21:41.110 - 02:21:58.019

that the question of whether they're going to go out on strike was never an issue. It wasn't like anybody was trying to push. a bad contract on them that the terms have been unilaterally imposed. That's what Sergio told me. Uh, he's probably right. I would trust

02:21:58.019 - 02:22:24.160

his recollection over mine because I wasn't really. Uh, you know, this was sort of, I wasn't, I wasn't right in the middle of it. I wasn't paying great attention to it. Yeah, you said that TDU help people reject the contract. That's what I heard. Um, You're

02:22:24.160 - 02:22:43.620

digging up all this wonderful stuff, but it's also being the If you want to stay here, that's fine. Um First of all, uh, there's a reference to taking away the gains one over the past 20 years. Do you know much about the history of uh I

02:22:43.620 - 02:23:04.009

should have asked Sergio this. The history of the Teamsters in Watsonville. I mean, was that one of those places where they went and they kind of uh undercut the CIO union back in the late 40s. That that was uh there was a war. The principal battleground

02:23:04.009 - 02:23:24.919

that was fought on was the canneries. I've read Vicky Ruiz's book, so I know that the rough outline of it. I'm just curious whether that took place in Watsonville. There was a war between the CIO and the AFL down in this area as well. But um

02:23:25.320 - 02:23:46.830

no, I don't think it came out of that. I think they got the the there was a real kind of wave of organizing in, I believe the 50s. And um by the Teamsters, by the Teamsters. And um, They got voluntary recognition at Watsonville Canyon and that

02:23:46.830 - 02:24:12.540

was one of the interesting points that emerged during that strike, and that that's really what saved it. Yeah and um. I'm trying to remember if it was a separate local or if it was initially part of 890. Um, I could find that out. I could ask

02:24:12.540 - 02:24:26.629

Millie Atmet, who was working at 890 in 1950 and is still working there. And in your opinion, I mean, there was a reference to taking away the games for the past 20 years and yet the The kind of the general narrative about the teamsters and the

02:24:26.629 - 02:24:45.089

cannery that they signed a bunch of sweetheart deals so that they could kind of vertically integrate, you know, that that's not true. You don't think it's true. I don't buy that, you know, in, in um in the canneries they had Uh, Health insurance coverage for workers

02:24:45.089 - 02:25:05.969

who worked 3 months a year, which is unusual, which is unheard of, right? They had year-round coverage. They, they didn't cover the worker's spouse. On the theory that those were seasonal work, the seasonal workers were women. And the uh uh and your spouse was working someplace

02:25:05.969 - 02:25:23.879

in the can, but they covered the workers' kids. They cover, it's the only insurance I've ever seen that covered the spouse, but the kids, but not the spouse. Uh, they covered the worker all year round, even though they only worked 3 months a year. They had

02:25:23.879 - 02:25:47.129

a pension for those seasonal workers. Um, And I don't know. You know, I I see an awful lot of unionized workers in seasonal food processing stuff. Not so much in year round but in the seasonal that have that have no health insurance, that have no pension,

02:25:47.290 - 02:26:07.940

that have what they get from a union is wages and a grievance procedure. Um, in frozen food industry, they had, um, and the other thing that they had was, I mean, even the seniority is important. Because in a seasonal workplace, that matters tremendously. But, um, you

02:26:07.940 - 02:26:27.730

know, frozen food, they had, it was kind of minimalist insurance till you've been there like 10 years, but an awful lot of people had, and then it was pretty good insurance. It bumped up. Um, And um, You know, it's totally true that A, the contracts were

02:26:27.730 - 02:26:49.540

way better for the, for the small chunk of workers in the warehouse and maintenance who were year-round. That B, those workers were overwhelmingly Anglo till fairly late on. And almost exclusively male. Those things are not. are undeniable. But it's, it's really also true that in the

02:26:49.540 - 02:27:08.610

cannery, And to only a slightly lesser extent in the frozen food industry, that if you look at at seasonal food workers, not workers who work year-round, um, Those were really good. Uh, uh, uh, agreements. You compare them, I would bet they would compare favorably to what

02:27:08.610 - 02:27:25.059

people were able to win in Europe, in the developed world. Uh, certainly they would compare favorably to what people were able to win in other parts of the country. Yeah. So, um, no, there was something very real that people were defending. The problem is that that

02:27:25.059 - 02:27:51.230

strike happened at a time when the industry was the bottom was knocked out of the industry by export of jobs to Mexico, basically. By export of jobs to Mexico and by the real development of, of, um, You know, I don't know when IQF freezing, individual quick

02:27:51.230 - 02:28:07.080

freezing really took over the industry. And that's where you run stuff. You, you cut the vegetables. They go widely scattered on a belt, and they go through a blast freezer on on the belt, and they come out the other end and they're frozen, but they're not

02:28:07.080 - 02:28:21.879

frozen in a block. Like if you put a bag of broccoli in the freezer and you take it out, you're gonna have to chunk it apart, right, or defrost it first or defrost it first. Once they were once they really had this blast freezing technology down

02:28:21.879 - 02:28:33.969

to where they could freeze it. Going through and it and you know, and start to do these poly bags. I don't know if you remember when I was a kid and I had frozen spinach, did you ever have frozen vegetables when you were a kid? Yeah,

02:28:34.089 - 02:28:46.209

that's a big frozen block which you had to tha sauce and it would boil it until it thawed out. It wasn't a bag, right? It was a box. It was a box. Yeah. Now you get the bag of frozen corn peas, broccoli, whatever in the store

02:28:46.209 - 02:29:01.009

now, and it, and it's great when you sprain your wrist. It's a nice bag, right, because it's flex. That's because of individual quick freezing. And it's in a blast freezer. I don't know what year that came in, but what that allowed them to do is At

02:29:01.009 - 02:29:20.219

some point they figured out they could grow the shit elsewhere. They could The money was being made in, in not in bags of frozen broccoli, but in blended vegetables in, in, you know, if you go to the store right now and you look at what frozen

02:29:20.219 - 02:29:38.799

vegetables are in, they're much more going to be in, who buys TV dinners anymore, but at the time that, but also like, you know, your little Lean Cuisine things, your, your, your package that's got 5 different ingredients in it. And so they realized that they could

02:29:38.799 - 02:30:02.150

freeze that into bins in anywhere, ship it here frozen, and just have a plant in the US that blended it. And the real labor intensive part isn't blending and packaging. The labor intensive part is trimming. And sorting and culling. Taking, taking the leaves out, taking, cutting

02:30:02.150 - 02:30:21.080

it into the right size florets, um, uh, taking out the stuff that was brown or yellow. Um, and that they could export all that. So that was starting to happen here. And now, let me, this is interesting, but I want to make sure I understand it.

02:30:23.959 - 02:30:41.490

The crops are harvested. You want to have the stuff trimmed near where the harvest takes place, yep. And then it's, it's freeze dry individual quick frozen, at which point it can be shipped somewhere else where it's turned into a consumer. It can be IQF and packaged

02:30:41.490 - 02:30:58.889

as they did here into just poly bags, right? Yeah. And that's just a machine that has a big roll of material and it chunks it in and makes a bag out of it. Or it can be frozen into great huge bins anywhere and shipped here frozen

02:30:59.500 - 02:31:16.419

because the bins, it's loose in the bins, it's not a block in the bins. So, but it still needs to be trimmed before it can be quick frozen, and that's the really labor intensive part. So what's happening now is because you've got quick freezing. Um, They

02:31:16.419 - 02:31:29.500

can grow the crops in Mexico. They can have a trim down there. They can quick freeze it there and then they can ship it up to the states to be done with whatever needs to be done to have it reach the market in the states. Well,

02:31:29.549 - 02:31:51.799

they grew in Mexico for a while. They grew it in um Purauo, I think. Uh, or Sinaloa, I forget Sinaloa. Uh, you got the movie, you got's movie. They went down and shot a movie. Silver may have worked on it. Sergio told me to see that

02:31:51.799 - 02:32:09.629

movie. So if it's get a hold of it, I'd like to. Joe will be able to get a copy. If not, I can get it from the Teamsters. Um, and they, um, So it went down there And then it went to, um, that shut down after

02:32:09.629 - 02:32:25.900

a while and it moved to Guatemala for lower labor costs. And I was in Guatemala for a wedding of a niece a couple of years ago and I was staying with an agronomist in um in Antigua, the old capital of the Republic of first capital of

02:32:25.900 - 02:32:42.519

the Republic of Central America, and uh and he was saying that that uh that they'd almost stopped growing it there. They've been growing it for freezing, but they've moved it to Ecuador to get better labor costs, but then he thought it was going to go to

02:32:42.519 - 02:33:05.660

China pretty quick. I think Carmen's working on that deal. Well, it's interesting, the The crops keep freezing. They locate the, I mean the crops keep moving around where they grow the crops. They locate the crops wherever they can have the cheapest labor to prepare the crops

02:33:05.660 - 02:33:22.209

for freezing. And then once the crop is frozen, you can send it just about anywhere you need it. So the point being that Freezing has allowed them to decentralize the industry and you know, I never really thought about it till we had this conversation, but I

02:33:22.209 - 02:33:41.030

would bet. That the wide popularization of the IQF technique and the and the because of course it's a while from the time that they invented till the time that they really popularize it because people already have big capital investment in current technology and And then it's

02:33:41.030 - 02:33:56.209

a while longer until they figure out. Why are we doing this here? Um, but I'll bet that that didn't proceed by much more than 5 or 10 years. This shit in Watsonville, easy enough to find out. So when they say fraud and it's always I guess

02:33:56.209 - 02:34:15.459

at the time of the strike it's still processed something like 50% of the frozen food. In the in the US market, was that a huge amount. I mean, it's a great place to grow. Broccoli and celery and cauliflower, they still grow it here. They still grow

02:34:15.459 - 02:34:30.250

it here. It's also cooler here than down they still grow it in the Salinas Valley too, but it's warmer in the Salinas Valley. But if you're going to run a freezing plant. You're better off doing it someplace that's cooler rather than hotter because the costs are

02:34:30.250 - 02:34:48.790

lower. And that's so by those standards, it actually would be. Well, what did they at Watsonville Canning, they didn't, they didn't simply quick freeze it. They prepared the product for market, right? Yeah, yeah, in poly bags, I think principally, yeah, and what would come out of

02:34:48.790 - 02:35:01.400

the dock would be like a bunch of bags which would go straight to the supermarkets with the brand name of Birds Eye or whoever on it. And is that still, I mean, there are, there are still one or two plants left in Watsonville from what I

02:35:01.400 - 02:35:24.469

understand. One was that What which one is that? It's um he was the name of it? It's over on uh. So we're on uh uh not Riverside, so we're on East Beach Street and and Harkin Slough Road, um. I forget the name of it. I but

02:35:24.469 - 02:35:42.250

through it. You should get a walk through it. Mhm. It, it's not important at this point, but um. I guess what I'm trying to get a sense of is It wasn't just NAFTA that drove the industry out of the country. It was the technology. It was

02:35:42.250 - 02:35:57.500

already happening even before NAFTA passed. I know that 912, you know, when Joe was president, Sergio was secretary treasurer, put a tremendous amount of energy into defeating NAFTA and trying to stop it. Oh yeah, but that was after the strike the strike I mean the strike

02:35:57.500 - 02:36:20.799

was driven by this. The strike was driven by um the, I think the strike was driven not by one or two guys determination to break the union, but by In part by changing economics in the industry, and this is my, you know, I wasn't investigating this

02:36:20.799 - 02:36:45.730

shit at the time, but once again, that's pretty easy to figure out too. I would think, um. You know, Mort's still around. Keep going. Mort is in, uh, Mort's running a frozen food plan. Mort's still around. Oh. I would have thought he would have died of

02:36:45.730 - 02:37:04.910

an overdose by now. Mort's running a frozen food plant, the non-union frozen food plant. I forget if it's Is it in Santa Maria or is it in uh in uh um uh where in Lindsay, I don't remember, uh, but he's running a big frozen food plant

02:37:04.910 - 02:37:23.969

someplace. No I'll be damned. The sense I had was that the guy was just really this very self-destructive. You know, kind of a playboy and that he kind of ruined himself during the strike. You know, he made a succession of really. Seriously bad decisions and frittered

02:37:23.969 - 02:37:53.339

away what he's inherited from his old man. I'm not a guy for you to talk to. Um, He works at Patterson Frozen Foods. Which is the sole surviving California. Uh, frozen vegetable plant. There are some frozen vegetable plants up in the Northwest still. Uh, and, uh,

02:37:55.200 - 02:38:18.259

What the hell's his name? Um, I can come up with it pretty easily. Um, He's there like, he's been their HR guy forever. Going back to sometime around the time of the Watsonvilleanic strike. And um they're still union. They're represented by Teamsters Local 948 over in,

02:38:19.129 - 02:38:46.900

yeah. And um See, I think it's a, it's. I don't know the union even necessarily Uh, Sergio was. He was young, he was. Had his nose to the grindstone as a business agent. I don't know that he was even. That cognizant of the economics going on

02:38:46.900 - 02:39:04.309

in the industry at that point. I certainly wasn't. I don't know how many people you're talking to that were. They're looking at a completely different side of it. No, I mean, Sergio's basic line is that, you know, King had an unhealthy relationship with the consul family.

02:39:05.280 - 02:39:20.669

That, um, you know, the old man died and his Playboy son took over the plant and the guy was just an asshole. And you know, he, he thought he had the workers under his thumb because of his family connections to King and he thought he could

02:39:20.669 - 02:39:43.019

break the union. That's a simple explanation. Sergio's explanation. And you know, maybe that's true. I'm skeptical of that. I just, you know, I, I, I suspect that there was. I've seen, I've seen people have wars because the owner of a company gets a hair because the

02:39:43.019 - 02:40:04.280

owner of a company gets a hair up its ass. But usually when there's wars of that bitterness and that cost, there's much more fundamental economic stuff driving it. And um, I would bet. That that was part of what was going on there, that it wasn't so

02:40:04.280 - 02:40:25.370

simple and uh uh. Maybe that is maybe that isn't the place to, you know, I think you could very well be right, but it's something it's an idea we have to develop because Um, Objectively, what happened is Shaw was being driven out of business, so he

02:40:25.370 - 02:40:35.849

claimed, you know, he opened up the books, I guess, and I want what did he say why he was being driven out of business? Well, here I'm giving you Sergio's line and also what Alex told me, which is that they went and they looked at Shaw's

02:40:35.849 - 02:40:54.530

books, and he pretty much persuaded them that if he didn't. That you know 585 was the most. He could afford And that if they stayed on strike, he would basically go broke. But why? Was he being driven out of business by Watsonville? Yes, because Dick King

02:40:54.530 - 02:41:12.540

had given console like a 40% wage differential. OK. Uh, and that that Shaw was being undersold, he complained bitterly to the union about it and then he finally thought, well, fuck, I'm just going to make the same wage demands that consul is making. So he wound

02:41:12.540 - 02:41:29.299

up going out with Washington canning as well, um. But Consul thought he was in a position to take a strike, and at the end of the day, neither was and Conse tried to take a protracted strike. He figured it would be, yeah, but the point is

02:41:29.299 - 02:41:44.019

that both both and figured they'd they'd pretty much get the union to capitulate after a couple of weeks. When it didn't capitulate after a couple of weeks, Shaw was ready to settle, and he called the international people in there and Sergio was in there too. They

02:41:44.019 - 02:42:01.200

had the books inspected. And lo and behold, Shaw really was losing money and was in terrible shape. Alex's position was Shaw never should have been struck in the first place. That was Dick King's incompetence that that happened, and we're frittering away resources that could be concentrated

02:42:01.200 - 02:42:24.650

on Markono, who really is a bad egg. Uh, So he went in there, tried to sell to the straw workers the necessity for settling for 585, even though it was a cut. And You know, concentrating everything on console. OK, but console wasn't running a very effective

02:42:24.650 - 02:42:42.549

operation at that point. Well, maybe he didn't know it. So why were they? Why did they need to cut wages from 7 to 585, and there were some benefit cuts in there too, in order for Shaw to survive. Maybe it was just competition for Mort. I

02:42:42.549 - 02:42:57.959

suspect that's a, especially when you look in hindsight and you see how over the next few years after everybody got those cuts, they all still went out of business or left. Right, well I don't think any of that assumed that, although that tells me is there

02:42:57.959 - 02:43:24.759

was other stuff going on. Alex did say. You know that the Shaw contract sucked, that the days of good contracts and frozen food were over. That was obvious. He didn't elaborate. That's just what he said. Uh, OK. One thing there were multiple frozen food plants here

02:43:24.759 - 02:43:48.509

that closed, the United Foods plants closed too, the one that strike, right, the one that. We lost when the lawyer dropped the ball on the vote. Well All that was going to do was keep us. In business for another 12 months. Not even that. Uh, well,

02:43:53.769 - 02:44:15.639

There were 2 there were 2 lawyer mistakes in that strike, but I diverge so. We don't have to go there. Law should have been hung. Instead he became an arbitrator. You don't remember what the other lawyer mistake was. Mhm. The first lawyer mistake was not understanding

02:44:15.639 - 02:44:41.969

that The fact that strikers get to vote. For 12 months. Um, and then they don't. It's not 12 months until you file the petition. It's 12 months until you have the election, so they filed a petition late that I heard about. They went on and on

02:44:41.969 - 02:45:00.219

and on an appeal. And Frank made the decision that we were losing this sucker. Our workers, our members that held out admirably. We still had probably 65% of them out, which is pretty fucking good. However many months, I think, I think that one went 21 months.

02:45:02.049 - 02:45:24.610

We had a negotiation session scheduled. Frank's plan was to go into bargaining to accept what was on the table. And to go back and rebuild. And um And we had one more appeal left on our lost election to like the 9th Circuit or whatever. And the

02:45:24.610 - 02:45:42.940

lawyer missed the deadline to make the appeal a week before the A week before our bargaining where we were going to go freaking lawyer. Ken Silver. My first job at 890 was to investigate uh the potential for suing the law firm. I would think that there

02:45:42.940 - 02:45:58.269

would be a basis for a lawsuit. Those are pretty costly mistakes. Yeah, we, we didn't do it. We didn't do it because it turns out that they were funding their liability insurance themselves, so we have to like go after all their houses. We would have had

02:45:58.269 - 02:46:18.959

to go after all the lawyers' houses. And um The law firm still represents that local. They do. haven't made that mistake again. God. Yeah. So no, the plan was to retreat, to retreat and rebuild, and, and a week before we could implemented, we missed a deadline.

02:46:19.129 - 02:46:41.190

The lawyer missed a deadline. The company canceled the bargaining session and it was all over. Yeah, bad, bad, bad. And at that point, I guess. We were out league was out of the picture. I think David Makawa and Cherie Ting were, were I had been working,

02:46:41.309 - 02:47:00.309

they've been working part-time for the local, like building a campaign around the strike because that was willing to spend money on campaign. Uh, Well, let's see. I mean, I'm working for now. I've answered most of these early questions in this letter. And you've answered them rather,

02:47:00.639 - 02:47:18.400

um. So you, you're vague about the solidarity, they march on October 6th. You weren't around for that. And then there was a demo at the plant gates on October 11th, which is referred to in the actually. I'm betting that I was at the solidarity thing but

02:47:18.400 - 02:47:37.150

not at the march march came later. There was an article in Unity on October 11th referring to a demonstration at the plant gates that I'm assuming was solidarity, the solidarity march. And that's where all the ruckus took out and you say you think you have some

02:47:37.150 - 02:48:10.030

correspondence about the way you see it's what I pulled out uh-huh. Um, Now, to sum up. said that when the After solidarity, after the solidarity, they rally and the workers are really kind of ticked off at CTU. It was an open break. and The sum up

02:48:10.030 - 02:48:29.830

Tom wrote said that they that we were told to unite with TDU come hell or high water. Is that our assessment of their position or is that what they actually said? Uh, they wouldn't have said it to me. Actually, I would think that you were the

02:48:29.830 - 02:49:28.620

person they would have said it to since you were on their payroll at that point still, right? This, uh, picture that we stole that graphic from is hanging on my wall in the courtyard here. But

02:49:28.620 - 02:49:48.429

and they couldn't because they couldn't change the essential nature of their organization which was an anti-war organization into like something that was this multi-issue social organization and That's not what it was. And, and when And it's always been a problem for TDU when they're in a

02:49:48.429 - 02:50:10.000

local union and they, after years of struggle, take over the local, they don't know what to do, or, or when their guy won the national election, the Teamsters. Um, They don't know how to be as something other than an oppositionist organization. I, I'd love to talk

02:50:10.000 - 02:50:29.719

to you some other time about what the hell happened with Ron Kerry. Um, I have a worm's eye perspective on it. I have my own worm's eye perspective on it. Well, fuck it, you know what, I'm getting too tired to continue the interview actually. I feel

02:50:29.719 - 02:50:49.290

like we're probably not using our time as efficiently as we were when we started out, but I mean, I, we'll talk again, um, but I want to get your perspective on this because I'm working now in Portland. I got involved when I retired too. I will.

02:50:49.299 - 02:51:07.980

I, I worked for the other guy in the last election, but I've never had big issues with him. Well, I'm not sure I. I thought he's, I, I, I, I've been working on, you know, a single payer with JWJ up there. That's probably the lion's share

02:51:07.980 - 02:51:23.660

of my political work now, and he's the big gun on our committee. I mean, he's administered a Taft-Hartley plan for 25 years, so he knows a lot about the issue, can talk articulately about it so, very smart guy. He's also got a very kind of a

02:51:23.660 - 02:51:43.769

take no prisoners approach to politics. I think, I mean, it's like, um. We periodically have to deal with these overtures from the SEIU, you know, HCM people. The ones who are pushing the public option, they would like to make tactical alliances with us. Well, can't we

02:51:43.769 - 02:51:57.219

at least unite against, you know, uh, individual mandates, you know, can't we at least joint have joint picketing of Ron Wyden's office and stuff? You know, because of my background in the league, my inclination to say, well, let's look for some common ground if we can.

02:51:58.519 - 02:52:25.860

You know, unity, struggle, unity, and all that. Tom's attitude is I just wish those people would disappear. All they're doing is fucking things up. You know, it's like, well, what's funny is Lorraine Shear, yeah. He was a close confidant of Tom's. Well, he's, yeah, he describes

02:52:25.860 - 02:52:43.690

himself as the director of 50, right? No, he describes himself as somebody who was trained. And took a lot of leadership from SEIU people. And now has a sense of real betrayal at the direction SCIA has gone into, and he also blames them for what happened

02:52:43.690 - 02:53:05.959

to Kerry. Basically, he got a bunch of SEIU hotshots on his staff who were very unscrupulous, did stuff they should not have done, pretty much ruined his administration, got him thrown out of the union, you know, and I mean, I probably shouldn't be repeating too much

02:53:05.959 - 02:53:19.099

of this stuff because my grasp on it isn't too clear. I've had only the, the slightest discussion with Tom about it. But you know, Loreen certainly hasn't drank the SEIU Kool-Aid. I, I had a long talk with her about this like a week ago. I mean,

02:53:19.320 - 02:53:33.299

first time I've talked to her and My buddy Jamie Parter just had her. I, I, I do the labor radio show on, you know, Care up there with Jamie. He's a fellow letter carrier and he had her on, you know, I wasn't around then, but he,

02:53:33.349 - 02:53:47.080

he, he interviewed her for like, you know, how do you organize. And uh I mean JWJ started off as as SEIU's baby too. Well, she doesn't come out of SCAU. She comes out of the Teamsters out of the Teamsters. I knew her when she was a

02:53:47.080 - 02:54:06.019

cannery worker in Eugene and I was a cannery worker in San Jose and. Uh, and she ended up being an organized during the years but you mentioned 50. She's our organizing director now. During the years that Leham was an IBT national official, she was working for

02:54:06.019 - 02:54:38.459

the IBT organizing department. You know, um, so my take on carrying the uh. Uh, take no prisoners. That's part of this problem. Reece heard him speak when he was running. For uh IBT president. And I was Barely, you know, I mean, actually, I, I, um. I

02:54:38.459 - 02:54:52.280

was delivering mail when the UPS strike happened, you know, and man, I mean, I, I, I took all the stuff at the end I, I, my route was in downtown Hillsboro, so I took all the parcels that the UPS wasn't handling, and I could see, man,

02:54:52.379 - 02:55:11.969

this strike is definitely having an impact, but um. Reese, I, I happened to talk to Reese. He's, you know, I heard Kerry speak. I don't see what the big deal is, you know, he's just a militant, tough talking trade unionist. He doesn't seem to have much

02:55:11.969 - 02:55:33.309

politics. You know, there's nothing qualitatively different between him and the people he's running against that I could see. That was Reese's assessment, except he talks tougher. He did talk tougher. He had a strong anti-corruption line. The biggest problem I saw with him was he. Oh, that's

02:55:33.309 - 02:55:52.549

my car, I think leaned against my key. See about that. He came out of, he came out of New York where if you weren't. On the team, you better not come to the game because you get the shit beat out of you, right? And um so

02:55:52.549 - 02:56:07.589

he always, he had always pursued a very kind of he was in contact with TDU because of the independent stuff he had pursued, arguing against UPS contracts and going around the country hustling support against UPS contracts that the international was pushing, and he disagreed with as

02:56:07.589 - 02:56:26.080

the head of a big UPS local. And um But when he got elected, when he got elected, he got elected with no virtually no local leader support. Um, I could have been on a slate if I wanted to. Um, because there was just no local leadership

02:56:26.080 - 02:56:44.750

support. You mean in California? Yeah, yeah. Um, and Uh, and his slate had a bunch of rank and filers on it, not because that was the point of principle, but because that was all he could get. And, and fortunately for him, the, the folks who had

02:56:44.750 - 02:57:01.580

been who were had were like the regional leaders and the national leadership couldn't agree among themselves and they Ran 2 slates and they split the vote. Sergio said something like that to me. He said that Because when I mentioned that I worked with Tom, he said,

02:57:01.709 - 02:57:14.080

you know, I, I really love Ron Kerry. I thought he was a great guy and Tom kind of screwed things up because he wouldn't I didn't get the nuances of what he was saying, but apparently that was the gist of it there was some kind of

02:57:14.080 - 02:57:35.160

a split in the. You know, opposition forces that Tom was well before this though, when, when the first, the first at large election, which was generated by a consent decree in 80 that came down in '87, the election happened in 91. That was when Kerry got

02:57:35.160 - 02:58:01.269

elected or uh was it 91? Yeah, 1991. Uh Uh, Is that right? Yeah, uh, well, the UPS strike was 97. Um, so Kerry gets elected in '91, 1st national election, rank and file election in the Teamsters had always been done at conventions before that. The, the,

02:58:01.299 - 02:58:23.049

the, the, the boys can't agree on who's going to replace him. You going to work? See you later and um. Uh, so they just have a knockdown drag out and there's 3 slaves. And Lee uh Kerry went with the plurality. So we had supported 890 and

02:58:23.049 - 02:58:38.450

Salinas had supported one of the other candidates, RV Durham. Because of representations he made about what he would do in terms of organizing farm workers and, and we delivered the vote for him. And, um, and so Kerry gets elected, we send him a telegram, and he

02:58:38.450 - 02:58:55.650

gets elected with virtually no support from local unions. There's 600 local unions and the teachers, and they wield the bulk of the power and the bulk of the resources. We send him a telegram from president of our local, Frank Balego saying congratulations on your election. We

02:58:55.650 - 02:59:07.730

supported the other guy and we delivered for him, but you've won and we want to work with you. We want to support you for the next 5 years. Let's talk. Dropping pennies in a well and you never hear them hit the bottom for the next year.

02:59:08.559 - 02:59:25.110

And we were at that point the 18th largest local in the Teamsters, and this is an organization that he has won in with no support from local unions, and he desperate by any reasonable calculus, he really needs to build some base of support there, right, and

02:59:25.110 - 02:59:46.299

to take advantage of the Of the, the, the momentum of winning to do that, especially because in the, in the time between his election and his taking office. There were these regional conferences, Central, Eastern, Western, Southern, and Canadian, and they had, they were creatures of the

02:59:46.299 - 03:00:00.809

international in theory, but they kind of had a life of their own. They each had, you know, a policy committee of the conference and and typically the general president would appoint. The people that had those and such and they met and decided that they weren't going

03:00:00.809 - 03:00:18.280

to put any Kerry's people on their policy committees, that they were just going to Take him on. And so I mean they really needed base. For the first year, a member, a rank and file member from our local calling the international would have had more chance

03:00:18.280 - 03:00:38.910

of getting a conversation with Kerry than the president of our local. Because his line was, hey, if you weren't on my team when I was running, fuck you. I don't need you here, um. They, they rebranded the union. As the new Teamsters. They put a sign

03:00:38.910 - 03:00:59.849

up over the door in DC and it went on all the international letterhead, the new Teamsters. So in 600 local unions across the country, There's all these local officials going, well, fuck, I guess we're the old teamsters, right? You know, I mean, what, what would you

03:00:59.849 - 03:01:23.799

expect people to say? Um, they, they brought, they, they brought in key staff. In a union that has a really Not always productive, but long tradition of local staff, union reps coming from the rank and file much more than in most unions like SEIU or something

03:01:23.799 - 03:01:40.200

where they hire college kids who study labor studies or something, right? And the Teamsters, they hire people who drive trucks to be business agents, and it's that's, that's much more the rule than the exception. And um more people whose fathers were union leaders, you know, but

03:01:40.400 - 03:01:59.280

even then they make them go drive a truck for a little while. So they hired a whole bunch of people from outside and a whole bunch of rank and filers. Um, but nobody with any. Organizational memory, any experience in the organization. Now, and then they set

03:01:59.280 - 03:02:15.690

about to build. To, to, to deal with this by building a basically a direct relationship between the international and the members to go around, figured they kind of wrote off the local leadership figured these guys are never going to be with us. So we're so boneheaded

03:02:15.690 - 03:02:31.950

to me and we're and we're just gonna, we're just gonna go around them to the members and of course the locals were totally threatened by that and they weren't gonna let that happen and Teamsters locals. I mean, it's a total. Um, in terms of members playing

03:02:31.950 - 03:02:43.509

a role in the day to day functioning of the union, it's totally undemocratic. It has because it's a total business model, you know, business unionism. Your job is to tell us when you have problems, and our job is to solve them. But if you, if you

03:02:43.509 - 03:03:00.549

gauge democracy by how often local unions throw their leaders out, we're among one of the most democratic unions. Contested elections are the rule rather than the exception, and, and people who have been in office 36, 12 years getting thrown out is not at all unusual. Joe

03:03:00.549 - 03:03:15.990

Fay getting thrown out after 6 or 9 years as an officer of that local or whatever it was, that's not unusual at all. Um, it happens all the time. And so all these people, they may be business unionists, but they know how to run elections in

03:03:15.990 - 03:03:31.269

their locals, right? And they just went around him. I talked to a guy who had been a key consultant for them, a guy named Joe Jrzak. Uh, a lot of the folks came out of the mine workers union. Isn't he? Associated with labor for single payer

03:03:31.269 - 03:03:49.389

in some way. I don't know. I might have met him back in St. Louis last back in January. I don't know me from Adam. I'm just the name is familiar. Yeah, there's not that many jurors, right? I think he did a presentation. I didn't realize he

03:03:49.389 - 03:04:05.290

was a team. He wasn't. He was a mine worker and he, and he worked, but he worked as a consultant for a while for him early on because because Kerry's Kerry's campaign manager had been a guy who was who had led the Pittston strike. Uh, for

03:04:05.290 - 03:04:29.000

the mining workers, who was that? I can't believe I can't pull up his name. I do not remember, but he was his campaign manager and he helped him run the union for a while, and they brought in a few other people. They brought in a general

03:04:29.000 - 03:04:44.730

counsel who had been general counsel to the mine workers union. And person who came after him and an executive assistant to the president, Judy Scott, who had been at the mineworkers, they brought a whole number of people over and Jurzak said, you know, I told Joe,

03:04:44.769 - 03:05:01.830

I said, I, I can't understand how you guys fucked it up so bad. I said at the time that At the time that Kerry came in, and the old regional national leadership was really challenging, he needed to do one of two things. He needed to either

03:05:03.490 - 03:05:17.120

Build a united front, right? Find a way to work with them, come to terms, or he needed to blow their asses out of the water. And he didn't do either. He didn't do either. And so 3.5 years later, as you get close to the next election,

03:05:17.169 - 03:05:32.000

you dissolve the conferences, their power base, which you could have done right off the bat if you don't want to. You, you know, you, and by then it's like it's way too late, you know, you just totally ceded the ground of the local unions, he said.

03:05:32.349 - 03:05:51.660

You know, the reason we didn't do either. was when we took over the mine workers union. Where it was kind of like the, the. Machinists or something where it's not really local leadership, it's kind of like a lot of the locals have district council level staff

03:05:51.660 - 03:06:05.150

and such, so you have you sort of take over the whole thing, right? When we took over the mine workers union, we replaced everybody top to bottom of the union was in chaos for years, so we decided to do it more incrementally. Well, it was, it

03:06:05.150 - 03:06:31.610

was not. Um, comparable. It was a different union. They brought in an organizing director Bob Mullencamp, out of uh SEIU. Who is involved in US labor against the war had been had been a special assistant to Sweeney Sweeney was running. SEIU, uh, and it helped set

03:06:31.610 - 03:06:54.459

up jobs for justice, arrogant guy, and he didn't, but they, they didn't have anybody who got the culture. And Kerry didn't get it because Ky had come from this. Fairly isolated place where where there was a fair level of corruption and nepotism and clannishness, and if

03:06:54.459 - 03:07:09.059

you weren't on the inside, you were way on the outside. And so he viewed the whole world through that lens of basically bought into the old popular model of the Teamsters as a kind of a mafia organization. Yeah, and there was, there was plenty of union

03:07:09.059 - 03:07:27.870

basically that assumption who wasn't with him was probably crooked. If you're not with me, or yeah, and it was just this kind of This kind of dogmatic militant thing of you're, it's like which side are you on baby? OK, you made your choice and Hoffa. To

03:07:27.870 - 03:07:47.629

my extreme surprise, has proven to be totally pragmatic. That's my impression of him too. His line is. You know, um, OK, so you supported the other guy last time. OK, so what can we do here? You know, how can we work together. Sergio, huge fan of

03:07:51.330 - 03:08:06.330

um have you talked to him? Do you do you still talk to him occasionally right around the corner from you practically. He never could stand me. I tried to suck up to the guy never did me any good. Well, you can't please everybody, Mike. I need

03:08:06.330 - 03:08:20.860

to go get some grub and probably need to head on back to Oakland. I feel like, you know, we could go on for years and I, I, we get some food if you want. Heidi's gonna come home pretty quick. I, if I have dinner, I'll be

03:08:20.860 - 03:08:42.099

popular. Well, hell. Can I help? Sure, say no to that. I was just gonna look for some local taco parlor or something. Driving north. You put me to work in the kitchen. I asked what we were what she was thinking of for dinner and she said.

03:08:45.030 - 03:12:55.769

Sorry, sorry. Yeah Um, I. No Oh. Or