I have a lot of people to thank. I would like to thank rosemary. I would like to thank mark and his wife were driving alice and myself down here. I would like to thank [applause] a serious mistake. I i would like to thank the letter carrier. When. When i was a little boy my parents gave me a book called they carried the mail. I only remember one sentence neither neither snow, nor sleet, nor rain, nor dark of night shall save these careers from the swift completion of their appointed routes which i believe were words sponsored by the king of babylonia i dont no how many hundreds of thousands of words we speak, but we should all be aware of the struggle of the letter carriers. Facilities are being closed down. That seems to be the same in youngstown, ohio. This summer they are closing the Distribution Center so that henceforth when you mail a letter in youngstown lets say to the the super max prison a 20 minute drive from our home that letter will henceforth go to cleveland and then come back to youngstown. We are also aware of the contracting out. Alice and i have gone to considerable trouble to buy whatever paper, envelopes, what have you we needed from christmas someplace else. I am going to thank charlie and mike. As you will see i have some particular ways in mind of thanking them. I think most of whatever i am able to do in my ode to my parents and in particular to a summers experience of my father once he became famous for middletown, and academic it did not go so well well, but when i found out about the summer of his life i think it rolled the dice as to what kind of person i would become. My dad flew to Union Theological seminary in new york city more or less across the street from columbia. It apparently was the practice there that between the 1st and 2nd years of Divinity School a student would go to some community that did not have a regular preacher minister priest and perform that service for one summer. Somehow i kicked myself that i did not find out more about exactly why. Somehow my father wound up being assigned to rockefeller in my wyoming. The early 1920s. He arrived by stagecoach. As i understand it the 1st afternoon he found a boarding house came to the supper table and noticed something. He decided probably what the guys were feeling was who is this handsome young guy from the east while i am out there working 16 hours a day for mr. Rockefeller . What else you have to do . You will be visiting our wives. Somehow he picked that out of the air and after supper found the foreman and got a job as a pick and shovel labor. It is the single thing about him of which i am most proud. There are all kinds of stories as you might imagine. My father would work with the men monday through saturday. He could not give a sermon on sunday. In in the evening when you cannot cast a fly any longer , he would preach in the schoolhouse, and what i remember about that is that there was a certain gentleman who stood by the front door. And as my father passed the hat this man would call out walking against the hat. [laughter] after the summer was over my dad had an exchange with John D Rockefeller and wrote a letter to mr. Rockefeller in which he said that it was a tedious and lonely thing particularly for the women to live in elk basin, wyoming and might it be possible for mr. Rockefeller to give a contribution towards the creation of a community center. He got a letter back saying it had been a bad year for standard oil. [laughter] mr. Rockefeller could not manage a contribution. [laughter] you can see the bending of the twig, the formation of family values. And what i want to do by way of let me see, a present to mike. There it is. Mike mike, elk basin was about 175 miles east of puke montana, which was the center of the copper industry according to a wonderful new book about the iww the iww had a strong direct action presence in the area through world war i, but by the time my dad spent a summer in elk basin the iww had been crushed by the anaconda trucker company. Some of the workers, the militant rankandfile workers who did copper had drifted east to the Rockefeller Oil field and brought their songs with them. In any in any case, my dad did bring a song about copper miners my wife has been after me for 20 20 or 30 years to make sure that there was someone to remember it from me. What do you know . That you. [laughter] so i im going to sing the song and then give you the case and the words. What it stands for the influence on me of my dad and a way of understanding my life is to turn an effort to turn into a way of life that he had created for a summer. And i understand [laughter] the verse after next the Copper Mining equivalent of consumption. And a missed whole is a dynamite charge that was not exploded so that when some minor puts his pick in it bad things happen. [applause] [applause] [applause] im not done yet. [laughter] i want to talk about the experience the beginning of so much in different ways. He forgot to mention that when i was putting together a book of essays and thought to myself where in the world is guerrilla history. He called up and said, i found it. Reorganizing his own library he had somehow come across that essay and i want to tell you about that essay and how it came into being because it is really that which informs the larger part of the book that you may buy steel or borrow. Charlie, pure. [laughter] [laughter] charlie pointed out that in the year after we 1st met. [inaudible] the rank and file we were excited about the idea of using microphones. We did what could have easily been called the teaching about labor history from the viewpoint of the rank and file at the Community College where charlie taught. I i have been worried that you might forget those initial things you sponsored. Therefore, it is my pleasure to present to you this reproduction. [applause] [applause] thank you. So my idea and to a degree my life upside down the 2nd session of our threepart forum where two men spoke to steelworkers. The 1st was an africanamerican man. The theme of his remarks was your dog dont bark no more talking about the trade union moment and talked about the way he felt in the 30s when cio locals 1st came into existence. They became involved in issues like the scottsboro boys, young black man falsely accused of rape in alabama and other Community Issues as well as the narrow workplace issues of hours of work rates of pay important as those are. And then john got up to speed. Now it turned out that he was the 1st president of the cio local in the gigantic steel facility in east chicago indiana with a i think, of 18,000. We are not talking about a food coop, a health food store, a small enterprise. We are talking about one of the commanding heights of the United States economy. I did not know exactly what john was going to say. I met him and talked with him some, but what he did say, if you want the complete text is in another book in the back called the rank and file. Remember, if you we will that january of 1937 was the sit in at the General Motors plant in flint where the uaw one bargaining status for its own not initially for the of the plan but its own. It was in fact initially practicing what professor morris wrote a book about now called members only. Then us steel later on that year recognized the united steelworkers of america and historians wonder if there was some overlap between the bargaining directors of us steel and the board of directors of General Motors so that the us steel 1 percent to not want to undergo what the General Motors 1 percent had undergone shortly before. That list was everyone except us steel. That is what happened. They went on strike in the spring of 1937 experienced the famous and tragic memorial day massacre in South Chicago and according to almost universal belief they lost. They were not not recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent for all those different kind of steelworkers. And those who consider the strike as a failure remedied only during world war ii when the steelworkers were finally recognized those who considered the strike was a failure include for example, our beloved and departed comrade martin wayne berman, who we lost to a catastrophe. John sargent president of that huge local three or four different times. Stood before us that night. It was hot. I remember him sweating. He he died of a heart attack a few years later and said that the little strike was a victory of great portions. Those were his words. What in the world could he have meant . I guess i have expended a large proportion of the last quarter century of my life or more trying to understand what he meant. As you do with something you care about to walk around it look at it from different points of view to explore it in a colloquial way talking to retirees academics, scholarlys, what did john sargent mean when he said it was a victory of great proportion. It turns out i think, think, that he was talking the same language of professor morris about members only union, Minority Union. He was talking the language of sbi you in their assistance to lowwage workers, fast food workers and here is what he meant. Maybe we will here from john. What we did then was the agreement through the Governors Office that the company would recognize the Steelworkers Union and any other organization that wanted to represent the people in the Steel Industry we went back to work with this governors agreement signed by various companies and Union Representatives in indiana. We had a Company Union our own Steelworkers Union. When we got back to work we work, we had company Union Representatives and steelworker Union Representatives, and we had no contract the company. But the enthusiasm of the people working in the mills made the strike into a victory of Great Proportions without a contract, without any agreement with the Company Without any regulations concerning hours of work, conditions of work, or wages a a tremendous surge should place. We talk about rank and File Movement the beginning of Union Organization was the best kind of rankandFile Movement you can think of. Of. Essentially workers in the mail who were so disgusted with the condition and ready for a change they took the union into there own hands now the statement, which i found very surprising without a contract we secured for ourselves agreements on working conditions and wages that we do not have today and that are better by far. For example, as a result of the enthusiasm of the people in the mail you had a series of strikes , walkouts, shutdowns, anything to secure for themselves what they decided they had to have. And what this statement challenged of course at least until very recently the only reasonable thing to do. You pass out leaflets, have meetings at sites away from the workplace in the end have authorization cards. Then you have an in our lb election and then if you are successful you enter into contract negotiations the approach of john and his colleagues was instead of building strength that way you build strength through small groups of people in the workplace taking initial action to when things right then and there and a very interesting example later in the book. An interview with a man named nick mayaguez mayaguez, who was the union representative, the Grievance Committee men. Mike and others can correct me, but i think it is fair to say that the open heart as long as you had that now Antiquated Technology for making steel was the heart of the process. You can shut that down and Everything Else to not have to stop. Similarly vicki another one of the people interviewed described the kill floor in the meatpacking house as the place where the most skilled, usually africanamerican workers were. If the kill floor went down, you did not need to take a vote on packaging because the place could not operate without that. And the reason that this seems to me so important today and the reason why we see groups of workers around the country picking up on it in different ways is that if you step back a bit and look at the way the cio went at things originally there are obvious problems the typical contract has a management clause which gives the company the owner, the boss a free hand in making all the Big Decisions like shutting down the no. The union cant file a failure to bargain charge about that because the contract contains a management prerogative clause not only that but the typical contract also contained a no strike clause on the one hand you give management Legal Authority recognized authority to make the Big Decisions and on the other hand you take away from workers there only real way to fight back. Now i want to make one thing clear. I hope it is the case the couple of groups of workers known to charlie you are trying this sort of thing are here with us tonight. The reason that it is important for me to say what im about to say is i have been through too Many Movement occasions when everyone in the room waste there time and energy combating one another when we should be outside winning only can. In this particular case what i think we now have is a general sense that there needs to be explored this Minority Unionism. The idea of building an organization through winning Small Victories but down the road in this general approach they diverge within the workplace we can look at this kind of organizing tactic and say if we wish what we are doing is trying with our minority forces to win some Small Victories maybe in these key parts of the production process like the open hearth and the steel mill or the kill floor in the meatpacking plant so that workers will say to themselves, if they can do it on their end of things, why cant we do it on hours. But if it is a tactical conception at the end of the road there probably is a a labor Board Election for an exclusive bargaining representative so that the union would say to people, hey, we are the guys that wonders and departments seven, the guys that one is for the midnight shift in department three. It it is a good way to build up a strong organization. But it is tactical and temporary. The other way to look at this kind of activity is hey, maybe that is a way of life. What is the name of the big electric plant out on the east side of things, charlie . And honorable. I think that must be it. It. The fellow who wrote his dissertation and book about that workplace said if i am not mistaken the way things were was the union and management agreed on something mail it to the wall so that everyone could see it. It was only in agreement about a particular issue, and then the next particular issue was resolved and added to the wall. Some people, people, i understand some amongst us tonight why not keep on doing that . And what i want i want to plead with everyone is this is new stuff. This is the 1st time in 75 years that many groups many established groups sei you ufc w taking it seriously this other way of building up strength in the workplace a couple a couple of years from now we may have enough experience that we can get in an argument about the strategic and practical, but i am pleading that people do not do that tonight or in general at this stage of the process. This is exploratory. We are just beginning. No. No one knows the answers for sure. Lets proceed as brothers and sisters, welcoming any gods of experience that come our way as things we can all learn from and in that spirit i understand, charlie, are your friends your . Would you like to say a few words . Because rather than you asking me questions, i would rather rather you here from people who are actually. [inaudible conversations] come on appear. [inaudible conversations] we wanted to here from two of the organizations. [applause] who wants to go 1st . Let me just Say Something a university in the shameful position they are taking the other thing the other colleague i think a wonderful moving thing recently as they approached 30 percent, 40 percent they run they won the election about two to one. Everyone kept their heads down. They were a majority not afraid anymore. The collective experience of power and suddenly this incredible feeling of freedom because they could speak, they had a voice. I am robert howard. A modern academic. National Advocacy Organization for contingent faculty. Only 24 percent of the people who are teaching our fulltime tenured faculty. Everyone else is contingent in one form or another. Our position was typical paid 2,500 per course. A maximum of four courses per year. No job security from one semester to the next. You effectively are reapplying for your own job every six months even though you have worked there for over 20 years. A list of indignities that goes on for miles. You can imagine when we started talking about unions people were interested. We thought about the conventional approach and by the spring of 2012 thanks in part to the work of our lead organizer on that campaign we got 70 of the workers to sign off reservation cards and won an election by a huge majority. But in the meantime the administration looked initially like they would say it is stipulated to the election which meant to say with the exception of the nlrb but a few weeks later they hired a fancy unionbusting lawyer out of memphis and filed legal papers that said it infringed upon religious liberty. In in some way their catholic identity could be sacrificed for destroyed by the presence of a boardcertified union. We, of course that we were happy to operate outside the authority of the nrl be just like the pittsburgh diocese. They did not want to do tha