Union Man

MEMOIR: I am a staunch supporter of union labor, in spite of my fraught history as a dues-paying union member. And I enjoyed factory work.

(David Guibault running a two-inch video-tape recorder at ABC News, Washington in 1977. Photo by Terry Irving.)

I was a Production Assistant in the Washington bureau of ABC News in the Seventies. Which meant I was in management and not a member of any union. It also meant I was required to do whatever task or job I was assigned. That was mostly to coordinate graphics for the evening network news.

But, when the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) struck the news network in 1977 I was assigned the duty of running four two-inch videotape recording machines. That was a NABET engineer job. One of the demands of their strike was “one man, one machine.” As I’ve said, I was tasked with running four simultaneously, the ‘manning position’ determined by the company. Which I did.

(Union workers walking NABET picket line in 1977. Photo by Terry Irving.)

I was making about $259 a week, as I remember, as a Production Assistant. But, ABC News was putting aside $10 an hour for all management personnel doing ‘strike duty,’ jobs other than their usual, for the duration of the strike. So, as I was working about 75 hours a week, as required, I was actually making another $750 a week. My wife and I saved that money and used it as a down payment for a condo apartment in Arlington, Virginia, our first home.

My relations with unions up until then had been fraught. As a very young man I worked at a couple of General Electric factories where my father held a management position. In all of those jobs it was assumed by my fellow workers that my father had gotten me the position. That wasn’t true. In fact, most of the time, my relationship with my father was argumentative and/or fractured.

The union workers I worked with taught me how to bend the rules without getting caught, thereby controlling my own productivity. One job was to paint transformer covers. This was in the Schenectady factory. Honestly, I can’t recall what union I belonged to at GE. I worked at both the Schenectady and Waterford plants in New York state. (A Google search indicates it was likely the IUE-CIO Local 301).

(General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York)

Anyway, the job of painting transformer covers was pretty straight-forward. I would receive a load of covers on a wooden pallet. I had a spray gun with a hose attached to a tank of paint. First, I was supposed to paint the pallet load with gray primer. Then the load would be baked in an oven and returned to me for a second primer layer, again baked in the oven. The final coat of colored finishing paint was sprayed on and baked for even longer than the primer coats. That’s the way it was supposed to be done. I presume the transformer cover then met safety and operational standards.

We were were paid by the pallet-load. So, the more covers that could be painted and baked, the more money we would get in our paychecks. Several co-workers showed me that if you pulled the trigger of the paint sprayer back only half way you’d get just air, not paint. So, they directed me to air-dry the first layer of primer and immediately put on the second layer of primer. Then send the covers to the oven where the two layers of primer would be baked once, not twice. Thus, greater productivity with less effort. Safety, be damned, I guess. I was young. I did what I was told.

We had quotas to meet, which were constantly being adjusted. And the union didn’t want the base levels of those quotas to rise too sharply, making too much work. So, the union had a way to slow the assembly line when it seemed we might be producing too many pallet loads. The pallets would somehow get held up and we would have nothing to paint. Then, we could take a work break and not be charged for that down time. The slowdown was noted as a material shortage problem, not a worker productivity issue.

Again, I am a strong supporter of union labor. But, I wholeheartedly do not support bending safety rules.

Ironically, at the Waterford General Electric plant, which produced silicone rubber, my father at that time was the head of Safety & Security. When the union somehow figured that out, they filed a grievance in my name, without me knowing. At the time, my father and I were barely on speaking terms. So, he assumed I filed the dispute for spite. It was an uncomfortable encounter when he and the union representatives paid me a visit at my workstation. I’ve forgotten what bogus violation they had filed just to embarrass me and my father.

(My father, David H. Guilbault, Jr.)

I admire my father for his life-long career at General Electric. He started as a janitor at the Waterford plant and worked himself up to executive positions at the corporate offices in Connecticut. That, with no formal education. I always remember that he was annoyed with the bosses at factories where thy put up signs warning laborers to work safely. He believed it was management’s duty and responsibility to actually make the factories inherently safe, and not rely on giving the workers safety lectures. Period.

Although my father did rail continuously against the Environmental Protection Agency and their rules, which he found onerous. No matter that General Electric was irresponsible with its toxic waste, for which it was eventually fined millions of dollars. (I believe that was all above my dad’s pay grade, but I’m not sure.)

“General Electric dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River between 1947 and 1977. The PCB discharges came from two GE capacitor manufacturing plants located in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, New York, about 50 miles north of Albany.” - The Riverkeeper

Which reminds me that when I was a teenager I worked for two weeks during a vacation plant shutdown at Mohawk Paper Mills in Cohoes, New York. My job there was to take a bucket of turpentine and a wire brush, crawl all over the machinery and scrape the hardened paper pulp off the metal parts. The plant was built and operated over the Mohawk River. All the waste just fell into the river water and ‘washed away,’ including what I was scraping off with toxic chemicals.

(Mohawk Paper Mill, 1954)

I must say there was a certain bliss with factory work. When you punched the time clock, you virtually turned off your thinking mind and became a rote worker. And when the shift was over and you punched out, your mind clicked back on and you could leave the drudgery behind. With more professional work, the worries and woes of the job are always on your mind. You are never really off duty. You’re thinking about what you’ve done, what you should have done and what you have to do, mostly all the time. It’s a much more soul-draining drudgery.

A FIFTIES SIDE NOTE: The by-product of the silicone rubber produced at the General Electric plant in Waterford, New York was what came to be known as “Silly Putty.” My father brought home basketball-sized gobs of it. I’m not sure who or when it was discovered to be a toy. But, you could always find bits and pieces of it in our carpet in the Fifties. As a child, I became a master at snapping it. And, we used it to pull the ink off the color funny pages in the Sunday paper. My mother hated it.

A SIXTIES SIDE NOTE: During the summer of 1966 I also worked at the Watervliet Arsenal boring out the barrels of 70mm canons. The arsenal is the oldest, continuously active arsenal in the United States, having begun operations during the War of 1812. My friends spent that summer as independent contractors painting houses. As I recall, at that plant, I was bullied by an older co-worker. Not fun. Such is life.

So, yeah, back to unions. Writer Ronni Sandroff give a concise definition in Investopedia:

“Labor unions are associations of workers formed to protect workers' rights and advance their interests. Unions negotiate with employers through a process known as collective bargaining. The resulting union contract specifies workers’ pay, hours, benefits, and job health and safety policies.

Thanks to the efforts of labor unions, workers have achieved higher wages, more reasonable hours, safer working conditions, health benefits, and aid when retired or injured. Labor unions were also instrumental in ending the practice of child labor. They have exerted a broad influence on American life, reshaping the political, economic, and cultural fabric of the country.

Backing for unions has been rising in the U.S. A Gallup poll, released Aug. 30, 2022, found that 71% of Americans now support unions--up from 65% before the pandemic, and the highest support level since 1965.”

Right now the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is striking three auto factories. They are threatening to expand their strike if there is no progress in their negotiations with the Big Three auto makers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is in the midst of an ongoing strike against the the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

President Joe Biden heralds himself as a union man, saying “The middle class built America and unions built the middle class.” The twice-impeached, and quadruple-indicted former president also claims to be a man of the working people. But, that, of course, is a lie.

Trump is heading to Detroit for a speech next week on the night of the second Republican presidential debate. Politico reports that Democrats see this as “a plainly cynical ploy to gain political advantage from the current United Auto Workers strike.” And, of course that’s what it is. Trump has attacked UAW management as incompetent, but is strongly courting union workers.

For his part, President Biden offered to send White House senior adviser Gene Sperling and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to Detroit to help the union and auto companies reach a contract, but without directly intervening. UAW President Shawn Fain nixed that idea. Instead, Sperling and Su are staying in touch with labor and management by phone & messaging and the Biden administration is considering sending representatives to the picket lines.

The presidential stakes could not be higher in Michigan in the upcoming presidential election. Michigan went for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1992, until Donald Trump won in 2016. Michigan is considered to be a crucial swing state in 2024, which Hillary Clinton barely lost to Trump in 2016 and JoeBiden took back from Trump in 2020.

I am not well-enough informed on the contracts, working conditions, rules, trends and demands of the auto and entertainment industries to have worthwhile or strong opinions on their current negotiations. I will look to those who do in the coming days and weeks for guidance on the fairness of labor and management demands.

What I do know is that this country needs strong unions and wise & fair leadership from both the workers and the owners. And also from the government regulators.

This country has become too much of an oligarchy. Corporations have too much power, and pay too little in taxes, as they wield an out toward influence on government. And workers, both union and non-union, have too little control over their pay & benefits, jobs & destinies.

I know it is easy to wish that goods and services be “Made in America.” But, those wishes can be difficult to fulfill. Biden is right to declare that America prospered as a union country. It’s a simple fact. Workers built those companies and products that built America. Now, not so much.

Globalism has, of course, diminished the power and prestige of American workers. Their importance in the American economy should be returned. Now. I believe we must recognize, train, advance and reward American workers. Now.

Sadly, the prosperity of America is in jeopardy because too many American workers have been dis-informed and seduced by the deceitful populism of Donald Trump. They are also being deceived and manipulated by the House Freedom Caucus, FOX News, far-Right media, America First devotees, corrupt corporations and MAGA politicians. Too many voting workers can’t see that they have been conned.

A corrupt, cancerous culture of lies and greed is spreading through the American economic, social, educational and political landscapes. We need to return the American worker to his/her/their rightful place in this democratic (and hopefully fair-minded) republic.

Unions then. Unions now. Unions forever.

(P.S. I wrote a song about the corruption of corporate greed. It’s called “I Own You.”)