l580 strikestermpaper912

The 1010 Rank & File in SWOC/USWA Strikes:

A Social Movement Becomes a Bureaucracy

by Mike Olszanski

Term Paper for L580 “Strikes”Ruth Needleman

Indiana University NorthwestMay 1, 2004

Revised 2007

Revised 2009

Revised 2012

Revised 2015

"My definition of a left wing union...is one with alot of rank and file democracy and control…”

-Harry Bridges in Harry Bridges, Public T.V. documentary, narrated by Studs Terkel, producer/director Barry Minot, MW Productions/KQED TV

Inc., 1992.

Olszanski 1 L580 Term Paper

I joined the Rank & File Caucus at United Steelworkers Local 1010 around 1971. One of

the first things I remember as a new member was the on-going discussion among Steel Workers

Organizing Committee (SWOC) veterans John Sargent, Joe Gyurko, Nick Koleff, and their

(slightly) younger counterparts Cliff “Cowboy” Mezo and Jim Balanoff about contract

negotiations at Inland Steel in the “old days” of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Bargaining took place

right in Indiana Harbor, upstairs in the old Inland office building (still standing) within sight and

earshot of the mill. From time to time, so the story went, one of the union negotiators would open

a window, and shout down to the strikers surrounding the building the company’s latest offer—

only to have it booed down by the crowd of rank & file workers.1 SWOC members in “Little

Steel” and in particular its huge local 1010, in contrast to those in U.S. Steel, exercised

considerable input into and control of negotiations in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The members in a

very real sense, ran the union in those early days. As researcher Edward Zivich put it in a 1972

paper, “Lodge 1010 and…rank & filers were one and the same during this period.” 2

Two examples of the opposite extreme in USWA bargaining seem to me salient. The first,

and most obvious, is the U.S. Steel paradigm—John L. Lewis’ secret, personal 1937 negotiations

with Myron Taylor behind the closed doors of a posh Washington, D.C. Mayflower Hotel

room. This example—with the resultant first steel contract and SWOC recognition—is well

known. Wary of a militant rank and file, inspired by the wave of strikes in auto and other

industries, Taylor chose to recognize SWOC and avoid a strike. The workers found out about the

1 A similar description of early negotiations at Inland Steel appears in Philip Nyden’s, Steelworkers Rank & File, 2 Edward Zivich, Fighting Union: The CIO at Inland Steel 1936-1942. Masters Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. July 1972 (CRA #115 Box 1, File Folder 1) page 3


contract after it was signed. A more recent example is the highly-touted 1992 USWA “victory”

at Ravenswood Aluminum. These secret negotiations occurred after a lengthy strike, in which the

USWA employs a plethora of “corporate campaign” strategies, some of which greatly involved

the rank and file. But the strike’s dénouement occurred when USWA vice-president Becker met

management’s Pete Nash for a closed-door one-on-one private pissing contest in which the final

agreement was clinched. Returning to the union negotiating committee, Becker placed Nash’s

“final offer” before them in typical USWA style: take it or leave it. This fait accompli tactic is

used consistently by USWA leaders in negotiations.3 The scenario, in which union leaders bring

an agreement back for approval by the local negotiating committee, and sometimes the entire

membership, with the proviso that this is the “best we can do” has become all too familiar to

those of us who were engaged in basic steel contract negotiations after the 1950’s. Often all

members of the negotiating committee are sworn to secrecy for the duration of negotiations, until

a final settlement is reached to bring back to the members. In this situation, the rank and file are

one more step removed from the actual bargaining process.

Local Union participants in the early basic steel strikes with whom I have talked are

nearly unanimous in their condemnation of the adoption by the USWA of more and more top-

down contract negotiations in basic steel. Most, I think would agree that the union has declined,

not just in numbers but in power, influence and the ability to protect its members since the

USWA “International” took bargaining to Pittsburgh and closed the door on negotiations.

Removing bargaining decisions from control of the local leadership—and especially from the

rank & file members—had a lasting alienating impact on union members and the relationship

between the union’s top leaders and the members in the mill. Consolidating top down


bureaucratic control, combined with purging the left and insurgent elements, ensured the decline

of the steel union, and indeed the entire U.S. labor movement.

Thesis Statement

I argue here that rank & file control of contract negotiations and strikes—and the lack of such

control—are key factors in the rise and later decline of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee

(SWOC) and its successor, the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and in particular my

own Local 1010 at Inland Steel’s Indiana Harbor Works. Intimately bound up with rank & file

control and union democracy generally, as I will show, is a leftist viewpoint strongly in evidence

in Local 1010 as well as in other unions with democratic traditions. Within unions and within

individuals I am convinced a left wing perspective goes hand in hand with a commitment to

democratic principles, anti-communist arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. This is

demonstrated as much by the actions as by the writings of Communist and socialist union

members. Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin have argued effectively that unions with the

most rank and file control—of negotiations as well as shop floor activities—tend to be left-led

unions like the United Electrical and Machine Workers (UE) and those with strong left factions.4

The vital connection between left—primarily Communist Party and Trotskyist—leadership and

union democracy and rank and file control over bargaining is well-documented in their work, as


well as by Staughton Lynd, Edward Zivich and Philip Nyden, who have researched early Local

1010 strike activity. My own research supports this conclusion, as I will show.

In order to evaluate negotiations and strikes qualitatively, as well as quantitatively,

I have developed some criteria by which to compare the relative degree of control exercised by

the rank & file membership in the cases considered. Questions I will apply to negotiations in

order to gauge the degree of rank and file involvement and control include the following:

To what degree is bargaining transparent, to union members and the public?Is it open door, or closed door bargaining,?

How close and specific is communication between the top union leadership, the negotiating committee, the full membership, and the public?

Is the bargaining Committee sequestered? Are they “Pledged to Secrecy” from the membership? Do they return to the mill during breaks in negotiations to talk with members, or report to the membership at mass meetings?

Are details of on-going negotiations made available to the union members in the media., the union newspaper, leaflets? How frequent are reports, and how detailed?

How does the union Formulate contract demands? Are members polled? Are resolutions accepted from members? Are open meetings held?

Who votes and how -- on demands, to strike, to go back to work, to accept or reject an offer?

What is the size of committee relative to size of membership?

What kind of negotiating committee is used, and how is it selected (elected by members vote or picked by leaders)?


Are negotiations Industry-wide or local? Are they held near the plant, or at a distant location? Is bargaining controlled by the International Union or Local Union leadership?

What kind of pre-existing contract language is there on the right to strike and how, when and by whom a strike may be initiated? Is there a no strike clause?

What kind of strategies are used? Are there alternative in-plant strategies, boycott, corporate campaign, and how much do they involve the rank and file members? How are decisions on strategy/tactics made? Is there input by members, or complete control by leaders? Are “secret” strategies used, known only to top leadership?

Is there a large strike committee (for picketing, and activities other than negotiations) and if so, what is its relationship with the Negotiating Committee? Is it inclusive? Who selects its members? Volunteers?

The answers to these kinds of questions can I think, help to define the degree of rank and file

control as well as local control of contract negotiations, and by extrapolation provide an idea of

the degree of overall democracy in the Local and International union.

The USWA and indeed the CIO rose with the rising of rank & file workers who—with their

own local leaders—did their own negotiating and shut down or slowed down their workplaces

when necessary. It declined when the rank & file and their leaders were relegated to the foot

soldier ranks of an army commanded from Pittsburgh. It declined as the Union bureaucracy

grew fat and out of touch with workers in the mill. It declined when those same leaders purged its

ranks of its most militant and democratic leaders in the name of anti-communism.

Metaphorically, the USWA, like the CIO, cut off its own strong left arm, and has been

ideologically crippled ever since. In support of this argument, I will compare and contrast recent

USWA negotiations and strikes, e.g., Ravenswood Aluminum, with the early SWOC 1010 “Little

Steel” strikes and unauthorized “wildcat” strikes as well as industry-wide steel strikes of the late

1940’s-early1950’s in terms of rank & file member involvement/control.


My Role as Participant Observer

It would be misleading to characterize my perspective as merely scholarly and objective.

In a sense, a more accurate description of my role here would be as something like a participant

observer in the sense implied by sociologists and anthropologists. I was a dedicated member of

the left-led Rank & File Caucus in Local 1010 for over twenty years, and very involved in the

militant and democratic Rank & File movement in the USWA. I was part of the Fight Back

Campaign organization (1972-1979) which supported Ed Sadlowski for USWA president in

1977, and the District 31 Right to Strike Committee which sued USWA President I.W. Abel and

the Coordinated basic steel companies for negotiating and signing the 1973 no-strike

Experimental Negotiating Agreement (ENA), questioning their authority to surrender the right to

strike absent input from or knowledge of the union members. I was elected to the Executive

Board in Local 1010 from 1976 through 1988, was an elected delegate to USWA conventions in

1976, ‘78, ‘80, ‘82, ‘84, ‘86, ‘88 and 1990, and served as Local 1010 president in 1987-1988.

I served on the 1977 1010 negotiating committee, and organized the strike and defense committee

at 1010 in 1986.

That having been said, my aim here is an accurate, useful analysis of the conduct of

contract negotiations and strikes by the SWOC and USWA at Local 1010, with the goal of better

understanding the connections between the degree of rank and file control of bargaining and

strikes and the growth, success and decline of my union. In addition to a thorough review of


available secondary and primary source materials, I can offer here a somewhat unique view from

inside the union’s rank & file movement, as a participant in and close up observer of many

events which shaped the USWA. I have also personally interviewed, as well as worked with,

union leaders who helped lead Local 1010 from pre-SWOC days through the present. Having

spent many years in a movement that generated an enormous amount of heat in my union, my

aim, in my post-retirement role of student of labor history, is to shed a bit of light on what

happened within and to my union, and why.

Left, Rank & File Build SWOC

In the wake of a powerful wave of strikes in 1934, exemplified by the left/rank & file-led

San Francisco General Strike,5 John L. Lewis and eight AFL union presidents formed the

Committee on Industrial Organization (CIO) in November of 1935. Lewis delegated his United

Mineworkers assistant, Philip Murray to organize the steelworkers. In June of 1936, Murray set

up the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC) in Pittsburgh. Communist Party (CP)

member Lee Pressman was hired as chief counsel, Communist Len DeCaux was named to head

the CIO News and 200 full-time organizers—at least 60 of whom were CP members—went into

the basic steel mill campaign.6 Clearly, Murray understood the value of leftist organizers, with

their intimate knowledge of and experience with the rank and file and their existing networks, and

proven organizing ability. Especially valuable was the left’s demonstrated experience in inter-

racial organizing. That year United Auto Workers (UAW) sit-down strikes at General Motors,

led by Communist Party Members including Wyndham Mortimer, Bob Travis, Henry Kraus, Bud

Simons, Walter Moore, Joe Devitt and Charles Killinger, as well as Socialist Workers party

members Genora (Johnson) and Kermit Dollinger in concert with a well-organized rank & file


inspired workers throughout the country. This strike also demonstrated the ability of the left to

lead, as well as their dedication to democratic, bottom-up strategies.7 As Nellie, one of the

Women's Emergency Brigade's members put it, "We couldn't have done it without the

Communists and Socialists”8

Lewis recognized the organizing and leadership abilities of the left. He also understood

the communist and socialist commitment to rank and file control but was confident he could

utilize them while maintaining control from the top. He shrugged off concerns among his anti-

communist union cohorts about Communist influence with the famous quip “Who gets the rabbit,

the hunter, or the dog?”9 Reassuring the public of his commitment to capitalist ideals, Lewis’

March 15, 1938 radio broadcast pronounced, “It is time for Americans to cooperate. It is time for

capital to recognize labor’s right to live and participate in the increased efficiency of industry…It

is time for labor to recognize the right of capital to have a reasonable rate of return upon its

investment.”10

Murray, for his part co-authored Organized Labor and Production in 1940 in which he

emphasized the necessity of “more mature labor-management relations” which he said should

eventually replace strikes with “labor-management collaboration for greater gross

productivity…”11 The contradiction here should be obvious. He was, at the height of a massive

class struggle relying on the left and the rank & file to build and consolidate SWOC. At the same

time, he already looked forward to “collaborating” with the bosses. One cannot help but wonder

whether any rank & file workers read the book, and if so, what it made them think of Murray.

Murray was a business unionist from the start. He wanted to, as Ed Sadlowski put it referring to

the labor movement’s “porkchoppers”, “’be part of’ rather than ‘change’ the system. That


catches up with you. You can’t play the boss’ game.”12 SWOC (later the USWA) was envisioned

by Murray as a tightly-controlled, top-down organization, from day one. Members of

Amalgamated Lodge 1010 at Inland Steel’s Indiana Harbor Works had other ideas.

Organizing in many mills was begun by SWOC organizers, aided by existing local

networks and a strong rank and file desire to belong to a union, and the CIO. Perhaps nowhere so

much as at Inland was self-organizing already underway. Outside organizers were not needed

there. At Lodge1010 of the old Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, “All

members were organizers’” as Bill Young, put it.13 A 1962 analysis of the union movement in

Steel by Berkewley Professor Llod Ulman refers to a “’Rank and File’ rebel movement within the

Amalgamated to organize the industry during the National Recovery Administration (NRA)

period in 1934 and 1935.” 14 The members at Inland Steel elected William Thomas SWOC Lodge

1010’s first president. Young leftists John Sargent, Bill Young, William Maehoffer and a rank &

file eager to settle old scores welcomed The CIO’s SWOC.15 A Communist Party influenced

Rank & File group, led by Sargent, Maihoffer and Young, cooperated with Trotskyites Pete

Calacci, Max Luna and Manuel Trbovitch in a united front to build the new CIO union.16

Sargent describes what some have characterized as a “spontaneous movement of self-

organization” at 1010: “The workers were gonna have a union, come hell or high water. No one

was gonna stop ‘em.”17 Minimizing his own and other leftist local leaders role, the

characteristically modest Sargent is interpreted by historians Staughton Lynd, Pivens and

Cloward as saying workers spontaneously organized themselves at Inland. Clearly, this is a

misleading over-simplification. Only a small percentage of workers were actively involved in


union activities, but a majority at least passively supported organizing efforts. Zivich paints a

much clearer, more balanced picture of the unity, solidarity and integration between Lodge 1010

members and their leftist leaders during the SWOC years. The now faddish and over-used term

“synergy” perhaps describes the relationship. The rank & file at 1010 and their local leaders were

—as we say in the vernacular—“tight.” The use of the (capitalized) term Rank & File, while

possibly confusing a movement with what was later identified as a political caucus, seems to me

a useful way to describe this unified group of union members and their local leaders. It is no

coincidence that the Communist Party, Trotskyists and other left union groups recognized this

connotation when they adopted the names for their sponsored union groups e.g., National

Steelworkers Rank & File, Rank & File Team (RAFT) and the Rank & File Caucuses at 1010,

1011, 1033, 6787, 1397 and other USWA Locals.18

This question of spontaneity v. leadership—especially left leadership, is for me one of

emphasis. The workers were primed, ready. They were loosely organized in local networks, a

Lodge of the old Amalgamated Association, and even the company union. Smart, class-conscious

leadership was essential. Organization is impossible without it. It was there, often already among

the ranks. Each played a crucial role in the mass movement that was the CIO in the early years,

especially in SWOC 1010. There was little opportunism among the unpaid 1010 SWOC leaders

in the 1930’s. But unprincipled careerism would become a serious problem down the line, when

the dues check-off and full time salaried officers and Grievance committee were initiated—just at

the time the USWA decided to purge the left. Sargent said in 1978:

A young fella who becomes active in the union, who hasn't got a broader perspective than just the union, sees the union as a stepping stone to security for himself, either to get a job in the union...or to use the union to get a job with the company, as a foreman, for instance...It was that way once you got the check-off. Unless the guy has a socialist viewpoint, or some kind of


broader view-point of what this whole thing means, you're not gonna get good leadership. That's an important part of it.19

One of the most democratic leaders 1010 would ever have, Sargent saw socialist ideals—

which he equated with democratic ideals—as an antidote to selfish opportunism in the labor

movement.

While U.S. Steel management accepted, if not embraced SWOC—no doubt viewing the

union as a moderating and controlling influence over the mass movement of rank & file workers

—Bethlehem, Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, National, Inland and the rest of “Little

Steel” chose class conflict. Republic’s Tom Girdler and Inland’s Block family, led by founder

and CEO Leopold Block threw down the gauntlet. 1010’s Rank & File were ready. As Bill

Young would put it forty years later, “after years of meeting secretly in the basement of an

undertaker…the day of salvation came…when we walked out of the mill.”20 The ensuing nation-

wide strike, begun May 26th, 1937 put 78,000 SWOC members on the streets.

A mere four days into the strike, 1010 members, including Sargent, Young, and many

others who brought wives and children, joined picketers at Republic Steel in South Chicago as

part of a “flying squad” to augment their picket lines on Memorial Day, 1937. Three 1010

members would never return. Shot in the back by Mayor Kelley’s rioting Chicago Cops, Earl

Handley, Kenneth Reed and Sam Popovich were three of the 10 steelworkers killed at the

infamous Memorial Day Massacre.

Mass meetings, mass picketing, hand-billing and store-front union halls characterized the

Little Steel strike.21 As Communist SWOC organizer Gus Hall put it, “The rank and file saw it as

their strike—that it not only affected their lives but that they could affect it. It was not a top down


operation.”22 At 1010, huge and frequent mass meetings at Auditorium Hall on Michigan

Avenue in Indiana Harbor were held. Here workers discussed strike issues, tactics, negotiations—

every detail of the situation—with an over-flow crowd hearing the proceedings via loudspeaker

in the street and parking lot.

SWOC’s top officers were already trying to wrest control over Chicago/Indiana SWOC

District 31 from the left and the Rank & File early on, with little effect in 1010 according to

Zivich: “While the SWOC District Office purge of its Communists did not affect 1010’s Left

leadership [“Wilcat Willie” Maihofer was President in January, 1938] the lodge’s militants were

under tremendous pressure from the district office not to strike or carry out any other job actions

at this time.”23 .But it didn’t stop them, apparently.

The Townsend Agreement

In 1939, under orders from the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) Inland recognized

SWOC as bargaining agent for its workers. The “Townsend Agreement” was not a full contract,

but a one page “Memorandum of Agreement” between Inland, SWOC and Indiana Governor M.

Clifford Townsend. “Although not a contract as such, the memorandum laid out the guidelines for

a labor policy at Inland and, even more importantly, called for the recognition of SWOC as the

bargaining agency.”24 Its first line reads: “SECTION 1 – The men to be returned to work without

discrimination between strikers and non-strikers.” 25 This kind of amnesty clause would be a

standard, and high-priority item in every strike settlement between Inland and the Steelworkers

until 1947. Crucially for the Rank & File at 1010, it contained no agreement by the union not to

strike. SWOC 1010’s class-conscious Rank & File movement took advantage of the opportunity.


As Sargent tells it,

Without a contract, without an agreement with the company, without any regulations concerning the hours of work, conditions of work, or wages, a tremendous surge took place. We talk of a rank & file movement; the beginning of union organization was the best kind of rank & file movement you could think of….. without a contract we secured for ourselves agreements on working conditions that we do not have toady, and that were better by far than what we do have today in the mill. For example as a result of the enthusiasm of the people in the mill you had a series of strikes, wildcats, shut-downs, slow-downs, anything working people could think of to secure for themselves what they decided they had to have.26

Strikes, departmental and plant-wide, continued to be effectively used by 1010 to bring a

recalcitrant Inland Steel Company management into line on hours wages and working conditions.

Joe Gyurko, hired at Inland in 1939, quickly signed a union card and became a “Dues Steward”

He participated in and helped lead departmental strikes in the Tin Mill, and later the Open Hearth

shop. He tells of how “One of the rollers comes up to me and says, “Hey, we’re working short-

handed again. We’re gonna shut it down. We ain’t going to work short-handed. Tell the rest of

the crew” Walking down the line, Gyurko would tell one operator after another of the shut-down

then watch as the foreman came storming up to find out what was going on. 27 Matt Vuxinic, a

Croatian immigrant, told Zivich he took part in five strikes in his department between 1939 and

1942.28

Nyden describes an ethos in which, “The men thought nothing of stopping work and letting

gondolas full of molten metal hang in mid air. In these situations, the rapidly approaching

danger that [the molten metal would solidify and] production would be interrupted …acted

as a time clock forcing the company to bargain with the workers [and settle departmental

grievances].”29 Yale scholar Will Tanzman, quoting Nyden describes this strategy as

“ ‘instant strike bargaining’ negotiating with the threat of instant, small scale wildcat

strikes.”30


While written evidence is scarce, strikes were often organized and planned well in

advance. A rare glimpse, found in the Group 9 minute books dated March 22, 1941, describes

the discussion and vote to strike over a grievance: “Motion made the mill be stopped at 8:00

A.M. the morning after the grievance is turned down. Seconded, carried.”31

For years, as Gyurko told it, you could be fired for striking, walk out the gate and go and

get hired again the same day—Inland kept very inadequate employment records at the time.

Bill Young, vice president of 1010, later vice chairman of the grievance committee, led nine

“unauthorized” strikes in his department, the 28” rail mill, between 1939 and 1942.32

Direct shop floor action was the order of the day at 1010. The Rank & File’s Nick Migas,

an open CP member, led much of it.

There was one time when they wouldn’t settle a grievance for the charging car operators [in the Open Hearth furnace department] They had increased the tonnage on the furnaces without increasing the rate [of incentive pay]. We discussed the situation with the superintendent: nothing doing. So that night it started to slow down, and by the next morning there were two furnaces where they had to shut the heat off. By next evening there were six furnaces where they had to shut the heat off. They settled the grievance in a hurry. Nobody told anybody to strike. There was just that close relationship, working with the people, where they knew what was necessary.33

Was this “spontaneity?” Or the very tight relationship between the rank and file workers

and their leftist shop floor leaders? Certainly there was a kind of intimate solidarity among them,

based on trust and a strong sense of shared experience, interests and community.

As Needleman points out, it was “During these years of contract limbo, Local 1010 gained

its reputation as the most militant local, ‘the red local,’ the anti-international local.”34 Not

coincidentally but consequently they were equally a Rank & File local, with the members


exercising a great deal of control. District 31 and top USWA leadership struggled to wrest

control over Local 1010 from the rank & file and its leaders. Local 1010, a large local dealing

with a large steel company with only a single basic steel plant, exercised more leverage than

many of the other locals, and more independence from the International. Nyden suggests this

factor also kept 1010’s Rank & File from aligning itself sooner with rank & filers in other locals

who wanted autonomy.35 This lack of a national coalition, with the exception of the black Ad-Hoc

Committee, would prove a handicap during the later insurgencies of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

How did the union negotiate? Elected union representatives, in close and constant touch

with the members, negotiated right at the plant, often in the plant. They voted, on whether, when

and how to strike, and when and how to settle. As Migas described it,

..The local leadership did its own negotiating. A contract would be read, clause by clause at the local union meeting, and then voted on, and adopted or rejected….36

Sargent reiterates,

…We used to bargain locally with the Inland steel Company…We let a representative of the international union sit in, but we bargained right in Indiana harbor and settled our differences right there. But soon Inland began to realize that this was not the way, because they were up against a pretty rough bunch…who had no ambitions to become political leaders and labor representatives on a national scale. They [Inland] realized that the best way to handle the situation was to work with the international leadership of this union.37

The “rough bunch” Sargent refers to here was clearly a class-conscious, left-led

Rank and File, who had proved perfectly capable of bargaining effectively with Inland

with little help (or control) from the International.


1942 Contract, USWA

December 7, 1941 brought the U.S., and its workers into World War II. In May of 1942,

a convention in Cleveland changed SWOC into the USWA, and unanimously elected Murray its

first president. “Little Steel” contracts were signed later that year: August 5th Inland; August 12th

Youngstown (YST); August 13th Bethlehem and Republic. The 1942 contract signing and its no-

strike provision “began the slow, but steady decline of the local from its previous position of

strength.”38 This, in conjunction with the CIO and Communist Party war-time no-strike pledge

had some limited success in suppressing strikes in steel for the duration of World War II.

Migas:

It wasn’t until the International came in, and dictated a contract with a no-strike clause, that it became a matter of what kind of leadership you had. When SWOC became the Steelworkers Union, it became a top-heavy organization.39

The top obviously had reasons beyond war-time patriotism for wanting to

enforce the no-strike agreement. Being able to discipline his own members would

make Murray a more attractive “partner” to the steel bosses with whom he wished to

collaborate.

Zivich claims that Sargent’s caucus upheld the no-strike pledge during the war: “With

1010’s Communist Party radicals pushing for unhampered war production, the ban on strikes only

disturbed one ideological faction in the local—the Trotskyites.” Zivich, citing Lynd, reminds us

that “Trbovich and others, at great risk [?] led a mid war departmental strike over a discharge to a


successful rehiring”40 Is there an implication here that the CP faction would not support

departmental wildcats during the war? This argument is called into question by, among other

things, president Sargent’s 1943 letter to the War Labor Board, threatening to strike Inland in

defiance of the no-strike pledge, as well as the 1942 contract. Sargent's adherence to any "party

line" during the war years seems unlikely, and the letter adds weight to his image as a militant,

rank & file oriented leader.41

Many labor historians, including some with no political axe to grind, naively assume a

disciplined, monolithic CP during this time period. The Sargent/Maihoffer caucus and its

members at 1010 are likewise presumed to be rigid adherents to the “Party line.” Labor historian

Jack Metzgar, lecturing a recent Labor Studies class at Indiana University Northwest described

USWA CP members as frequently “on the phone to Moscow” to get new marching orders.

Evidence, and my own experience, suggests a much more complex picture. Needleman has

argued that Communists in the Midwest were never “under the thumb” of the central CP office in

New York. A scenario similar to that of West Coast Longshore Union leader Harry Bridges, in

which decisions were made in close consultation with CP leaders, but democratically by a vote of

the rank & file, seems to me likely. Bruce Nelson describes a “syndacalist mood,” that yielded a

“rank and file insurgency at the point of production,” in which Communists were a “major force,”

whose “main role was to help shape an effective trade union program, sum up and popularize the

lessons of strikes…and sharpen and focus…workers antagonism toward their principle

adversaries.” 42 While Nelson and Selvin are referring to the San Francisco waterfront in 1934, I

believe a strong parallel can be drawn with Local 1010 in the SWOC era. The independence of

1010 leaders and members is legendary. Their interaction, the record suggests, was comparable

to that of the waterfront workers and their leftist leaders.


Some evidence suggests that CP members like Migas sometimes did support the pledge,

trying to use a cumbersome grievance procedure to settle issues. The Group 9 minutes of June 21,

1944 describe numerous grievances on overtime and other economic issues, and a speech by

Migas which seems to favor restraint,

Management has accused men in Btr. Shop of slowdown. Several grievances taken up on this accusation….Bro. Nick Migas: Talk on attending group and main lodge meetings and taking up grievances in the proper channels. Talk on case of the Steelworkers now before the WLB [War Labor Board]. 43

“proper channels” were, however, often slow and ineffective. Hence, during this same time

period, stoppages and slow-downs, if not always out and out strikes, continued at Inland.

And in reaction, a frustrated Plant Manager Gillies seemed to be baiting the Rank & File with his

arrogant tirades, like this one reported in the Group 9 minutes for May 3, 1944:

Refractories. Got some action because men really showed what they could do, Gillis accused men of slowing down, and threatened to fire them. Gillis told griever that he had notified the 6th area commander,[National guard?] probably a bluff by friend Gillis. Gillis finally agreed to compare rates with 4 mills and if rates were not returned soon enough he agreed to send a personal representative which he has done….man suspended for 5 days for knocking foreman down. Refractory man.44

Three days later, according to the minutes, Gillies is still ranting, “Sig Francis case of hookers to

have job evaluated. Gillis [Superintendent] claims he cannot make a definite date for this. Gillis

further stated that hookers could shut the mill down any time they wanted to.”45 In seems

unlikely that Gillies was taunting the hookers because he doubted their resolve, or the local

leadership’s willingness to support them. Rather, he sounds frustrated by the continuous in-plant

resistance of a Rank & File willing to stop production when in their opinion the grievance

procedure or the War Labor Board took too long to settle issues.

Rank and file “spontaneity” occasionally led to attempted “hate strikes” in some


departments, but here leftists like Migas and Gyurko worked with black leaders like Bill Young

and coke plant griever Buster Logan to get minorities promoted in spite of some “white

backlash”46 For example, Migas settled a wildcat strike in #1 Open Hearth when the company

refused to promote a black man to second helper on the furnace. Many of the white workers were

southern, and tended to back management's position. At a meeting inside the plant at which the

superintendent Gillies vacillated, Migas lectured his fellow workers on racism: “...discrimination

starts, maybe, with a Negro, but next it will go to the Mexican worker...and then it will go to the

Kentuckian, the hillbilly... .Then a so-called hillbilly won't be able to work in a steel mill. And

where will it stop?”47 The man got his job. Migas was later elected President of USWA Local

1010 in 1945, having served briefly on the USWA staff until he was fired for supporting

insurgent George Patterson in a bid for Director of District 31 against Joe Germano.

Sargent describes the consolidation by the International union’s top officers of their power

during the forties, as tri-partite (company, union, government) collaboration began to overshadow

and suppress Rank & File action, “The Government and the employers have learned how to

adopt, co-opt, and engulf the union and make it a part of the Establishment. And in making it part

of the Establishment they took the guts, the militancy, and the fight out of the people who work

for a living”.48

In any event slow-downs, departmental wildcats and other shop floor actions persisted at

Inland and other big Locals during the war. At U.S. Steel, the company reported there were 396

work stoppages in steel production in 1943 alone, and 216 in 1945. By 1948, the company

claimed, strikes “dropped to 22”49 As Zeiger says, “by December [of 1943] 150,000 USWA

members had left their jobs in short term strikes.”50 Statistics for Inland are unavailable, but there

is every indication that strikes and similar job floor actions were at least as numerous there.


Workers at Inland were aware that war profiteering was making Inland and other

producers rich. The U.S. Government built the Plant #4 complex for Inland at tax-payer expense

during the war, to produce iron for army tanks made across Dickey Road at the Cast Armor

plant. “A” and “B” Blast furnaces and a new coke plant produced profits for Inland, and were

turned over to the company at war’s end. At the same time the workers faced speed-up,

inequitable wage rates and were denounced as unpatriotic if they got impatient with the

ponderous and plodding machinations of the War Labor Board and tried to take shop floor

action.. As the war wound down, first in Europe, then the Pacific, pent-up frustration with wage

inequities and the bosses’ greed threatened to explode. Indeed, a strike wave swept through steel

3 For a complete description of the Ravenswood lock-out, including the corporate campaign, see Tom Juravich & Kate Bronfenbrenner, Ravenswood: The Steelworkers’Victory and the Revival of American Labor. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1999. The authors researched the lock-out on a grant from theUSWA

4 See Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003

5 For a discussion of the leadership of the Communist Party and leftist Harry bridges in the 1934 San Francisco strikes, see David F. Selvin, A Terrible anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. See also Harry Bridges, Public T.V. documentary, narrated by Studs Terkel, producer/director Barry Minot, MW Productions/KQED TV Inc. 1992. Just as at Local 1010 and other steelworker locals, CP members were involved in all aspects of the planning, leadership and activities of these strikes, which were democratically initiated and controlled.

6 See Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin , p 42; also Robert H. Zeiger, The CIO, 1935-1955, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1995. pp. 28-29, 38

7 See Roger Keeran The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Union, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 148-185. and “Flint 1936/1998: Same War, Different Battle.” People’s Weekly World, Saturday, August 15, 1998 8 Dr. Ruth Needleman, lecture to Labor Studies L390 class, Indiana University Northwest, February 11, 1997. See also, New Day Films, With Babies and Banners, 19--.


immediately after the war. U.S. Steel bemoaned the “serious production loss of 29 million tons of

steel from the end of the war to June 30, 1950, due to strikes and work stoppages.” 51 Nick Migas

was 1010 president during a big wildcat strike at Inland in 1945.52

War Ends: Strikes Continue

9 For leads to the source of this quip, see Zeiger, page 83, footnote 54. Also, Robinson (p 83) quotes Meany as attributing the quip to Lewis in a discussion with Dubinsky, who opposed hiring Communist organizers; also see Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin p 41.

10 See Charles A. & Mary R Beard, America in Midpassage, New York:The Macmillan Company. 1939. pp. 531-532

11 See Murray quoted in I.W. Abel, Collective Bargaining Labor Relations in Steel: Then and Now.New York : Columbia University Press. 1976. p 55

12 Edward Sadlowski, quoted in James B. Lane and Mike Olszanski, eds. “Steelworkers Fight Back, Inland’s Local Union 1010 and the Sadlowski/Balanoff Campaigns,”Steel Shavings., Gary, IN: Indiana University Northwest, Volume 30 2000, page 144.

13 Ruth Needleman, Black Freedom Fighters in Steel. New York: Cornell University Press, 2003. p 42

14 Lloyd Ulman, The Government of the Steel Workers’ Union, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962. p 4

15 See Needleman, pp 42-43 also Zivich op cit

16 See Zivich,op cit., p 10

17 (CBS reports: Inside the Union)

18 Ulman, op cit., pp 4, 37, 173, uses the capitalized “Rank and File movement” to refer to oppositional groups of steelworkers from the Amalgamated days up through the Dues protest of the 1950’s and beyond.

19 John Sargent, taped interview with Mike Olszanski, August 13, 1978.

20 See “ CBS Report: Inside the Union”


Once World War II was over, as Zeiger puts it, "Murray's vision rested on hopes for a

smooth transition from war to peace and on business-labor collaboration…" [Italics mine]53

What Tanzman describes as the “wages/productivity bargain” between labor and capital was at

the core of this strategy, and it relied heavily on centralized negotiations and control from the

top.54

21 United Steelworkers of America, Department of Education, Then & Now, The Road Between, Pittsburg: USWA, 1986, p 62. 22 Fred Gaboury, “Little steel Strike” The People’s Weekly World, May 13, 1997. p 4 23 See Zivich

24 See History of Local 1010 USWA at: http://www.uswa1010.org/history/1010history.htm

25 See Agreement in CRA Box 1,

26 Alice and Staughton Lynd, eds. Rank & File. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973, p 107

27 Joe Gyurko, Taped Interview by Mike Olszanski, May 10-13, 1983 transcript p 16 28 Zivich, op cit., p 37

29 Philip W. Nyden, Steelworkers Rank & File. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. 1984 p 24

30 Will Tanzman, “A Working Class Version of the New Left: The Rank and File Movement in the United Steelworkers and the Ed sadlowski Campaign,” Senior essay, Draft of manuscript, Yale University, April 2004, p 13

31 Minute Book Group 9 (1940-1944) CRA 1010 Box 1 Folder 5

32 See Needleman, p 45; also Zivich, p 37

33 Nick Migas, quoted in Alice and Styaughton Lynd, Rank and File, p 168

http://www.uswa1010.org/history/1010history.htm


In response to pent-up worker frustration over wage inequities and sacrifices during the

war, 1946 brought the first industry-wide basic steel strike. 750,000 steelworkers shut down U.S.

steel production for 28 days, winning an across-the-board pay increase of 181/2 cents an hour.

The strike was coordinated by Murray and the International USWA leadership in Pittsburg, but

was carried out by the Rank & File at Inland and the other mills. It was settled between Phil

34 See Needleman, p 45

35 Nyden, p 30

36 Lynd, p 170

37 Lynd,

38 Zivich, p 3

39 Lynd,. p

40 Zivich,., p 48 from Lynd., p. 76

41 Calumet Regional Archives (CRA) Box 1, File Folder 24, letter to War Labor Board, signed Jack Sargent, President, Local 1010 USWA, circa 1943.

42 See David F. Selvin, A Terrible anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikls in San Francisco pp. 63-64, 243-244

43 Group 9 minutes page 90, 6/21/44 (CRA) Box 1

44 Ibid

45 Ibid, May 6, 1944

46 Needleman, pp. 47-49 47 Lynd, p 169

48 Sargent, quoted in Lynd, p 109

49 Douglas A. Fisher, Steel Serves the Nation, 1901-1951, The Fifty YearStory of United States Steel, New York: United States Steel Corporation, 1951 p 88


Murray and John A. Stevens, vice president of U.S. Steel in Washington , D.C. For the first time,

some union members at Local 1010 heard about the settlement first on the radio. While it

established an industry-wide settlement on wages, it left many local issues, especially job

classification and incentive issues, unresolved.

1947 negotiations throughout the industry established language to evaluate and classify all

job rates and establish standard hourly rates for each job. It also saw a new clause—Section 2-B

in the U.S. steel contract—which gave local union grievance committees a degree of protection of

existing work practices within the departments. While never clear, the language allowed grievers

to argue that a “past practice” could not be changed arbitrarily at the whim of management.

Theoretically at least, it seemed to shore up local union autonomy and rank & file control. 55

The Inland/USWA 1947 contract negotiated in Pittsburgh, was signed by Phil Murray and the

Internationl USWA officers, as well as John Sargent and the Local 1010 negotiating committee.

But it left serious issues of pay inequity unsettled. The Rank & File at Inland wasn’t ready for

labor peace. But events in the world at large were about to change the context in which 1010’s

radicals resisted the international, and tried to exercise Rank and File control over bargaining,

dramatically.

50 Zeiger, p 152

51 Fisher, p 28

52 James Kollros, quoted in James B. Lane and Mike Olszanski, eds. “Steelworkers Fight Back, Inland’s Local Union 1010 and the Sadlowski/Balanoff Campaigns,”Steel Shavings., Gary, IN: Indiana University Northwest, Volume 30 2000, page 14.

53 ? Zeiger, page 213

54 Tanzman, p 2


The declaration, by Churchill and Truman, of a cold war against communism, brought

labor’s top anti-communists to the fore. Murray initially defended the CIO’s Communists,

defying the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and anti-communist Walter Reuther at the

1946 CIO convention with a militant declaration for center-left unity:

Let no one create conflict within this movement....this mighty organization, the CIO, is not going to be divided by anybody....We have our divisions of opinion and we, I suppose, in the years to come, will be susceptable to divisions of opinion. That is mighty healthy...

He was even more forceful at the USWA convention in 1946:

We ask no man his national origin, his religion, his beliefs. It is enough for us that he is a steelworker and that he believes in trade unionism...Our union has not been and will not be aninstrument of repression. It is a vehicle for economic and social progress.... As a democratic institution we engage in no purges, no witch hunts. We do not dictate a man's thoughts or beliefs. Most important of all we do not permit ourselvesto be stampeded into courses of action which create division among our members and sow the disunity which is sought by those false prophets and hypocritical advisers from without who mean us no good.56

The Federal Taft-Hartley act of 1947, passed despite Truman’s veto, fueled the fires of

anti-communism in the U.S. labor movement. Among other provisions, it required every union

officer to sign a “loyalty oath” swearing he was not a communist, on threat of expulsion from

union office. Murray continued vocal support of participation by the left through the 1947 CIO

convention at Boston, declaring himself unequivocally opposed to amendment of the constitution

to provide for expulsion of the reds which Reuther was demanding. He said that history had

proven that expulsions would take control of the unions away from the membership.57

56 ? Richard O. Boyer & Herbert M. Morais, Labor's Untold Story, New York: Cameron Associates, 1955, page 356.


In this he proved to be correct. But then the USWA and CIO boss reversed himself. At the

May, 1947 CIO executive Board meeting Murray announced to the union that he and the USWA

were on board the anti-communist.

It is high time the CIO leaders stopped apologizing for Communism...throw it to hell out, and throw out its advocates along with it. When a man accepts office to render service to workers, and then delivers that service to other outside interests, that man is nothing but a damned traitor."58

The reference here seems is to be to the likes of Pressman and De Caux, but with

this radical departure from his previous public statements, Murray was also finally placing

himself firmly in the anti-communist ranks, where it would appear he had belonged all

along. The kid gloves were off. Communists, and those in the USWA who associated with

them, were traitors. Anticommunist opportunists, who now included Murray, saw in this

cold war insanity an opportunity to crush their left wing political opposition—and anyone

principled enough to stand with them. In the process, they could now rip the thorn from

their side that was the Local 1010 Rank & File.

How would they do it? Migas suggested there was more to it than removing radicals from

union office under the new Taft-Hartley law. That was the stick. The carrot encouraged

opportunism, and the International was “playing politics” with grievances, and dangling full-time

staff appointments in front of cooperative local union grievers and officers, according to Migas.

Many of the less principled, and those who were convinced it was un-American to support union

leaders who were red or “pink” would go along to get along.

How did the International take over? …hedging here, hedging there, getting people under their influence in the local who were ambitious to become foremen or to get on the staff, spending money just before an election; that way progressive leadership was broken up in the plant, in the union. It was a


gradual process….if you had a good man as grievance committeeman, and the International didn’t settle his grievances at the third and fourth steps, then the people involved thought it was the grievance man’s fault [and voted him out of office]59

Migas personally got enormous support from the members in his department when an

attempt was made to remove him from union office for his CP membership in 1948. A petition,

signed by 250 members in #1 Open hearth stated, “it makes no difference to us that he is a

communist. He is a strong union man, a good fighter for us men here.” They argued it was the

will “of the rank-and-file…that Brother Migas be our Grievance committeeman.”60 With Murray

and Germano’s purge of 1010’s radicals underway it would get plenty ugly in the “red local.”

“Wildcat Johnnie” Sargent

“We had quite a few wildcats,” Joe Gyurko remembered. “It seemed like the Cold Strip

[John Sargent’s department] was always on wildcat.”61 Many of these strikes were over

incentive pay. “They had every job on a different type of incentive, and every time one of them

incentives dropped, the guys at the drop of a hat were out the gate. I was always out on strike.”62

These strikes usually resulted in a settlement which basically granted the workers’ demands. The

resultant agreements, written or verbal, until 1947 universally included amnesty for the strikers,

in spite of the no-strike clause in the Local contract. But 1010’s Tin Mill strike changed all that.

A 1947 wildcat at Inland’s Tin Mill in violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s

no-strike clause provided the International leadership an opportunity to rid the union of Sargent

61 Gyurko, 12/12/82 p 24

62 Gyurko, p 25


and the Rank & File. The issue was low incentive or “bonus” pay on a new electrolytic tin plating

line. The company was once again instituting speed-up. Sargent took some heat when the

company “in a flurry of red-baiting…” as Zivich reports, fired 80 strikers.63 According to Gyurko,

Mary Hopper and Nick Migas, the International Union under Philip Murray and District Director

Joe Germano signed an agreement without Sargent’s knowledge or consent that legitimated the

firings.

Gyurko told me in 1982,

Germano sent the letter out, ‘you guys goin’ to go back. The company’s got the right to fire you. You give ‘em that right.’ They stuck and they all got fired. And at that time, the Tin Mill had the most militant union group in the whole mill…They broke the back of the union in that department. Real bad. Germano. You can blame Germano because he wouldn’t support them…

But Gyurko also recognized that the Tin Mill rank & file’s insistence on

going it alone allowed them to be isolated by Inland and Germano—and crushed.

“Sargent was going to pull the whole local out, and they didn’t want him to do that, the group

didn’t. They thought they could hold out on their own…A big mistake!”64

Mary Hopper, along with a large proportion of the women hired at Inland during World

War II, worked in the Tin Mill with Ann Geba. She was elected 1010 Recording Secretary

several times. “Look at the way they crucified him [Sargent] over that 1947 strike,” she said.

“You don’t fire 80 guys, like, the way they did. They went completely around him. Then, of

course, people didn’t believe it. Nobody would believe that they would, that the International and

the company would sign an agreement without the local president.”65 Murray and Germano had

used the International Union’s legal ability to speak for the Local Union membership to

64 Gyurko, 12/12/82 p 25


circumvent its elected leadership and enforce top-down discipline.

It appears that Murray, Germano and the International hoped to accomplish at least two

goals with this deal: to wipe out or seriously curtail rank & file support for Sargent and his red

caucus, and to teach the members once and for all that the International ran the USWA, and when

Murray gave his personal word there would be no strikes, he wasn’t going to let an ignorant and

fool-hardy membership break it. Their attempt was to prove only partially successful.

The following year at the 1948 USWA Convention, 1010 delegate Nick Migas passed out

leaflets critical of the international leadership’s anti-rank & file activities. Migas’ leaflet, in

addition to criticism of Murray’s support for Truman’s new cold war foreign policy, made

reference to the 1947 back-door agreement. The leaflet attacked Murray and the International,

which it said “stopped or discouraged departmental stoppages, slow-downs and other actions

against departmental beefs; it permitted staunch union men to be fired without benefit of union

defense for simply fighting speed-up and other beefs. Either we are a fighting union every inch of

the way, or we go down the road to company unionism” For his trouble, Migas was dragged out

of the convention hall to the street by Murray’s goons, beaten and kicked to the curb.66

Metzgar speaks of the “discipline that enabled the USW from 1946-1956 to strike 5 times

and go out and come back together, as a group.” 67 This discipline can hardly be seen as self-

imposed, considering the lengths to which the international leadership was willing to go to

enforce it. “Eighty fired at Inland, Murray says they’re not coming back…” must have ripped

through the ranks of Local 1010 like a tornado, dispelling any notions radicals and rank & filers

alike might have that the old rules could still be applied. Indeed, progressive leadership in the

other big steel locals can hardly have ignored the message, though evidence suggests wildcats


continued longer in some locals, while at 1010 they practically disappeared after 1947, as far as I

can determine.68 I was aware of no wildcats of any significance in my time of employment at

Inland, from 1963 to 1996.

1948 was a turning point in U.S. labor history. The CPUSA supported the Progressive

Party’s Henry Wallace for President, as did Joe Gyurko and many Rank & Filers at 1010. Gyurko

campaigned for Wallace door to door. A huge Wallace rally in Gary drew thousands of union

members, who opposed Truman’s cold war escalation, as well as Taft-Hartley. Murray fired

Communists Len DeCaux, Fred Avila and Harry Gantt of the CIO News, and USWA

Washington D.C. legislative representative Robert Lamb, purportedly over the Wallace issue.

He reportedly shed tears over his firing of trusted chief consul Lee Pressman—but did it just the

same—for, in his mind, “putting loyalty to the CP above loyalty to the union.” 69

Pressman was quickly replaced with avowed anti-communist Arthur J Goldberg, a labor

lawyer recruited to USWA service by Van Bittner in 1940. During the war, Goldberg’s job as a

Captain with the CIA predecessor Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was to funnel money to

underground resistance units in occupied Europe—but only to the anti-communist elements of the

resistance.70 Goldberg, later a founder with Reuther and others of Americans for Democratic

Action (ADA) was a key proponent of the liberal “Middle Way” a social democratic theory that

aimed to “democratize, humanize and stabilize market systems” by sharing power equally among

corporations, the state and labor unions. Liberals like Goldberg detested communists more than

capitalists, and would prove to be just the man to help Murray run them out of the CIO, and the

USWA. 71

Murray had begun in earnest the purge of the CIO’s and USWA’s militants, calling them

communists and traitors. He had likewise effectively disabused the USWA 1010 members, if not


the entire USWA membership, of any ideas that bargaining in the old style would any longer be

tolerated. Thus, the “wages/productivity bargain” could be implemented and expanded with little

interference from a weakened Rank and File.72

The 1950s: Industry Wide Bargaining and Strikes

An Industry- wide strike was called by Murray in October, 1949. Murray and top USWA

and CIO leaders had determined that Company-paid pensions, rather than enlargement of

programs like Social Security were the way to insure steelworker futures under a capitalist system

they heartily endorsed. The post-war “wages/productivity bargain”, in the eyes of these business

unionists, made capitalists somewhat responsible for the welfare of their workers, while viewing

government-sponsored plans with some suspicion. Interestingly U.S. Steel, employing welfare

capitalism under the so-called “American Plan”—designed to keep out unions—had established

company paid pensions for its employees in 1911.73 Local 1010 was out for 42 days, as once

again the recalcitrant Inland Steel was among the last to settle. The Rank & File at 1010,

where Harry Powell was now president, once again furnished the foot soldiers, but had little to

say about the high level negotiations. “At the 1950 USWA convention, the International

Leadership was made the ‘sole contracting party’ in all collective bargaining agreements,”74

making the local union negotiating committees a mere creature of the International’s control.

In 1952, President Harry Truman announced he would seize the steel mills to settle

deadlocked negotiations between big steel and the USWA. Citing the effects of a steel shut-down


on military production for the on-going Korean conflict, Truman insisted a strike “must not be

allowed to happen.” He blamed the deadlocked squarely on steel management. Inland

management’s Clarence Randall called Truman’s action “an evil deed without precedent and a

threat of nationalization to all industry.”75 The companies settled with top union negotiators

under White House supervision, after 59 days on strike. “Wildcat Willie” Maihoffer was

replaced as 1010 president that year by the conservative Don Lutes Senior. Maihoffer’s botched,

indecisive handling of a racial incident in the Power and Steam department, where white workers

doused a black in kerosene and threatened to set him on fire, gave the Lutes caucus just what it

needed to beat the Rank & File in local union elections. Phil Murray died on November 9, leaving

the union’s top job to the flashy business unionist David J. McDonald.

In 1953 and 1954, the USWA struck steel again, for five weeks industry-wide.

Don Lutes Senior was president of Local 1010 during this time. McDonald would have no

problems with militancy in local 1010’s leadership during these years but in fact put Local 1010

under trusteeship during Lutes term of office over fiscal issues. Nyden ascribes to the

International an ability to tap, and largely control local militancy during the fifties, threatening to

“let local militants loose if the industry did not agree to union demands.” This also “served as a

catharsis for local union militants,” channeling and releasing much of their pent up frustration

with top-down international control.76

Pete Callacci was 1010 president in 1956, when the USWA and major steel companies

established coordinated bargaining. The CIO had surrendered to the AFL, and 650,000 USWA

76 Nyden, p 39


members struck the industry’s big twelve for four weeks, gaining 45 cents an hour, including a

COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment). Bargaining was handled by a top committee consisting of

USWA president David J McDonald, Secretary-Treasurer I.W. Abel, Vice President Hague and

General Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg. The Wage Policy Committee rubber-stamped the

agreement. The former Trotkyist Callacci was by this time firmly in the International’s camp.

He was still president in 1959, when the longest, and last steel strike at Inland Steel, took place.

Inland, and basic steel throughout the country, was shut down tight for 116 days. Once again,

Local 1010 did as it was told and let negotiations proceed according to the now established high

level bargaining model. Once again the members were presented with a fait accompli and did not

get to vote on the contract. Ironically, the key issue in the 1959 industry-wide steel strike was the

preservation of “local working conditions” or “past practice”—a clause (2-B in the USS

Agreement, Article 2 Section 2 in Inland’s) which armed individual local grievance committees

for the day-to-day struggle on the shop floor. In far too many cases this language was little

understood and not effectively used by many later, more conservatively schooled grievers. In the

case of Inland and Local 1010, the local working conditions language was inadequate to protect

things like crew sizes, and would become a key bargaining issue in 1965 contract talks. More

unfortunately still, far too few rank & file workers really understood what they were striking for

in 1959, since by that time the alienation of the workers from their Pittsburgh international

leaders, now presided over by David J. MacDonld, was almost complete.

Industry-wide bargaining, while it promised the positive effect of eliminating the possibil-

ity of management “whipsawing” one local union against another, at least over wages, failed to

assure uniformity in key provisions of the individual Company contracts, especially on language


protecting jobs. Indeed, the companies welcomed it, fearing the union might in fact whipsaw

wages upward by using pattern bargaining.77 But it greatly assisted the concentration of control

over bargaining in the hands of top International Union leadership, and put it effectively behind

closed doors. This was just where people like Phil Murray, Dave MacDonald and IW Abel liked

it. Local 1010’s negotiating committee, removed sometimes to Pittsburgh sometimes to Wash-

ington D.C. for coordinated bargaining was sequestered, with little or no contact with the rank &

file in the mill, often for weeks at a time. Trying to negotiate local issues with Inland manage-

ment, while international negotiators met behind other closed doors to hammer out an industry-

wide contract, the local team was out of the loop of the higher level talks. In the final hours, they

would be called together and told that the industry contract was decided, and to quickly settle

their local issue and go on home. The USWA Wage Policy Committee, whose members came

from other industries as well as basic steel, nominally approved contracts, but their vote was usu-

ally to support the recommendation of the executive board.

Elections for the USWA president and executive board came up in 1965, right in the

middle of basic steel negotiations. A palace revolt led by USWA executive board member I.W

Abel, was supported by Sargent and new Rank & File Caucus leader and alleged former CP

organizer Jim Balanoff. Abel, who in his “fight back” political campaign blasted McDonald’s

“tuxedo unionism,” would shortly emerge as another of management’s beloved “labor

statesmen.” Negotiations, suspended for the duration of the election, were concluded by Abel and

his team. The May 1 deadline passed, and Abel gave the 11 Steel Companies a three month

extension, rather than strike. A contract once again negotiated from the top-down was signed in

1965 by the international officers. This Inland contract does not bear the signatures of any Local


1010 officers or negotiating committee members. It remains the only USWA/Inland Contract

before or since left unsigned by a 1010 local union president.

John Sargent was president of Local 1010 in 1965, and fellow Rank & File Caucus leader

Jim Balanoff was Secretary of the Grievance Committee. Balanoff reported in November 1964,

on a Grievers’ meeting at which “the consensus…is that all the time needed to settle our many

burning local problems should be given the negotiating committee before any contract is agreed

to. These department and plant problems have to be settled and every attempt will be made to

settle them to the satisfaction of our members.”78 Sargent, Balanoff, and the entire Local 1010

negotiating committee refused to sign. Having promised in his Local 1010 Steelworker column of

December, 1964 to sign no contract “until local conditions are settled to the satisfaction of the

Local Bargaining Committees”79 Sargent kept his word.

Complaining of the waste and ineffectiveness of moving the local negotiating committee

to Pittsburgh, Sargent expressed frustration with the negotiating process and the resulting

contract. “IT’S OVER,” he writes in September, 1965, “After nine months of seemingly endless

talk—much of it futile and useless.” Sargent went on to explain the reasons 1010’s committee

refused to sign. “We appealed to the International Executive board, “ he said in his front page

column, “to either give us a contract similar to the Big Ten…or let us use the power of the…

Local [1010] to get…what other steelworkers have.” Sargent specifically pointed to two crucial

lacks in the Inland contract:. “The Steel Industry’s provisions [contract language] on incentives,”

and “The Steel Industry’s provisions [contract language] on protecting crew sizes, known as 2-

B.” Sargent explained that inferior language in the Inland contract did not prohibit the Company

“from cutting incentive pay on jobs changed by new equipment and processes.” And the Inland


version of the “local working conditions” language (Article 2 Section 2) would allow them to

reduce crew sizes. These two differences would give “Inland a distinct economic advantage over

the rest of the basic steel industry,” by taking “millions of dollars out of the pockets of Inland

workers.”80

A Local 1010 resolution submitted to the 1965 District 31 Conference called for changes

in negotiating procedures “so that we either strive for essentially one contract covering all the

basic steel companies or that we bargain separately with these companies…”81 Calling for a

“drastic revamping and reorganization” of “our entire method of negotiation” 1010 Grievance

Committeeman Joe Sowa called for membership ratification in 1966. Complaining that “The

president of the union is called in behind the politicians’ closed door, and nobody knows what

happened about the changes we asked on [the] local level.” Sowa pointed out that the Wage

Policy Committee and the International executive board could and did “overrule the negotiating

team of various Locals and approve the agreement even with the objection of the Local…”82

Bill Bennett, who defeated Sargent for 1010 president in 1967 by a vote of 5510 to 3590,

called for a shorter work week with no reduction in pay and early retirement and training to

offset job loss in steel. The Basic Steel Industry Conference, composed of Local Union

presidents of only basic steel was established that year, and given the authority to ratify the

contract or recommend a strike, which would have to be approved by membership vote. The

Industry Conference would prove highly susceptible to arm-twisting by the USWA president.

Thus, centralized control of negotiations was maintained. Local 1010’s negotiating committee in

1968 was headed by Sam Evett, District 31 Director Joe Germano’s personal assistant, thus


assuring International union control of local bargaining. Once more, locals negotiations started

locally, but were then moved to Pittsburg and sequestered.

The Seventies: Industry Bargaining, ENA

In 1973, I.W. Abel and the Coordinated Basic Steel Companies “Embarked on an un-

precedented experiment…”83 designed to insure “labor peace” and fulfill Murray’s old dream of

full “collaboration” between the union and the bosses. After meeting secretly for months, Abel,

the USWA Executive board, and ten major steel companies announced the Experimental Negoti-

ating Agreement (ENA) on television and in the newspapers March 30, 1973. Designed to

eliminate stockpiling by the industry in anticipation of strikes, the ENA pledged the USWA not to

strike at all, no matter how the negotiations turned out. It substituted arbitration for the right to

strike. The Rank & File were furious.

Typifying progressive local union leaders throughout the USWA, Local 1014 officer and

black leftist leader Curtis Strong blasted the no-strike ENA: “ENA takes away the only real club

unions have. The ENA was the same ideology they handed the blacks: ‘We’ll negotiate for

you.’”84

Local 1010 griever Mike Mezo (later elected president in 1988) likewise stood for the

right to strike and the right to ratify and complained of the top-down closed-door bargaining tac-

84 Curtis Strong, quoted in Ibid p 36


tics used by the USWA International: “The rank & file had been excluded from the decision-

making process and mistrusted both the company and the union. …The men in suits told them

they didn’t need to vote on contracts and now don’t need to strike. It caused even more alien-

ation.”85

Present District 7 Director Jim Robinson, who as a young griever served on the 1977 Lo-

cal 1010 negotiating committee, described the frustration of negotiating under ENA, carried over

from 1973 and 1974 negotiations:

We started negotiations locally and then moved to Washington for six weeks. Inland’s top brass knew when the industry-wide deal was going to come down. Meanwhile, they’d sit across the table and say in effect, ‘screw you.’ They wouldn’t do anything [agree to anything] until the last minute. Then they’d put a package on the table and say, ‘Take it or leave it’ The process reached its low point in 1974 when Inland told [then 1010 president and International supporter] Hank Lopez ‘You can take a ten cent increase on the meal ticket and Kotex for the women’s wash room’ Hank should have told them to stick it.86

Under ENA, a local could in fact strike, but only on local issues. Since all big ticket

economic issues were industry wide, that left the local to negotiate small change items, and made

the possibility of a local strike remote. Impossible is not a word I like to use, but I will say the

possibility of taking out 18,000 steelworkers in 1977 over non-economic issues was in fact

extremely remote. In spite of this, in 1977 the local negotiating committee, led by District

Director Jim Balanoff and 1010 President Bill Andrews took a strike authorization vote on Local

issues. We had assembled a huge package of health and safety, environmental and Coke plant

demands. We asked the membership to grant the committee the right to strike Inland, if they

wouldn’t settle. They did, by a paper thin 52% to 48% margin. With no economic issues on the

table, nearly half of 1010’s 18,000 members refused to authorize a strike. Along with Mike Mezo,

Jim Robinson, Rudy Schneider, James Ross and others, this was my first contract negotiations.


The committee of about ten was appointed by Bill Andrews, and consisted mostly of

departmental grievers. Each had a list of quite parochial, departmental demands he wanted to win

for his department. Most bargaining took place in Washington D.C. at the Shoreham Hotel. We

met the company in small sub committees, while top level talks went on in secret. Coke Plant

Griever James Ross and I, along with a delegation of coke plant workers from several big locals,

tried for a week to get a meeting with Abel, to find out what was on the big table for coke plants.

He refused to meet. We sat down outside his hotel room door one evening for an hour or so, to no

avail. He sent an emissary, Lloyd McBride, to defuse the situation. No one was to find out what

was in store for coke plant workers until a final agreement was submitted to the Basic Steel

Industry Conference of local union presidents for approval, take it or leave it. We were a long

way from Indiana Harbor, and from the members in the mill.87 In spite of Abel’s

recommendation, the Local Union Presidents voted down the industry contract on first ballot.

Arm twisting started in earnest then, and it didn’t take long for Abel to bring enough dissidents in

line to get approval.

We went home to the members with an industry contract already settled, and a committee

recommendation to approve the local issues we’d been able to settle. There was no way, we felt,

we could ask 1010 members to strike, since we had only narrowly won the strike authorization

vote of 52% to 48%. At an all day plant gate vote, the members approved the local contract 4 to 1.

It was a mediocre contract. We could have done better.

The 1010 Rank & File Caucus, led by then president Bill Andrews, joined with insurgents

from across the country to build for a convention floor fight for the right to ratify contracts in ba-

sic steel at the 1978 Steelworkers convention in Atlantic City. We campaigned for our slate of


delegates, pledging to fight for the issue at the convention. We elected 36 of 1010’s 37 delegates,

including Mezo, his father Cliff “Cowboy” Mezo, myself and griever Jim Robinson.

Jim Robinson was introduced to me by his father-in-law, 1010 Rank & File Chair and

later 1010 President Jim Balanoff in 1972 as a Students For a Democratic Society (SDS)

organizer. He was reputedly pretty radical in his younger days. He had this to say about closed-

door bargaining, the right to ratify contracts and the right to strike at the USWA convention in

1978:

I hired into the mill in 1971 and the contract came up that summer. Saturday at midnight was the contract deadline. The next day I’m sittin’ in a tavern in South Chicago, and it comes on the TV: the contract has been settled. Well, this is my contract! Why do I gotta learn that from the television, that it’s been settled? Why can’t I say , you know, what are the terms of this contract and I’ll decide whether it’s been settled or not? Or at least I’ll have my one four hundred thousandth of a say as to whether it’s been settled And that’s always left a bad taste in my mouth, and I think it leaves a bad taste in everybody’s mouth.88

Robinson’s description of learning about the contract on TV resonates with thousands of

steelworkers who experienced negotiations in the 1970’s similarly. His eloquent statement

describing how top union leaders had undermined the movement by top-down centralized

control of the union, and how rank & file control can revive it rings true today:

You read it in the papers, you see it on television: ‘Labor’s in trouble. Labor Law reform bill got beat. Common Situs Picketing got beat. Compromise on the minimum wage.’ Well, George Meany and them are in trouble! O.K.? Because I don’t see most of them doing a very effective job of going to their membership and saying, ‘Look, this is what we gotta do , and we can’t do it ‘cause we’re just individuals. We can only do it if we speak for you and if we have your backing.’ I don’t see them doing that. And if they did that, I don’t know what kind of response they’d get, because for years they’ve been saying, ‘Look, we don’t need your backing, we don’t want your backing, we don’t want you to say nothin’. We’ll negotiate the contracts. We’ll run the union. And you just pay the dues.’ Too much they’ve been doing that. And now, you know, the chickens are starting to come home to roost. They’re losing. And they don’t really know what to do.


And this is the sense in which we need a Labor Movement, O.K.? This union isn’t my union, it’s not your union., Jim Balanoff or Ed Sadlowski’s union or Lloyd McBride’s union. This union belongs to the members that work in the mill. And they’re the people that should make those decisions. Because that’s their right. That’s what the union’s there for.”89

55 Nyden, p 35

57 ? Boyer, page 357

58 ? Art Preis, Labor's Giant Step, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972, page 337

59 Lynd, p 170

60 Needleman, lectures and Black freedom Fighters in Steel, pp 56-58.

63 Zivich, p 49 65 Mary Hopper, Taped interview by author, 10/3/83

66 Lynd, p 172

67 Jack Metzgar, Striking Steel. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000 pp. 27-30

68 See discussions of U.S. steel Gary local 1014 wildcats in Needleman, Black Freedom Fighter in Steel and the Youngstown, Ohio area in Lynd, Rank & File, also Bruno, Steelworker Ally

69 See Zeiger, Also in 1948 General Motors chief Alfred P. Sloan jubilantly reported, the UAW under Reuther closed the door on bargaining for a new GM pact. “The privacy of the 1948 negotiations” was, as Sloan put it “one circumstance favoring us [management] in the 1948 negotiations…our collective bargaining had come to resemble a public political forum.” Closed door negotiations was for GM management, a huge relief. See Alfred P. Sloan Jr., My Years With General Motors, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1963. p 398. It is hardly coincidental that this “closed door” bargaining was first adopted by Reuther in 1948. He had just finished his own personal purge of the UAW ‘s “communists” and had consolidated his autocratic control of the union. Sociologist Jack Bloom argues that “A public, mass movement could not be dealt with in this way [by the leaders, behind closed doors]. Once matters could no longer be settled quietly and amicably by influence, the appearance of concessions or agreement with a leader was no longer sufficient, because that agreement would have to be brought back to the ‘mass.” See Jack Bloom, Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. p 150


These and similar sentiments among 1010 Rank and Filers, of whom, Robinson and Mike

Mezo were two, led to a serious contest for the membership’s right to ratify contracts at the 1978

USWA convention in Atlantic City. Robinson, Mezo and myself were in the thick of it.

Tight control of the convention by IW Abel precluded a victory there, or even a roll call vote.

The issue was referred back to the Industry Conference, which years later, in the face of the break

70 David L. Stebenne, Arthur J. Goldberg, New Deal Liberal, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p39. “American aid was having the effect of boosting social democratic and socialist unionist over communist ones in their struggle for the allegiance of the Western European working class, a consequence that seems to have satisfied Goldberg completely.”

71 Steben, pp. 42-43, 53-54,65, 71, 75-76. The aim of Murray and Goldberg was to secure for labor leadership a seat at the decision-making table alongside the capitalists and government through a “social contract” which would become the wages/productivity bargain.

72 Mainstream journalist Nicholas Von Hoffman, in his balanced portrait of anti-communist crusader Roy Cohn writes: "A number of trade unions lived through years of turmoil as drives were mounted to rid them of red leadership. Where the Communist factions were too deeply embedded to be pried out, the union was destroyed to be replaced by a suitable non-Communist organization. For these victories there were costs to be paid. From that time on, American trade unionism lost its dynamism, as it lapsed into the somnambulant listlessness by which it is characterized to this day." See von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn, New York: Doubleday, 1988, page 137.

73 Fisher, pp. 88-89

74 Nyden, p 36

75 Jack H. Morris, Inland Steel Industries, Inland Steel at 100, Beginning a SecondCentury of Progress, Chicago: Inland Steel Industries, 1993, p 51

77 Garth Magnum and R. Scott McNabb, The Rise, Fall and Replacement of Industrywide Bargaining in the Basic Steel Industry, New York: M.E. Shrpe, 1997, p 93

78 James Balanoff, “Report of the Grievance Committee” column, Local 1010 Steelworker, November, 1964.

79


up of coordinated bargaining and demands by the companies for concessions, saw fit to grant

membership ratification in basic steel.

Mike Mezo described how the Rank & File’s failure to win democratic reforms in the

USWA, through convention fights and the ill-fated Sadlowski insurgency of 1977, weakened the

union and its ability to resist the onslaught of the concession-hungry steel industry in the 1980’s:

On the national level, thwarting the Rank & File Movement had catastrophic consequences. We were helpless for ten years. Now the leaders of the International wonder ‘where are all our agitators, our activists?’ The answer is ‘They were run out in the seventies’ When the shit hit the fan in the 1980’s, and

? John Sargent “It Seems to Me” column on front page of Local 1010 Steelworker, December, 1964.

80 John Sargent “It Seems to Me” column on front page of Local 1010 Steelworker, September, 1965

81 “Resolution,” Local 1010 steelworker, November, 1965.

82 Joe Sowa, Grievance Committeeman 100” Plate Mill, “Letters, Our Negotiations” Local 1010 Steelworker, August, 1966, p 2

83 I.W. Abel, quoted in James B. Lane and Mike Olszanski, eds. “Steelworkers Fight Back, Inland’s Local Union 1010 and the Sadlowski/Balanoff Campaigns,”Steel Shavings., Gary, IN: Indiana University Northwest, Volume 30 2000

85 Mike Mezo quoted in Ibid, p 36

86 Jim Robinson quoted in Ibid p 100

87 Documentation of the conduct of these negotiations is available from numerous sources, including several at the CRA, but most of what happened in 1977 is still indelibly etched in my own memory.88

? Robinson, “Inside the Union,” 1978

89 Ibid


you needed masses of people, you couldn’t threaten a national strike. We have spent the last 15 years building what we had in the seventies.”90

Mezo is basically correct, though I have argued that the red purges of the 1940’s and

1950’s actually marked the start of the decline of our union. Running out the “communists” then

meant running out the most democratic, militant, progressives as well. The “new left” insurgency

in steel of the 1970’s built a pretty broad alliance, but it was too dependent on the charismatic

leadership of Ed Sadlowski, and failed to build a bottom-up movement which could endure as

more than an election campaign organization. Sadlowski and District 31 Director Jim Balanoff in

fact opposed the idea of a permanent, ongoing Fight Back organization at the 1978 Convention in

Atlantic City, arguing it would be a target for the International leadership. Refusing to take

leadership of an assemblage of USWA Rank & File groups from around the country they

expressed concerns the International Leadership would use the old “dual unionism” charge

against us. Following their lead, and that of Cliff and Mike Mezo and Jim Robinson, I voted with

the 1010 rank & File delegation against forming a permanent organization. I was soon to regret

that decision. Balanoff expressed his own regrets at this decision in an interview years later.

The 1980’s: Concessions Bargaining and Job Loss

In 1980, negotiations once more were coordinated industry-wide but the steel

industrialists had had enough of ENA with its 3% guaranteed wage increase and arbitration.

District director Balanoff and 1010 president Andrews once again tried to assemble enough “local


issues” to at least threaten a strike, but it was obvious that once again, the members would take

what was handed down from the top. Jobs were becoming the big issue among steelworkers, as

eastern mills began to be shuttered, and pressures for job combinations and eliminations

increased. Adequate job protections were still absent from the contract, and president McBride

told me and other delegates to the USWA 1980 convention that the union had no business telling

the owner of a steel mill when he could or could not shut it down, or how many workers he had to

employ.91

The last USWA contract under coordinated bargaining was negotiated in 1983. The

coordinated steel companies demanded the USWA give back wages and benefits, and sought

work rule changes to facilitate more “downsizing”—the combination and elimination of jobs.

President Lloyd McBride died in the middle of negotiations, leaving new president Lyn Williams

to conclude a pact that included. “Significant concessions.”92 A “NO Concessions” drive among

basic steel presidents, supported by Bill Andrews, failed to garner enough support to overcome

enormous pressures from the International leadership to settle. By February, the contract was

settled, with no threat of a strike. Then Chair of the grievance committee at 1010 Joe Gyurko

complained that the Inland contract still “contains certain sections that no other steel company has

and they hurt us in fighting job eliminations.”93 Coordinated industry wide bargaining, while

minimizing rank and file control of negotiations, had also failed to protect 1010 against inferior

contract language on work rules. Gyurko and the Rank & File urged members to help fight job

combinations and eliminations by closely following safety rules, filing grievances when they

caught foremen working, refusing to turn in suggestions on efficiency improvements, and

supporting the local union.94


In 1986, U.S. Steel, Inland and the rest of the basic steel companies decided to dissolve

coordinated industry-wide bargaining, and take on the locals one by one, hoping to whipsaw one

against the other. Inland demanded more concessions, saying they wanted “parity” with the other

companies. Local 1010, under president Bill Andrews, prepared for the worst. Two “sound off”

meetings were held at the union hall, and members attending were unanimous in their resistance

to concessions on wages and work rules. I was assigned to organize a strike committee. We

started early, urging mass participation by the members, and signed up over 2500 members out of

a total of perhaps 12,000 as strike committee volunteers. Andrews, who originally won office on

the Rank & File slate, had increasingly come under the influence of life-long friend and now

mentor, USWA vice president for human affairs Leon Lynch. His position had become

increasingly more cautious, conservative, and non-confrontational vis-à-vis the International, to

the chagrin of myself and some other Rank & Filers. He appointed a small negotiating committee

and started closed-door negotiations with Inland. Negotiating Committee reports were printed and

distributed at the plant gates, but they were edited by Andrews and director Parton, containing

only general information. Fearing “leaks” to the press or the members, Parton and Andrews

sequestered the committee and I, as vice president chairing informational membership meetings

in Andrew’s absence, was kept out of the loop. Angry at the return to secrecy, I complained

vehemently, telling Andrews privately that I didn’t appreciate being “treated like a mushroom—

kept in the dark and fed bull shit.” In fairness, Andrews was well aware of my position on

transparency, and felt I could not be relied upon to keep secrets from the membership. After

approval by the international executive board, the 1010 committee brought back a package which

it unanimously recommended to the members. Mass meetings were held at an East Chicago high

school auditorium, to explain the contract point by point. For the first time since 1942, 1010


members ratified the entire contract. Membership participation in the bargaining process was

limited and circumscribed, but none the less important. Negotiations, though closed door, at least

had to produce a contract which could garner sufficient rank & file support to ensure membership

ratification. I am convinced, however that 1010’s membership would be loath to reject a contract

presented by the entire negotiating committee as “the best we can get.”

Is there a way to return contract negotiations and the right to strike to the members?

I believe so. Unable to talk to participants in the early Inland negotiations as much as I would

like, I turned to a Gary, Indiana trade union leader I’ve known and respected for over twenty

years. Alice Bush, staff representative for SEIU Local 208, described to me how the left-led 1199

Hospital Workers Unions bargained with St. Mary’s and Methodist hospitals in Gary, Indiana in

the 1980’s. The bargaining committee was large—very large when compared to the dozen or so

appointed to a typical 1010 negotiating committee, which negotiated for some 18,000 members. It

was elected—one member from each occupation at the hospital was elected by his/her peers.

Negotiations were local and they were open. Any member of the union was allowed, in fact

encouraged to attend sessions, which were held in an auditorium large enough to accommodate

several hundred workers. Often it was full. Transparency was near complete, and Union

negotiators rarely acquiesced to management’s constant requests for a “sidebar” discussion

behind closed doors. In the rare instances when the door was closed, prompt reports to the

membership kept the rank & file in the loop. The press was not directly admitted, but were

generally out in the hall, and ready with questions any time union members or management left

the hall. “1199 always did it that way. That’s the way I was taught,” says Bush. Like the United

Electrical Workers (UE) her union was left-led, and saw closed door bargaining as class

collaborationist.95


In 1987-88, during my brief part term as Local 1010 president, I represented the local in

what might loosely be termed negotiations with Inland. Management was asking for a mid-

contract re-opener, claiming an urgent need to talk to the union about its role in a multi-million

dollar revamping of Plant #4 bar and structural division. The role Inland envisioned for its

employees was to cooperate in removing contract bars to combining operating and maintenance

jobs.

I met with the local officers and grievance committeemen, and we agreed to listen to

Inlands demands, but said we would not re-negotiate the contract. The very first thing Inland

wanted of us, when we met in East Chicago in the offices of USWA District Director Jack Parton,

was a pledge to secrecy. “We want to give you all the information about our business plans, but

we don’t want it to leave this room.” The very first thing I told Inland management was, “I don’t

believe in keeping secrets from the members. Whatever you tell us here, the instant we leave

we’re going to call mass departmental meetings with the members and tell it all to them.”

Inland proceeded to lay out a proposal, and an implied threat. We called two meetings a day with

each affected department membership, to fully cover all shifts. We told them Inland wanted in

effect a contract re-opener. They wanted a separate agreement for Plant 4, with totally new work

rules, allowing the combining of electrical, mechanical and production jobs. We detailed

precisely the proposal Inland had presented, completely, line by line. The members asked us, the

grievers and myself , what we thought. We told them we thought it was outrageous, but we could

not guarantee their jobs if Inland shut down all of Plant 4, which was what they threatened should

we not agree. We said we would do all we could to get people severance pay, but there were no

guarantees. The contract language was dubious and unreliable on this point. We told them an

agreement like this would set a dangerous precedent, and that we would prefer to tell the


company to stuff it, but that we would abide by their decision. We took a secret ballot vote and

counted it right in front of them. Out of several hundred votes, 2 or 3 said to negotiate.

The members, almost unanimously, told us not to negotiate on Plant #4. We happily reported to

Inland and the local newspapers we would not negotiate on these issues at this time. They would

have to put their proposals on the table in regular contract negotiations in 1989.

Mike Mezo, who was part of the original committee for these talks, supported this

decision. A few months later, after defeating me for 1010 president, he and Director Parton

opened private talks with Inland, and brought back to the members a fait accompli, a new

agreement for Plant 4. The members voted to accept. It was no surprise to me, given the position

their new president and director Parton had taken, that they did.

It’s not just short term outcomes that are affected by the kind of bargaining unions

employ, though I’m convinced the union usually gets better contracts when negotiations are open

and inclusive of the rank & file, and are only approved with their votes. Leftist 1010 leaders John

Sargent, Nick Migas, Joe Gyurko and Jim Balanoff, like Harry Bridges and unlike Germano,

Murray and IW Abel, saw their power as union leaders enhanced, rather than diminished, by

having the rank & file at the table with them in negotiations, not locked out. In the long term, it is

my conviction that every time the union leadership meets behind closed doors, the union is

divided and weakened. Mistrust and alienation are consequences, not to mention the loss of

valuable shop-floor input. Union leaders are easily tagged as “sell outs” when they negotiate in

secret—and how do they prove otherwise? I think the trend in negotiations at USWA 1010 is but

one specific example of how unions that lock their members out of control of their own

bargaining agreements alienate and eventually lose those members’ loyalty and solidarity. The


price our union has paid is by now evident. From nearly a million and a half members in the

1970’s the USWA was down to a half million ten years ago. From nearly 19,000 members, Local

1010 is down to around 6,000 these days, while Inland’s steelmaking capacity has grown.

Arguments continue to be made that this job loss was the inevitable result of things like

automation and foreign competition. But I am convinced that a serious fight for a shorter work

week, strong contract language on crew size, and an early, effective organizing campaign in the

mini-mills, coupled with international labor solidarity aimed at bringing up living standards

among foreign steelworkers would have significantly minimized these losses. A left-led Rank &

File at 1010 in fact advocated these strategies and policies for many years. Sargent and Balanoff

in particular, articulated a concern with and strategy to effectively deal with job loss due to

automation in the 1950’s and 1960’s. They raised the issue at Wage Policy Committee meetings,

conventions, and in the local union newspaper The support of 1010’s Rank & File for the UAW–

led Shorter Work Week campaign in the 1970’s and 1980’s was similarly an attempt to offset job

loss in steel with a rational, entirely justifiable reduction of working hours commensurate with

productivity improvement in steel.96 USWA and AFL-CIO leadership failed to respond to these

ideas, or to develop alternatives of their own. Hence I think they must accept a great deal of the

responsibility for job loss and consequent membership loss in steel, as well as in the rest of the

U.S. industrial and manufacturing sector. Perhaps a more open bargaining style would have

allowed some of these proposals to be incorporated into the USWA’s contract demands, and

perhaps some might even have had a chance of being implemented. We shall never know.

If the answers proposed by the Rank & File were/are unacceptable or unworkable, it

seems to me union leadership needed to find answers of its own. Over the years, many

steelworkers have lost respect for, as well as become alienated from their Pittsburgh leadership.


Indeed many 1010 members do not know the names of their past two International presidents,

since there was no vote. There was no contest, owing at least in part to the highly restrictive

USWA election procedure, which require candidates to be nominated by the votes of a large

number of local unions, simply to get on the ballot.

New Look?

Local 1010 contracts have been negotiated in the top-down manner largely without

incident, since the 1980’s. There has been no strike at Inland (now ISPAT/Inland) since 1959.

A fairly recent example of a major USWA strike is the twenty month Ravenswood, West

Virginia lock-out of 1990-1992. Some progressive supporters point to this campaign as the model

for a new kind of bargaining. The “new thinking” they rave about refers essentially to the

strategies and tactics employed, rather than any return to local control or democracy or any

ideological realignment.


A newly globalized Ravenswood Aluminum clearly aimed to bust the union. They

brought in black uniformed security guards and sealed off the plant before negotiations stalled.

They “permanently” replaced locked-out union members with scabs. Local 5668 members and

leaders, while displaying great unity and determination, differed markedly from those of the old

1010. A homogeneous group of mostly white southerners, they had no left leadership to speak of.

Already mobilized, willing to fight, and try any kind of new tactics that might help, they were

used by the International to try out myriad new innovative “corporate campaign” strategies aimed

at attacking management globally. Then vice president George Becker, who had a strong personal

interest in drawing a line in the sand at Ravenswood decided in conjunction with then president

Lyn Williams to pull out all the stops, employing as much money and new tactics as necessary to

win this particular strike. After decades of retreat and concessions bargaining, the USWA and

indeed the entire U.S. labor movement desperately needed a victory. Like the

Bridgestone/Firestone campaign, many tactics and strategies were global and carried out

overseas. At one point an 8 foot puppet of Mother Jones was sawed in half and flown to

Switzerland for a demonstration. Identifying international fugitive from the FBI Marc Rich as the

man who pulled the strings behind Ravenswood, Becker personalized the attack. The idea was to

make an example of one recalcitrant company, and strike fear into the hearts of the rest.

While the International union and Becker saved Local 5668 from total destruction, they

did so, I think at high cost. It is not just the $20 million the USWA spent to save 1,700 jobs

(reduced to 580 by 2002).97 It is the further alienation of the members from their union. It is the

lesson, once more rammed home by Becker and president Lynn Williams, that in the final

analysis the International will do the negotiating and make the deals, while the members walk the

picket line and pay the dues.


Strategies (many originally devised by maverick Ray Rogers) were largely chosen by

Becker and technicians in the AFL’s Industrial Union Department, while implemented by the

rank & file. Negotiations were conducted by a small committee, and at times sequestered. A final

closed door secret session between Becker and top manager Pete Nash yielded a fait acompli

agreement which Becker insisted the Committee must approve and recommend to the

membership. 98 At least one of the local committee members vocally rejected the agreement as

inadequate, and was embittered by the experience. A membership that is told it’s not smart

enough to participate in determining its own contract and work rules, figures the union is just one

more bureaucracy, that doesn’t need them any more than they need it.

If union leaders really want to rebuild the labor movement, and the USWA, they need

more than new strategies, though they have proved useful, indeed. A commitment to spend any

amount of money needed when necessary to defend the members is a positive step. But members

need to understand that the union belongs to them, and that requires real openness in negotiations,

local control, membership involvement in decision-making, and I think a new respect for what

remains of the left. Perhaps the USWA needs to adopt a slogan like I adopted from the UE for my

brief administration at Local 1010: “The members run this union!” And they need to put it into

practice at the negotiating table, as well as in the streets.

Olszanski L580 Term Paper

Bibliography

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Archives, Calumet Regional, Gary: Indiana University Northwest Campus. USWA Local 1010 Records (CRA #115) Box 1, File Folders 1, 2, 3 & 21; Box 3, File Folders 3&4; Minute Books, Executive Board 1943-1944.

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Bush, Alice. Interview by author. February, 2004.

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Lane, James B. and Olszanski, Mike, eds. “Steelworkers Fight Back, Inland’s Local Union 1010 and the Sadlowski/Balanoff Campaigns”Steel Shavings. Gary, IN: Indiana University Northwest. Volume 30 (2000)

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End Notes

90 Mike Mezo, quoted in Lane, p 142

91 See the 1980 USWA Convention Proceedings for numerous discussions of jobs between McBride, myself and other delegates.

92 Robinson, quoted in Lane, p 132

93 Joe Gyurko, Chairman Grievance Committee, “Fight for Every Job” Local 1010 Steelworker, June 28, 1983, p 3

94 Ibid

95 Alice Bush, taped interview by Mike Olszanski February, 2004

96 See Sargent and Balanoff in the Local 1010 Steelworker, various issues, also USWA convention proceedings, also Mike Olszanski “Time to fight for Jobs” The Voice of the Rank & File, December, 1989

97 Stephan Franklin, Three Strikes. New York: The Gilford Press, 2001, pp. 235-236. See also, Century Aluminum, Inc., “USWA and Century Extend Ravenswood Labor Agreement,” in NEWS, March 11, 2002 www.centuryca.com/nm/publish/news_13.html

98 See Ravenswood: The Steelworkers’Victory and the Revival of American Labor. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1999.

http://www.centuryca.com/nm/publish/news_13.html

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