A Steelworkers' Local in New England
Brooks, Thomas R.
Thirty years ago, many of the workers at Sullivan Machine Company—now the Claremont, New Hampshire, Division of Joy Manufacturing—walked to work. They would leave their three-story wooden...
...The war is one, the high cost of living another, naturally, and then, pollution...
...For this core, employment has been remarkably steady—"I've been in the plant 27 years and was never laid off," one man told me...
...perhaps not...
...This apparently, is what defines a "con 4 The interaction of radicals and working people is a little-studied but fascinating topic...
...There's a lot of pollution talk because one of the big polluters in Claremont is Joy...
...He hadn't been in the mill more than five or six years...
...I once asked Jerry Cavanaugh how he, an Irishman, became a mayor of Detroit, a city of blacks, Poles, and Southern Baptists...
...Riviezzo is a member of the Mayor's Advisory Board...
...The black president was one of the youngest members of a group or "ticket" that had run the local since its organization in the early 1940s...
...When I asked, "Who are your poor...
...It's happened before...
...You get discussions going on several...
...Most of the guys, I think, who were hawks have changed their minds...
...Most everybody wants to get the heck out of there...
...As the morning mist rises along the wooded road leading to the plant, a half-mile from the Connecticut River, early arrivals must keep a sharp lookout for the deer returning to the high ground from the river meadows...
...The socialist strand woven into its history, largely by Eli Bourdon and his son Earl,3 make Claremont unique among New 2 Readers will notice that Angus is neither a French-Canadian nor a Polish name...
...Thirty years ago, many of the workers at Sullivan Machine Company—now the Claremont, New Hampshire, Division of Joy Manufacturing—walked to work...
...problems over temporary transfers...
...Two are financial officers, rarely opposed in the local...
...uncle was an original member...
...While I was rapping with him, the local president, and a couple of others in the union office, a middle-aged, bald-headed fellow with aTrotsky-like beard came in...
...Neither ethnicity nor religion seems to figure in the internal politics of the local...
...Claremont is not a one-industry, one-company, or one-union town...
...Courtemanche ticks off the issues: The war...
...The younger men," according to Andre, "are getting more conservative and the conservatives are gaining strength...
...It is a world that has all but vanished from the small cities and towns of New England, where promoters once arranged "cards," or an evening's bouts in local mechanics' halls and sports arenas...
...Local 2944 members have shared in the gains won by their union over the years, and have benefited from the general economic rise in the post-World War II era...
...The company hasn't been hiring these last few years, and most of the men in the plant are in their early forties...
...I had occasion recently to do an article for Tues day, a Sunday supplement aimed at a black reader ship, on the black president of a Baltimore, Mary land, Steelworkers local, with 9,000 members in the Bethlehem Steel plant at Sparrows Point...
...The strike was settled with an immediate 8¢-an-hour wage increase and 10¢ more due the following year...
...Most of Claremont's working people are Catholic, and French-Canadian and Polish by extraction...
...The Company got a lot of static about it from guys in the plant and from people in the community," says Courtemanche...
...His visit, incidentally, was not an idle one...
...32 percent of union families are in the $5,000 to $7,000-a-year income range, 46 percent in the $7,500 to $15,000ayear bracket...
...The unions do not participate in primary fights, though individual members do...
...There are two Catholic parishes in the city, one of them the largest in the state...
...the CIO Steelworkers' Organizing Committee did not come to Claremont until 1943...
...A profile of unionized workers, based on a survey conducted by the John Kraft polling organization and carried in the August 1967 issue of the Federationist, shows that 20 percent of all trade union members are women, and 25 percent under 30 years of age...
...This is a second step within the plant...
...Today, they drive to the southwestern corner of this small city where pneumatic construction and extraction equipment is manufactured in a long, one-level, new, shedlike structure sheathed in blue sheet metal, reminiscent of an airplane hangar...
...Today's self-educated workingmen tend to be those who go to school nights to get a law degree, or some such...
...He was an admirer of Debs, a fellow Alsatian...
...In Claremont a job at Joy is considered a "good job...
...By putting the work on as fast as you can, incentive pay may even go as high as 45-50 percent of the base rate...
...He believed, correctly, that it would encourage them to press a bit harder on clearing up local grievances...
...Local 2944 now is serviced by Tom Breslin, subregional Hampshire mill towns...
...I'm not going to let those company bastards have anything on me...
...Some even live up with the doctors," I am told...
...Joy Manufacturing is the largest industrial employer in the city...
...Now the local makes up the difference between that rate, which is paid by the company, and their average earnings...
...It might be the new management (there has been a recent change...
...During the years immediately after the war, Joy employed some 1,200 people at the Claremont plant...
...There are two paper mills employing about 150 workers each...
...someone works out of seniority...
...While I would not claim too much for this Debsian outcropping in the hills of New Hampshire, it has exercised a modest influence on Local 2944 and the labor movement of Claremont...
...The next step involves top management and the International union representative...
...Andre ansends—"you mean, carried the city...
...But there are also vast numbers of workers employed by small concerns who belong to locals on the order of Local 2944...
...But though the Third Ward remains working-class, many of the tenements have been pulled down to make room for a new roadway...
...Currently it has some 950 workers, with 600 in the bargaining unit...
...Of Alsatian extraction, Eli Bourdon was born in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1871 and came to Claremont as a lad to work in a shoe factory...
...There are some Greeks, too, a few Italians—and "maybe" five black families and "a couple of Chinese...
...Carton, the first president, and his successor Melvin "Red" Butterfield, both were "progressives," though not Socialists...
...The Council carries on regular voter registration drives—over 80 percent of the workers at Joy are registered—and on election day it provides, without favor to either party, A STEELWORKERS' LOCAL IN NEW ENGLAND cars to carry people to the polls...
...Of course," Andre explains, "a financial officer tends to be against spending money in any way...
...When I show for the grievance meeting tomorrow I'll be in work clothes...
...My guess is that he once was in radical politics...
...In 1919, according to a newspaper account of his life, he "reestablished the boxing game in Claremont...
...Later, the president of the local made a point of telling me how smart a guy he was, "a good trade unionist but always knocking the International...
...The workers' homes, ranch-type or Levittown-style houses derided as "little boxes" in the contemptuous lyrics of Pete Seeger's song, nestle among more stately mansions...
...several answered, "The textile, shoe, and plastic workers who piece together a living out of low wages, seasonal work, and unemployment and relief checks...
...Eli Bourdon spent 30 years at this—and in preaching socialism...
...It's better than putting a greater load on the property owner...
...He laughed...
...It's hard to tell how long it will last, but eventually they'll come around...
...Elderly people, too, on Social Security make up a substantial portion of Claremont's poor...
...It is difficult, on a short visit, to assess the impact of the local union on the community at large...
...In Local 2944, there is usually, I am told, a contest for at least two or three out of the top five officers...
...Average seniority in the plant is said to be around 19-20 years...
...Earl is a member of the Socialist party's National Executive Committee and is a voice within the liberal wing of the New Hampshire Democratic party...
...When a voter is offered a choice between someone not of his own and an Irishman, he'll vote for the Irishman...
...It is a worry...
...In a sense, Earl Bourdon, Andre Courtemanche, and Al Riviezzo are the last of this tradition...
...Yet it would face difficulties if it wanted to endorse, say, a school-building bond issue or some other expenditure on the city budget...
...Like a majority of trade unionists, the members of Local 2944 are Democrats and have belonged to their union for ten years or more...
...The largest employer is the Claremont General Hospital...
...The leadership would have no trouble in getting passage of a resolution endorsing the AFL–CIO stand on Nixon's economic policies...
...Yet, suddenly, "we are having a little more trouble now settling grievances...
...Once most of Claremont's working people lived in the Third Ward, on the hills rising behind the red-brick factories that line the Sugar River as it runs through the center of the city...
...A union rule prohibits the servicing of home locals by its International representatives...
...Local 2944's "conservatives" do not want to spend its money on anything but local affairs...
...things," Andre says...
...Pollution...
...The religious life of Claremont, 48 THOMAS R. BROOKS however, is something of a surprise, with 20odd churches in this small city...
...the last, arbitration...
...But the members of Steelworkers' Local 2944 were blooded in a 92day strike in 1946...
...The average paid vacation is now over three weeks," says Al Riviezzo, president of the local, "and it takes 20 years to get four...
...Says Bourdon, "I don't know of any instance in which the Council has made an open endorsement where the candidate hasn't won...
...The Kraft survey found that 50 percent of all union members live in the suburbs, and though Claremont is a city with a population of 14,000, living there is pretty much like living in a suburb...
...that is the provenance of the County Council...
...One worker, whose daughter was getting married at the time of my last visit, was working 60 hours a week to pay for the wedding...
...Dues are two hours' pay each month, with a minimum of $5 and a maximum of $10...
...Our side generally wins out," Courtemanche claims...
...During contract negotiations, however, the local pays for the time-off taken by its negotiators...
...The local unions in Claremont rarely endorse candidates...
...3 Earl Bourdon served as recording secretary of Local 2944 from its inception in 1943 till 1957 when he went on the Steelworkers' Union staff as an International representative...
...director for Northern New England for the Steelworkers...
...He brought to the attention of the local leadership a Wall Street Journal account of the current state of the steel negotiations...
...I am not at all sure how this proposition would hold up under intensive probing, but I have met a number of such persons in my time in the movement...
...Most of the workers at Joy, I was told, take home $6,000–$10,000 a year, with a few earning $13,000–$14,000...
...Just by letting the machine do it," a gear cutter told me, "you can earn 25-30 percent on your base pay...
...but they are hardly representative ethnically of the dominant French-Canadians or Poles...
...Riviezzo has been president five or six times, though at present three of the top officers are "conservatives...
...Those of us who are Socialists, I often think, see the labor movement as one giant United Auto Workers' local with a membership of Walter Reuthers or, at times, as a smaller one of plumbers named George Meany...
...Claremont seems scarcely ruffled by the crises of our time—race, the extremism of Right and Left, even the war (which is close to Claremont...
...In these respects, then, Local 2944 is atypical of the labor movement...
...Then Norman Thomas walked their picket line, and two men were jailed for violating an injunction...
...We've lost some, and we've won some," says Riviezzo of such resolutions...
...There are those —guys like Andre, Al, and me—who want `outreach' by the union, activity in the labor movement, in the County Council and in the community, and those who do not...
...I asked if he did this all the time, and he gave me a queer look, "You think I'm crazy...
...Politically, the local's activists work through the Sullivan County Labor Council...
...The city is governed by a nine-man city council and its chairman, a Polish American, serves also as mayor...
...This settlement provided the framework for subsequent labor-management relations...
...Now he merely got a goodnatured ribbing...
...The basic hourly rate is $2.62 at the bottom and $3.90 at the top...
...The voice of labor in the area, therefore, is the Sullivan County Council, which represents several thousand members in the Steelworkers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and State, County and Municipal Employees unions...
...Voting is light in Local elections, except when there is a contest...
...And the company is a major manufacturer of antipollution equipment...
...But shabby houses and dooryards, spilling over with junked and rusting automobiles, can also be found in Claremont...
...Clearly he was accepted for his usefulness, yet held at a distance for being different, a bit of an egghead...
...Angus, a foreman who brought the clerks and watchmen into the union, enjoys the backing of the unions...
...At the last election, the local persuaded management to allow polling within the plant, and the vote was heavy...
...When a company magazine ran a big feature about an antipollution installation using its equipment, union people saw to it that the issue was widely circulated in Claremont...
...Al Riviezzo, the local's president, is also a member of the Socialist party, as is Andre Courtemanche, a past officer of the union and president of the Sullivan County Labor Council...
...Their former president, still a power in the local, had just earned his law degree after years of nightschool work...
...Is this, one wonders, an exception among smaller city, county, and state councils...
...And like most workers in industrial America, they count on overtime to keep up take-home pay...
...The union hasn't raised pollution as a major issue—"You can grieve about polluted working conditions but not the polluted discharge into the river"—but it has sought to shame the company into taking action...
...The first words out of his mouth were, "Don't worry...
...I was impressed by the high quality of the local leader ship...
...THOMAS R. BROOKS 50 Being Polish may have helped him offset his being a Pentacostal Protestant...
...As chairman of the legislature's labor committee, he introduced most of its prolabor legislation...
...Though there was not a Socialist in the crowd, their views were remarkably close to those of my Claremont friends...
...In Northern NewEngland, where Socialists do not exactly abound, I have come across old Italian stonecutters, two Italian barbers, a Finnish carpenter, and a railroad engineer, all in the Debsian mold...
...You can pick up knots of people talking about these things almost any day at the plant...
...Yet, something niggles at the surface placidity of plant and town...
...He was wearing a very mod pair of trousers...
...but Bourdon still lives in Claremont and is active in its affairs...
...Kraft pollsters...
...During the strike, the Sullivan Machine Company was acquired by Joy Manufacturing, a producer of mining equipment...
...It's everyday stuff," Andre informs me, "fairly easily settled at the grievance-committee level...
...So you can see that the seniority is getting up there...
...He is articulate and progressive, though not a Socialist...
...Since many of the workers borrow to make major appliance purchases, and the great majority are mortgaged homeowners— "property owners," in their phrase—the point on interest rates scores a strong response...
...You can speed up the machine, but you catch hell for it...
...There still are workers who educate themselves by reading the labor press and the kinds of books and pamphlets one comes across in a lifetime of trade-union activity...
...Local 2944 is the Council's largest affiliate and, as Earl Bourdon likes to remind me, "since 1945, every president of the Sullivan Labor Council has been a Socialist...
...He stated at the time that his experience with prize fights and wrestling taught him that only in a Socialist commonwealth would sports be freed from commercialism...
...4 As Earl Bourdon described local politics to me, "The chief dividing issue in the local has always been the same...
...one Council affiliate, however, has the COPE dollar checked off at 10¢ a month, then notifies its members that those who wish it may have their dollar back...
...The activists share the AFL – CIO view that if prices and wages are to be controlled, profits and interest rates ought to be...
...Riviezzo, of course, is an Italian American, and they are a tiny minority in the plant...
...He was, I soon discovered, a Zone grievance committeeman, an elected post...
...These workers missed the great upheavals of the late 1930s...
...Pat Angus, described to me as "the most prominent nonofficer in the local," sat on the city council for 12 years and served in the state legislature for 30, until his death in 1971...
...Several years back, one man, a "conservative," won the local's presidency in a three-man race...
...They would leave their three-story wooden tenements or one- and two-family homes in their working-class neighborhood—or, as the wAsrs would say, "the French-Canadian" or "Polish" sections—some 10 or 15 minutes before they had to clock in at the red-brick five-story factory...
...A STEELWORKERS' LOCAL IN NEW ENGLAND The Socialists in the plant are generally known as such but there is no question of socialism in the internal politics of the union...
...There are good relations between the union and Joy's management...
...There's the myth, you know, that we're all good politicians...
...The local, however, has not as yet taken that position...
...Grievances are about what one would expect in a factory like Toy Manufacturing: a foreman schedules work improperly...
...Self-educated workers, or so our tradition has it, are often radicals of one sort or another...
...Their elected officers work in the plant and conduct union business on time-off paid by either the local or the company, or some combination of both.' The membership of 2944 does conform pretty much to the portrait drawn by the 1 Years ago, the grievance committeemen in Local 2944 were paid no more than their base rate when off on union business...
...Not five years ago, he'd have been thrown out...
...Earl Bourdon endorsed Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 primary fight, then campaigned for Humphrey in the election...
...In 1936, he was the Socialist party's candidate for governor of New Hampshire...
...About 75 percent of the workers are skilled men—gear cutters, grinders, turretlathe and drill-press operators...
...There are men in the plant making $5 or more an hour, accounted good money in an economic region where the $1.60-an-hour minimum wage is the rule in the new plastic- and toy-manufacturing concerns, and where work is seasonal in the older, faltering shoe and textile plants...
...Local 2944's first president, Joseph D. Carton, Catholic and a Democrat, was elected to the New Hampshire state legislature...
...Dartmouth Woolen Company with 175-250 workers...
...Local taxes is the issue that draws sparks...
...The local keeps 50 percent of the first $5, and one-third of anything above that...
...The secret, I learned, is in the handling...
...There are, of course, many large union locals with a membership of 10,000 or more—with fully paid officers, and with members employed in great, sprawling industrial plants or conglomerates of shops, truck terminals, or building sites...
...He was a Republican: "He came out of the Second Ward, and that's the only way he could get elected," is the explanation...
...These people do share a view of trade unionism and politics, and it is not unlike that held by the Claremont Socialists...
...Both are skilled workers—Al is a turret-lathe operator and Andre a gear cutter—and both have a large following in the local...
...The current conventional wisdom, of course, holds that this cannot be...
...As it turns out, COPE monies from Claremont go to the respective international unions and is not spent locally...
...Eli was a strong wrestler, and in time he became wellknown in the New England sports world as a promoter...
...Workers in Claremont have a "wait-and-see" attitude toward President Nixon's anti-inflation endeavors...
...an incentive system builds up earnings...
...But "we get more back [for candidates]," I was told, "than we send in...
...Negotiations are held with local manage ment, and there has not been a serious strike since...
...Some of us feel," explains Andre, "that a state sales tax may be necessary if that's all we can get out of the state...
...His servative" in the local—not being a follower of Wallace or Buckley...
...Quite a few Russians in town" account for the Orthodox church...
...Proselytizing faiths prosper—Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Pentacostal churches...
...COPE collections are not munificent...
...Earl Bourdon says that a lot of union members are active in various community organizations, but not as union people...
...Property taxes are the major form of revenue income in New Hampshire, and the local is on record favoring a graduated state income tax, or, since the state constitution precludes it, a flat-level income tax...
...a new Tampax plant and a group of small industries—plastics, toy-makers, a thread manufacturer, and the like...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
