INSURGENCY IN THE STEEL UNION

...Initiated by Sadlowski and the insurgent forces in District 31, the movement has also appeared in California, and in Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh...

...The same is true in Gary, Indiana, where about 21,000 steelworkers rotate shifts around the clock in the two US Steel mills...

...Indeed it was through investigation by undiscouraged insurgents in the Gary local that evidence of the massive fraud against Sadlowski was first revealed...

...Here the situation was well expressed by a union staff representative who assessed Sadlowski's chances in 1972 as he campaigned against Germano's chosen successor: In the smaller plants it's uphill for Sadlowski...

...Does this mean Sadlowski will be a candidate for the Steelworker presidency in 1976...

...222 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...

...I've never seen a better run district campaign than Ed's," he said, "But it was really the dues issue that made his margin this big...

...This insurgent victory in the vast Calumet Steelworkers' region stands with the Miller election in the United Mine Workers...

...Like you take the women who work in so many of these little bucket shops: they want to know what you're going to do to get them a better share of the pie, or to help them from having their fingers chopped off in the machines, or to get some kind of better arrangement for child care...

...Don't forget that basic steel is only one branch of this union even if that's where all the romantic pictures are taken...

...In many cases, workers in the small shops had little knowledge of what the job of district director is...

...This just leads to the same mythical bullshit over again...

...The younger workers tend to blame the Abel administration for the erosion of steelworkers' wages, which have slipped from first among industrial workers in the early 1960s to about 14th presently...

...Freedom to vote for more than one candidate, freedom to vote without intimidation in a fair election, freedom to vote on the terms of the labor agreements, freedom to voice ideas that could take the union into new arenas of social action—these were the ideals that in November 1974 rallied almost 40,000 steelworkers in the Chicago region behind Ed Sadlowski, a steelworker and union organizer from South Chicago, who dared to challenge a union political machine that even the most astute labor analysts thought unbeatable...

...The candidates must be union "citizens," members who have demonstrated .their responsibility to the affairs of the local by attending a minimum number of meetings...

...They won't let you even get on the ballot...

...And it was this evidence that led the slow-moving Department of Labor to conduct its own investigation, and eventually 'to require a second district director election, which Sadlowski won by 39,737 to 20,158...

...The staff man runs the local for them and gets them to bring out the vote he wants...

...If I start believing this I'm in trouble...

...There are over 500 shops in the District and most of 'em don't have more than 300 members...

...Their big statement on the woman's issue was an example...

...If Sadlowski can cut into this vote he may win...

...Although he could never count on victory margins from the beginning for Abel or his other candidates, District 31 has remained Germano's fiefdom for 36 years...

...These comments, made during a recent discussion with Sadlowski in Chicago, only touch on some aspects of Steelworkers' politics—and the differences between the big mills and the smaller specialty shops to which he alludes are central...

...ONCE IN OFFICE a caucus does its best to remain there, and in some cases this may include flagrant subversion of the democratic process...

...Almost 20 percent of the members are women, so they figured they'd get that vote by promising that they'd appoint a woman to the union staff...

...and Ray O'Malley, from Chicago's West Side, the only union staff official to break ranks and join the insurgents— these and others like them form the nucleus of the insurgent organization in District 31...

...A third-generation steelworker from a family of independent socialists and street-wise political activists, Sadlowski is articulate, uncompromising with more cautious adversaries, and a brilliant campaign strategist...

...Purcell Reed and Ted Smolerek, who stunned even Sadlowski by the strength of their local's antiwar resolution in the Illinois State AFL–CIO convention in 1967...

...The interstate highways bypass South Chicago, Indiana Harbor, and Gary, in some ways leaving these mill towns more insular than they were in the 1940s...

...In District 31 the insurgents tapped those discontents and turned them into a positive program, a simple set of goals that, applied throughout the Steelworkers union, could be this new generation's contribution to the labor movement in steel...

...Many were newly hired women, rural blacks, white Southerners, Latins, and a massive educational campaign was required to bring these workers into the mainstream of Steelworker affairs...

...The most popular radio stations in the Calumet steel belt are, not WCFL, the Voice of Labor, CBS and NBC, but WJOB in Hammond, Indiana, and the black stations in Chicago Heights and Gary, stations that blend mass culture with ethnic themes and folksy news of bake sales and labor-union affairs...

...Sadlowski has also shown that the obstacles of dispersion and diversity in the membership can be overcome through the time-worn techniques of street organization...

...Joseph Rauh Jr., the veteran labor attorney whose intervention with the U.S...

...Abel's genuine appeal to the ideals of union democracy in 1964 never sold well in the big mills of Lake Michigan because they were being promoted by Germano, a director whose dictatorial rule often came into sharp conflict with the democratic traditions of the large locals...

...Abel to force the repeal or the weakening of Landrum-Griffin and weakens the credibility of whomever Abel chooses to support in 1976...

...This led to the chain of events that is still shaking the union's international leadership...

...the mills are dominant institutions, shaping every facet of existence in the industrial neighborhoods that cluster in their shadows...

...Birth and death, time and money, songs and 220 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS stories, all the comings and goings of people and machines, even the climate, the air and the water are tempered and stained by the making of steel...

...All elections, from grievance man to local president, are hotly contested, in campaigns that may last for two or three months and involve the active passions of hundreds of campaign workers in the mill shops...

...Abel has reached retirement age and cannot be a candidate for the union's presidency in 1976, the candidate whom he chooses will have the support of a paid union staff numbering about 900...

...Many older workers in Calumet's big steel plants, particularly those with 15 or 20 years in the COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 221 mills, have resented I.W...

...In nearby South Chicago, on the Illinois side of District 31, about 8,000 are employed at US Steel's South Works, another 4,000 work at Republic Steel, where the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre occurred, and another 2,000 steelworkers are employed in the smaller mills that perform only such selected basic steel operations as the production of coke or ingots...

...But even in locals like this one there will always be groups of insurgents who refuse to stop organizing...

...Our worst problem in organizing these campaigns is overcoming the mystique that the labor boss is some kind of God...

...THE INSURGENTS' VICTORY in District 31 is convincing evidence that the union's current leadership is extremely vulnerable to challenge grounded on the most basic CIO ideals of better wages, freedom of representation, and respect to the individual worker...

...I win the first election but they steal it on the count...

...In a way that sums it all up right there...

...In big steel the discontent with the Abel administration runs deep...

...The day after his final victory in District 31, while a crowd of well-wishers awaited him in his campaign office, he drove across the city to speak at a local union meeting in a small plant on Chicago's West Side...

...Chatak's qualifying remark may be true, but a steamrolling dues protest is only one symptom of more deeply felt discontents in the union's membership...

...Even Elmer Chatak, chief organizer in the union's Pittsburgh office, must agree, because as the campaign manager for Sadlowski's opponent in 1974 he watched in disbelief as the insurgent landslide developed...

...The real game was in pounding the pavement in front of the plants, getting to know the members, finding tough campaigners who wouldn't fold under pressure, and in knowing the issues in every part of this industry...

...The Sadlowski insurgents learned this the hard way when they lost their first district director's election in 1973 partly because the "loyalist" election committee at the big sheet-and-tin mill in Gary forged approximately 700 ballots for Sam Evett, the machine candidate...

...The guys in office tried to speak to these issues too but they'd lost touch with the membership...

...Since most of these workers will spend the greater part of their work lives inside the mill gates, the majority will choose to live in the communities close-by...

...He's been there since the union was started...

...This politics gets into your blood," says Jim Balanoff, who works at Inland Steel and has led more insurgencies in his local than he cares to remember...

...Certainly the national culture with its schools, television, and interstate highways brings mill people away from the world of steel more than was possible when the men worked a six-day week and a 12-hour day...

...This is particularly true in the Chicago-Gary District, where big-mill workers have never shown much enthusiasm for the union president...

...When I went out for this thing most steelworkers outside of South Chicago had never heard of me...

...Obviously the Steelworker president will not choose Sadlowski, for he has indicated in frequent interviews that any union leader who opposes the "official family" of regional and international officials will not have his blessing...

...011a Kennedy and Bill Todd, union leaders and civil rights activists from Gary...

...In consequence the machine forces had to pressure some of the bigger mills to somehow come up with more votes against Sadlowski...

...But he is also quick to play down the role of his own leadership...

...But here they've been in office for 36 years and now they're promising that one of the 60 staffers in the District will be a woman...

...He could offset any losses in big steel by large margins in the smaller plants, particularly in the hundreds of factories on Chicago's West Side that are organized by the USWA...

...Lots of the workers are new, and in a lot of 'em the local union officials are afraid to take a leak without running to their staff man...

...But Sadlowski's victory in the Calumet District is still a far cry from the capture of international steel leadership...

...People who feel this way—people like John Chico, the Chicano leader from South Works...

...People would say to us, "you can't go against Joe Germano [the previous incumbent] or his man...

...The insurgents did cut into the union machine's traditional strength in 1973, and they did so against overwhelming odds because in many instances they had no knowledge of how even to locate the shops...

...This means you've got to run all over hell to these small "bucket shops...

...That election was over but the campaign to "open the union to the membership" had just begun...

...Abel since his 1964 election, often for the very reason that District 31 boss Joseph Germano swung their district for him and made his election possible...

...These efforts were successful beyond anyone's imagining...

...Now a serious dues protest movement is accelerating throughout the union's rank and file...

...Now all of a sudden I'm ballyhooed as the "new man of steel" in all the papers...

...Sadlowski's prodigious political gifts have been apparent to rank-and-file Steelworkers since 1961 when he won his first election as grievance man at US Steel's South Works in Chicago...

...It is also likely that insurgent candidates will run in more local union elections in the coming year than ever before and, following Sadlowski's example, the candidates will be less reluctant to invoke the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act in questionable elections...

...Since his stunning upset in the Chicago-GaryJoliet USWA District 31—with its 130,000 members the largest and most powerful political subdivision of the union—Ed Sadlowski has been raised from the obscurity of mill neighborhoods and union halls to the status of an insurgent labor hero...

...Sometimes it's all you can do to keep going but you know that if you quit it you're a dead man inside...

...IN THE GREAT basic steel-producing areas of the country, such as the lower basin of Lake Michigan or the Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh axis, steelmaking is a way of life...

...The Germano forces were solidly aligned behind Sam Evett and refused to divulge the location of about 250 of the smaller factories...

...Before one projects this 36-year-old steelworker to the highest office in the United Steelworkers of America, as many outside the union are now doing, it is important to take a close look at the conditions that made this insurgency successful...

...And this may be only the beginning...

...This trend conflicts directly with recent efforts by I.W...

...They also resent the recent increase in their dues, which was rammed through the 1974 Steelworkers' convention at the same time that union executives' salaries were increased by over 25 percent...

...But the national culture also leaves plenty of room for the ways of steelmaking people to persist...

...So I get on the ballot...

...Union politics in these big mills usually alternates between something that one year may approximate classical Athenian democracy and another year may be more like a banana-republic junta...

...Sadlowski only lost the West Side by about 1,000 votes where the incumbents normally could count on a margin of at least 4,000 to offset losses in big steel...

...In the Calumet District almost 20,000 workers make steel at the giant Inland plant and another 8,000 work in the neighboring Youngstown Steel mill...

...The newest enactment of this political theme is unfolding in the United Steelworkers of America, where a young generation of leaders, up from the rank and file and gathered behind the banner of union democracy, has toppled an autocratic regional regime that had held power since 1937...

...Department of Labor helped Sadlowski secure victory, calls him "a young Walter Reuther...

...Both are examples that other young union leaders will follow...

...Nevertheless the insurgents campaigned endlessly at the plants they could find and in a two-month period distributed over 1.5 million pieces of campaign literature at the factory gates...

...The small fabrication factories and specialty shops are like machine precincts...

...It will take additional hundreds of Steelworker activists recruited throughout this country and Canada before any insurgent movement can seriously challenge the present Steelworker administration...

...The Labor Department comes in and I win the rerun by two to one...

...More powerful criteria of friendship, political ideology, or ethnicity and race lead to intense jockeying among aspiring candidates who seek to form a caucus that can dominate the local's politics, often for 10 or more years...

...The people in the can plants on Kedzie Avenue [in Chicago] or in the fabricating shops scattered all over couldn't care less about what you've done for the big mill workers...

...It is very difficult to get an answer from him on this question...

...Even though I.W...