Why The Insurgents Lost in Steel
Kornblum, William
Months, even years will pass before the dust settles over the issues raised by the Steelworkers' 1977 International union election. Lloyd McBride, the candidate representing the union's...
...The places where the insurgents lost were the areas where they had not done prior organizing and therefore had no organizers...
...Another campaign promise, to guarantee "due process" rights for workers in shop grievances, had not yet appeared in the basic steel bargaining...
...In the big U.S...
...This hurt, because quite a few of them were worried that Ed might be strike happy, which was the story the staff was spreading around...
...There was, however, much speculation during the campaign that, if elected, the McBride slate would support proposals to alter the union's constitution in favor of a convention rather than a referendum vote for International officers...
...It would also be a defeat for the traditions of democratic competition within the Steelworkers' union...
...This is the kind of machine-voting pattern that would make the boss of any "river ward" proud...
...Expansion of the Union's Executive Board from three to five members allowed the appointment of a new vicepresident for human affairs and a vice-president for administration...
...WHEN ONE LISTENS to Steelworkers discuss the election, the most frequent explanation for the results in basic steel usually hinge on the issue of the Experimental Negotiating Agreement (ENA), which has governed bargaining between the large corporations and the union since 1972...
...The contract negotiations in basic steel feature a demand, elaborated by Abel and McBride during the campaign, for "lifetime" security for workers in basic steel...
...Moreover, the 20 or so "organizers" who did coordinate the insurgent campaign were, but for two or three exceptions, Steelworkers either on layoff or vacation...
...we didn't have people who lived there...
...Steel Fairless works in Levittown, Pa., the workers voted for Sadlowski and his slate by a margin of 700 votes out of about 3,000, a spread that many felt was lower than expected...
...Some subscribers complain occasionally that they don't get their copies...
...And in Quebec the same situation prevailed, but for less obvious reasons...
...I do know that the layoff of about 60,000 Steelworkers in Pennsylvania because of gas shortages hurt us badly...
...The Sadlowski slate lost, because it failed to win wide margins in its areas of strength, margins needed to offset predictable severe losses in Quebec and the South...
...But Sadlowski's grounds for attacking the agreement do not seem to have been generally understood...
...Steelworkers with whom I spoke during the campaign rarely thought the issue of public appeals for funds was important...
...The big majority of those people were our supporters...
...What matters most to us is our own Quebec and Canadian leadership...
...Most took it for granted that donations were necessary...
...It is impossible to know for certain, but it seems likely that the combined effect of the attempts...
...If anything, he and his running mates tended to broaden their attacks on the Abel administration's record and to use increasingly hard language in their criticism of the union staff...
...I think at the last moment some of the older fellows got a little nervous about Ed's stand on the ENA...
...There is no question that the insurgency will continue...
...Thus, by incessant leafletting in the small shops, the insurgents were able to cut well into the traditional strength of the union administration, especially in New Jersey, Baltimore, New England, Ohio, and California...
...The assumption in this Sadlowski organizer's remarks is that there will be another election like the one just passed...
...The insurgent campaign, represented by the Steelworkers Fight Back organization, was counting on heavy voting and two-to-one victories in a number of key Districts...
...You can bet that next time we'll know how to work Quebec...
...Although aware of these problems, Sadlowski could not project a more "centrist" image as the campaign wore on...
...Under the directorship of Jean Gerin-Lajoie, a Rhodes Scholar and Ph.D...
...This was done in order to waken the interest and participation of Steelworkers employed in the fabrication, container, smelting, and service industries within the union...
...These 20 field organizers beat the union staff of some 900 organizers wherever they could campaign for a substantial length of time...
...I thought Eddie would take our mill by at least 1,500 votes [said Louis Genevie, a veteran of more than 20 years in the blast furnaces at Fairless...
...As a result of the election there are now strong insurgent organizations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, and much of Ohio...
...All we could do was a little leafletting and hope for the best, so naturally we got killed...
...We were hoping to match the 20,000 vote lead we won there two years ago, but it turns out we'll probably fall a little short of a 15,000 margin...
...If the opposition fails to condemn the poor working conditions, lower wages, and benefits typical in these industries, the workers will pay little attention to the election...
...McBride himself denied this charge in a debate with Sadlowski that was televised on Meet the Press nine days before the election...
...And this 137 achievement may create important new pressures for change in union policy...
...and Canada and generally operate in smaller shops...
...It's like we're at the end of the string," a FrenchCanadian Steelworker said to me during a preelection visit there, "We don't hear much from the International officers until election time...
...We will hold all our elections in the plants," a Quebecois union staff official told me before the election, "And you will see a very heavy vote from Quebec because every member will have a very easy time in voting...
...In some ways this may be one of the positive, if unintended, consequences of the election...
...Lloyd McBride, the candidate representing the union's incumbent administration, clearly has won a convincing electoral victory by amassing some 58 percent of the total vote...
...That's something we'll be talking about around the fire for the next years...
...Yet many workers thought the effort to discredit Sadlowski and link him with various left groups did cause losses, especially in the South where the Fight Back organization was unable to reach the membership well enough...
...This major steel-producing region has never thrown its support to 1. W. Abel, the incumbent USWA president who will retire in June 1977...
...You never know...
...So the coming months and years of Steelworker politics promise to be even more lively than things have been in the past...
...A Steelworker from the Chicago office lamented: How could these be real figures...
...Don't forget that at the end of the campaign the staff really poured it on in that area, which is something they never had to do when Narick ran...
...Indeed, voting results in the main industrial corridor of North America, along the basin of the Great Lakes and down through the Delaware Valley to Baltimore, show that, while the margins of victory were not what had been hoped for, the insurgent slate scored upsets in every District except Canton, Ohio, Abel's original home base...
...Given Ed Sadlowski's immense popularity in basic steel, it was generally thought he would do as well, if not better...
...The expansion also made it possible to include Canadian National Director Lynn Williams, the first Canadian candidate for International office...
...Unfortunately for the insurgents, the Steelworkers' campaign took place in Quebec while the flush of nationalist victory was still being felt, and the Quebec director used the opportunity to demonstrate his strength to the officials in Pittsburgh...
...It appears now that Sadlowski carried the region by only 5,000 votes, far short of the amount required to match losses in the deep South...
...As it turned out the Sadlowski campaign could barely afford to keep its Steelworker volunteers supplied with leaflets...
...to smear Sadlowski as a radical, the attack on his funding sources, and last-minute editorials in most metropolitan newspapers warning of possible "labor strife" did dampen the support for the insurgents in the steel centers...
...EVEN AS the campaign began, after the union's Las Vegas convention at the end of August 1976, it was certain that the Sadlowski challenge was pressuring the Steelworker leadership to bring about long-awaited changes...
...Perhaps the major disappointment for the insurgents came in the Pittsburgh region, where three USWA Districts with a combined membership of about 162,000 Steelworkers generally cast almost 20 percent of the union's 135 votes...
...Still, such a change remains a real possibility and would bring the Steelworkers in line with most other AFL-CIO unions, which do elect their officers in convention...
...I was even a little disappointed by the results in my own District 31...
...and Canada did vote for the insurgent slate headed by Ed Sadlowski...
...This fact, and the very bitterness of the campaign, requires that the union's new leaders take steps to meet the challenge raised by the insurgents.The Sadlowski forces now must find ways to survive politically in the coming lean years—which may prove extremely difficult...
...Victor Reuther, Joseph Rauh, J. K. Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger—all of whom signed fundraising letters for the Sadlowski side—have come under special attack by Meany, Shanker, and others...
...In 1969 Emile Narick, a relatively unknown union staff official, outscored Abel in the region by 24,000 votes, and Narick never mounted a thorough campaign...
...Please check with us...
...The former position went to Leon Lynch of the union's Pittsburgh office, the first black man to hold a place on the Board...
...These locals are dispersed throughout the U.S...
...We couldn't really afford to place an organizer up there...
...And a lot of our members lost sight of the union democracy issues...
...Such Meany followers as Albert Shanker also castigated Sadlowski for accepting financial help from "outsiders...
...We are also investigating the possibility of sabotage by the Wang-Chan-Chiang-Yao Gang of Four, currently being charged with so many other things by Chinese authorities they may also be responsible for this...
...We had no observers in these mines and other locals up on the Saint Lawrence river...
...We had a terrible time beginning a campaign up there, because none of us speak French...
...It will be worth watching development of this issue, because it was an extremely important rallying point for the insurgents...
...After all, Abel and his staff, along with other AFLCIO officials, indeed made no secret of their opposition to the McGovern candidacy in 1972, and their massive financial support for the Jackson presidential campaign is public record...
...And significant gains by the insurgents in Ontario could offset expected losses in Quebec...
...The most obvious thing though is that—except for Texas, Quebec, and a few other places where we couldn't place observers at the polls—this was a very close election, much closer than the overall totals show...
...q Gang of Four...
...In comparison with the lively campaign waged by both sides at Fairless and other major steelproducing centers, the election was a most onesided affair in much of the South and in Quebec...
...Despite all the publicity the campaign generated, it appears that in perhaps 50 out of 147 local unions in that state there was not one vote cast for the Sadlowski slate...
...They will vote for Docquier, and then they will just vote for the remainder of the McBride ticket...
...Now that the election is over, some of the administration's campaign promises are taking on immediate importance...
...Sadlowski's only hope was that the vote in Quebec would be light, as it had always been in the past, and that he would obtain at least 15 percent of it as had Narick in 1969...
...138...
...he will be replaced by his close friend Jim Balanoff, the fiery leader of Inland Steel Local 1010, one of the largest in the entire union...
...Only the "machine" voters will bother going to the polls...
...Now there remain few such areas in North America...
...Unofficial returns from Quebec indicate that, by 136 turning out at least 65 percent of the District's membership, Gerin-Lajoie was able to present the McBride slate with a margin of over 20,000 votes...
...This may be due to an error on our part, or to a failure to report a change of address, or to neglect in renewing a subscription...
...I'm not sure what went wrong there [Sadlowski said in a conversation shortly after the February 8 election...
...When early returns showed these Districts had failed to deliver as heavily as hoped, it was clear that the Sadlowski slate would lose...
...Thus Gerin-Lajoie promoted his assistant, Gerard Docquier, as candidate for Canadian national director and in return, for support for his man, the Quebec leader promised to deliver his District to McBride...
...in economics, the Steelworkers in Quebec were a major force behind the election of Rene Levesque and the Parti Quebecois...
...You began to hear things like, "Well, Eddie Sadlowski is a young guy with a great future, but maybe not just yet though...
...THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN the McBride forces, and most notably 1. W. Abel and George Meany, made much of Sadlowski's active solicitation of non-Steelworker funds...
...Sadlowski has been extremely critical of the agreement, because it gives up the right to strike over wages and working conditions (except on local issues) and, most important, it had never been submitted to the membership in basic steel for a referendum...
...Texas in particular gave lopsided counts to the McBride slate...
...Those named as "outsiders" are strenuously defending their rights to support the candidate of their choice in this important election...
...Sadlowski must step down as District director in the Chicago-Gary District...
...Here, as in Texas, the machine vote was astounding, for in about 30 local unions there was not one vote for the insurgents...
...Still, at least 238,000 Steelworkers in the U.S...
Vol. 24 • April 1977 • No. 2
