Ed Sadlowski's influence
Gallagher, Tom
When Ed Sadlowski retired a while back, his friends tried to throw him a surprise party. They failed as far as the honoree was concerned—people on the street in South Chicago just kept telling...
...But while they may have been futile, they were not naive...
...And as the videotapes of Sadlowski's old television interviews played in the back of the union hall the night of the party, it was painfully obvious that no one has talked that talk to as many people since that time...
...It would have been all too easy to leave Hilding Anderson Hall brooding about what might have been, but Ed himself told the crowd (notable for its total absence of major political, media, or industry figures) that although he might be retiring, he was still available if anyone had a serious interest in organizing the unorganized...
...It did win the majority of the votes in basic steel, but by that time the Steelworkers Union had also diversified and basic steel already represented only about a third of the union...
...At age fifty-six retirement came early for Sadlowski himself, even though it was thirtyseven years since Oil Can Eddie first reported for work at the U.S...
...Steel companies do not change their position...
...Sadlowski, known to take out-of-town visitors to the spot where Debs addressed the 1877 Pullman strikers, himself spoke the same language of working class radicalism...
...there was nothing of the Luddite about Sadlowski...
...Joe Rauh of the Americans for Democratic Action...
...They called for rank-and-file ratification of contracts and renewal of efforts to organize the unorganized...
...Steel but the USX Corporation...
...The Steelworkers Fight Back slate did not win its election...
...not to do this...
...They also faulted the leadership for insufficient effort to end company discrimination against blacks, Latins and women—and even for engaging in it themselves...
...The new $92 million furnace was never even fired up because, as the USX man explained, the South Works simply could not compete with the mini-mills the Nucor Corporation has built since going into steel production in 1969...
...In 1965 its president was Ed Sadlowski...
...Steel South Works...
...It has no long-term pension costs...
...Each mini-mill produces a single product...
...In 1993 Clinton's Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, declared that "the jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace...
...A U.S...
...Studs Terkel ended the tributes to Sadlowski on the theme of continuity and tradition, beginning with Ed's father's forty years as a steelworker and continuing on to Ed's son, about to start a job with the Madison Teacher's Union...
...and Leon Despres, one-time Chicago city councilman active in the defense of the 1937 Republic strikers, brought national attention to the insurgents' case...
...For Studs Terkel's vision to be of more than sentimental interest and for Sadlowski or anyone else to make a dent in the ranks of the unorganized—in steel or anywhere else—the federal government will have to start sounding less like Elbert Gary and more like John L. Lewis...
...hard hats, some with the names of steelworkers Sadlowski remembered...
...Today, with job loss in the steel industry into the hundreds of thousands, the campaign's goals may seem to have been doomed from the start...
...It uses scrap metal only...
...His people said he won...
...The Fight Back slate considered national union leadership partially responsible for those layoffs by virtue of its agreeing to establish productivity committees to work with management on speed-up and job combinations —not a difficult argument to make, with U.S...
...This had been no simple good-government-in-the-union campaign...
...Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 margin that such a prohibition was legal...
...So sixteen years later, as he sat in the worker assistance center that was all that remained of Local 65 and waited for a company representative to take him on a tour of the South Works the day before his retirement party, Sadlowski had been intellectually prepared for what he was about to see...
...And Local 65 continued its radical tradition by subsequently electing Sadlowski ally Alice Peurala the first woman president of a basic steel local...
...The South Works may rise again, but only as raw material for steel made by a newer, leaner company...
...the only real variable in the capital-labor equation is the role of Washington...
...He won the next year's court-ordered rerun two-to-one...
...Steel running ads in which union leader "I.W...
...No other labor insurgency in the last forty years has so excited the interest of those who choose to see in the labor movement not just what is but what could be...
...And finally the Department of Labor decided Sadlowski was indeed robbed...
...So much had changed that when the company man arrived—smilingly introduced by Ed as "a union man gone bad" —he didn't even represent U.S...
...Where the event falls within the life cycle of the American labor movement is not so easy to say...
...Frustrated in its efforts in the South and unable to put anything together in Canada (current USWA president Lynn Williams of Toronto was on the "official" slate), it lost by a 56-44 margin...
...By now everything remaining was considered useless: rotting railroad cars...
...Abel tells how America can become more productive...
...Union officials said Sadlowski lost...
...after the 1977 election the USWA prohibited outside contributions to its election campaigns...
...But at least on this one night three hundred showed up to sing it one more time in Hilding Anderson Hall, named for one of the ten steelworkers killed at the 1937 Republic Steel Massacre and headquarters of South Works Local 65, the first basic steel local the Steelworkers Organizing Committee ever chartered...
...The labor movement's...
...No more...
...Theirs...
...The local's first president was the picket captain that day at Republic...
...and the huge open buildings with union election slogans still scrawled on the beams where the overhead cranes once ran, now being torn down and sold for scrap...
...She was later defeated by a candidate who called for a less militant, more accommodationist strategy...
...Steel has been downgraded to a division, because the company now makes most of its money outside of steel...
...Abel in 1977, the campaign attracted interest unmatched until Ron Carey's recent successful quest for the Teamster presidency...
...To counter the ability of the officially backed candidates to raise 90 percent of their campaign funds from people on the union payroll, Steelworkers Fight Back had taken advantage of its high profile and raised money wherever it could...
...As Oliver MontgomFALL • 1994 • 547 ery, the slate's vice presidential candidate, reminded the retirement party audience, Leon Lynch would not have become the first black to hold USWA national office had the Abel forces not felt compelled to create a new post for him in an effort to counter Montgomery's presence on the Sadlowski ticket...
...For now USX will clear the slag and sit tight on its valuable lakefront property...
...After it was tried, she won the post back...
...It's improbable that anyone at Steelworker headquarters will take him up on his offer but, unlikely as it recently seemed, Nucor and the other mini-mill companies have demonstrated the viability of the American steel industry by adopting the innovations Big Steel held back on...
...Eight years later, S46 • DISSENT unlike many union rebels before him who let their union staff jobs take the edge off their militancy, Sadlowski bucked the official slate and ran for director of the 130,000-member Chicago District 31, by far the largest and most powerful in the 1.4 million member union...
...In fact, his opponents called him anti-steelworker for his 1976 magazine interview advocating use of the wealth created in the steel industry to train steelworkers to be doctors or plumbers as technological advances eliminated the need for lifetimes spent servicing coke ovens...
...And in 1982 the U.S...
...In 1937 the public stance of the Roosevelt White House was such that John L. Lewis could plausibly argue that "the president wants you to join the Congress of Industrial Organizations...
...Some think the area will one day house a casino, so the land may again harbor dreams of individual fortune, but the soil will no longer support steelworkers with radical dreams about the collective welfare...
...Once the world's largest corporation, U.S...
...It's a safe bet that in the intervening sixteen years fifty people had not gathered to sing "When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run" for thirty nights (or for three nights) straight anywhere in the United States...
...They failed as far as the honoree was concerned—people on the street in South Chicago just kept telling him they'd see him Saturday night...
...Ken Yablonski, son of murdered Mineworkers For Democracy leader Jock Yablonski...
...In the three years prior to Sadlowski's campaign, steel companies had eliminated forty thousand jobs...
...Nucor pays lower wages...
...Sadlowski's son told the crowd at the not-so-surprising party that the evening's opening round of "Solidarity Forever" was the first time he and his three sisters had sung together since those days when fifty guys sang that song in his family's basement every night for a month...
...They blamed them for giving away the right to strike in the Experimental Negotiating Agreement...
...Steel internal memo later warned plant superintendents against posting the ad in plants so as not to embarrass Abel, who "has trusted U.S.S...
...But many of Sadlowski's out-of-town friends and supporters were amazed to find it has been so long since his insurgent campaign for the presidency of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and wondered if an era has passed: His...
...Nucor is non-union, of course, and makes noises that it would close plants before dealing with a union, but this is what every steel company has said since U.S...
...Although this level of rank and file rebellion has not been repeated, the Fight Back campaign did make its mark...
...So when Sadlowski's Steelworkers Fight Back slate took on the designated successors of retiring Steelworkers president I.W...
...None of the eleven thousand workers that Sadlowski represented at a plant once employing twenty thousand would be found at the South Works...
...Steel's Elbert Gary acknowledged back in 1921 that "the workmen were not always treated justly," but explained that things were different now and there was therefore "no necessity for labor unions...
...Still, USWA officials decided to avoid any such serious insurgency in the future...
Vol. 41 • September 1994 • No. 4
