THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW BOB WAGES
SLAUGHTER, JANE
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Bob Wages 'Some union leaders think it's big stuff to go to the White House and have a handshake, even though on issues of importance to working men and women, they're...
...Jane Slaughter is a veteran of Labor Notes...
...We got him back...
...The oil industry, by the way, has never shown any inclination to do that...
...Q: What's it like, sitting down at the table with these captains of industry...
...Q: What kind of response have you been getting as the Labor Party Advocates convention grows closer, from higher-up people in the labor movement...
...Wages: The isolationist attitude of the federation's leadership...
...But the issue is, what are you mobilizing for...
...Thev don't know for how long, and sometimes neither do I. They also know that I know the industry as well as many of them, and that when I sit down at the table I generally know what I'm talking about, so there's not a lot of bullshit...
...They think it's big stuff to go to the White House and have a handshake...
...It can be ineffective if vour people haven't been educated as to what can happen...
...I lived in Kansas City and commuted to Lawrence thirty miles away...
...The president of the union at that time was Al Grospiron...
...Why do we need a labor party...
...You can ask any number of people how I wound up on the slate, and four or five take credit...
...I remember when I was elected I was just barely old enough to go to the club afterward and buy a drink...
...Most people felt that the AFL-CIO leadership was disengaged from the real world...
...Are you mobilizing for an individual, or are you mobilizing for an ideology, for a platform...
...The company had locked us out because they wanted to contract out all of our maintenance...
...Are the oil companies trying to break up the pattern...
...I was a laborer, just a ditch digger...
...Q: Is a change in labor law crucial...
...Wages: Tony Mazzocchi had a profound influence...
...And we're just now coming to grips with that...
...He is also a leader of Labor Party Advocates, which will hold its founding convention in June...
...Wages was used to the cold shoulder from the federation, but Sweeney promptly added him to the AFL-CIO's Executive Council...
...You've got to understand, I don't know them because I don't want to know them...
...It's been devastating to many workers, and for those people who say we have to go back to the time when we were on our knees and in chains in order for us to truly appreciate what unions do—that's just an excuse not to do anything...
...We can do a much better job of creating the notion that the union is not just the insurance policy on your job site, that the union stands for a great many things for all working people...
...They know that the folks will do what I ask...
...Wages: Right...
...I think the New Right, particularly the religious right, has proven that you don't necessarily have to engage in the political-candidate process as much as you have to promote an ideology...
...Some people on the building-trades side felt the same way...
...So I'm not gonna do it...
...Q: What should the base of such a new party be...
...You hooked up with the environmental movement...
...Since my world is not measured in rate of return, capital employed, you can take a great deal of comfort in small, steady improvements in people's lives...
...People will start fighting back when they see that there's some leadership willing to stand up and fight...
...Q: Was that the gist of the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in January...
...Either we create a party grounded on interests that resonate with working people, or the other possibility...
...Wages: No...
...But in many ways Al Grospiron...
...Wages: I wound up where I wound up in the early days because that's what I knew and that's what 1 was a product of...
...Instead of doing some of the things that the boss wants you to do to be efficient, you do it by the book, because generally the book is cumbersome...
...If we do that, we have the opportunity to create a political movement that has to be reckoned with, regardless of whether it runs candidates...
...By supporting a winner, they perceive themselves as having a role to play, and they like it...
...You're not just going to go out and get people who can be process operators to walk in and replace the work force...
...We need to focus on creating a mind-set among workers in this country, who still represent the vast majority of people, that there's a fundamental imbalance in what's going on out there, and they're being victimized for the sake of the stockholders at the end of the day getting all the money...
...Not all of them, but a lot of them...
...We've got to be in the streets, we've got to be visible, and we've got to take on some fights and win...
...Wages: I got in their face...
...when, where should the new labor parts participate in elections...
...What keeps the majority of union members from getting involved'.' Wages: I don't think there's a concerted effort to keep them involved or make them want to be involved, because of the way unions are structured...
...Wages: Oh...
...During the course of the dispute we [List got it fixed in our heads that we weren't going to go away...
...Wages: They don't see it that way...
...The next day, shit hit the fan and they disciplined me...
...Four months after I won...
...And in the meantime we had gone from representing 35 percent of the work force down to 15 or 16 percent, and now it's down to \ 2 percent...
...Wages: Well, I get paid to do this...
...What changes is Sweeney likely to make...
...And I'm not willing to make that trade...
...We got the BASF unions in Germany involved...
...After law school I didn't reallv know what I wanted to do...
...Q: Many union members I talk to say that working people just haven't been kicked hard enough yet...
...How important is that...
...Wages: And all the nonmembers...
...Because there are those within the labor movement who, while they don't want to see them fail, are still maybe hoping they don't look good...
...Q: How...
...The way it gets played back to me is: "We're being measured on our returns in terms of investor performance and therefore we have to compete for investor dollars, and investors don't care whether they invest in the oil industry or AT&T it's wherever is returning the most dollars...
...So are oil companies saying...
...And I think the labor movement has lost a great deal of its appeal to people...
...I was at that for a couple of years and then 1 started law-school...
...I was kind of inundated with going to school and trying to figure out why I'd screwed my life up as bad as I had...
...Well strike whoever doesn't follow...
...Everything I could imagine to do wrong...
...But I can call them out with confidence that I know what I'm going to do if they're threatened: put them back, and then strike someplace else with the same employer...
...This is a sociopolitical issue, not an issue of whether or not the law's going to be changed...
...we had a wildcat strike over the discharge of a man who didn't work forced overtime because his mother was dying in the hospital...
...The union movement had stood for nothing and stood for compromise and stood for cutting the best deal you could and stood for all the things that Kirkland, Meany, et al...
...And that, unfortunately, has been the AFL-CIO's policy for the last forty years, and it's also why we're where we're at...
...Q: How did you get involved in the union in the first place...
...In fact, their stock prices go up...
...We chased this one incinerator they wanted to build out of Indiana, out of Ohio, out of another site in Indiana...
...Wages: Well, I don't know...
...Bill Clinton says he will veto repeal of Davis-Bacon, he will veto repeal of the Service Contract Act—most working people don't even know what the hell you're talking about...
...I worked nights, traded off my daylight shifts, and went to school full-lime...
...Q: Do you have any heroes, anyone who's influenced you...
...Since I was part of this group to elect John Sweeney and Rich Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson, it's important to me to support them every opportunity I get...
...The problem isn't the law...
...With his New Voice campaign for the presidency, he actually went out to the rank and file to some degree, though they had nothing to say in his actual election...
...We got in their face every time they turned around...
...And many times we're not...
...I thought the road to oblivion was to continue not to be aggressive on social issues, not to be aggressive on political issues, that the status quo had clearly defined for us the path to going down the drain...
...They let me in the room, which was a test of faith, I guess...
...It was that time from 1983 to 1987 that helped define my union politics...
...Q: Caterpillar broke the pattern in the agricultural-implements industry...
...Who cares, if you engage in an economic policy where your jobs are being ripped out from underneath you and put in Honduras...
...Thinking, I'm a reasonably intelligent person, why did I do this...
...Because a party has to have some financial support...
...Wages: The key to our future is refocusing our efforts on organizing, using the talent and the money we have out there...
...It was clear that if we didn't do anything we weren't going to be around...
...But the reality is...
...We raised questions about stupid orders to do unsafe work...
...People gravitate to winners...
...I hope that the focus of the International Affairs Department becomes multinational enterprise rather than American foreign policy...
...I think he will pay attention to the need to take on global capital...
...I went over and told the boss...
...Everyone saw this total inaction and a leader who was truly uninspiring...
...New Jersey, and at its headquarters in Germany...
...We were locked out in July 19K4 and we went back into the gate in 1989...
...Q: You were elected to the AFL-CIO Executive Council for the first time in October...
...Sometimes people may use it when they don't think of another way to let the boss know they're mad...
...Q: If you build the ideology, the candidates will come...
...Wages: I know them but I don't know them...
...They are people who are comfortable, people who believe they know how to play this game...
...Mazzocchi was known as the man chiefly responsible for passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, and later the main organizer of Labor Party Advocates.] Wages: Oh...
...We'd go after them through the permit process...
...They think that's important, even though on the issues of importance to working men and women, they're getting screwed royally...
...Helping people in the face of monumental power, and helping people organize and getting new contracts, and seeing the look in their eyes, and getting letters from people saying thank you...
...Wages: That was a live-year war...
...Bill Clinton says he will veto repeal of OSHA—well, why the hell won't he promote funding for OSHA, so we can enforce it...
...Wages: Its base initially, I'm hoping, will be a broad cross-section of unions that can support it...
...Because at the beginning, if it does and it loses, it loses its steam...
...Wages: I didn't want to be...
...Why are so many union leaders, especially international presidents, committed to Clinton...
...It was clear to me that if 1 was going to do this I should become armed...
...The ability to withhold your labor is still a very basic tactic in an industrial situation...
...That keeps you going for a week or a month...
...Many of the people on the industrial side felt betrayed that the federation didn't do more both on NAFTA and on striker replacement/labor-law reform...
...He'd ordered me to order the people back to work...
...Then I knew that it was gonna be a war...
...Many of my colleagues in the labor movement would argue that that's what we need...
...they wish we'd go away...
...Q: How do those work'.' Wages: An in-plant strategy is a "work-to-rule," engaging in all kinds of concerted, protected activity on the plant floor which has the effect of aggravating the boss to no end...
...Even the most loathsome among us can get a bellyful and want to do something...
...My experience was dealing with the oil sector...
...He will veto the TEAM Act [that would legitimize company unions]—well, who gives a shit, if you don't have any jobs...
...I knew Goss from those days, and I thought he cared about what went on with the membership...
...That us to be our pastime...
...And I'll tell you another reason...
...You did civil disobedience...
...There is a difference between what Bill Clinton will do institutionally for unions, and what Bill Clinton will do on social and economic policy for the working men and women of this country...
...For every thirty times you get beaten back, you do so many other significant things...
...Wages: Because they're not willing to fight for an alternative...
...And I think they deserve that...
...Will he support the TEAM Act in Honduras...
...If we can promote the ideology and get candidates to embrace some of the ideology—or express our electoral outrage if they don't—that's our best early opportunity to create something different...
...I guess what keeps me going is that at the end of every day, somewhere along the line, we've done something to help people...
...How were you put on Sweeney's slate...
...So I got active in the union, started going to meetings, and in 1972 I was elected local president, rather handily...
...Q: And all the nonmembers...
...That would be refreshing...
...I asked Wages about prospects for the AFL-CIO...
...You wouldn't have known that here was the man who'd bought votes to push through NAFTA, who'd done nothing on the anti-scab bill, who'd campaigned for GATT, who'd proposed a health-care reform package that favored insurance companies...
...what's gone on in corporate America, and what's gone on as a matter of government policy, has affected everybody...
...It's like trying to teach a pig to sing—it wastes your time and it annoys the pig...
...Chemical, and Atomic Workers union (OCAW...
...Kansas, Wages is also a product of the 1960s, having agitated against the Vietnam War at the University of Kansas...
...Wages: One, it's reflective of the tremendous loss of manufacturing jobs...
...Obviously this is skilled work that I'm not skilled to do...
...It wasn't till after I'd worked with him for a while that I became increasingly concerned with whether he had a broader sense of what the union ought to be...
...Q: Clinton got an extremely warm welcome at the AFL-CIO convention last October...
...What made his backers step outside the boundaries of what's considered polite in the AFL-CIO...
...Q: Most of the media have said John Sweeney is going to make a major change to revitalize the U.S...
...I think you have to make an effort to mobilize people and keep people engaged, to communicate with them and to be responsive to what they say...
...Q: What strikes have you been involved in yourself...
...We picked out the places that were important to them...
...And I just totally screwed it up...
...There's a legitimate question being raised by workers as to what unions really stand for...
...The difference was that we got the religious community involved, and the social-justice community, and we went after BASF whenever they were trying to expand somewhere...
...I don't think our peopla can be immediately replaced...
...Wages: That's bullshit...
...But you have to start somewhere, and where you start is where you have some institutional structure, and that's the labor movement...
...I'm going to be hopeful as long as they give me reason to be hopeful...
...But they hired me, and I moved to Denver and worked on the legal staff and then as [president Bob] Goss's administrative assistant...
...What keeps you going in the face of all this...
...And therefore, vou...
...Many will make the case that it's a distraction, that the most important thing now is to get Bill Clinton reelected...
...So their strategy was very clear: They were going to lock us out and slar\e us out...
...And 1 think that strategy will work...
...Anybody who seriously sits around talking about labor-law reform—they might as well fly to the moon...
...and God only knows who else...
...We started trying to educate ourselves...
...So I went in and did it...
...Wages: 1 don't think there's an option for working people...
...I think it's captured by moneyed interests, captured by the New Democrats, captured by this notion that we are inextricably bound to the two-party system...
...Wages: I don't think at the beginning it does...
...THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Bob Wages 'Some union leaders think it's big stuff to go to the White House and have a handshake, even though on issues of importance to working men and women, they're getting screwed royally.9 BY JANE SLAUGHTER When I spoke with Bob Wages, he was in the middle of bargaining a pattern union contract for the oil industry, one that would force all union employers in the oil business to agree to the same conditions...
...Wages: Well, this is probably heresy, but . . . since 1938...
...Wages: I think he will bring a new focus to the federation's role in organizing...
...Wages: No...
...Wages: As a local member, we struck in 3970, and in 197 There were a couple of wildcat strikes in 1973 and 1974.1 gue in the six years I was in the plant I was in about four...
...The problem is that it's become socially acceptable, that there is no forum of reprimand, socially or otherwise, to employers who victimize their workers...
...Wages: I truly think people were fed up...
...Q: OCAW pulled off a famous corporate campaign at BASF back in the 1980s...
...Q: Back in those days you weren't identified with what was seen as the more progressive wing of the union, with Tonv Mazzoc-chi's various campaigns for OCAW president...
...I pulled people off unsafe work...
...Q: There have been so many defeats for the labor movement...
...labor movement...
...And every now and then you hit a home run, and you really do something significant...
...Come on, you know these guys...
...They're too highly skilled and trained...
...I think he will bring a more active advocacy posture to the federation...
...Q: Many people would say that strikes are irrelevant now, that they're no longer a viable tactic...
...What do you think about that strategy...
...We've got to help ourselves...
...It has become routine for companies to argue that they ought not be held to a standard of their competition, but rather some other standard, because they can make more money...
...Q: What did you do that convinced your fellow workers you should be president...
...Q: What should unions be doing, then, to regain legitimacy...
...It seems to me the problem with the progressive movement is we have so many people dedicated to one particular issue, or two or three, and we need to create a movement that addresses very broad issues of social and economic justice that all of us together would not disagree with...
...I did...
...Of its first meeting, Wages said...
...Q: But now it turns out you're very much allied with Tonv and the more progressive aspects of the union...
...Wages was one of the early backers of the palace revolt that led to John Sweeney's election as AFL-CIO president last fall...
...People in my position, or some of them at least, are willing to trade institutional protection for unions for economic and social justice for their members...
...For LPA to succeed, it has to reach all those folks who are disaffected with politics as usual, who've been captured by other political forces, the Ross Perot forces...
...And three, we have to get out of the mind-set that the law is going to help us...
...The supervisor said, "Don't give me that stuff, you either do it or go home...
...I was working on a job on overtime, and they had asked me to do something that I didn't know how to do—lay some wire inside a stack in order to cement the refractory inside it (refractory's sort of like insulation), so it won't burn up and melt...
...You had a wives' support group that picketed...
...for labor's fortunes in politics, and for the much-clobbered working class...
...Q: So maybe vou have a little bit more protection than so other unions0 Wages: 1 think so...
...Ultimately, you want it to reach out to people who are within the broad definition of the middle and working class...
...Wages, have to understand that we have to compete with AT&T and Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands and Total Petroleum in Paris...
...and the only time I'd ever met Al we'd had a real pissing match over the wildcat strike...
...We shut down jobs when people got hurt...
...The line is he's better than Bob Dole...
...To a person, no one really debates the merits...
...we have to refocus politically and create a political movement that stands for something...
...But I'm not going to turn my back on what I do and why 1 do it and who I do it for, for the sake of either unanimity or getting along inside...
...Wages: No surprises there: If Clinton doesn't win it'll be the end of life as we know it...
...He says all these things that are of institutional significance to unions...
...I was identified with it all right—I was the architect of the opposition...
...If they tried to replace the permanent work force ana there was an explosion in the community, they'd never quit pal ing for it...
...Q: OCAW is one of the few unions that still has pattern bargaining...
...Q: One of the things this kind of thinking has led to is Labor Party Advocates, which OCAW was instrumental in starting...
...There's a lot of short-term work, temporary work, piecework—even if it's in a white-collar industry, it's piecework and part-time work, so it's very hard to get vour arms around people in those industries...
...There's a little more leverage for us than there is for a lot of people...
...It's not as powerful a tactic as it once was, perhaps, because of technology and automation, because of fear...
...Why shouldn't we...
...Q: So you don't waste your time trying to pick out the good guys among management, since they're all on the other side...
...1 figured anv lingering notion that I was ever going to be anyone's fair-haired boy in the international union, that was crazy...
...I told him to kiss my ass...
...At (hat point, once it knows what it is, it can then start reaching out to see if others can relate to its precepts...
...Wages: It would appear so...
...Look, they were still getting tea and crumpets at the White House...
...Q: Usually protocol would not permit a challenge to a sitting AFL-CIO president...
...I had the experience of becoming a father at an early age, nineteen, so I had to go to work...
...They are putting on a huge grassroots mobilization effort, which—standing by itself—is wonderful...
...It was just this one plant in Louisiana, but you got on BASF's case in Indiana...
...I wouldn't endorse him until the man came to the table and started justifying this bullshit he calls an economic policy...
...Wages: That's certainly how the Christian Coalition has done it...
...I don't think it's a fair trade...
...They had adopted this notion that they could gel rid of unions whenever they wanted...
...Q: What are some of those other ways of pressuring companies'.' Wages: In-plant strategies, or corporate campaigns, when you know what you're doing...
...Sure, there are some people doing very well out there who are represented bv unions...
...Q: Why do you suppose that so many union leaders would prefer to not fight, and be sure to lose, than fight, and you might lose or you might win...
...I suppose, is that the Democratic Parly reforms itself...
...employers have been able to replace strikers legally...
...They don't accept the challenge to try to do something differently, for fear of failure...
...stood for...
...I simplv just don't believe you can...
...Q: What did they have a bellyful of...
...We used to have two-year agreements, and seemed like we struck every time...
...Mv dad was still working there...
...Q: How do they see it...
...I hadn't been on the job four months...
...Wages is president of the Oil...
...that things need to get worse before people will start to fight back...
...Q: Why has union membership in the United States fallen so low...
...I think they will do what is reflected in the economy at large...
...Wages: Don't waste your time trying to create this fiction of "win-win...
...Wages: Actually, you would be surprised at how straightforward it all is...
...Son of a union family in Kansas City...
...Until we start taking that on, we're not going to make sense to anybody...
...Q: Can vou call your members out with confidence that they will not be replaced...
...He instilled in me the notion that it didn't matter who you dealt with, if they represented the interests of corporate America, you could bet the farm they didn't represent your interests...
...Q; The vast majority of union members are not particularly involved in their unions: they function more as consumers...
...BASF had decertified unions in a number of locations...
...The average age in this plant was forty-five to fiftv years old...
...He rose through the union ranks quickly, to become president of the international at the age of forty-one...
...If you go home, you ain't coming back...
...How did that happen...
...At 80,000 members OCAW is not one of the biggest unions, but it has become known for its pioneering work to found a labor party, fight for single-payer health insurance, and join forces with environmental groups...
...1 believe we'll be able to keep the pattern in place...
Vol. 60 • April 1996 • No. 4
