CHAPTER 5- A GROWING FAMILY IN THE AGE OF MALAISE

  Around 1975 I became a shop steward for the Bakery and Confectionery Union at Colonial. I took the job more out of frustration than anything. We were working very long and hard hours without breaks. For my first couple of years I was working in the bun room and we were supposed to be relieved every two hours for a ten minute break. There was a break man that relieved everyone on the bun and bread lines. Our first breaks usually came close to on time but as the night wore on they would get farther and farther behind. Our second break was usually late and out of frustration everyone took longer breaks as the night progressed. This threw the breaks further behind and on top of this we were not getting a lunch break. I found a copy of our union contract and there in black and white it said that we were not only supposed to get a ten minute break every two hours but a thirty minute lunch break after we had been there four hours. Every time I would ask the older employees about the contracts language they would just shrug their shoulders and say that they had always had a break man and had never had a lunch break. That was just the way it had always been. To me that wasn't good enough. I was determined to make the company live up to the contract.

 Part of the problem was that our Chief shop steward was illiterate. He was a great guy but he couldn't get a lot done if he couldn't read the contract. Another issue was our disciplinary procedure. It was so vague that the company could pretty much do anything that it wanted as far as disciplining an employee. The bakery was so hot, especially in the summertime, that people were passing out. I didn't know it at the time but the president of the company wanted the bakery to stay above eighty degrees on a regular basis. He had gone so far as to seal off the vents and fans in the ceiling. Sometimes around the ovens the temperature would be as high as 120 degrees or higher. After 2 years I left the bun room to take a job as a checker. My job was checking orders and loading the tractor trailers for what we called our rural routes. I eventually lost about 45 pounds from working and sweating the weight off. We were the definition of a sweat shop. Colonial Baking Company was the fastest and hardest job that I ever had. 

Something had to be done to change the situation but I didn't know how to go about it so I started attending union meetings and I had a friend nominate me to be a shop steward. After a year or so I was elected chief shop steward. At first it was all trial and error. I made mistakes but over time I was able to win victories through the grievance procedure. We had some pretty raucous meetings with management. I paid a price being a Union leader because I was harassed by my supervisors and as a person who hates confrontation it was nerve wracking and very stressful but I learned a lot about human nature. When the chips are down I discovered that you can count on one hand the people that will stand with you. Most people are cowards. I also learned that just one person can get a lot done. It was kind of like the refrain of the Civil Rights movement with me. If not me, who? If not now when? At first I was too willing to fight peoples battles for them. The grievance procedure stated that a person was responsible for initiating a grievance on their own by first talking to the supervisor without the shop steward being present. If they couldn't resolve the problem the shop steward would become involved on the second step. After that, if the problem was still not resolved the grievance would be submitted in writing to the president of the company. A meeting would then be arranged. If it still couldn't be resolved it could then go to arbitration. The arbitration process was costly to the union if we lost so we only had two arbitration's in the nine years that I was at Colonial. We won one and lost one.

 Most of the time that people came to me with a grievance it would go no further when I told them that they had to talk to the supervisor by themselves. People seemed to appreciate the job I was doing as chief shop steward but I made my share of enemies in the union and in the company. This was because I stood up for the union when they were right and the company when they were right. I never lost sight of the fact that the company was our employer and not the union. They paid our paychecks. I have never been rabidly pro union or rabidly ant-union. I can see where certain industries can benefit from one. Unions are too socialistic for me me and too prone to corruption. The movie Norma Rae, with Sally Fields, reminded me how I was treated at times. I was watched and mistreated by management because of my Union activities. Confrontation just made me that much more determined to stand up to them and the experience taught me a lot about myself. I was involved in four contract negotiations while at Colonial. I rewrote the grievance procedure and disciplinary procedure. The company adopted almost all of my language word for word.

My proudest moment came just before Thanksgiving in the late 1970's. We had an incentive in our contract called the Earned Work Credit. It was designed to encourage attendance and for every week of perfect attendance ten dollars would be added to a sum of money that we would receive every November in a lump sum. Most everyone used this money for Christmas. Every year we would gripe, however; because our checks were usually shorter than expected. They paid us for vacations but we were not paid for holiday weeks. We were able to negotiate into the contract that a holiday was considered a day worked for the purposes of being counted in our Earned Work Credit. Between vacations and holidays it was now possible to earn 520.00 dollars if you had perfect attendance because there were 52 weeks in a year. Five hundred and twenty dollars went a lot farther in the 1970's than it does now. Everything worked out fine for a few years until one November our checks were much lower than normal. When I asked supervision about the discrepancy they explained that the company would no longer pay us for holidays and vacations.

 I knew that the company was in blatant violation of the contract. They could be forced to pay us but it would be after the first of the year before we received our money. We needed this money for Christmas. Everyone was very angry but I had an idea. I would take advantage of the anger and call a special meeting at the union hall. It was located on North 1st street in Nashville. We gathered on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving because this was one of the busiest holidays in the baking industry next to Christmas and the 4th of July. We were usually off the day before the holiday but we had to work on the holiday. As mad as everyone was about this only about half of our membership showed up for the meeting. For my purposes this would be enough. Wild cat strikes were illegal and we could all be fired on the spot if we walked out. I told the membership, however; that I was going to try to bluff the company into believing that we were going to pull a wildcat strike. Hopefully his would put a real scare into them just two days before Thanksgiving.

I was going to call Mr. Kraut from the meeting but before I got on the phone I told the membership to make a lot of noise and to act as angry as they could so it would be heard in the background. When the receptionist answered the phone I asked to speak to Mr. Kraut. She told me that Mr. Kraut was off but I could talk to the vice president. I told her to put him on the phone. The noise from our disgruntled union members could be clearly heard in the background as I told the vice president that we wanted a meeting that afternoon with management. I told him about the money that the company had shorted us on our Earned Work Credit and we had called an emergency meeting of the membership.  They were very angry and I couldn't guarantee to him that I could keep them from walking off of the job. Before the vice president could respond I heard the excited voice of Mr. kraut. Who was supposed to be out of the office that day say "Greg, don't you let them go out. You keep them from going out". I was smiling as I told Mr. Kraut that I couldn't guarantee anything unless we could arrange a meeting that very afternoon. He said that it would not be possible that day and it would have to wait until after Thanksgiving. Knowing that we would lose our leverage I said no, it had to be today. Reluctantly he agreed to a meeting.

 Several of us met with Mr. Kraut that afternoon. I pointed out in the contract the language proving that a holiday was a day worked for the purposes of the Earned Work Credit. Vacations also had to counted because of past practice. The fact that the company had always counted them for Earned Work Credit in the past meant that they couldn't arbitrarily stop paying it. It was a legal standard that once the company had established a precedent we had a strong case in arbitration. I could tell by Mr. Kraut's expression that we had won. Dejectedly he asked  me "Greg, why are you working here? Why aren't you a lawyer"? Coming from Mr. Kraut I took this as a compliment. This was when I realized that I should have pursued  law rather a history degree. The company agreed to our demands and we were paid on our next payday in time for Christmas. This amounted to thousands of dollars in back pay when you counted every employee that was shorted on their checks.