The Critical Lesson of Labor Day

There are several days in the year that take me back to meaningful experiences. One of those days is Labor Day. It comes at a time that takes me back as well to the start of school. But there is a different kind of labor between matters of the mind and matters of the body. Labor Day began in the late 19^th century during the Industrial Revolution where the Labor Department recognized the unfair treatment of workers, a call for safer conditions, and an eight-hour workday.

On September 5, 1892, 10,000 workers marched in New York City.  It was the first labor inspired day parade organized by the Central Labor Union. Labor Day would become inextricably linked to the Union Movement.

Labor Day brings back a flood of memories for labor conditions and unions shaped my life.

When I finished writing my memoir, The Times of My Life, I said to Vicki, “You have heard me talk about the steel mill. I want you to see it.” We took off, but we couldn’t get down the road where it was based along the Schuylkill River in Conshohocken. There was a huge Inquirer Printing Plant blocking the way. We went to the local town office. Young people were at the desks and I asked, “Where is the Coke Plant of the Steel Mill?” They looked baffled. They never heard of it. They directed us to the resident town historian who had a bookstore a few blocks away. When I asked him where it was, he said: “Blown up! The plant was blown up, and the miles of iron were taken and sold.” He had pictures of the plant which he showed Vicki and me. It was just like I remembered it with ovens at the end of a series of enclosed conveyer belts taking coal to be fired at a high temperature in ovens.

I worked there to earn money to pay for college and to have some left over. Even though I was valedictorian of my class and class president, I couldn’t afford the cost of Penn, so I went to a state school which underscored that you could make a college education great if that is what you want.

But what an education I got at the steel mill! I got to learn why labor and unions were forever yoked together. I worked a ten-hour shift at the bottom of a coal handler where coal was dumped down a shoot to underground conveyer belts where it began traveling up other belts to get to the ovens. Here the goal was burned higher to turn it into coke which burned hotter in the open hearth where the steel was formed. At the end of the day, I looked like a coal miner from head to foot. I could hardly breathe and at times couldn’t see through the coal dust. At night when I got into bed, I could still taste the coke gas, and I was coughing up black sputum. I could feel every muscle in my body.

That was why Labor Day came into existence and years later it was still needed. But the union did get something. I made more money than you could imagine. The Union had a chokehold on the mill ownership. I was reading at the time Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, which exposed the terrible working conditions in Chicago meat packing plants.

My first exposure to the unions was my refusal to pay the union dues when I applied and was accepted to work at the mill. The union hired me, not the mill because the union leader made it clear that if I didn’t join the union even as a college kid, I wasn’t working there.

I learned the first day that the Irish Mafia was running the Coke side of the plant and the Italian Mafia was running the part of the plant that contained the steel rolling mill. When a group of us were sent over there for a few weeks, we were introduced to the Italian mafia. It was the final binding the coils of the steel before it was shipped. We had hour per hour bonuses which meant that for the amount ahead of the quota that we banned the coils, we would get a share of the excess. The Italian Mafia let us know if we slowed things down and they didn’t get their bonus; we would be toast. It was quite a motivator.

I noticed that the head of the Irish Mafia in the coke plant had other people do his work as well. One of his designated union guys and I had a confrontation the first time I had two days off for he didn’t do a thing doing my job in my absence. The coal piled up. We went nose to nose. He didn’t do it again. The Baron was a loan shark who collected his loans at the end of the week for those who borrowed money from him.  We were paid by lining up at a Brinks truck!

One night the Baron, the head of the Irish Mafia and I were walking together to the gravel parking lot and a car backfired. He dove over the hood of a car thinking it was a gun shot. I laughed out loud. Evidently, some people didn’t like him much or wanted his position.

When the mill closed due to excessive demands of the union, the secretary of my high school class who was a secretary to an administrator told me years later that the union workers were locked out and they stood outside a chain linked fence baffled that their demands could result in the plant closing.

Call it Karma, the Holy Spirit, or a small world experience, but I was blessing a marriage in a setting off the coast of New England that was right out of the Great Gatsby.

After the service at the dinner I sat next to the owner of the mill that helped finance my college education. We introduced ourselves to one another. He went off on an angry tirade about the evils of the union and how it cost him ownership of the mill. I responded to him by telling him just what it was like to work there. Believe or not, at the end of the dinner we shook hands and got both views acknowledged. For a moment we stared into each other’s eyes. No apologies, but a smile from each of us. Unforgettable.

But there is a lesson here that we must remember on Labor Day.

Whether it is power in management/ownership or a worker, there is a message on Labor Day since its inception. Any absolute power can corrupt absolutely. It was Thomas Hobbes contribution to political ethics. He called the leader the Leviathan, a sea monster. It is why Trump is so dangerous! Once you give too much power to one person or group, your social ethic is doomed. I kept my Union Badge which is posted with this blog on Facebook and kept it in the top drawer of my bureau. I don’t ever want to forget what I learned there.