OO#10 Unionizing Mass Machine
By Peter Olney
Mass Machine was a classic “hot shop”. In labor parlance “hot shop’ indicates a workplace where the issues and the anger is such that the workers want change and the task of the organizer is to give voice, understanding and organization to that “heat” so that the workers can form a union. It took a worker losing a digit under a repeating punch press to spark the heat, but the dissatisfaction with the wages and the abusive treatment of supervisors were longstanding. Mass Machine (MM) was not a big shop, 60 total workers in tool and die, maintenance, production, shipping and receiving and the sweeper, all working one shift. Unlike workplaces with hundreds of workers, multiple shifts, buildings and departments, MM was very manageable for four organizers!
That did not mean that the challenges of language, race, fear and uncertainty were not there. In some ways the 60-person shop was a good learning microcosm for young and inexperienced organizers like my comrades and me. The winning formula was simple: unite the Italians and Puerto Ricans and split the white ethnics, mostly Irish American. The Puerto Ricans were very united and their leader was Luis Collazo, who had been in the USA for a while and was from Ponce, PR. He sported what we used to call a classic D.A. (Duck’s Ass) haircut enriched with shiny gel. He was respected as a high production worker and commanded the loyalty of his Boricua brothers.
The Italians and Puerto Ricans generally had a playful relationship somewhat based on the fact that their languages were very similar. I worked side by side with Miguel Santos, a young Puerto Rican also Ponceno. Miguel spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish at that time. He spoke to me in a considerably decelerated Spanish and I responded in my Italian standard. We did fine. I can’t say I did as well initially with the Italians. They all spoke either Beneventino or Avellinese, the dialects from their cities and villages out side of Naples. That was a foreign language for me, far more foreign than Puerto Rican Spanish. But Sabado, a younger worker from Benevento, who spoke Italian standard and Neapolitan dialect, became a friend, and he was able to galvanize the Italians. He even wrote a flyer in Italian ripping the company’s disrespectful treatment of workers: “Per quanto tempo ci facciamo essere trattati come bestie, che sono chiamate alle 7:00 e rilasciate a pastoreggiare alle 4:30” (how long are we going to allow ourselves to be treated like beasts of burden called to work at 7 and then let out pasture at 4:30). I think the pastoral metaphor resonated well with the Italian cohort.
In the run up to the election in late June we used a lot of flyers. Our newsletter was called the Workers Voice of MMS or La Voce Operaia di MMS. At this time there was no Voz Obrera en Espanol because nobody in our team spoke Spanish. But the Puerto Rican workers told me not to worry that they were doing fine with the Italian and kind of enjoyed it. Later we published full-page newsletters in all three languages with detail on the major happenings in the facility. The workers looked forward to the newsletters and especially the famous Fred Wright UE cartoons (here, here and here). The newsletters were probably overkill in a factory of 60 workers because there is no paper substitute for face-to-face conversation in organizing. We organized in the grungy bar on Northampton Street; that’s where a lot of the most senior workers, mostly Irish American hung out. The Italians had me over to Sabado’s house for an evening discussion prior to the election at their home in Hyde Park. Meetings away from work with the Puerto Ricans were held at Lechoneria Los Reyes under the Orange Line elevated at the Egleston stop.
Election day came for the UE Union on June 28, 1973. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election day and the vote count is one of the most cathartic rituals in American working life. Casting aside the obstacle course of company threats and promises leading up to the election, the actual election ritual itself is chock full of emotion and pathos regardless who wins.
Each side chooses an observer to witness the actual balloting. The Company chooses a worker from the proposed bargaining unit. If the company chooses someone that the Union has been counting on as a union supporter let alone a core organizing committee member that is an ominous sign. At Mass Machine, the company chose a trusted “company man” who we had not seen as a supporter. I was chosen to be the UE observer because of my relationship to the Italians who were considered the swing vote. The observer is charged with challenging any voter who they believe is not eligible to vote. Often the Company will mobilize laid off workers or supervisors to vote. In the case of Mass Machine the workforce was so small that there was not much room for chicanery.
The observer is not supposed to speak to voters so I was focused on body language and making eye contact as a way to divine the votes. One of the older Italian workers who I was friendly with received his ballot and as he faced me on the way to the voting booth erupted in to a full-bore Fascist salute ala Mussolini. I took that as a good omen!
The vote count is excruciating no matter how many times you experience it in workforces large and small. In the case of Mass Machine the voting took less than one half hour and then everyone gathered in the company lunchroom for the count. The owner, David Knights was there with his attorney Alan Tepper and several other management personnel including Pat Caizzi, the Italian American floor boss. Our UE organizer, Michael Eisenscher and almost all the workers were in the room. The NLRB government agent dumps the ballots on the table and sorts the Yes and the No ballots. Then the agent holds up each ballot and calls out Yes or No. As the count proceeds everyone is waiting for one side or another to get to the majority of the votes cast. Once that number is exceeded the winning side erupts in often joyous screaming and cheering. At MMS most of the workers broke into cheers and David Knights cast an angry glance at Pat Caizzi and left the room in a hurry. We celebrated in the lunchroom and quickly moved to the bar on Northampton for drinks all around.
We had won the vote 39-20. I later learned from poor Pat Caizzi that he had told the owner that he had the Italians by the “coglioni” and that they would vote as he told them to. The Italians voted en masse for the union, and we had our victory. Caizzi admitted to me later that he was happy that the Union had come in. It made his job a lot easier and he got a pay raise.
Next Organizing in the heat of Boston August for a First Contract at Mass Machine.
I’m struck by a few things: how wacky we all were,and how much we still accomplished. Despite our utopian visions and expectations, we were delighted to work on relatively small struggles. And how much those early fights taught and shaped us. Whatever else one can say about us, we weren’t arm-chair. In my case, work in public housing almost got me killed. But it knocked any shallow left assumptions about the lumpen out of my head for good.
Not only was it a heartening story, I’m a sucker for most anything with good cartoons and any Italian vulgarisms that I don’t already know.
Most interesting. But just to show that I pay attention, I could have wished for a few more details about the terrible working conditions. Yes, a worker had a finger cut off – but such accidents often happen in even the best of factories. I might also have wished to hear whether there was any “friction” between those Irish-Americans and the Italians/Puerto Ricans. All that aside, I had no trouble accepting that it was time for these workers to have a union.