The workers at Mass Machine Shop had voted decisively for representation by the United Electrical Workers (UE), but as anyone knowledgeable of labor knows, that is only a small first step. Often the challenge is negotiating a first contact between the union and the company. Many companies in the 21st century treat the NLRB representation election as a minor speed bump and race ahead with their plans to undermine the choice of the workers and destroy the union. That was not the case at Mass Machine Shop in 1973 for reasons soon to be revealed.

The employer had threatened such a move in the run up to the union election. We needed protection…

The workers at Mass Machine elected their negotiating committee. Billy Foley was chosen to represent the South Boston, white Irish contingent. Julio Santos was chosen to represent the Puerto Ricans, and my Italian language drew me the assignment to represent the Italians. Our UE Organizer Michael Eisenscher was the spokesperson and chief negotiator. The company sent its Vice President Dick Theurer to the table along with the company’s outside attorney for labor relations a very tall and well-spoken man in his sixties named Alan Tepper.

Negotiations began in August of 1973 with an initial meeting during which the union presented its proposals. The proposals had been honed in several cafeteria meetings at Mass Machine and at the UE Local 262 hall at Andrew Station in South Boston. Health and safety issues had to be addressed. We demanded that the Company engineer out the high decibel noise from the clanging punch presses. We demanded that the company install guards over all the presses so that no one would ever again lose a digit in the production process. We decided that we would, in our little proletarian stronghold, emulate the mighty United Auto Workers and get Supplementary Unemployment Benefits (SUB). SUB meant that a worker who was laid off would receive the difference between unemployment benefits and their regular take home pay supplemented by the company. We were very attuned to the danger of production being closed down in Roxbury and moved elsewhere to evade the union and its contract. The employer had threatened such a move in the run up to the union election. We needed protection so we proposed a 30-mile radius clause that would insure any move within that distance would carry it with the responsibility on the part of the employer to keep the workforce and the contract. And of course we wanted a healthy pay raise.

Negotiations began in the steamy humidity of Boston summer. The company, prior to being union, had a loose heat day policy whereby if the temperature exceeded 90 degrees they let workers go home with pay. They relied on giant fans to keep the temperature just under 90, and no one could remember ever having benefited from this policy. That summer we decided to test the policy. The temperature was in the high 80’s around 11 AM and I started to monitor the temperature and called it to the attention of Pat Caizzi, the production supervisor. The thermometer that would control was next to the time clock in the punch out area. At 11:30 the workers in the tool and die shop that abutted the time clock began to stoke up all their ovens that were used to harden their dies. That drove the temperature over 90! I called Pat to the thermometer, and he reluctantly rang the break and lunch buzzer, and we all lined up and began punching out. As the last worker happily punched out heading home with 4 hours of “heat day” pay, Pat looked at the thermometer and saw that the temperature had slipped back under 90! It was too late, we were free and we subsequently incorporated that “heat day” language into the collective bargaining agreement that was settled in September.

I went out and bought myself a new car, a lime colored Ford Pinto with rack and pinion steering. I probably should have paid less attention to the hype in the auto showroom…

I thought that a combination of the ingenuity of our negotiator and the solid support of the workers led to a very fine first contract, in fact a model agreement. We got the Supplementary Unemployment Benefits, the runaway shop proviso of 30 miles and the heat day language, which I have never seen in any labor agreement since. And we got all of this and a dollar an hour raise immediately which in those days on a base of $3.25 was a whopping 30%. I went out and bought myself a new car, a lime colored Ford Pinto with rack and pinion steering. I probably should have paid less attention to the hype in the auto showroom and more to Ralph Nader. I had bought a lemon with an exploding gas tank!

All of these gains were made in record time. From vote to first contract took a matter of months. I have since negotiated first contracts that took years. Being young and a labor novitiate I liked to think that the contents of the agreement were the product of our bold organizing. Certainly the early seventies were not the height of employer aggression and resistance to unions. We would see that in full flower at the end of the seventies and into the 80’s with Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981. But it was a few years later after I had left Mass Machine that I figured out another factor that weighed on the negotiations, the company’s attorney Alan Tepper.

In 1979 I went to work at Boston City Hospital (BCH) right up the street from Mass Machine as an elevator operator. I had my license from NECCO, which enabled me to get on in the elevator department (More on the job at BCH in future installments of OO). One evening I was operating the elevator in the surgical building, Dowling Hall, carrying visitors up to the post op wards. Onto my elevator stepped Alan Tepper. I introduced myself to him and he said he remembered me from the negotiations at Mass Machine. How could he not remember my banging the table and giving militant agitational speeches that he would tolerate with a patient grin? He asked how I was doing and said he enjoyed our negotiations 6 years ago. We shook hands and he departed my elevator. I got curious and I decided to figure out whom this Alan Tepper was. Turns out he was a very progressive Boston attorney who made his living in labor negotiations, but during the height of the McCarthy period in Boston he had defended communists from prosecution. I think in retrospect he found me kind of amusing and probably appreciated the history of the Left wing UE.

Most management side labor attorneys counsel their clients to resist all the union’s “outlandish” demands so as to prolong their usefulness and their fees. Alan Tepper seems to have counseled a quick settlement with some contract language that unbeknownst to his client was more appropriate for a giant auto factory with a bargaining relationship of 40 years and several agreements. Tepper did accede to the 30-mile radius language for runaway production. We held that up as a great victory for the workers. Less than a year later we would find out what MMS had in store for us and that there may have been method to attorney Tepper’s “generosity”!

Olney Odyssey # 12 – Stay or Pay -Fighting the Runaway Shop at Mass Machine