With the labor contract settled at Mass machine I was not only able to buy a brand new lime green Ford Pinto, but I got myself a couple more pairs of elastic polyester pants made popular in the 70’s disco theme movie, Saturday Night Fever. One pair I had was my pant of choice in public gatherings, parties and union meetings. It was an alternating plaid brown and black that you might see today on the legs of a cruise ship octogenarian playing shuffleboard. I’ll never forget trying to impress my aunt Amy, who had decided to visit me and see how I was doing. She came to my run down and filthy apartment on Dorchester Ave in Savin Hill . To show her that I was doing fine I proceeded to pull out my ironing board and begin to iron my polyester. I paused to talk to Amy and withdrew the iron. I had burned a huge hole in my best dress pants. The polyester clung to the face of the iron in the shape of the gaping hole.

While my automotive purchase and haberdasher decisions might be called into question, I had done enough right in the organizing campaign and contract negotiations to be selected union shop chairman at the factory. That meant I was responsible for making sure the contract was enforced and representing our small unit at UE Local 262 meetings and at UE New England District Council meetings. The action however was on the shop floor and even though we had signed an excellent labor agreement, the turmoil and battles did not cease.

Visionary leader of the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers, Anthony “Tony” Mazzochi. (Photo: Robert Gumpert 1981)

1973 was only three years after the passage of the Federal Occupational and Safety Act (OSHA). This was a huge breakthrough for working people and was championed by the visionary leader of the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers, Anthony “Tony” Mazzochi. (See a biography of Mazzochi by Les Leopold called “The Man who Hated Work and Loved Labor”)

OSHA, although lacking teeth then and now, is a wonderful organizing tool. The penalties are not strict enough and enforcement capacity is limited and often completely lacking but OSHA remains a wonderful organizing tool for a union that is on its toes and has the power to enforce the standards.

We certainly used it that way at MMS. The loud clacking of the metal stamping presses meant that the noise on the floor of Mass Machine was often higher than the acceptable OSHA standard of 90 decibels. We told Mass Machine that it was their responsibility to engineer that noise out of the production process.

The company at a certain point installed a buzzer system with an alarmed door and a Plexiglas window like those at all night convenience stores in a high crime neighborhood.

In April of 1974, the company hired a new Vice President for labor relations, Jim Moran who was tasked with taming the UE juggernaut. Moran approached me and told me that I would have to wear earplugs and recommend that all the press operators wear earplugs. I told him that we wanted the noise engineered out, and that earplugs were not a solution. I said that I would not wear them. He fired me on the spot for insubordination and told me to leave the factory. I passed the word to all the workers to meet in the lunchroom on the second floor to discuss the company’s actions. Just as the meeting started the Boston Police Department entered the lunchroom, called by the company to evict me from the premises. The workers decided that if I was being escorted out that they would all go out with me. The plant was shut down, and we were on the street. Within 2 hours the Company was in negotiations with Mike Eisenscher our UE Organizer and they agreed to put me back to work with no recriminations against the other members, and they would explore the engineering solution to the high decibels. So while we had a grievance procedure that provided for no strikes during the term of the contract I had quickly learned an important lesson. When production is halted and the employer has no effective means of restarting it any time soon, we had a lot of power. This was the first of many episodes of MMS workers flexing their muscles.

In June we struck again. The Company brought in two Labor Pool workers to do our work. They were paying them $2.00 per hour, $.75 below our start minimum, and no benefits. We shut down production and negotiated a $2.75 per hour rate for them for all work they had done and an agreement that the company would not try again to bring in Labor Poll workers.

During that summer of 1974 the workers at Baltimore Brush, a facility adjacent to us on the corner of Albany and Northampton Streets decided to organize into the same union, UE Local 262. Baltimore Brush employed about 65 workers and I knew the main organizer at the “Brush”, a Puerto Rican brother named Julio. As their organizing drive opened up and got more aggressive, the company responded by firing Julio. This was the pre-cell phone era so Julio came over to our lunchroom to tell us what had happened. We rounded up our members from Mass Machine, particularly the Puerto Rican brothers, and we all marched into the Executive Offices at Baltimore Brush demanding Julio’s reinstatement. Two days later he was back, and soon the workers at Baltimore Brush voted in the same union, the UE.

We had a habit of barging into executive offices, a tactic we had employed successfully on many occasions at Mass Machine. The company at a certain point installed a buzzer system with an alarmed door and a Plexiglas window like those at all night convenience stores in a high crime neighborhood.

These were pretty heady times. Young red agitators like me were anticipating big societal change and often intoxicated with our small successes. I think the most amazing moment and the one that pushed the company to a fateful decision was the Bill Buckley incident. Bill Buckley was a popular supervisor who was often supportive of our issues. One night in a Marxist study group I discussed Lenin’s “What is to Be Done” which describers the tasks of communists in a pre-revolutionary period (Guide; Study questions) . He exhorted us to be fighters not only for the interest of the working class but also for the interests of all classes in opposition to the Tsar. Taking this exhortation completely out of historical context, I headed to the factory the next day determined to implement my new understanding. The company chose to fire Bill Buckley. I chose to “fight for the interests of all classes”, and save the job of a low level supervisor, and I led a walkout to protest his firing. We were out on the street and I thought I better call the union hall and talk to our union rep, Mike Eisenscher before the company did and explain the situation. I explained what we had done and he said, “you did what????###%%^^&&! He ordered us back to work immediately.

On November 6, 1974 the company announced that they would be closing in Roxbury and moving to Nashua, New Hampshire sometime in January 1975. Nashua just happened to be outside the 30-mile radius clause (in post #11 the number was incorrectly printed as 60) we had negotiated in our new labor agreement. Nashua was 45 miles away and that meant that the contract and the union would not be going to Nashua with the company.

This decision set the stage for our battle against the runaway.

Olney Odyssey #13 Stay or Pay Fighting the Runway Shop