Confessions of a Union Buster [1 ed.] 0517583305, 9780517583302

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CONFESSIONS OF A UNION BUSTER

Confessions of a Union Buster

Martin Jay Levitt with Terry Conrow

Crown Publishers, Inc. New York

Copyright© 1993 by Martin Jay Levitt and Terry Conrow All rights reserved.No part of this book may be r~produced or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,includingphotocopying, recording, or by any informationstorage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Publishedby Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group. Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney,Auckland. CROWN is a trademark of Crown Publishers, Inc. Manufacturedin the United States of America Lib~aryof CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Levm, Martin Jay. C_onfes_sions of a union buster / by Martin Jay Levitt,with Terry Conrow._ lst ed. p. cm. Includesindex. 1. Union busting-United State 2 T . States-Organizing 3 C s. . · rade-umons-United Corrupt practices. . . orporat1ons-United States!. Conrow' Terry· II, T'It 1e HD6490.072U6493 1993 . 33l .88'092-dc20

[BJ 93-14736 CIP

ISBN0-517-58330-5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 FirstEdition

3 2 1

To Walter, Evelyn, and Harvey Levitt

Contents

I

Acknowledgments

IX

Foreword

XI

Prologue

1

Cravat Coal

7

Genesis

33

Seduction

45

Paradise

69

World Airways

81

The Storm

113

Pathos

153

Copeland Oaks

163

Bloodletting

201

Gates Mills

227

Poison

239

Descent

261

Apocalypse

275

Epilogue

287

Index

293

II

Acknowledgments A very special thank-you to my wife, Alice, and my sons, Jason and Justin, for who and what you are. I love you. -Martin

Levitt

It is impossible to thank, or even to remember, all of the people who have helped me write this story. May this page stand as a very belated and sorely inadequate thanks to all those supporters who gave selflessly of their time, opened themselves and shared their passion so that this work would be as complete, as truthful, and as compelling as possible. Those to whom I owe a debt of gratitude include employees and former employees of the companies mentioned here; members and former members of a dozen international unions; university professors and other experts in labor and industrial relations; labor attorneys; and the library staff of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley. I further wish to thank my agents at International Creative Management and my editors at Crown Publishing for their knowledgeable guidance as well as their dogged insistence on quality, accuracy, and fairness. I am indebted to my family, who shouldered the emotional and financial struggle of this book project with grace; in particular I thank my husband, Art Toczynski, who never wavered in his enthusiasm for my work and for this book. Finally I thank Marty Levitt for having the chutzpah to write this book in the first place, the inspiration to choose me as his collaborator, and the determination to stick with it. - Terry Conrow

Foreword I hadn't felt nervous during the sunny, one-hour flight from Reno to San Diego. But as I sat there at the speakers' table at the head of the cavernous Hyatt Islandia conference room, my throat suddenly felt dry. Beads of cold sweat crawled down my forehead and underarms. Before me, crammed into the hall around the endless rows of folding tables, sat four hundred union men, strong, thick-armed, sunburned workmen who had gathered for the 1988 Western Conference of the Brotherhood of Carpenters. I tried to mask my panic with small talk and smiles, but while I waited for my name to be called my heart beat uncontrollably and my palms were clammy. Then, from somewhere off in the distance, it seemed, I heard my name announced; within my head the speaker's voice was muffled by my booming heartbeat and the sound of my own heavy breathing. I don't remember standing up or walking to the microphone, but suddenly there I was, clutching the podium. The auditorium fell silent. A roomful of eyes met mine, bearing secrets I could not read, or dared not. I dipped my head so that my lips almost touched the microphone, and without my willing it, a throaty sigh escaped into the sound system and ricocheted off the ceiling and walls. I had no choice but to begin: "I come from a very dirty business .... " As I spoke I watched the carpenters' faces, hoping they would tell me something. Their eyes were still but not empty. Just what filled them I did not know: Was it hate? Was it anger? Was it disbelief? The men watched me intently throughout the eternal twenty minutes during which I revealed to them the villainy and XI

Foreword

Id I heard my voice as if it came from fie . treacheryof my former . throug hout t he vast uhere above me echoing elsewhere,from some\, ' ballroom. . . . Suddenlyit was over. Thecrowdremainedsilent for a bnef moment, as 1fto give my voice a chanceto make its last reverberations. Then the room erupted.Men jumpedto their feet and beat their hands together with such vigor that I could feel the vibrations through the soles of my shoes.The force of the thundering applause pushed tears intomyeyes,and as I scannedthe crowd I saw dozens of carpenters wipethickfingersover their own wet eyes. It was not joy, but an overwhelmingfeelingof relief that filled the menwho heard me chat day: relief to know that the war they had suspectedwas beingwaged on them had been a real one all alongand not just a creation of a union's paranoid imagination as so manycorporatebosseshad told them. ' Gracefulfor the sense of righteousnessmy speech restor d · the'.11, the men kickedaway from their folding chairs and :a~: theirv:ayto the podium,where,one after another, they embraced mewith strong,welcomingarms.

xii

CONFESSIONS OF A UNION BUSTER

-

Prologue Union bustingis a fieldpopulated by bulliesand built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individualsand a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack. The law does not hamper the process. Rather, it servesto suggestmaneuversand definestrategies.Each "union prevention" campaign, as the wars are called, turns on a combined strategy of disinformationand personal assaults. When a chief executive hires a labor relations consultant to battle a union, he gives the consultant run of the company and closeshis eyes.The consultant, backed by attorneys,installshimself in the corporate offices and goes to work creating a climate of terror that inevitably is blamed on the union. Some corporate executivesI encounteredliked to think of their anti-union consultants as generals. But really the consultants are terrorists. Like political terrorists, the consultants' attacks are intensely personal. Terrorists do not make factories and air strips their victims; they choose instead crippled old men and schoolchildren. Likewise,as the consultants go about the businessof destroying unions, they invade people's lives, demolish their friendships,crush their will, and shatter their families. I entered the union-bustingbusinessin 1969 at age twenty-five. It wasn't an informed career choice, but a move motivated by ambition. I answered a blind ad in The Waif StreetJournal for a managementconsultant with knowledgeof the National Labor Relations Act. I had never read a labor law, but I knew how to sell myself, so I sent off a resume to the post officebox. At the rime I

1111 Levitt/Conrow a union Buster

.

. successfulexecutive beenrunninga 00 · b · d teryad l ha .d \most $100,0 m us1answ~red thefi~~;\or rw~yearsthat d1h:d no biases for or against recru1rn1entll so I wasprettycocky.I h desire to make money. oals savet e f . nessannuay, . s and no careerg . h J h Sheridan a ormer umon laborunion . · v wit o n ' fir , I wascalledroan ,nre~'.:\abor relationsconsul~ing m, John anizerfromChicago.. . d . nning campaigns to thwart ec1alizein ru org . . h kb ~p k l knewlittle about t e wor ut SheridanAssoc1ares, nizewor ers. b unionefforcs to orga ideredfor the job, so I put on my est he start My golden tongue won was flatteredto be cons f •dan l"ked · 1 . me .rom show.Shen . t f $250 a day. . b witha starungb1lltngrate o h mea JO f he excitement,the power, t e money, OnceI got a taste o t d R. h . . busting I was hooke . 1g t or wrong , andthe glamourin union It ould be twentyyears before l saw the field . becameirre1evant. w forwhatit is. . Therearemanyformsof unionbusting.Somelabor consultants andattorneystake on unionsthat already represent a work force, squeezing negotiatorsat the bargainingtable, forcing workers out onstrike,harassingunionofficers.My career took another path. l refinedrhe Sheridanspecialtycalled "counterorganizing drives," battlingnon-unionemployeesas they struggled to win union representation. The enemywas the collectivespirit. I got hold of that spiritwhileit was still a seedling;l poisoned it, choked it, bludgeonedit if I had to, anythingto be sure it would never blossom intoa unitedwork force,the dreadedfoe of any corporate tyrant. Formycampaigns I identifiedtwo key targets: the rank-and-file workersandtheirimmediatesupervisors.The supervisors served as myfrontline.I tookthemhostageon the first day and sent them to anti-umon bootcamp.I knewthat peoplewho didn't feel threatened · . and one-on-one wouldn'tfight· Sothrough hoursof semmars, rallies th · • · I encounters l taught ' e supervisorsto despise and 'fear the umon. persuaded themthat · ·• . k onth f a umon-organmngdnve was a personal attac h. . em, a re erendum o th . 1 d hu ·1· h n etr ea ers tp skills and an attempt to . . ' m11atet em I wa f · dl givingas I co~ ell:dnen Y,even_1ov1al at times, but always unforblameforthe ~ each supervisorto feel he was somehow to anyhostagesumon m pusha_nd consequentlyobliged to defeat it. Lt·ke , ost superv1so Id . cametoseethefi h h rs cou not resist for long. They soon wringing union: tt r~ughthe eyesof their captor and went to work Although I tymkpatiesout of their workers. 00 · · unionactivistsw on the supervisors face to face my war on t he as covert. '

Confessions of

2

To stop a uni~n proponent-a "pusher," in the anti-union lexicon-the bus~erwill go anywhere, not just to the lunch room, but into the bedroom 1fnecessary. The buster not only is a terrorist· he is also a spy. My team an? I r?uti~ely prie~ into workers' policere~ords,personnel files, credit h1stones, medical records, and family lives in search of a weakness that we could use to discreditunion activists. Once in a while, a worker is impeccable.So some consultantsresort to lies. To fell the sturdiest union supporters in the 1970s, I frequently launched rumors that the targeted worker was gay or was cheating on his wife. It was a very effectivetechnique,particularlyin blue-collar towns. If even the nasty stories failed to muzzlean effective union proponent, the busters might get the worker fired. Such was the case of Jeannette Allen, an assembly-lineworker at the Stant Company manufacturing plant outside Little Rock, Arkansas'. The Stant factory was torn by the conflict between a vigorous United Auto Workers organizing effort and a doggedcounterdriveby corporate officers and their consultants. One night, as graveyardshift workers pressed and cut hot metal into the shape of radiator caps, the plant foreman's phone rang. The foreman an wered and heard the voice of a black woman announce that there was a bomb in the factory. He then let the crew go on working for nearly an hour before evacuating the plant. The police got a warning call from the same person that night. When they searched the factory they found nothing, but they had captured the caller's voice on tape. Two plant managers identified the caller as Allen. l believed it wasn't she. (WhenI heard the tape, I was sitting with Jeannette Allen herself. It did not sound like the same person.) A black woman whose intelligenceand integrityhad earned her the admiration and loyalty of her co-workers,Allen~lso happened to be an outspoken proponent of the UAW campaign. Company bosses, it seemed, considered her the drivingforcebehind worker support for the union, particularly among blacks, who made up one-third of the work force. They feared her. As oon.a Allen was implicated in the bomb threat, he was fired. Meanwhile, her co-workers wondered what kind of union could corrupt uch a stalwart character. The UAW lost the election. ln 197 5 l left the employ of consulting firmsand set out on_my o · f one-man un1onwn. Over the next eight years I ran a series 0

U ·on Buster Confessions of a lU

Levitt/Conrow .

-ng a successfulexecutive 00 . b . d 1had been runn1 d the mystery a ' I d'd almost $100,0 in us1answere ears nat 1 irmenrfirmfor two y k I had no biases for or against retty coc Y • k recru nessannually,so 1wasp Is save the desire to ma e money. . and nO career . · a former union laborunions . .goa . 1 John Sheridan, . fi J h nterv1ewwit l d 1wascalle to an I H' I bor relations consulting rm, o n oroanizerfromChicago.. 1s ad . running campaigns to thwart " · specia11ze m SheridanAssociates,. k knew little about the work but . ff orgamzewor ers. 1 'd d for the 1·ob so I put on my best unione orts to fl d to be cons1ere ' was aStt\er~dliked me from the start. My golden tongue won show. 1en an . . f$ d mea job with a startingb1llmgra~eo 250 a ay. Once1 got a taste of the ~xc1tement,the powe~, the money' ·n union busting I was hooked. Right or wrong ' fi and the gIamour1 · I nt It would be twenty years before I saw the eld becameirre eva . forwhat it is. Therearemanyformsof union busting.Some labor consultants and attorneystake on unions that already represent a work force, squeezing negotiatorsat the bargainingtable, forcing workers out on strike,harassingunion officers.My career took another path. I refinedthe Sheridanspecialtycalled "counterorganizing drives," battlingnon-unionemployeesas they struggled to win union representation. The enemywas the collectivespirit. I got hold of that spiritwhileit was still a seedling;I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeonedit if 1 had to, anythingto be sure it would never blossom intoa unitedwork force,the dreaded foe of any corporate tyrant. FormycampaignsI identi£edtwo key targets: the rank-and-file workersand theirimmediatesupervisors.The supervisors served as myfro~tline.I took themhostageon the first day and sent them to anti-umon bootcamp.I knewthat peoplewho didn't feel threatened wouldn'tfight.Sothroughhoursof seminars,rallies and one-on-one encounters, I taughtthe supervisorsto despise and' fear the union. I persuaded themthat a umon-orgamzmg · · · dnve · was a personal attac k h ont -em · Ieadersh'1pskills and an attempt to - ' ahreferendumon theII hum1 1iatet em I wa f . di . . ' · IIs nen Y,even1ov1alat times, but always unforgivingas 1 compe ed ea h · blameforth . c supervisorto feel he was somehow to e unionpushand I . . .k anyhostages . consequenty obliged to defeat It. L1 e ' mostsupervisors Id . cameto seethefi h h cou not resist for long. They soon wringing union; ~t r~~ghthe eyesof their captor and went to work Although I ty kpat iesout of their workers. . oo on the s . upervisorsface to face my war on the urnonactivistsw as covert. , 2

To stop a union proponent-a "pusher" in th - . . ·11 h ' e ant1-umonlex1h b con-td e us:efrw1 go anywh ere, not just to the lunchroom,but into the be room 1 necessary.. T e buster · he 1s . a so . . not only is a terronst; 1 d I a spy. My team an . h' routinely . pned mto workers' pol'icerecords personnel fi\es, ere d1t 1stones, medical records, and fam1 ·1y 1.1ves ' .in search of a weakness that we could use to discreditunion act· · . h'l k lVIStS. Once in a w I e, a wor er is impeccable.So someconsultantsresort to lies. To fell the sturdiest union supporters in the 1970s I frequent_lylaunc_hed_ rumors that the targeted worker was gay ~r was cheating on his wife. It was a very effectivetechnique,particularlyin blue-collar towns. If even the nasty stories failed to muzzlean effective union proponent, the busters might get the worker fired. Such was the case of Jeannette Allen, an assembly-lineworker at the St~nt Company manufacturing plant outside Little Rock, Arkansas. The Stant factory was torn by the conflictbetweena vigorous United Auto Workers organizing effort and a doggedcouncerdriveby corporate officers and their consultants. One night, as graveyardshift workers pressed and cut hot metal into the shape of radiator caps, the plant foreman's phone rang. The foreman answeredand heard the voice of a black woman announce that there was a bomb in the factory. He then let the crew go on working for nearlyan hour before evacuating the plant. The police got a warning call from the same person that night. When they searched the factory they found nothing, but _they_had captured the caller's voice on tape. Two plant managersidentified the caller as Allen. I believed it wasn't she. (WhenI heard the tape, I was sitting with Jeannette Allen herself. It did not s~und l!kethe same person.) A black woman whose intelligenceand integrityhad earned her the admiration and loyalty of her co-workers,Allen~lso happened to be an outspoken proponent of the UAWcampai?nd. . seemed cons1 -deredh er the dnvi · ·ngforcebehm Company bosses 1t h ' ' . I \ wor ker support for the umon, part1cuar Y among blacks' w o f red her As soon as made up one-third of the work force. They ea · h'l . . . b b h he Allen was implicated m the om t reat, s was fired.Meanw I e,h her co-workers wondered what kind of union could corrupt sue a stalwart character. The UAW lost the election. . fi nd set out on my In 197 5 I left the employ of consulting rms af man union·es O oneown. Over the next eight years I ran a sen 3

nfessions of a Union Buster

. \l d b such disingenuous names as Emsting enterprises I ca e dyH an Resources Institute, and I um · h · p 0 oram an h oyee _Sy~t es1s r o 1983 I had become hopelessly alcoholic; t e ruck 1t nch. But by l' d life and solo work was taking ddiction had badly comp icate my '. ·ng job at an Ohio coal waoc~:;:e::~~;1z~nd I decided I needed s toll on fime.11ladndedd ompany ve rnn re ' Sh . d . acku I called on some former colleagues fr~m _a en an s~1~ff cafi~d Modern Management Methods_ and 1~v1ted them to JOm carcass of the Umted Mme Workers. They ne as I feasted o ff the . • d ·l h did, gleefully, and my reaffiliation with MMM continue unt1 t e . death of my shameful career. Then the change started. Watching the crude and abusive behavior of my old associates during those years, I was forced _to acknowledge the vile nature of my field. _Slowly ~ ~egan to ~eahze that my more polished techniques were 1ust a d1st1lled version of the same villainy. Not only were working people crushed by the cruelty of the union busters, but the companies themselves were raped, as consultants and attorneys conspired to wring as much money as they could out of their clients. The executives paid whatever they were asked, the consultants having convinced them that a union-organizing effort amounted to the worst crisis of their business lives. In the end I understood that a union-busting campaign left a company financially devastated and hopelessly divided and almost invariably created an even more intolerable work environment than before, as managers systematically retaliated against union supporters for the high costs of the campaign. I felt repulsed by what I saw and sickened that I was, in fact, a prominent member of the club. I renounced the field. My awakening came in late 1987. I was making $200,000 a year and living on a five-acre wooded estate in an exclusive community• 1 traveled, dined, and lodged in first class, drove only the finest luxury cars. By then I had directed more than two hundred anti-union campaigns-and lost only five-and had trained th ousan~s of craven managers to go and do likewise at their own compan'.es.l was at the top of my field, one of the best and one d . of the nchest No 1 d• b · ' was not nven from the field by need. I was nven Y horror and remorse. l' f d As labor laws ha and ve pro I erate , the arena of employee relations contract negotiat'10 h b . more and f ~s as ecome infinitely more complicated; pro ess1onals h ave b u1·1t t h e1r · careers on advising · · employersmore h ow to manage th eir . wor k force and cope with the maze 4

Levitt/Conrow

of federal and state worker laws Some h I I . sue profes . are needed, and a few even do an honest . b B s_ionas c early 1thm the field of labor relations the big money is in unio;~ · . ut wW US t mg. hen I entered l• the field , on 1y a h an df u l of law firms and c . 1· d . b . onsu tmg companies h spec1a 1ze m com atmg worker organization T d s. o ay t ere are more t h an seven t h ousand attorneys and consult · h k h · 1· · ants across the k nation w o ma e t e1r 1vmg busting unions and th 'l . ' ey wor a1most every day. At a b 1 1mg rate of $1 ' 000 to $1 ,500 a day per consult~nt and $~00 to $~0? an hour for attorneys, the war on orgamzed labor 1s a $1 b1lhon-plus industry. Many consultants have given up union busting and quiet! gone about building more honorable careers for themselves so:r of like former Nazis moving to America and setting up flower shops. Not I. At the time I made my conversion, I was struggling to overcome alcoholism. In my pursuit of recovery I also sought redemption, so I came to believe it was my moral duty to confront what I had done and somehow to make amends to my tens of thousands of victims. At that moment I vowed I would do whatever I could to stop the others in my trade from carrying out their hateful mission. I would not run and hide. I placed a call to the AFL-CIO office in Washington, D.C., and spoke to Virginia Diamond, then a labor federation attorney who tracked the activities of more than five hundred union-busting firms across the nation in a publication called the RUB Sheet (for "rep_ort on union busters"). I told Diamond that she had one less union buster to worry about. That conversation led indirectly to my new vocation, as a consultant to unions on how to bust the buSters.. Not long after my change of heart became the talk of labor c,_rw1tcles, the United Auto Workers called me to test!'fy a~ an expert . f I • it against Stant . · ness m Jeannette Allen's wrong u termmauon su . Company. I immediately recognized the bomb threat ploy ~s adryphi· t I belteve t e .d cal union buster's dirty trick and I sa1 so m cour · . ' ' f II the company never voice on the police tape was not Allen s; a ter a ' ·need h l was conv1 Prosecuted her they just got her out O f t e way. b scheme ' h h d h born scare f LI some of Stant's consultants had ate e t e . . . . the verge o co apse. w h en their ant1-umon campaign was on f by the only . a per ect one It was a contemptible plan. But it was . k d measure that matters in the war on la b or·· 1t wor e ·

L

,

Cravat

Coal

The sticky Ohio summer heat had given way to autumn's chill. A miner I'll call Hal Lockett fixed his hunting rifle in its rack on the back of his dust-covered Dodge pickup, gave the bald rear tires a kick, and climbed into the cab. His eyes were as cold as the coal he had been digging since dawn every morning practically since he was a baby-cold as the coal Lockett's daddy mined and his granddaddy before him. But Lockett's heart was burning. Two months had gone by since a handful of well-dressed strangers had walked into the converted roadside motel that housed the offices of Cravat Coal Company, bearing poison and promises. In those two months Lockett had stopped believing. Men who had worked together like brothers for years-some were brothers, for chrissakes-had started taking blows at each other's heads and saying nasty things about each other's wives. Some had stopped talking altogether. Lockett still wasn't sure who those strangers were. He knew they'd showed up just a few weeks after the guy from United Mine Workers _had come around asking people to sign little yellow cards and saying the union would help the miners keep their jobs and make sure they could afford to see a doctor. Sure, Lockett knew all about that. That's what his daddy had told him, too. But somehow the whole thing had just gotten crazy. His foreman, usually a nic_eg~y, had taken to badgering the men, threatening them, questt~nm_g ~hem, and telling them didn't they know they'd lose everyt~i~g if hey let that goddamned union in. The workers were so divided, some couldn't stand next to each other in the pit without st arting a fight. Lockett kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove the wind ing road from the mine to a converted farmhouse at the edge of th e 7

onfessions of a Union Buster

Levitt/Conrow

·ncongruous fame rested in . hose soIe and i rirrytown of Cadi_zw ce of Clark Gable. Lockett . drove the a,~og been the b1rthpthla.d f the ramshackle building, one of . all .nto e s1 e o f ed on the brakes, and shut o f ,ickuppracac Y1 fc I . , Cravat fieldo nces, s anun d h . he six . h lf a dozen secretaries tappe away at t e1r back of the truck, he motor. Inside, ka lk d slowly to nundanetasks. Loe ett wa e . ·n f . ck and released the . sa.dfery.ThH e pus hed ifted his n e rom its ra , mhouse and stomped ms1 e. en a one:ipenthe door of the far f L k , .ntelligible curses streamed rom oc ett s man war brok·e out. Unl . l d fil mouth as his free hand grabbed paperweights, stap ers, an e foldersfrom nearby desks and hurled them across the room. He gavehis weapon a quick cock and squeezed the tngger. One shot out. Then another. Then another. Lockett tore through the rang · d· h ·1· A building pumpingbullets out the windows an into t e ce1mg. secretar;screamedand dove under her desk. Then a man's voice was heard:"What the hell? Stop him!" Lockett blasted away, sobbingand ragingall the time. Bythe time the Cadiz policearrived, Lockett's face was stained with tears and mud. His eyes had lost their focus. No one was hurt, but a handful of townspeopleand Cravat office workers had gatheredfor the spectacle.They knew the rifleman as a veteran minerout at one of Cravat's most remote pits. Everyone knew the unionbusinesshad been gettingto him, poor guy. He had enough trouble,with his marriage on the rocks and all. People had been talkingabout it for weeks. The police loaded a subdued Lockett into the car and drove off to the station. This was no good.

the

I firstmet Cravat Coal on paper. One hot August day in 1983, l sent the paralegal student who worked as my assistant to the NattonalLabor RelationsBoard office in downtown Cleveland to pokethroughthe fi_lings. That was the method I had developed to gen~ratework dunng slow times. It turned out to be a brilliant tactic' for often . . . dnve . before com. I d.1scovered a umon-orgamzmg pany executtves had a · · Th · · . . . ny susp1c1ons. e t1melmessof my call ma de it 1mposs1ble to ig d h h. nore, an t e c 1efexecutives' panic allowed me to suggestthat h . h ouroff . 'h_lavmgcaug t the trouble early we could launch . ' ens1vew I e the · eg)' Th • f unionwas st11l struggling to develop a strat. at, m act was th .h e case Wit Cravat. My student-assistant had discove d ' . . a day bref a bunion repre · pet1t1on · · that had been filed . sentatton Just e ore y the Un1t d M. d. Wheeling,in neighb . e . m_eWorkers District 6, base 1n ormgWest Virginia. The UMWA aimed to ors

ganize the 485 miners at what was then th • e nation's Iargest m · dependent coal-mining company. l gave Cravat a call. The call reached Mik p k . h . e us anc the elde t o f t he four Yugos1avian-American brothers h .h' . s ran Cravat Coal and a handful of related bu: o, wit their sons, "M p k . h 1, messes. r. us• anc ' m Marty Levitt' pres1·d enc of Human Re sources Institute of Cleveland. I thought you should know tha; your · · cam. of a union-orgamzing . company . has .become the victim paign by Umted Mme Workers. Were you aware of th ~,, He wasn't. But it didn't take Puskarich long to le:t~e know where he stood: He wasn't going to have any fuckin' union, that was for goddamned sure. They had tried this shit before he told me. Well, they were not going to get away with it. ' _That, of course, was the entree I needed. I kept my language polished but my message tough as I pressed Puskarich."If you're intent on beating the union, we should get together as soon as possible," I told him. Puskarich wasn't sure. He didn't go in for outsideconsultants, liked to handle problems himself. He had an in-houseattorneywho could stifle any union shenanigans. I told Puskarichhe might not be aware of how deadly a United Mine Workers organizingdrive could be. If he lost the union election, there'd be no turning back, no recovering the days when he was boss of his own company.I recommended he talk to a labor lawyer I had worked with for several years, a brilliant attorney by the name of Earl Leiken.Puskarich said he'd meet with me the next day. The drive down to Cadiz was a trip into another decade.The town of four thousand souls stood nestled in the scarred hills of the flattened Appalachians in eastern Ohio. There was only one highway through Cadiz, and the peculiar Cravat Coal building stood off that road like a camp symbol that the town was somehow lost in space and time. The long, two-story brick structureretained the sterile and prim look it must have had as a motel. The cond. to corporate offices seemed ha lfhearted, for secretaries an version . clerks could be seen roaming the outdoor hallwayscarryingpapers . to another, 1·ke 1 motel. maids. k ·h and coffee from one execunve M er Mike Pus anc , I When I found myself before Genera. anagld be like no other. I understood that this anti-union campaign wou b "th bushy t 1 Puskarich was a hulk of a man, a 250-pound deaS1"':k ened him 11 . d h ough han s. b eye rows, massive forearms, an uge, r .d B hnev then at . my mind to the late hard-line Soviet . Leom rez ' in 9

·on Buster Confessions of a Uni

Levitt/Conrow

. t Puskarich's long-sleeved h Communist par Y· h. f "Id d ff links looked out of place; 1s the helm o t e nd starchedwhite shirt a g~ e_hcu Id-and-diamond rings. Puskarthick fingerswere adodrnel_wit georexplosive·as I sat across from . , I was cru e us temp , 1chs anguage. could see that he was not a man ' him and ~xplame?my sltrarrn~! the Puskariches would be a liaof subtlenes.Instmcuvey . . d . .. . . . figl1tbuilt on subtle d1stort1onsan mamp. , bihty111an ant1-un10n . I knew I would have to rein in the Yugoslavians tempers ulanons. . . lest they give the union promoters more fuel for the organmng campaign. . AsI explainedmy strategy,I watche_dPuskan~h fi~get. He ~as not usedto this kind of talk. "The entire campaign, I told him, "will be run through your foremen. I'll be their mentor, their coach.I'll teachthem what to say and make sure they say it. But I'll stay in the background.This will be a case of overcommunication.I will make the foremenfeel they have postdoctorate degreesin labor relationsbefore this is through. They'll fill their employees with so many nasty little facts about unions, they'll all wishthey'dneverlet this get started." Puskarichwasn't sure. He had never thought of foremen as management. The only managementwas the Puskarich clan. The foremenwerejust a bunchof stupid miners, grunts like all the rest and not to be trusted.How could he count on them to take on the unionfor him?Hell, they'd probably called the union themselves. "You'llhaveto do it," he commanded. 1. objected.Think about it, I said. How could I come in, an oMutside~, an_dconvincethe workers not to trust another outsider? Y ann-umonmessagew Id . the union as a . ou turn on portraying h power-ungry mterloper d b d . . , an no o y was gomg to buy it coming frorn the company'shued N h wouldh f gun. 0 , t e words and the warnings k . aveto come rom peo l h e t ey wor ed with every day down in the pits from th 1 and that ,~eeklyp/y&eopk e t ey counted on for that good review " ec . Here'show it is," I told Pusk . . angryeyes."You'll anch, fixmga steady gaze on his . . come to see th" . d. d1sgu1se.Onceour ca . is umon nve as a blessing in be the leadersthey s~~l: gets rolling, supervisors will learn to ~naketheirpeoplehap ua d ave been all along. They'll learn to Just be workingfor :ypan htoklovewhat they do. The men won't another umon · problemaga· ye ec anymore, and you'll never face m.,,

h

Puskarich couldn't be persuaded by such h. h d ·d d a ig -roa argument ' I k new, but I dec1 e to throw it in to make th C aittorney happy. I wanted him on my side. I warned Pu k e . hravhat . s anc t at would do some unusua I t hmgs throughout the campa· . . .. ign, some activmes . h fi d ff . he m1g t n o ens1ve, others corny. He brushed ·d h . H. I d b h d . as1 e t e warnmg. 1son y ou t a to do with embracing his fo 11· "W 'II . h f remen as a ies. . e convmce t e oremen that when the National Labor Relat10ns Bo~rd holds the_representation election, the workers will not be vo~mg fo_ror agamst the union, but for or against the management, mcludmg all of them," I told the Yugoslav."To lose the election would be a humiliation, an indictment of their ma _ h . nage ·1·. 0 6 ment a 11t1es. nee t ey see 1t my way, the foremen will glad! Y join the war on the UMWA." Puskarich started to growl, but his attorney silencedhim: "Listen to the man. We need him." The boss lifted a diamond-studded hand to his fleshy face twisted his mouth, and asked my fee. It was $1,000 a day pe; consultant-I planned to use several-plus a $10,000 retainer.Puskarich complained, "I've never known anybody worth a thousand a day." Then he barked at his secretary, Dottie, to make me out a check for $10,000. He offered his hand and commanded,"You're in charge." During that first meeting, there were lots of logisticsto map out. I insisted on holding the kick-off meeting in just two days; I didn't want the union to gain momentum while we chewedon our pencils. Cadiz was an uncomfortable four-and-a-half-hourdrive from Cleveland, so naturally I was to stay in town during the week. Puskarich put me up in the best there was, a Sheraton hotel in a neighboring town. But even better was his weekendshuttleservice. Every Friday evening throughout the seventeen-weekcampaign,he had the company plane fly me to the Cuyahoga County airport near my home in Gates Mills in suburban Cleveland,just a half hour away by air. Every Monday morning the plane picke~me up and. delivered me to Cadiz, where a company car awaited my arrival. From the moment I read the UMWA petition for Crav~t, 1 knew we faced a bitter fight. The key to my so-called umo~· campaigns had always been to pamt · the Iabor prevent1on . organizat,·on as a greedy outsider . · supervisors.and and to convince foremen that their jobs depended on its • destruet1on. · MeanwhileI

10 II

confessions of a

uJU·onBuster

Levitt/Conrow

with a human face-now r management ld worked to recast uppe human-so workers wou but always very MWA silly,now generous, d for a union. In the U I . there was no nee . I b cometo e 1eve .d bl f . not that the miners umon was had a particularlyform1a e h~et,·catedor even more aggressive . bl or more sop ts I more honora e . th UMWA was more than a umon. h r But to miners, e . t han any ot e . f h kers at Cravat were the first m three ·ty Someo t e wor Itwas f~m1 . b I to the UMWA and they were not happy generanonsnot to e ong . . ' . C d. R&F about it. The only other major mmmg concern m a tz was CoalCompanydown the road from the Cravat headquar~ers, another non-unionoutfit owned by the mammoth Shell 011 Comeffect the union had been locked out of the town. Yet pany. In ' . · ·1 Fd l amongminers,to speak against the umon was a sacn ege. e era law blessesa union-organizingdrive if 30 percent of the workers sign authorizationcards invitingthe union in. At Cravat, 80 percent of the minershad signed.How was I going to get people to fighta unionthey had been brought up to think of as the Mother Church? I was convincedI shouldn't tackle Cravat on my own, so I calledfor help from four former colleagues at a Chicago-based labor consultingfirm called Modern Management Methods, or ThreeM. By 1983the union-bustingfieldwas bursting, and it was easy to find eager ass kickersin need of work. Joining me at the CravatbloodlettingwereTom Crosbie, an executive vice-president at ThreeM and my onetimementor· Ed Juodenas a large impos, ' 1.~g figure and a fifteen-yearveteran' of the ignoble trade; Dennis Fisher,a meticulous,softspokenmethods man; and Kevin Smyth, an mtense,portlyman with a look of malevolencein his eyes. The firepoweraddedby thoseunion-busterheavyweightswas phenomeCnal. Yet th~ aggressiveness of Cravat's union activists turned the ravatwar mto. one of the blood.1estof my career. By the time the defeat of the unionwash. . C one rank-and-fil . history,six ravat foremen had been fired; I . e mmer ad gone riagewas in tro bl b crazy; at east one mmer's marh u e ecauseof busterforces·and co unsavory rumors floated by t e Iess Crav t f ·1· ' unt shatteredas the enf . a am11esand friendships were . ire popu1at1onof s h . •d The intensityof l out eastern Oh10 chose s1 es. I th everytool availabletooyda.~dto h e UMWA dictated that we use iv1 e t e . 0 .h f wit oremenwould b h mmers. ne on-one interviews of h usua1, but attorneyLeike t e heart f t e counterunion drive, as en, my ellow d experts, and I knew we coul 0

12

begin our sabotage even before the first meet' w d . · lL b mg. e nee ed Just one too,l t h e N attona a or Relations Act of 1935 It so happens that the NLR Act, the bible of . II . b . . b . b co ecttve argammg, can e a umon uster's best friend In its c I · h · , f d · omp ex1tyt e nation s un amental labor law presents endless possibilitiesfor delays, roadblocks, and maneuvers that can undermine a union's efforts ~nd frustrat_e_would-bemembers. ln a bit of classicunionbuster irony, we d1v1dedthe Cravat workers by forcing them together. Cravat ran a handful of businesses in addition ro its twenty-five Ohi~ mines: three trucking firms, a fuels company, a couple of quarnes, a farm, and a Kentucky coal-miningconcern called Blue Grass Mining. Only the Ohio miners had been approached by the UMW A, and we were betting that workers in other divisions could be turned against the union, particularlyif we got to them first. Our first legal move, then, was to petition the National Labor Relations Board in Cleveland to expand the UMWAvoting unit to include all Cravat workers. Leiken was an opaque, colorlesspersonality, but when it came to forming legal arguments,he was a genius. The UMWA, although it used a seasoned attorney, was caught unprepared for the kind of sophisticatedmaneuverof which Leiken was capable. The attorneys sat through a day-longhearing before an NLRB officer, which was held in the city clerk's office in St. Clairsville, a town about fifteen miles south of Cadiz and only slightly larger. Witnesses for both sides spent muchof the ti~e sitting on benches outside the city building, eating pizzaand waiting to be called. The lawyers then submitted their briefs to the NLRB regional director and awaited a decision.The beautyof such legal tactics is that they are effective in damaging the union effort no matter which side prevails. Our petition to expand the Cravat voting unit was filed two weeks into the campaign, and the case took at least three weeks to resolve. Thar kind of delaysteals mo· · · d nve, · wh.1ch is · gready dependent mentum f rom a umon-orgamzmg on the emotional energy of its leaders and the sense of. urgenc~ among workers. By dragging a union through the p_lodding lelga · was s ug5Ystem,we showed workers that the labor orgaruzanon. h h .h . k fix hey m1g t ave gis and inefficient certainly not the quic r I ' hop d · e it wou d be. . for rhe inaugural When the sixty Cravat supervisors assembled Id ot have meeting that sweltering day in mid-AuguSt' they cou n 13

~ Levitt/Conrow . o( a Union Buster confessions

he foremen arrived under . . d he bloodletting yet to come. Tr at the meeting in a letter imagmel t. g been commanded to appeJ ned the union drive as orders, 1avin k . h in which he con em from Mike Pus anc ' om large enough to . . ,, a "cns1s. didn't have a ro The Cravat headquarters k . I s had never seen a reason nt-the Pus anc 1e . . h ld . h fit its ennre manageme h k" k-off meeting was e m t e t e ic b . ther-so to bring them aII roge t white-steepled Pres ytenan I f n aging but e egan ff f basement o a ,· f Cadiz. I got the first whi o my prey church on the outsklIIts oh k' g lot in my black Lincoln Town ld · to the c rnrc par m d as rove m d Th IO t was lined with aging American-ma e • Car . that first ay.h e . hunting nfle. Rugge d men fill e d th e ickup trucks eac sporting a . h ~hurch base~ent. They didn't know then h~w muc~ nme t ey would spend crowded around folding tables m the dingy_ ce~ent hall. Twice each week, for four months, as I prepared to d1stnb~te a damningnew union "fact sheet" among them, I would be calling the forementogether to make sure they understood and could promote its message. As the men entered on that first day, most grabbed a polystyrene cup from the table in the back of the room, but not everyone filledhis with the coffee cheerfully provided by Cravat executive secretaries.Rather, the cups would serve as spittoons for clumps of brown tobacco spat at regular intervals throughout the threehour revival.A blank pad of paper and a pen sat on the table next t~ the cups, and next to it was a hand-lettered sign that read Please SignHere. That was _a p~op, and one I had grown very proud of, for 1 had never seen it fail to make its point. I watched as one by one, the dmenstooped to jot down their names. After signi~g some sauntere to the edge of the h II d I d ' to stud th . a an eane against the gray wall y e commotion before th O h . 1 of buddies slap d em. t ers approached a circ e tenselaughter X\e,one or twdoof them on the back, and exchanged v seeme ob\ivio O f h h . . h · up and claiminga fold. h . us t e ot ers, walking ng t .it l"k mg c air then s . . . I e a horse They d ' wmgmg 1t around to strad dl e st . are at the hulk' d th Odd b p k e and of suited men wh mg us arich brothers an O flanked them at the bride's table. Thesewere mountain m y ne\ sh· h en. oung and old 11 Theirirts, t e hunting caps, and he , a wore the faded flanforearms and back avy leather boots of their trade. facesrudd d s were massi h . . ve, t e1r hands rough their . Y an chiseled th · M1kep k • ' eir words f Th · ' know th us anch spoke first H e~. e1r mistrust ran deep. e union's after us. Weli :/ot nght to the point. "You all 14 ' re gonna stop them, and here's

the man who's going to help us do it. This here is our hired gun, Marty Levitt. I want all of you to listen to him. He's in charge." I stood and launched my campaign. Except for one disclaimer at the end of the morning, I didn't alter my kick-off show for the miners. They had to hear it all, no matter how esoteric, no matter how offensive. I had to convince those mountain men of at least the injustice, if not the villainy, of the union system they had been taught to revere. "This is no union campaign," I announced to the silent gathering. "This is a war." I liked to entertain as I taught, so I packaged my message in melodrama and comedy. From beginning to end I paced up and down the aisles, gesturing dramatically, looking straight in the miners' eyes, making them take part. I never let the energy subside. "Guess who the union's fighting? Everybody. They're fighting you. This is going to be your victory or your defeat." I didn't have their hearts, I knew. But all eyes were on me. Not a sound was heard, save the rhythmic kersplatt of tobacco wads as they hit the rigid bottoms of the cups. "If your workers vote in the UMW A, you will have failed. A pro-union vote is proof of your inability to lead. If you let it happen, both your workers and your company will suffer-permanently." My aim was to coerce the foremen into thinking of themselves as holy warriors. Of course, the Crusades imagery worked best if the foremen truly came to believe that the union was evil and that to sabotage it was akin to doing God's work. So the miners were in need of a little reeducation. . Putting on a mock air of ignorance, I challenged, "What is a union?" I scanned the faces, blistered by the sun. Already many eyes had softened. A few volunteered definitions: workers fighting for their rights; an organization that could negotiate a contract on behalf of the workers. Wrong, I told them. b _A union was a business just like we were. And what did any Uu~mess need to survive? Money. Now, it so happened that the d nited Mine Workers had suffered great losses over the preceding e~ade. The U.S. mining industry was in deep retrenchment. The ~~ fur-laden coal like that mined in southeastern Ohio had been amed for acid rain. Minerals companies had closed, merged, re1 oc_ated, and otherwise restructured shedding union contracts and union mem b ers m the process. 1n ' the preceding · ten years t h e IS

Confessions of a Union Buster

UMWA had lost 60 percent of its member~.Partly be~ause.of de. . d partly due to admitted finanoal m1sman· h clmmg emp1oyment an k . h d operated in the blac on1y once m t e agement the umon a h . . h d .' The net worth of t e organization a preceding twe1ve years. . dropped in half over that time. . I turned to Mike Puskarich,who apparently was learning someh. elf that day. "Mike, what would happen to Cravat . ,,, F thmg new 1ms I h. Coal if you lost sixty percent of your custo~ers. ortun_atey, 1s posturing didn't get in the way, and I cut him off as quickly as I could. · d d A businessgets moneyfrom its custom~rs,I contmue , an use_s the money to pay workers, buy more eqmpment, expand the business.By federal law a union can get mone~ from only one place~ the membership.Everyoneknows that unions charge dues: that s how they pay that organizer and that attorney back in West Virginia. But dues are only part of union money madness, I declared. Striking a tone of sympathy, I asked, "How many of you were aware that unions can levy fineson their membership? If a worker does somethinginterpreted as 'anti-union'-it can be as trivial as talking against the shop steward-that worker can be sent to a union trial and made to pay a fine." When membership dwindles, as it had in the UMWA, the union starts to run out of money, I told my listeners.Sooner or later the union has to go on the warpath to colonize new groups of workers. That's what we had here-not an organizingdrive, but an invasion. "This union is desperate," I declared. "They're going to do whateverit takes to restore some of their lost revenue. That's why this is a war." I went on, pacing energetically.I was preparing to deliver one of my favoriteanti-unionanalogies,and I always got melodramatic when the time came. "Do you have any idea what supervising at Cravat will be like under a union?" I asked the group. I scanned the faces and focused on a young, blond, gentlelookingman: "You married?" I asked. "Yes, sir," the man replied, his twang revealing a life in the Appalachians. I moved in closer. "You love your wife?" "Yes, sir." "You sleepwith your wife?" The man blushed."Uh, yes, sir."

lit

16

Levitt/Conrow

"Well," I continued, "how would

· 1aw s1ept between you and your wi·fyou m-

. 1I.ke it. 1f y

. our mother. e every night'" The crowd broke out m laughter a d . · of the room hooted, "Not bad. you shou~da v~~cefrom t_heback Well, maybe you're lucky, I told the boy bsete is mofther-in-law." ' u most o us wo Id , . 1 . want our mot her-m- aw m bed with us That' h . . u n t I h . . . s w at it willbe lik 'f for you I we et t e union m· everythingyo d e .1 ' u o or say to yo employees w1l have to be cleared through the h . ur the . mot er-in-aw 1 union steward. , "And who will the union steward be?" I asked."W II 1 tell you; he'll be the laziest worker you have the onee '• ehtmhe . h U . , wit t e b1ggestmout . mon stewards don't work for nothing yo k They get all kinds of union perks, time off for uni~n buusi~~:· super-seniority, special privileges, bonuses." That steward I told my recruits, would be the foreman's nightmareand the ni;htmare of every hardworking miner on the crew. So what could the foremen do about the union threat?It was time for a lesson in law. I walked to the back of the basement room and picked up the legal pad on which the minershad signed their names. I handed the tablet to the miner sittingnearestmeand announced that everyone should make sure he had signedthe pa· per. While the tablet was being passed up and down the aisles,I distributed copies of a federal government guide to the National Labor Relations Act. The fact that the booklet was a government publication was not serendipitous. It is crucialfor the unionbuster to establish that what he is doing is sanctioned,evenpromoted_ to a certain extent, by the U.S. government. The labor law guide spelled out what an employer could and could not legallydo to th~art a union-organizing attempt. The bookletwouldteachthe miners the limits of the law, and I would tell them how to bend and even break those limits. . . · · an anti· I started by outlining the four forbidden actions 10 union · campaign. • They were the fundamentaI5, not becauseIdwas so concerned about upholding the law, but becauseI wandtem~ · . · to o any trainees to learn to commit the acts without appearing th·ing illegal· " "A · h eatenemployees, representative of management cannot t r deliver Iw . to show you how you annot can inter· h arned, " but we're gomg t rears without doing anything unlawful. A managerc ·thoutaskrogate employees. We'll teach you how to inter · rogatewi 17

.Li:Jttnr

Confessions of a Union Buster

.

. y cannot spy on employees, but you can sure mo any quesnons. ou · Th b 0 h nd you cannot make promises. e an on keep an eye on t em, a . b df . . . k y 'll see that while management 1s arre rom pronuses 1senc Y· ou • k b .. h. the union goes about wooing your wor ers y promising anyt mg, . , ,, making generous promises that it can t keep. . . I walked up to two miners. "Hey, you," I said ma playful t~ne knocking him gently on the arm. "At the end of the meeting to one, d d d II I . " h. u here's going to give you one hun re o ars. promise. ~~: ~o laughed. "Well, what do you think?" I asked the rest _of the group. "Would the \aw allow me to make a careless promise like that?" The miners waved their hands and booed to show they knew better. Of course not. Ah-ha. Tricked you. Suspicious looks turned inquisitivewhen I declared that I had just given an example of the kind of promise unions make all the time, and that they are perfectly legal. "The law forbids the party with the power to deliver from making promises," I explained. Since the company, not the union, has the power to raise wages and benefits, authorize more vacation, guarantee job security, or improve safety conditions, the company is barred from promising any such rewards during a union-organizingeffort. The union, on the other hand, can promise whatever it wants, because all it is really doing is promising to ask managementfor something. All the union representatives are going to do is go to the company and ask for the goods it has already promisedthe workers. I referred to the discussion of collective bargaining in the government booklet I had handed out. I asked a miner to read one key sentence.While the chosen young man was still struggling to pronounce the first word, I realized he was illiterate and quickly moved on to someone else. The second man read: "Neither party is requiredto agree to anything or to make any concessions." There you h~ve it, I told the group. When a union wins the right to col\ecnvebargaining, it wins only the right to ask. The workers may get more. But it is also possible to wind up with the same or get less than they already have. "Do _yousuppose your workers knew that when they signed th0se union authorization cards?" I asked the men. "I bet most of them never even read the card." .k lthsohappenedthat the United Mine Workers authorization card, l1 e t at of many unions d bl d . . for union . memb h. ' ou e as an application ers ip. I proposed that most of the workers who signed did not reis

Levitt/Conrow

alize they were applying for membership and might b . h dh . e angry to find out t hat t h e umon a oodwmked them into it The k h . · wor ers ad m . d bl k essence,s1gne a an. check. I picked up the yellowpad signedb 'all the foremen and held 1tup for all to see. "Did all of you si·g th. y . ,, k d n 1spaper voluntarily? I as e the crowd as I moved slowlythroughth Heads nodded. "Well, let me te_llyou what you signed."I beg::;:~~ ing a lengthy mock membership authorization statement which in' cluded the following declaration: We the following individualsdo, of our own freewill,affixour signatures to a blank sheet of paper to formallybind us to this authorization. Effectivethis date, we unanimouslyagreeto pay the Marty Management Union an initiationfee of $1,000 and subsequentmonthly dues of $200. We alsoagreeto payanyspecial assessmentsor fines,which, fromtimeto time,willbe levied. We swear our oath of allegianceand fealty,overand aboveall other considerations, to this union and its constitutionand ritual. The idea of the gimmick was to get the word out that the workers had been buffaloed into signing the authorization cards. It was our hope that some workers would call the union to ask for their card back. They would be told that the cards were union property and would not be returned. All we needed were a few skepticsto plant the suspicion among workers that they were beingrailroaded by the union. The skepticism also would serveto sow the firSt seeds , asked of divisiveness. . What could the company do to fight for its freedom. 1 th my audience. Then I answered for them. I told the foremldcnkc out they cou ma e . . 1ega1 11m1tswere clear: to get our message ' d"d h statements I not statements of fact or of opinion, as Iong as t e W . ' bout what to say. e, .h thing constitute a threat. They were not to worry a I them wit every the experts, would take control and supp Y h f ts in the they needed for the campaign. We would suppIYIt e acge'rto be f . d b he genera mana orm of twice weekly letters s1gne Y t Id ly the opinh . .b d1stn uted by foremen to t e workers. We wou supp Id be dis. h. h he letters wou ton, through group meetings at w ic t h·ng the foremen I cussed. We would supply the methodo(ogy,hteac approachtheir at group meetings and at individual sesSlOns ~w tor All we asked , .on sennmen . . crewmen and track each wor ker s um. beatingthe u111on. . 1 m1tment to from foremen was the emonona com e 1·mportantthan . h. was mor From that day until the elecnon, nor mg the anti-union campaign. 19

It I

l

Confessions of a Union Buster

. thing in the kick-Mf meeting was stanUp to that pomt every 10 h. . d e with a homespun appea . ne t mg was

Confessions

0{a

Union Buster

h ugh the office, doling out the money in cash and cake a srro 11t ro

l

)

f . ting however, also made him treachalong the way· Wh made Da 1y ascma , d ffi ac · d h firings were no secret, an o ce emerous. The sudden an kradsat Daly's whim. "He ran the company I knew chey e P oyees . C wor Steffen World's vice-pres1'd ent o f Ia b or rewith fear,' says urt ' I d lacions during the 1970s. ' f W Id' ~ 000 employees in 1973, 2,500 were a rea y un0 or s .,, f I · · f . d I f omewhat protected rom t 1e uncertamt1es o ion an c 1ere ore s b' . . Dal life. The mechanics, dnvers, pilots, and ca m crews who h b lk of che World work force were represented by a y I · ma de up c e u . nearby Teamsters local. Only the white-collar emp oyees were still . not organ1·zed , and Daly was loath to let them fall. He resented · co deal with che Teamsters and spent a great deal of ttme h avmg k h . ' . b . d money over the years just to ma e t e union s JO tiresome :~d difficult. If che Teamsters wouldn't go away and leave him alone chen he would make them slug and grunt for every inch. For exam~le, whenever a union member filed a grievance against the company, he challenged it on principle and steadfastly refused to senle che difference, Steffen says. Daly insisted that Steffen take each and every complaint through the full, months-long grievance process, all che way co the last step, arbitration. The company spent thousands of dollars along the way, and so did the union. Steffen said he personally fought more than one hundred grievances on behalf of World, and lost only two. Daly also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars during the mid-1970s to prevent the whitecollar workers from unionizing; the Teamsters tried twice to bring the clerical workers under the union's wing. Daly tried to oust the Teamsters altogether during a string of labor strikes and work stoppages from 197 5 to 1977. Although he never succeeded in ejecting the Teamsters, Daly did become quite adept over the years ac weakening the union's grasp. Former employees tell how, by laying off workers from World Airways and having them hired by his foreign airlines, Daly was able to remove a number of pilots and flight attendants from the union contract. The fact that Daly kept Air Mali and Air Yemen employees out of the union riled the Teamsters and was a continual bone of contention during contract talks. But Daly was intransigent. He said simply but emphatically chat those were separate companies, and they were non-union. . Daly's anti-unionism was virulent. Perhaps that is because "it was less a business philosophy than a personal battle," as Michel 90

Levitt/Conrow

Rousse\in says. "No one [told] D I h a Y w at to do H band, and no one was to stand in his wa ,, · e was a o~e-man unclear, Daly designed a workplac y. L~SC the battle Imes be e motto to msp· d 'd . ire an gu1 e hts troops. As clerks and mechanics labo d h and receive their Daly counsel. On the re i1t bey couhld look upward wa a ove t em hung the ad. . . "P f . momt10n. er ect1on, not correction ,, 1 d d 11 · n ee , t ere was one voice at W or Id , an d t h ere was never any questi·on w h ose .1t was. My first meeting with Mendelsohn went well· h . . d •• . , e was mtrigue · I b b y my sp1e a out utihzmg the supervisors and cle I . d . ar Y entertame b y my zea I. H e wasn , t gomg to give in easily however k · . wou Id b e up to h'1m to build the case to Ed ' Dal . «w,h ' nowmg 1t y. w at you say ma k~s sense, but we already have good representation in these matters. Mendelsohn told me World had an industrial relations man, Steff~n, whose full-time job was to deal with labor issues. On legal questions the company turned to Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the Los Angeles-based mega-law firm that has represented numerous celebr~ties, including Ronald Reagan during his presidency. My presence, tt seemed, would be superfluous. Yet Mendelsohn was charme_d enough by my youthful gutsiness that he agreed to talk it over with the attorneys. Before leaving his office, I was sure to get the lawy~rs_' names. I knew I needed them on my side if I was going to get this Job. I planned to give them a call myself. With Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, World was in very capable hands indeed. The airline's lead labor lawyer, Jerry Byrne, was an expert in the Railway Labor Act, the 1926 law that, together with its 1934 amendments, still defines worker-management relations in the railroad and airline industries. His partner, Steve Tallent, also was well schooled and intelligent. It would be a pleasure working with such a top-notch pair, if only I could get their blessing. I reached Byrne by phone at his Los Angeles office and launched my pitch, mixing my practiced tone of certainty with just the right amount of deference for Byrne's superior knowledge and his seniority: I wouldn't presume to tell him how best co do his job, oh no. I wanted only to offer the services of my company for the technical tasks. "As a labor attorney you already know that the best way to get to the workers is through their supervisors," I teased. "Now, I'm certain you don't want to go in and do all that work with supervisors. Well, that's what we do. We run the campaign at the company level and let the attorneys concentrate on the law." 91

Confessions of a Union Buster

h h d eard of Three M, but he was skeptical. 1 Byrnethought e. ak I d he didn't want to risk letting World L. a b?rIaw could be tncbecause ·y, an the consultants had been c1umsy. It I trouble fall into lega hand over control. Now, the last thing I just didn't seem. smart to to feel he was bemg . shoved as1'd e. So ttorney wanted• was a won't pass gas unless we cIear 1t . wit. I1 you. d Bfo1 an«w· I promise yrne, e • J , planning the campaign, you have t 1e Jast word. ven t oug we re . h h E rgenc)' and we have to get a letter out nght , away, t ere s an eme , . ,, If hcall you and read it to you. There ~o~ t be any s~rpnses. I'll I y word too. Not only did 1t keep me 1ust out of a Iways kept n1 , . b k reach of the law, but it fed the attorneys' piggy an s, and they always remembered that. I needed attorneys to get work, and there was no faster way to get the lawyers in my corner than to make money for them. Every time I c~lled an attorney to ~!ear a letter, it was another fifry dollars on his meter. They loved it. Byrne said he would be in Oakland in two days and agreed to meet with me then. In the meantime he talked to Mendelsohn and set up a conference at World headquarters. There, I was to meet one more member of the World inner circle-Brian Cooke, Daly's somber, even-tempered senior vice-president, who was to assume the presidency after the emperor's death. After letting me talk for a while, Byrne quizzed me on my knowledge of the Railway Labor Act. True to form, I hadn't even bothered to look at the railway act before going into my meeting. But Tom Crosbie had warned me that the question might come up and had supplied me with the official Three M bluff: "If they ask you, tell them you haven't worked under it, but that there are principals in the firm who are very expert at it," he told me. Three M liked to sell itself as a highly evolved company, with a methodology so developed and a staff so highly trained that the consultants could be considered "interchangeable parts." A client need never worry that we might not be able to handle a situation. The Railway Labor Act would be no problem; I had been briefed enough on it to know that it is even more generous to employersthan the National Labor Relations Act, because it does not specify what employers may and may not do to combat a union-organizingattempt. The National Mediation Board, which overseesunion elections for railroads and airlines, does not involve itself in the organizing process to the extent that the NLRB does. There are few ground rules and no list of unfair labor practices for union election campaigns. If a union feels an employer has broken 92

the law, its only recours . Levitt/Conrow . e is to su . is very time consuming and coseI in federalcoun wh· I1 of proo f. That gives railroad andt Y. and 1· holds to 'h.ighic of course advantage over unions th air tne compa . er standards . an orhe niesan e contend with the nuisance f r employerswh0 I vengreater 0 . at east have to respondingto' unfair complaints. lab . Crosbie had told me h or practice , owe~r ~ to hear h ow we would take ad ' ar attorneyswo Id , want to know that we wouldv~nrageof the law.Theyu n tldw_ant . d 1· n t cause th wou 1usr deI1vere my mes as instructed·· "I' m nor rhem any headaches. So I I know,· we Iwould still conduct th e expert,bur from h L b e campai . . w ar gn as if it were und the N auona a or Relations Act,, S0 Byrne liked that. · we would be law abidin;~ • The World executives and thei.r attorney d pa1gn strategy. It made sense·. 1·f we wanted sh en fc. orscd 111)' cam' turn down the union, we had t . t e O nee workers ro . . d d o convmce the h m t at Daly was willmg, m ee eager, to change the wa h order to do that, we had first to . Y e ran the company. In convmce rhei . . . r supervisors,who fetI more directly oppressed by Dal h the kid-glove approach would be so y r a~ ~heirsubordinates.Bur were they going to sell him on it' o~ ode I aracrer for Daly.How attorneys said they needed to talk.. en e shohn,Cooke, and the audience. Would I please wait our ~dt~ver, t en they'd ask for an SI

e.

I returned to my perch in th

. ing and clipping. Time dragged eo~ec~pt1on arelaand re~u~1ed smokous, too nervous to read . w~s unc iaracrerisr1cally nervAs the minutes ticked by rbchat or st11leor do a~ythingbur wait. was u se d . egan to ee vaguelysick. My stomach had pt t, an I was dizzy. The anticipation of this Dalycharacter ·11sec go ten to me. Finally Mendelsohn emerged·· "Mr . Da Iy w1 you."

f

Oh, God. bersBefore M' h Mend I D leIso h n an d I were allowed to enter Daly's cham, ic e a y's p~rsona I assistant, . checked my appearance.He then I d the fie I us t ro~gh his office to the solid wood door that stood as knock:adtefttatwn between Daly and the commonplace. Michel a butle ig t Y, then opened the door, holding it in the manner of almost:ua~b entered. When I saw what lay beyond the door, I Withtre e my eyes. Before me stretched a great room so filled asures that I fe It I was entering · a sacred museum.The ' Wassixty f suite eet long and at least thirty feet wide; everywherethere

h

w;

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of a Union Buster

. and por1 screens ' marble statues, 0 nenca were handwoven ru gs' th f d of the room, be hin cl a h eavy f . f I at at e ar en . darkened except or a pair o celain vases. D a Y s . cl k l enure suite was h 1 h h. h ceiling directly above t e es , antique des k · T . ~ white lights _pos1t10ned e h~y shrine. 1 which illuminated Da\ ; 0 :ched slowly, silently, with the revern Mendelsol-U: a cl I P~ great cathedral-or perhaps the h f orsh1pers encenng a ence o w Oz As I walked I half expected co_hear a t unthrone ro?m_of · "I Daly the Great and Ternble. Who are dering voice 111:on~: . amlychar' I should not be Marty the Small . . •f h ou )" I knew msrmcttve Y •Mee k p ower fu I m en rarely respect subm1ss1veness, and cl h even I t ey · · r wou Id Ptay Daly che way I had playe ot er corporate demand ,r. chieftains-only much more so. . The great and terrible Ed Daly looked oddl_y out of pl_ace amid his ornate surroundings. A broad, rugged-lookmg man with a bulBut, of course, bous nose, h e se e med more suited co the corner bar.f h" cl k h. Daly didn't have to go co the corner. On the top o 1s es ,_s 1mmering in che spotlights, stoo~ a tall c:ystal_ glass filled with an amber liquid. The air around him was thick with the pungent smell of Pinch Scorch. Daly was half-drunk and feisty. . . "So you're the fella who chinks he can help us get nd of this union bullshit " he boomed. "Why should I hire you?" I was read~ for the pissing contest. "I don't think yo~ hav~ an,y choice, Ed," I said coolly. "From what I've heard, this unions gonna kick your ass." . He knew it, coo, and he launched into the most profane tirade against unions I ever heard, before or since. When he recovered, we got down to business. I explained how my program work~d and forewarned him that he would be called upon to humble himself, just for a while, if the strategy was going co work. He would hav_eto tell his troops that he knew he had made mistakes and convmce them that he wanted to change. He hated the idea of playing the softie. He was a fighter; he wanted to make war, not love. Ed Daly was not about to do any sweet talking. Most of the bosses I worked with felt the same: here they were, all primed for rape, and I com_e around and start talking seduction. But then I explained how it worked, bow we wouldn't hold back, we would just make department managers and supervisors do it for us. Then the cruel smiles appeared. That was even better. Let them rape each other. Daly relished the maliciousness of the plan as much as the reSt of them. He wasn't too happy with the nice-guy approach, but the

ot/

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strategy intrigued him. He was go· f . mg or n · "I hear you •re expcn. with a snort. sive," Daly said "You ger what you pay for Ed"! h b k , , s ot ac • As . · ber o f the firm, my fees were then $350 d . a Jun~or memworking with two more senior consult a ayh.I whasgoing to be , ams, w o c arged $500 a day. I cou Id n t say how much the who! h. Id · depended on how long it took. e t mg wou cosr; rhar Daly didn't like uncertainties. He didn't • d d. mm spen mg money . I d f an ots o it, to slaughter the union but h d I ' " , e wanre contro over how muc h . Do the whole thing for twency thous d d , an an you re hire d , " h e pronounce d . h I jumped for it. I had been with Three M or1 ly a f • , • < ew mont s, and surely d1dn t have the authority to sell a job at a discount. As it turned out, the voting_ didn't take place uncil July t 974, seven months later. The final bill would have been more than twice Daly's offer. But I was afraid to let Daly get away, so I made the deal. I was to catch hell for it later from Melnick. On the job with me were Tom Cro bie, whom I had called constantly during my courtship with World, and Jim Bannon. We set up shop in Howell Estes's old office, which had remained vacant since the general's resignation, and also made use of the orn::ite corporate board room. Bannon and Crosbie both were ba ed out of town, and they juggled the World c::imp::iign with ochers they were running simultaneously. As the West Coast partner, Cro bie also was responsible for coordinating a dozen other consultants. He hopscotched around the country Sheridan style, looking in on campaigns and collecting fat fees for his presence. For Cro bie, World Airways came in handy as yet another base of operations for Three M's itinerant business. When he w::is present he spent much of the time holed up in the president's office, phoning clients and associates, hunting down work, and helping out with other campaigns in progress. I was on the World job more consistently than the others and therefore handled the bulk of the one-on-om:s and the letter writing and was the design::ired emissary to D::ily's office. But the dynamics among the three of us were cruci::il to our drama. Each had a specific role to play, with a cript written ro suit his character. We played off one another masterfully. Bannon was the numbers man. He could churn out anti-union st atistics like no one else. From union leaders' salarie to the potential cost of a strike Bannon could combine the numbers so th::ir they told only the stor~ we wanted workers to hear. Crosbie played

94

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1' I

I

it· he knew how to be mean and to b d cop He was expert at , 1 a .· ff ctive From a white hot rage he cou d sudmake his meanness e e . . . . b · frightening reluctant supervisors into o edenly turn coId as ice, . A C b' b I I art of good cop my favonte. s ros 1e eat d1ence. got t1e p ' h . fu f ers I romanced them. I was t eir re ge rom g 1 away at t 1e mana , . d b h · . I Th y turned to me for protection, an I ecame t e1r 1d . • h1scrue ty. e · and cl1eir pimp· I heard their confess10n, priest . . d counse e them, then sent them out to sell our lies to the1_rfnen s. __ We launched the World campaign with a flurry of act1v1ty,as s did cranking out two or three letters a week and calling , . • we alway 1 · , in the supervisors for propaganda rallies each ume. Da y d1dn t involve himself, except to sign the letters and hear a weekly progress report. Daly gleefullysigned any letters that ridiculed the union. lf the tone was even vaguely conciliatory, he was less willing and had to be cajoled. Occasionally Daly was too drunk even to read the letter. Then we would take the circular co Michel, who had become quite expert at forging Daly's signature. It was just as well that Daly stayed away from the campaign. It would be a lot easier to do a makeover on him if he remained out of view. At the group meetingswe stuck to our roles: Bannon filled the crowd with facts, Crosbie intimidated, and I made love. "Remember the Golden Rule at World," I told my captives time and time again. "We're family." We divided the supervisors among us for the private meetings, then cross-checked each other continually. We had learned that although some supervisors would be able to deceive one of us, virtually no one would be adept enough co trick all three consistently. Since we were dealing with office workers, most of the supervisors were women. Generally women were more easily intimidated than men and also more eager to believe in the possibility of change. But the World Airways ladies were a tough bunch. Anyone with a few years of Ed Daly behind her was sure to have developed a hard edge and a thick layer of skepticism. They were even more mistreated than their subordinates, and they dumped their complaints on me in the interviews: "We need something that can protect us from Ed Daly"; "Look what Daly did to Wanda-that could happen to any of us"; "He gives us a con of responsibility and no authority"; "You never know what he's going to do when he's drunk." Daly was a loose cannon, they knew. They cold me how every few months he'd turn up in the large, open, office area and go on 96

Levitt/Conrow

a rampage. Like a trigger-happy . h inhabitants, looking for a targe:.nier, h_ewouldsurveythe office cluttered desk, a little casual cha nyt mg could set him off: a hairdo. He'd zero in on his prey a::Cr;, an /nbecoming Outfitor rim's desk, he would curse and pound hi:\st owenn~ ov_erthe vic"Get off your butt, you lazy slob Wha s, shoun~ginsultslike or "What makes you think you c.anwot wetay1_ngyou for?" Go comb your hair." Often he would ~ . erehookmg like that? nve t e poor woman to tears. ' Daly was nor always so terrible bur he al k h • . . ' ways ept t e presf sure on. Superv1sors despised his meddlinginto th d _ -d f h · d e ay to ay a · fairs o t elf epartments. He kept his fingerson II h . a t e contrasI yet sull held them accountable for every detai'I• So t'1ghr was I11· ~old that department heads could not even give their employee nme off co go to the doctor or to a funeral without his written appr?val. The invisible_thumb of Daly was pressingon them all the ume, even when things were quiet. Many supervisorstold me privately that they would organize a union for themselvesif they could figure out how to do it; they would have loved to have a contract. They seemed quite unconcernedabout the possibleconsequences of their private blasphemies.Like the rank-and-fileemployees, the management people had learned not to waste time wondering how Ed Daly would react. He'd do what he'd do, and not even he would know what it would be until the last second. There wasn't a thing anyone could do about it. Perhaps no one knew that better than Michel.Michel'sformal title was chief administrative assistant, but that obliquedesignation belied his intensely intimate relationshipwith Ed Daly. Michelwas a genteel, dignified man, one who dressedimpeccablyin European suits and spoke with a refined Frenchaccent.He occupiedthe office just outside the chief executive's and thus was the final buffer between Daly and the irritations of the outsideworld. Dalycompelled all his executives and assistants to serveas attendantsand whipping boys; it was not uncommon for him to phone Mendelsohnor Brian Cooke or Michel at two in the morning to harangue them about a misdeed or demand some immediateservice.But no one carried a more personal burden than Michel. Michel cared _for Da_l(s drunken body, battled his angry spirit, and endured h!s humiliations more than any of the others. Michelpoured t~e drmks, drove the limo, did the shopping, fetched the coffee,earned the lug~agc, and listened and listened and listened. From 1970 to 1980 Michel

r~

97

Confessions of a Union BuSter

II

· Daly loved rhen reviled, then loved again. He was the compan1on , . h . ed at least six rimes during r ose years. h d H f I was fired an re tr . .I I or at all of one mind about unions. e e t the M 1c1e was 11 d"d , . rridly for one thing, and he t n t know , . " Teamsrers beI,a Ved llo heir antics But he did know Daly. He was an I to ma ke Of t w1at .· " . · l very primitive " Michel says. Ed Daly was a gentus: he amma , ' . I II I . could sit with a pack of lawyers and outwit r :em a . t was 111srinctive. Bur he was terrible with personal relanons. I:e hurt _people terribly, over and over again." He also was very s~mgy. ~1_chel calls World wages "just adequate." Employees received mm1mal medical coverage and enjoyed no pension plan. Clearly rhe job of convincing Daly's employees that they didn't need a union was going to be rough. Taming Daly would be impossible, we knew. We would have to try to keep him on a tether until the voting was done; he was going to be a big, big problem. From rhe beginning, we had another problem. It, too, had a name: Curt Steffen. Curt, a veteran union organizer, former airline executive, had been working as World's labor relations hie man since the year before Three M arrived. Just weeks after Curt was hired in 1972, Daly had bumped the former personnel direcror our of his office and installed Curt, with the title of vice-president. From that moment until 1977, Curt worked as a one-man front line in Daly's never-ending battle with the unions, slugging it out with the Teamsters day after day. He did Daly's bidding in the tedious war over grievances and executed His Majesty's orders to fire or demote or punish employees as suited each particular transgression. Curt was tough, and he was loyal. A stocky, muscular man with a permanent scowl and a smoldering temper, he was perfect for the role of union antagonist. Curt had started his labor career much like Sheridan, as a staff member and eventually president of an IBEW local in Chicago. He went on to become an organizer and negotiator with the Airline Pilots Association and later landed a job as the vice-president for labor relations at Universal Airlines in Chicago. Then, somehow, word got to Daly that Curt Steffen was looking for a job. Daly knew of Curt and had been looking for a toughie to help him keep the unions humble; he made Curt an offer. There was no time to think. Daly had told him, "Get here on Monday." Curt took the job. Thanks to Ed Daly, Curt was on the rise. He was the resident expert in labor matters at a daring airline and was forever talking 98

Levtivc onrow .d , . in the pres1 ent s ear, tellmg him h . ow to h dl . an e this or running get his approval for that. Over the 5t year C h ·d W Id I pa cons1 er or emp oyee relations h. un ad come to t guarded his domain jealously. Then al is personal fiefdom and h~ denly Curt Steffen was irrelevant He ong cam~Three M,~nd sud. . In f . was nor tnvit d . union campaign. act, he was shoved .d e tnto the antilike everybody else, simply to show up a~s~e. Cun_was expected, he was told. ur meetingsand do as From the first day it was clear that c . un meant to trouble. It enrage d h 1m the way we came in t00 k . ~ause us started bossing people around. Here he w~s ove~_his Job,and Daly's dirty work every day, and suddenly h~ up t~ ts elbowsin . . wasn t good enough to shove I t h e rea I sh It. Who were we anmvay' Th f k" . f . lk . ' ' . . rec so t-s inned boys m ancy sultS wa 111 and suddenly everybod h • · h W II h Y as to sit up • stra1g r. .e , e sure as hell wasn't going to· He had been domg just fine without us. Daly cherished him, wasn't that so? It was Curt, _after all_, who had p~epared Daly's f-word letter to union orgamzer Loms Celaya, which I had read in the Chronicle. Ironically, Curt objected to Daly's stubborn refusalto let the clerical workers _organize. Nor that Curt was a softie.Hardly. Bur he was pragmatic. He had worked for and with unions for many years, and he knew how to handle them. He used to tell Dalythat it was much easier to control employees when they wereorganized. With a union, everything was institutionalized.There was a proper way to ask for something and a proper way to complain.It was all spelled out. "I used to tell him, 'With a union, I only have to deal with the business agent. It's better to have five businessagentscometo see me every day than all these employees with all their complaints,' " Steffen recalls. But Daly wouldn't have it. He wouldn't let go. Now, just a month after the Celaya letter, Curt couldn't believe what was happening. Suddenly he found himselfsitting ,~ith the other World executives before an audience of sixty supervisorsat the kick-off meeting of an anti-union drive in whichhe wouldhave no say. There he was, shoulder to shoulder with a dozen thcr officers of World Airways in a manufactured show of management · against the union. ' He stared out at the faces of the desolidanty · cIassroom· BcPartment heads and supervisors who filled t hc giant fore him, Tom Crosbie and Marty Levin and Jim ~annon werdc "ra · • h h k·ng their rattles an ~ ncmg and danctng around t e room, s a 1

°

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Confessions of a Union Bust er

. . d ms And all he was supposed to do was listen playmo t 11e1rwar ru · . :rnd nid. Ir made him sick to his stomach. Curt did listen, enough to know h~ hated every damn word we to sat·d and enougI1 to know he was g01ng to do what hed could d · When that first dog-and-pony show en e , Croswork against us. . . Bannon, a nd I approached Curt to let him . know what we b1e, would be needing from his office. We were going to want the mes of all supervisors and the employees who reported to them, na . h W as well as all pertinent personnel informanon on eac o_ne. . e talked to him dispassionately, as if giving an order to a wa1~ress_m a fast-food restaurant. Curt puffed his chest and stuck out his chm. "Okay, you guys are here now. There's nothing I can do,,ab~uc that," he grunted. "But this kind of shit I can hand!e myself. With his whole body shaking, he barked a summary of his backgroundexcluding the felony. Crosbie responded coldly: "Okay, so you're the personnel man. Congratulations. Just understand one thing: we're running the show." When Curt had left, Crosbie called me and Jim to a powwow. "This guy, he's not going to play ball with us. Watch out for him," he warned. "Don't give him too much. We may throw him a bone every now and then, but that's all. If he can do something to make us look bad, he will. Don't give him anything he can use." We were used to having to contend with wounded personnel directors, and generally it didn't bother us. We had learned that most executives saw personnel work as merely clerical-the administration of payroll, benefits programs, and the like-and that they generally resented spending money on it. Many of the companies that hired us, even relatively large ones, did not even have personnel departments. They saved their pennies by distributing the various tasks among the secretaries. Where there was an actual department designated as personnel or, more contemporarily, human resources, more often than not the function continued to be mostly bureaucratic. The human resources officers screened applications, put together the policy handbook, handed down judgments on leaves of absence, and produced tons and tons of employee-related paperwork. Personnel directors were just midlevel administrators, not leaders. I came to expect that the head of personnel would be the most incommunicative and unempathetic bureaucrat in the plant, possessinglittle vision and no authority. Rather than seeing human resources as a vital support service for employees-as the name 100

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suggests-our clients tended to .d I er rhe whole departmenr a costly bother. As a result we •veconsb1 , ' re a e to co I I personnel office, taking charge of th mp ere Y overrun the I even the most closely guarded • fe emp_oyees and appropriating tn ormatton Tl1 d" •h have grunted and groaned b h . · e •rector mtg r , ut t e way his bos fi d . . about time the damn departmenr was s gure tt, it was put to some use ff Curt Ste en was a little more proble . h · .f H h. d I mane t an most personnel h. b ch1es. e w me P enty about our steppi . . h h. ng on is roes ur our confltct wit im turned out to be weightier than ti , , b. • 1e u u:iI barrIe f C over tur . urt s o 1ect1onsto us were substantial,and he worked hard throughout the campaign to sabotageour strateg Th .d d · y. ose people d I nee a union, and he knew it. So there he wa t lk. . h. h , a mg at Daly, te 11mg 1mt e workers would neverswallowthe bull h·it WC . h were c hurntng out; t ere he was again, cursing our names and speculating on our high prices; and over there, ridiculingour message of love and our promises of change. Perhaps,had Curr been another type of man, he would have won. Perhaps, h:id he been able to harness his rage and suppress his pride, Curt would h:ivc been able to undermine us as he hoped. But Curr wa a vi ceral being, one driven by passion and incapableof the elf-controlrequired to carry out a protracted war with :in ice cold enemy.He was easy to provoke and not hard to disable, given rhe righr weapon. Against Curt, our weapon was indifference.We didn't let him engage us in battle. We dismissedhim, brushed him aside. As exciting as it was to be working for Ed Daly, the real focus of my life was Alice. I thought about her day and night and spent much of my day hiding out in my officeat World composinglove letters or calling her on the phone. When Alicewas working,I left messages for her at hotels in Boston, New York, Washington,St. Louis. When she was home, I was useless. I was so cager to be with her that I could hardly think straight. I knew she would be waiting for me, so I cut out of the officeas early as I could and sped to fetch her from her parents' home. I romancedher the only way I knew how, by spending a great deal of money. We ate at expensive restaurants; I bought her fancy jewelryand sent her e!aborate bouquets. We spent our nights togetherat Holly ~o~d, ~rinking exotic liquors bathing in the hot tub, and luxunatmg in thc peace and comfor; of that Marin hideaway.Aliceand I plannedro marry in April 1974. With the wedding just a mont~ away,.we rented a small house in the charming baysidecownof Tiburon,1ust 101

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. . the Ho\\y Road house, and beg~n making plans down the hill fron~ T h' . The World Airways union vote was set \ moon 111 a \ti. for a 1oney the schedule seemed perfect. . . for )uly, so, to Ed Daly, anyway. One night, around m1dlt wasn t-not was Dave Mendelsohn. l had been blab1 night, the phone :ang. dt·ng nuptials for weeks, so certainly the l . bout my impen I bing r were my honeymoon p ans. Those a t b h . dd'1ng was no secre , 110 bl Daly was getting nervous a out t e union we 1 ' were me pro em. f d . Plans d I h told me· he couldn t have me so ar away unng . , .f b dnve Men e so n . d' d h' , l f t\ e campaign. What 1 t e union 1 somet mg d h the fina stage o 1 l had serve as t e em. ·I f somethinoi:, went wrong? sneak y ,~ W\1at • • D I throughout the campaign, and he came to count on 1ssary to a Y · w1·ndow and his voice to the employees. me as \11s . . He was very upset. Rather than honeymooning on a tropical island, would l consider using his cabin at Lake Tahoe? 1t wasn't what l had in mind, but l agreed. l had been told that King Hussein had once stayed there, so l figured it couldn't be too bad. Alice and l were married amid the rococo elegance of Grace Cathedral atop San Francisco's legendary Nob Hill. That night, as husband and wife, we drove to Dollar Point in Lake Tahoe, in search of Mr. Daly's little cabin in the woods. What we found instead was a grand, six-thousand-square-foot mansion that rose up like a castle on a hill high above the lake. We arrived to find the cupboards packed with full liquor bottles, the refrigerator stuffed with fine food, and the beds all dressed in satin sheets. Life was quite different for Edie Withington and her staff at Local 29. By 7 A.M. each weekday, half a dozen of the local's most earnest men and women had deployed themselves at the various entrances to the World Ai.rways office buildings. Wrapped in heavy sweaters against the morning fog, they handed fliers to secretaries and file clerks as they hurried to work. The union folks then headed for their own jobs, only to return to the World offices at quitting time, when they would spend an hour or two trying to talk to the workers. Edie's nights belonged to the TraveLodge, one of a dozen motor inns that populated the ugly, mile-long stretch of Hegenberger Road linking the Nimitz Freeway to the Oakland Airport. There, in a stark meeting room, she would listen to World Airways office workers' troubles and try to convince them that Local 29 could make a difference. More often than not there were five or six anti-union employees at those meetings, workers who had been 102

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sent_ by me to_ disrupt the caucus and put the union on the deh d fensive. Sometimes a couple of supervisors . l b even s owe up a move stnct ·1 y ver oten by the National Labor Relat·ions A ct as an ' act o f ·1 h h survet lance. But at World we were working · . wit t e ra1 way act, an d t h e c h ances of anybody . . making a stink abo ur a coupeI o f management types sh_ow~g their faces at a union meeting were pretty rer,:1ote. The ant1-umon workers made the going very tough for Edie an~ the rest of them. Sometimes they would shout and sneer. C?ther times they _would ask questions-hostile, misleading question~ .. And sorne~,m~s they would just sit quietly, glaring at the pamc1pants and Jotting down mysterious notes on little pieces of paper. Whatever tack they took, they always unnerved rhe employees, even they didn't rattle the union officers. Every rime they asked a question, they dropped a bit of distorted information. "They insisted that joining the union meant you had to go on str_ike,''. Edi~ sa~s: "They harped on union dues a lot. Then they said thmgs like Figures don't lie, but liars figure.' It put a damper on the discussion, that's for sure." The management plant is a standard presence at unionorganizing meetings. Their job is manifold: disrupt the meeting so the union can't talk strategy; take the focus off workplace problem by turning the questions on the union; intimidate union sympathizers; report back to the management. Of course, if the anti-union workers are acting as spies, the railway act makes that patently illegal, but big deal. It's almost impossible to prove. Edie Withington believed in her union. As a secretary at :1 Construction Laborers Union local and a union member for more than thirty years, she knew how unions worked and what they could do for people. She had seen lots of organizing drives and heard thousands of workers tell stories of injustice and abuse. So when she met with World Airways employees, she wasn't surprised ro hear workers accuse their supervisors of favoritism, inconsistency, and a general lack of fairness. She knew those to be the capital sins of management, the corporate inequities that most often led workers to seek a union. Edie was surprised, however, at the depth of mistrust of World management and at the charges leveled against the chairman of the board himself. "Daly scared people," she remembered, "particularly when he was drunk. Some thought he might even get violent. They had no job security. Management was arbitrary, capricious. They could get fired for anything or for nothing." Under those conditions, why

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weren't work_ers ter'.1 ~'They had nothing to lose." . l . . , As Edie saw it, paign. h • sue of ·10 6 security was t1e question of pay. h Secondary to t e is ln 1970 Fortune magazine listed Ed Daly amo~g t e twenty-five . h · tie world. Yet office workers at his company earned nc est men m 1 h d' than they would elsew ere, accor mg to Cun about 20 percen t less their benefits package was meager. One former secSte ffen, an d h · 1974 h. h embers rnakino $451 a mom m , w 1c comes to retary re m o 'k d h . b . . f about $2.62 an hour. The secretary _h e ~r JO m spite o the wages, saying her co-workers were l_1kefamily. lt was more than familial warmth, however, that convinced most workers to put up with World's paltry pay. For many, terrible wages were the tradeoff for the company's considerable travel benefits. Even though World was just a supplemental airline, the company made available to all employees the enviable Interline Pass, the airline industry's premier perk. With the pass and the price of sales tax, World employees could fly their families anywhere in the world on any airline. World also allowed its employees to fly for free on any World Airways plane that was being delivered for charter service. If the company needed to send a DC-10 to Paris the following month for a European charter tour, for example, employees would be invited to sign up for a free trip. So dearly did employees prize World's travel benefits that the perk became a major obstacle to the union drive and a primary weapon for us. World employees didn't have much to lose to a union fight, except the travel package. So we warned the supervisors, "You know, there's no way Ed's going to let you keep your travel benefits if the union gets in." In our letters t0 the rank and file, the threat was more indirect; we preached that in contract negotiations the union would have to barter for every penny and every benefit, even the ones that workers already enioyed. The message was clear. The World Airways administrative supervisors were an angry bunch; it was a struggle to get them to campaign against the union. To better control the battle, we set our sights on eight key supervisors, who together oversaw more than two hundred clerical workers, almost half the voting unit. For those eight we prepared an_intensified version of the campaign, with double doses of everythmg. We mixed sweet talk with warnings and saturated them daily_,starting out soft and letting the tension build, until the threat of discharge seemed the only logical conclusion. "Can't you see 104

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what the union is doing to this ,, like family. Now look. What's compa~y? we teased. "We were wrong' Don't h·. . your people trust you? What have you done to brin better find out. Go out there and~~~ t is union thing? Well, you'd to trust you again. (Pause) Of course ~ r°~r ~eop!e and get them 15 having a union in here, you know tha/ ~ ~ut goi~g to stand for 1 own people, he's going to hold you respon~ble c~ht control your in these conferences is confidential but · d ar you ~ell _me 1 am un er an obliganon • ' to report your e ffect1veness to my client." We demanded that the eight as managers of k d · 1 . ' ey epartments turn every smg e voter against the union · No excepnons. · we d"d ' I n't want stray sheep, and we didn't want unknowns E b d A d ·f h h • . very o y. n 1 t ey, . t e. supervisors, couldn't convince thei·r O wn wor k·ers ro have fa1~h m management, then they would have to answer ro Ed Daly. Directly. He wasn't likely to be too understanding, either. On the other hand, Daly always rewarded loyalty, didn't he. Surely he would reme~ber someon~ who worked so diligently on hi behalf, perhaps with a prornonon-or even a rai e. Even later in the c_arnpaign, when we were letting less significant supervisors slide a ltttle, we never loosened our grip on the target eight. Each was called in_sev~ral times a day and asked for an accounting of every worker m his department. Each had ro fulfill several assignment daily that brought him face to face with some of the toughest, sharpest pro-union workers in the office, over and over again. After a few months the routine had the supervisors begging for their jobs, not to Ed Daly or to us, but to the pro-union workers who seemed to hold their bosses' future in their hands. After a few weeks it was clear that threats alone were nor going to be enough, particularly with supervisors outside the eight-per on bull's-eye. It had been mainly my job, both at the mass communions and in our private sessions, to give the supervisors hope rhar Daly was willing to change-to let go a little, to delegate a little, to be a little kinder, to fix some things. Some bought into rhe ruse, vowing to work against the union if we could extract certain pledges from Daly. But we needed more. We had convinced Daly he could sell the employees on a program of the benevolent father, and the employees weren't buying it. So we sharpened rhe other edge of the sword: having lured the supervisors into the confessional, we began to use their disclosures against them and their crews. Nothing made Daly fly into a rage more quickly than a suspected betrayal. He was lord, and he expected complete devo105

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reporting employees' sins, · When we bega 11 } · fid I · rion from his sub1ecrs. . 1 rhat pushed t 1e 111 e s into a of repnsa s . I rhc result was a wav_e 'tches are always 111great supp y. lonely corner. In a w1rch hu4nr, w_,tors abounded. Disloyalty could . .h h . Id in 197 rra1 Likewise, ar W or rk a little cheating wit t e time 'd ' . 'pe a sm e rerna , I , . d be anyt hmg: a gn , Id use to raise Da y s ire an put . k harever we cou f I clock, a rn1sra e, w k We tried to keep the source o t 1e pressure on a rroublerna er.. es would continue to feed us inforleaks secret, so that our captlV · s ·11 people became wary. rnaCJon. CJ , . nd the place " says Charles Pat"Marty had a reputaCJon arou , d . , f D 1 , vice-presidents. "People starte say111g, Look rerson, one o a Ys I· , " our for Marry. Watch what you say to 11m. . . sort of for somethmg he once said to fired ff got , ' urt re en S C me. He never forgot how it happened_: "[Marty] ~ould use any. sai'd against Daly. The interviews were tncky. They were t h mg you h · h h' l'k 'Ed setups. He'd lead you down this negative pat , wit t d111hgs,d1 e e report isn't always fair.' Then !you'd'] say something, too, an it.,, What Curt actually did was call Daly "a prick." 1 tattled. It gave me great pleasure. Curt had been a pain in the ass for month~, and now maybe I could shut him up. Daly was drunk when I divulged what Curr thought of him; he fired Curt that same day. As often happened with Daly, however, by the next morning the transgression was forgotten. Curt was in his office piling his belongings into boxes when he got a phone call from the president's suite. "What are you doing down there?" a now sober Ed Daly demanded. "I need you up here." Curt was back on the job. Once the campaign had settled into a routine, Crosbie, Bannon, and I found we had a lot of time on our hands. Some days we would lounge in our office for hours at a time and take turns making phone calls around the country. 1 called Alice, my parents, my friend Michael Krasny, or anyone else who could help me pass the time. Sometimes I found it frustrating, sitting there in a big fancy office with nothing to do. When Crosbie got on the horn to do his telephonic rain dances, I smoked and listened and clipped my nails. I was bored. After a couple of months we knew who was on our side and who wasn't, and we didn't need to interview every la st supervisor every day anymore. The phone calls entertained us for a while; when we tired of that, Crosbie and I killed time talking about the Oakland Raiders or evaluating women. Eventually even 106

those conversations ceased to be inter t' d . . back to work Crosbi'e Id d es mg, an It was rime to ger · wou stan up st h • .1 ander over to the door. ' retc noisi Y, and rnc"Hey, it'~ pretty quiet out in the hallway. Maybe we should get someone m here. Who should we call?" , h f "What about Judy?" I suggested "We h ·1 d h , · aven t seen er or a wh1 e, an s es got great legs." With the , help of the in-house directory , ve h a d snare h ed f rorn Curt Ste ff en s ?ffice, we summoned the person we had selected for the next hours entertainment. A lot of the time the supervisors were grateful to be called. Those who were willingly carrying out our game plan saw our office as a haven from the work floor and a break from their routine. We engaged them in conversation offered them cigare_ttes, swapped jokes, and used up a lot of time. One of our favonte comrades at World was the director of maintenance, a young hunk named Tom Ripa. Ripa looked like the actor Tom Selleck in his prime, muscles head to toe a head full of black curly hair, a thick mustache, and a perpetual grin. He was our good buddy, our fraternity brother, a beer-drinking party boy with a hearty laugh. Great at guy talk. As maintenance director, Ripa supervised two hundred workers, but only ix were clerical people. So, technically, he did not promise to be a key player in our campaign. But we liked Torn Ripa, and in the end he would come to play a role as important as it was bizarre. At World Airways we never got to enjoy the cockiness that comes with a sure bet; this race belonged to Ed Daly, and he was constantly changing the odds. Still, about halfway through the campaign a company win began to look like a possibility. We had taken all the supervisors through the same basic program as the key eight; even with considerably less intensity, we had managed to convince them all that their jobs were in jeopardy should the union win. Sufficiently worried, the supervisors kept the pressure on their workers and after a few months managed to rum the campaign in our favor. We learned that the company-as-family argument appealed to many at World, so we never let up on the message of renewal. Meanwhile we had managed to keep the union ~n the defensive, forcing organizers to rewrite their game plan contmually in order to respond to our moves and answer the question we planted. Often, their answers were lacking. At their worst, they attacked Daly. That was the union's gravest error. So powerful wa~ 107

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h. 1m claimed to despise I ... hose w10 cnt1c1ze Daly's magnetism that even ~orshiped him secretly. earned for his approval and uel irony: the campaign was all Y Itwasacr h. Daly was blasp I1emy. . 't dare mention im. about Daly, yet the union d1dn. Local 29 was looking clumsy I . . lculat1ons, After a series o f m1sca A 1 g last workers were osmg . d d ate. t on espe~ b r estimates, the company was and ineffective an . t I,e union-'i y ouNLRB election we m1g . h t h ave . h tn interest and fa1t leading by a handful of votes. In an ould have been to keep the Our pan w felt somewhat secure. . he last ballot was counted, then 1 warmth and love in foe¥~ unn tBut a Railway Labor Act election collect our check and wa_ awa~. ·ng to be so easy. . d d'ff I and it wasn t go1 . 1s one I erent Y, ion election is conducted by mail. Under the railway act, a unk I . ballots and return them to Voters have two weeks to mar t ,eir . ld b . M d. . Board That rwo-week ume lag cou e the Nanona 1 e 1anon d · . t at World it pracucally guarantee a unbu a pro bl em anyw h ere, . d H 1· • • Th telling what Daly might o. e was 1ve ion wm. ere was no . .d • • . · · w e could go into the elecuon with a so 1I ma1onty, ammunmon. . only ro have it demolished by one rash Daly1sm. . To make matters worse, on a railway act ballot there 1s no place to vote against the union. If an employee favors representation he marks the box next to the union's name. If opposed, he sim;ly does not return the ballot.. We feare~ th~t in the peace and quiet of their own homes, with nme to ~hmk 1t over, World e~1ployees might be inclined to follow the bias of the ballot and_ give the union their vote. The mediation board only has to receive a majority of ballots for the election to be valid, so Local _29 could win even if almost half the clerical workers threw their ballots away in disgust, assuming that those who did mail theirs in voted in favor of the union. With just four weeks to go before we would rum the employees loose with their ballots, our side fell apart. Twice in the final stretch Daly mounted his notorious office raids, winning a few more for the other side with each savage incursion. But he saved his ~ost srupid display for the end, just fourteen days before the elect10n. At that crucial moment Daly apparently found himself overwhelmed by the urge to fire somebody. So he did. It might not have mattered if he had axed an irritating supervisor or picked on one of his executives, as he had so many times before. But, as if purposely trying to foil our operation, this time he chose a sweet, unassuming, newly hired young accounting clerk, someone guarConfessions

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anteed to inspire sympath would be deciding wheth y among the very workers who soon for the firing made D ~r odrnor th ey wanred a union. The reason . . a 1y s . eed h even more outrageous: ch e c Ier k Paid a 6111on time · Th at , s ng t World h d · far as I knew-that no b·tt · . a a rule-unwritten, as I was to be pad ·1 h fi I d . '. ~nn _r e na ay H was due. If an invoice called for d h payment w1th111thirty days rhe check · , was to b e issue on t e twenty • h d been taught the dogma but f-ninr ay. Surely the new cle~k had bill on the twenty-third da o; reas?ns unknown, she paid one •i h . . Y. 0 a thirty-day contract. Daly was merc1 ess. T en, 1ust 111case his sever·ty , b · · I wasn t emg given enough h · attention, t . e tyrant dashed off a length Y, scat h'mg memo b cratmg · the• accountmg staff and warning the others n k · ·1 k or to ma ·e a s1m1 ar m1sta e. We didn't know if we could rescue Daly's· image from h'1s Iate t blunders. What we . . did know was that we had O n Iy one I1ope: H'1s ~1ghness was gomg to ha_v~to ask his ubjccrs' forgiveness. Crosbie and I knew our next v1s1tto Daly's suite would not be pleasant, and we wanted to be prepared; we shut ourselves in our office and plotted. Together we drafted a letter of contrition that we saw ,,s Daly's only chance to salvage the election. The letter was to be sent by ~aly directly t~ the employees' homes, rather than being handed out m ~e office, m order to create an aura of intimacy, as in the confess1onal. We hoped a show of humility by Daly at that moment might be enough to rekindle the hope sparked by all the promises of the past months. The threats, we knew, would not be forgotten. We were loath to ask Daly to bend his knees even a little, but we also knew there was no other way. With the trepidation of apprentice exorcists about to meet the devil, we put a call in to Daly's office to say we were coming. Daly could not have suspected the weight of the impending meeting; we had popped in three or four times a week for even months in pursuit of his signature. By now it was all very mattcrof-fact. This time would be different, though. This time we would fight. This time Daly would howl. Crosbie pulled out the letter and handed it to Daly, who was seated-as usual-behind his desk with_ his glass of Scotch. The two of us remained standing, like soldiers awaiting a reprimand. Daly read: Dear Fellow Employee, I have taken the liberty of writing you at your home because of the extreme importance of my subject. 109

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For many months we have all had_to en_durethe intrusion and annoyance of an outside third parry. It has not been easy for anybody. But by no~ you have lear~ed that the union can guarantee you nothing except that it will take money from you and perhaps take you o~t on strike. Your company is not perfect. No company 1s.We have made our share of mistakes in the past, and we may again in the furure. But nothing can justify the dama_ge that would be caused if we were infected by an outs1de agent. We will accomplish a lot more through a direct relationship than an arm's length on~- And so I am asking you, from my heart: Please, give us a c~ance._ Thank you for allowing me into your home with this most important message. Yours uuly, Ed Daly.

As his eyes marched down the page, Daly's habitual scowl grew more pronounced. When he reached the middle of the letter, his face reddened. His cheeks quivered.Then he began to grunt. Finally he exploded. He slammed his fist on the desk and pushed himself to his feet, leaning coward us with rage. "What the hell are you thinking, walking in here with this crap?" he howled, throwing the letter on the floor. "I'm not going to sign that fucking shit. Get the hell out of here." Crosbie and I were ready. "l don't think you have much of a choice, Ed," I rold him coolly. "This letter is our only hope. Your people are angry. If you don't want them voting for the union, you have to make them believe that you recognize your mistakes." Then the clincher, the threat I always delivered when executives balked at playing humble: "Without this letter, I can't guarantee you the election." In a reversal of our usual roles, Crosbie tried to be conciliatory, offering to change words here and there. But Daly would not be calmed. He ranted and fumed for nearly an hour. Then, finally, Crosbie struck gold; he came up with the only line that could freeze Daly's rage and transform it into glee. If we would add that one golden sentence, Daly said, he would sign. He even laughed as he penned his name. In the final edition, Daly's admission of imperfection was followed by the proclamation: "As you know, I never have and I never will bow to a gun at my head." Very John Wayne. Very Ed Daly. The letters were printed on Daly's personal stationery and put in the mail chat night.

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Within a few d Levitt/Conrow us a chance" letterays supervisors bega was . n repo · wanted to believe . getting a war mng rhar the "Give m one b. h m recepr· . to elieve in Ed D I T ig appy World f . ion. People really b . Th. a y. hey aIso Wanted amdy'an d rhey wnnred or a while. f .h mgs were . nor to see h. wit a collective sigh. Weifom~ to be all right aft im angry again stress lately. He reall d ' lets face it, he has b er all, they said for the people in B _Y foes care; I mean G d een under a lot of aia a ter th h ' aw lo k h He Ien out when her husba d e urricane . • a 11d I'ookoh w har he did Crosbie, Bannon, and n was tn the hospital. y ow e helped Daly was ephemeral· and I knew that the renewedeah. mick that would sh ' . w~ knew we had r0 romance wirh . Ort-circuit h . concoct . t e railway acr el . some g1mefi nttely didn't want h d for two weeks rem· rd_oseballots sitting on pe ec;1~nsystem. We going to have t~ enti~: :°g thcm of World's p~:b~/ coffeetable a long shot, but nor . mploy~esto rip them up Thms. \~e were . h1mposs1ble:the two h .d e elecnon was worked under o ur e1g r ta un red cl k the pressure, as their bosse;gt supervisors were crumbl~~,s ,~ho to delclare themselves againsta;~~gue~,coaxed, and begg;dut~ er u111on.Dozens of otl1 open y upset with Local 29' cm our b I s attacks D crs were N enevo enc father routine. Tha on aly and convincedb ow we had to come up with a lu/ put the e~ecrionwithin rcac: people to destroy their ball B c provocanveenough to . d . We ha ots. ut what? tn ucc . . ppened to be tossin m~etmg one morning when T g aro~nd _1~easafter a supervisor tamed ~y the problem and jok:d~ Ripa_J~tne~ us. He was enter~ ~:· W~th broad grin, Ripa quip::;r"1~111h:s eng~ginglymacho

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t e1krumon ballots for a chance t e s o young women forfeiting I star naked across the airport WhO sec a hunk l"k c R"1pa running · at a scream o one w Nf as more surprised th R. . my~ fice a short while later to sa ai° tpa \~hen _Icalled him into You gotta be kiddi·ng'" h y wdasrakmg his offer seriou ly W · e gaspe . "I_twas only a joke." · . eII, why not? I said Th received the "Give us a . e ~ood w~s right. The employeeshad we_restill feeling forgivin;h~cff ~ettcr 1usta few days earlier and union anyway. The rest ,;. a t e ~orkers were ready to nix the ~ay?e even relieved enougo:~d ?,e_relievedby the change of pace st its footing; maybe Ri a' o _g1:'eus a chance." Local 29 had p s hem1e would be enough to push it

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su ervisors meeting and got over the edge. We called an emergency Ph half your employees . If more t an . the wor d out. Hear ye, hear ye. . T R' a before the votmg rip up their ballots and turn them m toh om h 1~11never forget. To deadline, Ripa will treat them to a s o_w t ~ 'ted the hook with wit: a run in the buff. Well, the supderv_1sodrsa,beaten down were I way out So raine , so . zea I. It ':"as t h eir on Y · d n thin to get this cammy capnves by then, that they would O a Y g II h . ff I . b k G f I to finally have b ad product d tof seh , t e Pa1gn o t 1eir ac s. rate u · appy supervisors hawked the promise O f R.ipa ' s o y-an . o. a Th . d company- 1·ke carnival barkers reunite i . on commission.. . ey right · bordi·nates· Step goa d e d t h eir weary su · . up, folks. This 1s our chance to be friends again, to bury our difference\ We ~eed some excitement around here anyway, don't you agree. You re gonna love this. . To my surprise and delight, the workers swallowed the bait with gusto. Clerks and secretaries giggled as they egged and prodded each other. The pressure was off, finally. Thro~ghout ~orld Airways offices the sense of rel~ef was ~alpable._ Like magic, t~e hostility had dissolved. Seemed hke old times agam, workers whispered to one another, like before this union thing. World Airways was just one big family out for a little fun. Eager to get it over with, girls and women hurried home to their mailboxes; nearly four hundred of them tore up their ballots and trotted them over to Ripa's office. And so it was that in the final days the World campaign was transformed into a circus. And so it was that we completely befuddled the men and women at Local 29, who stood by helplessly as the crowds abandoned the center ring for a silly sideshow. We delivered Ripa as promised. Wrapped in a black fur coat and nothing else, Ripa was driven to a general aviation runway that lay in plain view of hangar six. At the foot of the air strip Ripa disembarked, shed the coat, and ran.

112

The Storm It had taken me weeks of persistence to meet Ed Daly and mont~s of constancy to gain his acceptance and approval. But it took JUSt a moment to lose it all. As he did to so many others, Daly finally had me fired. In my case, though, it was deserved. After World's stunning triumph over the union, Dave Mendelsohn had invited me stay on at the company as a symbol of a new era. T?e arrangement suited Daly, because my presence would make 1t look as though he really were trying to change things. Through me, Daly could show doubtful employees th:it he intended to keep the promises he _made during the anti-union camp:iign. The arrangement suited me for other reasons. First of all, it wa~ a plum. Daly paid me $100 a day-th:it's $2,100 a month, which was as much as I made with Three M-and he let me keep the office I had used throughout the campaign. All he asked in return was that I show up every morning and that I conduct a management training session once a month-preciou little for :i g~y who supposedly was committed to changing the way he r:in his company. Daly didn't care how long I stayed or what I did really, during my daily appearances, as long as the supervisor~ knew I was on the job. I did do the obligatory monthly workshops and also continued interviewing key supervisors to keep tabs on workers' postelection attitudes. But that only took an hour or two a ~ay. The rest of the time, I was free to hustle other business, using the rent-free World Airways office as home base. The com~any's long-distance telephone line, which I also used for free, w:is like a present under the Christmas tree. I had a picnic with it. I c~lled everybody I knew. It was a rare opportunity, a singular c ance for me to set out on my own. I would have been a fool to 113

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. d me to stay, however, was \et it pass me by. What really mobnva~v\ly in love with her; l was . ly and o sess1 d Alice. l was passionate . as my life. So consume was k l d . d d f It my marriage w h ht of going bac on t 1e roa newly marne an e . f "\' that the t oug h l by desire or n ice B h Alice was three mont s preg. M . k ed me. y t en . I w1th Three sic en . ff b American Airlines. How wou d l O nant and had been laid fi y r-old expectant nymph for days bear to abandon my twen ty- ve-~edaeaprovoked in me intense and 1 very I d. l k time) T1e an d wee s at a f. . ess guilt insecurity, an 1ea ousy. conflicting feelings o protec~1~en , me' comfort. A" propos1uon gave The Wor Id irways f ·t wasn't that simple or that So I quit Three M. 0 course, I . . \ armers $5,000, an advance that l had clean l left sn 11owing t 1e P · h. h 1 · · d ic ms1ste d. requ~sted so 1 could pay for the lavish ~edding on habit of mine borrowmg money an te It became an un fortuna ' · it back The pattern caused me to 1ose never managing to pay · . • I · h' l . d b b . contacts and sp01I family re anons 1ps. , . h' . fnen s urn usmess '1 h d a complicated and troubled relanons 1p with d h ave a ways a 1 have with love. No matter how much money l ma e, as d di \ · money, l never could get ahead. 1 have chase money-en ess y, 1t _ d have been endlessly tormented by it. Money has acted b seems an · · as a cruel demon in my life, made all the more sm1~ter y my drinking. ln the years following my time at World Airways,. the combination of money and alcohol would come to throw _me into bankruptcy, force me back home to Mom and Dad,_ po1s~n my marriage, and \and me in prison. The real ~ragedy of 1t all 1s that within the world of labor relations consulting, l am not at all unusual. Alcoholism, bankruptcy, divorce, fraud: hazards of the trade the secret resume of the union buster. The boys at Three M were not the forgiving kind. The way they saw it, not only did I steal the $5,000 when l lef~, l also stole World Airways which they had been hoping to enlist as a poSt e\ection client. My sudden departure enraged them. "~o one leaves us like this," Tony McKeown bellowed when I told him and Crosbie my decision. Who did I thin~ l was? l was ungratef_ul, greedy; srupid. I'd be sorry. Harsh sennrnents, I thought, corning from gang like the big M's. But, hell, I should have expected it; that wa~ the union buster's nature as I had come to know it. We were a predators, and everyone else was prey-everyone, including one another.

V:

114

In January 1975 Alice and I h Jason Edward-the Edward in hoad our first son. \Y/c named him was born I was running tor of Daly. By the time Jason World Airways office and: co:_or~able solo business from my mon~hs. Through my coma~: a:'~mg horn~ $6,000 in the good rid I picked up a couple of relatively small coumerorgan· . . ~ 0 World's $100. Jobs that w izmgb( s th at added $500 a day to ere too 1g for O to Three M, a gesture of goodwill born ne person_ 1 pas~ed along really didn't need much h out of guilt. Alice and I money; 1 ad no b . h w.e paid no rent where we 1· d A f usmess over ead, and tve . ew months b f h 1 World campaign was ending Alice had . de ore, w en t 1c · h ' convince me we should move mto t e cottage behind her parents' h . S Orne m an Leandro . k 11 h actua y a c. 1c. en coop that my in-laws had expan d ed ·into a n·d y' A stmt m the rundown little cottage house. .· m · Al_ was a tra d'mon · , f ·1 ice s. amt y. Each of her three older sisters had 1· d h 1ve t ere rent free dunng the first year of their marriages , and now 1·t seeme d 1t · was ?ur turn. The co~tage, at 423 Sybil Avenue, had come to be known m the Campouns h clan as the "423 Club." I didn't like th c I·d ea. . For one t h mg, t e 423 Club w~s dilapidated and horridly decorated; I knew how much work 1t was going to take to transform th~ ramshackle co_ttage into the kind of place in which a person w1_thclass would_ live. But Alice was very close to her parenrs, and I liked them. Besides, I could hardly offer a better plan at the time, so we moved in. A month after my son's birth I was summoned to Daly's office for a special assignment. I was told that word of Daly's efforts to make World Airways a better place to work had spread throughout t~e company and had become a hot topic at Gatwick Airport outside London, home of World's European hub. Workers there, it seemed, were feeling slighted. Lately they had begun to grumble that they should be given the same attention as the folks at the home port. If supervisors in Oakland got to go to communications workshops and special interviews, why, so should the chaps on the ?ther side of the Atlantic. Daly jumped at the invitation. He knew it would be smart to spread the "we don't need a union here" gospel as far and wide as he could while it was still a fresh topic. I was to leave for England the next week to do two weeks of supervisor training at the British connection. Wow. London. This was a whole different kind of traveling, and I was thrilled. I was booked on a flight to London on TWA 115

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h t the major airlines offered d VIPs to fly first through a sweetheart arrangement t a 11 each other's executives. The travel dea 1.a owe f the host carrier. • \' s comp 1nnents o . . . class on any part1c1patmg air me , d I was ready to This time the big-shot VIP was to be me, an swagger. . A. ort plenty early, I arrived at San Francisco Internanobna 1 d1rp Club a private , d at the Am assa ors knowing I wou Id b e pampere . . se accounts and TWA waiting area for passengers with big expen b h" . the f I t"ll d" 1 had my mem ers •P 111 . d e m self one last time little tolerance for ,scorn ort. 5 y . h I d club through Three M and wanted to 111 u 1g before I was cut off. Ambassadors Club patrons wer~ s e t~r: from the nuisances of airport reality with the help of sue a_menmes as an exclusive ticket counter designed like an office reception are~, stuffed armchairs, color televisions, and, of course, a cocktail lounge with a full bar. d I I I headed straight for the bar. There, surrounded as ove to be by the trappings of the upper classes, I nailed_ three o_r.four straight Scotches in no time, maybe five. I was feeling as vmle as a young rooster when I strutted over to the reception des~ to ch~ck in for my flight. There, a sweet-faced TWA ticket agent ~n a cnsp burgundy uniform flipped through some_ papers. She clicked_ her tongue and, tapping her crimson fingernails on the desktop, dialed somebody on a black telephone. She hung up, looked up at me, . then uttered the unutterable: "I'm sorry, sir. First class is sold out. I can get you a seat m coach." Excuse me? Coach? Clearly this little chickee didn't realize how important I was. Couldn't she see I was Somebody? I began huffing and puffing and yelling. "I'm from World Airways,''. I bellowed, pounding my fist on the clerk's desk. "Ed Daly set this up f~r me, goddammit. He's not going to be pleased to hear about th_1s.Let me ralk to your superior. ... " TWA found a spot for me 111 first class. For one week, life in London was bliss. World Airways had issued me a limo and a chauffeur-who just happened to have on his resume a stint in Queen Elizabeth's secret service. The driver treated me like the royalty he had grown accustomed to. He took me sight-seeing throughout London and accompanied me to Harrod's, where, naturally, I bought a cashmere coat. I worked very few hours, as usual. It seemed my life had been blessed. Then the telex arrived: 116

Levitt/Conrow

Marty Levitt. You are to mediately. Report to Davi~eturn to Worl~ Airw~y Oakland im· . t T Mendelsohn 1mmed1a1elrupon your re urn. rave 1 msrrucnons to follow. The · 1second wire came the next da Y· It or d ere d me ro b oar d :i parncu ar stretch . DC-8 that World A"irways was s h.1ppmg · b ac k h e A t Iantic that night The stretch DC 8 across t I · · - was an exrrn Iong p anef sometimes used to ferry equipment and crew members back and orth for the charter flights · It was a b.1g, b'1g airp · Iane, an d ·1t Ietely empty that night exceptfor n was comp d my noisy · 1· I • 1 c an 1tt e conscience. I had ten hours to think about wh a t wou Id h appen to me w h en I got b ac k . I had imagined a much more fiery scene. Daly would be drunk· he'd rant, he'd curse, he'd pound his fist and throw me our of hi~ office. Then, probably, he'd get on the phone the next morning :ind order me back to work. I could take that. But what I faced when I got back to Oakland left me stunned and wounded. There w:i to be no great story, no hilarious memory, no romantic melodr:Hn:i attached to my exit from World. I was simply cut. It wa dull .rnd mundane and ordinary-and deeply humiliating. I didn't even r:ite a personal firing. Instead I wa told to report to Mendelsohn who dispatched his duty crisply. ' "Ed heard from the president of TWA," he told me opaquely. I knew he wasn't through. I didn't try to stop him. "He snid that you made some trouble at the Ambassadors Club. You know, Marty, our relationship with these airlines is very delicate bccnuse we're a supplemental carrier. We depend on the goodwill of the ~ajor airlines for our charter business. What you did has jeopardized a very important relationship. Becau e of this, we no longer want you to continue with World Airway ." And that was that. I never saw Ed Daly again. At the 423 Club everything was small, including my kitchen. But that diminutive corner of home soon became my life. Once I left World Airways the kitchen at 423 Sybil Avenue came to erve me as both office and bar, as anchor and olace. The kitchen connection then set a pattern that persisted for more than two decades. After getting dressed in the morning, every morning that I wasn't on a job, I found my way to the black rotary dial telephone mounted on the kitchen wall. Alice served me coffee, rubbed my shoulders, and looked at me hopefully. And I got to work. Ir was 117

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fine with me that the only telephone at 423 was ~ "."all phone, for I never could do a sales call sitting down. Before dialing th e nud~ber · I h o ped to seduce , I steppe mto of whatever corporate executive character. That character wouldn't sit, for he was st rong an~ sure l ways m · control · He had no time to · and energetic· and emp h anc-a waste and no patience with ambivalence. In that character t~ere was no trace of the worried husband and new father who had 1ust pissed away a good job and was forc~d to liv~ in his i~-laws' converted chicken coop. There was no hmt of his deepening dependence on the bottle. That character had talked his way into ~nd out of trouble all his life, and he knew just what he was do_mg. _He stood staunchly, he paced, he gesticulated, he modulated his voice, and he never let go. That character knew his prey well, understood the greed, the ego, the fears, and the hatreds that drov~ them .. He played adeptly to those frailties, weaving into his sales pitch a little sweet talk a dash of sarcasm, a well-placed bit of advice, a dose of bragga