Into the Eighties

1980

INTRODUCTION

President Jimmy Carter had a disappointing, inept record in his one term in office from 1976–1980. Inflation was rising fast. There was an energy crisis, so in one TV speech he wore a warm wool sweater urging the country to do likewise. He talked about a “crisis of confidence” which the country saw as a “malaise.” Then the fanatical followers of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini captured and held 52 Americans from the US Embassy as hostages. Carter’s vain attempt to rescue them was a total flop. So his Republican opponent, movie actor and two-term California governor Ronald Reagan swept into office in an electoral vote landslide of 489 to 49 over the hapless Democratic incumbent. GOP Congressman John Anderson running as an independent did poorly with only 6.6% of the popular vote. Although at this point in my life my reason for voting was in pure protest against corporate power. So I voted for ecologist Barry Commoner of the leftoid Citizens Party who only drew 233,000 votes and was on the ballot in 28 states. My old SP comrade David McReynolds ran his first of two token campaigns for the Socialist Party as the first gay man to publicly run for the Presidency with a nun, Sister Diane Drufenbrock, as his running mate. Reagan called his victory as “Morning in America!” in which he took the country into a long-term right wing trajectory. In the SP of my time we used to sung a parody of “God Bless America” as ‘’God Bless Free Enterprise.” This was Reagan’s gift to us as he hacked away at the legacy of the Rooseveltian New Deal he himself had supported as a young man.

MY SWITCH FROM ADMAN TO PAGE MAKE-UP

By this stage the Chronicle had switched from hot metal typesetting to composing on film, and pasting up display ads. My main tool of the trade was now an X-acto knife to go with my line gauge as an ad and floorman. All to this was just a transitory stage until total computerization of the work which eventually eliminated the composing room, as editorial eventually did all of this on this new infernal machine. But the boss eventually switched me to page make-up which had also transformed to a cut, wax, trim and paste onto a cardboard newspaper page size backing. “Cutting paper dolls,” as we called it, a de-skilling process which would hardly call for a six-year apprenticeship we printers underwent during the hot metal days. Initially, I worked an evening shift, pasting up the business section of the next morning’s SF Chronicle. My editor was usually Jim Toland, a Guild chapel chair who was cynical about the whole setup. Jim would tell me he couldn’t understand why they sent me to make up the business section, my being the most anti-capitalist printer in the joint. One night I was trying to paste up the photo of some banker on the business page. I asked Jim where I should trim the photo to fit the item. “Cut the son-of-bitch at the throat, as he’d cut plenty of them in his own time to get where he is today,” was Jim’s sardonic response. Jim also taught a beginning journalism class at SF City College. He would tell his incoming classes that they’d never get rich as news hacks. They’d “be better off getting apprenticeships in the Plumber’s Union.” Jim was my kind of guy, no illusions.

I finally got tired of working nights and wanted my evenings off. So I used my seniority to claim a slot as day-side make-up. As luck would have it, I got to work two to three days a week preparing the SF Examiner Sunday Travel Section for production. I had the good luck to get Don Fortune as my regular make-up editor on this section until my retirement. Don was a strong Guild Union stalwart, an old-timer who was Third Vice President of the Guild unit at the Ex. We had a great time working together talking union politics. On the alternate days after putting Travel to bed I would work on the Ex daily make-up production line getting the final afternoon edition of the paper ready for the street. We had plenty of down time on this shift for coffee breaks in the Chapel alcove to shoot the breeze.

RACEWALKING SUMMER

Fred Dunn and I participated in the National Masters Track & Field Championships at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in the 5000m racewalk. I was now 54 years old in my last year in the M50–54 age group. The late Fred Dunn, MD, a world-renowned epidemiologist, was two years younger than me but we were in the same age group. I had taught Fred the race walk technique but he was considerably faster than me as both a runner and walker. We both represented the Golden Gate Race Walkers at Philly. Fred won our age group in the 5000m walk with me earning silver. He stayed longer into the weekend and was also National Champ in the 20K road walk. Instead, I flew to Boston and rented a car to drive to Fitchburg to the annual Finnish Summer Festival at Saima Park, at which we were regulars since I was little. They did have a 1500m judged walk scheduled early Sunday morning at the Fitchburg State Teachers College track, which I skipped and opted for the 5-mile road run leading out and back to Saima Park. I won an award for being the fastest runner in the 50s age group as I was in good competitive shape. Most of the first generation Saima Park Finnish regulars had passed on but it was fun to reconnect with all of us in the second generation who were contemporaries.

I had another racewalk scheduled in Niagara Falls on a following weekend, the National 15K Championships, but I wanted to stop and see my cousin Jane and Mickey at Windy Hill in Walden, NY before crossing New York State by train to the Buffalo region. I remember taking the train from Boston to Albany, where I took buses down to Newburgh where Jane and Mickey picked me up for my all-too-brief visit. It was in the middle of the intense summer heat but I managed to get in some good racewalk workouts on the country roads near Windy Hill. Some great family and political talk with the two dear women as well as fine food. Turned out it was the last time I ever saw my dear mentor and surrogate older sister, my beloved Lempi/Jane, as she died of cancer in 1984. Mickey survived her by ten years, with whom I remained in touch by letter and phone until her death.

I walked a successful national 15K along the cliff paths overlooking the turbulent waters of Niagara Falls and won the Men’s 50–59 age group m about an hour and 31 minutes. My aim was to finish in under an hour-and-one-half, but the blistering summer heat took its toll on my intense pace. I was presented a beautiful trophy at the post-race banquet that followed, where all age groups, from juniors through masters, men and women, were duly awarded. The occasion gave me chance to meet and chat with most of the top race walkers of the United States at this event. I felt in my element.

EQUINOX MARATHON AT FAIRBANKS, ALASKA

Niilo Koponen had tried for months to get me to come to Alaska and run their rugged mountain trail Equinox Marathon which scaled the wild majestic wilderness starting and finishing at the University of Alaska campus at College, AK. So in September 1980 I flew to Fairbanks where Niilo picked me up in an old hay truck at the airport which took us to the Koponen homestead on the rugged roads of Chena Ridge overlooking the valley where the city of Fairbanks nestled. The sprawling Koponen residence was built bit by bit as five children were born to the couple. Karjala, the older boy who I had seen as an infant in Chicago in 1954, was living in Vermont; Sanna the oldest girl was married living in Canada; Chena Newman, the second girl, was married and lived not too far away; I never met the youngest, Heather, although we occasionally write nowadays, and second son Alex (now a Fairbanks attorney) had his own A-frame house on the homestead acreage. At the time of my visit, Niilo was running in his first campaign as a Democrat for the Alaska State Legislature, with daughter Chena as his campaign manager. He lost that race. but made it on his second try, serving eight years in the lower house, until Joan was severely injured in a vehicular collision on the 40th anniversary of their marriage, after which Niilo retired to help take care of her. Niilo and Chena were also volunteer fire fighters in their district which engine house Niilo helped found. The Koponens also had their home-built sauna attached to their living quarters with a community sauna night very Sunday patronized by their friends around Fairbanks, including Alaska University faculty, bush pilots, political allies, as well as anybody who happened to stop by, which they enjoyed for many decades. (When the Koponens first moved to Fairbanks, an old Finnish Wobbly mining family, the Herman Mäkis, had welcomed the community to their sauna in a 50 year stretch. When Niilo and Joan moved to the area, they succeeded in the Mäki family tradition after they built their own sauna. That sauna was balm to the bones of this ancient runner after the Equinox Marathon as we admired the Aurora Borealis bathing the surrounding skies to the Fairbanks city scene below from the back porch of the sauna. Oh, yes, what about the marathon itself? A trip and a half, as I took my sweet old time, stopping to take pictures all along the trails of the gorgeous mountain scenery we traversed. I even took pics of the volunteer crews who served us refreshments and water at the various aid stations. Took me well over five hours to finish, but who cared? The frequently steep turf didn’t lend itself to speed records. I was more intrigued by the scenic wonders of Alaska on my one and only visit there. After sauna that night we enjoyed a generous food and coffee table hosted by the Koponens, after which Niilo drove me to the airport for my return home.

1980 HONOLULU MARATHON

Alaska and Hawaii the same year? I couldn’t miss it.! My old DSE Running chum, Len Wallach encouraged me to do the Honolulu Marathon next which always takes place the second Sunday of December. So I signed up and flew to Oahu for the first time to run it. Touristy as all hell with Waikiki Beach crowded with nearly as many people as there were grains of sand. Where the onset of Fall came with the Equinox Marathon, we plodded in the sweltering tropical sun in Oahu. The starting gun was a cannon by an old Fort in the city at 6AM, and we proceeded straight East along the beach road past Diamond Head for some miles more before we circled back to finish in Kapiolani Park. I treated my daughter Christine Alcaraz and son-in-law Steve to a trip to Hawaii in time for the Marathon and they did the tourist thing while this old guy ran it. Prior to the Marathon the same weekend there was a Hawaiian Masters Track & Field Meet in the stadium of Honolulu’s Punahou School which years later was President Barack Obama’s alma mater as a young man in Oahu. I only tried a few field events that day and totally stank in my attempts at the Hammer and High Jump. The Marathon went OK, made all worth while by the massages provided free for all us plodders in Kapiolani Park by dozens of students of a local massage school. But my greatest gift was in meeting Rose, an African-American marathoner at the carbo-loading spaghetti feed the night before the run. We made a date to meet again at the 1981 Honolulu to run an encore of the one we just completed. I left Hawaii with stars in my eyes in more ways than one! Unfortunately, that romance fizzled out in a couple years.

EDITORIAL INTERJECTION!
Reminder: A Finnish IWW Branch in Berkeley!

A neighbor just loaned me an exciting book: “Left of the Left,” a Memoir of Sam Dolgoff, an old-time Wobbly anarchist personality, written by his son Anatole Dolgoff, 391 pgs. AK Press, 2016. It’s peopled by hundreds of personalities that had touched on Sam’s life, like Carlo Tresca, Ben Fletcher, Emma Goldman, Ben Reitman, Paul Avrich, and the exiled Russian anarchist revolutionary Gregorii Maximoff. The name that immediately caught my eye was the late Dick Ellington, of Oakland, CA, a comrade and Wobbly Fellow Worker. Severely crippled for most of his adult life with rheumatoid arthritis, Dick made his living as a home-bound typesetter, with his tool of the trade being an IBM Executive Typewriter, just before the computer made it obsolete in the march of technological advance. Despite living in constant pain, he had an enormous sense of humor and loved to regale his visitors at his Irwin Court home with stories of people he’d dealt with in different walks of American radical life. With me he liked to tell about actives in the Finnish-language IWW Branch who met at the Finnish Brotherhood Hall in Berkeley as it was called before the 1970s. (In Memoir 26 I cited that the Berkeley IWW Finns left their original organizational home at the socialist Toveri Tupa hall on Tenth Street in the 1914 schism between the Industrial Unionists and the Socialist Party.) Tired of meeting for years in transitory rented rooms, when the non-political Kaleva Lodge 21 build the Brotherhood Hall in the deepest Depression, the Finnish IWWs asked if they could utilize what is now called Kaleva Hall as their regular meeting place, which was granted. I’m sure these Wobs also joined Lodge 21 as well for fraternal and its mutual aid benefits to cement an ongoing relationship.

The Finnish Branch couldn’t officially call itself IWW because IWW law didn’t permit nationality branches, so the club was officially called the Finnish Workers Educational Association, although all its members paid IWW dues as individuals as well. Dick Ellington functioned as an IWW Delegate in the East Bay, and once a year, the secretary of the Finnish group Nels Kanerva would visit Dick to pay all their Wobbly dues for the forthcoming period. I only met a couple of the Finn group members while it existed and only talked with F.W. Nels on the phone once. I did know Jack Krans, a prominent Kaleva Lodge member who was a Wobbly and who served a term as President of Lodge 21 during the 1930s. His daughter Eleanor Luokkala, also deceased, was a Lodge activist and officer for many years. The FWEA met at the Hall until death diminished its membership and it quit meeting in 1973. Yet all its records are stored in the Kaleva Hall library in boxes that include membership lists, meeting minutes, financial reports, and correspondence, all still neatly organized. Also on the library shelves are bound and loose copies of the Finnish IWW monthly magazine Tie Vapauteen (Road to Freedom) published for about 20 years until its cessation in 1938. There are also some copies of Industrialisti, the Finnish Wobbly newspaper that published from 1916 to 1973. There are also some books on the library shelves published in the Finnish language by The Finnish Socialist Publishing Company, a former Wobbly enterprise in Duluth. I hope sometime Kaleva Lodge will come up with an archival option that will preserve these valuable collections. We also have a couple of boxes that should find an archival home of material collected for decades by a Lodge 21 socialist pioneer Arvid Nelson, who in the 1930s founded a Finnish-language Socialist Party Local in Berkeley. Priceless stuff!

CONTINUE NEXT COLUMN

1981 POLITICS IN THE NEW YORK ‘BIG SIX’

New York Post owner Dorothy Schiff, Mediator Theodore Kheel and Local 6 Prez Bertram Powers.

Bertram Powers

Thomas W. Kopeck

When the ITU began accepting women into membership in 1870s they got pay equality with men, still rare in the US workplace.

New York Typographical Union No. 6, known as “The Big Six”, was the largest local of the ITU. During most of my earlier years in the ITU its politics were dominated by Bertram A. Powers, a New Englander who was elected its president in 1961, and by Thomas W. Kopeck, its secretary-treasurer who were continually locked in a mutual power struggle for dominance in the Local. Powers was the popular leader in the Progressive Party, while Kopeck was unaffiliated with any ITU Party. Both were voted into office by overwhelming margins by the rank and file to serve as “watchdogs” to check and balance one another. Of course, no Prog would dare admit to Bert they were voting for Tom. Bert Powers grew to early fame (notoriety?) by leading a huge strike against the numerous dailies in New York City in 1962–’63 which was extremely costly to the city and its papers and drew the wrath of President John F. Kennedy and brought Powers the distinction of being the only ITU official ever to make the cover of Time Magazine! Some of the weaker newspapers failed as a result but it made Powers the most feared leader in New York labor circles that no publisher or employer had much stomach to take on. He fought to retain hot metal printing and members’ jobs to the last situation and was a hero to his rank and file. One news scribe wrote that Powers was “honest, clean, democratic and — impossible!” for his obduracy against technological change. Finally, in 1978 he had to swallow a bitter pill by agreeing to a contract that granted an attrition clause in an arbitration that allowed the printers already on the job to keep them until they were ready to retire or voluntarily quit but permitted automation to change the industry.. He showed his fury over this defeat by smashing a stereotype mold before the news cameras. Tom Kopeck was equally blunt, tough, and direct and would fight over every contract that his rival negotiated even if he was the final resister on the union floor. But both were extremely popular with the men and women of Big Six.

In 1982, there were elections for ITU General Officers, and Tom Kopeck decided to run for International Secretary-Treasurer independent of either of the Union’s political parties. The Prog machine ran its own candidate and the weaker Indies had no candidate of their own and endorsed the popular Tom Kopeck. I opened a correspondence with Tom in 1981, offering my active support for his candidacy as a powerful militant option who had his own mind, and started a Kopeck campaign among our Northern California ITU members, which drew a good response. We became good friends vis snail mail and phone (no email then) and discussed many problems of our union. He drew much popular support throughout the US and Canada as a fresh-faced tough fighter with smarts, uncompromised by the old political party machines.

1981 NATIONAL MASTERS T&F CHAMPIONSHIPS

Los Gatos High School Track in California was selected as the site of the Nationals in 1981. I was planning to compete in both the 5000m racewalk at Los Gatos and a 20K road championship on a nearby South Bay community college campus in my first season in the M50–54 Masters age group. Since Lori Maynard and I were now Pacific Association Racewalk Co-Chairs of The Athletics Congress (later renamed US Track & Field) we had our work cut out in organizing the logistics of the Nationals walking competition. (That besides the developing Kopeck campaign in the ITU for me.) By then I had purchased a used Dodge van to haul around marker cones and other equipment for the 20K Road walk. Sonny Maynard (Lori’s husband) and I were assigned to lay out and chalk the 20K course. We had over a 100 participants in the 5000M track walk alone! It was a hot summer Saturday morning when the gun went off on at 8AM. Somehow I was able to win the title in the men’s age 50–54 division though I had good competition.

After breakfast, Sonny and I headed for the other campus to lay out, measure, and chalk the 20K course for the next day, Sunday morning, at 8. It was nearly 100 degrees as we labored in the hot sun in our tasks. “T’was ‘otter than the ‘inges of ‘ell,” as a Cockney might say. We were pretty well wiped out when we finished. I had supper in a Los Gatos restaurant with friends that evening and slept in my van that night on the campus near the start of our 20km in the morning. I got up at 6AM, ate a couple of energy bars and drove around coning the course and then filling the plastic water bottles for the aid station table and putting out the paper cups. Although it was already hot at 8Am when the 18 or so competitors for the 20K toed the start line, including foolish me, whose energy was pretty sub-par to begin with. I had one or two age group rivals who I managed to stay ahead the whole way. Our only woman walker was GGRW’s spunky Diane Mendoza, 34, of San Jose, on her first time at this distance. Diane was a bit hesitant at first so I put in some good distance between her and I until she saw she could increase her pace. But my overall exhaustion made my legs like wood, and I only edged her by about 100 meters. She later became a tireless 50K specialist I could never touch again. I don’t know how but I was now a 20k National Champ!

1982
WE ELECT TOM KOPECK

The Kopeck campaign was brilliantly organized in the US and Canada and he was elected by a large margin over the Prog machine hopeful as his reputation had long preceded his decision to run as a strong, fair and competent leader. Our Local 21 volunteer committee wrote and financed a flyer, for which we were able to use the mailing stickers of our Local membership list which was part of the democratic election process of the ITU. The Golden Gate Progressive Club’s flyer for his national opponent didn’t have any solid grounds to criticize Tom as he had a sterling reputation throughout the Union. We had a good turnout at our February endorsement meeting and although the Progressive Club controlled our Local 21 administration, we won the Local’s endorsement for Tom by the majority of the members attending.

I had put enormous time and energy into the Kopeck campaign, but hardly expected any material favor or reward for my efforts. So it was a total surprise when Kopeck offered me a job as one of the ITU’s four Assistant Secretary-Treasurers which the ITU Administration at Colorado Springs allowed for. I really didn’t want to leave San Francisco and much preferred being a Local 21 rank and file activist than gaining a bureaucratic post in the ITU. Besides, I had made plans for a six-week vacation trip to Finland the summer of 1982. and had my plane reservations already paid for. Tom said he was heading into hostile territory at the Springs as all the other officers were Progs and hoped he would fall on his face on the job. Such were the hard line partisan politics of the ITU! So he had to have his assistants hired early on as he was forced to organize his administration from scratch in a hostile political environment. I demurred by saying I knew nothing about accounting or bookkeeping and was only a two-fingered typist. The job he was wanting to hire me for was to oversee the already established office staff of his department, and the woman who administered the staff in practice would do the direct supervision. In other words, I was to add an extra layer of bureaucracy over an experienced staff that was perfectly functional without me.

But he then pointed out to me that my job would really be a political job directly answerable to him as a “trend spotter” to observe in what direction the internal affairs of the union were moving. He said I had sharp political instincts that would serve such a position well. In other words, I would really be a political apparatchik at his beck and call. Suppose we disagreed on some union policies, he could then fire me as easily as he could hire me. The thought basically repelled me, being an unquestioning cog in somebody’s political wheel. I was basically a labor rebel, not a useful tool for someone else’s agenda.. I liked the guy and felt he would be an excellent secretary-treasurer but I could not be good fit for what he needed. We were still a union with maybe 75,000 members to choose from for his needs. Which he did, and I took off for Europe and we remained good friends.

FINLAND AGAIN

From 1982 on I was a frequent Finnish visitor for years until my final trip in the summer of 2010, after which old age set in limits to extended travel. Many of my visits were routine so I will highlight only aspects of those that might be of interest to readers of these Memoirs. There were two things that stand out in my mind about 1982. The first was the Lasse Viren Hölkkä (Lasse Viren Jog), two running races that took place in Myrskylä, Vilen’s home town near Porvoo on Finland’s Gulf Coast east of Helsinki. For those unfamiliar with Finnish athletics, Viren was the fastest Finnish distance runner since the days of Paavo Nurmi in the 1920s with his twin wins in the 5000 and 10,000 meter races in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. I went there with my running friends from Espoo, Matti and Ulla Rutanen. Matti ran the longer 35Km distance and his wife Ulla ran the shorter 10Km. which I chose to racewalk. Viren himself was no longer a serious competitor and he chose to just jog the 35K of his own event. This was the first time I ever saw the great runner who I was to meet several times during the ensuing years.

My second outstanding memory was of the quality time I spent with my sole surviving uncle, Eino Saikkonen, Mamma’s brother. Eino was a sports nut like myself and I enjoyed watching athletic events with him on his and Helmi’s TV when I stayed with them. We got to be great buddies. When I went to a meeting with the editor of Finland’s Juoksija (Runner) Magazine, Eino accompanied me on the bus. Matti Hannus, Juoksija feature writer. had written a story about me earlier for Kaleva, the City of Oulu’s daily newspaper, so the editor wanted to talk to me about the early Finnish-American sports history. We had a good discussion which Eino enjoyed immensely and was tickled when the editor gave us both copies of the latest issue of Juoksija to take home with us. When I left Finland to return home my lovely cousin Irma drove me to the airport on the way to work and her father, Uncle Eino, came to see me off. As we sat waiting for my flight, he encouraged me to move to Finland as I would like living there. I agreed but I was still a few years away from retirement. That was the last time I saw Eino as the next time I visited, he had passed away from prostate cancer.

1983
1983 ITU CONVENTION IN SAN FRANCISCO

The 125th Annual Convention of the ITU took place in San Francisco in 1983 from August 6th to 12th, 1983, at the St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street near Geary. As we were increasingly unable to go it alone as the ITU, the major topic of the Convention was merger with other unions. At the top of the list was The Newspaper Guild, with which negotiations had been ongoing and which was the major goal of our own Local 21 Administration led by President Leon Olson. Joe Bingel, an old-time Prog politician who had succeeded Sandy Bevis as ITU President, threw a monkey wrench into that prospect by inviting the flamboyant president of the Teamsters Jackie Presser, a huge bulk of a man, to address our Convention. Bingel saw this as a better solution than the Guild as the IBT was a powerful massive union that would give us major clout. This created a current of excitement at the convention as the swaggering Presser promised us the moon if we immersed ourselves in the Teamsters. This particularly impressed the Mailers Union, the bulk of which later elected to leave the ITU for the Teamos. Yet many of us had our doubts because of the alleged massive level of corruption in Teamster politics. My friend S/T Tom Kopeck was at least initially in favor of the Teamsters as was Joe Bingel, while Bob McMichen. the first vice president was opposed. The upshot was that it resulted with the Guild proposal becoming an afterthought. My own preference was merger with other graphic arts unions like the GCIU (which however became Teamster eventually), or the Communication Workers of America (CWA), a huge union which would be more realistic to join and reputedly more democratic and corruption-free than the Teamos. In our own Local 21 Administration, Leon Olson and Vice Presidents Morris Goldman and Arnold Sears favored an AFL-CIO affiliation while Representatives Don Abrams and Bob Troupe were impressed with the clout of the Teamsters.

On the International level, in the ITU’s forthcoming Presidential elections Bob McMichen, who opposed Teamster merger, defeated the incumbent Joe Bingel, a leading Teamster advocate, over just that issue. However, the majority of the ITU Executive Council forced McMichen to put the Teamster merger issue up to a referendum vote of the general membership. Our members voted 2–1 against such a merger, showing their basic distrust of the Teamsters if we were swallowed up by them. (Personally, I’ve known my share of good Teamster members and honest IBT Locals, to know they are hardly the greatest evil in American public life. I’m forever thankful for the powerful San Francisco Teamsters Union Local 85, whose muscle helped us survive the disastrous commercial printers’ strike back in the early 1960s.) So by 1987 we made the wise decision of merging with the CWA and our venerable and often heroic ITU was no more. Going it alone was not tenable for The Newspaper Guild, and they soon affiliated with CWA as well. One result of the divisions in our union over the Teamster merger issue was that it pretty much triggered the break-up of the ancient ITU two-party system of the Progs and Indies as a calcified relic of the past. I recall a large membership meeting of the regional Typos in San Jose prior to the referendum on the Teamster merger of which Tom Kopeck was the most prominent advocate. I took the mike to directly oppose him on it, which broke up the alliance we had earlier had. (I understand from other sources that Tom in the end opposed the Teamster merger.) Before his death later, we resumed a personal reconciliation through exchanges of holiday greetings to somewhat repair our past friendship. I thought he was one of the smartest Union officials I ever knew. In fact, the late Ralph Kessler, a veteran ITU proofreader, who had worked in major jurisdictions over the years in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, said the greatest, most brilliant leaders of the ITU he ever knew in his opinion were Bert Powers, Tom Kopeck and Leon Olson, the late president of our Local 21, with whom our rank and file opposition frequently tangled on the union floor on contract issues.

GLANCE BACK AT KAGEL
ARBITRATION ON ATTRITION

The San Francisco newspaper moguls had no compunction about trying to do end-around plays in trying to introduce automation into the composing room unilaterally without consultation with our Union. The situation got so bad that we fought for an attrition clause to our master contract to prevent a haemorrhage of our jobs. It was never easy, but we were finally able to get a procedure into the works with our fate determined by the brilliant San Francisco arbitrator Sam Kagel (1909–2007), whose masterful intervention had saved the day for the Longshore Union (ILWU) in the 1960s. So on Jan. 9, 1973, we got a supplemental agreement that included an attrition clause which saved the jobs of hundreds of our members until they decided to retire. But that wasn’t all. The Newspaper Agency tried to sabotage our union’s jurisdiction over the display ad production by creating a new art department where the Guild would have jurisdiction over ad composition. It was back to arbitration which ended with a clause that split that work 50-50 between us and the Guild around 1976. I wasn’t aware of all this until this writing when former Local 21 President Charlie Tobias (from 1991 to 2001) and current Printing Sector President Gloria La Riva (since 2002) were kind enough to inform me of the essentials of these complex developments.

End of Installment 27