Trade union democracy

When we were first told that the state employee unions required an 80 percent yes vote to ratify a contract, a union official proudly proclaimed we were witnessing trade union democracy in action. But since then, the 80 percent rule was magically reduced to a simple majority, without the advice and consent of all those trade union democrats.In more authoritarian societies, this sort of thing is known as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletariat being the industrial working class that is theoretically endowed with all the political power, but not really. I was introduced to trade union democracy at an early age while spending my college summers at an A&P grocery warehouse in Newark, N.J. There were two warehouse buildings. The main warehouse, with about a100 employees, was used to store the groceries, and the other, where I worked, held the empty cardboard boxes, baskets and crates the red A&P trucks collected from the supermarkets for what was then not known as recycling. Unloading the wet and smelly fish crates was a special treat on humid summer afternoons. In the summer, the small warehouse employed three bleeping college kids, as my part-time colleagues and I were constantly — but affectionately — referred to by the dozen or so full-time workers, friendly guys with nicknames like Wild Willie and Rumnose. We were all paid the same, $73 a week.During the summer of ’54, my fourth and last in the warehouse, we were unionized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers, an event that came as something of a surprise because our small warehouse did not vote in the union election. Only the workers in the big warehouse voted. I guess they didn’t bother with us since we couldn’t change the outcome. But Rumnose and the others were pleased, as the Teamsters contract included a small raise, eroded just a bit by monthly dues of $5, as I remember after more than 50 years.The bleeping college kids became part of the union but not part of the small raise. We were, however, required to pay dues, which left us with a weekly salary of $71.75 as opposed to the $73 we received before enjoying the protection of union membership.When a Teamsters official came by to welcome us into the brotherhood, I protested our loss of income. He didn’t seem particularly interested until I asked, “Would Dave Beck approve of this?”Dave Beck was the union’s national president and the subject of a Time magazine cover story I had read, so I was able to drop his name and get the attention of the local official.“You know Dave Beck?” he asked with a new interest in me and our complaint. “Only that he’s a great union man and wouldn’t like what’s happening to us,” I said. The union rep promised to see what he could do, and I believe we were excused from paying dues until the contract would be renegotiated the following year. By then, I had left the warehouse, finished college and become a professional journalist, at a pay cut of only $21.25 a week.But before my final summer as a warehouseman had ended, I received another visit from the local official and an associate. I was struck by their resemblance to the union bosses in “On the Waterfront,” a big movie that summer about crime and corruption among the longshoremen in nearby Hoboken.I don’t remember the details, but the conversation included the offer of a job, which I declined with thanks, saying I had other career interests.Dave Beck became a celebrity of sorts later by taking the Fifth Amendment a record 117 times while being questioned by young Bobby Kennedy at a Senate hearing into union corruption. He went to jail and was succeeded by the “reformer” Jimmy Hoffa.I have sometimes thought about my good fortune in choosing journalism over an association with the Teamsters and Hoffa, who some believe rests not far from that Newark warehouse, under the old Giants Stadium in the Jersey Meadows. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less