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On the Job

David Berger

    A collection of people sat in the union hall on folding chairs with attached desks. Ron Elliot, an experienced union guy, is presiding over a workshop for organizers in the United Transport and Drivers Union.
    “You Millenials, I swear,” Ron said. “You don’t know diddley about labor or labor organizing or even about this union. I’m not even sure you know how to fuck or wipe your asses. You think you can stay in the office and make calls, send out emails and that’s organizing? Shit!”
    “Don’t start again, Ron,” Elliot Klein, one of his fellow organizers called out. “No one wants to hear that oldie-moldy crap.”
    “If these guys would shut their pie holes, they might learn something.”
    “Yeah, like how you organized the first Mammoth Drivers local.”
    “Listen, wise-ass. I’ve been involved in eighteen union organizing drives and six union elections and two of them was fixed. One of those elections, I’m telling you, was fixed by the NLRB under a Republican administration. The union went to court and finally proved it was fixed. Nobody was punished and a new election was ordered almost a year and a half later. And we lost! It wasn’t worth the time and effort. The next fix was done by the union. We won, but one of our guys got beat almost to death. That shop hates us ever since. They vote down every contract and can you blame them?”
    “I never heard about either of those,” Klein said.
    “There’s a lot of things you ain’t heard about, Elliot. Welcome to their education and yours. Here, take a look at this. I keep this in my wallet to remind me of where it’s really at, in case I get soft. This was on December 31, 1996, last day of the year.”
    The handout, a copy of a newspaper article, was passed around quickly.
    John W. Maynard, 60, of North Stonington, died from head injuries caused in a dispute with fellow Lockheed employee Edward Moran, 50. Maynard and Moran had argued over whether Moran should remain employed while other workers with more seniority were laid off. In lieu of flowers, send donations to the Local 17 Welfare Fund.

    “What it doesn’t say, kiddies, is that fucking Moran was 6' 2" and weighed 220, and he worked out. My buddy John was a real monster at 5' 7" and a rough, tough 160 lbs. Moran was also related to one of the Local’s vice presidents. And everyone on the shift was edgy because of the layoffs.
    “And a couple of hours before Moran killed John, that rat-bastard asked me to meet him outside the gate over the same seniority issue ’cause I brought it up on the executive board. I’m only slightly bigger than John, so I said, ‘Sure, Ed. But first I got to run home to get my Remington.’
    That shut him up.
    “What actually happened in the factory cafeteria was like this. There was the steam table where you got your food, lots of places to sit and a bunch of lockers. It started a couple of minutes into the first shift lunch.
     “It went down like this. Fucking Moran was sitting at a table across from Ray Waters, who was the boss of the shift. Moran was still bitchin’ to Ray about workin’ as an electronics mechanic. He’d been demoted from a supervisor when the other mechanics were being laid off, but they made him a mechanic. And John made a comment from across the room about Moran actually having less seniority than some of the other union mechanics, and he was still workin’ because he was a supervisor.
    “Moran stood up and yelled across the room, ‘Shut your fucking mouth, Maynard, before I fucking shut it for you!’
    Everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching. Waters, remember he’s the boss, just sat there, not saying a word. John ignored Moran and kept walking over to the lockers.
    “Moran jumped up and ran towards John screaming, ‘You don’t think I mean it, huh?’
    “Ignoring Moran, John took his hard-hat from his locker and put it on. His back was to Moran as he put on his safety glasses and turned around. And just then Moran hit him hard on the left side of his head. At the trial, one of the guys testified it sounded ‘like a bat hitting a watermelon.’ John’s hat and glasses went flying across the room as he slumped against his locker. Then fucking Moran brought his right arm straight back and up, and with all his strength he landed a smash to the center of John’s face. John bounced off his locker and fell face down on the concrete floor.
    “‘Ya got anything else to say, Maynard?’ Moran shouted as he bent down about to hit John again. Ray Waters and a couple of other guys grabbed the crazy bastard and pulled him to the floor, practically next to John. Some others got towels and tried to staunch the blood flowing from John’s nose and his mouth and even his ears. An ambulance was there in about half an hour. Thirty fucking minutes! Then when it arrived John wouldn’t take any help getting to his feet, and then he wouldn’t get on a stretcher. He insisted on walking to the ambulance.
    “‘Call the fucking police,’ was his last words. On the way to the hospital, John went into a coma. He died three days later.
    “They convicted Moran on second-degree manslaughter, and he spent a big four years in the slammer. And if you can believe it, before the trial some big-wigs in the union got him a lawyer! Maybe the shits would’ve got his job back if Moran had moved to Florida.
    “So the lesson, girls and boys, is this: Union work ain’t no bed of roses, ’specially these days. There’s always a Moran or his cousin around, waiting for his chance. Any questions before we go on?”

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