"The terrible thing about labor, many times the history dies with its membership": Interview with Edward Lindsey, May 27, 1989

Transcription

1 "The terrible thing about labor, many times the history dies with its membership": Interview with Edward Lindsey, May 27, 1989 A new generation of black workers came into the Firestone plant during its hiring expansion in It was the same year as the March on Washington, with the civil rights movement in full swing. Lindsey's cohort proved very impatient with the old ways, even though the previous generation had undermined much of Jim Crow on the shop floor in the late 1950's, with a suit against the company and the union. Lindsey initially had aspirations to become a doctor, and participated in the Nashville sit-in movement before coming to Firestone. He put his energies into union politics, and looked back to the plant's closing philisophically. The terrible thing about labor, many times the history dies with its membership and people get the wrong impression about what labor's about. They get negative attitudes about it. It's due to ignorance, 'cause they just don't really know. The civil rights struggles have always been parallel to labor movements. I don't care how deep you go into it, they are just parallel. If you solve the labor problems, you're gonna solve them in civil rights. And vice versa. People just don't know about what goes on. It takes money to get involved, to get your voice heard in politics. And when labor began to do that, then people said, it's a special interest group. But that isn't the case at all. Labor has just always been interested in the well-being of people, education, people's rights, freedom. That's what the struggle's about. You find the same thing going on in Beijing China now, it's there. It's parallel; all over the world, it's the same struggle. I would say [the corporations], they're the special interest groups, in order to retain all the things that they have. I understand the process. And I understand the political wars that go on in order to try to destroy labor. I understand it, but many people don't. I understand the struggle of these people that want to keep power. Once you get power, the more you want, you want to keep it. I understand that struggle. But I still think the masses of people need to be able to participate in the political process. I think that if we ever wake up the masses, who will really begin to participate in it, then you will see some drastic changes, that I think will be for the better. We tend to apathy. I think the problems that labor is having today is simply that apathy set in. You could see it coming. You could see it coming. But you were never able to arouse the people, of what was coming to them. No matter what you fight, you struggle for, the stroke of a pen could remove it, just like that. You saw some of it in the Reagan administration. It's struggle many people have died for that will be just removed with the stroke of a pen because people let apathy set in. I went [to Firestone] in '63. There were still some problems, but they had worked out a great deal of it. Because prior to us going in there in '63, they had what you'd call black and white jobs. There were some jobs that blacks just were supposedly not able to do. They did still 1

2 have separate rest rooms, eating facilities, the colored fountains, brown and white fountains. That was obvious. Of course, there was certain jobs, and naturally there was no policy-making people--black, that is, in the union. Like you had black shop stewards, you had black division chairmen. Lawrence Garrison, he was division chairman. A division chairman is a person that represents all three shifts [in a given area of the plant]. Everybody has to be subject to the division chairman. Major decisions had to be made by him. He was the right hand of the president of the administration in that particular plant. I think we had something like 65 division chairmen. Like Lawrence was in the compound room and the mill room, which was predominantly black employees. Those were some of the jobs that were restricted to black people at that particular time. Of course, you had others. You had Clarence Coe at one time. You had Josh Tools at one time. Those are the three that I remember. They weren't on the executive board. The executive board were [plant-wide] elected people. But the people elected the stewards by department. The division chairman were appointed by the administration. They were appointed positions. You start talking about someone being the treasurer of the local union, someone might be the secretary, or vice-president, president. You could run. At the peak we had probably about 1,000 black employees, against 2,000 white employees. With those numbers it was just virtually impossible for them to get elected [to plant-wide office]. We had some very good labor people, some good black labor leaders that were capable, they just never had an opportunity. Lawrence Garrison was one. Clarence Coe was another. Josh Tools was another. When I went in, they were there. I remember those guys. They helped us a lot. Those guys paved the way for us. Hillie Pride and those guys paved the way for us, in order to be able to have a chance to work at Firestone. There was a frustration to us too, because naturally, in '63, the civil rights movement... They kind of helped us readjust. And we did. We were able to get the water fountains removed, same locker rooms, things like that. That was a struggle for us too. Now you did have, see, you had almost in the plant like political parties, you had two or three political parties. It was just like the Republican and Democratic parties, that's the way it worked. Many of them were able to get blacks elected on an executive board. You had some black executive board members. That was a known thing. That wasn't a big problem [because they would be part of a ticket]. I think it was seven, if I remember, seven executive board members. Of course, the other part of the administration--president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer--all were members of the executive board by virtue of their office. The overall count was seven elected, and then four policy-makers, for eleven total. They set the policy, as to how things would go. Trustees, that was a different thing. They always audited the books, kept of the books in order, in compliance with the way the international wants you to keep them. There was a guy, when I went in there, by the name of George Clark who was the president. Lawrence Garrison was a part of his administration. A young guy got elected [to the 2

3 executive board], by the name of Chester Turner. He was part of Clark's administration. He was the first young guy I knew that got elected, overall by the plant. He was elected as an executive board member. He was the only one, the only one at that time. Chester was a real aggressive, assertive person. Very able person. In time, he would run into trouble with the administration. He ran for the position but was defeated. If there were some things he didn't like, Chester was a very talkative, outspoken. And you know what happens with that. Chester only lasted one term. The term would be three years. Chester was sensitive to black needs. He came into the plant at the same time I did. He just didn't see enough black movement as far as the union was concerned and Chester was concerned and he spoke out about it. If things went down at an executive board meeting he disliked, many times he got on the floor and spoke against 'em. It was political suicide. But it really didn't bother him because he was really concerned and sensitive to the needs of the people. If that happened to him, so be it. He didn't care. [Among the black workers] here were some people who were, what would you say, loyal to a particular administration. Some of them thought Chester was wrong. Of course there was a division there. They thought Chester went about his grievance wrong and they were loyal. Then there were those that understood it and went along with Chester. So it was just a divide and conquer type of thing where you divide the blacks. There was a real division there. Yeah, it always happened like that. I would guess many times it was by design, to do it that way. It happened one time, and I think it happened during the time when I was elected, once all blacks got together beating the same drum, then they would get things changed. For instance, I was elected overwhelmingly as treasurer. But that happened only because the blacks got together and combined with the white voters. For a number of years it was just the opposite, where some issue would divide blacks. You always had blacks here, and blacks on this side, maybe you had two or three factions. And you can see what happens, you never get the job done. To be in the labor movement, you really have to love, be obsessive about people in general, I don't care if they're black or white. If they're workers, if they're dues-paying members, you have to be concerned about those people and try and take care of their needs. It really doesn't become a black and white issue because the problems out there, those problems don't care whether you're black or white. I guess what I'm saying is, if you don't learn to be together, stick together, you'll never get anything accomplished. And I think that that's a lesson that all of us at Firestone had to learn in the final analysis. I would hate to think the company would like it the other way around, where you got everybody divided. [Sometimes that was the case]. I think some of the issues people just brought into the plant as a result of what was happening in the communities. The communities were divided. They just simply brought those divisions to the workplace. I think the only significant issue [where blacks united] would be like when blacks were 3

4 restricted to a particular job, where he couldn't bid on certain jobss. Like I said, they had taken care of that prior to us getting in there, prior to '63 [when I came there]. But I can remember, like in the tire room they had very few black tire builders. You had a certain time you had to qualify. It was 90 days you had to qualify as a tire builder. What they would do many times, was they would change you from different types of machines. By the time you learn how this machine operates, they would move you. It makes it awfully difficult [to qualify]. [As a result of those kind of techniques, they kept the number of blacks in tire building] to a minimum. There was certain blacks that went in there that had, what you'd call a "don't give up" attitude, or the right attitude, he could stay around and qualify. But as time went on, naturally that changed. Most of them that went into tire building went on to become excellent tire builders. I worked at that position for a while. I was hired in as a tire builder. I think the advantage that I had, I was hired into the department as a service man, therefore I learned a lot, just watching, so when the opportunity presented itself for me to become a tire builder, I didn't have that kind of problem. What happened was, I was laid off. I asked for a transfer to come back there as a tire builder. I came in as a trainee. I didn't have any problems qualifying. [The advantage of being a tire builder] was more money. Then it was production, strictly production. You could count on the amount of money you wanted to make. You got paid by the number of tires you built. Of course, if you didn't do anything, you didn't make any money. It was kind of self-oriented, you know. If a guy wanted to get in and make him some money, he could make just about anything he wanted to make, within reason, he could make it. 'Cause you've got everything there to build the tire with. You're being serviced by the various departments. And you have everything there to construct a tire, assemble it on a machine. A guy that was efficient, making good use of time, he could make good money. At that time, you're talking about '65, '66, a guy could make close to 45, 50 dollars a day, which amounted to about dollars a week. When I left, although I wasn't a tire builder when I left, I know there was some people making as much as dollars a day, as a tire assembler. It's taking advantage of your time; some guys shorten their breaks, shorten their lunch period. Some guys could just build tires. It's like athletic skills. Some guys are just better athletes. Some guys were just better tire builders. And they were just efficient, made good use of their time, they could just build them in less time. [Before I came to Firestone] I had a good attitude about unions, but I didn't have any experience. I spent two years at Tennessee State. So I had little jobs like waiting tables, and stuff like that, where you didn't have any unions, but a lot of my friends' fathers had been railroad men. [My father worked at] the Illinois Central. He worked in the service department, in a shop. He was in the union. He wasn't an officer, he was just a dues-paying member. He was always concerned about what issues, what took place. So I had a pretty good working idea what the unions are all about. I had planned to be a doctor. I got involved in sit-ins by my freshman year, around 1960, at Tennessee State in Nashville, right. At that time it was Tennessee A & I, a predominantly 4

5 black school. I knew James Lawson because at that time he was in graduate school in Vanderbilt. We were trying to integrate the lunch counters at that time. I participated at a sit-down at Havarty's. Luckily, there was no violence. They just managed to shut it down. Harvarty's [was] a big department store like Goldsmith's here. They had eating counters at that time. I didn't get arrested, [we] just shut it down. After which I used to support them, talking food to people, stuff like that. [But I got married], naturally. Had to worry about taking care of the family at that point. I kept saying I was going to go back to school. I'm sorry that I didn't. [I went] to work at Firestone April 26th, of I'd been involved in sit-ins prior to that. Race relations were bad at the time that I got in there. Like I said, we stood at the brown and white fountains, had separate locker rooms, eating places. As a young group, a bunch of us just hired, we began to rebel. We'd go and drink out of the white fountains, periodically show up in the white locker room and white cafeteria. They had a partition, like they had an area about this wall to that wall, where black employees had to eat. You had this big other side. There was a hole in it, you could just walk through, for the whites. Of course the same employee had to service and to clean up both sides, so they always had a partition where she could walk through. And we began to go on the other side, go into the locker room, drink at the water fountains. Eventually, they broke it down, in order to avoid some trouble. Firestone had a guy come in named Paul Border. He worked with the union, to help them remove those kinds of things, like partitions, so all people would have the same locker room. He was brought in specifically to save the plant, period. That was prior to us getting there too. They couldn't get any production out. Of course, when production is down, there are numerous problems. That was one of the problems. Race relation problems. And he came in, to save the plant. He was real aggressive. He would do anything, whatever it took to get production up, he would go ahead. He had the guts to go ahead and do it, whatever it was. I remember one incident--that was right after we got in there--a black employee was accused of just pissing on the floor behind a machine. Supposedly he exposed himself to some white women. And of course the next day the women and some white men refused to come to work. Paul just stood up there and looked and them and he walked out. He told the guard, "if anybody don't want to come to work, just ask them to put their badge in the garbage can." That's the kind of guy he was. He just challenged them. The shift was changing, like, first to second shift or something, about 2:30 in the afternoon, it was time for the second shift, and that's when the problem occurred, on the second shift. These people were standing out in front of the gate and refused to go to work unless something would have been done with this black employee. Paul wouldn't have anything to do with that. If you didn't want to work, just go ahead, go off. They went to work. I got to know people. You got some flak from white workers. But as a whole, most of them thought [desegregation] was right. They couldn't just come out and say it. Some of them have told me in privacy, that we were right, we should stick to our guns. You always got people who know they're going to do what's right. I would guess a majority of the people wanted it to 5

6 become a right. There's always that small percentage that shows up and you get the wrong impression. But most of them wanted us to stick to our guns. Some people even received telephone calls, saying you need to stick to your guns and even suggesting some things that you ought to do. When we started to eat our lunches in the cafeteria, there were people that threatened to do something to us. We always stayed together, two or three of us, we wouldn't be caught alone for fear of that. Thankfully, nobody ever attempted to do anything. But I was young and crazy enough I would have tried to do as much to them as they did to me. Yeah. Wouldn't hesitate. I was just that headstrong about it. I am thankful that nobody ever did. The removal of water fountains, and locker rooms and things, it was a gradual process. People just began to accept it. I would guess people's jobs were critical at that point too. Firestone being one of the better jobs, I imagine both side weren't going to take a chance of losing their jobs. There wasn't a lot of physical abuse, like fighting, but verbal abuse, yes. I can't ever remember a fight taking place. I've heard about some, but I never really witnessed or seen one, they were always kept to a minimum. The two times that King came, we were there in support of the sanitation workers, we collected money out there, also participated in the walks. And we were prepared to go the rally that night, prior to his assassination. In other words, we were in contact with other unions with similar problems like that. We also worked a great deal with the Memphis AFL-CIO. We took an active part in city elections. It was a civil rights struggle and it was a labor struggle also. Being that the predominant number of those workers were black, that in itself made it a civil rights struggle. But it was just as much a labor struggle as anything else. When you go through it, the labor struggle and the civil rights struggle is parallel, you can't hardly get away from it. Memphis itself has always been anti-labor for some reason, even though you've had strong labor movements within the city, it has always been anti-labor. And I guess it goes back, I guess it's where Hillie Pride and Clarence Coe would remember; the older guys can really give you a better view of it than I can. I seems like a thing we just inherited for some reason, but it goes back far. You have to somewhat understand the way politics goes in this city. It's viewed from ultraconservative. Like certain families control, and have always controlled ever since I can remember. It's just a small sector in control. Maybe that's true in all cities, I don't know. But it's always been that way. From the Crump machine on back. I've heard my father talk about that. It was always that way. Memphis is a city that has been [one of] divide and conquer. That same mentality still holds true. There's not a lot going on now. I guess with civil rights, apathy has set in there. So it's just at a stalemate right now. [With labor], people were satisfied. They were making good benefits, they were making good wages. They didn't see a need to continue to be organized, to continue to be enthusiastic about 6

7 unions. They weren't cognizant of this trend that was taking place in this country politically. A good example of that would be what happened to the PATCO workers. To me, what happened to the PATCO workers was the turning point as far as labor was concerned. Because to me, every union person in this country should have participated in that process because once President Reagan got rid of them, that was it. It was a trend, the trend was set, and the trend is still there. I think when they were able to turn those people around, a trend was set in this country. And after, it certainly had set in. When you look at history, I guess that's the way it goes. History repeats itself. I can understand the Jewish people that would never let you forget about the Holocaust, because they don't want it to happen again. Because if you become ignorant of the past, then its obvious the past is going to haunt you, it's going to come back. And I can understand why they'll never let you forget the Holocaust. It's just like, as far as blacks are concerned, we should never forget about slavery, never. We can't. Because if you let your guard down, it will come back. That's just the way it is. You could look at the people who were being elected to the various positions, and I was telling you, there were signs. Like I've got an eleven year old kid. I don't know if he's going to be able to accomplish the same things, buy a house, buy a car, things like that. Something needs to happen in terms of our trade deficit. Everything is built in other countries. We're the greatest consumer. We buy everything from everybody else. Consequently, there are no jobs. Everything comes from Japan, Taiwan, with cheap labor. Some kind of way, the trade deficit must be turned around for us to survive. There's a lot of acquisitions taking place in this country by foreigners. It's kind of frightening. I was reading TIME magazine. They kind of dealt with that issue two or three weeks ago. I wasn't aware there was as much acquisition by foreigners. I always knew it was there, but I didn't know it was that bad. Consequently, we're losing our jobs. I'd say the trade deficit definitely needs to be turned around if things are going to be better. Because there just won't be any jobs for our people. I just don't know. No matter how many schools they go to, college or whatever, it doesn't really matter. If it gets down to the fact that the masses can't survive, then everybody's in trouble, everybody's in trouble. You may not think it, but you are. You pay dearly. Naturally, when you have a plant closure like this, you have some bad things happen. Like, I can remember one guy, he took his own life. It's a guy I thought it would never happen to him. I thought he just had everything together. And you've had a lot of divorces, naturally that happens, family break-ups. Some guys and gals just never recover. And I think it's because they continue to dream, 'it's not going to come to this, instead of picking up the pieces and moving on the best you can. Some of them still haven't done anything yet. They've lost their families, lost everything. And it's just really too bad. They have some testing going on. I took those tests. What they were asking me, I didn't have those kinds of problems. Like shortness of breath. But lamp black, I was exposed to 7

8 carcinogens linked to cancer. There are carcinogens in benzene, that was used daily. Some people have been tested positive by this particular company. I knew of a guy. I think he had some kind of cancer. He eventually died. Periodically he would swell up. Probably he worked there a long time, when conditions were just horrible. I think he had some type of cancer, but they never talked about it. Like you say, OSHA hadn't come in yet. But in my mind, I think that's what happened to him. We had some strange deaths there. Like people get sick and die and they never find what's wrong with them. A lot of people had rubber rash. I never had it, I never had that problem. You just break out, you know. A solution they would give you, many times it would clear it up. It was so severe on some people they had to change departments. But nobody ever viewed the rubber rash as anything terrible, or you know, thought that much about it. When OSHA come through in the late '70s, if a guy had been there 25 or 30 years, the damage was already done. It was tough, but the wages were good. If you had to work, I'd say that was the place to work. If you had to work, I don't think you'd find a better place to work. As a result of organized labor, it was a good place to work. Like I say, the wages were there, the benefits were there. And all this on the backs of people like Hillie Pride. Of course we had it better than they did. It took some long strikes at times to get those kinds of benefits. Of course I was involved in one 96-day strike myself. That was in '76, and another in '67 too. That was a long one. That one was about 126 days. That was pretty long. We went out in, like, in April, I think a little before labor day. It was the whole summer, [over] wages, benefits, retirement, cost of living, dental plan. And you know, many company people saw this. The thing of it is, the more things we got, the better we got, the better for the company people too. They had to make it more advantageous to be a company man than they made it to the guys down on the floor. They probably don't want me to tell you this. I know that there were company people that come by the union hall and leave money, coffee, stuff like that, because they tell us, hey, whatever you guys get will certainly make it better for us. They would wish us luck, they really would, they'd wish us luck. Because they knew, they understood, I think, if it got better for us, it had to get better for them. They understood that. Most of them did. You had some, excuse the word, assholes, but most of them knew But most of them knew. If we got a dental plan, that meant they would likely get a dental plan. And theirs was probably better than ours. And so, they understood. They understood. As a matter of fact, a lot of things we got was a result of them telling us some things, some directions to go. Like I got two boys. One is already out, he's in the Navy. The younger kid I always tell him things about the union, just like you do about anything else. It's really important. A lot of things about labor... I'm glad you're going to write a book that's going to be edited, because a lot of things that 8

9 labor did, people just have no knowledge. They just think it was a bunch of toughs. That was an image that you had earlier. Everybody who was in the union was tough, knock everybody around. But in the latter stage, you had people who knew economics, that's what it gets down to when you're negotiating contracts, you've got to know your economics. And you've got to know what the potentials are out there. And you have to tell people the truth. If an employee came to me with a problem and he didn't have a case, I told him he didn't have a case. Because you'd waste your time. The company always has to be competitive out there. I wouldn't want to get something that the company really couldn't afford to do, because then your job's not secure at all. So I say, a guy had to know his economics. He had to understand his politics. More so than somebody who's just big and tough and doing a lot of rattling off. I think that's more detrimental to you than anything else. I think that when a worker comes to you, you have to tell the truth. If he hasn't got a case, you have to take the responsibility to tell him he doesn't have a case. I think that hurt some unions too. Because a lot of people got that impression, we're just a bunch of people out there that didn't want to work, special interest groups. But I think a real good union man or woman, a leader, has to be a person that's responsible. And you've got to know your economics, you've got to know that. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke. And I think you'll end of doing more damage to both the company and your membership if you don't. You have to be intelligent. There's a difference. Of course, you can be a fighter and be responsible at the same time. Of course. Sometimes, people may get that mixed up. But you can be a fighter and be responsible. In fact, I suspect that that's what you gotta have, you'd better be that way. But you always have to keep the people in mind, always keep your people in mind. That's the way I was brought up. That's the way I was taught. 9