THE UNION AND I      

At the age of 17, I went to work as a woodworker in a large upholstery shop on Bryant Street.  My father also worked there as a furniture frame assembler.  He asked the foreman to give me a job.

I disliked my job.  It was dull, simple work, certainly not challenging, and there was no chance of learning anything.  The place was drab, and many of the workers were older emigrants working for very low pay.  

I already knew how to use most woodworking tools, and this coupled with my observations of the other workers' methods, allowed me to soon produce more units per given time, and at higher quality, than the older men.  Nevertheless my pay was still less than half of theirs.

After about eight months my father pleaded with the foreman, a little fat, obnoxious tyrant, to give me a raise in pay.  After long deliberation, and looking me over and over, he decided to increase my weekly salary  – an increase of about one dollar more per week, with the provision that I would come to his home every Friday night to tutor his four little girls with their Hebrew lessons.

For more than a year, I made this useless trip to upper Fillmore Street every Friday night to teach four little girls a language that they didn’t want to learn.

At that time, San Francisco was not yet known as a union city.  True, there were some organized unions, like the printers, or even a powerful longshoreman’s union on the wharf, but unionization did not come easy.  There were bloody fights, arrests, accusations, even deaths.  There was a notorious trial that sent two innocent men to State prison for long terms just for attempting to found a union.

Little by little, though,  the unions made inroads.  Times had changed.  People began to speak out, and to organize.

I, too, was fed up with the feeling of helplessness against the dictatorship of the petty bosses to exploit the workers, and I fell in with a group of progressive young people.   I met a concerned, serious man; Mr. Jack Shelly, who later became a Supervisor in the city, and eventually the Mayor of San Francisco.  (Much later, after he died, his widow and children became friends of mine. His son, Kevin, is a State Senator now.)

Mr. Shelly introduced me to an ambitious young man who seemingly couldn’t hold on to any job, but was very anxious to become a union organizer.

I felt that we could use each other.  As time passed I became more Americanized.  I worked in a number of different trades and had many interests, but the injustices in the woodworking shops, and there were many, bothered me.  Since my father was still a woodworker, and even I had gone back to this trade a few times, I encouraged this man (I will call him Julius, not his real name) to organize the workers.  I even tried to make an intellectual out of him by giving him books to read by Marx, Engels, and others.

It took a long time, and great effort, but a union of the employees of about 10 shops was formed, although the organization was not recognized nor accepted by the bosses.

Roosevelt was President.  The war came, and finally was over.  People came out of the services and the shipyards with a new look at society, goals , and expectations.

Julius pushed the union members to make demands, and strive to be recognized and accepted.  The owners of the shops that employed woodworkers realized that they to would have to deal as a group with the workers and the union, and they formed their own association.

Julius gained some influence and certain concessions were made, but he didn’t want to stop there.  He became ever more ambitious and became known as a tough advocate; a man to recon with.  He won more concessions from the association of shop owners,and with success he became even more aggressive.

I tried to tone him down but he accused me of being against him.   My position was now reversed from my worker days.  After the war I opened my own woodworking shop, and I  belonged to the shop owner's association, even though I was still a member of the union, and very active in its’ activities and goals.

I wore two hats, but my heart was with the workers – their achievements and hopes for the future.   It was now time for a new contract to be negotiated and signed. Meetings were initiated and the negotiations went on and on. There was no end to these meetings and attempts to negotiate.

Julius made wild demands, and when some were accepted, the union representative upped the anti and asked for much more.  Each small point yielded brought on a new host of demands, greater than the earlier ones.

I brought in my own version of a new agreement – a sensible plan for a higher  wage scale, paid holidays, and sick leave.

The owners rejected it outright.

The union representative rejected it as too little.

The meetings dragged on and on.

Finally, some officials higher up in the union chain joined us.  They all agreed that my plan was generous, workable, and would be acceptable to them.

I tried to promote this agreement, but the other members of our association felt that I sold them out.  They called me a "Trojan Horse."  I had to resign from the group, and they held a grudge against me for years thereafter.

Julius still didn’t want to sign on or agree with me.  Although the other unions congratulated me, and hoped that my offer would be accepted, Julius proclaimed that he wanted to call a strike – a stoppage of work in all factories that had union members – and that included me.

I pointed out I was already voluntarily paying my workers higher figures and greater benefits than even the proposed agreement. 

It was bizarre - I was a founding member of the union, and I appeared before the whole union body to plead my case.  They understood that I was already paying more than they demanded, but Julius shouted me down. "Strike, Strike," he screamed, and the strike was voted, crazy but true.

I decided to fight back.  The union would not close us down!

My father was technically a partner in my shop, and he too was a member of the union.  He was furious with Julius.

"What does that idiot, Julius, want?"

"Notoriety and  fame," I answered.

Bennett, my son, gave up his school activities and came to work in the shop.   

Picketers were outside.  Not my workers, but other union members. 

"STRIKE," they proclaimed, and carried the usual signs and marched about or sometimes just stood there.  

The San Francisco newspapers (there were four of them in those days) carried the story, although some called it a "Lockout,", but it really was a strike.

The doors to my shop remained open.  Neighbors came in, and some even helped me out.

On cold foggy days, we always set up a table just inside the doorway with a pot of hot coffee and sandwiches for the pickets to share.  At night, after the union pickets left, some of my people came in.  We covered the windows with plywood, and these ostensible "strikers"  worked for me.  I worked in the mill, and Bennett spent most of his time in both the mill and assembly areas, while my father assembled frames.  Between ourselves and the night time workers we were producing all the frames that were needed to meet our contracts and commitments. 

Everyone agreed that a strike against my place was unjustified, as I already paid and gave my workers more than was being asked for.

Naturally we had to deliver the finished frames, and Bennett drove the truck to make all the local deliveries.  I have to add that we were not afraid of any form of harassment as my personal friends on the police force made a point of always being nearby, and when we had to use the truck, Bennett always had a not too discreet escort – a police car.  We got this same personalized attention when we drove home at night.

It was the most profitable time in the many years of my business.  I had no competition, we were able to maintain production, we worked efficiently as three generations of a family, and we had our "nighttime" workers, and thus not only did we meet our contractual obligations, but we sold most of our accumulated stock.

Julius came into the shop and confronted my father, who, for all purposes, was carrying out his duties as a partner.  There was some shouting and Papa took up a hammer and ordered Julius off of his premises.  Julius resisted and threatened to have Papa kicked out of the union.  Papa was angry and Julius cursed.  Julius was fuming.  He still wanted to make a name for himself – and eventually he got it.

I started to run out of lumber to produce furniture frames.  At that time, I used to buy timber by the car (box car) lot from the big mills, and store the lumber at Higgins Lumber and Ricci & Kruse - two firms with which I dealt.

When I had need for this lumber, or had space of my own in which to store it, I called them, and the lumber carriers delivered it to my shop.  Because the carrier drivers were union members, and the pickets were marching outside of the shop, they refused to deliver.  What we could pick up with my truck was not enough.  Julius knew this, and he wanted a confrontation.

After a few weeks into the strike, most workers wanted to return to work.  Some solid, sane, and responsible representatives of the larger unions intervened.  A contract was almost hammered out (much less than I was already paying in the past), and a big meeting was called in the nearby Union Hall.

When I saw no strikers in front of my shop, I quickly phoned the lumberyard, and a carrier delivered the much-needed wooden planks.

Julius heard about it, and with a group of very agitated men, he appeared in front of my shop.  He also notified the newspapers.  Somehow a photographer was dispatched.

Julius jumped at me, and holding a 2 x 2 that he had brought with him, he tried to hit me over the head.  I ducked and dodged.  Photos were taken.

On the front page of the Call-Bulletin, there appeared a picture of a group of pickets, Julius with a stick, and me, a small man attempting to defending himself against attack, in front of his own shop, and appearing scared.

This was the beginning of the end for the union organizer that I had helped to groom.  His own members knew that he had gone too far.  They kicked him out.  He had his few  minutes of notoriety, but it was hardly the notoriety he sought.  A new man, a former woodworker, was selected to head the union, and a new contract was quickly signed that lasted for many years.

I continued with my business and prospered.  The members of the union were satisfied.  The association of shop owners dissolved; there was no longer a need to fight, and Julius, defeated, slinked away, never to be heard from again.

Some say I set out to break the union, but that is not correct.  The resistance and fight against unreasonableness ultimately helped make the union viable and fair.  As the shop prospered, so did my employees, and we enjoyed an excellent relationship.  There was never even a suggestion to strike again during all the subsequent years I owned the company.