“Fighting Times – Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War” by Jonathan Melrod, 2022
This
is part memoir and part history of a turbulent time in U.S. politics, when
every issue was up for grabs – the late 1960s into the early 1980s. Melrod was one of those at the forefront of in-plant
trade union struggles. He went from
being shocked by seeing a black chain gang in Virginia as a child, to standing
up to an archaic teacher at his private high school, to attending the U of
Wisconsin at Madison in 1968, a student political hotbed. There he joined SDS, marched with thousands
of others supporting black studies, fought along with hippies defending a People’s
Park against the police, participated in the 1970 mass student strikes and
became a supporter of the Revolutionary Union (RU). He worked with Obreros Unidos helping organize farmworkers in Wisconsin. That connection brought him to the organized
labor movement, who called the Latino’s ‘brother.’
The September
1970 Math building bombing in Madison motivated Melrod to move to Milwaukee and
join the labor movement. Melrod, a
slight guy, worked at toxic worksites inhaling silica dust, plastic fumes,
chlorofluorocarbons, leather solvents, degreasing chemicals and the like. Later he contracted pancreatic cancer because
of it. But he does not regret his
progressive activism in the labor movement, which lasted for 13 years.
UAW/AMC
Melrod
finally got a job at a UAW / AMC plant in Milwaukee, which became a hotbed of a
different sort. He had several advantages
at the AMC plant. The plant had an
excellent UAW Working Agreement that limited the power of the bosses and
supervisors, won by UAW activists long ago.
It was full of young workers, ex-Vietnam veteran black workers and
Latino comrades. AMC’s
Wisconsin plants were large and key production sites. 1972 was a time of labor turmoil in auto and
across the country, with many strikes.
This upheaval is one reason why the capitalists opted for a neo-liberal
strategy in the late 1970s. His ties with the RU helped, though he had already earned
an FBI file for his work in support of the Black Panthers. His work at AMC added to that file, as he was
an open communist only a few months after gaining permanent status … a somewhat
questionable option.
The
book could be used by present union comrades on how to organize on the shop
floor in certain locations. It goes into union minutia occasionally. It’s also an
entertaining read. It involves distributing
the contract, working to rule, forming a rank & file caucus, issuing leaflets
and periodic news bulletins, creating buttons and T-shirts, opposing speed-up
and forced overtime, enforcing the contract, in-plant strategies and wildcats -
all the while finding allies where you can. Bars become organizing centers; socials useful
in melding comrades. This while opposing the sell-out leadership of the UAW locals
and the International. As you might
guess, Melrod was fired quickly after an anti-speed-up struggle. A grievance was filed with the company against the termination. The Local 75 Working Agreement allowed the
workforce to strike over grievances (!), not just go to a dead-end arbitration.
Melrod and the majority of the
work-force stood up to the Union president, who purposely miscounted a hand
vote to defeat a possible strike vote. He was terminated. Melrod won his NLRB suit against AMC for “McCarthy-like tactics,” but it was
appealed by AMC, per normal.
More
Struggles
While
waiting to be rehired Melrod works at a reeking, non-union tannery staffed by
black workers; another toxic job at a welding shop from which the FBI gets him
fired; and a steel workers union (USW) job in 1974 at a metal-dust-filled plant
in West Allis, where he was also tracked by the FBI. None of these places provided protective
masks or anything else. The USW job resulted in a wildcat contract strike
against the missing Local and the Steelworkers’ international led by a local
Unity caucus, part of Melrod’s doing.
The picket lines were honored by Teamster drivers. They stopped scab trucks by placing large sharp
‘jacks’ quietly under the tires. They
won some of their demands in a 7 week strike.
At
this time there were still massive civil rights, student, women’s and native
movements, so there was plenty of fuel lying around for ‘prairie fires.’ Melrod also worked on an anti-police
brutality campaign; support for the Menominee Warrior Society takeover of a
reservation abbey, similar to what AIM did at Wounded Knee; the 1976
Bicentennial protest in Philadelphia and a rally in Tupelo, MS against the racist
Klan and cops. All in his spare
time! This was closely connected to his
work with RU and its various front groups.
AMC
Milwaukee Again, then Kenosha
After 2.5 years Melrod got his AMC job
reinstated by the NLRB and the Appeals court. He reentered the plant, was
harassed by supervisors and helped launch a campaign against 1,000 proposed layoffs
in the Milwaukee plant. This failed and
he was transferred to another local, Local 72 in Kenosha, with 350 others who
were not laid-off. They were there to
build one of the shittiest cars ever, the Gremlin. There was already a Fighting Times caucus at Kenosha.
The first issue was the 1976 industry-wide contract negotiations, followed
by negotiations every 2 years. AMC went
after voluntary overtime, the steward system and the right to strike over
grievances. At least 30+ rank and file
caucuses in the auto plants united to fight concessions and satisfy a hunger
for information, as the officials were keeping a lid on it.
At one
point the Fighting Times caucus
members were told by an older union activist that they needed to drop the
‘outsider pose’ and run for union offices if they were serious. I’m not going
to tell the rest. What follows is the
story of their combative climb up the union ladder, with Melrod going from
steward to department chair to chief steward and eventually to the board of the
Kenosha local. He details the small and
large internal struggles that led to his victories, along with the characters
you meet in any workplace.
Some
of this happened after Maoism shattered in the U.S., leading to the RU splitting
in 1978. He left the organization after
that. It ends with AMC’s
partnership/ownership by Renault, and the international battles that ensued
over new car models, robots and automation.
In ’85 Renault pushed through a crushing give-back contract, heaped on
layoffs, work transfers and the threat to close Kenosha. At that point Melrod decided to leave AMC and
go to law school.
Constant
Themes
A
constant theme is the do-little to do-nothing attitudes of local and
international union leaderships – UAW and USW – complacent as they lose members
in the 1970s and still siding with the company. UAW Local 75 had 10,000 members
and was down to 2,500 in ‘76. The other
theme is ‘divide and conquer’ – by job category, by skin color, by ethnicity, by
anti-communism, by work location or department, by age, by gender. Anything will do in a pinch. Racism was one of the most embedded. The counter-theme is to bridge divides in
order to be successful, which he always tried to do. Another theme is to try to find embedded
activists that they could ally with. And
another is the damage to the body and exhaustion working greatly ‘physical’
jobs. An obvious theme is connecting the
trade-union struggles to events outside the factory walls. A background theme is the role of a Marxist
organization in being able to influence and affect events, even in the conservative
and anti-communist U.S., by training, guiding and supporting class struggles.
Melrod
was in the right place at the right time, as this saga shows. Many Marxist organizations sent cadre into
the factories in the 1970s and ‘80s. The
RU was not alone. Like much radical
syndicalism, it did not attempt to gain political power outside of street
protests, but focuses on union struggles most of all. The stories will ring bells for comrades who
worked in factories, warehouses, plants, mines and shops in that period, union
and non-union; those who work there now or are planning to; or those who want
to know what it is like. The book pictures a radical time in detail, which has
faded from view but will return with a vengeance. It ended in the crushing of organized labor’s
great bargaining agreement at AMC. But
labor is rising again.
Prior
blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our
16 year archive, using these terms: “Factory Days” (Gibbs); “Polar Star”
(Smith); “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor,” “Autopsy of an Engine,”
“Night Shift,” “The Unseen” (Bellestrini); “Red Baker,” “A Contract is a
Contract,” “USMCA Fraud,” “The Flivver King” (Sinclair); “Save
Our Unions” (Early); “Tell the Bosses We’re Coming,” “Embedded with Organized
Labor” (Early); “Reviving the Strike” (Burns); “Rebuilding Power in Open-Shop
America,” “On New Terrain” (Moody).
And I
bought it at May Day Books.
The
author will be present for a book talk September 30 at May Day.
Red
Frog
July
7, 2023
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