Introduction

I come from a short line of unionists. Nobody before my parents was involved in the labor movement, but my father and mother were members and activists. My folks didn’t belong to any lodge; they didn’t have a bowling league. What they had and what they believed in were their unions—in my mother’s case the IATSE theatrical attendant’s Local and in my father’s the teachers’ union he was trying to build right up to the day he died.

I fell asleep at night listening to them talk about contracts, negotiations and grievances, or where my mother was on the dispatch book. For working people such things were very important. They determined whether you had enough money at the end of the month to pay for gasoline or meat or shoes. At the age of nine I knew that if my mother got enough overtime I could get a bicycle for Christmas; long before that I knew that if my father got seniority rights he would always be sure of teaching summer school, which meant that we would make it through the long summer when his regular salary wasn’t paid.

To our family the union was not just some vague concept of collective bargaining carried on by distant representatives. It was very much with us, not only in the presence and promise of material things but in the heritage of my family.

My father worked as a sheet metal mechanic in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard right after World War II. One day while going to work on the streetcar he found himself passing through a union demonstration against the General Electric Company. Mounted police officers charged the union pickets with clubs swinging; several pickets went down and the cops continued to attack the helpless men. My father jumped from the streetcar and, with the help of others, pulled a few of the cops from their horses and treated them to a dose of the same medicine. After this he went to work as usual, but a few days later he found that he was being sought for assault on a police officer. This precipitated his departure for the west, and eventually for Los Angeles, where he began a new life.

My mother grew up legally blind from an eye disorder that was eventually cured by the time she was eighteen. At nineteen her mother got her a job in a Los Angeles garment factory making shirts. The place was simply a sweatshop. After working there a short while my mother (85 pounds and with glasses thick as your thumb) decided to lead a wildcat strike against the lowering of piece rates. Somewhere in my attic is a picture of the event, taken by a news photographer. It shows a line of picketers and an arrow drawn toward one. On the back is written, “Strike first job age 19.”

It was my fate to become a unionist, though I fought it hard. I got out of the navy and went to college but changed majors every other semester because it all seemed so far removed from real life. I took a break from school to get my head straight, and found a job in a factory. One day an office mate of mine who happened to be the union steward was out sick. A guy with a grievance came around asking for him. Instead of going away he said, “Can you help me out?” I agreed without hesitation. That decision was like a magic spell, opening the sealed door to let fate catch up with me. In a short while I was going to college at night, majoring in Labor Studies.

Since that time, a quarter-century ago, I have been a member of, worked for, with and around dozens of unions in the public and private sector. I have worked for the U.S. Department of Labor, for other public agencies, private firms and for labor-management trusts. I have been a private investigator in the area of labor and employment law. In all that time I have never been more than a handshake away from union contracts, union agents and union members. And never for a moment sorry I answered that question from the guy who wanted his grievance explained.

This writing is a distillation of those years and what I’ve seen and learned in that time. It was neither reviewed nor approved by any union or union official. I am aware that some of the content may not conform to the official views of particular unions or other groups. These postings consist of my work and opinions alone. In writing this I hope to pass on something useful to the practitioner in the field.

Michael McGrorty