Union Rep Toolbox

Not long ago a novice union representative asked me if I knew of anything he might study in order to do a better job representing the membership of his local. After asking the question he sort of settled into his seat as though he were expecting a long lecture. Instead I said what I always say:

“Learn to type.”

When I was in junior high school my aunt delivered a stern lecture to me about responsibility. She did this every time one of my report cards came through in the mail. She took it upon herself to correct my academic and personal shortcomings, addressing the two in a single diatribe to save time.

I believe I’d received a ‘D’ grade in math. Somehow this led to the demand that I learn to type. My aunt was a typist by profession; everything led to or from the typewriter in her universe. And so it was that I took a typing course the summer before high school. I’d promised after all, and there was no way of getting out of it.

And I promptly flunked the class. The reason I got an ‘F’ was because mine was the only typewriter in the room that had letters on the keys. I never got over the habit of looking down to find the right key, which slowed my typing rate down below the passing level. Besides, it was summer and there were a lot of girls in the room wearing shorts. The girls looked a lot better than the bail of a manual typewriter.

My aunt did not receive the news about my typing failure well. You’d have thought I’d murdered the Lindbergh baby. She made me promise to take another typing class. I promised and was not sorry. The typing classes in high school were almost entirely attended by girls. Unfortunately my teacher was a sour old gent who insisted that I actually learn the typewriter keyboard, and moreover, type text without error. I got a respectable grade in that course and in the one following. By the time I graduated I could make a manual Royal sound like a machine gun.

Knowing how to type got me a clerk’s job in the navy, which is to say that it kept me out of the engine room and scullery. Typing of course makes college work much easier. When the computer went from a toy to a tool I was ready.

The problem is, many of the business agents I’ve known aren’t ready for the nineteenth century, much less this one. You can find them at their desks, hunting for a letter that has migrated from its remembered place rather than finishing off the work they have to do. And union reps have a lot of work that requires typing skill. The ones who can’t or won’t type will try to push the work off onto a clerk or secretary, but that’s just a delaying tactic and it won’t wash.
Nowadays nearly everything of significance in the labor movement has some connection with the computer. The computer is practically useless unless its operator can send commands via the keyboard. Strange how so many union reps, who hail from the ranks of machinists, mechanics and other operatives, head into a job without being able to utilize its most important tool. The result is that they can’t function as true journeymen.

Even stranger is that typing is seldom listed as a job requirement for union representatives. It may take another generation before the skill becomes universal among that bunch. I expect the last holdouts to be among the gentlemen of the building trades, those experts with hand tools.

Michael McGrorty