J.W. Giles oral history interview, 1995-09-11

 CHRIS LUTZ: September 11, 1995 in Temple, Georgia. Giles, where and when were you born?

J.W. GILES: One-twenty-twenty-five, Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia.

LUTZ: Twenty-twenty-five …okay…Whereabouts in Atlanta?

GILES: Uh, at the corner of Fair Street and…I cannot recall.

LUTZ: Southwest Atlanta?

GILES: Yeah. About two blocks from the old Terminal Station where I was born.

LUTZ: Okay. Okay. Were you a child during the Depression then?

GILES: Right.

LUTZ: Um. What was it like in your neighborhood during the Depression?

GILES: Tough.

LUTZ: Tough? How come?

GILES: Because my dad was legally blind and he couldn't hold a very decent job.

LUTZ: Uh huh. And your mom?

GILES: My mother had tuberculosis after I was born. And she stayed on the cure at Battle Hill Sanitarium in…Battle Hill close to Mosley Park at that time in Alto…in Alto, Georgia. At that time, the only cure that they had for TB was rest and diet and a lot of fresh air. And my mother overcome the tuberculosis and lived to be 83 years old.

LUTZ: Um. Who helped take care of you while she had to be away?

GILES: My aunts and grandmothers. Believe it or not I saw twelve grandmothers and twelve grandfathers.

LUTZ: How come? [laughter]

GILES: Uh, well, I give you on my dad's side and I had the same thing on my 00:02:00other side. I saw my daddy's mother and daddy's too. I saw each one of their mother and daddy and that's six. I saw the same thing on the other side.

LUTZ: Wow! That's a long-lived family. It's nice to know, isn't? Well, did you get to finish high school?

GILES: I quit in the ninth grade. I failed English at John Brown Junior High School in the ninth grade and quit.

LUTZ: Said, 'The heck with it.' Huh?

GILES: Got married when I was seventeen.

LUTZ: Wow! Do…

GILES: Got drafted when I was -- got drafted on April 22 after I turned eighteen in 1943.

LUTZ: In the navy was your…?

GILES: The navy.

LUTZ: Um, where did you serve?

GILES: I served on the Atlantic Ocean on the Stary Escort.

LUTZ: Okay, and did it see action?

GILES: Plenty of action.

LUTZ: Wow, so, you were just a baby and you were seeing action.

GILES: Well.

LUTZ: Were you scared or what? Excited?

GILES: Well, you are scared for a while and then you get over it. It's just routine. We, uh, chased submarines. That's what I did in the North Atlantic.

LUTZ: Eek, um.

GILES: We escorted huge convoys to England. Two or three hundred ships and there would be six destroyer escorts out in front looking for submarines. And when got a contact, we open up to battle stations and we dropped depth charges to chase submarines.

LUTZ: Um

GILES: I also operated with the USS Wake Island in what they call the Killer Squad. Wake Island was a converted aircraft carrier. They would put up planes looking for submarines. And I operated with them for eighty-nine days in the 00:04:00North Atlantic without seeing land. We took all our fuel and groceries from the Wake Island while we were at sea.

LUTZ: Wake Island in the Atlantic?

GILES: Yeah, That is the name of the aircraft carrier.

LUTZ: Oh got you. Okay. Well can you start there for a second? [laughter] Did you ever to get on shore?

GILES: I had some duty at the receiving station in Philadelphia.

LUTZ: Okay, but not abroad?

GILES: No. I went to the Pacific Ocean and I served on an aviation supply ship.

LUTZ: Mmhmm

GILES: And I went from San Francisco to Guam and operated from Guam to China, three trips to China.

LUTZ: You went to China?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: Whereabouts? Neat.

GILES: Oh, it's interesting. We went to Tac tu Bar the first time in the 00:05:00Yellow Sea. The next time -- no, the first time we went to Sing Thai.

LUTZ: Okay.

GILES: Then, the next time we went to Tac tu Bar which is all the way north in the Yellow Sea. We had to anchor out about forty miles because we was too deep in the water. They sent out barges for us to unload on.

LUTZ: Um, did you get to encounter any of the Chinese people?

GILES: Yes, we sure did. We got to take the liberty to Tsingtao, China. We went into Tac Tu Bar and we got a truck over to the train station and rode the train into Tinsinger. The marine primary division went over there a year when we got there. And we had been at sea for a long time.

LUTZ: Oh dear

GILES: We had a lot of money. We created some inflation while we were over there. We put the marines out of order.

LUTZ: We might not want to go too closely into the details of that. [laughter] Um, maybe I should have said did you meet any of the country people. But let's just slide over that leave.

GILES: At first the marine primary division had the biggest hotel in Ten Sen. Their chow hall was in the restaurant in that hotel. That is where we stayed.

LUTZ: Um

GILES: And those communist was fighting there during the night at that time along the railroads. That was before [China] went Communist in 1946.

LUTZ: So, the Communists were fighting the Japanese?

GILES: Fighting the Chinese.

LUTZ: Oh, ok.

GILES: It was internal.

LUTZ: Yeah. Okay. So, this is…the war is still going on --

GILES: No, the war was over then at that time.

LUTZ: Okay, but you stayed in the Navy

GILES: With Japan, right.

LUTZ: Okay. Were you married to -- your wife's name is Mrs. Lavern --

GILES: No. Her name was Wilma Jives.

LUTZ: Different wife?

GILES: Right.

LUTZ: Ok. Were you still married to Mrs. Wilma then?

GILES: Right.

LUTZ: And still a young man.

GILES: Yeah, very young.

LUTZ: Let's get passed the war, back from China, and back to the States. Now, what happened when you got back to the States?

GILES: I had to get a job.

LUTZ: And what job did you get?

GILES: I…I was a boilertender in the navy aboard ships, so I went to the Georgia Power Company looking for a job to operate a boiler in a powerhouse.

LUTZ: Uh huh.

GILES: And they don't…they wasn't hiring anybody in the firehouse. They sent me to the line department and I got a job as a helper in a line department.

LUTZ: Oh, okay.

GILES: I had a wife and a little boy to look after.

LUTZ: Oh, you have a son too. What's his name?

GILES: His name is Jimmy, James Alfred Giles.

LUTZ: Okay, um…

GILES: He was born while I was on my way from Bermuda Island to New York.

LUTZ: Okay. Oh, you got to go to Bermuda too.

GILES: Yeah, we went down on the shakedown cruise on a new ship.

LUTZ: What's a shakedown cruise?

GILES: A shakedown cruise is where you go to find out all the shortcomings and the physical problems of the ship and get them straightened out before we got to battle.

LUTZ: Oh, you kind of shake it down.

GILES: Shake it down.

LUTZ: Alright, Yeah. [laughter] Anyhow, you have a wife and a son and you become a helper. Now, what did you do as a helper? With the Georgia Power Company?

GILES: I started digging holes for the power company poles.

LUTZ: Oh. Um. Did you stick with that job long?

GILES: Yeah, thirteen years.

LUTZ: Is that right.

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: Wow! Uh, when did you get into AFSCME?

GILES: While I was working for the Georgia Power Company, I joined the IBEW. I was active in the IBEW all those years as a member of the executive board and so forth.

LUTZ: Okay, well, I got confused as to which came first. Let's slide back to the IBEW then. How did you get interested in the IB…how did you come to join the IBEW?

GILES: Well, it wasn't optional when I went to work, you had to join within six months or you didn't have a job as before the Taft-Hartley.

LUTZ: And so, you join up. Are you glad to?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: Was Atlanta a comfortable place for union men then?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: Yeah. Okay. Would you call it a union town?

GILES: Not hardly.

LUTZ: Not hardly, all right. [laughter] Um, what were people thinking about your neighbors saying or your church congregation people thinking about unions at that time? If you had to make a generalization.

GILES: Well I wasn't bashful about letting anybody know I was a member of the union and active with the union in…including my minister or anybody else.

LUTZ: Did you find a good response or kind of hostile or what?

GILES: Well, sort of mediocre.

LUTZ: Like you are in a union, so what?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: Hey, that's not so bad considering some of the stuff that people did. That's not so bad. What made you decide to get active in the union and how did that come about?

GILES: It was real simple.

LUTZ: Mmhmm.

GILES: There was a bunch of GI's working for the power company in [inaudible] about four hundred of us under one roof.

LUTZ: Mmhmm.

GILES: Every morning we would go into our locker rooms, go in and get ready to go out on trucks to the jobs. There was a bunch of those old 4F bastards that 00:11:00stayed there. And this foreman, had made foreman was using bad language talking to some of us employees. And I said, 'Something needs to be done about that.' So, I started attending the union meetings. I served my apprenticeship, I sat on the back and listened to the procedures and the issues. Finally I started running my mouth and started participating in the discussions and the debates.

LUTZ: Mmmhmm. And, um, did you become a steward?

GILES: Yes. I was a steward.

LUTZ: Okay. What did you do as a steward?

GILES: I tried to look after our members.

LUTZ: Yeah. Um. Did you take on the 4F…fellows? [laughter]

GILES: Not really in that capacity. That is what motivated to get active in the union was the way we were being treated. We had a sweetheart arrangement between the union and the company. And I didn't like it. I thought it needed to be changed. And I worked towards that end. And I changed a lot of it before I left.

LUTZ: Why don't you tell me about that. Tell me about some of the highlights looking back on changing that. Hmmm. Wait a minute. Let's go back to your childhood first. Would you tell me some more since I have rushed you ahead?

GILES: Ok. Um, I want to point out that my dad was blind, legally blind, but he could see to get around. And, during the Depression, there was 15 million men, big, healthy strapping men out of work. My dad didn't have a job. And the city 00:13:00of Atlanta was broke paying their employees with script whatever that is. That's my understanding. They couldn't hire enough police to keep people from stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. My daddy went to the city of Atlanta and got a permit to carry a gun. He bought an old 38 arrowhead pistol and went to the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Boulevard and signed up the junkyard, the grocery stores, drugstores, and all the shops in that area. All of them together was paying him about twelve dollars a week to spend from sundown to sunup guarding the stuff in that area. That was the way my dad made a living 00:14:00and made a job for himself during that time.

LUTZ: Um. They hired him even though he was legally blind?

GILES: He could see to get around. He could see what was going on. He couldn't read and he couldn't write.

LUTZ: Uh huh. I guess they figured it was night time anyway.

GILES: But he kept the people from stealing the stuff anyway.

LUTZ: Yeah. Um. What were you doing? Tell me more about what you were doing as a kid.

GILES: Uh, I was playing as much as I could.

LUTZ: [laughter] Uh, where did you play at?

GILES: In everywhere.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. Remember any special games?

GILES: No, not really.

LUTZ: Oh, that's kind of [inaudible]

GILES: I spent a lot of time in the country when school was out. My grandparents lived in the country. I love the country. And that's where I went when school 00:15:00was out and stayed until school started again.

LUTZ: Uh huh. Where were they living?

GILES: Well, my mother's daddy lives in Paulding County near Hiram, Georgia. And he was a truck farmer. I pulled my first strike working for him.

LUTZ: And what did you do?

GILES: I had been carrying seed to the planters and giving it out to the distributors. Chopping cotton and pulling cotton, putting soda around corn. And, uh, he had fourteen acres of watermelons. And he told us when we got through playing by the watermelons, we laid back for a while, we was going to quite for a while. The vines had already start growing and I had to turn those 00:16:00vines parallel to the row where they could plow up close to them and then go back and straighten them out. There is a lot of hills with the watermelons, fourteen acres. He said he would be done when we got through. That evening about three o'clock, we got done. I got me a can and went and dug some worms and fixed me a fishing pole. It rained that night and I was going fishing the next morning. My granddaddy got up from the breakfast table, he said, 'J. W., when you get through, you get that old scoville hoe we are going to sprout the new ground.' There wasn't but one scoville hoe so I knew what we meant. I didn't get to go fishing, but I didn't sprout the new ground. There's an old man down the road that ran a rolling store. He went to Atlanta on Friday and traded all of his chickens and eggs and butter for his supplies. It was Friday 00:17:00and I knew he was going to Atlanta. So, I got my other pair of overalls and I went to Atlanta. I didn't get to go fishing, but I didn't sprout the new ground.

LUTZ: You ran away from home? Did you get in trouble?

GILES: No.

LUTZ: Um.

GILES: And I got get on the record about my great grandpa that lived in Villa Rica, Douglas County Georgia. When we has fifteen years old at the mud hole school in Douglas County, Georgia. The confederate army sent a lieutenant around looking for boys big enough to go in the service. And they was going to take him and put him in the service, wasn't even going to let him go home and tell his mother and dad. And he ran away, got away from them. Next year he joined the Confederate Army and he was in the battle of New Hope in Dallas, Georgia. That 00:18:00statement I just made is in the history of Douglas County book.

LUTZ: He survived the war?

GILES: He was the last living survivor of the Confederate war in Douglas County. He attended the last convention of Confederate soldiers in Dallas, Texas. In about… about 1935 or '36 before he died in 1937. I was twelve years old. I used to sit on his knee and he would tell me about being in that war.

LUTZ: You must have been proud of him.

GILES: I was.

LUTZ: Yeah. That is heavy stuff for a twelve year old. Isn't it?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: You get up to about age thirteen. This must have been when you started high school? Hmm. About that?

GILES: Somewhere in that neighborhood.

LUTZ: And, um. I. It was Brown High School?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: And then, all of a sudden you say, 'To heck with this noise.' And, uh, 00:19:00you dropped out and got married.

GILES: Yeah. I was a soda jerk for American World Pharmacy on East Point, and the Howard Pharmacy at the corner of People Street and Gordon Street on the west end. And I made sandwiches at the Varsity, packed ice-cream at the Varsity. And was very close to old man Gordon and before he died he looked just like he did in 1942.

LUTZ: Do me a favor and tell me just for my kids, because they are big Varsity fans. What was the Varsity like then?

GILES: Oh, it was humongous.

LUTZ: Mmhmm.

GILES: The parking lot went out there where I-75 and I-85 is now.

LUTZ: Wow.

GILES: All of that was the Varsity parking lot. I was told, the story goes, 00:20:00Gordy was a student at Georgia Tech. He flunked out and said, 'I'm going up the street to make a million dollars.' And he did.

LUTZ: Once more he did it by poisoning the Georgia Tech students. [laughter]

GILES: The what?

LUTZ: He did it by poisoning the Georgia Tech students too. I'm just kidding, I'm kind of a Varsity fan myself. At least once a year, I gotta go. Is it true that people used to bring food out to them on roller skates?

GILES: No

LUTZ: Oh, okay

GILES: I don't remember the roller skates.

LUTZ: That was just a fantasy, then.

GILES: I remember Flossy who was a Carrib boy that could sing the menu to all the customers. He was there for years and years.

LUTZ: He sang the menu to people?

GILES: Yes.

LUTZ: Where did you and your wife live?

GILES: We lived on York Street in the West End to start with.

LUTZ: So, you got out on your own right away?

GILES: Well, that is what my mother told me when I told, when I told her I was going to get married. She said, 'Where you are going to take her, you are not going to bring here.' A lot different than it is this day and time.

LUTZ: Yeah. Um. [laughter] Well, um. Did you want to add some other thing about your childhood?

GILES: I guess that is all.

LUTZ: 'Cause I think that we have to call you an adult once you get married and especially once you get into the service.

GILES: Right.

LUTZ: How do you think the service changed you?

GILES: It made me grow up pretty fast.

LUTZ: Um. Does it feel like you are a different person when you came back or a fuller person?

GILES: I…uh…I think I probably wound up doing a lot of things in my life 00:22:00that I wouldn't have done if I hadn't been in the service.

LUTZ: Wow, boy, you read my mind. I was going to ask. What kind of things?

GILES: Running around with women and stuff like that.

LUTZ: Oh, well, all right, that wasn't quite what I was going to ask. I was going to say, do you think that being in the service filters you towards being an activist later in life or affected you in any way, um, in terms of your career or your labor involvement?

GILES: One thing you learn in the services, you learn to follow order. If you don't learn anything else, you learn to follow orders. And, there's, there's a reason for that. The reason is that everybody's life is depending 00:23:00on whoever is in charge. Somebody has got to make the decisions.

LUTZ: Mmhmm.

GILES: And, um.

LUTZ: Is that a lesson that carried over with anything?

GILES: Well, one thing about the service, when I used to go to the movies and I'd see the sailors looking out the porthole at the hula girls in Honolulu. They never did tell me who was going to be washing my clothes and making up my bunk and that sort of stuff. That didn't tell me. I'd be washing my clothes. They didn't put that in the movies.

LUTZ: [laughter] No, they don't. Mmhmm. Well, were you joking about the women stuff?

GILES: Well, no, because we was living hard and living fast. And we didn't 00:24:00know when we was going to be living and when we was going to be dead. We decided we would just go on and live a little bit.

LUTZ: Was it a girl in every port?

GILES: Not hardly, I wouldn't say that. Every chance I got.

LUTZ: Okay, well that's a little different. [laughter] Well, you were young. When you got back to the States and went to work for Georgia Power, ah, where were you living then in Atlanta? Do you remember?

GILES: I was living at the corner of White Street and Lee Street

LUTZ: Okay, ah.

GILES: In the West End about two blocks from that old farmers market on Southern Road.

LUTZ: Not so far from where you grew up.

GILES: That's right.

LUTZ: Were you living there with your first wife?

GILES: Right.

LUTZ: Well, Okay. Well, you are at Georgia Power. Who are your mentors in these early years?

GILES: Well, E. J. Slim Lord from Gainesville, Georgia was a lineman for Georgia Power Company in Atlanta. He was the man that I apprenticed with. A man that I have a lot of respect for. And, um, one of the foremen that I worked with was deeply involved in the strike of local union 84, IBEW from '31 to '36. The strike lasted almost five years. N. W. Chapman was one of the many men that was involved in that strike. And, um, he has some strong convictions about the union and he was a big inspiration to me and my union activities. And I would like to pay a special tribute to L. W. Luther Borden and Walt Fairchild for their strong 00:26:00support for me to run for full-time business manager and financial secretary for Local 84, IBEW.

LUTZ: Okay. What kind of men were those, the last two men? Were they also big union men?

GILES: They were good union men. They wasn't that active, but they believe in the union or what the union stood for. They stood behind what the union was standing for at that time.

LUTZ: Sounds like they believed in you too.

GILES: Well, uh, I would like to say this. When they started that strike in 1931, uh, the unions didn't have good procedures back then. And people just went to a regular union meeting one night and they was pissed off about something and they didn't like what was going on. They decided they would strike. They didn't give any notice and didn't give the other people a 00:27:00chance to be there and participate in the discussion and the debate and the vote. That is the reason that it wound up as part of the men working the strike. They, they, uh, 'cause they didn't have an opportunity to vote which is bad procedures. You need better procedures than that in the union. We have them today, thank goodness.

LUTZ: Were you involved in any strikes yourself?

GILES: No, not with Georgia Power Company.

LUTZ: Okay, um. Ah negotiations?

GILES: All negotiations for ours on the negotiating committee several years before I got to be a full-time union representative.

LUTZ: Um, so, you must have been a successful negotiator if there weren't strikes then. Um, do any of them stand out in your mind?

GILES: Well, one of the main reasons we didn't strike was because we had a continuance clause in our contract instead of the contract expiring on a given date. Just being out without a contractor after that day. The contract had a provision that said the contract would remain in force effect until a new agreement was reached. Therefore, we beyond the expiration date of a lot of times in our negotiations. And we always got our wage increases were retroactive back to the expiration date of the contract.

LUTZ: Very nice.

GILES: So, that saved a lot of strikes. The IBEW has one of the best arrangements with this outside contractors which local union dealt with too. Has a counsel of industrial relations they called. It's one of the best arrangements in the entire labor movement.

LUTZ: What makes it so good?

GILES: When they reach an impasse in negotiations either party reserves a right to take the issues to the counsel of industrial relations. And the counsel of industrial relations is made up of equal representatives from the contractors associations and from the IBEW. And they resolve the issues and their decision is final and binding on both parties. And that organization has saved the industry millions of hours in strikes.

LUTZ: Um, do they do this because say Georgia Power, or other --

GILES: Georgia Power Company don't have anything do with this. This is between the electrical contractors and the IBEW.

LUTZ: Okay.

GILES: But, Local union 84 also in addition to the utility jurisdiction, it also had jurisdiction over outside construction

LUTZ: I understand.

GILES: Which dealt with the counsel of industrial relations. And I never did have a case. I negotiated the first outside agreement Local union 84 ever had with outside contractors. And the reason that I found out later that we got an agreement, the contractor from Hinkles and McCoy from Indiana, Muncie, Indiana. They was going to break down our working conditions by glove and a higher voltage and what we was accustomed to. And, um, much to their surprise, they 00:31:00couldn't get any of the IBEW members to do what they wanted them to do. They wasn't able to break down our conditions. The Georgia Power Company attempted to do that while I was business manager. They wasn't successful at it.

LUTZ: Well, what is that. What is gloving higher voltage?

GILES: Well, you put on a rubber gloves up to your elbow, then you got a leather glove that goes over top of that. At that time, we gloved up to including to 2,300 volts phased ground off what they called 41, 60 phase to phase if you put one hand on one phase and one hand on the other phase, you have 41, 60 between them. But, from phase to ground, it's just 2,300 volts, but that would kill you too. But 12,000 volts…they had taught us all the time that we was working there that it was unsafe to work 12,000 volts. Then all of a sudden, because the 00:32:00twelve thousand volt system was much more efficient than 2,300 volt system. They could feed further away from the stations and they was converting their system from 2,300 to 12,000. At that time, we worked all of that voltage with sticks. We did all the work with sticks. Didn't put our hands on it or either we killed it and ground it, de-energized it and grounded it.

LUTZ: And so, all of sudden. SHAZAM! It was safe then, right?

GILES: Yeah, it was [inaudible]

LUTZ: Oh, it was like a miracle.

GILES: And, um, they was getting geared up to do that. And I arranged to get a lot of alignment, bring their wives. And I got some movies from Georgia Tech and different places that showed the arch and all that electricity how bad and how dangerous it was. I had the support of the people, and they didn't do it for 00:33:00as long as I was there. One time, when we was in negotiations, they offered us a whole hundred dollars more a month if we just glove that voltage. We told them a hundred dollars didn't make it any safer. They didn't work it.

LUTZ: It doesn't pay for the tombstone. I'll tell you.

GILES: They are working the day after I left. They are working it.

LUTZ: Yeah. I wanted to ask you in a little while about what your opinion is of the labor movement today. But first, let…let's just get on record just exactly what your positions is in the IBEW were. You started as steward and then you moved on from there.

GILES: I was on the executive for several terI was vice-president of the local union for one term. I was president for one term. I was business manager for um, 00:34:00three terms, three two year terAnd then, I was kicked out of office in 1965 for being under the influence in negotiations.

LUTZ: Hmmmmm.

GILES: I didn't do anything any different than the international representative did that was sitting in on those negotiations. We went out to lunch and we had some martinis and we got back and I just happen to cuss somebody out. They didn't like me anyway. They…the international didn't like me 'cause I was too proper. I didn't have no trouble having the support of the people. And they didn't like it. And I would go up to the district meetings and the district counsel. All of the companies that was on the Southern Company property, all of the unions had a joint counsel we called, Southeast Assistant Counsel. We had quarterly meetings or semi-annual meetings or special 00:35:00meetings whatever it took to keep everybody informed of what was going on the Southern Company system.

LUTZ: Mmhmm

GILES: And, um, when I, when I talked at those meetings, I had support of the people, wherever I was at. At the, uh, I went to six international conventions with the IBEW while I was a member. And one of them was in St. Louis in 1965. And I got the local union to go on record to oppose the six dollars and 46 cents increase in dues at one time that they was trying to ram down our throat to support a fifty dollar a month pension that somebody had reached up in there twenty years before that and picked out a figure and said, 'This is what we are going to pay for it and this is what they are going to pay out.' And they 00:36:00didn't do any actual studies and we was going to subsidize all them old people that had gone on before us that didn't pay for their pension plan. So my members voted me and instructed me to go there and oppose it. And I opposed it. And, um, I talked against it, when they put it to a vote, it lost. It was a yeah and nay vote and it lost. The chair ruled it, it passed. And I sat on the chair and they had a standing vote. And it was obvious that lost. They sent a sergeant-at-arms out. They counted and come back and tallied it up. And He said it will pass. I called for a roll call vote. And all these other things I did, I was identified in the proceedings in the convention in the proceedings. But when I called for a roll call, it said an unidentified delegate called for a roll 00:37:00call vote. And they adjourned the convention right then. And they got their house in order that night. And the next day on the roll call, it passed. But I, I talked more times at that convention if you looked in the back end of the convention proceeding by every delegate that spoke, it has got the page number that he spoke on. I talked more times than the president did.

LUTZ: [laughter] [inaudible]

GILES: They didn't like me

LUTZ: No

GILES: So they kicked me out of office.

LUTZ: Okay.

GILES: So after that, they got real concerned about the people working for the power company. They got the power company to agree to an employee's assistance program, but the international didn't have no damn employees assistance program for me.

LUTZ: Yeah. All right. All right. Let's go back before sixty-five, now. Because it sounds like you have met some memorable people that you would like to punch out and some memorable people otherwise. Why don't tell me about some of the people that you remember, good and bad. Um.

GILES: Well, to start with, the vice-president of the IBEW was a guy name G. H. Parker. He had a coin collection that was worth about a million dollars back then. A million dollars was a pile of money, sure enough in those days.

LUTZ: Does he have an unmarried son?

GILES: No. I'm not going to speculate how he got all that money.

LUTZ: Mmmhmm. All right. I guess he wasn't one of the ones that you remember fondly.

GILES: He was one of the ones that helped kicked me out of the office. He and a guy named J. B. Pate who was a thief from Macon, Georgia.

LUTZ: Okay. You mean literally a thief?

GILES: Well, they tell me that when he was, uh, when he worked with his tools in Warner Robbins, he was caught thieving before he got to be local business manager of Local 1316 in Macon.

LUTZ: Oy. Okay. How about good memories? [inaudible]

GILES: It's…

LUTZ: Well, lemme…I'll ask the question this way, that is a real general question. If you had to pick out a time that you said, 'I'm so proud of that, that moment, that I'll live it again, what would you pick out?'

GILES: Well, it would probably be after I had been working for AFSCME, and after I had been secretary of state of the AFL-CIO, I went back to work for local 84 as an assistant business manager when I lost the position. When I lost the election for the president of the state AFL-CIO. I went back to work as an assistant for Clyde from '71 to '72. At that time, the William Stagier Act, later know as OSHA was under consideration in Congress. And I hadn't always been concerned about safety. I was…sort of up to speed of what was going about my trade, my industry. And when they come out with their proposed standards in the federal registry, I got a copy of it. And I went through the proposed standards. And I wrote up a bunch of proposed standards myself. And I ran around 00:41:00the city of Atlanta taking pictures of the old tight construction they used to have a long time ago. And eight by ten photographs of the new type of construction were there to thank congestion, which was much unsafer than what we had been accustomed to. It was more economical for construction and more, economical for maintenance, so that's what they adopted. So, they had public hearings in Washington. I made slides from those eight by ten photographs. And I had a canister of slides and my prepared remarks to present at the public hearing. And there was safety men from utility companies from all over the 00:42:00country at that hearing. And there was also some union people from all over the countries at that hearing. And when I got through with my presentation at that hearing, the union people jumped up and clapped. And the union management people got carried away and jumped up and clapped too.

LUTZ: [laughter] [inaudible]

GILES: That was one of my most memorable moments.

LUTZ: Yeah. That's a proud moment. You bet. After '65, let's just get it in order, where you went right after '65, and you lose the election, what do you do then?

GILES: I didn't lose the elections, I was just -- I had just been re-elected in July and they removed me from office.

LUTZ: Oh, I thought they rigged the election or something. Uh.

GILES: No, they had a trial. They had some of my good brothers come up and put 00:43:00charges against me 'cause I took a drink of liquor. And they took me out of office and hand picked a guy to put in my place that had been giving me hell for two years. He was going with my secretary. My secretary was furnishing him a copy of my report before every meeting. And he was holding a rump meeting with my executive board. And they come to the regular meeting prepared to vote against everything that I had proposed and did. Instead of me reading off a page or two and…and saying in the executive board report, and we vote to concur with the executive report like they had always done. I had to fight them on every damn issue at the union meeting, but I won every issue for two years. That 00:44:00guy couldn't beat me on nothing. And that, that's is one of the reasons they kicked me out of office.

LUTZ: So you got framed up.

GILES: Yeah, I got framed up.

LUTZ: [inaudible] Bet you… bet you didn't think much of that secretary.

GILES: And he fired her later on too.

LUTZ: No joke.

GILES: Yeah

LUTZ: What was his name?

GILES: Amos Lowery.

LUTZ: [inaudible] Okay. I have to make a mental note to never for this man. Well, so, you got kicked out, then what did you do?

GILES: I went to work for my tools, working with a contractor.

LUTZ: How long did that last?

GILES: Oh about six or eight months. State, County, and Municipal Employees looking me up and wanted me to go to work for them.

LUTZ: AFSCME?

GILES: AFSCME.

LUTZ: What did you go to work for them as?

GILES: Organizer.

LUTZ: Why don't you tell me what it was like to work for AFSCME.

GILES: It was interesting.

LUTZ: Yeah?

GILES: It was real interesting.

LUTZ: Give me a typical example of organizing.

GILES: Well, the union already had some sort of recognition from the city of Atlanta. They could go over the personnel meeting with grievances. Somebody had been done wrong. They could take a grievance with the personnel board. They could get some different things straightened out. You know the laws don't cover state county maintenance for employees, they are exempt specifically,

LUTZ: Yeah

GILES: and gone away the state county for employees union couldn't get any 00:46:00words with muscle or whatever.

GILES: One of the first things that I did when I went with AFSCME was to adopt some procedures for going on strike.

LUTZ: Okay.

GILES: I got them revised with by laws and updated them to establish some procedures. After I got to be director of district council 14, somebody decided 00:47:00that they were going to make the city of Atlanta grant a wage increase that was already promised and the city was already committed to on January the 1st of the following year. By August to September is when we were there about, somebody decided that they was going to make the city of Atlanta pay that wage increase then.

LUTZ: Oh.

GILES: That's when the wildcat strike occurred.

LUTZ: Tell me about that.

GILES: There was a guy named John Kissic from the Textile Workers Union from North Carolina who was living in a motel on Cheshire Bridge Road close to the 00:48:00headquarters of the Cheshire Bridge Road, uh, sanitation department. And one morning about nine o'clock, the city of Atlanta called me and told me they had a strike at the Cheshire Bridge Headquarters. And I called the superintendent of sanitation, I can't recall his name at this time. But it was under the Ivan Allen administration in 1968. And, uh, ask him to came to meet me out there and he did. I went in the locker room where all those people were and there were some of them already well under the influence. And I got up on the bench and told them that you are in…you are on an illegal, unauthorized, wild-cat strike. You are in violation of your own rules and regulations and I urge you to get on those trucks and get on to work. If you don't, I'm going to urge this man standing beside me here to fire you. And, um, it was apparent to me the 00:49:00strike was going to spread, so I got on television with John Pruitt and made the same statement on television. Well, the international union got hold of it and they didn't like it. So, they sent their hatchet man, a guy named Shapiro to Atlanta. And he was going to take over my union. And I said, 'No, you are not going to take over the union.' I was meeting with the city of Atlanta. I said, 'You can sit in on any meeting that I am in, but I'm the director of this counsel 14 in accordance with the constitution with this union. I said, 'Unless and until you put it under trusteeship and remove me from office, I'm in charge and you can take a backseat. So, I run the meetings dealing with 00:50:00the city of Atlanta. And I can't remember the exact sequence of all this. But, um, and I want to put it in the record, we had a secretary in this union named Mildred Plaque. And she had at one time been a secretary for the machinist international union. And, um, she also knew John Keswick. And she knew that he was in town and he was out there at that motel and he was engaged in some activities with that group of people. So, um, in the meetings with the city of 00:51:00Atlanta, after we had been meeting almost a week, it comes time for these people to get their payday. They was on strike. And, um, a couple of them that was on the committee decided they would come over on my side. They had been on Shapiro's side. I said, 'Well, you know, y'all, they don't pay people while they are on strike. If you want to go back to work, I might could make some arrangements to get the city of Atlanta to pay you while you have been on strike.'

LUTZ Uh huh.

GILES: So, they thought they could sell it. So, I might with Ivan Allen and they 00:52:00was considering it. There was a guy on the city council, um…there was a guy on the city council, they called him alderman at the time, named G. Everett Milligan. He was vice-president of Gulf Oil company. He was fixing to run for mayor. And he wanted the support of the black community to get elected mayor. Instead of dealing with me and the union and letting the union decided in the union meeting what to do, he goes and gets with, uh, um, Hosea Williams. And Hosea Williams calls a meeting of the AFSCME members at a black church on 00:53:00Boulevard. And the news media was there. I didn't go because it wasn't a union meeting, that was Hosea's meeting. And at the eleven o'clock news that night, Hosea said, 'If ya'll vote to accept what the city is offering to pay you while you are on strike, I am with you and if you vote to reject it, I'm with you." They voted to reject it. Well, the next morning, I figured out what was going on. I went to Channel Five. I had the presence of all five city local unions. I was going to make a news release to the city…to channel five about what G. Everett Milligan was doing. Well when I got to that part in the story on the release, they cut the camera off and said, 'We will be back in a little bit.'

LUTZ: [laughter]

GILES: They stopped right there. He was part of the establishment, G. Everett Milligan. They went and called G. Everett Milligan, and he called Hosea Williams, the city of Atlanta takes city trucks and goes to the picket lines and picks up the pickets and carriers them to the same church on Boulevard. They vote to accept the same thing they had rejected the night before making my news release no longer news worthy. So that's the reason that I am putting this in the record.

LUTZ: [inaudible]

GILES: That is exactly what happened.

LUTZ: Milligan never became Mayor?

GILES: Milligan didn't become mayor and Shapiro never put that local union under trusteeship. I was…I was still director of District Council 14 when I got elected to secretary of the state AFL-CIO about a month or two later. But I 00:55:00got out just in time, but they were after me.

LUTZ: [laughter] The good guys won for a while. Well, wait a minute, before I go on to the state AFL-CIO. I have heard that AFSCME is a little quick to put unions, local unions under trusteeship or receivership. Is that a fact?

GILES: They weren't while I was there. I went to one of their board meetings in New Orleans. And I made my case. I had…I had two huge three ring binders about everything that transpired. And I pointed my finger to Jerry Wurf's face and told him that if he had authority under that constitution to put that organization under trustee ship, but until then I was director of District Council 14. I was a delegate to his international union in Miami. And they… it was about this time of year and they had a hurricane named Abigail. And his 00:56:00wife, Jerry Wurf's wife gave birth to a baby girl in New York and they named that baby Abigail. And that day, Hubert Humphrey addressed our convention. I had my picture taken with him. My ex-wife has got it and I would give anything for it to put it in the labor archives.

LUTZ: Is she still --

GILES: She lives in Rex, Georgia. And, um, the labor movement really screwed up when they failed to elect Hubert Horatio Humphrey president of the United States. I have been told and I have good reason to believe that the Teamsters and the Auto Workers Union supported Richard Milhous Nixon, so they could have a 00:57:00key to the back door of the White House.

LUTZ: The Teamsters I can believe, but the Auto Workers too, huh?

GILES: That is what I understand.

LUTZ: Is that right? Very interesting.

GILES: We could have elected Humphrey.

LUTZ: Yeah, um.

GILES: And the next day, Robert Kennedy got killed while I was at that convention.

LUTZ: Were you a supporter of Robert Kennedy?

GILES: I would have, I was support either one of them, either one of them got the nomination. They'd have my all out support.

LUTZ: Giles, are you a yellow dog Democrat?

GILES: I don't know what a yellow dog Democrat is.

LUTZ: You would vote for a yellow dog if it was running on the Democratic ticket.

GILES: Um. I reckon I am.

LUTZ: Yeah.

GILES: I haven't seen anybody….the closest thing that I ever seen that I might have voted for was George Bush. I, I, um, I have never understood how people voted for Ronald Reagan. He was a Democrat to start with – and, um, he 00:58:00was….what was it that they said about him. He was a teflon president.

LUTZ: Yeah.

GILES: You can tell his supporters about all of the money he spent for his friends in defense industry. And he spent more money as president than all the other presidents put together. Got us more in debt than all the rest of the presidents put together. And they talk about the Democrats doing it. [Break] For the record, I only, I started attending union meetings in the Labor Temple adjacent to the Atlanta City Hall parking lot. The Labor Temple is a two story building facing Trinity Avenue. The temple was once described as one of the 00:59:00first labor temples in the United States.

LUTZ: Is that right. And what did it look like?

GILES: It was a nice looking building. You walk in the front door, it had wide steps going to the second story right in front of the front door. We had some raunchy union meetings in them days.

LUTZ: Like what? I'm kind of scared of the answer.

GILES: Well…I don't want to go into that.

LUTZ: All right, we will just slide by that one. Why did they get rid of the Labor Temple and build the new IBEW building?

GILES: Well, I can tell you a story behind that if you want to know.

LUTZ: Yeah, I do.

GILES: I was a delegate to the Atlanta Labor Temple Association from Local Union 01:00:0084. As a delegate to the Atlanta Labor Temple Association, we was, the Labor Temple at that time was at 250 Tenth Street. Never had adequate parking around that facility for any meeting of any size. We was always looking for something different, I was. At that time, there was a boy's club just south of the Capital between Central Avenue and the expressway. The property is going to be for sale. I advocated before the labor company association that the labor association inquired about that property. We built a new labor temple in that area, so it would be close to the Capitol and convenient. Well, the Labor Temple Association got somebody to look into the possibilities into getting the land. 01:01:00And they got somebody and an architect to do the plans that the IBEW building has got. The Labor Temple Association opted not to do anything the IBEW Local 613 took the ball and went and bought the land and built the building. And my statement can be substantiated if I'm not mistaken it is in the record in the Atlanta Labor Council proceedings.

LUTZ: And that's why it is the IBEW building.

GILES: Right.

LUTZ: Yeah. I often wondered about that.

GILES: But that was my idea.

LUTZ: Um, now, you were bopping along, you had gone out on your own, you had been in AFSCME. And I think we last left you shaking your fists in Jerry Wurf's face. [laughter] What year was that wild-cat or that sort of wild-cat, 01:02:00kind of a half wild-cat, I guess you call it.

GILES: It was 1968

LUTZ: 1968

GILES: Same year that Martin Luther King got killed. In fact, just prior to the time Martin Luther King got killed, he was walking a picket line at the Scripto Plant on Boulevard and I was walking on the picket line right behind him.

LUTZ: Uh, did you meet him then?

GILES: Yeah, I knew Martin Luther King. And he was…that's what he was doing in Memphis. He was in Memphis on AFSCME business.

LUTZ: With the sanitation.

GILES: The sanitation workers, AFSCME.

LUTZ: What sort of guy was he?

GILES: He was a deeply religious man. He had strong convictions as everybody knew.

LUTZ: That is very interesting that you should say that.

GILES: Well, let me tell you another little story about the IBEW and black people. The CIO attempted to organize the underground department, the Georgia 01:03:00Power Company which was the laborers was all black people. At that time, an underground department, Georgia Power Company when they went to build an extension to an underground line, they would dig a manhole. And then these black men -- would tunnel under the ground from one hole to the next and build the shoring for it. The Georgia Power Company didn't want to deal with the CIO because they was a militant organization. And they made sweetheart arrangements for the GX Barker. And, um, the IBEW amended Local Union at 84's charter so it 01:04:00would take BA members, what they call BA members that's a non-beneficial member. It used to be primarily people in the manufacturing industry was the BA members, construction type people was A members. Now that's the beneficial members were where you get the pension from that. But the IBEW went out and took those people in. And at the time I was elected business manager. The black people had always been holding their meetings for black people at the Butler Street YMCA.

LUTZ: Aaah.

GILES: I attended some of those meetings when I was president of the local union. When I was elected business manager, I did away with the meeting. I told them if they wanted to come to the union, they would come to 250, 10th Street 01:05:00like everybody else.

LUTZ: Oh.

GILES: And the first meeting that they attended was a contract that we was voting on the contract and it was a big meeting. The president of the local union at that time was a guy name Paul Champion. When they started the meeting, the meeting halls was already full with people sitting in the windows on radiators and everywhere else. Once they come in, he was fixing to order them out. I got up and stopped them. They come in and sat down. We had one or two incidences after that one time, they sitting in a meeting one night and a guy went down, this was at 250, 10th Street, he went down the hall to janitor's room and got a bottle of Clorox or something and slipped in the back door and poured it on the seat where some of them guys was sitting, raunchy. Georgia 01:06:00Power Company also had a separate insurance plan for their black employees. Black employees was not entitled to the same benefits as white employees were. And I'm the guy that brought the Georgia Power Company to the bargaining table on the insurance and pension. Up until that time, they had been taking our insurance premium. And at the end of every year, they would check the Providence Insurance Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was probably some member of the Georgia Power Company's executives that was on the board of directors of the Providence Insurance Company if you checked into it. Um, they would come around. We had an insurance plan, hospitalization program that pays so much for 01:07:00such-and-such operation, so much a day for a room and so forth. Only at the end of the year, they would be real charitable, they would come around and say, 'We are going to add another dollar a day to your insurance for your room rent or we are going to add a ten dollar a day coverage on an appendectomy or something like that.' The Steel Workers Union took the United States Steel to the Supreme Court over insurance being a proper subject for collective bargaining and they won. And when they did, I took them to the bargaining table, they come too.

LUTZ: They must have been sweating too. [laughter]

GILES: We never did, we never was that successful in making all the dramatic changes that we would have liked to made, but at least we got them to bargain on the issue. And we also got them to bargain on the pension. They had always 01:08:00contended that was their pension program, they paid for it exclusively and we would run it like we please, we changed that in my administration.

LUTZ: Are you getting a pension now?

GILES: No, when I got kicked out of office, if I had went back and worked for the power company one day and bridged my time, I would have had it just right. I was too damn hardheaded. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of working me one day, so I don't have a pension. I collect eighty-four dollars a month from the IBEW that I bought and paid for myself. Nine hundred and eighty-eight dollars from Social Security, that is all I get.

LUTZ: Would you consider yourself a hardheaded man?

GILES: I still consider myself hardheaded and proud of it.

LUTZ: [laughter] Um, I, you know, it is almost silly to ask you this after what you were saying, but let's get it on the record. How did you feel about the 01:09:00civil rights movement when it came along? As a labor person?

GILES: Well, I can answer that, I was going to tell you that, had that in my notes. Um, before I was elected business manager of the Local Union 84, the Atlanta Labor Council was petitioning the united appeal to put on a labor liaison person. And before the AFL-CIO merged, um, there was an IBEW guy that was in charge of the AFL's program. He was a labor liaison between the AFL and the united appeal national. He heard about my interest in that job. And he called me in and told me some things to do if I wanted to apply for that job. 01:10:00One of them was to take a course in public speaking. And I went to, um, well goodness, I can't think of the name of that old school. There was an old high school on Whitehall Street.

LUTZ: I'll look it up and I'll put it in brackets.

GILES: Um, but the instructor's name was a guy named Morris. And, um, he said, the first night we attended, he said, 'I want each one of you to come prepared to make a five minute talk at the next meeting.' And, um, that was the subject I chose to speak on [inaudible].

LUTZ: Huh. What did you say about it?

GILES: I had a wife, and a little boy, and two little girls at that time.

LUTZ: Are we up to misses…

GILES: Having been a veteran, and having served with some black people in the service, having seen how they was treated in the service, and having gone up to the city of Atlanta, I spoke along those lines in that…in that meeting. I said 01:12:00how can you tell a man to go fight for his country and then come home and tell his kids that you can't use this water fountain and you can't use this restroom, and you can't go in this restaurant, but yet son, when you get eighteen, you have to go fight for your country too. I said, 'My granddaddy will probably turn over in his grave hearing what I had to say.' That was my convictions and all I had to say at that time.

LUTZ: You never know, your granddaddy might have thought it was a good idea too.

GILES: Could have.

LUTZ: Um, the response must have been one of shock for a lot of people.

GILES: Including my wife and kids.

LUTZ: Is that right? How old were your kids then?

GILES: I don't know. Um, living on York Avenue, my boy was probably fourteen, my daughters was probably six and eight something like that. I lost one between there to leukemia.

LUTZ: I'm so sorry. Are we on Mrs. Lavern yet?

GILES: No, that doesn't happen for a long time after that. That happened twenty-one years ago.

LUTZ: Um, what do you think about the changes of the civil rights movement created in Atlanta? Let me rephrase it. Do you think the civil rights movement created changes in Atlanta?

GILES: I want to have to be honest with you. I spoke to you real frankly about what my convictions were at that time. But there have been some things happen that have transpired to just about turn me back to the other way.

LUTZ: Do you think that is connected to the civil rights movement?

GILES: I think that there is a lot of people in that organization that is just carrying things absolutely too far. I mean they are trying to imply that all us honkies was responsible for all their down tribulations and that's not true. A lot of people in this country that didn't ever have any relatives that had any slaves. And as far as I know, I am one of them. And, um, I am not responsible 01:15:00for holding them back.

LUTZ: When do you think that turned around?

GILES: I don't know. I think, I think some of those people that are doing their own people a great disservice by continually, continually – I mean, they are teaching their young black kids they are leaving with them the impression that all these good things that you see on TV it is always what other people have got, you could have had it too, if you had been treated right. And they will just go out and take it, if you haven't got it, just go on and get it. That is the impression that they are leaving them with.

LUTZ: Um. Hang on. Let's get back to that public speaking that you were telling me about.

GILES: Ok, Bob Flurrly encouraged me to take a course in public speaking and told me about several books that I should read and things that I should do if I was interested in applying for that job with the United Appeal as a labor liaison. All of which I complied with. At that time, I was a delegate to the Atlanta Labor Council. That was just before I was fixing to run for business manager of Local 84 in 1959. The president of the Atlanta Labor Council at that time was a guy by the name of Jim Moore. He was also president and secretary of the state AFL-CIO at that time. And a fellow named Charlie McFerris was supporting a guy named J. C. Lester as a labor liaison for the United Appeal. 01:17:00Charlie was a pretty influential person in the city of Atlanta. A night or two before nominations in my local union, Jim Moore took me back to his office and showed me a bunch of what was supposed to been airmail letters all to the correspondence he had trying to promote me as labor liaison with the United Appeal. He said, 'Now if you could run for business manager, you are not going to be able to get that job.' I looked at him, I said, 'Jim, I don't fool your damn local union politics and you don't fool my damn local union politics. What I run for has got nothing to do with my application to the United 01:18:00Appeal.' If I had listened to him, I would have sitting outside, the guy was business manager of my local union had been re-elected and Jessie Lester would have got the job of United Appeal. It wasn't long after Jessie Lester got the job with United Appeal, I was business manager and still the delegate of the Atlanta Labor Council. Jessie Lester was taking sides on the issues in debate in the council meeting. And I took Jessie Lester aside. I said, 'Look, you are the labor liaison for all people in all organizations in this body. And I said "You 'aint got no damn business taking positions on nobody or none of the issues in debate in this organization. If you do, you are not going to get the support of the people in this labor movement." He wised up and got off that position. He was just a puppet in Charlie Mathis's hands. Charlie Mathias one 01:19:00time, promised Ivan Allen that he had labor's endorsement for mayor. And he got up and said so in the Atlanta Labor Council meeting. I got up and said, 'Damn if that is so, you don't promise somebody that we are going to support them without a vote of this body. And we are going to support Charlie Brown and the council is going on record to support Charlie Brown.' We didn't get him elected. But Charlie Mathias didn't promise the support of organized labor.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. While we're on the Atlanta Labor Council -- let me just ask you. How did it work then, how did it break down? I know how it works formally more or less. Tell the dirt on the Atlanta Labor Council is what I am trying to say. [laughter]

GILES: I don't know about that. I, um.

LUTZ: Do you want to just skip over that part for a while?

GILES: Um. No, I don't want to comment about that.

LUTZ: Let's draw that curtain then.

GILES: I want to talk about a fellow named – hmm….turn it off for a sec.

LUTZ: Now, where were we?

GILES: I was going to tell you about an experiment, not an experiment, but an experience that I had with George Bagley, who was a state representative in Paulding County in Dallas, Georgia. While we was having the problems with Georgia Power Company working twelve thousands votes, I found out that the 01:21:00states were arguing in Washington they had state laws that prohibited…list prohibited working voters above 2,300 volts phased to ground. Some of my good friends in the labor movement, told me that George Bagley was a best state representative or labor representative in the state legislature. So I got my local union to go on record to donate him five hundred dollars for campaign contributions and me and the president of the local union, Paul Champion, went to visit with him one night to present him with that check to get him to try to get some legislation passed on working twelve thousand votes. In the state legislature. And he took that $500 and we never did get any legislation on glove 01:22:00and 120,000 volts. And I learned through the grapevine later on that he was on a retainer fee for the Georgia Power Company.

LUTZ: Did you ever meet a politician who you thought was worth anything?

GILES: Well, I have some reservations about that. I can not qualify that statement.

LUTZ: Um.

GILES: But there should be a way. We the people of this country should have a way of knowing every damn politician that is on a retainer fee for anybody and every lawyer, it ought be public information there ought be a way to get it. How are you going to get those legislatures to pass a law like that?

LUTZ: Yeah, that'll happen. Um. Was there other stuff that you were going to 01:23:00mention about the IBEW before we get onto the state? You were telling me some of the proud moments of the IBEW's history and also some of the technical aspects. Um, why don't you tell me a few of those for the tape for instance the question of dues.

GILES: Okay, when I was president of the local union I had been advocating to the business manager, a Arnold Kennedy that we should increase our dues so we could pay off our debts and have some money to hire lawyers when we need to and represent our members like we need to. And he wouldn't agree to do that 'cause he was scared of getting defeated if he increased the dues. That was one of the first things that I did, when I was elected business manager was to point out to the members of our local union that we was affiliated with Atlanta 01:24:00Labor Council and Atlanta Building Trades. And we was affiliated with the Southeast Assistance Council. We was affiliated with the Georgia Electric Workers Association. And we was affiliated with Georgia State AFL-CIO, all of whom we was shortchanging on our per capita tax, we wasn't paying full capital on none of them. The only one that was getting full per capita was our international in Washington and that was like, uh, I told the business manager at that time. It was like a union member coming up and saying, 'I'll just pay part of my dues this month.' I didn't feel that was right. And, so, the first thing that I did was increase the dues, so we could pay full capital to everybody we was affiliating with. And I took our organization out of the building trades because we was not a building trades union, didn't have any business being affiliated with them to start with. Only reason we was affiliated with them was so our Arnold Kennedy secretary of that organization.

LUTZ: What did the members think about the dues?

GILES: The membership supported me a hundred percent, well not a hundred percent, but the dues increase passed overwhelming when I explained the need and we become a hundred percent affiliated with everybody we was affiliated with. Paying our full per capita to all of them.

LUTZ: It has been a local with a very proud history. If you would just tell me a little about some of these fine points of the local.

GILES: Local 84 was chartered on July the 24th, 1899. It is the sixth oldest local union in the brotherhood at this time because every local between 1 and 84 has gone defunct and the charter has been reissued at a later date which makes 01:26:00Local Union 84, the sixth oldest local union in the brotherhood will continue standing without a blemish on the charter. I want to say that I had the good fortune with visiting with the last living charter member of local 84, old gentlemen by the name of Jerome Foster and his wife several times before he passed away and he was one of the charter members of local 84. Local 84 will celebrate its centennial anniversary on July 24th 1999. I also want to get in the record about a gentleman named, a brother named Bill Pollard who was business manager, financial secretary of Local 84 -- never heard anything, but 01:27:00good praises about the fine job he did representing members of that organization. He…I was told that he come to Atlanta selling bits for Erwin Bit Company. The kind of bits that they bored holes in power poles and telephone poles and telephone poles with.

LUTZ: And then there was the strike that began in '31.

GILES: Yeah, I worked with some of those old men that went through that strike. I can't recall if I have already put this on a tape. If I have, just leave that part out. A bunch of the men went to the union meeting one night and voted to go on strike without giving proper notice to everybody else. For that reason a strike wasn't supported very good. Some of them worked the strike and scared the job. There was a lot of good old men that stuck that strike out, lost their 01:28:00homes and their automobiles and some of them lost their wives. The only reason the strike was ever settled was in December of 1935 and I'm old enough to remember. It snowed and sleeted and every trolley line in the city of Atlanta, streetcar lines was down in the streets. Trees was all over the streets. Atlanta Gas and Coal Company was a big company that had a lot of trucks at that time and Georgia Power Company rented every one of them and bought all the axes and saws from hardware stores from all over town and hired everybody they could hire to clean up the streets and rebuild the power system. And they had to, they had to hire somebody to climb those damn poles.

LUTZ: [laughter] [Inaudible] Um, but there was some problems with the constitution that you were mentioning.

GILES: Yes, under the IBEW constitution when you are at the an international convention electing vice-presidents and international executive counsel members, you vote a county unit system vote. Each local union has got one vote in each one of those elections. If you have got twenty members in a local union or five hundred members in a local union, you still have got just one vote. That is equal to what we used to call a county unit system in the state of Georgia in electing state officials. In my opinion, it is in violation of laws of this land. How can you conduct a secret ballot among ten delegates trying to 01:30:00determine how you are going to vote one vote. If there is a way to do it, I've never seen it done. I have been at conventions with numerous delegates and it's always presents a problem because everybody has got to declare for which candidate they are for. Everybody knows who is supporting who and that is not a secret ballot. That perpetuates them people that's in office. That is what it's for. The international has also got the right to send in characters and remove charters and combine local unions. In my case, in Local 84 in Atlanta, they were at one time, there was seven local unions on the property of the Georgia Power Company. Because they was utility local unions and 'cause they 01:31:00had votes on the inside of local unions, they merged them all into one, eliminating five of the local unions.

LUTZ: That is very interesting. When was that?

GILES: It was between the time I was removed from office in '65, when I went back to work for them in '83.

LUTZ: Yeah, you go back in triumph in '83 don't you?

GILES: Yeah.

LUTZ: But, let's do the state AFL-CIO first. Now tell me about….let's state for the record what your position was, what your job was and then tell me about your job, ok?

GILES: I attended a state AFL-CIO in Savannah, Georgia as a delegate from District Council 14 AFSCME, American Federation State County Municipal 01:32:00Employees, and successfully ran for secretary of the state AFL-CIO against John Wright of the Communication Workers Union. And my job as secretary of the state AFL-CIO was to carry out the directives of the convention, number one, um, keep up with all the correspondence, keep the executive officers informed what all the activities was going on and things that was coming up. Shortly after I was in office, Jim Moore, the president of the state of AFL-CIO – (break in audio)

LUTZ: Interview with J. W. Giles.

GILES: Jim Moore and I went over to the capitol. He was running around some of the state officials. And we met the secretary-of-state Ben Fortson and Jim give 01:33:00us the highway commissioner and some of the state senators and representatives that happened to be there that day. On the way back to the office, he informed me that he was going to fire his secretary of the office, Mrs. Sarah Butler. I said, 'I beg your pardon, you are not going to fire Butler because she works for me, I'm the secretary, she…you are the president. You had two years, you could have fired her when you was secretary. I'm the secretary now, she works for me and you are not firing her.' So, we got started off on the wrong foot. And, um, in my opinion, Jim Moore didn't do anything for the labor movement as long as I knew him.

LUTZ: Huh.

GILES: He come to the office at 10:00 or 11:00 o'clock in the morning and look at the newspaper and get his hat about twelve and go home till 1:30, 2:00 o'clock, come back and maybe look at his mail and throw it in the garbage, get 01:34:00his hat and go home. And I did his job and my job for two years and I decided that he had to go, I had to go, and I got beat by four votes on the recount.

LUTZ: Killer. All right, now what did you do after that?

GILES: Sarah Butler never did get fired by the way.

LUTZ: She's OPEIU they would have thrown up a picket line.

GILES: Right. She was a fine lady. I documented. I gave everything that happened between me and Jim Moore I put it in writing, signed it and had it as an affidavit in case something happened to me for her protection.

LUTZ: Is she still alive?

GILES: I talk to her every day. She lives close to Gainesville.

LUTZ: I'll go to her and ask for the true scoop on you, watch out. [laughter]

GILES: Do.

LUTZ: Um, now Giles, what did you do after the State AFL-CIO after that election?

GILES: Then, one of the first things I did, I did something that Jim Moore had been under instructions for six years by the convention. I introduced the resolution during the convention about six years before that instructing the secretary to establish a pension program and a annuity plan with the Union Labor Life Insurance Company for the officers and the secretary of the state AFL-CIO, the office secretary. Jim Moore was under the direction of the convention for six years and sat on his ass and didn't do it. And as soon as I was elected, I got it adopted and put it into effect. I never did enjoy none of the benefits, but I am proud to say that I got it and put it into effect anyway.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. Did you then or are we getting up to when you go back to IBEW Local 84…or can you add some stuff about the state AFL-CIO?

GILES: Well, um, as secretary of the state AFL-CIO when we would have our executive board meetings, I would be thorough in trying to keep the officers informed and they hadn't been accustomed to that, they hadn't been accustomed to meeting and enjoying the expenses of being paid by the state of AFL-CIO and their meals being paid. They wanted short meetings, so they could get to the happy hour. They didn't like me being so thorough with keeping them informed with what was going on. And while I was secretary of state AFL-CIO I wrote to every national and international union and advised them how many 01:37:00members of their local unions, how many of their local unions was affiliated and how many members they was paying on. And, uh, asked them if they wasn't paying on the full membership to use their influence get their local union to pay the full per capita like they was supposed to. You can be sure I caught hell from some of the local union representatives for doing that, but I also got some different local unions paying full [per] capita while I was there.

LUTZ: Was it just a standard operating procedure before not to pay your full per capita?

GILES: Everybody just always done like they wanted to. Just pay on the total membership. Get up there and run them out like they was paying on their full membership.

LUTZ: Was there anyone among the State AFL-CIO officers and general leaders that 01:38:00who you look back and say, Ah that was a good person to work with at that time?

GILES: Yeah, Morgan Bowen, Local Union 1316, Macon, Georgia was one of the finest men I ever worked with. Faye Knight with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union from Americus, Georgia was a fine lady and a good union worker. I want to get it in the record, Mrs. Maud Ireland from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, I think that's who she represented. I think she was employed by Carl Harbolverton on White Street. It was one of the finest ladies I ever met. She was a true trade unionist. William Mayfield sent in from the painter's local union who was business manager of the building trades. Bill was from 01:39:00Savannah, Georgia. His craft was painting the intricate fixtures in the ceilings of elaborate buildings like the old -- what's that old hotel out on White Hall…I mean West Peachtree Street?

LUTZ: Not the Grady? No that was Peachtree, nah that's gone…

GILES: Biltmore.

LUTZ: Oh, okay.

GILES: A lot of the figurines and he lay on his back on a scaffold and painted those things. He was a…

LUTZ: Like Michelangelo.

GILES: Yeah. He was a real craftsman and a true trade unionist. And he was from Savannah, Georgia. He was a fine old gentleman.

LUTZ: When you say true trade unionist what in your mind does that intend?

GILES: True trade…trade unionist is a man that believes in a honest days work for honest day pay and stands up for his members and other members of the trade union movement, all craftsman trade.

LUTZ: Okay. Well, when did you leave the state AFL-CIO?

GILES: I served one term, two years and I was defeated to give you an example of how old I am, Jim Moore was at the convention where I ran against him and was defeated as secretary of state of AFL-CIO I set up everything at the convention. Everything that was -- the arrangements made for the convention was just 01:41:00[inaudible] I know for a fact, prior to the meeting, I went into the convention hall and the flag was in the places that it was supposed to be. He had some of his [inaudible] from the carpenter's union, I learned later to move the flag. He turned to me when the convention was called to order and said, 'Where's the flag Secretary, that is your job to see that the flag is in here, but since you hadn't got one in here, I got one here on my lapel and ya'll can salute it. That old son-of-a-bitch.

LUTZ: Son of a gun. Being in the state AFL-CIO gave you a unique chance to see what was going on across the state. Just limiting it to the AFSCME and IBEW 01:42:00locals. Are there any that were particularly strong or weak during that period?

GILES: The…the strongest local unions in the state of Georgia was in Rome, Georgia.

LUTZ: Oh yeah? Okay.

GILES: In my opinion.

LUTZ: Mmhmm? Oh, where was…

GILES: Al Worthington of the international union of the electrical workers. A gentleman named Tate who was from the Pulp and Sulfide Workers Union at that time before they merged with the paper workers was two of the leaders in that area. In fact, Tate ran with me when I was running for president, he was running for my old job as secretary and he ran a good race too. Um, he just barely got beat.

LUTZ: So Rome, Georgia, that is very interesting. Did they, um. Did they send a labor guy to the state legislature?

GILES: Um.

LUTZ: Maybe I can make it a broader question. Were there ever any guys who really weren't with the labor in the state legislature?

GILES: Well, um, the IBEW had a member that was a member of the state legislature, a guy by the name of Joe Battle from Savannah, Georgia was a member of the paper workers local union in Savannah. Um, uh. He ran on the Republican ticket. And as secretary of the state AFL-CIO was instrumental in getting a minimum wage law passed in the state of Georgia. It is on the books, but it wasn't there enabling legislation to put any money there to enforce it. And Joe Battle was the prime sponsor of the bill. He worked out the differences in 01:44:00the joint conference committee between the house and senate to get the bill passed.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. Um. Why do you think a minimum wage is important?

GILES: Well, at that time it was needed and still needed today for the ladies that work in housekeeping and things like that. I can't think of the term that you call them -- domestic workers, I think.

LUTZ: Yeah.

GILES: Severally needed.

LUTZ: How did you end up, stop me if I am zooming along too fast. How did you end up getting back with the IBEW, in '83 is it?

GILES: Ah, um. We hadn't covered the time that I worked for OSHA. I worked for OSHA.

LUTZ: Oh, that's right! [laughter]

GILES: I worked for OSHA for eight years a labor liaison.

LUTZ: Okay, yeah. Tell me about that.

GILES: Well, the gentleman that interviewed me for that job was out of the Boilermakers Union. The under-secretary for labor at that time, over OSHA was a guy named William Stender who was also the boilermaker by trade from Seattle, Washington. He was one of Scoop Jackson's friends. Scoop Jackson made him under secretary. And, um, I can't remember the gentleman's name that come down from Austin from the Boilermaker's that interviewed me for the job. He took me over to the regional's director's office and we meet with the regional director. They decided to hire me in that capacity as a labor liaison. 01:46:00At that time, my job was set up to report directly to the regional director. And, um, the regional director come out of the Maritimes Union. Maritime Union. And, um, he had a friend that come out of the Maritime that was also in that same office, at a lower grade. He was a GS-13. I went to work as a GS-12, labor liaison. The regional director wanted to make Pat Hunney over the GS-14 over the 01:47:00training section. In order to do that, he had to give them some bodies and I was one of the bodies that he gave to Pat Hunney. Pat Hunney was a fine old gentleman from New Jersey. I got along fine as long as he was there. When he left, a young pip-squeak to come up in office in the business that wasn't a safety professional by trade. His daddy had worked for the government on one of their airbases down in Florida. And he worked for the government long enough to know how to make the system work. And a fellow by the name of Allen McMillan, he got over the training section and my life became miserable after that. After he 01:48:00used me a little bit 'til he got acquainted with all of the union representatives from the Washington level the, uh, the safety people for the building trades and the safety people for the auto workers and some more people that I got him acquainted with. And after he got acquainted with them, he didn't need me anymore, he was ready to get rid of me. I started cutting deals. He wound up being the regional administrator at OSHA. For the record, I want people to know why OSHA ever didn't get off the ground like it was supposed to, to represent the interests of the working people. When the law was 01:49:00inactive, the congress didn't have the time to sit down and adopt every safety standard that had to be enacted to protect working people. So, he empowered the Secretary of Labor to [inaudible] some regulations. When the William Staiger Act was passed, all of these agents was in the federal government already had safety people working in those agencies. All of them moved into OSHA and took over the key positions in OSHA. All of them immediately started building their empires and hiring as many warm bodies as they can get to justify whatever they wanted to do. So then, the law also made provisions for states to go into the safety 01:50:00business provided they furnish so much of the money. The reason for that I represented the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky had state plans. And it was part of my responsibility to monitor some of their activities. In North Carolina they had an old area director by the name of Haskins, um, that didn't like the labor and didn't like the labor unions. They was provisions….there was provisions in the state plan for anybody that didn't think the party was doing right. They could file complaints. Haskins 01:51:00didn't think they should have that right, so he wouldn't allow it. So I made arrangements to see that he had to do.

LUTZ: How did you do that?

GILES: Through the regional director.

LUTZ: Were the state plans pretty much the same or did you have to deal with a lot of differences.

GILES: They had to be as good as or better.

LUTZ: Okay.

GILES: That was the way it was set up.

LUTZ: Were they ever better?

GILES: No, the California may have been. May have been. Um.

LUTZ: What was the hardest part of your job with OSHA?

GILES: Adapting…adapting to their new procedures, day in and day out. And, um.

LUTZ: Were you, um, glad to get rid of the government job?

GILES: I quit that job.

LUTZ: Yeah.

GILES: When I went with OSHA they were doing about five inspections a week per compliance on average. When I left there, they was doing between one and one and a half. The reason being, the documentation and taking photographs and all of that. As soon as the legal department of labor got a lawyer half way trained to do a good job. Some company would hire them away from OSHA. I think there was a conspiracy with the companies to do that, so that OSHA wouldn't have any competent lawyers. When OSHA was first enacted, I have reasons to believe, I can't qualify this, I have reasons to believe that some of the companies got some of their key people to take jobs with OSHA. They deliberately went out and 01:53:00harassed mom and pop operations and issued citations when they should have been at some hazardous work places inspecting theirs to the mom and pop operations. It brought about a lot of adverse publicity for OSHA.

LUTZ: Certainly historical principals. Going back to Teddy Roosevelt's day. So, you quit OSHA, then where did you go?

GILES: Went back and worked with my tools for about six months at plant Hardy Branch as an inside electrician. And, um, then I ran my business manager, Clyde Collins was a man who had been kind enough to give me a job two years as an assistant business manager. In the last election before I ran against, he was almost defeated by just a few votes. I felt sure that he was going to be 01:54:00defeated that time. I felt like I was the best qualified man for the job, and I ran for the job and got elected. And I fought the leadership, the executive board for two years and got defeated again by a small margin. Very low turn out. We had a referendum, mail ballot. We had over five thousand members and the turn out was very small. I don't remember what it was.

LUTZ: [inaudible] Okay.

GILES: In the last term of Clyde Conner administration, they had a strike. There was a few people, a few of the members that scabbed a job. And there was…some 01:55:00of those people tried to join, and, uh, even when the international representative would be present in the executive board meeting, they would those people down. And, not only then, but some other people. I never have been able to understand that. People standing in line to join the union and they wouldn't let them in. I didn't agree with that, I don't agree with it today. Some, some people have always been….turn it off.

LUTZ: Let me ask when you finally retired. Are you retired?

GILES: Yes, after I was defeated…uh…turn it off..

LUTZ: Actually before you retired.

GILES: Last time I was business manager of the local union when I was vice-president of the Georgia Power Company ordered construction. Jack Lawrence called them all dead and wanted to know if I could furnish him two or three hundred people for a year or two. Said that they had a lot of work that needed to be done, but they didn't want to hire a bunch a people for that short term. I said, 'You give us the work, we will find the people.' And we did. Billy Smith Construction Company did most of the construction. Local Union 84 collected two percent assessment off all of it. The man that defeated me from my job is business manager, Doyle Howard. His brother worked for my local union during that period of time as a non-union member after he…. his boss, Clyde Conner, got elected, Doyle Howard was working for him as an assistant. After his 01:57:00boss, Clyde Conner got defeated, Doyle Howard's brother asked the local union to reimburse him all the assessments he had paid during that period of time. I called the international union and asked him what I should do. They said, 'You better pay it.' So, I cut him a check for all the assessments that he had paid. I want the record to show that Doyle Howard's brother did that, thank you.

LUTZ: [laughter][inaudible] That is kind of nervy. When you were sixty-five and you retired, you also were honored, weren't you? As a labor leader of one of the outstanding leaders of the area?

GILES: Yes and no.

LUTZ: Atlanta Labor Council is it or state? [Break] It was the [inaudible]. They 01:58:00felt pretty highly of you?

GILES: Yes. I would like to say while I was being honored at that ceremony, down town somebody deliberately messed with the PA system and tapes that did on what I had to say in my remarks that I had to make wasn't audible to the people present there that night because the PA system, I am confident was deliberately tampered with.

LUTZ: Uh huh. Um. Who do you think did that?

GILES: I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't somebody from # 613 'cause 01:59:00Harry Bosch's have never been honored and they have always been jealous about that.

LUTZ: Ok, let me just ask before I ask you something more a little philosophical. Uh, what do you do now that you are so called retired?

GILES: I try to stay active. I got something to do. I got a new house.

LUTZ: Yeah.

GILES: I'm trying to get some grass to grow in the yard, trying to have a garden.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. Got your greens in already. Now, let me ask this. If you had a podium, you are up on a stage and you could say anything you want to an auditorium full of young union members, what would you tell them?

GILES: I would tell them to be active and participate in the activities of their organization. See that it is run right. See the people abide by the rules and regulations. See that they are spending money right and see that they are made to account for them. The first thing I did when I was elected business manager, one of the first things I did -- The night I was in installed I made a motion at the local union and authorized to hire the auditor under the supervision of someone from our international office because I inherited a set of books that had been kept by the same person for sixteen years and there was some irregularities and I had a clear cut-off debate. That is something that nobody has ever accused me off. I have been and rightfully so of franking and chasing 02:01:00women, but I had never been accused of misusing nobody's money.

LUTZ: Ah, but they always go after the money first. It is the one thing you always get charged with. Um, that is your advice to these young people who are now on a labor movement that you would access how? Where do think the labor movement is going and should it go in a different direction or keep on?

GILES: Well, the political move of the average person in this country today seems to be elect more and more Republicans. You can bet there is going to be more and more anti-labor laws. It is going to be more difficult for the unions to get in kind of favorable rulings from the NLRB. We hadn't had any decent 02:02:00rulings from the NLRB for twenty years. Unless and until the people get way down, down and out like we was after the big depression, they are not going to see the need for affiliating with the unions and making the unions stronger. It is hard to look at it like that, but that is probably the way it's going to go

LUTZ: What should the labor leaders of today be doing?

GILES: They should be attending to the business and represent the people and give them an account of their activities.

LUTZ: Accountability.

GILES: They encourage people to be active in politics and support people and do 02:03:00the right by organized labor. Some of the problems that organized got, they brought on themselves or we brought on ourselves. We don't deserve the kind of treatment that we had been getting.

LUTZ: Giles, would you say, it has been a good life for you?

GILES: It has been a good life. I wouldn't change a thing if I had it to over.

LUTZ: Okay, that's a good place to end. Um, let me just ask you about Joe Jacobs who is one of the shovers behind this whole project.

GILES: Joe Jacobs has been a friend all the time that I have actually been in the labor movement. He has given me a lot free advice against his better judgement about how to look after my businesses, as a labor representative. I 02:04:00will always be eternally grateful to him, one of the finest men that I have ever know, Joe Jacobs.