CHRIS LUTZ: Chris Lutz interviewing Harold McIver; Meansville, Georgia,
September 26, 1995. McIver, can you tell us where and when you were born?HAROLD MCIVER: Yeah. I was born in south Georgia between Sylvester, Georgia,
and Moultrie, Georgia, in 1931, April the 1stLUTZ: Um, what was…
MCIVER: In a house. [laughter]
LUTZ: [laughter] Um, what was it like growing up in the Georgia country?
MCIVER: Um, well, I really didn't grow up there. My dad came to Atlanta during
the Depression and went to work for Atlantic Steel Company.LUTZ: Oh.
MCIVER: And he had worked various jobs; and actually after he married my mother,
he was in college up in Tennessee, studying to be a minister.LUTZ: Mmhmm.
MCIVER: Then, his dad disappeared. He got on a train down in Cordele, Georgia,
00:01:00and nobody has seen him since. So he came back home; he was the only man in the family. He had three sisters, [inaudible] and and he kind of helped out, looking after things for the family, and my mother. Then somewhere around 1930 or so, they came to Atlanta, [inaudible] and he got a job with the Atlantic Steel Company, during the Depression.LUTZ: Was he a union man also?
MCIVER: Yeah, he helped organize that plant in 1941 and had me on the picket
line. They had…they won the election, and then they had a strike shortly after. The Company wouldn't recognize the union. I spent a lot of time with him on the picket lines, sleeping in tents when I was ten years old.LUTZ: Did you like it?
00:02:00MCIVER: Um, well, it kind of got into my soul, I guess. He was a strong union
man and always was. And…and, um, I guess it was some--like a religion with him and I, in fellowship with your working men and women--mostly men. And it kind of grew with him and me. I think that one of his ambitions was to see me become the local union president of Atlantic Steel, and and I did that when I was twenty-eight.LUTZ: Did he live to see you do it?
MCIVER: How's that?
LUTZ: Did he live to see you do that?
MCIVER: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was [inaudible]. He was working in the mill the
same as I was at that time. Yeah. And he was proud of it…proud of that. He was active in the local--like he was an observer in the election. And he was real active during the strike they had. There's a lot…a lot of history there 00:03:00that I could tell you about. Um, I saw a lot of my dad. He and I were real close. We used to do a lot of bird hunting in south Georgia--you know, quail?LUTZ: Um-hm.
MCIVER: One of the reasons I bought this land--He was still alive when I bought
this place. I haven't bought it. I'm still paying on it--LUTZ: Yeah.
MCIVER: He was real proud to get outside and a place for us to hunt, you know?
LUTZ: Um-hm. Um, when you looked at your dad, with, say, at ten years old,
through a ten year old's eyes, what did you see?MCIVER: Well, I think that you had to grow up. We were a real poor family--even
though my father was pretty well educated, there just wasn't any jobs. And I can remember him walking like five miles to work and maybe eating a can of pork and beans with a loaf of bread and then walking back home and, you know, after 00:04:00you got into the unions, and they were successful, you know, our lives became a lot better than what it was prior. And I think the dignity that went along with it. I can remember my dad telling a lot of people that before the union went in down there--They were making steel, you know, like on a rolling mill, and I worked in doing the same thing. It's like rolling out biscuits, there. But it comes out of a furnace and it's white hot, and you keep running it back and forth and shaping it until it gets to the desired--that it is supposed to be--like an angle [inaudible] or pig iron or -- a lot of different things, what-have-you. We made all of these things from [inaudible]. It's hot--You had 00:05:00to wear, like, long handled underwear to keep it from blistering you, and those steel-toed shoes with clamps over it and goggles and a fan behind you. And before the union went in, they'd have a guy to come around and spell you every now and then, to keep you from passing out. [laughter] But after they got the union in, they actually worked thirty minutes on and thirty minutes off. We had two people for each job on the mill. And it got to be a lot better, you know, wages and benefits, got a lot better pay.LUTZ: That was a very good example to use [inaudible].
MCIVER: Yeah, sure.
LUTZ: Lemme…um…..What was your first job?
MCIVER: My first job was working on the rolling mills. I went to work down
there when I was seventeen. I told them I was eighteen. It was a good experience. I mean, we all had to take a shower every day together. We had 00:06:00lockers. And, um, really, you developed a relationship with your fellow man there, you know?LUTZ: Mmhmm.
MCIVER: I worked checking hot steel with a pair of tongs when I was seventeen.
And, really, it was a man-sized job, but I could do it. My daddy had me tough. He spent a lot of time with me playing ball and everything else. I was prepared for it. I could take the heat a lot better than a lot of the rest of them could, especially in years gone by. I worked on every job in that mill. We had like a line of promotion. You started off at the bottom and then you'd get the next job up, and so on and so forth. And my, my father worked in another mill, 00:07:00in the Wright mill and I worked in what they call the [inaudible] mill.LUTZ: [inaudible] Um, what made you--aside from, of course, your father's
influence, what was the push that said, 'Okay, now go be a steward'?MCIVER: Well, I was drafted during the Korean War. I worked at the Atlantic
Steel Company from 1948 to 1952; and then I was drafted right after I got married, and then served two years, got out of the army, went back to the mill, almost didn't, but I did. I went back to the mill. And, then after I got back in the mill, I'd matured a little bit. So they asked me to serve on the Departmental Grievance Committee, either a Committeeman or the Shop Steward or whichever you call it. I agreed to do that. And we had a real--a real arrogant 00:08:00young foreman in our department. I had a confrontation with him right after they elected me to be on the committee. And, undoubtedly, in times gone by, what the general foremen would do was to get the [inaudible] 'You got to do this. You got to do that.' And there's a fear element there that I didn't have. [Laughing]. So we had a confrontation, and I won. I won a grievance with him involving seniority and how we were going to progress up the line. And he had, more or less, four jobs in one classification. He would decide who he wanted on those four different jobs. And I told him that, you know, he had a 00:09:00right to fill those vacancies according to seniority. And that was before--we had a little bit of qualification in the contract, not a whole lot. Seniority was the main thing. You know, you tried a job. If you can't do it, you take them off, and let somebody else have it. So, you know, the grievance procedure was: You take the grievance up with the departmental guy in charge, the superintendent of that department. If you can't settle it there, then you take it up to the next level. So we couldn't settle it there. I mean, he was just, 'No, we're not going to. I'm going to do this. I've been doing this for a long time. You are not going to come out here and tell me what to do.' I said, 'Okay, Ralph, that's what I wanted to know.' So I took it up to the next level, and the Superintendent of all the mills sat in that meeting, and the Personnel 00:10:00Manager of the company, and as soon as I explained the grievance, they agreed with me. Well, this guy was so upset by it. He had already selected the people he wanted to go on the different jobs, and they were changing--they were adding crews, which means there were jobs coming open, and vacancies and people getting raises by going up to other jobs. And he asked me, he said, 'Well, c'mon, let's go back down to my office. We'll make those changes now.' I said, 'Ralph, you don't need me to make those changes.' 'Yeah, but I want you to see that I'm doing it right. So we got into his office, and it's just like a, you know, a little shack out in a yard in the same location where the mills were, you know, making steel--lot of noise. He slammed the door and said, 'Sit down, over there!' You know, like that--And I didn't think anything about it. I figured 00:11:00he was a little upset. And I did. I sat down. And he looked up at me. His face was real red. And he said, 'I'm not going to call you no son of a bitch.' You know, like that. And when he did, I just jumped across that room, and I grabbed him. He had a little ol' tie, you know, with a white shirt, and I pulled him across the desk, and I put my fist in his face. And I said, 'Look, Ralph, you better not call me no 's.o.b.', you know, or I'll knock your 'g.d.' head off. I had to take some crap off people like you when I was in the army, but I'm not in the army now.' [laughter] So he, he, he didn't know what to do. I just held him there for a minute. He struggled, and, what have you, finally I let him go. I had sense enough I didn't hit him. And and, so he started--He grabbed the phone, but he couldn't dial, he was so upset. He was going to call 00:12:00the guards and have me ushered off the property and stuff like that. And long about that time, the Superintendent of all the mills, a guy named Bob Lange, he walked in. And Ralph was still upset. He looked at…he looked at Bob Lange. He said, 'Look, Mack over there threatened me while ago.' And he said, 'I'm trying to decide what to do with him, and I think I'm just going to have him--fire him and have them take him off the property.' And Bob told him, he said, 'Look, Ralph, you need to calm down some.' He said, 'That boy was right in what he said up there and because you can't get your way about everything, we do have a union and a union contract, and you need to learn to abide by it.' So after [inaudible] that spread all over the plant, you know, and after that, you know, 00:13:00I progressed from a Departmental Committeeman to like a Plant-wide Bargaining Committeeman and vice-president of the local, chairman of the Grievance Committee, and then I was elected president at a young age. Most of the guys--There had been only about two guys that had been swapping it back and forth since it was organized in 1941. This would have been 1952.LUTZ: Um, well, now, you were in your thirties when you were president?
MCIVER: No, [in audible] I was twenty--let's see--I was twenty-four
LUTZ: Wow.
MCIVER: when I came back out of the army.
LUTZ: Wow. Okay. What made you decide to switch from the Steelworkers over
into or out into--MCIVER: Yeah, yeah--
LUTZ: --organizing just anybody?
00:14:00MCIVER: Well, I guess it was in…in 1968--Well, after I became active on the
bargaining committee, we--We had an inferior contract with the Basic Steel Industries like U.S. Steel, Republic Steel. --a privately owned company. The guy that owned the majority of it, also, you know, owned a big hunk of Coca-Cola, the Glenn family, the ones that have [inaudible]--He and his family owned those businesses. And a lot of times, if they had a strike in the Basic Steel Industry, then we'd come out on strike with them; but when they settled in the Basic Steel, we still weren't covered by their contract. As a result, we 00:15:00didn't get the wages and benefits that they were getting in the industry. I set out to change that, as well as to try to get some good language in the contract. We had a real militant local. It would strike just like that. I mean, they had an arbitration case early on, even though the contract didn't provide for arbitration. They didn't have the right to arbitrate but the Company agreed to arbitrate a case; everything was by mutual agreement. I mean, the contract was very short in nature and there wasn't any details about employees' rights. It had management's rights all the way through it, you know?LUTZ: Uh-huh.
MCIVER: So, I guess it was in 1968, we had like a hundred and five day strike.
And -- It wasn't 1968. It was -- Let's see, I'm getting ahead of myself. I 00:16:00went back in 1954, and this was like 1958. We had a strike, and for the first time since 1941, in 1958--every strike they had, they wouldn't try to operate, they just closed the gate until the thing was over with and we'd go back to work. But in 1958, they said they were going to operate the mill.LUTZ: Uh huh.
MCIVER: And, so they tried it. They had supervisors and everybody else down
there trying to run it, and the mill was in a critical type situation. Everybody was anxious, I guess, to win this strike. The way you win it is by 00:17:00keeping people out of the plant. And there was some violence, and what have you. But in 1963--Where we made a mistake in the previous contracts was that prior to a contract expiration--the merchants--the people that bought the steel and what have you, they would buy steel in advance, you know, and get a big stockpile. So if they settled a contract, usually there was a layoff because they already had so much steel supply. And Atlantic Steel does the same thing. So I had a meeting with--David J. McDonald and the legal director, a guy named Lauren [inaudible], and I said to both of them, 'Look, the only way'--We kept 00:18:00making improvements in the contract and finally got the wage scale up to what they were getting in Basic Steel in Pittsburg, as far as the hourly rate. There was some other things that we didn't have that I wanted to get, like thirteen weeks vacation every five years they had. We didn't have it. There was also some strong language in the contract like customs and practices, like we didn't have that, and they had it, like if you had a dispute over managing a job and the contract didn't cover it, then whatever the customs and practices--If you had two men doing this job for five years or ten years, then they would continue to do it unless there were changes in the job or the job content to justify eliminating one of them. Atlantic Steel started doubling up on the work for a 00:19:00lot of people, and it was a heavy issue with them. They were--You know, we planned the thing, and we had like an open-ended contract. It wasn't fixed. It was just from year to year. And then you had a right to reopen. All you had to do was notify the department. So we planned to strike them before the Basic Steel contract expired, you know before they built up. And McDonald, you know, he put his blessings on it--'Yeah, fine.' And the regional director and everybody else, so we did that. We had a strike. We went around and took a vote.LUTZ: It was clever. It was a clever thing to do. You know.
MCIVER: Yeah.
LUTZ: Um.
00:20:00MCIVER: We hadn't been out too long then, really; it's a segment of the labor
movement that I didn't appreciate. I wasn't used to-- you know--Here I was that--I was making sure that the members knew everything that went on. I'd reproduce contract proposals and pass them out to the membership, you know, like we had, as well as the company -- A lot of them would say, 'Well, we don't know what is going on.' At every meeting prior to the strike, for a year before the company was sold, we went over it in detail to make sure that it was all explained--And here's what we needed, you know? So everybody knew what it was about. And I found out that David J. McDonald and some lawyers had had a meeting with the company officials and their lawyers up in New York that I didn't know anything about,LUTZ: Oh
MCIVER: And really they lowered our demands way down.
LUTZ: Oh, get out of town.
MCIVER: Yeah.
LUTZ: Those sons of guns.
00:21:00MCIVER: Yeah, and that was like a hundred and eight day strike. I told the
International Union, and they [inaudible] the membership. And, um, but it was resolved shortly after that. After that, I took a job in Northern while I was the local union president. I was assigned to J.P. Stevens textile campaign in 1964, January of 1964. And I felt like the textile industry hadn't been able to organize like they had in the steel industry and the oil industry or a lot of others; and our wages and benefits proved, you know, they needed it if you 00:22:00compared it. They didn't have holidays or insurance or pension plan or things like that, and we had them. So I didn't mind the challenge of trying to organize the textile mills. And, you know, so I spent, really, seventeen years, off and on, in that campaign to organize J.P. Stevens and had some success.LUTZ: What stands out in your mind about that campaign?
MCIVER: Well, there again, I think the fact that I know that I was able to keep
the whole thing alive. After--From 1963, when I went to work for them as an organizer and had some success, in the [inaudible] campaign -- in 1968, I was elected regional director--coordinator in charge of the Southeast, and I was 00:23:00able to keep that campaign alive. But the textile workers union didn't have very much money, and the Industrial Union Department was actually funding half the effort to try to organize the textile industry, and we were directing the campaign. The fact that I was able to keep it alive for so long -- There was a lot of people in the Textile Workers Union saying, 'Look, why should we be out here trying to organize these jobs in all the opposition, when we could be out here organizing the [inaudible] company, and get contracts for collecting some dues. But still that wouldn't solve the problem that they had in the South, in the textile industry in the South. We organized J. P. Stevens up in New England way back by AF of L.; and they shut down and come down south. So I saw it as a 00:24:00way to really change the environment and change the working lives of Southerners in general because -- it was segregated then.LUTZ: Do you think that the lives of Southerners have been changed through the
labor movement?MCIVER: Eh, there's no question about the labor movement helping the workers. I
mean, if you look at the wages and benefits of union people versus non-union people.LUTZ: Right.
MCIVER: It's, um, it's clear. The biggest problem we've had is the political
aspects of it. You know, Ronald Reagan, and, you know, setting the pattern with the air traffic controllers, and he fired them, and the weakness of the of National Labor Relations Act. And I fought to change that. Um, really Reagan didn't change the law. What he did--He changed the people that administered the 00:25:00law, and the NLRB is structured in such a way that the President appoints five men to a Board, and he also appoints a General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, and they've got a lot of power. And they can take the identical situation and rule on it a certain way for years, and then change that. For illustration, during the Reagan years, the people he appointed to the Board, really, a lot of them were actually union-busters and bragged about it. Then, of course, when Clinton got elected, I saw it as an avenue to really make some gains in administratively and procedural changes that could make a big difference.LUTZ: Has that happened?
00:26:00MCIVER: I've made some changes and the Board has gotten better, but it didn't
get as good as I'd like for it to be. Like this fellow Devaney who was appointed by Reagan and re-appointed by Bush--I actually personally changed this guy's philosophy. You can't have all Republicans or all Democrats, you know, it's structured such a way that you've got to have, like three and two, and you can have an Independent. So this fellow was a Democrat, but he's kind of a moderate Democrat, you know, a [inaudible] type guy, and he really came alive. I mean, he handled this decision personally because of me.LUTZ: Well, even though it's jumping ahead a little, let me ask you about this
decision. Um, why don't you tell me the story of what happened. 00:27:00MCIVER: Well, after being involved in over twelve hundred campaigns [laughter]
in thirty years, and the game that's played -- we'd have an election scheduled, and the Company has access to the employees. You know, they can shut the mill down or shut the nursing home down and call them into a meeting, show them movies. And that's a tremendous advantage as to the voters. And we have to go around and knock on doors and depend on them coming to a voluntary meeting, most of them scared to come. And so it is a question of being able to get the truth across: what the union's about; what their rights are; what they can do; and what they can't do. So the one avenue that we had that came about in 1966 was the NLRB at that time was trying to decide whether to give the Union like equal time in meetings if the Company was having them, and what have you, and they 00:28:00came out with this decision that said, 'Well, let's make sure that you get the names and addresses that they can go communicate with everybody with mailings and whatever.' And…and really the Board had allowed the companies to make a mockery out of that decision, simply by giving the initials and rural addresses rather than street addresses or full names.LUTZ: Like: 'T lives on Rural Route One'?
MCIVER: Yeah, and everybody in the labor movement complained about that--all
the organizers and everybody that knew anything about it. But true, I think, our efforts with this NLRB subcommittee and explaining to him--Well, here's something that won't cost the company a dime, you know, they've got 'em, and they use them. They send their full names and street addresses. All we are doing is asking you to give us the same thing. It won't cost anybody anything. 00:29:00So we were unable to convince them to do that until this fellow Devaney and a couple of other board members--and we talked to them and explained to them--Some other things that we talked about like mail ballots, so the workers could vote by mail rather than having to go over there and vote in the same place that the company has the meetings and shows all the scare movies and things like that. And we've had more mail ballots than we've had in the past. And they've changed--The General Counsel changed its rules to provide for more mail ballots than they've had in the past, which I was really proud of that, as well.LUTZ: So, in 1994, by your efforts, these things went through.
MCIVER: Yeah.
LUTZ: Now, we go back into the past again.
MCIVER: Sure.
LUTZ: Looking back, what did you personally feel, aside from J.P. Stevens, of
00:30:00course, was your greatest success in your career as an organizer?MCIVER: Well, in the late 50s and in the late 60s really--I went to work in
1963, and five years later in 1968, the program was going down. We had very few organizers at that time and had very little money, and a lot of money was spent at J.P. Stevens. And a lot of people were fired. There were sixty-eight people fired in the beginning, and we took from the money that we had to help take care of those people and their families, you know? But in South Carolina in 1969, I believe it was, they opened up a steel mill in Georgetown, South Carolina, 00:31:00Georgetown Steel. It was owned by Germans, and they advertised in nationwide magazines; and one of the reasons they were located in Georgetown, South Carolina, was because they didn't have any unions down there, and they could make steel as a developer cheaper than the American producers and therefore have a good business. So, as soon as they cranked that thing up down there, then I was asked to try to organize it, of course. And we had some success. We organized the plant after a bitter campaign. Several people were fired. Strom Thurmond was in the plant patting everybody on the back. So we had like a six 00:32:00months' strike, and we won it, and we were able to get a contract. So that was one of the places that kind of initiated a little corporate campaign strategy, if you've ever heard that terminology. We found out that a German bank that had loaned him the money to build the mill over here was controlled by unions in Germany. So, you know, the Steelworkers sent a person over there -- and brought the people back, and they saw what was going on. And with the strike, as well as that pressure, we were able to get a contract.LUTZ: Oh, that's great.
MCIVER: Yeah. But, after that, we were able to organize a lot of plants within
a 50 mile radius of Georgetown, South Carolina. One of them was like Oneida Knitting that makes t-shirts. There was a plant of about 1200 people. There 00:33:00were two plants, one in Andrews, South Carolina, and one in Lane. We were successful there, and went up the road in Florence, South Carolina, and we organized a LazyBoy Chair Company; and over in Dillard, South Carolina, Barber Manufacturing Company. And all of these were non-union towns with no unions in them-- Johnsonville, South Carolina, Wilming Industries, 1200 people. We had three elections every two years after the Georgetown Steel and one [inaudible] was able to get a contract. So my memories in South Carolina are real good. And the same thing is true in several portions of North Carolina. I lived in Charlotte, and after a while, we had all these campaigns won and had some 00:34:00success. Then the other unions started wanting to get involved and they were assigning staff. At one time, I had ninety staff people from about thirty-five different unions that were working under my direction. That was when I was the regional director in North Carolina. And we had a lot of success.LUTZ: Well, um, I'm going to change my question a little, um--
MCIVER: Sure--
LUTZ: And say what are the qualities of a good organizer?
MCIVER: I think dedication.
LUTZ: [laughter]
MCIVER: You know, it is difficult to try to supervise an organizer and to select
the right people to be an organizer. Part of that job is to try to hire organizers who have success, but I think if you've got somebody who is dedicated and willing to work and believes in what you are doing, that's ninety percent of 00:35:00it. An organizer stays away from home in a nice motel and when people get off in the evening, is the main time, and before they go to work on the second shift--It's a hard job, and, really, it takes somebody who has the ability to communicate and wants to--likes to win.LUTZ: Wh…
MCIVER: Oftentimes, it is difficult to find them.
LUTZ: Mmhmm. What did you avoid when you hired an organizer? When did you say
immediately: That person is not going to be able to do it?MCIVER: Yeah, well, I think, you know, after some intense orientation,
initially, then I came to the conclusion that really the best way to find out is 00:36:00through the trial period. I mean, they can tell you anything. A lot of people will tell you anything to get the job, but I looked for somebody who had some success, maybe in their little community at their local--I hired a lot of college students right out of college, you know?LUTZ: Oh, yeah? Yeah.
MCIVER: Four different lawyers worked for me right out of school. They come to
me wanting to work for me, you know? That was where the action was in the labor movement down South –LUTZ: Very interesting. Yeah.
MCIVER: And, um. So, um, it's difficult to say any one particular thing.
Dedication and wanting to do the job. 00:37:00LUTZ: Looking back, what do you look back with sadness upon?
MCIVER: Sad--
LUTZ: What do you look back and say that you feel sad about, which organizing campaign?
MCIVER: Oh--
LUTZ: Because I know they weren't all successful. They can't all have been successful.
MCIVER: No, no, there were a lot of losses. Fortunately, we won a lot more than
we lost. I can remember a lot about an awful lot of them, but one of them in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at a big power plant, the Kelly-Springfield Power Plant--And they had been located there for several years, and they organized another area. [Inaudible] And strangely enough we found out that the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company owned Kelly. And the Kelly workers had been unsuccessful. They had tried to get organized. They would go to Fayetteville, 00:38:00and Fort Bragg was there, and there were lot of retired soldiers that went to work at Kelly. And they would come to me and were able to put that campaign together and actually won it when they couldn't do it on their own. There's about 2300 people there now that pay union dues -- they wanted a better life, better wages, better benefits. And then, after that, there were other smaller companies later organized in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where you didn't -- weren't able to do that before. The same thing is true in and around Wilmington, North Carolina--organized a company called Babcock-Willcott. Then 00:39:00within a couple of years, just about every major company in Wilmington, North Carolina, was unionized as a result of having success in that plant. And I found out, you can tell them anything, but when workers see their neighbors, you know, with more vacation, more holidays, um, you know, driving a better automobile--that's the best example you can give them.LUTZ: [laughter] In the movie Norma Rae, there is a discussion where they act
out a racial conflict. You were in charge of all of this while some of the very dramatic racial conflicts were going on in the South. Um, did they…the labor movement bump up against the civil rights movement, or did you find it easy to cooperate?MCIVER: The…the--in the movie Norma Rae, the company was trying to create a conflict.
LUTZ: Yeah.
00:40:00MCIVER: And there was numerous problems in that campaign, and Norma Rae was one
of them. I mean she--She got stars in her eyes when the fellow came in there from Miami, for example--I had--and wrote an article that appeared in The New York Times about life in a textile town.LUTZ: Uh huh.
MCIVER: And then, they asked her to appear on like a women's liberation program
in New York, and she did that. And so she was a real boisterous type person and wanted to get things done. And there were other people that was on the committee that were just as active as she was as far as signing people up into the union and what have you. The organizer I had up there, you know, on a 00:41:00day-to-day basis--I went in and started the campaign. And I carried this fellow--We hired him, and I carried him up there to Fayetteville, and he made the mistake of getting involved with her--you know, sexually and otherwise. I don't know that, but I'm pretty sure of it. And she, more or less, was taking the campaign over. I got a bunch of letters from several people that was on the committee complaining about it and saying that they were going to quit and do this, that, and the other. So what I did, I went up there and, and, um, stayed several days, and each one of them that had sent a letter in, I called 00:42:00them in an interview because the campaign was just about gone at that point. And so after I interviewed all of them and Crystal as well, as well as the organizer; and I had a meeting, and, you know, more or less laid it down to them that they had to cut out the bickering among themselves. And that if they wanted to pick on somebody, they ought to be picking on the company; they were the one confusing everybody. If they can't organize themselves in an effort that's going to help everybody, then we can't help them. And it's got to be cut out. And I spent a lot of time up there, after that as a matter of fact, the organizer quit. Um, and, and, um, and then I wound up and couldn't find anybody to really go up there and do the job, so the last month of that campaign, I was 00:43:00up there myself every day and, um, brought some other staff in. But the Company was the one that was trying to divide the white and black. There was this notice on the board: 'Look around here'--That's what they said--'See who's supporting the union. See, they had more blacks that were willing to wear buttons and things of that nature. And, then they go to a whispering campaign. You know, 'You want old Joe over there to do your talking for you?' You know, whatever--And the letter they put on the board, that she was trying to copy down--that was a violation of the law. You cannot post anything racially inflammatory comments--you know, or what have you. That was a job. That was really a job. Nobody thought I could do it.LUTZ: Wh….whe…..
MCIVER: Nobody thought we were going to win. I knew we were going to win--But
the morning of the election before we went over there to count, I told them we were going to get two hundred and something--over two hundred votes, boy, and 00:44:00that's what it was. [laughter] And that's what it was. There was about two hundred and forty-something votes.LUTZ: When you would go into a place--
MCIVER: Yeah.
LUTZ: J.P. Stevens or anywhere else. How would you start off an organizing
campaign? What do you actually do?MCIVER: Well, normally, the…the part that a lot of people don't understand is
usually we would follow requests. The workers would call us, or either there would be a local union already in the community or a central labor union, part of the state-wide influence, you know--I've got a friend that works over you and they are really getting abused--Normally, we had a --It's usually better, I guess, when they requested we come. On the other hand, we had a list of targets that unions had committed to, and most of them were like runaway companies. Part of the company was organized up north, and really that's the 00:45:00reason our program got started was to try to organize workers for a company that was running down south to get away from the unions, you know, and undercutting their wages and benefits that they had gained up there. But, usually, what I would look for--it depends. You need to make a good survey, if you are going to try to organize somebody. You need to be thinking about it. You need to find out things about the customer, and we've got ways of doing that, to get the financial status, the history, and the past union practices or if they've had elections held or what have you, did anybody get fired, or what happened to them. The first thing was to make a real good survey and see that it is a good target. A lot of them I backed out of if I found out they weren't making any 00:46:00money. There's one in Darlington, South Carolina, I can remember -- Value -- E -- that had over 400 people, and it….and it, um, was real hot. The guy had a meeting and told them that he was sent in there to close that plant down, or either put it on a profitable basis. We had about half of it signed up and…and really withdrew from the campaign. The Chamber of Commerce and other employers like to see unions in the picture especially if a company is not making money and they go out of businessLUTZ: …side 2. Okay, you were still talking about what happens when you go in.
00:47:00MCIVER: Yeah, and usually I would talk to the workers, to basically, one-on-one
to find out what the issues are. I mean, how do they like their job? How do they like their supervisors? And who is the good guy, you know? And the day to day treatment of workers, I think, is more important than wages and benefits. If a worker --[inaudible]-- to supervision, and what-have-you, even though he might be abusing it, they are hard to organize.LUTZ: I see. Um, how did you wrap up a campaign? What's the last shove towards
a vote like?MCIVER: I tried to have a plan—[laughter]
LUTZ: [laughter] Yeah
00:48:00MCIVER: Um, you know, a major issue that you wouldn't wear out during the
campaign. You need a real good issue right before the vote. And my biggest weapon really was to overcome the fear. Scared people don't usually vote the union because there's a fear element there that you have to overcome if you are going to be successful. Fear of the unknown--Regardless of how bad off a person is in wages and benefits, if they are getting by, got a wife and kids, and maybe we don't make as much as they do up north but, you know, 'We're doing all right, you know, we're here.' And you have to overcome that element. One of the best ways I found to overcome the fear is like a wide open campaign. And I was known for that. I…I developed a petition that would also serve as an authorization for the Union to represent them. 00:49:00LUTZ: Mmhmm.
MCIVER: I wouldn't use it for that. I wouldn't--run a campaign for the world to
sign this card--Don't say nothing to this one or that one because you are liable to get fired. It's better, if you can do it, if you have the staff to go in, and if you've got real good issues and the situation is right, to try to sign the people up real quick. I've found an employer is less likely to discharge somebody if they think they might have to put them back to work and pay them. You can't do that by running a secret campaign. The first thing if somebody gets fired or discriminated against is to file a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, and they ask you how can you prove the company [inaudible] a union? So I developed this petition, and my whole game plan was, like just 00:50:00prior to the election, we'd have a lot of pictures and names of workers, saying, you know I'm for the union. We need a union here. We are doing our part to help make this a better place to work. We hope all of you are going to want to vote 'Yes.' We've got, you know, John, Mary, James--down on the list I found that that's probably the best thing that I did, in terms of running a campaign. And a lot of people--That's cruel--You shouldn't have told the people, but even if you lose, and you've got that there and something happens to them after the union's been defeated, you've still could prove that knowledge, and they've got more protection than they had.LUTZ: That's right.
MCIVER: I learned that through experience, and I learned that, really, through
00:51:00an employer, because they were exposed to people. Otherwise, you've got a big group in a factory somewhere, and you really want to find out how they feel. They have the supervisors in regular meetings say: We want you to report on every one of your employees. What do you think this one is going to do? What do you think that one is going to do? What would it take to change this?LUTZ: Mmhmm.
MCIVER: And, um, so, normally, they will have buttons they've put out supporting
the company, or some kind of badge, or even a petition circulated by an employee at that committee to find out, you know, drawing the people out one way or the other. So I found out early on in the campaign, you are not going to have any secret ballot. I mean, on election day, the union people are going to be over 00:52:00here. The non-union are going to be there. Even though they vote by secret ballot, they are going to be drawn out, one way or the other.LUTZ: [inaudible] So what you did was kind of pull the rug out from under the
Company before--MCIVER: That's right.
LUTZ: Yeah, okay.
MCIVER: That's right.
LUTZ: Uh, huh.
MCIVER: And I would do that from the very beginning of the campaign, and I had
the ability to communicate with workers up to the point that I could convince them that they weren't taking chances. The chances were not making, you know, a public endorsement.LUTZ: That's right. Um.
MCIVER: A lot of times I'd…I'd find the issues to prove that. I never will
forget the campaign in Fayetteville, South Carolina. The South Carolina Electric was the name of it, but they ran from New Jersey down to Pageland, 00:53:00right down below Monroe, North Carolina -- right across the line to a factory that employed about 260 women. And they was really abusing them. And the biggest thing that kicked it off was they had some vacations scheduled two weeks. And one of them had sent money to deposit, and the company had some rush orders, they said, so they cancelled the vacation. All of them were upset. But, anyway, the biggest thing that won that campaign was my credibility with the workers. They had a policy handbook that said that no solicitations for anything inside the plant, and they also had--said about unions that you were not allowed to solicit for anything illegal. Well, that was illegal in there--in their handbook. In the meeting that I had with them, I said, 'You know, you've got a right to talk about the union anytime. You've got a right to sign people 00:54:00up on your break and before work and after work on company property. 'You can't do that. The Company won't allow that.' And everyone at that meeting--It was a small group, and I'd say, 'Look, you people called me, and I've been doing this a long time. I've collected a lot of back pay for a lot of people who have been illegally discharged. And I'm telling you that you've got a right to do this. You've got a right to go to their front door and pass out union leaflets.' You know, --'Naw'--They are there shaking their heads. I said, 'Well, look--' After about ten minutes, I convinced them. I said, 'Look, you've got a right to do this, and I want you to do it. If you want to win and be successful in this campaign, you've got to show the workers that you do have some rights under the National Labor Relations Board and the National Labor Relations Act. I said, 'How many, now, would be willing to go over there in the morning and pass out these leaflets.' I had a leaflet there that spelled out their rights under the 00:55:00National Labor Relations Board and National Labor Relations Act. And about ten of them--Well, there was about five, I guess, that stuck up their hands, and said they'd do it. And, actually four of them showed up over there that morning. And they went right to that front door. And I said, 'Look, if they threaten you with the police or anything else, don't worry about it. If a police locks you up, then we'll get you out of jail and sue the police department. So, they did. They called the police out there, and they had every supervisor--and they called the rest of them in early, and they told them they had to get out--You've got to leave. And they stood there, you know, and they passed out their leaflets, and they went on to work, you know. After that, I called a meeting and half the damn plant came out to the meeting. So that was…that was the key element that really established my credibility with them and showed them that they did have some rights. And we won the election about 00:56:00three to one. And they were in negotiations about a month, [inaudible], couldn't get a contract, so they come out on strike, every one of them came out, and they stayed out for two weeks. They got a good contract. Things like that--you know, are the enjoyable part of it--I could tell you about an awful lot of them like that that I was personally involved in. A lot of them I supervised, but, still, an awful lot of them that…that, well, the first five years, ten years really, that I was a coordinator or better, and I won out on just about everything in the campaign.LUTZ: You enjoyed your work?
MCIVER: To help start them and also to finish them. [inaudible] Yeah, I enjoyed
00:57:00it; it takes an awful lot out of your personal life. But I've really enjoyed it. The union is my life. So…LUTZ: Um, which brings me to the question of religion--A little while ago, you
were talking about--for you and your father, um, the union was like a church.MCIVER: Yes.
LUTZ: Um, I don't know if you meant that literally or not, but being that the
South has got such a reputation as a religious region, do you feel that that's -- that plays into labor union organizing or can it also bump up nose to nose and be a problem?MCIVER: You mean, union versus religion?
LUTZ: Yeah, did you get church people saying: 'I can't. It's against
religion.' Or ministers preaching against you, or did you find mostly that that it blended in smoothly? 00:58:00MCIVER: Well, we had a good relationship with a lot of religious leaders and
mostly in the black community was the most -- most of them, you know, usually we would get open support in the religious community. At the same time, the employers worked real hard to offset that and to make contributions to the church. I can remember when black people voted for Strom Thurmond in South Carolina, and it was a prominent guy that was running against him was way ahead in the polls. They turned the money loose, went out in the black communities; and the same thing with George Wallace in Alabama. The blacks voted for George 00:59:00Wallace. Now you tell me how they could do that, but they did. So, you know, I helped form a lot of different organizations--like the Brown Lung Organization for the Carolinas that worked kind of behind the scenes trying to prove that cotton does have a problem. And in North Carolina and South Carolina, we were able to get the state law changed that would cover the Workers Compensation for the brown lung, same as the black lung in the coal mines. Whereas in the past everybody would--if they had a problem with their lungs, they would say, 'Well, you've got emphysema. You smoke or you know -- bronchial problems or what-have-you. The doctors they had set it up, but a lot of these people, the…the young activists, most of them college graduates—that….that, um, I 01:00:00can remember when we first started in South Carolina, the United Church of Christ put up ten thousand dollars, and I was able to get the IUD to put up ten thousand dollars, and, we -- you know, hired this guy and put the organization together. In North Carolina, we had Cy Kahn's ex-wife, Charlotte Brody--I don't know if you know Charlotte or not, but she was real active in North Carolina with the Brown Lung organization. And there was a lot of other things that we did. In Mississippi, we set up like a social service department. We had two nuns down there that stayed there for two years, really, and they would try to help people as far as anything that was available--you know, food stamps, 01:01:00welfare, or whatever and tried to change our image a little bit.LUTZ: Did it work?
MCIVER: It helped a little bit, not an awful lot. There's nothing that will
offset the direct contact with the union organizer that's got the ability to communicate. I mean, that's where it's at. A lot of unions say, 'We support organizing. We do this; we do that.' If they don't put their money where their mouth is and hire staff people that really go out there on the front line and work with the people, they are not going to get it done.LUTZ: Tell me about some of the heroes and villains. Out of all of these
years, who do you remember from the labor movement…um….fondly? Who stands out in your memory as a genuine good guy hero or heroine?MCIVER: Yeah, well there's an awful lot of people. I…I…I grew up admiring
01:02:00Phillip Murray and Walter Reuther and John L. Lewis, even though he was a Republican [laughing]. Um, he…he had the ability to help the workers. [inaudible], you know? And Jimmy Hoffa--the wages [inaudible] tripled while he was the president. And, um, so, anybody, I think that really had the interests of the working people, you could feel that and you could see it in action. And I could…when Phillip Murray spoke, you could hear a pin drop, you know, at conventions or whatever. Whatever I can remember in the old days with my dad, if somebody said, 'Well, we're going on strike again.' And somebody would say, 'Why?' And my dad would say, 'Well who in the hell cares why? Phillip says we 01:03:00need to strike; we're going to strike.' And that's the type of leadership that I can remember admiring and respecting and I think that's where we are lacking in the labor movement today. Leadership, somebody that the labor movement can really look up to and rally behind.LUTZ: Um-hm. Who on a--
MCIVER: I. W. Abel, of course, is a person that I really admired, in addition to
that, and a lot of local union people, I could name many that I found and developed through education as to what they could do and what they couldn't do that later went on to become union organizers.LUTZ: Tell me one or two that you remember of, um, local folks.
MCIVER: Um, well, I think, outside of Christopher, [laughter] of course, there's
01:04:00an awful lot of people that I can remember from the [inaudible] workers that came out of--five local workers that they hired as IUD interns and assigned to me to train and develop as organizers. And one in particular, a little fellow named Randy Hinkler, who lived in the mountains of North Carolina and he talked--if you think I've got a Southern accent, then you should hear him, you know. And really, he's one out of the five--I said, 'Well, look, this fellow here just might not be able to communicate.' But workers loved him everywhere he went, and he made a tremendous organizer as a result of that.LUTZ: Maybe they said, 'He's the first one who ever talked like us.' [laughter]
01:05:00MCIVER: Yeah, and, then, too there's a lot of others down in Fayetteville, North
Carolina, at the [inaudible].LUTZ: Mmhmm.
MCIVER: There's a lady down there that really developed and spent a lot of time
trying to help us organize.LUTZ: Do you remember her name?
MCIVER: Yeah, but not right off the top of my head, though.
LUTZ: It will float in the middle of the night, won't it? [laughter]
MCIVER: Yeah, it will, soon as you leave. As a matter of fact, I'm going to
North Carolina in the morning to [inaudible], to Asheville, North Carolina.LUTZ: You are getting an award from them, yes?
MCIVER: Yeah, something they are going to honor me for about an hour up there.
I'm on the agenda. [inaudible]LUTZ: Let me ask first, while we are on good guys and bad guys--Ever since you
grabbed that one guy by the collar, who have you, um, wanted to take a poke at since? 01:06:00MCIVER: Internally, I guess I got a right to talk internally, but
I…well…externally, there's an awful lot of lawyers, company lawyers that I went up against, and most of them I had some respect for. But there was an awful lot of them that I had absolutely no respect for. They get people to get on the stand and say, 'No, I didn't…I didn't….the union didn't have nothing to do with me. We're under oath.' There's a fellow named Whiteford Blakely out of Charlotte, North Carolina, a law firm Blakely, Alexander, and Macon that was notorious in the old days, and there was one big plant that I was working on down in…in, um, South Carolina right after I went to work in 1964, 01:07:00that I had been assigned to the company, J.P. Stevens. There was a big plant there with 1600 people in it, and I was going to organize. And out of that plant there were three different husband and wife teams that were [inaudible]. They had--in one family they had over 50 years service of husband and wife. Usually, what they would do, they would fire the husband first, and maybe the wife after that. Take all the income out of the household, you know? And I really hated that guy to the extent--for awhile, but then after we started winning these NLRB cases and beat him--We finally beat him in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina--That was one of my big adversaries. And there are others. 01:08:00There's Fisher, Phillips, and Ford, a law firm in Atlanta, with a guy named Billy Ford that was advising a company over in Tallapoosa, Georgia, a place called Litchfield Builders, which was owned by Atlantic Steel Company. The reason it went to Tallapoosa was to get away from the union, you know? That plant had been there for years prior to me becoming an organizer. But I worked in the Carolinas in 1963 to 1968. My wife had a nervous breakdown, and they allowed me to come back to Georgia. So I worked--I was working on Southwire in Carrollton, Georgia. And I was contacted by some UAW people that worked at the Ford plant -- in the Chevrolet plant -- that lived in Tallapoosa and told me that there was interest over there. I went over there, and I was able to 01:09:00organize it. But right after the campaign started, and I had my petition going--This was back in the '60s, too--They fired nine people in a week's time out of a unit of about 230. And they take boilermakers and welders and put them underneath the plant digging a ditch, a drain ditch, you know?LUTZ: Three feet deep?
MCIVER: Three feet deep, and only about three feet left from the top of the
building, which would have been--You know, you get welders and boilermakers, and then there was a vicious campaign and I won all nine cases. Every one of them got their jobs back and back pay, but one thing I did do was involve the members 01:10:00that I knew at Atlantic Steel Company. I went to the local union meetings, and I set up a bank account in Bremen, Georgia, and was going around to the local unions, particularly Atlantic Steel to pass out leaflets, you know: You want to know what kind of company you work for? Everybody knows Litchfield Builders in Tallapoosa. Here's a list of nine people that were good employees, until they got active in the union. And we would like for you to show your support at the gate on Friday. We were down there with a bucket. So we raised enough money to take care of everybody, and that got the interests of the workers, you know. If they can do that to them over there, [laughter] what can they do to you at some point, you know? And we successfully won that campaign, but that lawyer, he and 01:11:00I really got into a personal thing. I…I would challenge him to a debate and all that. And, at one point, there was a fellow named Charlie Bastida that was president of that division, and he used to be at Atlantic Steel. I had a grievance with him. And he--The lawyer was writing the letters for him, but he was signing them. He said something like 'McIver, I suppose you are successful and the people believe all the lies you've told them.' He said what about Star Steel located in Cedartown, and their competitors put them out of business, etcetera etcetera. And I wrote him back and I told him, 'Charlie, don't worry about Star Steel in Cedartown. We are going to organize it, and you could help, too, if you'd talk Star Steel into hiring Bill Ford because I know how to keep him out.' [laughter] So it was really--Back in those days, there was an awful 01:12:00lot of moonshiners, illegal liquor that was made right there on the Alabama line, you know? And they thought it was an honest way to make a living. You know? And I had a lot of those people that was on my side, and I was glad of it, too. They didn't…I mean, you had to really be accepted in that community. But the Sheriff, a guy named Pinky Allen, the sheriff over there--and the bootleggers gave him like a dollar out of every sack of sugar they used to make liquor with, you know? And the City Police cop -- I was down there one night passing out leaflets at eleven o'clock when they got off. He came down there and said he'd just left this private club downtown, and that there was a guy in there complaining that he'd ordered a double drink and they'd give him a single. And there was supposed to be no drinking in the city. And I said, 'Well, why 01:13:00didn't you-- do something with him? 'No, uh-uh, there's no way I'll do that. If we arrest somebody, then they'll somehow get it bound over to the county, and Pinky will turn 'em loose, and in addition to that, they'll burn up your house over here.' [laughter] That's the kind of community I was in.LUTZ: You were lucky they liked you.
MCIVER: Yeah, yeah, I was lucky. Right after that, I organized a credit
[inaudible portion] in Carrollton, Georgia, and after I organized [inaudible]…you talk about an anti-union --That's one--A fellow named Roy Richards, that started Southwire, he owned that town. You know. They had an ordinance on the book that it was illegal -- and they arrested me for soliciting 01:14:00membership through the Carrollton Better Business [inaudible]. So that…what was a real challenge. I had a couple of elections at Southwire. One of them was pending. IUE had had an election early on and come real close. And Lloyd developed a program. He would oppose the union. At orientation programs for all new employees, they'd show them a film. And he would tell them, 'Well, if the union's not trying to get at you now, they will later, and we want you to learn something about the union. So they showed them a film, that's been declared illegal, called And Women Must Weep, supposedly about a strike in Pennsylvania, and it showed a big bully, telling them that, 'we're going to do this, they fired the local union president in the film -- They are not going to get away with this.' He goes out to the picket line and starts turning cars over, and showed somebody pulling up to a trailer at night and getting out 01:15:00with a shotgun and shooting into the trailer, and a woman started screaming, 'Oh, my baby. Oh, my baby.' [laughter]LUTZ: [laughter][inaudible]
MCIVER: It was really something. There again, I think the number one problem
that [inaudible]; and, of course, it's been the law and the way [inaudible].LUTZ: Especially lately, huh?
MCIVER: How's that?
LUTZ: Especially lately?
MCIVER: Yeah, yeah.
LUTZ: Ah, um, let me ask you one question, and then I'll let you go for now.
Um, if you were in an auditorium, and you got to stand up on the stage and a lot of the people in the audience were young union membersMCIVER: Mmhmm.
LUTZ: What advice would you give them?
MCIVER: Well, I think the advice would be to appreciate what they've got. If
they are fortunate enough to go to work already in a union plant, with a union contract, the wages and benefits and that contract didn't come just cause they 01:16:00had a good employer. I went down--on Labor Day, I went to a picket that they had -- a local union, Atlantic Steel, over on 14th Street, and there was another one in Cartersville, that they went out and built. I guess, 90% of the membership down there now has never been on strike and don't really appreciate the efforts in the earlier day, but a lot of people got killed trying to organize the steel industry, and and you know, in Chicago. Right out of east…in east Chicago, they called it the Memorial Day Massacre.LUTZ: That's right.
MCIVER: And…and, um, an awful lot of good people spent a lot of effort in to
making those jobs what they are, and I don't think a lot of the younger members appreciate that or really realize. There again, I go back to the leadership 01:17:00that we've had in the labor movement. A lot of them are there that really have never been on strike, and a lot of them don't pay union dues. They've come…come through as an assistant here and an assistant there, and you know what I mean, and really don't have a feeling for the working people that we had in the old days.LUTZ: That's it.