CHRIS LUTZ: Chris Lutz interviewing Richard Ray, September 22, 1995,
Atlanta, Georgia. Ray, could you tell us when and where you were born?RICHARD RAY: I was born in Durham, North Carolina, September the 19th, 1941.
LUTZ: Happy Birthday.
RAY: Just had one. I tried to get out of it, but it still came up. But I
couldn't understand it--but, 54 years ago.LUTZ: So, you grew up in Durham during the 1950s?
RAY: Correct.
LUTZ: Why don't you tell me a little about what it was like to be a kid in
Durham at that time?RAY: A wonderful place to grow up. My father was a police officer. My mother
was a housewife. Um, I was the youngest child. I was born when -- My sister is twelve years older than I, and my brother fourteen years older than I, so you might say that I was not planned. 00:01:00LUTZ: You got lucky is what it was. [laughter]
RAY: But, you know, it was a wonderful place to grow up in a neighborhood where
everybody knew each other, um, lots of kids to play with, I had a very, very happy childhood.LUTZ: What were your dad and mom like?
RAY: They were probably what we would refer to now as, um, 'country people' who
had come to the city. Um, both of them, when they first came off the farm, you might say, to the city, had started to work with Liggett Myers Tobacco Company. Um, when they met and got married, my mother quit and became a housewife. And the interesting thing was that my father, um, at that time, was trying to help 00:02:00organize the union in the Liggett Myers Tobacco Company and was fired for his efforts. Needless to say, even in those days, you didn't say that was the reason, but that was the reason that he was fired. And, um, he decided to become a police officer. There was a job there, and, you know, it was a steady job. And he became a police officer, and came to be--formed a union in the police department and became the first president of that local. And then North Carolina passed a law that police officers couldn't belong to a union, and they dissolved the union, but he was always a very union-minded person. And I can remember as a small kid, six or seven years old, there was a paper that was produced, a labor paper, and on Saturdays, he would drive over to the building that housed the newspaper, and I would go with him. And that's how I got my, 00:03:00per se, union background, I suppose, in knowing what he did and what he believed in. And, um, they were very strong, real people by being these country folk and being people that were born on a farm and moved to the city--very strong in community. I can remember my father was referred to kindly as "the mayor of Lakewood Park." That was the section of Durham that I meant to… By being a police officer, people held him in great esteem. They would come to him with their problems. Everybody knew him--just a fine man, a Christian man, strong-willed--big, big man, about six foot three; and he weighed about 240 00:04:00pounds, and I had a tendency when he spoke that I did what he said. Um.LUTZ: My dad also had a cop for a father.
RAY: Of course, it did cause me some problems as I became a teenager because I
couldn't do anything that my father didn't know about by the next day, at the latest, so I tried to walk the straight and narrow.LUTZ: Right.
RAY: But it was not easy.
LUTZ: There was no getting drunk for you, was there? [laughter]
RAY: No, no, no. I mean, I remember one night--My father owned an old Chrysler
that he would let me borrow, but I shouldn't put more than ten or fifteen miles on it, because you didn't need to go that far. But, one night, I had made arrangements to borrow the car, and I had gotten it; the kid across the street got his father's car, and it was a much nicer--It was a Chevrolet, you know, and it was more--sportier. So I parked the car out behind one of the high schools 00:05:00while I went off riding with them. And the next day at breakfast, my father said, "Where'd you go last night?" I said, "I just went riding around--no place in particular." "Well, who'd you go with?" "Well, Bill Markham across the street--" , "Well, my car was parked out over behind the high school." So, you know, I could never do anything he didn't know about. Because somebody had called him and told him, "Your car is out here behind the high school."LUTZ: Uh-huh--
RAY: But it was a very enjoyable childhood. By being the youngest child and
coming along later in life, as my brother and sister have told me, you know, I got a lot more than they did; and I remember my mother telling me that whenever I would get mad at my dad--because he never drove the car during the week; he rode the city bus to work. He only drove the car on the weekends, but if I was 00:06:00mad at him, he'd get in the car and drive me around until I got over my madness, so---You know, you might say I was a spoiled kid, but--I had a happy childhood growing up in Durham.LUTZ: Where did you go to school?
RAY: I went to grammar school at Lakewood Park, and, then, went to Junior High
School at Carr Junior High School and then went to Durham High School and graduated from there.LUTZ: What year did you graduate from high school?
RAY: 1961.
LUTZ: As a teenager, did you have any consciousness about segregation?
RAY: Oh, yes. We lived in--as I said--in a community that was close knit, but
there was a very large black community right on the outskirts of our community. And on Sunday afternoon, of course, we always had a football game or something going on. And lots of times the white kids would play the black kids in football on Sunday afternoon. And, of course, that was frowned on by some of 00:07:00our parents that, you know, we ought to be playing among ourselves and not be playing with the black kids. And, um, but it didn't bother any of us because we were just, you know, trying to play football and have a good time. My father and mother, by being from a rural background, were somewhat prejudiced. I can remember my mother would have a black lady to come in once a year to help her do the spring cleaning. And I can remember, you know, it'd take two or three days, but I can always remember she would not allow her to sit down--I say 'she would not allow her'--She would not sit down at the table with us to eat. She waited until we got through before she would sit down. And, um, being from that background, they were what you would call today--to say they were very prejudiced toward black people and black people 'not being as good as us.' But 00:08:00being kids and growing up, I mean, when I was in high school, when I was in the eleventh grade was the first year that a black came into Durham High School.LUTZ: Um-hm.
RAY: And the kids took it a lot better than the adults did, even back then.
You know…you know, they didn't particularly like it, and we had agreed that we would raise Cain about it, and we would push them in the hall, and all this. But most of the people said, you know, 'No big deal.' Durham was a little bit more progressive than some of the other Southern cities. In fact, I have a booklet that was put out when my father was president of the Policeman's Union back in the early forties where it lists all the black police officers that were already on the force. It was a background of all of their participation and 00:09:00what they mean to the city, and this was back in the forties, even before Atlanta had hired black police officers. So Durham was a little bit more progressive. You have to remember that Durham was the home of Duke University. North Carolina was only eight miles away--The University of North Carolina--And North Carolina State was only twelve miles away. You had the influence of people in the academic world that paved the way a little bit for some of that--more progressive in race relations than most of our southern cities like Greensboro, where we had to sit-in up in Greensboro, North Carolina. So, um, but it was always on people's minds. Politics is the main thing I remember growing up--After I started to notice politics was --no way a black was going to 00:10:00be elected or that type of thing, or voting for people that were very conservative and, um, did not share basically what the benefits were -- what the beliefs were in Durham. On a statewide level, it was more, how did they view race relations and that type of thing.LUTZ: [Inaudible.] Okay. So you are out of high school and, um, when did --
RAY: I went on to college.
LUTZ: You went to college.
RAY: Yes. I decided to go in the twelfth grade and had never really prepared
myself. I had worked all during high school in a service station close to my house, and I really never planned to go to college. But, just like a lot of kids, when you are getting--all of a sudden, you see all your friends going off to college, and, you know, you don't want to be left behind. So I had applied 00:11:00to a University or a College in Wilson, North Carolina, called The Atlantic Christian College, and, low and behold, they accepted me. And I went off to college. And, um, I was not really prepared to go to college--but enjoyed the experience. Of course, at that particular time, I was dating my wife. I dated a particular girl all through high school, and she had not gone off to college. She had stayed at home and was working. I came home every weekend and worked in that same service station and dated my wife. And so at the end of the first year of college, I knew that I was not getting anywhere; and I was wasting my parents' money, even though I had worked on the weekends to help pay the way--I 00:12:00just knew that I was not doing myself any good by continuing on.LUTZ: Were you bored out of your mind?
RAY: Um, that was not my--I was thinking more about my girlfriend back home and
that kind of stuff than I was my studies. You know, I wasn't very happy being away, so I decided not to go back and to find something else to do. So I was still continuing to work in the service station, and one of my friends that summer after the first year of college, you know, came and told me that he had gone to work for Owens-Illinois and that they were hiring people and that I should go down to the employment security office and see if I couldn't begin because there was an apprenticeship; and there was good money; and we would have a trade; and he was my best friend. So I happened to have a lady that stopped in 00:13:00to that service station who worked at the employment security office. And I called her that night and asked her about it, and she said, 'Yeah, come on down and take the test.' So I did, and I passed the test because everybody had to go down and take different kinds of tests and what you were good at. So she set me up for an appointment to go down and be interviewed by the plant manager. And….and so I did, and they hired me. And I remember the first day that I walked into that big plant, which was basically what you call a big 'machine shop.' I walked in that day, and I looked at all those big machines and said, 'Oh, goodness, I'm not going to be able to do this.' But it worked out very well. I started my apprenticeship and started to learn some of the machines and 00:14:00to do my job, and at that time, they told me that they had a union. Of course, they needed men, so I went to sign up, because I knew with what I knew about unions that this is what I should be doing--I should be joining a union. And it was basically, um, I got in on the ground floor. The plant had only been there for a year. They were hiring a lot of young guys to be apprentices and to learn the trade, and…and I started going to union meetings. Within a year, we had a shop steward that resigned, and we needed a new shop steward, and there were only two of us eligible to…to run. And I ran, and I got elected. And that was my first real test of unionism, to learn what a shop steward was and what a shop steward was supposed to do and…and, um --LUTZ: Well, what did you do?
00:15:00RAY: Um--started handling proble You know, and--We are the guys that if they
have a gripe or a bitch or whatever they had--as a shop steward, you know, you listen to them and decide, basically, if it is or if it isn't. And I started reading, you know, basically anything I could get my hands on about what a good shop steward should do. And I was very fortunate to have a…an international rep with my International that, basically, when he was in, he evidently had taken a liking to me, and I kind of liked him, you know, I really respected him. And, um, I was learning a lot from him. And the next--We had elections every year for all the offices. So within two years, I decided that I wanted to be 00:16:00president of that local, so I ran for president and won.LUTZ: You were a very young man at the time.
RAY: Yeah, as an apprentice, any other place, that would not have been
possible. But by the fact of them trying to build the shop up and hiring apprentices and apprentices, we had more apprentices than we had journeymen; and so, basically, there I was about twenty-three or twenty-four years old, president of a fairly good-sized local.LUTZ: And the local was?
RAY: Local 6 of the American Flint Glass Workers--one of the oldest unions that
we have still that was organized in 1870 [inaudible]LUTZ: Back to your apprenticeship. What kind of training did you get?
RAY: Basically, it is training in machinist type work. I started on a mill
00:17:00that put in tongue and groove into--Basically, what a moldmaker does in the glass industry is to make the mold equipment that they use in the glass industry for the forming of different type bottles, different shapes, different sizes. I started on a mill. Basically, I went through and learned every machine in the factory from the lathes to the drill presses to the bench work. I was a firm believer that I should try to learn everything that I could because I wanted to be the best there was. And I almost made it. I think I worked just about on every machine in that shop at one time or the other, either during my apprenticeship or after, during my career. I learned the machine that I was working on prior to coming to Georgia before they shut my plant down, which we 00:18:00will get into later, the machine itself, at that time, in 1973-74, cost about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just for the machine. It was a duplicating machine, a very fine machine that had four heads that duplicated really fine designs in the cavity that would make the same impressions on the body. And some of the jobs, like on salad dressing jars--or bottles--sometimes I would come in and the guy that was running the machine that I would be relieving--It would be running, and I wouldn't do anything the rest of the night but sit there and watch it run and check the cutters every once in a while to 00:19:00see if it was good because it ran so slow to get that fine design on the bottom. And, um, you know, that's all you had to do, so I really enjoyed that machine.LUTZ: [laughter] You enjoyed your job.
RAY: I got a lot of my union work -- talking on the telephone or reading or
writing grievances or whatever. But, um, my apprenticeship for four years and going to school and working. And at the same time, getting more involved in the union work. Because like a lot of other people that start at the local level, you kind of feel like the labor movement is your local view. You are not acquainted with all of the other aspects of the labor movement in all the other unions. All you are concerned about is your local union. But as I progressed and stayed there longer and read more and had the opportunity to meet more 00:20:00people, I found out there was another world out there also. And, of course, at the same time, I was also getting more involved with my national union. And during that period of fifteen years that I worked there in Durham for Owens-Illinois, I became president of the Durham, North Carolina, Labor Council, as well as being elected to the Executive Board of my international union to negotiate--basically, my job was to negotiate the contracts that covered all of the mold making trade throughout the United States.LUTZ: Now, go back to--I'm not going to let you get out of your youth that fast.
RAY: It's quick enough.
LUTZ: Yeah, it seems over very quickly, doesn't it? Who helped you when you
were a kid? Or who inspired you, when you were a kid, to actually start looking at the larger world? 00:21:00RAY: The person that did more for me, that was my mentor, I suppose, was a…a
fellow by the name of Wilbur Hobby.LUTZ: Okay
RAY: Wilbur Hobby was president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO and was from
Durham. In fact, his brother was president of the Labor Council before I ran for the job. He came out of the tobacco industry--a very dynamic man who had, at one time, been on the AFL-CIO staff as a co-director for the southern region and had given that up to go back and run for president of his AFL-CIO. And during my time as president of the local, Wilbur and I had gotten to know each other because of our involvement with the state AFL-CIO, and there was another 00:22:00person who had kind of taken me under his wing, and Wilbur was--He had something going all the time, and, um, where he needed volunteers and people that helped him do certain things in politics and everything else. And I was always there.LUTZ: He swooped you right up, didn't he?[laughter] RAY: Yeah, he did. And he
opened doors for me to do some of the things that I did. And I, in turn, supported him wholeheartedly also because I've never, ever met another labor leader that worked as hard as he did for the people he represented. In fact, there was a downfall to Wilbur--He did have too many irons in the fire, and could not do a great job on anything because he just had too many things going. In fact, in later years, Wilbur did serve some time. He had gotten involved in 00:23:00government contracts for job training, and he had let some people keep the books and run some of this stuff; and they had done some things that were not legal. And, of course, Wilbur, by being the one that secured the contracts, was charged with embezzlement and all of this other stuff and served some time in the federal penitentiary. Um, they charged him with taking this money and spending it on himself. I have never felt that he did that. I think any money that he might have gotten that he did not spend on job training was probably poured back into the labor movement because that's the kind of -- I mean, he didn't need a lot. I mean, you know, he was always out there working. He didn't need money to spend for himself. I mean, you know, he didn't dress that great. He didn't 00:24:00have a new car. I mean, all Wilbur wanted to do was to work for the labor movement, and he did, so he brought me along. He pointed me in the direction that I suppose that he wanted me to go more so than what I wanted to go, but he opened the doors for me. And Wilbur and I, until he passed away about four years ago, we always kept in touch. But maybe--I left Durham in 1977 about the time he got into trouble, and had I not left Durham, maybe I would have been right in the middle. So, um, you know, I came to Georgia at a good time, I would say.LUTZ: [laughter] Yes, you did. Um, when you were head of the Durham Labor
Council, you were in a really unique position to see what was going on in Durham and in the state. What were some of the situations that you remember during that period?RAY: You know, in thinking back on that particular question, there were not a
00:25:00lot of differences about what was going on at that time as to what is going on right now. It's not really changed that much. There's a [inaudible] that you have. During that period of time, I was labor council president, we had an organizing drive going on with J. P. Stevens. Um, and it was our job with all the labor councils to go and participate in the rallies and get our people pumped up, to spread the word about what was really going on, and, you know--And we won that. We got them organized. They had contracts. And in North Carolina, of course, is a right-to- work state, and still is. It was then. Labor was not very well thought of--then. It's still not that well thought of 00:26:00in North Carolina, um, as well as Georgia. Um, the differences between Georgia and North Carolina are really not that great, as far as workers are concerned. Um, those things that happened when I was president of the Labor Council, as I said, are just really not any different than what labor council presidents do here today in Georgia--of trying to keep the troops, you know, motivated: electing good politicians, people that will understand our agenda as to what working people or more especially union working people. You would think that things would have changed, but the same thing with the fire at Hamlet where those people were killed in North Carolina three or four years ago. [Inaudible] 00:27:00You would have thought we would have learned what's happening to workers over the last twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years. Sure, it's better than it was in the 1920s and 30s, but it really has not changed that much. The laws are still, um, archaic. Um, businesses still--and business interests come first in the legislator's mind, not workers' interests. Um.LUTZ: Why is Labor not able to get its candidates elected…or is it--and [inaudible].
RAY: Well, you know, it goes back to--especially in the South--where the
mentality of the community is that the business community is right. Plus they have the most money. They have the most power. Right here today in the Georgia 00:28:00General Assembly, the Chamber of Commerce can go to the Georgia General Assembly and get about anything they want passed, without a lot of difficulty, because the General Assembly is made up basically of professional people and business owners, lawyers--people that don't think about themselves being workers. They are business owners or they work for big business, and well-educated, and they don't think of themselves as workers. An average worker in a factory or in a construction job can't afford to run for public office—cannot…cannot afford that. Whatever they make, if they don't work, they don't get paid. In the legislatures, you know, they don't make enough money -- They call it a part-time job. We do have some of them in there that get by on that. 00:29:00LUTZ: [inaudible]
RAY: It's just the fact that the average man or woman can't afford to run for
public office, nor would they give up the freedom that holding public office takes away from you as far as your family life and things like that--because it does--If you are going to be a member of the Georgia General Assembly, that is not a part-time job. They might say to meet forty days, but you have committee meetings all during the year, and if you are going to win the next election, you've got to be at every function that happens in your county, um, from the Chamber of Commerce to the picnic at the church. And you've got to be at all of them, and that time takes away from your family. Plus, you know, the media, nowadays, there's no such thing as privacy. They are going to check your closet 00:30:00from day one to see what skeleton they can find that they can print or broadcast on the news that night--that you did so-and-so thirty-five years ago. And most of the good people that could run for office will not run for office because they don't want to live in a glass house.LUTZ: [Inaudible]
RAY: True. Because you are [inaudible] in public office. Your children--and
you talk about 'latch-key kids'--You don't see your kids.LUTZ: Yeah, and when they get in trouble because they grow up to be JD's--and
then they are put under the microscope, too.RAY: That's right. Exactly.
LUTZ: Well, did you ever know a good politician while you were in Durham?
RAY: Yeah, I mean, you know, people say all politicians are crooks. I disagree
with them. There were politicians when I was growing up, that were good people that were trying to do the right thing. And to this day, there are quite a few 00:31:00politicians that I consider are more than politicians and that they are even statesman-like, people who are really trying to do what's good for the people they represent.LUTZ: Give me a couple of for instances from the Durham years.
RAY: From the Durham years? We had a couple of mayors that tried to do the
right thing. I can't give you their names; I can't even remember their names now. We had a couple of city councilmen during that period of time that really tried to do and to represent the citizens in a professional manner and to do what was right for the city, more than what was right for themselves. At the state level, Jim Hunt was an outstanding Governor, and the Labor Movement had a lot to do with getting him elected. And now he's Governor again--a good 00:32:00Democrat and helped North Carolina a lot. He stands out more than any other politician at the state level that I knew that really tried to do what was right. We had some good representatives there, but not a lot of good ones.LUTZ: People probably ask you about Jesse Helms all the time, but what's with
Jesse Helms?RAY: When I was growing up, back in the 50s, when he first started on Channel
5, television, as a commentary person. Every night after the news, he had five minutes or three minutes--right at the end of the news every night. And even back then, he was a racist individual. He never talked positively about anything he talked about. He always put negatives every single night. Every single night, there he was, talking to the citizens of North Carolina, negative about 00:33:00everything, whether it be race relations, whether it be government, whether it be—or whatever he was talking about--LUTZ: [Inaudible.]
RAY: Yeah, it was always negative, and that's how he got his start, and, to
this day, that's the way he is now; it's always negative, negative, negative, negative. And he is a racist and a bigot. And, um…LUTZ: Has he ever done a thing for labor?
RAY: Never, ever--hates us with a passion.
LUTZ: He's such a pessimist. Well, [laughter] back to--
RAY: But you've got several more. You've got some in South Carolina--And
you've got some in Georgia--not quite as bad as Jesse, but pretty damn close.LUTZ: Pretty close. [laughter]
RAY: Pretty damn close.
LUTZ: Um, from that period of time, can you describe the job you were actually
00:34:00doing--the day to day--daytime job?RAY: Do you mean my union work or --
LUTZ: Your union work is what I meant, but as a glass worker, too.
RAY: Basically, like, you know--the Durham Central Labor Council--trying to
build it up, trying to find the thing that we should be doing -- whether it would be going to a rally, the J. P. Stevens union march or, basically, as labor councils do now, in state federations being involved in the political goings on, whether working with the people who are in office or trying to get some people elected that would be better office holders. That's what I enjoyed. I enjoyed the politics of it, being involved in people's races and trying to get--whether it would be phone banks or mailings or putting up signs or convincing the labor 00:35:00movement that one particular candidate was better than the others, and that's who we ought to go with or -- I enjoyed that, and still do to this day. If I didn't, I couldn't do this job. If you don't feel that you have made a difference and are making a difference, then you can't do these jobs because in the labor movement, you find very quickly that politicians--and I say the word 'politicians,' --A lot of them, you only see them around election time; and the rest of the time, it's hard to get them on the phone. But you will see them start lining up getting close to elections because they want your support; they want your money; they want the people that you can put out to work in their campaign. That sequestering part of it, that you start learning to pick those 00:36:00out, then you start trying to find somebody to run against those. That's the exciting part of the labor movement and these jobs because in these jobs you get to do that, and to be involved, to know the politicians. They know you. And if you need to call them, at least they know who it is that's calling them. And as I've tried to express through our labor unions out here and to the population in general: If you don't…if you are out here, and you are not involved in anything, and you've got a pothole in your street, and you call your county commissioner to get it fixed, and you ain't involved in anything, and you haven't worked in the election, and if you don't know anybody that you can say you belong to, your pothole is probably going to stay there. You have to be involved. If I as secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO or as Atlanta Labor 00:37:00Council President call a politician and talk to them about a particular problem, then, you are just not talking for yourself, you are talking for all of the other labor people that put you in that position. So you have much more strength on getting something done. I wish it was more strength to get more done, but at least I can call any congressman today and probably get a call back.LUTZ: But can you get my potholes fixed; that's what I want to know? [laughter]
RAY: Yeah--But I knew a county commission chairman that always talked about an
open door policy that he had--'Anybody can call me. I work for everybody.' But beside his desk, he had the voter registration file; and when Joe Q. Citizen called, he said, 'Well, Chairman, I've got a problem down here on my street'--or in my yard, or with the school system--or whatever -- and, you know, he's going to say his name. And while he is talking to him --first, he's looking to see if 00:38:00he's registered to vote. If he's registered to vote, he's probably going to give you a little help. But if your name ain't on the voting file, 'We'll see what we can do.' And that number went into the trash can because this man didn't vote.LUTZ: That's pretty clever. Who was the politician?
RAY: I'm not going to tell you.
LUTZ: You can tell us now.
RAY: No, but that's the way he operated. And he stayed in office a long time.
LUTZ: Now, before--Now, Owens-Illinois was still employing you, right? How did
that work? How did you manage to do both?RAY: When I was in Durham—um, Owens-Illinois was a good company. They had a
good labor-management relationship. Um, as long as you did your work, you 00:39:00basically could fudge a little bit on some of your work and make some phone calls; if you needed to be off on union business, you would ask off, and they would usually grant you time off. Of course, [inaudible] a smaller local, and a lot of times, I took off on union business and really just--the local couldn't afford to pay me--I just took off. But they were good about that because the glass industry is one of the higher organized businesses in the United States. We don't have a non-union glass company that I am aware of in the United States. Everybody is organized here--in the South or in the North or in the West. I mean, every factory that they have ever built--LUTZ: How do you manage that?
00:40:00RAY: We were good.
LUTZ: [Laughing]
RAY: Um, we had, basically, good management at all of our companies, whether it
was Owens or Anchor Hocking or, um, Rockway or any of the other glass companies--good people. The men that started Owens-Illinois was [inaudible]. The man that built the first bottling machine had come up through the ranks, and that has always been just the labor management relations that were decent. Sure, we had grievances, and we've had strikes, but not a lot of them because we'd somehow find a way to settle the problem. We went through the grievance 00:41:00procedure, which was actually being man enough to know when you had a grievance and when you didn't have a grievance, you know--To talk them out and get them settled.LUTZ: But then you closed?
RAY: Yeah, they closed my plant in 1977.
LUTZ: How come?
RAY: Owens had three central shops. What we had in Durham was a central shop.
They had three central shops: one in Alton, Illinois, which was the oldest and the biggest; one in Oakland, California, which was newer than the one in Durham, and Durham was -- No, the Oakland shop was also the second oldest, and Durham was the newest and the smallest. Due to advances in, um, mold design, due to advances in the way mold equipment is made and how long it lasts, um, Owens finally determined that they didn't need three mold shops at full capacity. 00:42:00They had their factories. They just didn't need three. We had worked for two years because it had been rumored for two years that they were going to have to shut one of them down. We didn't want it to be Durham, but we knew that being small like we were and being the newest one, you know, our chances were not too good, but labor and management worked together to cut every unnecessary expense. I mean, we even went so far as to go down to the factory and shut off every other row of lights to save on the power bill. We just did everything we could to help management keep that factory open. But, you know, luck finally ran out; and April, I think, or May--April, I think it was, they called us in one day and said they were going to shut it down. And there I was with fifteen years of 00:43:00service to Owens-Illinois, and they gave all of us an opportunity to transfer to the Alton shop, in Alton, Illinois. They gave two of us an opportunity to transfer to the Owens shop here in Atlanta. Um, I caught a little flack on that one, um, by…I've always been a union leader, the company knew that I was a member of the lawmaking executive board from the Southeast. Had I transferred to Alton, I would have had to give that up because I would have been out of the region. And I told them that, you know, I really didn't want to go to Alton, was there any other place I could go that I could retain my job as an executive board member. And they came back to me and said, yeah, we know there is going 00:44:00to be an opening in Atlanta. If you would like to apply for it, please do. And I did. And some of my members in Durham thought that I had used my influence as a union person to get that job; and, in fact, probably I did. Um, I don't think that I ever gave the Company anything in return for that, but they respected me enough to give me that opportunity to continue to serve on the executive board, so, you know, I took it at that, and I came to Atlanta because I certainly didn't want to go to Alton. I wanted to serve on the executive board.LUTZ: It sounds like a horrible nightmare, doesn't it? [laughter]
RAY: It was--I mean, there I was with two kids, a home that I had built--had
built that I had planned to stay in the rest of my life. I was president of the Labor Council. I had grown up there. My family was there. I was involved in 00:45:00the state politics. I was involved in everything. And, all of a sudden, my life just came crashing down. And I did not want to move but after checking around trying to find if there was any jobs that paid anywhere near what I was making--even the chance that I might consider going to work as an organizer--I could have stayed there. But I knew I was not cut out to be an organizer, and, um, I just said no--I'm going--I've got fifteen years logged with the company. I'll go to Atlanta. And so I went.LUTZ: Yeah. The final thing I wanted to ask you about Durham is back at the
civil rights movement--because you in the Labor Council are certainly in the leadership of your union as all hell sprang loose. Did the civil rights movement in North Carolina have a relationship with the labor movement, in 00:46:00Durham, at least?RAY: Yeah, they had somewhat of --Of course, Wilbur Hobby and all the Hobby
boys in the tobacco industry…the labor movement will support. I can remember--It was a little bit before my time, but the unions in the tobacco industry: You had a white union, and, then, you had a black union. And they merged those back in--probably in the fifties--earlier than most, and made them one union. Even that, though, there was still a lot of the old feelings among a lot of our unions about anything that concerned putting blacks and whites 00:47:00together, even if they were workers in the same factory or workplace.LUTZ: From the black side or from the white side?
RAY: Mostly from the white side, but, still even at that--during those periods,
there were a lot of the older blacks that didn't think that that would be a good idea. Um, but the labor movement probably took a better stand on it than any other group—um, even our churches. At the end of the interview, I'll show you a letter that I have in my briefcase from the church that I went to concerning what to do if any of the blacks came to the services.LUTZ: Good God! What would you do? Call down the wrath of God?
RAY: Um, you just didn't let them in. If you let them in, you took them to the balcony.
LUTZ: [Inaudible] Okay, so you come to Atlanta, then, and almost immediately
became president of your local-- 00:48:00RAY: No, I had a good dose of humility there in -- When I came, we had just
gone--They shut my plant down in July. July was the last--I left the week before they shut my plant down to go to negotiations. And we stayed in negotiations and got into a major work stoppage during that period of time.LUTZ: Well, tell me about it.
RAY: Yeah, the first one that we had had since I had been with the Flint Glass
Workers, the first strike that we had had in about nineteen or twenty years. And there I was caught between leaving home and my plant shutting down and coming to Atlanta, and here I was out on strike with the rest of the mold makers in the country. In fact, during the negotiations, the company even sent a guy down to interview me for the job in Atlanta, to, you know, make sure I got 00:49:00interviewed, so there would be no questions about how I got the job.LUTZ: Um-hm.
RAY: But it lasted for--Let's see, we went out in about September on strike.
Let's see…we had negotiated and just could not make it any further and called a strike. And I traveled all around the Southeast explaining to our local unions what was going on. And we finally got it settled, and I came to work in Atlanta on October--October the 25th of 1977.LUTZ: Okay, now, before you move off the strike: What were you striking over?
RAY: Basically, it was not just one issue. There were several issues that we
were striking on--in fact, more than several. What we considered to be--When we 00:50:00negotiated the contract, it was a multi-employee bargain. All of the glass companies met at one time with us as an executive board. And they always elected a spokesman for their side. And they all supposedly had one vote apiece on the Company's side. And that particular negotiations, Owens-Illinois had a new, brand-new--what they call now Human Resources people, that was going to be -- And he got elected spokesman. He had never negotiated a contract before in his entire life. He was there to make a name for himself. And he backed us into a corner that we couldn't get out of is basically what happened. 00:51:00President Parker was the international president of our union. I have never seen anybody more of a shrewd negotiator than him; and even he was stumped. I mean, we just were at a place where we could not get out of and had no choice but to, you know, call a work stoppage. We tried to get out of it, but we could not get out of it. He would not let us out of it. He had backed us so far in the corner that we couldn't get out of it. And It was, you know, what goes around, comes around. He didn't last.LUTZ: [laughter]
RAY: He didn't last. After the strike was over, he lasted about another three
months, and he was gone.LUTZ: Did you work it out successfully for the union?
RAY: Yeah. You might say we won the strike. We got basically--There were two
00:52:00sticky issues dealing with plant shutdowns, severance pay, as well as work rules that they were trying to impose on us that could've -- It was called "dual operations." The company wanted us--Because we had in the contract that you could not operate two machines at one time, and the Company had been pressuring us for a couple of negotiations prior to that to take that language out because new types of machinery was coming on the market where they could back up two machines, back to back, and one operator could actually do both jobs. And we were fighting that tooth and nail, and rightfully so. We fought them, and when we went back in, we didn't have dual operations. So we felt it was a victory. 00:53:00It would not affect all of our mold makers because the mold maker working in the glass factory would not be affected by that. It really basically came down to central mold shops. And that's where it would have, you know, really put more people out of work. People on two machines would work just twice as hard for the same pay, and we didn't think that was right, so we won.LUTZ: And you were right.
RAY: We were.
LUTZ: Okay. Was it hard, then, coming to Atlanta and settling in or were you
glad to have a bunch of this behind you?RAY: Well, as I said earlier, it was hard. I knew one person in the state of
Georgia when I came to Georgia.LUTZ: Hmm.
RAY: And the reason I knew him was because he had served his apprenticeship in
Durham and had come up from Georgia to serve his apprenticeship because his dad was a moldmaker down here in [inaudible], and he had some personal problems, and 00:54:00we had voted to give him his card about three months earlier than normal getting his card so he could come back because an opening was up and he could come into the shop. So that was the only person I knew down here. And I moved my wife--Well, I didn't move her quickly because it took a while to sell my home, and they came down about five months after I came down. So I was keeping up two--I was living with this one guy I knew. He brought me into his home. He was a single father with a teenage son, and he had an extra bedroom. He didn't charge me a dime. And I stayed with him until I could sell my home and get my family down here. And I came in, and, of course, I had given up every office that I held other than the executive board seat; and I came in, and, immediately--as in a lot of cases, you know, you are trying to get around to 00:55:00meet everybody and know each other. And, it was, you know, maybe my ego had gotten to me a little bit, you know. I had served on the executive board. I was president of the local. I had done all this. And these guys, you know--I was an outsider. Every one of these guys had started with Owens. They had worked with Owens for fifteen, sixteen, eighteen years--never had another outsider in there, and here I come into that shop. And they also had elections for local officers every year. And I came in October and started work, and I let a couple of guys who were dissatisfied with their leadership talk me into that I should run for president of that local. And I say I let them talk--I probably talked myself into it also. And so I ran in January for president of 00:56:00their local. Well, not only did they beat me for president of that local, at that meeting also you had to nominate the person that would be on the executive board for their local; and they also did not nominate me to continue my service on the executive board. And, um, I got the message real quick.LUTZ: It smarted, didn't it?
RAY: I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I knew that, you know, they had
taught me a lesson. They didn't care whether I had been on the Executive Board or what I had done. This was their shop and their local, and I was the new guy on the block. So, I took it well. And I continued to go…I continued to go to their union meetings; and the next year I ran for secretary and was elected; and the following year I ran for president and was elected. So they taught me a good lesson in not all…not ever forgetting where you came from, not always 00:57:00think you are so damn important that you can't lose an election.LUTZ: Always a good lesson for a labor leader to start on.
RAY: That's right. But they are a good group of guys. They just…taught me a lesson.
LUTZ: Okay. So you are president of the local there, and, now, what stands out
in your mind during your stint as president?RAY: Well, during that period of time, [inaudible] and we didn't have a lot to
do; Georgia State University and its labor studies program was started up at that time. Dr. Fried was the director, an outstanding man; and I decided that I would enroll in the Georgia State Labor Studies Program. They had an associate degree at that time, an accredited course. And I started going to school. And, 00:58:00um, a good group of people, a good group of students. And Dr. Fried was an outstanding professor. Made the Dean's List.LUTZ: All right.
RAY: I didn't make it when I first started to college; but, you know, I was a
little older, a little wiser, and I was learning about things that I knew a lot about to start off--But I made it through the program.LUTZ: Did you find that it jived well with your experience or seemed removed
from your experience?RAY: Um, certainly, my experience up to that point--It let me be a bigger part
of the program because most of the students did not have that type of experience, so I was able to use my past experience to bring out things that even enhanced Dr. Fried and what he was trying to teach the students. That's probably why I made the Dean's List.LUTZ: [laughter]
00:59:00RAY: Um, it was a good experience for me. It took my mind off--because I was a
very depressed person. I mean, I had been involved in everything, and here I was--All I did was go to work in the morning and get off and look forward to going to school at night because I was not involved in anything. And you know about that. And probably what saved me from going bananas is that I had something that I was participating in. That I was learning something. 'Cause I have always been able to learn something everywhere I've been, but at the same time to give something to the other students that they didn't have because they hadn't been through that experience before, so it was a good two years of my life in that particular program. And I made a lot of good friends that I still have--Charlie Key and I was in the same class.LUTZ: Oh, you were classmates.
RAY: Charlie Key is one of my closest friends. And some others that were in
the class have been known to use what they learned. Some of them didn't, but 01:00:00some of them used something within their local unions or even just in other ways [inaudible] I'm sorry to say that we don't have the degree program anymore. That went down the tubes. I wish that we could have kept that, but you have to have enough people at a university to…to, um, find it justified for spending that money, and we didn't have the amount of people that it took to do that.LUTZ: State of Georgia.
RAY: State of Georgia.
LUTZ: It's a little different [inaudible]. What kind of differences or
similarities were there between management here at Owens and the management that you had been dealing with for so long? 01:01:00RAY: You went from a factory that employed, at the top maybe of 130-something
people to a glass factory that had six or seven hundred people with two--three different unions within the factory.LUTZ: What unions?
RAY: My union, which was the smallest, the Flint Glass workers; then you had
the 'Glass Bottle Blowers' at that time; and they had two locals in there. They had one that represented the forming department. That's where the glass first goes into the machine and runs those machines; then you had the production and maintenance local. So you had three locals there. Plus out there the truck drivers who hauled--used to haul for Owens-Illinois, the truck drivers--They were Teamsters.LUTZ: Huh
RAY: We had four unions there.
LUTZ: Did you all…did you get along?
RAY: Basically.
LUTZ: Did you negotiate together?
RAY: Basically--No. We didn't negotiate together.
RAY: --Three unions in the plant down in Lawrenceville. The Flint Glass
01:02:00workers were the skilled people in the industry, which some of the production and maintenance people always kind of felt that the moldmakers considered themselves 'prima donnas' and always had made more money than they did and had better contracts. There was some of that involved in it, but over the last maybe five, six, ten years that came about, the P&M people kept coming up, coming up, coming up, so it really got to the point where the money part of it was not a big factor. But there always was the moldmakers--since they were considered skilled, they were always considered 'prima donnas.' 01:03:00LUTZ: Did you think of yourself as having an art rather than just a job?
RAY: I considered myself to have a skill more than a job.
LUTZ: Okay.
RAY: Because, I mean, once you go through an apprenticeship, I mean that's--To
me, an apprenticeship is like college. You've got three or four years when you learn how, what the trade is and how to do it. And it does take skill. Some people could do it; some people couldn't. So I thought I had a skill. It didn't make me better than anybody else. It just made me know that I valued that more than just a job, and that I could go anywhere and get a job.LUTZ: Yeah, because it sounds like you like to do it. What else stands out in
your mind about this period? Now, you'd been to Georgia State. And you are president of your local. I guess, what I want to lead up to is and what on earth made you get involved with the Atlanta Labor Council? 01:04:00RAY: By being a former Labor Council President, I knew that's where I wanted to
go and participate. So I started going to the meetings. I did convince my local union to--because when I first came to Georgia, my local union was not affiliated with either the Labor Council or the state AFL-CIO. And at least they might have defeated me as president and on the executive board, but they did agree to re-affiliate or to affiliate with the Labor Council as well as the State. And then I convinced them to let me come as the delegate because none of them wanted to come so it was really no big deal. They didn't want to give up their time to do that. So I started coming to the Labor Council. And the president at that time was Doug Brooks[?], and Doug and I became, you know, 01:05:00decent friends, and I volunteered for anything that he needed. And after about a year, he put me in as Director of their VIP Program, which is Volunteer In Politics Program, to keep the voter registration lists and that kind of thing, so that gave me something to start building on.LUTZ: Do you keep voter registration lists of union members?
RAY: We keep a list of--what we do is we order out from National [?] --They
have on their computer files a list of all the union members in Georgia. And at that time, we would take the list of like Local 3, and we would either -- We didn't, at that time, we didn't have a voter match tape. We would go to the courthouses and go through the voter registration--LUTZ: Oh, my.
RAY: --And put down who was registered to vote, and who wasn't and put the
01:06:00phone numbers down on the list that we were able to run phone banks. Keep them updated; keep them updated. If a member left, you marked them off. That kind of thing.LUTZ: And then, when someone is running that is a particularly good candidate
for labor, then you would do the call --RAY: Yeah.
LUTZ: Oh. Okay.
RAY: I did that for about four years, three years, down there. And then the
person that was vice-president of the Labor Council that came from the other union in the factory who--We had a good close relationship--He decided that he was going to step down as vice-president for the next election, and he was going to recommend that I run in his place. That way the glass industry would still have a voice on the Executive Board. And that happened, and I was elected Vice-President of the Labor Council. And, then, about two years after that, Brooks took a job in Washington during his term and, according to the 01:07:00Constitutional By-Laws, a member of the Executive Board--if they wanted--could be elected--and Doug recommended me to take his place. At that time, I had to make the decision of whether to --That's a full-time job--whether to stay in the factory or whether to--I had four days to make that decision--or to come out and become Labor Council President. And I decided that I had twenty years with Owens-Illinois, but I asked them for a leave of absence, and they granted me a leave of absence. So I decided I would--And I had always wanted to be a full time union officer, but I really wanted to be a fulltime union officer within my international union. But the chances of that were becoming slimmer and slimmer 01:08:00and slimmer because the moldmaking department was becoming smaller and smaller and smaller and did not have the votes that I needed to move up to that. So President of the Atlanta Labor Council was not a bad job, and that's why I decided to take it.LUTZ: Would you make the same decision again?
RAY: Yeah.
LUTZ: Okay, well, you've got wall full here of all the activities, political
and union, that you became involved in when you came to Atlanta. You eventually fit in pretty well, huh?RAY: Evidently.
LUTZ: Tell me about this one you got from the Communication Workers, for your
help in the '86 strike. What did you do?RAY: That strike caused the Communications Workers Unions and some of the other
unions to have some very bitter feelings toward each other, mainly because there 01:09:00was no communications going on at that time between CWA and the other unions prior to their CWA strike happening. And then the other unions were having to cross their picket line.LUTZ: Ah.
RAY: And they got very concerned about it. And I had just taken over the Labor
Council, and I got both sides together to sit down in a room and discuss why they were having to do what they had to do. And once CWA recognized that they -- What it was was the building trades--and the building trades had it in their contract that they had to go in there and go to work. If they didn't go in there and go to work and stayed out and honored the picket line, then the General Contractor had the right to pull their union contractor off the job, all of their equipment and everything else, and give it to somebody else. Then, if the other contractor did not finish the work on time, in the same budget, then whatever the costs that they lost, the union could be sued for. So when 01:10:00CWA--when I got them to talk, and they found out what the real problem was--All they knew was that the building trades were crossing their picket lines, and they didn't like it. And once we got them in a room where they could talk to each other civilly and find out what was really going on, they worked it out, and everything was cool from then on. They ended the strike within a month; they called me over to the union and gave me the plaque because they said that I'd been the one that had gotten them together.LUTZ: Did it end up that CWA let the building trades cross or did it end up--
RAY: Yeah. They let them cross because they didn't want to see them lose their
jobs. They didn't want to see the Union get sued. Um, it wasn't--I mean, it 01:11:00was the principle of the thing, a union brother or sister crossing their picket lines.LUTZ: Um-hm.
RAY: It hurt. It hurt them to see this happening, but once they understood
why--not because they hated CWA or they were really trying to take their job; they didn't have any choice.LUTZ: How about this one here, um, from Maynard Jackson, former mayor,
'Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Service to the City of Atlanta'?RAY: That was from when Maynard was mayor of the city, and the Labor Movement
had endorsed Maynard for the job, and Maynard and I always had a good close relationship. Um, I had his private number and could call him if we needed--you know, if something happened. And, one day, he gave me that.LUTZ: Oh. All right.
RAY: Basically, that's what he did. I'm sure other people have the same thing,
but Maynard and I were fairly close. 01:12:00LUTZ: How do you evaluate him and Campbell and Young as mayors? Who was good
for labor?RAY: Well, if you take all three--If you take Andrew Young; if you take
Maynard; and you take Bill Campbell, probably Bill Campbell is closer to the labor movement than the other two. They're all close to the labor movement, but Maynard was more--I mean, Maynard's a lawyer, a bond salesman, understands the value of the union movement, but at the same time at one time fired all the garbage--LUTZ: Um-hm--
RAY: --workers. I mean, he was pushed into a corner, and he did what he had to
do, but Maynard came from an environment of the business community. I mean, he 01:13:00might feel toward the labor movement, but he's still pro-business, a very wealthy lawyer. Andrew Young, probably, is one of the best human beings that I know. I know that his heart has always been in the right place and thinks very highly of the labor movement and what they have contributed to society and to the working people. But, um, Andrew, by being in the Carter administration, by being an ambassador to the U.N., by being now a member of the Laws Group, and when you hang around with certain people forever and all your closest friends are the rich and the powerful, that has a tendency to change your way of thinking about working people and what is really right for the community. I 01:14:00don't say that Andrew has lost this entirely, but I'm sure he looks at things a little differently than he did when he was first elected to congress. I mean, I've never heard Andrew Young that I wasn't inspired. I mean, he has a way of speaking that inspires you, and I know his life has been devoted to doing the right thing, but he's been so separated from the average person for such a long time. Bill Campbell – um, he was a city councilman when I was Labor Council President. Bill didn't make a lot of overtures to the labor movement at that time up until he had a political race for a seat in the city council; and we screened him, and we endorsed Bill. And we had never endorsed Bill Campbell before. And he was very appreciative of that. He always--Every time, I walked into a room after that, it was, you know, 'Hi, Richard. How are you? What's going on?' But he wouldn't give us a vote like on policemen having a right to 01:15:00organize and no dues checkoff. He used the reasoning that he couldn't vote for it because he represented some police officers in their legal matters, and that'd be a conflict of interest. I mean, it was a copout as far as I was concerned, and I lost a little respect for him because he wouldn't stand up for the police officers because they had a perfect right to organize and to have a union. But when he decided to run for mayor, of course, I was up here. And, um, the labor movement got behind him early, came out really, really early for him over Michael Lomax, and we put a lot of money in his race. And he probably would have won the race anyway, but he gives the unions a lot of credit, and 01:16:00President Acuff and the Labor Council did work long and hard for him and other unions did--leafletting, putting signs up--put a lot of money in his race, and he, in turn, gave Stewart an appointment to ACOG, which was a nice gesture on his part for the labor movement and their involvement--and works closely with Stewart on a lot of things--city workers and everything else. I mean, now, we have a Memorandum of Agreement, an understanding with AFSCME. They don't have collective bargaining, but we've got a Memorandum of Agreement with them that we'd never had before. So, if I had to rate one being best in getting the best results from, it would be Bill Campbell.LUTZ: What is this Letter of Agreement? How…
RAY: Basically, what it says is that the City will do certain things, and they
will not do other things. One of the them is that they will not subcontract or privatize city workers' jobs, which is a big statement, unless the city is in 01:17:00dire emergency status--financial or whatever. That's a big…that's a big one. I don't know whether it would stand up in court or not if the city council decided that they had to do it, but at least there's something there in writing which says what the city will do and won't do. And it gives more "ump" to the AFSCME local in their dealings with city government.LUTZ: Before we move off of this--This is really a wall collection here--What
time that you were honored gave you the biggest charge?RAY: Here?
LUTZ: What's the proudest of all of these honors?
01:18:00RAY: It's probably Labor Leader of the Year. Anytime you are honored by your
peers, it certainly humbles you a little bit. It makes you grateful that somebody thinks you are doing your job. But when all of them get together in a banquet where all of the house of labor has come to for twenty years--even when the Teamsters were out, the auto workers were out of the AFL-CIO--that one time of year, all of them came together to honor a person that had been chosen by a committee as being the person that they wanted to honor as Labor Leader of the Year. I was very humbled by it. It made me feel that the years and the time that I had spent working for the Labor Movement, more especially for the people 01:19:00who put me there had really meant something--that somebody -- that my peers recognized that I wasn't something special, but that an honor was there to let me know that they appreciated me. I'm sure not everybody who was there probably thought that I should have got it, and I'm sure there are other people out there probably more deserving than me. But they chose me, and I accepted it that night, not on my behalf, but on behalf of all the people who had put me into the positions where I would be there that night to accept it. Because if people had not believed in me and voted to put me in these positions over the last thirty years, I certainly would not have been there to get the plaque. So I accepted it on their behalf, and that's the way I really feel about it because those 01:20:00people, from the very first time they put me in as a shop steward to all the other offices that I've held. And to have been president of two local unions, to be president of two central labor councils, to be the president--or to serve on our executive board of the International -- and now to be secretary-treasurer of the second highest union office in the state of Georgia, it was a thrill for me then--something that I will never forget, something that no one can ever take away from me. And it mattered, too, because as a labor leader, you don't get a lot of pats on the back.LUTZ: You are telling me it is really the opposite, isn't it?
RAY: You don't get a lot of pats on the back. And, um, maybe that makes up
for--that plaque--Maybe that makes up for the Little League football games that 01:21:00I didn't get to go to, or for the birthday parties that I missed, the things that I put second under the labor movement during the years that I worked very hard--not to gain, to make it to the top, but to do the job that I knew that needed to be done, because a labor leader has a tendency to put the labor movement and his job above his church, his family, his--everything else. I mean, you live it; you eat it; you breathe it--because that's the most important thing you do. I've finally reached the age where--I never knew how to say no to anybody--But I have reached the age now where I do know that the labor movement is the most important thing in my life, but you can also have the other things--your grandchildren and your wife and children, and spend some quality 01:22:00time with them, too. You can say no to somebody. I don't need to be there at that meeting. Y'all can take care of it. You know, if you really get in a bind, call me. I'll come. But I'm going home. And for a long time, I didn't know to do that. You worked to try to put food on the table, but every other minute of your time was spent trying to do something for the labor movement. And in my case, it was to involve myself immensely in the political area.LUTZ: You've said before that you didn't think that you would have been a good
organizer, that you were more of a politician…person. What are the qualities that you think make an organizer and an administrator or a political union --RAY: Organizers, in order to convince people to join a labor organization, have
01:23:00a tendency to believe they have to lie to convince people that this is what they ought to do. And sometimes I don't even want to say it's a lie; but if I'm not organizing, and I'm telling people to come over to a meeting--you know, to get in there and talk to your fellow workers and to get them to sign cards, and one of them says, 'Well, you know, if the Company catches me doing this, they might let me go.' A lot of organizers, 'Don't worry about it. You'll get your job back. You know, just get in there. And be careful, but, you know, get these cards signed.' Because organizers, you know, he is graded basically on his wins and losses. And if a person asked me that, I am going to have to say, 'We will try to get your job back. Now, I'm going to tell you it is going to take two, three, four years to get your job back. And I don't know how you are going to eat for those two or three years. I know you've got five kids out there and 01:24:00your wife don't work.' Now, that's me--where some other people, their idea is to get them organized, you know? And they will get their job back if they are let go. I've seen people lose their livelihood because they did get out there, and, you know, I couldn't do that. I'm just not made up that way. I can't--I'm not an outfront person--I'll tell you how I feel in here and let you be the judge of me. You know?LUTZ: What part of [inaudible].
RAY: Um--To right the wrongs of sorry politicians.
LUTZ: [Laughing] Yeah, it's like [inaudible]
RAY: As best I can. I suppose
01:25:00I'm Dr. Jekyll and Hyde on this one. I respect all politicians because of what they give up in order to be politicians, but I detest politicians. I like statesmen. I also understand that in the world of politics that if you are going to change things, that you've got to be there in order to change them. And if you don't make some decisions based on politics, you won't be around to try it again. So there's a gray line there of where I get very mad at politicians because they don't practice the statesmanship, and they base everything on whether they'll get elected or not. And, at the same time, I get a little upset with my union people because they don't understand politics the way they should. I mean, to give you a perfect example of that--Buddy Darden, 01:26:007th District Congressman. Buddy was a pretty good Congressman. He messed up in some areas about NAFTA. He voted against us on that. He voted against us on a couple of other things. But he was still a Democrat, and he had about a sixty-five percent voting record for AFL-CIO's rating. But when he voted against us on NAFTA, there were a lot of our union people here in the state of Georgia and some of our national and international people said, 'We have to teach him a lesson. We are going to not support him--If we do support him, we are not giving him any money. We aren't going to give him any workers. We are going to show him that he voted against us on that, and that was a damn vote that he was either with us or against us.' We did that. Darden got beat. And 01:27:00now we have Bob Barr--zero voting record--voting with us.LUTZ: [laughter]
RAY: Now, did we win? Or did we cut our nose off--what's the old saying--our
nose off to spite--LUTZ: Cut your nose off to spite your face, yeah.
RAY: Sure, we taught Buddy Darden a lesson. Now, he is not a Congressman. He
is a lobbyist making good money, and he ain't got all that pressure on him, and we got Bob Barr. I believe I'd rather have a 65% vote than a 0% vote. I mean, that's good arithmetic to me. Sure, I think we should have continued to pressure him on what he did wrong, but I think we really should have done a little bit more to help keep him up there because if you remember who was before Buddy Darden was Larry McDonald. 01:28:00LUTZ: [Inaudible]
RAY: No, he had about a 3%; he must have made mistakes somewhere along the
line, and we couldn't get him out. I mean, Korea had to shoot him down in a plane to get him out of office. So now how are we going to get rid of Bob Barr?LUTZ: I don't know.
RAY: So we're stuck with a zero voting record; where if Buddy--if we'd gone on
and given him a little bit more money and support, we would have had a better record.LUTZ: Um-hm.
RAY: So that's the frustrating part of working in the political arena. You try
to do the right thing. You try to find good candidates; and you try to work with the ones that are elected; and you try to get them to see what your agenda is and why your side is better than the other side or your opinion is better than the other opinion. But it is a constant never-ending battle that you work with every day from the county commissioners to the city council to your Congressman to your President. And, at the same time you try to convince your rank and file unionists that they need to be more involved in voting and 01:29:00registering to vote and voting for the endorsed candidate. So I enjoy it.LUTZ: I can tell you do. It sounds like it's a challenge.
RAY: It is. It is.
LUTZ: Well, now, in your state office, you must have been involved in
state-level politics. Who's….who are the good guys? Who have been the good guys in Georgia's state politics?RAY: There haven't been many. We have a working relationship with some, but
you don't have many that will stick their neck out because this is a business orientated state. All of our governors--George Busbee--that was back before my time. I'm giving you what I've heard. Now, George Busbee was a half-decent 01:30:00Governor as far as the labor movement was concerned. Not a great one but a working relationship. He could sit down with you, talk with you, have a beer with some of the labor leadership. Joe Frank Harris--LUTZ: Yeah.
RAY: The man had no personality. And he hated us, and he was an embarrassment
to the state. But the business community loved him. [Inaudible] Um, Zell Miller. Zell Miller has had the labor backing from the day he first went into the senate. Zell Miller could be a great friend and has been a good friend of the labor movement in certain respects, but Zell goes off on things that he has no business getting involved in--things that he doesn't need to do. And he has a very bad temper, and he holds grudges. And, um, he doesn't -- I mean, my idea 01:31:00of a governor with -- even though we, say, 9, 10 percent of the work force organized in Georgia, when we do speak, people do listen. I mean, we…we do get the attention of certain groups of people in the state because we are the AFL-CIO.LUTZ: And it's an organized nine or ten percent.
RAY: Right, but basically, even the polls say that sixty percent of our people
[inaudible]. So I think the Governor should have a little bit more respect for the labor movement and more especially this office and President Mabry or whoever sits in President Mabry's seat, to have a little bit better dialogue as to -- If I'm going to appoint a, um, a panel to study privatization of state 01:32:00employees--and I know there's a union that represents state employees, give the president of the state AFL-CIO a call. Say, 'I'm fixing to do this. What do you think? Should I put a labor person on here?' Go over it with him. I think that's only right. Of course, that didn't happen. And that's just one example of what this office and the leader of the state should have in common. Sure the business community can give Zell Miller more money— (break in audio)RAY: Any good politicians.
LUTZ: Good guys. Any other good guys? [laughter]
RAY: [Sighing] There's not a lot.
LUTZ: No--There aren't. [laughter]
RAY: I mean, there's not anybody that I can say that sticks-- To give you a
perfect example. Everybody says that the labor movement belongs to the Democratic Party, and they will never support a Republican. There is one member 01:33:00of the Georgia house that is a Republican by the name of Vinson Wall. Before he casts a vote on any legislation that he thinks that would affect working people, he comes out and asks the labor lobbyists how he should vote on it.LUTZ: What happened? He's a Republican.
RAY: Because he lives in Gwinnett County, and he used to be a Democrat; and he
changed over to the Republican Party when the Republicans took over Gwinnett County, and he remained in the state legislature.LUTZ: So we have this kind of wacky thing.
RAY: And he gives the Republicans all, you know, just a lot of hell up there in
Gwinnett County; but they can't get rid of him because he's a Republican, and he continues to win. But he continues to think about the interests of working people and organized labor. Um, Vinson Wall is a good guy. A number of our black legislators have always been supportive of the movement and our agenda. 01:34:00And we work very closely with them in the General Assembly. And they support us 99% of the time on every issue that we want. But you have to understand we don't present a lot of issues to the General Assembly as labor legislation. And we do that for a couple of reasons: the first reason being that if a piece of legislation goes into the Georgia General Assembly, and it is tagged as union legislation, anybody who votes for that is immediately targeted by the business community to have opposition the following election. So we don't want to set our people up too much and give them more grief because most of our legislation we can't get out of committee, let alone on the floor for a vote. We did do it this past year on 'fair share.' Um, we were able to get it out of committee, 01:35:00not in the language that we had presented it, but after it had been amended, so we did let it get to the floor so they had to talk on labor for two hours on the floor of the General Assembly and take a vote on that bill because then when we knew that it was not going to pass, we asked that it be tabled. And, of course, everybody that voted to table it knew that that was going to get it off the floor. And that was a vote for us so we could identify and say, 'These people are our friends.' Those who voted not to table it, we know what they are about.LUTZ: Ah hah
RAY: So we did something good.
LUTZ: Yeah
RAY: We didn't get the piece of legislation passed. It's very simple. All it
says is that in the state of Georgia, we have the right-to-work law, so we say that if you have a union in a shop and a non-union member comes to you, you have to, by law, represent that non-union member even though he doesn't pay dues. We think that he should have to pay a fair share. That's all. Very simple. Fair. 01:36:00But, of course, we can't get it out of the General Assembly.LUTZ: You can't get it out of the General Assembly, but it was neat the way you
worked it to find out who was good and who was bad. [laughter]RAY: That's right. And we finally got something where they had to vote it up
or down because too many people come to our screening committee and say, 'We're going to be with you. We're going to vote against Right to Work law, and we are going to vote for'--this and that and the other--knowing all the time that the chances of them having to vote on it are almost zero because we can't even get a lot of them to agree to serve on the committee that gets all of our legislation because they don't even want to be on that committee because they don't want to vote. They want to just be able to tell you that they will. So, we've got a few on record now that we know who is with us.LUTZ: All right. If you could do something in your life over again, what would
you choose?RAY: You mean another occupation or--
01:37:00LUTZ: No, if you could take a part of your life and say--'That was wonderful.
I want to re-live it.' or 'Boy, that was terrible. I wish I could start over.' What would you choose?RAY: I don't know that there is anything in my life that I would have done
differently. I really don't know. I mean, you know, I do have a divorce, and most people say that when you're divorced, that means that you must have done something wrong. I don't think so. I think it was just one of those things that happened. I don't know of anything in my life that I would change or do differently. Maybe spend a little bit more time with my kids as they were growing up. I spent as much as I could, but when you are working eight hours a day in the plant and taking care of your union stuff on the rest of the time, 01:38:00you do miss some things. Maybe I would spend a little bit more time, but both of my kids understand the labor movement. Both of my kids are union members. Well, one of them just went into management, but she is still a true blue unionist because they understand what the labor movement is about; and they understand that everything that they've ever had, basically, since I went to full-time union work is paid for by union money, people who, by the sweat of their brow, pay my salary. And every…every time I spend money, that is money that some union person paid dues on out of their check that they could have used for their families. So I appreciate that, and my kids do. They understand where it came from.LUTZ: If you could stand on a stage in front of an auditorium full of young
union members, what would you tell them?RAY: To get off their butts.
LUTZ: [laughter]
01:39:00RAY: Be involved. Be proud that they have the opportunity to work in a factory
or a worksite or a job that is a union and has a union contract; take their union card out of their pocket and tell people who they are and why they are union people; and always go back and give back to the labor movement something that they have gotten from it. Don't always be: What has the union done for me today? What can I do for my union today?