Barron Watkins oral history interview, 1995-07-05

CHRIS LUTZ: This is Chris Lutz, talking to Barron Watkins. In…Griffin, Georgia. Um, Watkins, could you please tell me your date of birth, just to get a sound check?

BARRON WATKINS: That's, um, 10-6-23. [break] There's a….I believe in Kingsport, Tennessee. -- R.W. Ayers…that is much more familiar with that than I ever was, if you can get in touch with him…

LUTZ: [inaudible]

WATKINS: I'm sure that he can give you a lot of information on that.

LUTZ: I could ask him about it but…

WATKINS: He worked at Kingsport Press. And then he was on…he was International rep for a while and then he, um, I understand, went to work for Peabody Coal Company and there…and handled their industrial relations. So he could probably give you all the information that you would ever want on Kingsport Press.

LUTZ: [inaudible] What do you remember about Kingsport?

WATKINS: Um, I don't remember much about it. I wasn't close to it. At that time, I was local officer here in Atlanta and primarily stayed in…in the area and didn't get out.

LUTZ: Let me take you back into your childhood. Back into the past. Whereabouts were you born?

WATKINS: Cherokee County

LUTZ: Oh, yeah?

WATKINS: Georgia. Yeah.

LUTZ: Did you grow up there?

WATKINS: Yeah, raised on a farm in the northwest corner of Cherokee County by about a mile from Pickens County line.

LUTZ: What was growing up there like?

WATKINS: Ah, well, part of it was kind of hard.

LUTZ: Yeah?

WATKINS: I remember the big Depression, and it got rough. All I can tell you is that, basically, I've enjoyed life and feel like I've had a good life. It hasn't been a bed of roses, but it's been a good life.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: I think if people would just realize that, hey, today's the good old days. It's not something that's gone, but it's today. Life is better today than I can ever remember it being. So that's why I say to you, today's the good old days. Um, we are so fortunate in this country to have the standard of living 00:03:00that we have and the way of life that we have. Now, you know, it sort of makes you sick when you watch the news and see what's going on. And it was just terrible to me.

LUTZ: If you had to pick out something that you would live again, what would you pick out?

WATKINS: Look, I enjoyed my job to the fullest. I wouldn't want to do anything else. Um, that may sound crazy. But, um, certainly, there was many ups and downs in it, many disappointments. You couldn't accomplish as much as you wanted to accomplish. Um, you couldn't do all of the things that you wanted to do. Many times, you're -- I guess bound by what people will allow you to do. 00:04:00Um, you say, that's a crazy statement. Well, in our organization -- It was a very democratic organization; we followed the membership mandates. And there was times that you could see a broader picture because you had the information that would substantiate that broader picture that the average member working in his plant on his production job didn't have. And I, um, remember one of the tough times was about '58. And I was working at St. Regis Paper Company at that 00:05:00time; I was [inaudible] paper division and we had a…a, um, company pension program. We decided, at that time, to change to a jointly, um, administered program, company and union, so that we would have some say-so. The company's program was, it was a good program. The only problem being that do like companies that are doing today, dump it at any time, and we didn't have any say-so. So we sought to change that, and we did. And, um, I went into 00:06:00negotiations with them…unprepared, really. This was a situation that at that time we were negotiations for five plants.

LUTZ: Okay.

WATKINS: A multi-plant bargaining unit. I was from the Local 527 here in Atlanta, and we hadn't been prepared in moving into negotiations. The vice president of the International union had talked with the secretary of the committee and all, but he really hadn't done a lot of preparation with us; it kind of caught us flat-footed. So when we came back and recommended it to the membership, some of them got hostile. They didn't particularly like that idea. 00:07:00And, um, of course, we were on the committee so we caught the rap. Nevertheless, it passed, and it was a good thing. Um, that plant closed a few years ago. And, you know, their pension benefits were secured. So, you've saw companies, and I have too, that have dumped pension program and they now dump them on the taxpayers.

LUTZ: Didn't [inaudible] do that just a while ago? [inaudible]

WATKINS: Yeah, they did. So, it you know, those are things that you look back and -- I know that for years we fought to get federal legislation to prevent 00:08:00that. Well, we got it but it's got so many loopholes in it, it's ineffective.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: I guess that would be my big gripe really today that because of loopholes and the laws, that it's tough. The working man doesn't really have insurance.

LUTZ: You think things are better or worse now for the working person than, say, 20 years ago?

WATKINS: They're worse. Seriously, they are. Coming out of World War II. Or, you know, in World War II, management started retirement programs to retain their employees. You know, at that time when the war industry, you wouldn't know, but I'm telling you, at that time the war industry paid more than just 00:09:00general manufacturing. So, there was a gravitation in that direction. So, they started the retirement programs for the specific purpose of retaining employees, and they had some nice ones. But they…they hadn't done their homework on them as to the cost of that over an extended period of time, where it could wind up, and that's why they started dumping. They accomplished what they wanted to -- to retain their employees, and then they started watering down their retirement program. Look, I'm proud to be an American. I served time in World War II. I didn't see any combat, but I spent time in World War II, and I know what conditions were at that time, and I know how near that we came to really having 00:10:00a bad situation. We were close to having to fight the European war from the United States. We were close to losing England, and if we'd have lost that, we'd have had no base in Europe to fight from. We would have, had done in the U.S. There were an awful lot of people never understood that, but that's how close we came. If Hitler had of followed through when he started bombing England so heavy, if he'd have concentrated on that rather than turning and putting his force on Russia; he was taking good shots. And that…that would have put us in a position then where we would have had to of fought him from 00:11:00this country. And that would have been disastrous. You know, and a lot more people would have been involved. But, um, twenty years ago, employees were treated better than they are today. You look around today. I…I don't, um, our…like I told you, our International union and all the locals are very democratic. The vote of the people meant that was what was going to get done. Now, um, when you look at that -- there'll be times when you can see further because of the knowledge, I guess, is the simplest way to put it, that…that 00:12:00you had at that time of being able to see the overall picture than the local member could. And sometimes that deterred the situation. That's the way our organization operated. We always believed in a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. We believed that the employer was entitled to make a profit. If we expected to have the top wages, then we needed to be the top producers. That's what we strived for. We did back in the early days at our headquarters was Pressmen's Home, Tennessee. We had a school up there training pressmen, 00:13:00platemakers and all. You could go to school there, come out of there with a good skill, a skill that paid you something that you could walk in a commercial print shop, and the man could give you a job jacket and you could run it for him. And this is why at one time the printing industry was the third highest paid industry in the States over the years -- a long way from that. This is the…that was the philosophy behind our union. And, like I said, we always wanted to see the company make a profit because if they made a profit, then we had a chance of getting a little of that. And over the years, um, we reached a 00:14:00point to where many of our members did not understand that. Their ideas were that "You owe me. I'm here. You owe me. I don't really have to do this." And that is the point in time when we lost so much ground to the West Germans and the Japanese.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. Well, did you find younger people were saying that?

WATKINS: Yes.

LUTZ: Um.

WATKINS: You wonder today, this is totally off the -- at that time the younger people -- and you see, I think that us older folks had something to do with it 00:15:00also, because we did not want to see the young folks go through what we'd had to go through. So we tried to make it easier, and I think that we overdid it. I'm not saying we made it too easy. But somehow or other, they don't and didn't understand all of this. It was just there and, you know, all I had to do was walk in. I have a feeling that maybe a lot of people don't have. But, when I look at the fast food industry, and I look at what they keep hollering about the health care system in this country. I look at the fast food, and I look at the people that's made millions on fast food because they use high school kids, 00:16:00part-time workers, no benefits whatsoever, twenty hours a week. Well, I don't begrudge those kids that. But why don't we add another nickel to that old hamburger and give them some health care protection, instead of putting it finally down on the taxpayer? Where's it going? It's finally going to the taxpayers. All of us are taxpayers.

LUTZ: My son was talking just last night about, he's brand new at his job, 'You know, Mom, if I was full-time it would really hurt me. I'd have to pay a lot more taxes.' I said, 'Son, who told you that?' Of course his employer told him that. I told him, 'If you were full- time, you'd get benefits.' He said, -- 'Oh!', like a big light bulb went off in his head.

WATKINS: Think of the things you could do. What's wrong with…you know, I 00:17:00believe in supporting my country. I've never been against paying taxes. I am against throwing tax money away, and a lot of it is thrown away, programs that you don't agree with and I don't agree with. And I'm not…I'm not saying -- I run into an awful lot of people, and you have too, you've saw it, that, well, "I don't agree with that law. I ain't going to abide by it." To me, that's totally wrong. I may not like it. I'll do all I can to change it, but I'm going to honor it, because I think that's my obligation as a citizen of this country. I've voted…I voted in every election since I've been old enough. I hadn't always voted with the winner, but I've always voted.

LUTZ: I think I never have much [laughter]

WATKINS: But I have. I've enjoyed my job. I really did.

LUTZ: How did you get into it?

WATKINS: Well…my…my experience in labor movement early -- It started about '42. I was working for Gordon Foods up on Sylvan Road, in Atlanta, just off the farm. And, um, a guy stopped me on the street as I came out of the plant, and started talking to me about it, and I liked what the man had to say. So I signed a card, and I helped organize the plant and was on the first negotiating committee. Then I went…I went in service, in the Air Force, in World War II. So when I came out I went to work for Follett Paper -- this was before they were 00:19:00bought by St. Regis. And, um, I joined the…they were organized, so I joined there. And, um, then about 1950, we became disenchanted with the representation we were getting…that we were getting from the Bookbinders Union at that time. So we went a year without a contract, then had an election and joined the Pressmen's Union. So, about '57 I was elected president of the local. When we came in the local, there was two companies in it, one of them I can't even 00:20:00remember the name of. Never got a contract; they were on strike. But the group that received the charter for Local 527, they…that was the old Empire Printing and Box Company, and we joined that local. So, about '57 I was elected president of the local. And then in '58, this is when we had the situation with the change in the retirement program, and I lost the election. It was "Vote against Watkins," not necessarily "Vote for the guy we think he will do a better job," but vote against me because of the change in the retirement 00:21:00program. And, um, the guy that led this campaign, well, about a year, two years later, he was let go from St. Regis. And, um, after…the guy that was elected president at that time wouldn't show up. He never held a meeting. Even though I wasn't an officer, I held the meetings for the local union. At that time, if we went three meetings…three months without a meeting, they'd pick up the 00:22:00charter, so we held our meetings and went on. Then in 59' we had . . . I came out in 58' and worked full-time organizing. Um, the International had sent in a team of organizers, trying to build the local up, increase the membership. And one of them got sick, and the campaign going. So, you couldn't afford to have anybody working that group. It was 264 people in the group that he was working with. So, I came out on a leave of absence and took over that. And then we won the election and in '59, why, I was elected the secretary-treasurer-business agent of the local union, which was full-time. So, from then, until I retired 00:23:00in '88, I represented the union full-time. Now, I represented the local union as the secretary-treasurer-business agent until '65. In '65 I resigned and was elected business agent for the District Council, made up of a group of local unions and then, I resigned that and, went on the International staff, and I stayed on the staff until June third of '88. I retired after 18 years, almost.

LUTZ: Of all of those, what do you remember most fondly, the job with the international or the local?

WATKINS: Listen, there was some awful good times with all of them, and there was rough times. I guess I remember the time with the International more because it was longer. I got sent into Pennsylvania by the president. We had almost 500 people on strike. They broke away - that was the fifth plant in a multi-plant bargaining unit and the other four plants were working. The help was taken on 00:25:00the contract. It was accepted, but then, that local union says "No, we didn't accept it." All the votes were pooled, you know. They said, "No, and we're not going to do it." So they went out. And I went in there on that basically to tell them that, 'Look, you know, you're totally wrong. If you think 500 people is going to overturn 1,500, it doesn't make sense. You got 1,500 working for the same company in their other four plants. And if you're successful, then what happens to the 1,500? Well, they're going to do the same thing.' There's no such thing as labor peace in that type of situation. I went in there and, 00:26:00believe it or not, they had the meeting at the American Legion post. The bar had been open all day. [laughter] We had the meeting at 7:00pm. So you can figure about what I walked into. But I came away with some friends. And, um, you know, I pointed out to them, 'Hey, look, the only thing I want to tell you is, you're in an impossible situation. And there's never been…it's like the old cowboy saying, "There never been a horse that hasn't been rode and there's never been a cowboy that's never been thrown." There's never been a strike that hadn't eventually been settled. This one will be settled. What you 00:27:00need to do now is cut your losses, get back to work.' They wouldn't hear of it. But like I said, I came out of there -- the people gave me the hardest time in the meeting, made friends out of me. I treated them with respect and dignity and I came away from there with them as friends.

LUTZ: What year was this?

WATKINS: International Re….

LUTZ: No, no, what year?

WATKINS: Oh, good grief. I can't remember what year that was.

LUTZ: Must have been 1977…78? [laughter]

WATKINS: Yeah, um, I'd say somewhere in the mid-seventies.

LUTZ: Yeah. I guess I was just trying to place it in my head.

WATKINS: Yeah, I guess that's one of the things I never paid a lot of attention to, is the years. You go from one to the other.

LUTZ: Where else did you get sent by the International?

WATKINS: I worked from San Antonio to Miami, as far in the Northeast as Boston, and in the Midwest as far as Minneapolis.

LUTZ: Oh, any place besides Pennsylvania sticks out in your mind?

WATKINS: Well, it's…

LUTZ: For good or bad?

WATKINS: They were all good. Those folks went back to work, and there is still a very strong union there today. They realized the situation that they were in and they've been strong members and still are.

LUTZ: What…what makes people decide to get into the print business? What made you decide?

WATKINS: Um….now….you…you can't apply my answer to people today. Remember, I said to you, I remember the Depression. I do. I remember the hard times when there wasn't any money. There weren't any jobs. And what got me…why I went to work for St. Regis - it was the Follett Paper, which was a bread wrapper plant. Your bread's in bags today, so of course we changed. But when I went to work there, your bread was wrapped in paper. I was looking at a situation…

LUTZ: [inaudible]

WATKINS: What I was looking at -- I was interested in working for a company 00:30:00that I could work for until retirement. And that's why I went to work there. The law says your bread has to be wrapped, so there'd always be a need for bread wrappers. You don't find that a lot today. I've got two boys and two girls, and none of them think like that. None of the younger people today -- and I realize that most of them are not going to be able to stay in one job in their entire life because of the change in technology they're confronted with today. 00:31:00Looks like it's going to be about seven…seven different professions over a lifetime. But this is why I went to work there. Their reputation was good for working regular. I went to work there for 62 and a half cents an hour. Now, you tell somebody that today, and they'll laugh at you. "Unless it's ten or fifteen dollars and hours, I ain't going to work there." And I still believe that a half of the loaf of bread is better than no bread at all. So I wanted a regular pay day.

LUTZ: You mentioned technology. What technological changes did you see in the industry?

WATKINS: Oh my gosh.

LUTZ: A lot, I'll bet.

WATKINS: You better believe it. When I went to work for St. Regis, 98 to 99% of 00:32:00the printing at that time on bread wrappers was done on the letter press. Now, when they closed up, 99% of it was done on Flexo.

LUTZ: I don't know what Flexo is.

WATKINS: Well...

LUTZ: [inaudible]

WATKINS: Letter press is an oil-base ink and, um, most times, lead plates, where Flexo is an alcohol base or a water base ink, and it's printed from rubber plates.

LUTZ: Okay. Easier to work with?

WATKINS: Um, could be! [break]

LUTZ: How about computers? Were they moving into the industry when you were there? Or rather [inaudible]

WATKINS: Yes, yes.

LUTZ: How did they change the work?

WATKINS: We lost a lot of jobs to them.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: When you think about it, we lost membership in the newspaper field. They took our methods and turned them against us. Um, I told you that we operated a school for many years training pressmen. We not only trained letter press and Flexo, but gravure and offset. You know, offset basically wiped out letter press.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: An awful lot of your magazines and all are printed on gravure. 00:34:00Gravure, now there's another, many times alcohol-based ink, but it's printed from an etched cylinder.

LUTZ: Okay.

WATKINS: Your offset has an etched plate, but the image is transferred from a blanket, then from the blanket to the product, where the other is a straight transfer from the plates. Be they rubber plates or metal plates, the transfer is from those plates to the product. So we lost a lot of members in the newspaper field when they started going in…more to offset. And it takes less 00:35:00people. So our membership went down. And, um, we had a time with a lot of pressmen, convincing them that "Hey look, there's no need to fight it. We have manning tables in the contract. Um, we have…we think we have to have so many men to operate this big press. And we proved that we didn't. I don't know whether you want to print this or not; it might not be good for the industry, but the way that we proved that you didn't have to, managements come to us, saying that they can operate with fewer men. We say, "No, you can't. We got to have all these folks." Then they showed us a video, and that video was of our 00:36:00members across the street in the bar.

LUTZ: That kind of killed it, didn't it?

WATKINS: That knocked it in the head. But you had an awful time with these guys. And this is where technology began to change, you see, from the old days when it did take that many people to run that baby. You had to have them there on each unit. But it…as they improved the equipment, you didn't. We weren't going to give up the jobs.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: But eventually, we reconciled ourselves to it. This is a fact of life. You see, the Typographical Union, the people that set the type, you know, for 00:37:00the newspapers, they set the type to make the plates, they suffered more than we did, because the computer age wiped them out. The person sitting at the typewriter will type a tape. Put the tape in the machine. The machine'll do it. Now, you see, you're doing it with computers. The computer can be several states away, but come in the plant and the computer equipment in there, it'll run the place with almost no people at all. And, you know, that's the thing. Years ago, we felt like what we needed to do was in…in the developing 00:38:00countries, that we needed to help them develop and create a market for products at that time. We needed to raise their standard of living. Um, you know, you couldn't get the government to buy the idea. Really, there has been. Now, realize that I spent most of my time in what we call the specialty field, basically in the packaging side: boxes, bags. I never spent much time representing commercial press or, um, newspapers. I got a newspaper assignment 00:39:00every now and then, a commercial assignment every now and then. But my…my primary work was in the packaging industry. If you look at packages today as to what they were 20 years ago, you can't recognize them. There's been that much improvement.

LUTZ: Do you feel that some of the art of the craft is being lost? Um…

WATKINS: Look, the craft has been diluted by technology

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: "Touch the buttons." Where it used to -- you know, on an old flatbed letter press, when you set the type and put it in a frame and print it from 00:40:00that, and you had to make that press ready . . . You'd see the guy out there, when they went to plates, making metal plates. They'd started making it ready. They'd put the packing on the cylinder that the plate pressed against to transfer the image to the paper. You'd see glue on his hands, and if it was this part of it was a little heavy he'd peel just a little of that packing off but if it wasn't heavy enough he'd put a little glue on there and add a little thin piece of packing to that. And, um, you know, that no longer happens. They 00:41:00do it now with their computers and all. And, um, I remember back when the old Flexo, you know, little 30" jobs, 32" was about as wide as you could print on that Flexographic press. Today you're on out there 60 and better inches that you print. And, you use a common impression cylinder where used to, each color….each color, you used a different cylinder. They developed what they 00:42:00called a Centroflex, which was a common impression cylinder with the decks around it with your colors and each -- you know, you take a six color and you'd have this huge one drummed about, yeah, this big. And when you have that and each color is in a separate deck around that, it's much easier. That way, you see, they have to do that because printing on plastic, it wouldn't stretch your plastic. You could put some stress on that plastic, and it would stretch. But this way, you get a perfect print. And, you know, all of this has come about, 00:43:00and it takes less people to do it. Used to, many years ago, you'd watch a pressman, his eyes would go this way.

LUTZ: Up and down, up and down, up and down?

WATKINS: Checking the register of his print.

LUTZ: Oh [laughter]

WATKINS: Then they developed a machine that did that. You just stand there and watch it. It was made out of mirrors, and it turned, it checked the register on your printing. Originally you had to go back and hand adjust it to keep it in the register. Then all you do is touch a button. Then, you know, further development, electronic eyes that did it for you. You just sit there and see that the papers don't break and keeps running. All the adjustments are 00:44:00automatic. That's how far we've come in the industry. When you do that, of course . . . you go back to the old days, you had to go back down the press to adjust everything. Then it took more people to do this. That's where we eliminated all the people.

LUTZ: Now, it sounds like the new technology must be cheaper for the people…the employers.

WATKINS: It is.

LUTZ: Do the people who are still left in the industry….the workers still left in the industry – do their wages reflect it? Do they get a…it's a cheaper process….

WATKINS: Yeah.

LUTZ: Are they still making good money? I guess it's what I started to say [inaudible]

WATKINS: Yeah.

LUTZ: There's fewer of them.

WATKINS: There are fewer of them, but they make better money.

LUTZ: Who did you….if you had to look back and say, if this person or that 00:45:00person was a memorable person, who stands out in your memory….of the people in the union?

WATKINS: Well, we had, I think, some good leaders. Um, I think that we had a vice-president early on, Walter Turner, that was outstanding. In…in later years, no. It's like all, you know, someone else comes along with different ideas . . .

LUTZ: Mmhmm, what made him outstanding when he was younger?

WATKINS: Um, his ability to inspire people, and his ability to then use those people. I don't mean anything derogatory when I say "use them," but in the organization, you have to use their abilities and knowledge in building the organization to be able to do a better job of representing the membership. When you get a labor organization there's only one justification for it, and that is, to represent its membership. Somewhere along the line some people have lost 00:47:00sight of that, are more concerned about retaining their position than they are representing the membership. I would not charge anyone of that, but I'm sure there have been some. Not only Turner, but I never had the privilege of knowing President Dunwoody. President DeAndre, I thought, was another in our International Union I thought was an outstanding leader. President Fishko, in 00:48:00fact, I never gave it much thought, but he made a statement one time, that, you know, 'To the victor belongs the spoils.' There's politics, of course, in labor organizations. And he was speaking of it in that vein: that 'They lost and we won.' [inaudible] He was a leader that -- he never finished high school. He got his education on the streets of New York. But, I never saw a 00:49:00company rep that could ever out-negotiated him. It didn't make a difference who he was. And…we had…when I first came into the Pressmen's Union, we had a guy, George Gooch, that was good.

LUTZ: My hearing [inaudible]

WATKINS: Yeah, yeah, he started off in Savannah.

LUTZ: Huh

WATKINS: And, he had the ability of bringing people together and getting them to do things without a lot of anguish or hard feelings. You know, I thought George Meany was good. I talked with him. One time I raised a question with him. I said, 'George, why…why can't we have one retirement program for all working people? Why can't it be country-wide that we take it with us? If we move, that 00:51:00moves with us. Why isn't that possible?' Well, he gave me the answer. It's one I should have already known. 'Very simple, "he said. "Two, you've got resistance from companies, but one of the big things is, you've got so many different labor organizations.' You know, "my own identity." We need to constantly remind ourselves that we're here for one purpose. And that's for God's pleasure, number one. And we need to serve humanity. Now, if we do that, we don't have all the problems that we have in our country today. I don't 00:52:00believe in the theory that you walk over people, that you step on people to get to the top. I've seen a lot of it happen. But I don't…don't believe in it.

LUTZ: Um, you mentioned Meany. So it occurred to me that you were around when the AFL-CIO got together. What did you think about that merger?

WATKINS: Yes. You heard me say the question I asked Meany. So by that you would believe that I thought it was good, and I did. The problem being that here again, you get personalities involved. And, of course, the big hangup originally with that was Walter Reuther and Meany. Um, I believe -- you see, 00:53:00originally the Pressmen's Union was part of the Typographical.

LUTZ: Mmhmm. Part of the ITU?

WATKINS: Yes. First the Pressmen pulled away. See, at that time the ITU really was an industrial union, but then they separated into crafts. The Pressmen was the first group that left, then the Bookbinders. Now, you see, they're all back, other than the ITU went with the Communications Workers. But other than that, your printing unions are now in Graphics Communication International Union. So I think that it's good, you can do a better job for the total 00:54:00membership, and you need to organize from the front door to the back door. In the craft days, they beat us to death. They'd play one craft against the other, and then, they'd make you settle for what they wanted you to settle for. But if you had a front door to the back door, it makes a difference. You can't play one group against the other. So, yes, we only need one labor organization. That is all we needed. But we need to represent all working people. It is like I said . . . if you just look at this fast food industry, you think about fast 00:55:00food. Who was it, Y. A. Brown, Governor of Kentucky, that bought, um, Colonel Sanders' Chicken?

LUTZ: I didn't know.

WATKINS: Yeah. Yeah. He bought it for, what, 1, 2 million dollars? Finally sold it for 51 million. Now, you can't tell me that if there's that kind of money in it and, "I can siphon off that kind of money," that the people couldn't be paid and their….they couldn't have a good health care program. They could if, "I wasn't so greedy and want it all for myself." That's the reason…I have some relatives. We used to really get into some good ones. 00:56:00It's like one of them said Sunday, 'You really knew which buttons to push to get me really rolling.' And I said, you know, 'I want to make one point with you. You know and I know that the only reason there was ever a labor union to start with, is because of sorry management.'

LUTZ: Your relative must be in management, hmm?

WATKINS: Well, she got upset one time because she said I made more money than the man running the hospital made.

LUTZ: Did you tell her that you worked harder? [Laughter].

WATKINS: She just couldn't see that. But, you know, this is the whole thing we 00:57:00need to do. This is why I was in the labor movement and why I enjoyed it.

LUTZ: Did you ever find that, um, negotiations or strikes would be around other issues besides the money?

WATKINS: Many times. Many times it comes down to a principle.

LUTZ: Give me a for instance. Let me change the tape. [break]

WATKINS: The transportation industry, in this vein – it is as I pointed out to you, we were in manufacturing, basically. That's where I spent my time. So, that meant that we were in fierce competition. We tried to organize the entire industry, say the corrugated box industry. Well, it got split up between different organizations, but you tried to organize as much of it as you could 00:58:00and you tried to put a group of plants from one company together under one contract so that you had that much more bargaining power. Now, the transportation industry was not that way. Now I want you to think of the trucking industry and also the airline industry. Controlled industries. All they had to do was to negotiate whatever, and then go to the controlling agency and petition for the rate's increase, and they got it. So, when they were decontrolled, they did not know how to live in a real competitive world. That's 00:59:00why you had so many airlines go under, so many trucking firms go out of business. They had been in a protective situation their entire life. They didn't know any different. Like I said, they didn't know how to live like us crazy folks out there that were in the strictly fierce competitive situation all of our lives. If we priced Company A out of….priced them in a…basically out of business, put them so far ahead of B and C that B and C took all their business, we had done our members a disservice. Now sometimes that was hard to get the membership to see. "I'm only interested in my situation." But you have 01:00:00to have a broader view than that, because if I price my employer out of the market place, then my job's gone. I've got to go somewhere else. And this is what you saw happening when they deregulated, the airlines and the trucking industry. And it's been tough for them to survive. You saw some of them just [snaps fingers] like that. I mean overnight, gone.

LUTZ: Waiting for Delta to make the announcement. We were talking about principles - strikes, negotiations, and principles. What sort of thing would be 01:01:00a principled dispute between a company and a union, as opposed to just a matter of wages?

WATKINS: I guess you get back to the company's philosophy that they were losing control of their employees. They need to maintain control. You see that in everyday life. You see a lot of arguments that, "I'm going to maintain control." Now, I'm going to say this. I learned in service in early life -- I got drunk, and I lost control. I realized right then that could not happen 01:02:00again, that I needed to always be in control. And when I allowed alcohol to take control, then I was in trouble. And this is where you get into a fight, it's not alcohol, but it's the loss of control that management feels that is happening to them. You think about it. I'll give you an illustration. The company, St. Regis, it happened before my time there. But before they were organized, one of the -- you had to be over there every day to see if you were 01:03:00going to work. You didn't have a work schedule. They'd come outside and take so many in to work. The second thing, one of the employees -- there's railroad tracks behind the plant. He lived across the tracks on the street over there. He happened to be out in his yard, and the plant superintendent was over at the plant on Saturday. To get the job off, he had to run right up to his quitting time Friday. They're supposed to wipe the machine down on Friday before they 01:04:00shut down. He didn't have time to do it. And he was out in his yard. The plant superintendent hollered at him and told him to come over. He told him, he says, 'You know, you didn't wipe the machines down.' He says, 'I didn't have time to complete the job that you had scheduled for me, I ran right up to quitting time.' He says, 'Well, if you want your job Monday, you better go in there and wipe it down.' That's the type of control that management exercised. Now, later on, that superintendent wound up as mechanical superintendent for the entire company. He was not a bad guy. But, here again, 01:05:00that's one of the reasons that the plant was organized originally. It's like I said earlier, bad management brought about the necessity to organize labor.

LUTZ: Did you have any mentors? Anybody that you remember kind of pulled you along and gave you words of wisdom?

WATKINS: Sure.

LUTZ: Tell me.

WATKINS: Well, Larry Smith was one.

LUTZ: Okay.

WATKINS: He was International rep when I went on the payroll. The first time I met Larry Smith; he was International rep at that time. Um, Fishko is another one.

LUTZ: What was his first name?

WATKINS: Sol

LUTZ: Sol Fishko. Okay.

WATKINS: He's a Jew.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: And, um, he was one.

LUTZ: [inaudible]

WATKINS: Walt Turner, of course, even though he and I sort of parted ways later. This is the thing that Sol made me understand when he says, 'You know, to the victor belongs the spoils.' The younger people have different ideas. "We want to do it this way. We know it's been done this way for all these years, but we think this is a better way now. We want to try that." Well, you know, 01:07:00we resist change. Us old folks say, "No, sir, this is good enough. We're going to continue to do it this way." So that creates your problem, in organizations, not only in labor, but in management, same way.

LUTZ: What exactly did you do for the International, you know, technically?

WATKINS: Technically, I represented the local unions on assignment from the International. They'd request assistance in grievances, negotiations, arbitrations, and organizing.

LUTZ: And the International would send you to where you were needed?

WATKINS: That was our job -- whatever.

LUTZ: You had a lot of traveling?

WATKINS: Yeah, I enjoyed it.

LUTZ: Did you care for that?

WATKINS: Yeah. I miss the traveling. I don't miss the work, but I do miss the 01:08:00traveling. I miss seeing all those friends.

LUTZ: Yeah.

WATKINS: See, that is something that you're bound to miss.

LUTZ: Of course.

WATKINS: I know when you, again when you talk about this, you talk about representing a local union. I represented a local in Miami that the arbitrator had suggested to them that they didn't have a case. That, um, it was an insubordination case, and when you have insubordination, you've lost. Someone has to maintain control, and it can't be Tom, Dick and Harry -- it has to be one source. So, an arbitrator will not uphold insubordination. I pointed this out 01:09:00to the local union. That, um, 'You don't have a case.' They insisted, "We want to arbitrate it anyway." So we arbitrated it. And the arbitrator said the same thing. The only thing, he went a step further. He noted three separate occasions that the man was insubordinate. He would not reinstate him. He upheld the company's position. Then the local union, the member got with the president of the local and he wrote the arbitrator a letter and asks him, "Why you didn't listen to me?" You should have seen the letter that the arbitrator wrote the local union. I told the president, if he would just talk to me, I 01:10:00would have suggested that you never do that. But that is a situation where an individual will not accept responsibility of their actions. And you have some of that. This creates some problems. We arbitrated a case with Mead one time where their plant manager fired a guy, fired him on the spot. Said it was "willful sleeping on the job." We proved the man was not "willful sleeping on the job." He was reinstated and paid for all lost time. In that 01:11:00process, the guy that moved up to his job while he was off, called me up and called me everything but a human being because I got him demoted. And I spent considerable time getting him to understand that all I was doing was protecting the man's seniority rights. He had a right to go back to his job. He was fired unjustly. And it meant that "You had to move back down the ladder." If you don't protect your seniority right, then what good is the contract? It means nothing. But you have individuals -- and that's a type of work that we were involved in. Um…

LUTZ: Was that the hardest part of your job, would you say? What was the hardest part of your job?

WATKINS: I really don't know. I never looked at it, as any of it, "the hardest part." I always enjoyed it, even though there was times when you were certainly unhappy with the outcome of a particular situation. We were involved in organizing when we lost the plant by one miserable vote, and that was hard. 01:13:00We spent months working on it, and lost it by that one vote, and that was tough.

LUTZ: Where was that? Do you remember?

WATKINS: That was the Montag plant, which is now part of Mead, here in Atlanta. We worked on that thing for years. It went back to, um, early World War II, about '42, I think, was when we had the first election out there. We went in and organized just one little section of it, and lost it on strike. That's when we begin to go for an industrial unit, front door to back door, rather than a craft unit.

LUTZ: Yeah, you lost it by one vote, huh?

WATKINS: Yeah. We were organizing the entire plant at that time, and we lost it by one vote. I could have cried if it had done any good. One thing my wife insisted that I go to the ball game that night and take that anger out hollering at the ball game; I did.

LUTZ: [laughter] She wanted you out of the house, huh?

WATKINS: She's a smart woman.

LUTZ: Have you lived around Griffin a long time?

WATKINS: No, we lived in Forest Park up until '87.

LUTZ: So this is your retirement home?

WATKINS: Yes.

LUTZ: It's pretty around here.

WATKINS: We enjoy it. We bought this lot; we got a two-acre lot here. We bought this in '75 and put this double-wide on it in '87. I started staying 01:15:00down here. I had an angioplasty in '87, and after I got out of [inaudible] the hospital [inaudible], I started spending time here. My dad lived next door. My wife, she moved down here in December of '87. She was living…still living in the house in Forest Park. Her mother was up there. Her mother was sick, also. She came on down here in December of '87. I laughed. I told 01:16:00her, I said, 'Hey look, this weekend wife isn't getting it, honey. If that's the way it's going to be, I'm going to start taking applications for a full-timer.' [laughter] You know, you have to have a sense of humor to be in the union business. I'll tell you that. If you don't, you'll go crazy. When you stop and think of the reality that you're sitting at the bargaining table and hundreds, possibly thousands of people's livelihoods are depending on you and your actions at that table, it's a pretty heavy load. You don't take it lightly. You make a mistake, people pay for it. So you can't afford those.

LUTZ: If you had to give one word of advice to union members today, such as it is, what would you say? If you had a chance to stand up in front of all the union members and tell them what to do? What would you say?

WATKINS: I'd certainly tell them that they needed to be organized. They need to be knowledgeable, not only of their job, but of their industry. Whatever that industry is -- they really need to be knowledgeable, so that way they can make a 01:18:00more intelligent decision when the time comes that they have to make those hard decisions. In that, I have friends that worked for Eastern Airlines. Listen, to me that was a deplorable situation that should never have occurred; it occurred because neither side was facing up to reality. Like I said, they were in a controlled industry so long, a profit was guaranteed. That hit an awful lot of people. And neither side can go scot free. Both of them have to share their part of the responsibility blame in that situation. It's like -- we're 01:19:00back to the situation to where your employer, whoever that employer is, needs to make a profit. If they can't make a profit, they're better off to put the money in the bank and draw interest on it. They don't need to take the chance out there. Stupid -- I lost a strike in Oklahoma City over two-tenths of 1 percent. This was a situation that had built over a period of time that I could not convince the membership that they should accept that. They had their fixed idea that this is the settlement that we have to have. Their feeling was that 01:20:00the International Union, the representative who came in, in prior years had forced them to accept a settlement that they didn't want, that was not right. That is the thing that you constantly guard against and are in a tough position about because you know what's going to happen. You're looking at the broad picture; they're looking at their little picture. And I did. I lost that strike. And the first person that crossed my picket line was the president of the local union. So, when you talk about that -- like I said, it's a heavy load 01:21:00to carry. I never regretted a moment of it. I loved the job, and I felt like that I always did a good job. That one thing that you were talking about, mentors, one thing Fishko said to me one time: I made the statement that I'd done a good job, probably could have done better. He says, 'Then if you could, why didn't you?' I never forgot that.

LUTZ: That's a good note to end on.

[Break]

WATKINS: -- being able to provide for the family. That job was important, I needed it and if I took care of the job then it would take care of me and my family. I felt that strong responsibility and always have. I spent time, really, away from my family that I shouldn't have. I wish I could have spent it with them and wish I had. That's yesterday; that's gone, I can't do nothing about it. Because of living in that Depression is what brought that about. There weren't any jobs. I worked on the farm. I worked for 50 cents a day. 01:23:00When I went to work for Gordon Food, I went for them at a minimum wage.

LUTZ: How much was a minimum wage?

WATKINS: Um, 32 1/2 cents an hour. I'll tell you something: I worked for a minimum wage when it was a quarter.

LUTZ: It's hard to believe isn't it?

WATKINS: Yeah, but we were clearing the right-of-way for a power line up in north Georgia, around Ellijay.

LUTZ: Wait a minute. And what…who was the hirer? Who was the employer on the right-of-way?

WATKINS: Um, I don't remember. This was when they first started the -- do you 01:24:00remember that Roosevelt started the Tennessee Valley situation, with the…and then the Rural Electric Association? This is what we were doing. The contractor was from down in south Georgia somewhere. This was '39.

LUTZ: How did you end up clearing this right-of-way?

WATKINS: The contractor gave the people that were going to tie on to power, as 01:25:00many as they could use, an opportunity to work. This was the way that it was arranged through the Rural Electric Association, and this is how I wound up on that. It was a minimum wage, but hey, that's better than what we'd been making. Like I told you, half a loaf's better than no bread at all. This is the thing, I get a little aggravated when I see all of these places hiring, but nobody wants to work, because "I'm not paid 15 or 20 dollars an hour. You know, I'd rather sit at home." Well, I never felt that way. If I can't make ten, let 01:26:00me make five today. Like I told you, I remember being in the Depression; I remember Roosevelt being elected. I still think he's the greatest president that I've ever known. And I…I believed in that man. I know that as far as World War II goes, that he was great and he did an awful good job with it. I realized that God was the one who was in control and has been all along. He determined who would win it, who would not. But we went through some tough 01:27:00times, like I told you. If, um, Hitler had kept on, he would have taken England. That's why we developed that old, big B-36 bomber, because it could make a round trip. We could bomb Germany from the East coast. That was a long-range job, the biggest that's ever been built. It was coming on just at the end of World War II, but it was in the process, and that was why because it looked like we were going to have to. I'm sure you saw some of the footage of the concentration camps. Man, that's horrible. What's going on in Bosnia now 01:28:00is horrible. We need to do one of two things. We need to go in and straighten it up, or get the heck out of it. We don't need to subject our people to that kind of stuff if we're not serious about it. I don't know who's right and wrong. My oldest son spent a year and a day in Vietnam, and that was hard times for me, because I was…I felt like I didn't have enough information to know whether we were right or wrong at that time. But I knew this, that our people were in there and they should have been supported 100 per cent, and they weren't.