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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2015)
PAGE 2 | October 16, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS (International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X) Established in 1900 in Portland, Oregon as a voice of the la- bor movement. Published on a semi-monthly basis on the first and third Fridays of each month by the Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non-profit mutual benefit corpo- ration owned by 20 unions and councils including the Ore- gon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Office location: 4275 NE Halsey St., Portland, Oregon Mailing address: P.O. Box 13150, Portland, OR 97213 Phone: (503) 288-3311 Web address: http://nwlaborpress.org Editor: Michael Gutwig Associate editor: Don McIntosh Office manager: Cheri Rice Printed on recycled paper, using soy-based inks, by members of Teamsters Local 747-M. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Individual subscriptions are $13.75 per year for union members, $20 a year for all others. Send a check for that amount, indicating mailing address and union affilia- tion, to P.O. Box 13150, Portland, OR 97213. For 25 or more subscriptions, group rates of $9.60 a year per person are available to trade union organizations. Call 503-288-3311 for details. CORRECTIONS: See an error? Please let us know at editor@nwlaborpress.org or by phone at 503-288-3311. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT PORTLAND, OREGON. CHANGE OF ADDRESS NOTICE: Three weeks are required for a change of address. When or- dering a change, please give your old and new addresses and the name and number of your local union. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS P.O. BOX 13150 PORTLAND, OR 97213-0150 Low Prices! Mon-Fri 9-6, Sat 9:30-5:30, Sun 12-6 Beyond ‘Wages, Benefits and Working Conditions’ In post-war St. Louis, two vision- ary Teamsters put their union in service of the community Bob Bussel — the director of University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) — is the author of a just-released book, Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway and Working Class Citizenship. Pub- lished by University of Illinois Press, the book is about two leaders of Teamsters Local 688, a St. Louis warehouse union which had 10,000 members and a social agenda. The Northwest Labor Press spoke with Bussel by phone about the book. Who were Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway? Gib- bons was a top aide to Jimmy Hoffa and a prominent labor lib- eral. Calloway was head of the St. Louis NAACP. Together they fashioned a visionary form of social unionism that they called ‘total person unionism.’ What’s total person union- ism? It was their conviction that workers were not only eco- nomic beings but social beings. They were interested in using the knowledge and power that workers had — to act as effec- tive citizens in the community. Because you could only im- prove working class life so far if you have the greatest conditions where you work but live in a community where public insti- tutions and infrastructure are not in good shape. What kinds of things did Teamsters get involved in? They took the idea of shop stew- ards and said, “Let’s do this in the community.” So they took different wards of the city, and recruited people to be “commu- nity stewards.” They would so- licit grievances from members that lived in those wards, and then would have meetings to discuss what they wanted to work on. They worked on im- proving public transportation, rat control, public health. They were involved in fights for bet- ter public housing, better public education. They did a lot of work on juvenile delinquency prevention, along with things like broken sidewalks and traffic lights. They were really trying to fashion a way in which worker- citizens could improve the qual- ity of life in their neighborhoods — and negotiate at what they called the community bargain- ing table with the power brokers of St. Louis. They would some- times launch city-wide cam- paigns, and they really did es- tablish a strong sense of worker participation as citizens. Work- ers would go out and investigate these grievances, publicize them. They would go to court. They would mobilize politically. What were their biggest suc- cesses? Well in the 1960s, they had the trade-union-oriented war on the slums, to assist groups in St. Louis that were fighting for better housing and against racial discrimination. They also built senior citizen housing. They even briefly man- aged St. Louis public housing in the late 1960s, working with striking public housing tenants. They were very ambitious in saying unions and union mem- bers should play a larger social role. It was about showing what the working class could do. They wanted workers to say “We’re as good as anybody else.” They even established what they called the Health and Medical Camp, 30 miles out of St. Louis, where workers could leave the city and have almost a country club experience. It had a lake, a golf course, family recreation. The sense was, “If our bosses can enjoy these things, we should be able to en- joy them too.” Are there any lessons for to- day’s labor movement from their experiment? Well you al- ways have to be careful about transplanting history from one soil to another because the con- text changes. But I think this no- tion of unionism that’s con- cerned about the total person has real potential. Book talk and signing ■ Eugene: Tuesday, Nov. 3, 4:30 p.m., Wayne Morse Commons, Knight Law Center. ■ Portland: Thursday, Nov. 5, 5:30 p.m., Room 302, UO White Stag Building, 70 NW Couch St.
