A New Era of Union Leadership

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Today’s labor unions are not the violent mobs of the past. Compared to present corporate America, labor unions are docile. There are far more recorded incidents of illegal and unethical practices by American corporations, such as tax evasion, price fixing, bribery, and fraud, then there are of labor unions. But accusations of improper and questionable behavior of labor unions appears to be more of a media focus.

Unions have had to overcome a reputation as corrupt. Past union leaders have been associated with mob bosses and the misuse of union funds. The mention of so many corporations that have raided employee’s retirement funds is evidently overlooked. It wasn’t the few examples of union misuse and abuse of funds that led to the establishment of the Employees Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), an act that establishes standards for private sector pension plans, as much as it was the failure of private companies to maintain its fiduciary duties to keep those plans fully funded.

A 2022 Gallup Poll shows that 84 percent of households in the United States have no union member living within the home. Yet, the same poll finds that 71% of Americans approve of labor unions.

United Auto Workers at three targeted automobile assembly plants of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (Chrysler) went on strike at midnight on Friday, September 15. In the past, public reaction to the strike would have been heavily negative toward the union and union workers. However, according to Morning Consult Pro: “By a 2-to-1 margin, U.S. adults surveyed said they would support [the strike] by the UAW if they are unable to reach an agreement with the Big Three.”

Of course, there’s a caveat to those figures. Fewer than fifteen percent of the people surveyed had considerable knowledge of the issue. Still, it’s good news for organized labor. Labor’s rotten reputation since the Haymarket Affair riots of 1886 have been a burden with a small exception throughout the 1950s. In the eyes of some Americans, union leaders are seen as goons and thugs; leaders are referred to as bosses, although the ultimate boss is the collective voice of members.

Why have so many people in the past hated labor unions? A labor union is not much different than the Farm Bureau, your local chamber of commerce, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, the Iowa Bar Association, and the Iowa Judges Association to name just a few. Each of those associations of people and entities are organized to protect and advance the rights and interests of its members. That’s the definition of a labor union. Sort of. A labor union in Iowa must also protect and advance the rights and interests of employees who are not members of the union.

A labor union, as an association like the aforementioned organizations, works to protect and advance the rights and interests of its members in a particular trade or profession. It accomplishes this goal in a similar manner as so many other entities, through legislation, negotiation, and if necessary, the courts.

Fair Share is the concept of charging non-union workers a fee to compensate the union for costs incurred by the union to represent them. I made a remark about how it was difficult for anyone to not understand the concept. Immediately, a Farm Bureau lobbyist jumped out of her seat and attacked me for my comments. I was left to point out that unions are the only organizations that have to represent people who are not members. On the other hand, if I want benefits offered by other organizations, for instance, the Farm Bureau’s health insurance, I have to become a member of the Farm Bureau. Why is it different with unions?

“Quarterly profits have surged by more than 80 percent over the last two years.” In a recent social media post, President Barak Obama wrote that “when the big three automakers were struggling to stay afloat, my administration and the American people stepped in to support them. So did the auto workers in the UAW who sacrificed pay and benefits to help get the companies back on their feet. Now that our carmakers are enjoying robust profits, it’s time to do right by those same workers so the industry can emerge more united and competitive than ever.”

If you’ll recall, two out of the three auto makers’ CEOs took the money, with no oversight, paid themselves and filed for bankruptcy.

What is it in a memory that allows a person to recall negative aspects of one entity (unions) but not the other (corporate greed)?

I anticipate that with today’s intelligent and ethical labor leaders, tomorrow’s unions will not only grow exponentially beyond the participation of the 1950s, but will gain the respect they deserve.

***

This article first appeared in the Fall issue of the Prairie Progressive. The Prairie Progressive is Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter, founded by Jeff Cox in 1986.
It is funded entirely by subscriptions from our readers. Editor: Dave Leshtz.

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The Vail Marauders

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Marty Ryan

We were called The Vail Marauders. We didn’t coin that name. Two old men sitting on a bench outside of a bar watched a few of us Vail kids walk across the street. One said to the other: “There goes those marauders.” We liked it!

Not every boy in the small town of Vail, Iowa, was a Marauder, but The Vail Marauders was a large group of teenagers and a handful of preteens. That’s a pretty good-sized group considering the town was populated by fewer than five hundred residents. My sister compared us to the Our Gang short films from the early Twentieth Century. There was no comparison. A few Marauders served prison terms later in life, some served time in jail, and most were on a first-name basis with the county sheriff. You weren’t an official Marauder unless you served at least 6 months of probation. I never went to prison on the order of a judge, but met the other requirement twice. I never met a probation officer.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, you were foolish to leave the keys in your car. It would be used for joyriding. Although I was in on a few joyrides, I never once turned the key of a vehicle without the owner’s permission. I never shoplifted and I never vandalized. I did have some scruples. As a teenager, I asked my mom for permission to go somewhere once. She denied permission because she “didn’t want us hanging around with the wrong crowd.” I had to break it to her that “the Ryan boys ARE the wrong crowd.”

We knew every backyard in town. Clotheslines were numerous in that time, and any Marauder could tell you how far a line drooped and where the clothespin basket was located on the line. In the late summer, we knew where the best tomatoes were ready for harvest. In the middle of the night, we would sneak out with a saltshaker and raid a few gardens. But since most kids in town worked for farmers during the summer putting up hay, walking beans, hoeing thistles and other noxious weeds, or detasseling, they also knew where the watermelon and cantaloupe patches were hidden within a particular field. If you haven’t raided a watermelon patch and had a farmer shoot a shotgun above your head, you don’t know how sweet a melon can taste. They were always the best!

Our favorite activities occurred after dark. Vail had a curfew of 9:00 pm in which all teenagers under the age of 18 had to be home and off the streets. That’s when it got exciting. Most of us had to sneak out of the house, some just left. The town cop was a retired heavy equipment operator, J.C. McCullough. His official duties were to make sure business doors were locked after hours. He was supposed to make rounds walking the main street area, but we had other ideas.

Marauders would gather at some predetermined location, usually the corner of the deserted funeral home or a small walking bridge on the west side of town, and go downtown. One of us would run across the street to get J.C.’s attention and the chase was on. J.C. would gun the engine of his pickup and throw pea gravel around a street corner trying to catch one of us. We were popping up or appearing from out of nowhere all around town. He would abandon his chase of one Marauder to catch another he thought was easier to catch. The scenario was sort of like a dog chasing a car, or Wylie Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. He never caught any of us. He came close to catching me, once. He surprised me by coming around a bend without his headlamps on. I hit the ground so that he wouldn’t see me, and I slithered into a shallow ditch. His tires missed me by fewer than two feet.

If the Marauder running across the street was not noticed by J.C., he most likely was sleeping. That matter would cause us to take more drastic steps. We were known to let the air out of his tires. Not all of them; just enough to let him know that someone was aware of him sleeping on the job. He wouldn’t want that to get out. We never found out how he got air back in his tires by morning without raising red flags to city officials about why he was often having flat tires.

When you think about it, the curfew ordinance probably prevented burglaries in town. There was too much nighttime activity for a potential second story thief to operate safely.

As the Marauders aged and left town, a younger group succeeded as the Young Marauders. That group was big into carrying cases of beer from beer trucks parked in the alleys behind the bars. And Vail supported four bars for the longest time.

I’ll take the Fifth Amendment on whether I participated in any break-ins around the area, but each time there was a burglary in Crawford or Carroll County, the first accusations and suspicions of who the culprits might be was directed at the Marauders. The reputation was notorious, but often inaccurate.

We were bored kids in a small town doing what kids in small towns used to do when bored.

***

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Full Circle

Posted on September 2, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Coming home from the grocery store this week, the traffic was erratic. I could see young people moving over toward my lane in traffic as they were looking down on their phones; going so fast I tensed up wondering if they were aware of the cars around them; and passing me – immediately moving into my lane, only to stop suddenly to make a right turn. I’m not finished describing the recklessness of the other drivers’ actions, but you get the picture.

The immaturity, recklessness, lack of responsibility, and disrespect by young drivers is not anything new. When I was a teenager, and even into my twenties and thirties, I knew that old people were not in car crashes very often, but it was my belief that they caused car crashes. It made little difference that I engaged in six car crashes in one month in 1968, and not one of them had anything to do with a person older than twenty-five.

During May of in 1968, the month I graduated from high school, I was driving my employer’s Econoline van (we called it the Weenie Wagon) from Vail to Denison on U.S. Highway 30 when a gust of wind picked up the empty vehicle and threw it in the ditch. I was okay, but a little shaken up. It was my first encounter with what we used to call accidents. The Weenie Wagon was okay, as well. It landed right-side up in the ditch. I caught a ride back to Vail and Dick Blair retrieved the Weenie Wagon.

Not long after that, a small group of us were sitting in a car at the top of the hill where Vail’s park was once located. We had the headlamps off, of course, because we were drinking beer. All of a sudden, a car without headlights on came around the bend and ran into the front of us. The four in our car, and four in their car, all got out to see if everyone was okay. While the drivers checked out the damage (if there was any), three in our car took our beer and went east. Three in the other car, took beer out of their car (even though they were all over twenty-one) and went west over a fence. No one was hurt. I wasn’t driving; Herbie was. No old people (over the age of 25) were involved.

I didn’t go to my junior/senior prom. Rather than get dressed up to sit around watching people dance, three or four of us got some beer and went to a party. When the party began to break up, someone said that another party was going strong and that we should move to that party northwest of Carroll. I was driving my stepfather’s car, an ugly gray Chrysler with transmission controls on the dashboard. We were to follow the car which held the people who knew where the party was. They were traveling much too fast, but knowing that I could have been a race car driver, I kept right on their tail. That is, until we hit a curve in the road. I rolled the car right up to the fence that separated the ditch from an auto junkyard. The other car came back to get us, but I had to stay with the damaged Chrysler that was lying on its top.

The highway trooper didn’t show up until the sun began to come up over the horizon. His name was Larry Long, and I had to wait a “Long” time for him to arrive (pun intended). He gave me a citation for ‘failure to have control of vehicle’ and had me stay by his car until a wrecker could pull the car from the ditch. He knew what he was doing. When the wrecker brought the car upright, a full can of beer fell from it. “Is that yours?” He asked. “I don’t know; it could have been in the ditch.” He didn’t fall for it and gave me another citation for ‘possession of alcohol by a minor.’ After the tow truck drove away, I asked trooper Long if he could give me a ride home. He said he was off duty now and that troopers don’t drive people home. Fortunately, a guy by the name of Jim came by. He was in my class but dropped out a year before we graduated. He was driving to work in Denison at the beef slaughter plant. He gave me a ride home to Vail, which was on his way.

I walked into the house and my stepfather was sitting at the kitchen table. I told him I had wrecked the car and his face turned red. His lip hung open like a pissed off bull. I was scared to death. But he kept his cool. We did have another car. Eventually, the insurance company had the Chrysler towed to Vail. It sat there for a day or two before Quant’s Junkyard bought it and parked it about three feet on the other side of the fence from where it landed after I had rolled it. There were no old people involved in my prom night adventure.

It wasn’t long after rolling the car into the ditch when Kuemper High School held its Baccalaureate Celebration for seniors. After Mass in the gym, the school fed us breakfast. You know it was bad when I can still remember it. Upon moving the plastic-tasting sausages and eggs from our mouths to our stomachs, we rushed to the parking lot to pile into cars and head down to a farm north of Dedham where one student had a keg party.

After a day of drinking, I realized I had no way to get home. Mud and Pitter (not their real names) said they would take me home. As a matter-of-fact, Mud let me drive his car. It was a nice car. Somewhere along the way home I failed to navigate the car properly from going west to going south and ended up in the west ditch. Mud decided he would take over driving from that point. The car was not damaged. There were no old people in the way at any time.

I can no longer remember the other two incidents, but I’m sure I was a passenger in each incident. It’s safe to say no old people were involved in either case.

Yeah, I see now how old people cause crashes. Youthful drivers and their attitudes and actions require old people to drive defensively, and it’s that defensive driving that causes crashes involving young people who just may be irresponsible, disrespectful, irreverent, self-centered, and reckless.

If I cause a crash, it will probably involve a round-a-bout. I hate going full circle.

***

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Can It!

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Marty Ryan

In 2009, I won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair for my caramels. It was my mom’s recipe, and it took me several tries to get them to taste and be the same consistency as hers. But the State Fair was not my original goal.

I made a batch of caramels one weekend, and since a batch makes approximately 100 individual caramels (depending upon how you cut them), we had far too many caramels for ourselves. So, I brought about half of them to the Capitol. Legislators and lobbyists will eat anything. I put them in a community candy dish in the House Lobby Lounge. A few minutes later I was approached by Lana Shope. Lana is everything Fair. She asked if I made them. Oh, oh. I hope she’s not sick from them. After I let her know that I did indeed make them, she told me that she had tasted blue ribbon winners from the Iowa State Fair and that I should enter them in the next contest.

That summer, I made a batch and read the instructions for entering a sample. Suzette’s, a candy maker on Ingersoll Avenue (now closed), sponsored one of two contests. It’s judges met on a Tuesday. I noticed that my sample was set aside with the dozen or more others that were obviously rejected. We peeked at the comments. “Not arranged proportionally, too soft.” No one told me that each piece had to be cut symmetrically to the other three. And “soft” was the point.

The next contest was the following Friday, and was sponsored by Land O’ Lakes. First place offered the prize of a year’s supply of butter. So, I made another batch, cut the caramels using a ruler, placed the four pieces on a small paper plate, and changed the title of the recipe to “Mom’s Old-Fashioned Soft Caramels.” My marketing career was born that day. I won the blue ribbon and received twelve coupons worth one pound of butter each. I ran out before the year was over, but I’m not complaining.

This year, I decided to enter three contests. I have been making my own salsa and canning it for several years. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just buy it at the grocery store? Yes, but the point about canning is that you can have the best on hand whenever you like.

Contest rules demand that all ingredients are fresh. We’ve always had a few tomatoes, but this year we grew a few more than other years. I’ve realized that purchasing peppers and onions at the store is more efficient than growing them. And I checked the expiration date on the tomato paste to know that it was fresh, as well. Salsa would be one of my entries.

Similar to salsa, I make my own pasta sauce, too. Spaghetti sauce is a class in one of the divisions within the Food Department at the Fair, so spaghetti sauce would be another entry.

Finally, I struggle to make good jelly. Too many times it doesn’t set up. However, this year I made a good batch of black raspberry jelly from the invasive plants in our backyard. It was good enough to be my third entry.

I didn’t expect the jelly to win anything. The spaghetti sauce was a possibility, but the salsa had to win the blue ribbon. I just knew it.

Stephanie, her daughter Kelly, and I attended the judgement day. First up was the salsa. I had twelve competitors, but I was confident mine would come out on top. We noticed the rejects were being lined up on the northside table near the judges, just like the caramels were fourteen years ago. Was mine on that table? It had to be, because the final three were sitting in front of the judge, and not one of the finalists was a tomato-based salsa. A peach salsa was the winner. We can’t remember what the other two were made from. It doesn’t matter. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Your best is only as good as the discriminatory tastes of the judge.

Next up was the spaghetti sauce. I was watching my vessel. All the jars looked the same, but I followed my entry from the southside table to the judge’s table. I pointed it out to Stephanie and Kelly. About the time the judge opened my entry I was distracted by a guy sitting next to me, wanting to know if I had entered the sauce contest. He had also entered the canned meat contest and was trying to tell me that there was a controversy in that class (I found out later that it was his entry that caused a controversy). I looked back to the judging. Stephanie told me that the judge made a sour face. Well, crap! “Let’s go,” I said. I didn’t need to see my pasta sauce placed on the northside table. We left. But not before we stopped to see the entries into the “Ugliest Cake” category.

I did not show up the following day to watch the jelly judging. I knew it wasn’t very good, and I didn’t need another day of rejection. Later, we went to the Fair with family. I wanted to walk the length of the concourse to see who won those three classes I had entered, and to see if their product looked as good as mine.

David yelled at me: “Marty, here’s your jelly!” I went down to the end of the row to see that my jelly had won a white ribbon. It dawned on me at that moment that I had to have won a ribbon. Blue is first; red is second place; and white is third. A day earlier I checked the competition. There were only three entries in the black raspberry jelly class. Hey! A ribbon at the Iowa State Fair is still a ribbon.

Everyone went to look at the ugly cakes and I searched for the spaghetti sauce result. To my surprise I saw my name on a jar sitting on a red ribbon – second place. What caused that sour face Stephanie and Kelly saw? I had eleven competitors in this contest.

I think canning is a dying art. And yes, it is art.

It’s also addicting. Next year, I’m entering a few pie contests, one for dinner rolls, and whatever else I concoct this fall and winter.

***

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Brain Drain

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Marty Ryan

Have you ever walked into a room and couldn’t remember why you were entering that room? I have the answer as to why that phenomenon is common among us old folks. Bear with me.

It’s no surprise that my annual headaches were visiting me again. They often arrive every year like clockwork, or calendar work, usually around Labor Day. But this year, they are getting to me a month earlier. Ever since I was a little boy, I have experienced severe headaches caused by sinusitis. “Sinusitis is present when the tissue lining the sinuses become swollen or inflamed.”

I first experienced sinusitis when our family planned a week at Blackhawk Lake by Lake View in Sac County. A friend of my mother’s offered her family’s cabin by the lake for us to use. After two days, little Marty was so miserable his pain and discomfort was affecting the entire family. We had to go home. Since that humid, overcast day in my ninth or tenth year, I get the familiar pounding in the head around the first of September. Not this year. It began around the first of August.

So, the doctor ordered a CT scan of my head, and in particular, my sinuses. I have no idea what sort of treatment would be recommended as a follow-up. You can’t remove sinuses; they’re holes in your head – literally. The procedure took a week to schedule and less than two minutes to complete. I received a copy of the results in the mail a few days ago.

“The CT scan of your sinuses was unremarkable.” That unremarkable word threw me for a loop. I thought it was rather rude of the physician assistant who interpreted the results to offer such a deplorable remark. Could it be my understanding of the word “unremarkable” was a misunderstanding? I had to research it.

“Unremarkable is a term that is often used in healthcare to indicate that something is benign. Unremarkable meaning describes the report as normal, which means that there is nothing to report. Nevertheless, it’s a very powerful word used by radiologists that is helpful for medical experts.” Unremarkable also means “ordinary.” Now, that hurts. My sinuses are anything but ordinary.

It was the second paragraph of the letter that made me laugh.

“The head CT showed changes in brain volume. We start losing brain volume in our 30’s and 40’s, and at an increasing rate by age 60.”

It gives new meaning to the platitudes: “If I had half a brain.” Or “air head,” or, “I must be losing my mind!”

I guess that’s why I can never remember where I placed the car keys, or why I went into the kitchen, or . . . where was I going with this?”

My original complaint to the doctor was that I was feeling pressure against my head. Sometimes it felt like a piano was balancing on top of my head. If the volume of brain matter is decreasing, why would I experience pressure? I’m sure the doctor will explain this to me unless he orders more tests.

There’s a lesson in this story. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is. I’m lacking gray matter. And that’s a fact!

***

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Political Baptism II

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Marty Ryan

1987 was a busy year for me in politics. Not only was I the Secretary-Treasurer of the UFCW Iowa Branch and the Secretary-Treasurer of the local union, UFCW Local 440, I was the Chair of the Crawford County Democratic Party. I had contact with most of the Democratic Party presidential candidates that year.

The Iowa Caucuses were scheduled to occur in February of 1988. In the late months of December 1987, I received a call from Denny Colvin, the President of the UFCW Iowa Branch. He told me that Louie DeFriese, President of UFCW Local 431 in Davenport wanted a meeting of the PAC. So, Denny scheduled a meeting of all Iowa Branch local representatives to meet at the union hall in Cedar Rapids, Denny’s local union. I thought it was odd that someone who is not the president would want to schedule a meeting, but then, I didn’t know who Louie DeFriese was. Before I left on a drive to Cedar Rapids, I was informed that Louie was a longtime union organizer/president and a huge donor to the Democratic Party and many of its candidates.

I arrived in Cedar Rapids and learned that the International Union’s political vice-president from Washington, DC, was also invited. The purpose of the meeting was to endorse Michael Dukakis. I said, “wait a minute! I have polled my membership and discovered that ‘undecided’ is the preferred choice of our membership, with Jesse Jackson coming in second.” I may have been naïve, but I could see that DeFriese was looking for some sort of position in the Dukakis White House. We didn’t have a considerable amount of money in the PAC, maybe a few thousand dollars, but I convinced a majority of the other representatives that our money could be better spent on statewide candidates like Dale Cochran for Secretary of Agriculture, Elaine Baxter for Secretary of State, and Jo Ann Zimmerman for Lieutenant Governor.

That summer I received several telephone calls from Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) My daughter, Sara, answered the phone in our house – she was a teenager. Sara and Senator Simon became familiar with each other to the point of talking to each other on a first-name basis. Senator Simon impressed me so much when I was at the IFL Convention in Waterloo. I was walking down a hallway in the hotel, and Senator Simon was walking with an entourage toward me. He asked me how Sara was doing. It blew my mind.

I received a FedEx overnight letter from Governor Dukakis asking for my support. Congressperson Gephardt asked my daughter, Erin, to come stand by him during a speech at Cronk’s Café to emphasize the importance of children in the race, and U.S. Senator Joe Biden did the same. I had lunch with the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Cronk’s Café in Denison where he autographed his book for me. He was wearing a bulletproof vest.

The County Democrats had a fundraiser at Yellow Smoke Park, northeast of Denison, and seven candidates showed up: Dukakis, Simon, Jackson, Gephardt, Biden, Arizona Governor Babbitt, and U.S. Senator Al Gore. It was a warm summer day, and more than one candidate quietly told me that Gore was a fool to speak while wearing his wool jacket. The rest had gone as far as rolling up their sleeves and removing their ties. It was a great honor to individually introduce each candidate.

I was politically confirmed at that point in my life. I became the County Chair of the party because I did something no one else had done. At a central committee meeting, the current chair asked if anyone wanted to be in charge of the GOV (Get Out the Vote) Campaign. I volunteered. I didn’t know that previous campaign leaders took the computer printout and did nothing with it. I recruited several people to help me, phones were installed in the union office, and every person on that list was called. On election day, Democrats had won seats in every office of the county, from sheriff to auditor, to county attorney, and supervisor. Crawford County had one elected official that was Republican. We even had a Democratic state senator and representative. Unfortunately, our congressional representative was a Republican (Jim Ross Lightfoot), and so was our governor (Branstad). I was shocked when I was nominated to be the chair, but I also accepted the challenge to keep the county blue. Today, it is bright red! There is one Democrat serving as a county supervisor.

Governor Dukakis was third in the Iowa Caucuses with 22.3 percent. I doubt $2,000 was going to help him win the Iowa Caucuses. Congressperson Gephardt won the Iowa Caucuses that year with 31.1 percent, and U.S. Senator Simon (Ill.) came in second with 26.5 percent.

I wound up caucusing for and being a delegate for “undecided” because there were no other candidates in my caucus who were viable.

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