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The advantages of union organization were clear to many, but labor unions had been built by and for blue-collar workers in industry and the building trades, and until the 1960s they didn't reach much farther. Then, in a dramatic shift that gained momentum throughout the 1970s, organized labor began seeping into business offices, fire departments, county hospitals, and public school classrooms. White-collar employees and public servants of all sorts joined unions in record numbers, making up the fastest-growing segment of the labor movement in the 1970s. Between 1968 and 1978 union membership among public employees tripled, to more than two million. Another two million public employees belonged to once sleepy professional associations that, m the previous decade, had been transformed into aggressive labor organizations.
The enlistment of the white-collar workers into the union ranks substantially upped the stakes of the war on labor. Business leaders knew they needed to send more troops to the front, and they justified the deployment with a recitation of the dangerous schisms in U.S. economy, things like the cost of the Vietnam War, foreign competition, plant closures, high inflation, the energy crises, recession, and growing unemployment. All that ravaged the American worker, of course, but it was American business that went crying and gnashing its teeth to Congress. The problem, our corporate captains wailed, was the damn cost of labor. Business leaders from all sectors organized to "control labor costs"—meaning cut people's pay—initially in the construction industry. Our illustrious executives focused on construction because, they alleged, high wages in the building trades translated into high-cost construction, which meant high-cost everything that came after—the age-old "ripple effect" as applied to anti-unionism. To invert the argument, then, if business could successfully undermine unions in the building and construction trades, it could well defeat the whole of organized labor. They were shooting for the moon.
So the unions won a round—but very belatedly and only by a hair. That same year the mighty Chrysler Corporation declared itself on the brink of bankruptcy and appealed to President Jimmy Carter for an emergency bailout loan. The taxpayer loan was granted, but only under the condition that the labor unions representing Chrysler employees, primarily the United Auto Workers, agreed to substantial cuts in pay and benefits. Determined to preserve jobs, the UAW conceded; from the Chrysler bailout deal, then, was born the "concession bargaining" system that still dominated union contract talks a decade later.
Three M, as a favorite union buster to hospitals, was one of the prime beneficiaries of the public treasury. Since hospitals receive money from many government sources, including the federal Medicaid program, a substantial portion of the hospital fees collected by Three M actually came from taxpayers. Now, it so happens that the costs of an employer's counter-organizing campaign are not listed as allowable charges to Medicaid, but for years Three M's hospital clients managed to get away with it by packaging union-busting costs with in-service training, which refers to training on site that purportedly brings some sort of benefit to patients or residents. According to testimony before Congress, a hospital watchdog agency in Massachusetts ordered six hospitals to return to the Medicaid program $250,000 in fees paid to Three M for their anti-union campaigns from 1974 to 1976.
actually wild (modern management methods)
But the moment they were drafted into management, the LPNs had to give up the union meetings. At the kick-off I warned them that they could be fired for attending. Not Copeland's rule, mind you, but the federal government's rule on surveillance. I told the LPNs they didn't dare go anywhere near the organizing meetings, no matter how close their friendships with the union "pushers." Friendship could be very dangerous at times like these, I said. In war alliances had to be redefined. The nurses were management now, and they had to be careful not to let their emotional ties lead them into a union trap that could harm the company. I taught the nurses the facts of the law: that management presence at union meetings destroys the "laboratory conditions" in which the NLRB insists that union-organizing campaigns take place and thus risks an unfair labor practice charge against the company. If any of them were to let that happen, I said, she would be held responsible. She would be fired.
"Look, Kathleen," I offered. "You still have a chance to make amends to your girls. Talk to them. Find out what it is you've done to make them call in the union and tell them you're willing to change. Assure them that they can come to you with any complaint, and let them know you'll really listen. Apologize for any mistakes you've made, even if you don't know what they are." Then my voice turned hard. "At the same time, be sure they know this: It's a onetime offer. Warn them that once the union takes over it's out of your hands. From that moment on there will be no more flexibility, no more chances for change. Everything will be regimented, impersonal. Tell them that they won't be able to speak for themselves, and you won't be allowed to answer. Every little detail of their workday will be determined by some union man up in Cleveland."
The new rules came as a shock to supervisors, particularly the LPNs. To many Copeland employees, their co-workers had been like a second family. Most of the women led poor lives inside tiny houses in dull, small towns. Their greatest joy was coming to work, taking care of the old people, and spending the day with friends. They gossiped and giggled as they worked, they celebrated one another's birthdays, they sent flowers when a co-worker was sick. My rules put an end to all that, clouded the atmosphere, turned it dark and grim. Nurses were afraid to chat with their aides; aides and housekeepers fell silent when a nurse walked into the apartment in which they were working. Laundrywomen and waitresses could be seen ducking into elevators or scooting down the hall to avoid the inevitable, oppressive conversation with a supervisor. Friends stopped speaking.
During those first few weeks of the Copeland campaign, I had delivered my standard program; but all the while I was searching for a secret weapon and an Achilles' heel. Every company seemed to have one of each. At Copeland I found both in the old people, the heart and soul of the home. The Copeland employees loved those old people, every last one of them. Some of those old folks were cranky, some were ill, and some wouldn't talk at all. Nursing home work could be dirty, unpleasant, emotionally trying, sometimes demeaning. But for many workers, their relationships with the old men and women of Copeland transformed a mundane job into a vocation. Nurses, nurse's aides, housekeepers, cooks, waitresses, all of them, what they wanted most was to please the old people, to make their lives a little more comfortable. It didn't take much: a witty conversation, a special favor, a little time spent looking over pictures of great-grandchildren or admiring vintage jewelry. It brought the workers great joy to know that they were making the old people's lives just a little better, and it made them feel important. It was no accident that Copeland employees were so tender with the elderly residents; Claude had incorporated love and respect for the old people into every job description. When a worker was hired, even for the kitchen or the laundry room, she was told, "We are here for the residents. They pay your salary, and they are the most important part of your job. Talk to them. Take a little time out for them. Show them you care."
After the fourth negotiating session I knew it was time for some new ammunition; the stalling tactic was wearing thin. I got a lucky break. It so happened that Local 47's patience was also wearing thin, and I heard through my network that the union would soon hold a strike vote. Well, nothing makes as sweet music to the ears of anti-union management as the word strike—particularly in the fall of 1981. In August of that year the most powerful man in the world, the president of the United States of America, had pulled off the biggest union bust in history. That month President Ronald Reagan fired thirteen thousand striking federal air traffic controllers—who were striking essentially for safer working conditions— and allowed their employers to hire permanent replacements. Reagan also had five union leaders prosecuted under a never-before-used law prohibiting strikes against the government. In firing the strikers, and calling their leaders criminals, the president, himself a former union official as onetime president of the Screen Actors Guild, displayed his contempt for organized labor. The firing annihilated the air controllers union, PATCO, and crippled all labor organizations by destroying their most powerful economic weapon, the strike. What I did not know was that a few months later, Reagan would outlaw PATCO itself. Thus, in ninety days Ronald Reagan recast the crimes of union busting as acts of patriotism. When word came to me of Local 47's strike vote, I grinned. I knew the moves. And I would start making them immediately.
As for me, I was surprised to find that I disliked the Gates Mills house even more after we moved in than I had on that first tour. I hadn't thought that would be possible. Usually it works the other way; as they get to know their new houses, homebuyers often discover their hidden charms. But I just kept uncovering absurdities. To me, number 699 was an intolerable house until almost $20,000 of work had been done, and then it was only barely livable. First off, I had to have an intercom system installed throughout the entire house just so that family members could communicate with one another. Without the intercom Alice and I had to go on search missions whenever we needed to find the boys, and I kept missing phone calls because I didn't hear the ring and whoever answered couldn't find me. It did no good in that house to yell; the curves and corners created natural sound barriers. And looking for someone was just impossible, the layout was so baffling. During our early weeks at Gates Mills, in fact, four-year-old Justin got lost several times on his way down to dinner from his remote bedroom. To the intercom system I added a telephone network. I saw no reason to run around the house in pursuit of a telephone. The telephone was my main sales tool, and I should have one handy wherever I went. Seven phones were not one too many, I decided.
so funny
My introduction to chemical processing had left me dumbfounded. The plant seemed so menacing; the work shocked me. I'm not sure why PMS got to me more than any of the other horrid little places where I had fought against the employees. Maybe it was the obscene contrast between the PMS factory and my Gates Mills estate, which was growing more luxurious by the day. Maybe my increasingly heavy drinking made me more vulnerable emotionally to the sufferings of the PMS crew. Or maybe it worked the other way around: maybe I started drinking more and more during the PMS campaign partly to dull the pangs of guilt about the people I had been hired to beat. I don't know. What I do know is that I found myself feeling sorry for the PMS workers. Every time I saw someone from the factory floor—which I made sure was rarely—felt vaguely sick inside. I had to fight the impulse to tell Timm that it looked to me like the place could use a good union. Yet I never considered throwing the PMS fight; my ego and my lust for money would not allow that. Instead I used my misgivings the way I always used the law, to help me devise a cunning antiunion game plan. It looked as if I were going to have to be especially clever in this one. It seemed to be just a matter of time before the union would be successful.