November 2022

The Union is in the People: FW Ed Mann

by x409232 | Nov 30, 2022 | Labor History

Ed Mann’s life was a testament to the power of worker solidarity. His was a steel will set on struggle and defiance against overwhelming odds. Ed’s story is one of enduring the darkness of industrial collapse without losing hope.

Growing up in Toledo, Ed worked various intensive physical jobs. He was no stranger to tough, dangerous work. Ed remembered his mother inviting homeless folks for family meals. Despite having little, she showed deep solidarity with those around them. She also ensured Ed received a Reform Jewish education at a local temple. He never much identified with the religious side of his upbringing. Still, Ed valued his education for his whole life.

In 1952, Ed settled in Northeast Ohio. He started working full time in the local steel industry at the Brier Hill mill.

Things That Politicize People

Even with his Reform Jewish upbringing, racism was not a consistent issue in Ed’s personal life. Ed and American racism first clashed in 1947. One fateful day would define his future views on race and his organizing work. It started when he took out a YMCA membership.

Ed planned to exercise with his friend Bell, a Black man. Ed never considered that there were separate facilities for whites and Blacks. When Ed and Bell showed up together to work out, Ed asked for a guest pass. “Don’t cause any trouble,” the manager replied. “He’s got his YMCA and this is yours.”

“I think it’s things like that that politicize people,” he later reflected. “I was at an age where I was like a sponge, wanting to participate in society. Then I found out what society was like where I was living at that point in time.”

This shaped how he viewed the treatment of Black steelworkers in Ohio mills. The union locals had long stood by while bosses discriminated in pay and promotions. A key part of Ed’s early union years involved fights for equal treatment for his fellow workers. He later picketed with Black residents and unionists outside Akron against the KKK.

Putting Down Roots

The Union is in the People — *Ed Mann on a picket line*

Ed emphasized becoming active in the local community. “It’s so much easier to go somewhere else and demonstrate,” he noted, “than to demonstrate in your own home town.” Ed saw this quality as essential to good organizing. “You’ve got to put down roots if you want to change anything. You can’t be like a damn butterfly, flitting around all over.”

Years of gang-type work in the mills taught Ed what it meant to need someone’s help. Whether you liked another worker or not, “to get the job done and not die, you had to help each other.” It was this mutual necessity that led to firm trust. Ed could ask about workers’ kids or the type of car they drove. Eventually, someone would invite someone else over for a party or a beer. “Before you know it you’re friends. And then the politics started talking. That’s what I experienced.”

Ed wasn’t shy about his radical views despite pushback. “I found that the people didn’t really care what my politics were as long as I won grievances, did my job as a union officer.” By all accounts, he did. Ed bypassed contract procedures and fought grievance battles on the shop floor. He led many wildcat strikes, including one over his fellow worker Tony’s death.

Ed was smart about how he shared his political ideas. No radical efforts would amount to anything unless rooted in something real. “For me to have gone out to the gate and pass out the Socialist Workers Party newspaper, and not know anybody there, and expect to recruit thirty people by the end of the month, would have been insane!”

Ed’s actions spoke more than any labels. Not every radical was able to take the brutalities of the mills. “We saw many people come into the Brier Hill plant, real hotshots,” he said. “Every shade of the rainbow as far as radicals went, from fiery communist to whatever, but they couldn’t stay! They could run off at the mouth pretty good, write manifestos, but they couldn’t stay and do the job.”

The situation was simple: “We could express ourselves. We weren’t afraid of the boss. We were always thought of, ‘Hey, look at these radicals, look at these reds.’ But we would do our job. You got a job, you did it. You are not a slacker. You didn’t do any extra. You helped your fellow worker. Over the years you develop a certain credibility.”

Ed was friendly and open on principle at least as much by disposition. “If you’re going to be a socialist, you’ve got to be sociable,” he quipped. He built his organizing on quality shift work and worker accompaniment. He soon found himself a key player in United Steelworkers of America Local 1462.

Against Bullshit

In 1973, USWA 1462 elected Ed as president. He was laser-focused on building democracy from the ground up. “We were trying to build a union in the plant, not worldwide,” he said. “We gave them democracy in the local.” He began an all-out assault on corruption. Before, officers had fixed elections. Union leadership had sided with the company in grievances. No more.

Ed helped establish the local’s first internal newsletter, the Brier Hill Unionist. The paper kept workers updated on all union activities and issues. Ed also opened union education to all members. He fought to enable the rank and file of the local to vote on contracts themselves. By 1976, Local 1462 could boast that it was the only large Sheet and Tube union with up-to-date grievances.

“I believe in direct action,” Ed declared. “Once a problem is put on paper and gets into the grievance procedure, you might as well kiss that paper goodbye.” Bosses could easily manipulate grievances. “When corporations started recognizing unions, they saw this,” he explained. “They co-opted the unions with the grievance procedure and the dues check-off. They quit dealing with the rank and file and started dealing with the people who wanted to be bosses like them.” These were the loathed “union bosses.”

Union leaders wielded contracts against rank and file as much as management. That led Ed to hold union contracts with employers in great suspicion. “I think we’ve got too much contract,” he admitted. “I think the IWW had a darn good idea when they said, ‘Well, we’ll settle these things as they arise.’”

Local organization was key to winning gains. The international union would dispute 1462’s proposed resolutions. The “Ed Mann Team” helped the local hold its ground. They caucused, handed out leaflets, and set good examples of solidarity. They won on every resolution. It was an “unheard-of defeat for the international union.” Ed began to reach out to other unions only once 1462 “functioned as a local, without all the petty bullshit.”

Local 1462’s revolutionary spirit was palpable by the steel mill shutdowns of 1979. Enraged by the Brier Hill mill closure, Steelworkers marched into Mahoning Country Club. They decided on a surprise confrontation with Sheet and Tube superintendent, Gordon Allen. Taken aback and embarrassed, Allen said, “Now, Ed, you know we are handling this through the Union.” With one voice the gathered workers replied, “WE ARE THE UNION!”

“I’m Going Down That Hill”

Ed Man addressing the decisive meeting of Local 1330 on January 28, 1980

On September 19, 1977, “Black Monday” terrorized locals. The sudden announcement that Youngstown Sheet and Tube would close was devastating. 5,000 workers were immediately out of a job. The local economy collapsed. In the next several years, U.S. Steel continued to shutter operations. 40,000 workers in manufacturing alone would lose their livelihoods. Youngstown still struggles in Black Monday’s long shadow.

People didn’t take it lying down. The community came together as workers began a fight for control of the local steel industry. Against the odds, Ed and countless others rallied workers. They fought for community ownership of the nearby abandoned Campbell works. But the company refused to negotiate.

Ed gave up on some arbitration process that would never come. Why couldn’t workers make the bosses sit down and talk? The idea was a long shot–but the only option he saw. Two months earlier, 300 Youngstown steelworkers joined with local supporters in Pittsburgh. They occupied the first two floors of U.S. Steel’s national headquarters. The occupation lasted for several hours. Ed decided that that tactic needed further exploration.

Ed was full of passion as he addressed Local 1330 the morning of January 28, 1980. “I’m going down that hill and I’m going into that building. And any one that doesn’t want to come along doesn’t have to but I’m sure there are those who’ll want to.” It would be a last stand.

At least 700 workers marched to the U.S. Steel office building downtown. The crowd met no resistance. The workers took over the building. When they reached the top floor, they found a secret executive game room. “My daughter Beth changed her baby’s diaper on the executives’ pool table,” Ed boasted. For most workers, it was the first time they had defied the establishment. “People were proud.”

Ed was proud, too. But the workers dispersed once the company agreed to negotiate a deal. Three days later, the company again refused to come to the table. Ed was honest in his analysis of the action. “At the end of the afternoon Bob Vasquez, president of Local 1330, decided to end the occupation. But if we had it to do again, I know that he, and I, and every one I know who was there, would have stayed in that building for as long as it took.”

Arrested at Trumbull Memorial Hospital

Ed was a staple at local pickets. He disliked that Youngstown public schools didn’t teach labor history. Ed would take his grandchildren with him on the picket line. It was here that he and fellow workers gave them an education about their working class heritage. In 1982, police brutalized and arrested him at a picket. He had joined with striking Trumbull Memorial Hospital workers.

Prosecutors charged Ed with inciting a riot and resisting arrest. He was found guilty and had to appeal all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. “I found that the case had a very devastating effect,” he reflected. “I didn’t do very much . . . . For four years I think I was intimidated. You’re not getting any younger.”

But the union at Trumbull Hospital survived. AFSCME Local 2804 lives on to this day, almost 400 workers strong.

Lessons from the IWW

Ed Mann joined the IWW in 1984. He became a member after he had already retired. It’s easy for eager young radicals to overlook or even suspect older generations. But this breakdown of trust between age groups is yet another function of capitalism. Retired folks have much to offer a radical solidarity union. This is true for the IWW and others, like Ed’s Worker Solidarity Club. Ed’s story is an opportunity to remind ourselves: “young and old together, we shall not be moved.”

Ed joined the IWW out of principle. It didn’t matter that he had finished working. He was a true believer. Ed also joined with LTV retirees to save worker pensions after the company’s bankruptcy. The group called themselves “Solidarity USA.” Solidarity was by then the enduring theme of Ed Mann’s life and work.

What was it that Ed admired about the IWW? “The IWW is a lot like the Solidarity Club,” he said. “Whoever wants to do their thing at the moment, does it. If you want to participate, you participate, and if you don’t, you don’t.” Ed compared this to the mainstream unions. “The AFL-CIO is afraid of getting fined for violation of a contract, but if you don’t have a treasury, what the hell good is it going to do to fine you?”

Ed liked the IWW’s insistence “that workers should exercise some power.” He agreed workers must make decisions “instead of handing it over to bureaucrats.” He encouraged union members to demand more of the AFL-CIO, but he didn’t hold out much hope for it. “It’s not going to do its job. It’s not structured to do its job,” he mused. Ed didn’t think anything of the vertical boss-worker system of the trade unions. “I don’t regard the AFL-CIO as ‘the union.’ I think the union’s in the people.”

Ed advised being ready for the ‘right moment’ as key to success. Someone has to be laying the groundwork for the eventual class conflict. “Who knows what is going to make the workers say, ‘This is enough’? But the point is, somebody has to be there when they say, ‘This is enough!’”

Ed saw union contracts as an opening for corporate doublespeak and little else. Companies like to say they want workers to participate in management. Yet companies give away no real decision-making power. Labor contracts outline management rights, often for pages. But workers have no power in hiring, firing, disciplining, or the rules of production.

Ed saw the IWW’s vision as a more hopeful one for the future than the AFL-CIO model:

“The Wobblies say, ‘Do away with the wage system.’ For a lot of people that’s pretty hard to take. What the Wobblies mean is, you’ll have what you need. The wage system has destroyed us. If I work hard I’ll get ahead, but if I’m stronger than Jim over here, maybe I’ll get the better job and Jim will be sweeping floors. But maybe Jim has four kids. The wage system is a very divisive thing. It’s the only thing we have now, but it’s very divisive.

“Maybe I’m just dreaming but I think there’s a better way.”

Glimpses of a New World

Ed’s biggest labor actions are significant on their own merits. He democratized USWA 1462. He organized steel workers and community members to fight against the shutdowns. He put his body on the line for striking workers. But what makes them especially relevant to us is that they all happened before he was in our Union.

Ed’s story shows that the solidarity we need is already within the people we’re seeking to organize. It was in him before he joined us. His story also shows that the spirit of solidarity is not something limited to the shop floor. It can extend beyond into workers’ everyday lives. Just as the wage system shapes every part of our lives, so must solidarity.

From Ed, we can gain a focus on the tactical value of building concrete local power. Without it, no movement can ever become enough to build workers’ democracy. As Youngstown alone could not fight the steel industry bosses, no one community can build a new world on its own. But local communities can come together if they are willing and organized.

Nobody has found a substitute for the solidarity of the rank and file. That’s you and your coworkers, neighbors, and friends. Focus on the avenues for organization and solidarity right in front of you. There are paths open to you, closed to the rest of us. We all need you to help the work along right where you are.

Don’t get distracted by any bullshit.

References

You can learn more about FW Ed Mann and the fight to save Northeast Ohio’s steel mills in Staughton Lynd’s work, “The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown’s Steel Mill Closings.” Ed is also featured alongside other Northeast Ohio workers in the short documentary film about the shutdowns, Shout Youngstown! Most facts about Ed’s life and all quotes are taken from a copy of his autobiography, “We Are the Union: The Story of Ed Mann” first given to me by Alice and Staughton Lynd. It is currently out of print.

The Death of Mourning

by John Reilly | Nov 19, 2022 | Reflections

We live under capitalism, its cruelty is both intentional and absolute. And that cruelty comes primarily in the form of apathy and indifference. That apathy comes from the system itself and those who represent it. But it’s even forced into the souls of those who wish to simply live.

Capitalism steals everything from those it brutalizes. And I do mean everything, not just money, not just things, not just time. It steals concepts and emotions. No matter how fundamental something is, capitalism will steal it.

That includes simple joys like waking up in the morning and being ready and willing to greet the day. It’s difficult to wake up and appreciate the morning when you have to sell your body, mind, and soul for most of your waking hours with the expectation that you do it all again tomorrow.

It’s even difficult to simply appreciate the quiet moments when we’ve nothing to do because our tasks are complete. Quiet moments that once upon a time would be used for reflection and thought are now filled with dread for what comes next, dread for the exploitation we’re subject to.

And then while at work there’s no satisfaction to be had from a job well done because the reward for good hard work is more work. You’re actively disincentivized from caring about what you do, and you’re even further disincentivized from doing it especially well. Mere competence, but not exceptionalism is instilled into us due to the lack of reward for a job done well.

Beyond that, capitalism also robs us of things that are necessary to us. The capacity to grieve and mourn has been stolen from us, and ironically we’re unable to grieve that loss.

That capacity to mourn that we’ve had stolen from us is due to a combination of a system in which cruelty is the point and apathy which is built into the system to facilitate that cruelty. When someone we know and love dies, we don’t get to mourn how we ought, we don’t get to celebrate their life, we don’t get to stay sad about their death, we don’t get to treat death as anything but an inconvenience.

We’re sad for a day, if we’re granted the day off for the funeral at all, and then we’re forced to move on. The feelings linger, but we’re forced to put them on a shelf to be ignored. We tell ourselves that we’ll get to processing those feelings later, but that’s a lie. Because that’s not how it works. We’re forced to just keep working. All the while never working on processing our losses, and those losses are innumerable.

We’ve had our capacity to mourn stolen from us. Robbed of us by a class which seeks to parasitize us for their own benefit. A class which seeks to subjugate us to their will and desire, but never to allow us our own. Mourning has been killed by capitalism, but it can be resurrected.

An act as simple as taking time to grieve is an act of revolution when that act is disregarded as unproductive and inefficient. So please, mourn and grieve your losses in whatever way you deem appropriate; for we are all, each of us, individuals subject to a system of cruel oppression, but together we are a collective refusing to bow.

Dedicated to Staughton Lynd, friend of the union and Fellow Worker Forever.

We’ll Walk Hand in Hand: In Memory of Staughton Lynd

by x409232 | Nov 18, 2022 | News

Staughton Lynd passed away Thursday morning, November 17, 2022, in Warren, Ohio. He had been in and out of the hospital for several weeks with worsening health, until finally Staughton and his family reached the decision to discontinue aggressive treatment and seek palliative care. His wife Alice, and their children Barbara, Lee, and Martha, accompanied him in his final days, along with the countless friends near and far whose lives he impacted so deeply.

Staughton, second from the right, and fellow Vietnam War protesters in 1965, shortly after being doused with red paint outside the White House.

There are countless articles about his deep scholarship and the wide impact of his activism. Others can tell the stories of his time training teachers for the Freedom Schools of the SNCC, or his leadership in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. Staughton was the author of several notable books over the years and he served as a teacher, activist, public intellectual, and a lawyer for decades. But he was also a great friend to our Union and to all of our organizing. And in his last few months, he became a surprisingly dear friend to one nearby Wobbly from the Northeast Ohio GMB.

I first met Staughton and Alice at the end of a Youngstown May Day event this year. They each gave talks that day, and I dragged my whole family along to hear them. Wrangling my toddlers, I was only able to make it for Staughton’s talk at the end of the day. He discussed Starbucks and Amazon, and rebuilding a labor movement “from below” through the sheer strength of our own solidarity. But the talk was not what impacted me so much. It was afterward, when the gathering ended, the Lynds led us in singing “We Shall Overcome.” At the chorus, Staughton belted out, “Deep in my heart, I STILL believe: we shall overcome someday.”

It’s one of my favorites, but I’d never sung it with anyone before. Then I sang it with Staughton and Alice, and everything changed. Singing together was like a shot of adrenaline to my heart. There was something intangible, in that moment, that he passed on to me, and it rekindled hope. And that hope was something I took home with me and carried into my organizing work and branch building work in the Northeast Ohio GMB. I wanted to show them what we were doing in Northeast Ohio and in the IWW, so I tried every way I could to send them an email. Finally I just wrote them a letter and mailed it to their home address.

Staughton was one of the earliest notable critics of the Vietnam War.

To my surprise, they answered.

I didn’t recognize that number calling me one Sunday. I paid it no mind on Monday, either. But Tuesday, I finally checked my email: “Dear Joe, we tried several times to reach you by phone today but you were not available…” (Fellow Workers, I have never picked up the phone in such a rush as when I called them back.)

In the weeks since that first call, Staughton and Alice have shared so generously of their time, wisdom, and friendship with me and with our branch. We quickly started planning events together, and Staughton did not want to wait a single day. We gathered people to watch Shout Youngstown!, a short film about organizing to save our local steel mills. Like any consummate organizer, as soon as people were gathering in the room we rented, he turned to us and asked for a pen and paper to start gathering contacts. At the end of that event Staughton asked that we play his favorite song, Paul Robeson singing “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”, and once again we sang together.

He was planning steps ahead of us. Staughton was already talking about future actions, like helping a group get together to protest a dangerous incinerator project in Youngstown, and starting a reading group, and asking our GMB if we could take some of his books to start a Worker’s Library, and making plans to come visit the activist space where we had just begun in-person meetings. My heart was bursting when he came over at the end of the night and wrapped his arm around my shoulder as the whole room sang “Solidarity Forever.”

Staughton never officially joined the IWW. No matter. He and Alice have been our unassailable friends, allies, and fellow workers for decades. He told me that he and Alice have learned much from the IWW. But our Union has learned and gained so much from them. And even with Staughton’s impressive academic career, his historic activism, his role in defining solidarity unionism and our own internal debates about what those words mean, nothing he gave us can mean more than his deep and abiding friendship and his unshakable love for our movement. Every bit of news about the union we shared, from the smallest detail about our local organizing to broad sweeping pictures of the IWW as a whole, was met with joy. His friendship and love for our movement is a lesson to all of us in the deepest meaning of solidarity.

I was so blessed to share a few hours with Staughton one more time on November 7. I visited him that morning in the hospital. Staughton had been so ill he was unable to reach the phone, so I dialed Alice and put her on speaker. I’ve never seen such light in a person’s eyes as when Staughton heard Alice pick up on the other end.

Diana Ludgwig via flickr. Alice and Staughton present their memoir, Stepping Stones, outside the Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown on July 6, 2009.

Remembering how much he loved Joe Hill, I brought Staughton my prized pin depicting Joe Hill with his guitar. We had bonded over our love of Joe and how, just as Paul Robeson sang, he lives on wherever workers organize. Staughton held my pin up to the light and said, “Bury me with this.” He looked at me and I nodded.

We talked together until my visit had gone on too long. “All right, Fellow Worker,” I told him, “I think it’s time I gave you some rest. I’ll see you on the other side of this.” After a moment, I moved to the doorway and raised my fist: “Solidarity Forever, my friend.” And Staughton, smiling with his eyes, raised himself straight as a beam in bed and imparted a final farewell, his fist held high: “Solidarity Forever!”

Sometime after our visit, Staughton suffered a heart attack and kidney failure. Staughton Lynd will long remain among us, through his books and his ideas, through the countless stories we tell, and in the memory of the incredible love and solidarity he shared with all of us. His work has hardly ended, however. We have to build on his ideas and bring solidarity unionism to life. The community he represented in Youngstown after Black Monday is still fighting for new jobs and in new industries. The prisoners he wrote about and defended, the Lucasville Five, are still on death row today with the first scheduled to be executed in one year. There is much work to be done.

Staughton Lynd and Denis O’Hearn speak to the Re-Examining the Lucasville Uprising Conference

And even knowing all that, one of the things he impressed on us most often was how important it really is that we keep getting together and singing with each other. It is from Staughton Lynd that I learned how to “walk hand in hand.”

Solidarity forever, my dear friend.

I still believe.

x409232