[3rd in three-part posting on Steelworkers Fightback reform
movement in the 1970s. Brown documents issues and personalities that
drove the movement of relevance today in understanding and
appreciating reform movements underway today.]
[[link removed]]

LOOKING BACK AT THE STEELWORKERS FIGHT BACK CAMPAIGN – PART 3  
[[link removed]]


 

Garrett Brown
July 5, 2023
Stansbury Forum [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ 3rd in three-part posting on Steelworkers Fightback reform movement
in the 1970s. Brown documents issues and personalities that drove the
movement of relevance today in understanding and appreciating reform
movements underway today. _

SFB District 31 campaign poster featuring Ed Salowki for USW
president and Jim Balanoff for District 31 director.,

 

This is the 3rd in a three-part Stansbury Forum posting on
Steelworkers Fightback (SFB), a reform movement within the United
Steelworkers Union in the 1970’s. Garrett Brown documents the issues
and personalities that drove that movement. The series is of great
relevance today and can help inform our understanding and appreciation
of the reform movements underway in many large US unions. The
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) has new leadership as
does the United Auto Workers (UAW). In the United Food and Commercial
Workers union (UFCW), America’s largest retail union, there is an
active opposition called Essential Workers for Democracy
[[link removed]]. They had a big presence at the
union’s most recent convention in April and are actively pointing
toward the 2028 convention. _PETER OLNEY, CO-EDITOR OF THE STANSBURY
FORUM_

PART 3 – STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF STEELWORKERS FIGHT BACK

Despite SFB’s previous electoral successes in District 31, it was
clear that scaling up to a national level for the 1977 international
union election was a huge challenge.  A challenge that was made more
difficult by increasingly apparent weaknesses in the campaign
strategy, a fractured national campaign office staff, and frictions
between Chicago and Pittsburgh campaign offices.  

The top-down centralization of the campaign meant the Chicago office
made all the decisions about strategy and priorities as well as all
the policy decisions, selection of campaign issues, and campaign
statements for the entire country and Canada.  Local knowledge and
input from outside of Chicago was not well recognized or used, leaving
supporters to basically “follow orders from HQ.”  Internal
communication with the field, which could have inspired supporters
around the country with the successes and lessons learned by others,
was weak, and often campaigners relied on leftwing newspapers such
as _The Militant_ of the Socialist Workers Party and _The Daily
World_ of the Communist Party for campaign news.

STRATEGY  

_“CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS DID NOT RECRUIT AND PROMOTE CANDIDATES FOR
THE DISTRICT DIRECTOR ELECTIONS – OUTSIDE OF DISTRICT 31 …”_

The campaign had a decidedly basic steel focus, which did not
necessarily match the key concerns of non-steel and smaller locals,
which made up 75% of the membership.  The SFB campaign was not well
versed on issues of concern in Canada – both internal to Canada and
Canadian steelworkers’ relations with the USWA based in the U.S. –
nor with issues affecting local unions in “open shop” states like
Texas.  

The SFB campaign barely touched Canada, whose 900 local unions had a
“favorite son” candidate – Lynn Williams – on the McBride
slate.  Over the years, Canadians have played a key role in the USWA
with two being elected president – Williams, after McBride died in
1983, until 1994, and later Leo Gerard  from 2001 to 2019. Gerard had
worked against Sadlowski in the 1977 election.  So a Canadian
candidate on the SFB slate might have made a difference.  

The Deep South locals saw the SFB campaign mostly in the form of
traveling teams of supporters from Chicago and other parts of the
country.  In July 1976, one of the traveling supporters – Ben Corum
– was shot through the neck while handing out SFB flyers at Hughes
Tool Co. in Houston.  So in these areas there was basically a clear
field for the international staff and local officials to push the
McBride campaign.  

Campaign headquarters did not recruit and promote candidates for the
district director elections – outside of District 31 – which would
have created mutually beneficial electoral alliances between the
Chicago SFB and local district director campaign organizations.  SFB
eventually won the majority of 10 of the union’s 25 districts, so
there might have been additional reformers elected to the union’s
International Executive Board as well increased votes in the
presidential election with SFB-supported District Director
campaigns.  

The campaign hoped to compensate for the lack of local grassroots
organizations, and the refusal of the Pittsburgh union HQ to release
information until late in the campaign about the location of local
unions, with a high-profile media campaign.  Sadlowski had received
almost universal good press in the District 31 campaigns as the
“bold, young maverick,” but the national media coverage was more
mixed, no doubt influenced by opposition to the SFB slate from
industry and union officialdom.  

Finally, the successful legal strategies to harness the power of the
courts and Labor Department to overturn fraudulent elections in the
Mine Workers union and District 31 campaigns was not a guarantee in
the USWA presidential election conducted under a different
administration.  It was Republican administrations (Nixon and Ford)
that had ordered the election reruns in the UMW and USW-District 31
– in part because this advanced standard Republican talking points
about the corruption and violence inherent in labor unions.  In
January 1977, however, a new Democratic Administration, elected with
the strong support of the USWA and other union officials, came to
power in Washington.

INTERNAL CONFLICT  

These weaknesses in strategy were compounded by a divided staff in the
Chicago headquarters.  The headquarters staff was basically two camps
of people.  The first group were locals led by Clem Balanoff – the
brother of Jim Balanoff – who had been a steelworker at Youngstown
Sheet and Tube in Indiana for 17 years.  Clem was a longtime friend
of Sadlowski who had been involved in his union election campaigns
from Local 65 president through District 31 Director.  The second
group were “out-of-towners” who had worked together in the
successful 1972 Miners For Democracy election campaign in the United
Mine Workers union – including Edgar James, attorney Tom Geoghegan,
financial manager Robert Hauptman. Not from the MFD, there was
independent photographer Robert Gumpert and graphic artist Sandy Cate,
from the West Coast.  

It was not clear whether Clem Balanoff or Ed James was the actual head
of the campaign – but it was clear that there was dislike and
mistrust between the two groups.  The locals called the MFD veterans
“technocrats” who did not know the local community and
personalities, and were new to the steel union. The
“out-of-towners” found it increasingly intolerable that Clem and
his crew were reluctant to share information and collaborate in the
essential tasks of the campaign.  The working styles of the two
groups were completely different and a mismatch from the beginning. 

Clem Balanoff got his political training as a member/supporter of the
Communist Party during the Cold War and Joe McCarthy-era repression. 
He was secretive, trusted only a small group of people, and was
personally paranoid and inclined to circulate rumors and use his
friendship with Sadlowski to bolster his position in the internal
debates and staff infighting.  Clem had been an effective campaign
manager in District 31 union elections, but he did not have the
skillset needed for a national campaign where SFB had to create,
inspire and lead an effective network that did not yet exist, and
which could only come about with transparency, delegation of authority
and initiative, flexibility, and trust and openness with others.

Fortunately, the office manager of the SFB’s headquarters was George
Terrell, who not only got along with all sides, but was capable and
even-tempered.  There were about 20 regular paid and volunteer staff
in the office every week handling work assignments like producing
campaign materials, fundraising, plant-gate leafleting, union hall
rallies, candidate scheduling, responding to media inquiries and to
supporters calling in from around the country.  

There were somewhere between 30 and 40 paid staff working at campaign
offices outside Chicago, including a number of Chicagoans who were
sent from HQ to organize in local areas.  Part of the SFB response
was to organize traveling teams of steelworkers from Chicago to go to
local areas, leaflet the plant gates, and coordinate with local
individual supporters.  It was remarkable to see rank and file
steelworkers gave up their vacation days to join these traveling
teams, and use sick days and free time for local campaign
activities. 

Braddock, PA. and US Steel ET Works in the background

At the same time, there were tensions between the campaign
headquarters in Chicago and the Pittsburgh SFB office, the two most
important campaign offices.  Pittsburgh was where two of the SFB
slate members worked at USWA headquarters – Andy Kmec and Oliver
Montgomery – and where another union staff member Pat Coyne was the
key coordinator of the SFB campaign.  Kmec was protected against
Official Family retaliation by the independent field staff union,
while Montgomery and Coyne had protection from a USWA local
representing headquarters professional staff.  The campaign offices
in Chicago and Pittsburgh were operating in a different set of
circumstances, which the Pittsburgh group felt that the Chicago
headquarters did not understand and did not accommodate local
initiative.  Clem Balanoff’s son – Clem Jr. – was eventually
dispatched to work in the Pittsburgh office, but Pittsburghers, seeing
him as young and inexperienced, were not sure if this was additional
support or espionage from Chicago.  

Moreover, Coyne took a page from Clem Balanoff’s book and tightly
controlled the Pittsburgh office, although leeway was given to some
radical SFB supporters, if trusted by Coyne.  In both cases, the
offices were trying to prevent the campaign from being defined as
“radical” or “communist” due to the high-profile participation
of steelworkers in leftwing groups.  At the same time the campaign
wanted, needed, to tap into these groups’ networks and activism. 
In some locales and locals, radical steelworkers of various
organizations were the best organized and most committed campaigners,
and this was a resource that could not be ignored.  No one on the SFB
side was satisfied with this schizophrenic approach, and the McBride
campaign continued to red-bait the campaign in any case.  

Around Thanksgiving 1976, several months into the campaign, the
“out-of-towners” had reached a breaking point, openly talking of
resigning _en masse_.  According to Bob Gumpert, the group decided
not to resign after Tom Geohegan made an impassioned plea at the
gathering of the “out-of-towners” that the SFB campaign – win or
lose – was too important for building the momentum of union reform
movement within the USWA, and other unions, for the group to walk away
at this critical juncture.  

Sadlowski needed both groups at headquarters – the locals and the
technocrats – as well as good relations with Pittsburgh, so a plan
was made to bring in Ernie Mazey for the last nine weeks of the
campaign as the official head of the campaign to mediate and direct
the HQ groups and relations with Pittsburgh.  Mazey was a longtime
leader and reformer in the United Auto Workers union, and, ironically,
the brother of Emil Mazey, the UAW’s Secretary-Treasurer who was a
leader of the UAW’s “Administration Caucus” – the equivalent
of the USWA’s Official Family.  Nonetheless, tensions continued at
the Chicago campaign headquarters, and led to the departure of Ed
James a month before the February 1977 election.  

IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF THE VOTE

Only 40% of the USWA membership actually voted, despite the high
profile nature of the presidential contest.  This was testimony, I
think, to the legacy of decades worth of hand-picked, Official Family
candidates running in one-person races where the union’s ranks had
nothing to say about the candidates or the results.  Sadlowski was
popular among young, Black and Latino union members, but it is not
clear how many of them voted.  One-third of USWA members were under
30 in 1977, and about 25% of USWA members were Black.  

SFB strategy was the slate would roll up a huge margin in basic steel
to overcome weaknesses in the smaller locals, Canada, and the Deep
South.  But Sadlowski received 5,500 fewer votes in the 1977
presidential election in District 31 than he did in the 1974 District
Director race.  The SFB margin of victory in District 31 was 61% to
39% — less than expected – and the margins in other basic steel
centers were less than that in District 31.  In District 31, I think,
McBride’s media themes had an impact over time on individual
steelworkers, as did the staff electioneering in local unions, support
for McBride from four of the five District 31 Director candidates.
Fewer resources for local campaigning with the recruitment and support
needed for traveling national teams sent out from Chicago played as
role as well.  

But for me, the fact that the SFB campaign won at least 250,00 votes,
or 43% of the vote, on a program of union democracy, union militancy,
and social unionism – the most radical union program since the 1930s
– was quite an achievement, especially given all the obstacles,
including some created by the SFB campaign itself.   

LESSONS

There are aspects of the SFB campaign that were clear at the time that
radicals seeking more democratic and militant unions today might learn
from:

FIRST:  Campaign election organizations cannot substitute for
patient, long term grassroots organizing of workers and union members,
which other reform movements like Teamsters for a Democratic Union
(TDU) have demonstrated in the years since the SFB campaign. 

SECOND: Highly centralized organizations, which allow for little
local initiative and participant buy-in, are not effective in
organizing worker members or in winning union elections.

THIRD: Radicals in the union, and as non-union supporters, can play a
critical role in union reform and revitalization campaigns, if they
prioritize a broad, united effort to reach out to, and mobilize the
membership, rather than just promoting their own organizations and
perspectives.

FOURTH: Ensuring that the message of the campaign gets out on its own
terms is crucial, since where steelworkers heard from the SFB
directly, there was a positive response.  Developing a “war room”
capability to effectively rebut charges like the “outsiders will
control the union” theme is essential.  

FIFTH: Getting out the vote is critical, especially in unions like
the USWA which had no tradition or practice of internal democracy,
especially with key sectors like young workers, workers of color, and
women.  

SIXTH AND LASTLY: Incumbent officials will _ALWAYS_ cheat if
allowed to do so, so preparing in advance a strong poll-watching,
legal, and publicity strategy to respond to the inevitable fraud is
key.  

AND NOW  

Almost 50 years later, what was the impact and legacy of the
Steelworkers Fight Back campaign?

On the negative side, the promise of an ongoing, national SFB based on
the campaign never materialized.  This was due to two factors, in my
view.  

One was the physical and emotional exhaustion of the leadership of SFB
in District 31 (Sadlowski in particular) and the need of District 31
Director Jim Balanoff, and SFB-affiliated local union officials, to
fend off attacks from Pittsburgh while effectively administer their
offices.  

McBride rejected some of Balanoff’s appointments to international
staff (as Abel had rejected several of Sadlowski’s proposed staff,
including Ola Kennedy, who would have been the first black woman staff
member in the district).  To limit his influence within District 31
and nationally, Balanoff was stripped of some internal union
positions.  Balanoff’s strategy, in response, was to “turn down
the temperature” in relations with Pittsburgh, and focus on
effective management of the district.  This approach ultimately
failed as the McBride administration was determined to root out all
officials that SFB supported.  

Braddock, PA. Hymies Bar across from the Edgar Thompson Steel Works.

The second factor was the swift onset of the crisis and collapse of
the U.S. steel industry.  In the second half of 1977 layoffs began at
US Steel South Works and other mills around the country.  These
accelerated in 1978 and into 1979, when US Steel permanently closed 12
major facilities around the country.  In 1979 alone, 57,000
steelworkers lost their jobs in plant closures, and by May 1980 the
number of hourly steelworkers in the U.S. was below the previous low
recorded in June 1933 at the height of the Great Depression.  By
1980, the membership of the USWA had been cut in half – with basic
steel taking the brunt of the cuts.  These laid-off steelworkers,
many of them SFB supporters, were soon to be ex-USWA members and
outside the union altogether.

The argument can be made that a “fighting program” led by a
national SFB to save jobs – such as demanding a massive
government-funded public works program to increase the demand for
steel, or cutting the work week with no reduction in pay to spread the
work – might have galvanized the ranks and mitigated the crisis. 
But I think insurgent rank-and-file campaigns like SFB were too new to
the USWA, the members too desperate for immediate solutions to their
families’ intensifying economic problems, and there simply was not
enough time before the industry’s collapse crashed down on the union
and its members.  There certainly was no support among Democrats or
Republicans – either in Congress or from Presidents Carter and
Reagan – for such a program.  

On the positive side, the SFB campaigns from 1973 through 1977
inspired and mobilized a large swath of USWA members.  Hundreds of
steelworkers became involved in “taking back their union” through
the SFB campaign.  The 1977 presidential election with 580,000
members voting was the largest direct election ever held in the USWA
and a tangible demonstration of union democracy. 

Despite the national loss, supporters of the SFB message registered
victories on a District and local level.  In District 31, Sadlowski
was elected Director in 1974 and Jim Balanoff in 1977.  In in the
north central states” District 33, SFB supporter Linus Wampler was
elected Director in 1977.  In Districts 9 (Bethlehem), 20
(Pennsylvania) and 38 (western states), reformers ran strong campaigns
in 1977 against Official Family candidates.  In 1981, Local 6500
President Dave Patterson, who organized the SFB campaign rally in
Sudbury, was elected Director of District 6 in Ontario, Canada.  

In the 1979 local union elections, SFB supporter and women’s rights
defender ALICE PEURALA
[[link removed]] became
the first and only women to became president of a basic steel union at
US Steel South Works.  In Local 1010, Inland Steel in Indiana, the
“Rank and File Caucus” candidate, African-American Bill Andrews,
became a four-term president on a platform of democratic and militant
unionism.  In Local 1397, US Steel Homestead Works, another “Rank
and File Caucus” swept the officer positions and implemented new
systems of contract bargaining and grievance handling based on
substantial member participation.  

Union activists in the SFB campaign went on to lead the fight against
plant closures and the related community impacts in Illinois, Indiana,
Ohio and Pennsylvania.  In particular, Local 1397 in Homestead played
a critical role regionally throughout western Pennsylvania.  Even
after the steel mills were bulldozed into rubble, individual SFB
supporters inspired by the campaign continued the work of promoting
the ideas of democratic, militant unionism, supporting union reform
efforts and election campaigns in other unions, organized alternative
labor education centers, and supported community-labor coalitions on a
variety of issues.  

The SFB campaign was a building block of a historic process in the
American labor movement that started in the United Mine Workers and
the Miners for Democracy in 1969, through the 1970s USWA campaigns, to
the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and the election of Ron Carey as
the Teamsters union president in 1991, and then Sean O’Brien in
2021; and continues with the reform movement in the United Auto
Workers union, which elected Shawn Fain as president in 2023.  

The themes of all these successful efforts have been the same:
membership participation and mobilization; defense and support of
those discriminated against and harassed; coalition building within
the union; strengthening links between labor and other social
movements; and strong action, including strikes, to protect members on
the job. 

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Steelworkers Fight Back
campaign of 1976-77 is that today’s “failure” can make an
essential contribution to “success” later on.  

 …

NOTE:

Among the labor history books that provide important background on the
Steelworkers Fight Back campaign and its legacy are:

·      “Rebel Rank and File: Labor militancy and revolt from
below during the long 1970s,”
[[link removed]] editors
Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner and Cal Winslow

·      “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel,”
[[link removed]] by
Ruth Needleman

·      “Homestead Steel Mill; The final ten years,”
[[link removed]] by Mike Stout 

GARRETT BROWN worked in steel mills in Alabama, in a chemical plant
and garment factory in Georgia, been a journalist in Chicago, and a
Cal/OSHA inspector in California, in addition to consulting and
training with worker and community groups on workplace health and
safety around the world.

THE STANSBURY FORUM [[link removed]] is a website for
discussion by writers, activists and scholars on the topics that Jeff
focused his life on: labor, politics, immigration, the environment,
and world affairs.

* Labor
[[link removed]]
* History
[[link removed]]
* unions
[[link removed]]
* Steelworkers
[[link removed]]
* Reform Movements
[[link removed]]
* economics
[[link removed]]
* organizing
[[link removed]]
* chicago
[[link removed]]
* Pittsburgh
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]