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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0005, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Carlee Drye worked at the Alcoa aluminum plant in Badin, North Carolina, from the 1930s through the 1950s. An active participant in the establishment of a local union that later merged with the Steel Workers, Drye served as president of the local union from 1952 to 1959. Drye describes briefly the establishment of the local union in Badin, but focuses primarily on his role as the leader of the union in the 1950s and reflects on relations between the union and Alcoa management at the time of this interview in 1980. After describing the merger of the Steel Workers with the AFL-CIO that he helped secure in 1959, Drye speaks at length about the process of eliminating racial discrimination in hiring practices at Alcoa. Although the local union had been largely integrated since the 1930s, Drye explains that similar progress in the actual workplace occurred more slowly. He describes the process of persuading white workers and Alcoa management to change its policies, beginning in the 1950s and into the 1970s. In addition, Drye speculates about the relationship between the union, the community, and Alcoa management in the late 1970s following his retirement and his departure from union activities. Drye explains how the sewer and water systems, previously under control of Alcoa, had passed into the hands of the county, how Alcoa was purchasing and tearing down buildings in the downtown area, and that fewer residents of Badin were finding work in the Alcoa plant.
Carlee Drye was a founding member of the local union for aluminum workers in Badin, North Carolina, which later merged with the Steel Workers of America. Drye served as president of the local in the 1950s, during which time he worked actively to change policies of racial discrimination in the Alcoa aluminum plant. He retired from the plant and from the union in 1970s. He speculates about relations between the union, the community, and Alcoa following his retirement.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
. . .and came to the dedication of the new union building, would have been '72. But I cannot answer that. Maybe Cary could give you more of that background, because he was actually working right there in the power division. Cary was in the maintenance end of it, rather than in the switchboard operation end.
What do you think it was like for him, trying to encourage other people to join the union? What can you imagine his experience was like? Did he have a lot of obstacles in his way?
Not really. It had to be done on a quiet sort of thing, you know. Really,
when you get to thinking about it, you see the connection, because these
fellows on there who were power division people, every one had a
telephone connection, one with the other. Any time there was a load
dispatch, or anything changed, well, they were on the phone constantly.
They are today; part of it's done by radio these days rather than
telephone, but they still rely primarily on that actual telephone
conversation. But evidently there was discussion between them, and then
the people who came along later who don't show there or in the
presidents or anything else. Somebody between Dean Culver and O. B.
Lackey. . . . Dean worked one shift and O. B. another, as a switchboard
operator, but Dean didn't come here till sometime after '34. He went to
work about the same year I did. There had to be a contact and
conversation between them. Maybe at company expense; I don't know.
What did he do up in Pittsburgh?
He went to work in the Youngstown plant of United States Steel. He
married a girl named Gilmoltz [unclear]
Why did I spend the years that I should have been here trying to,
What were you doing?
I worked eight hours a day in the plant and then did the local union work
and handled grievances and that sort of thing afterwards. I couldn't
handle the grievances during work hours. The actual grievance meetings
themselves, I handled during the work hours and off the job. Of
You said something about going around the state.
That was after I resigned in '59. I was active in that end of it. The
Steel Workers started in the merger with the A F of L-CIO, and I was the
first vice president of the A F of L-CIO and helped bring about the
merger. Served on the merger committee and drafted some of the language,
implemented some of the language that came down from the A F of L-CIO
office in Washington. That took a lot of time away from home. Then I
actually travelled in the state, and I've been in every local union in
the state except two, in '59 and '60. It's a hell of a big state when
you get driving one end to the other.
Tell me about what was involved during your administration in the union.
The first big thing that hit me right square in the head was the
integration issue. In fact
And these were . . .
These were whites, every single one of them.
Whites who were encouraging you not to do this.
Threatening to pull out and withdraw from the union. And maybe I
outlasted them, or maybe I'm too hard-headed to give in to them, but I
didn't. Because I still believe that the Steel Workers' philosophy, and
it went before 1953 here. . . . And I stuck to my guns. Although the
Steel Workers sent a
So the Steel Workers knew that you were having this problem here, and they sent down a . . .
They knew it, and they didn't know whether I was capable of handling it,
because I hadn't been president but about a year, and I was learning. I
burned a lot of midnight oil in studying and getting an education
myself. I didn't have that kind of education, to stand and argue with a
lawyer over here across the bargaining table. And I did a lot of
studying. I got an education that you couldn't get anywhere else.
There's no school and university in this state that you give you the
education I got. Of course, I went to school [unclear]
How did you finally encourage the people in the union not to quit, that it would be all right once blacks were in skilled positions?
You know, I've wished many a time I had had a tape recorder going for
what I actually told those people. You had to butt heads. "This is
what's best for the local union. If you tear yourself, we're going to
have to go back and start off again. You are the one
it's going to hurt, when the final analysis comes. They're working with
you. What's so unfair about them getting the same benefits you're
getting?" Under the wage structure, there were comparative-rate jobs,
but there was no way you could get into them without going through
certain other. . . . The laborer and the lesser skilled jobs, the dirty
jobs. It was just selling the people on what we believed in, really. And
that old "fair day's work for a fair day's pay" is still pretty good for
the Steel Workers.
Of course, now, that's changed in the last seven or eight years. You're
going to get the people who
What were those things?
At that time we were making a base of Guam, and I dived in a foxhole on
top of a black boy.
By the time you resigned in May, 1959, what progress do you think had been made in the union in terms of blacks in skilled positions and in restructuring . . .
The other thing that took place was when Emmett Akridge. . . . And this
gets involved in some national-level politics. I was vice president at
the time Emmett Akridge went on the staff. He went on in '51, but I
served. . . . He says he still had the title of president when I was
vice president; I was carrying an acting president. He didn't actually
resign from the presidency until September of '52, but there was about
seventeen months there that I was actually performing the duties of
president and vice president. It was a hang-up now. I
didn't like it; I think I wished I had a vice president under me to help
me. Because God knows I needed help right then. That's why Cary became.
. . . He was the brains of the organization. He had one of the sharpest
brains I know about. Everything except leadership. He just couldn't push
ahead and take obligation. He was too me. Or you
can completely forget what your. . . . Or you can get
your brains beat in. But you've got to be ready to come out tomorrow and
do it again. But that period, by the time Emmett ran against me in the
election of '54 in June, I beat the pants off of him. And this, I think,
was the key, because the membership, black and white, wasn't that great
differences. If every black man over there voted for me—and I did not
get all the black votes—then it could have only been just a little over
two to one. But I beat him almost four to one. Call it
self-gratification if you want to. This showed me that people had
bought
Because you had been campaigning that you needed this restructuring, and that the union had to allow blacks . . .
If you understood the constitution of the steel Workers, today it has a
clause in it that people on the international payroll, international
representatives, cannot run for local union office, period. And that's
because I
How did Alcoa buy it? How did they start to change their hiring practices and their promotion practices and their training practices in response to what you decided in the end?
From October until December, we restructured every single line of [unclear]
Oh, you mean Affirmative Action.
Yes. This is foolish. Which tied industry's hands. I don't agree with a lot of things that come through. They have harmed management; they've harmed people. I don't think a man, if it's very obvious that he's incapable even of probably one-tenth of the ability to perform a job. . . . Go out there and expose him, it's going to wreck him mentally, physically, and everything. But I still think he'd be insisting, and if he wants to cut his own head off and expose himself to that, fine, go ahead. But you can't get involved in testing people out of promotions. But from '54 on, it was wide open. It still is.
And you think now that blacks, since the late fifties, have had . . .
Cary thought of that. In June of last year, '79, you had your
Why it's taken so long, or why it's happened here?
Why it took so long. Not that it happened here; I expected it. But I expected it longer than. . . . I think the blacks themselves recognized that they didn't have a real leader. And this is not, in my own opinion, a real strong leader. He's the strongest that's been on the scene in quite a few years. The one strong man they had in the forties was electrocuted in 1952 or '53. Moving a television aerial, and let it fall on a 2,300-volt line. It electrocuted him and his son. Now he was an intelligent black, and he would have gone somewhere, and within the Steel Workers. He wouldn't have stayed in this local long, because he had that much up here. Plain old common sense. He didn't have all that education, but he had plain old common sense dealing with people, black and white. He was well liked by everybody in the plant. And it was unfortunate. It was just one of those things. But it took that much longer. They recognized, I think. . . . Well, within the trade union movement, there's been a different approach to taking over leadership. Where it's been forceful in other directions, in the union movements they didn't want to rock the boat. In other words, break up a union or split up a union. They eased themselves into it. Restraint, if you want to call it that. And this is my opinion about that. And I've seen it other places, but especially in this local. They had the vote, on the basis of black and white, until about six years ago.
What do you mean, "they had the vote"?
The black membership was fifty-six percent six years ago. And that was
the hiring practice of Alcoa in the early days. When they were here,
there was no way to get rid of them. Only till you hire more black and
more white to
A hiring practice of Alcoa's was not to allow there to be more blacks, or . . .
Well, frankly, in the early days of getting people to work in the pot room, you had to shanghai them. Actually there was one man that ran four taxis back and forth to South Carolina, Georgia, wherever he could shanghai, and that's the only terminology you can use. You haul them up here; they work one shift, and they'd be gone. About one out of a dozen. . . . I don't know what the figures would be. I've asked the question, and I always got, "What the hell. You can't ask that." Well, I can ask it. You may not answer it.
I'd ask that question, too. They say the same thing to me.
Right.
And that's the reason for the statistics.
Yes, I've heard about a sheriff named Kid Heavy. Have you ever heard of him? He was one of those shanghai people, and when the people would get back onto railroad cars and get out to Salisbury, he'd hear about them having got on the train. He'd be standing there with his gun, telling them to get back on the train and go back.
It's a unique sort of thing. Those are perhaps the. . . . And I have my
own opinion about the merger, and I wouldn't want that to be in a
document or anything else, about the merger. I think we've made some
I was involved in the merger. I was also involved in kicking the Teamsters out of the CIO after the merger. And it amazes me, what was wrong with the thinking, that of all the international unions that have organized in this locality, and nationwide, why has the Teamsters continued to grow in membership and the Steel Workers, for one example, have declined in the total number of members?
Why is that?
The rank and file didn't care what Jimmy Hoffa did; he was delivering the
goods to them. And if you want to get an argument going, even today,
don't say anything detrimental to Jimmy Hoffa. Oh, I had my opinions
about Jimmy Hoffa, too, now. He was a rough, tough fighter. He had to
be, in the trucking industry. Maybe they're getting a little more mellow
these days; I don't know. But I think the union movement overall hurt
itself by kicking the Teamsters out. They should have accepted them and
left them in the merger—accepted them in the merger—and then clean house. See, we got the cart in front of the horse,
frankly, and that's my opinion. But I fail to understand [why] for the
ten years after merger and then the expulsion of the Teamsters, they
increased their membership and still are doing it.
By 1959, when you had resigned, how had the restructuring of the lines of progression been accepted by Alcoa? How had it been implemented? What changes could you see in that seven-year period of your administration, in terms of the situation for blacks at Alcoa?
We had started in '54 a wage-job study which slotted every job, an
evaluation system. The CWS manual—the Steel Workers Evaluations
Manual—evaluated and factor-weighed every job in the plant. We came up
with our own version, which Alcoa insisted on. We wanted the CWS manual.
And it cost them, in the final analysis, two cents an hour more in every
job in the industry
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
To me it was a highlight for this area of the country and for the steel workers, too. In 1949 there was a ten-week strike here.
Here?
Here in this Badin. Unheard of
This ten-week strike in 1949 was just here at Badin, just at this local?
It was industry-wide. See, we had been in the Steel Workers for five
years. It was Alcoa, and the strikes didn't take place simultaneously as
far as beginning, but they ended pretty much. But Alcoa, if my
recollection of the true facts at that point, caved in first. And in
Alcoa as an industry, this has been one of their good concepts, I think,
that they
To go back to what you were saying before about why the union was formed in the early days, during the thirties.
I think there was two things, and I don't want to put too much credence
on the first instance. I carried S. A. Copp's, who was works manager,
clubs around the golf course more than one time. Fifty cents, and
ten-cent tips.
What did he say?
He said Badin was wonderful. It was a big, happy family and didn't need anybody. But he didn't realize there was a lot of unhappy people out there in the plant. He was probably depending on the lower-echelon management.
Why were they unhappy?
General working conditions. Low recognition of the true worth of the
people. The people in Badin—perhaps it's a localized thing, and perhaps
it's not; I don't know, I've never been able to analyze the Tar Heel,
the North Carolinian—they're a prideful people, and they take pride in
their work. And that, I think, is the key to the fact that this Badin
plant is still here, the modern version of 1960, when it started.
Because Alcoa recognized that if there was something to be tried out,
some new test
Are you saying that S. A. Copp sort of undermined this pride that people had in their work?
No, I think he should have recognized it. He didn't recognize it. He'd
been here too many years. Perhaps he was getting on up in years. It was
probably nearly seven years ago, maybe, when he died. When I was a young
boy I thought he was an old man then, but he wasn't really. Because I
have it brought home more every day as I get older. I'm no spring
chicken either. But that, and I give Alcoa management credit for not
having common sense, not having their pulse on the rank-and-file
attitude. And Alcoa really built this local union. They made a bad move
at a bad time. It was prior to the time that we went into the Steel
Workers, trying to get a local union formed. We were recognized, and
they were dealing with the old Aluminum Workers International union.
There are still some. . . . It's never been really effective. And they
rode the steel workers' shirttails as far as benefits every. . . . Just
a little behind. You know, enough to keep them out of the Steel Workers.
And frankly I think they, in the past ten years,
They charged them with trespassing. That's still technical to me, because
Why did they resent you in Albermarle?
Because we were making. . . . Well, the people that are working in that plant now are probably making three times what you are over in the mills, in the comparative wages. Benefits, why, they don't even know what they are. Oh, they have insurance and some of that sort of thing.
Do they see that that's something that the union has brought to workers at Alcoa, or do they focus that resentment just at Alcoa?
It's not particularly at workers, but the fact that the wage structure is
so much higher. And this is true of the management in the mills in
Albemarle. I know that the so-called executives there can't touch in
wages the hire-in rate in this plant two years ago. Their salaries do
not come to it, I mean night supervisors and these so-called
supervisors.
Leadership in the union or in management?
The attitude towards unions started changing probably in 1944, at the
time that this Local 303 was formed, the old aluminum workers. And I've
forgotten what that name is. I could probably dig out one of the
contracts somewhere. There aren't but two copies of the first aluminum
workers' contract that they signed in existence, that I know anything
about. I'm rather proud of the steel workers, what they stand for and
what they've attempted to do through the years. They haven't really, in
my opinion, received enough recognition for the fundamental,
down-to-earth issues they've battled for. The welfare of the working
man. Even today, you organize a plant into the Steel Workers, the first
contract is going to be as near to the basic steel
Back in the thirties, say from 1934 on, supposedly there was an A F of L union here. Do you have any recollection of that union at all?
The Aluminum Workers were A F of L and still are, for our technical
terms. That's probably, in my opinion, what's wrong with construction
trades. Hm, I'm getting into some touchy ground now. [unclear] [unclear]
Because this was a way . . .
Because they'd take everybody, craft and everybody else. Although when it comes to representative negotiations, you do get separation take place; there's no question about that. You have to. You can't talk about a laborer in a plant and a craft in the same terminology. There's no way you can do it.
Say, then, from the time in '44 when you went over to Steel Workers, is that right?
Yes. June the fifth is when the charter says. I just found out something myself when I got to reviewing this this morning. I didn't know that O.B. Lackey was the president two different times. I'll let you have that.
Oh, great. Thank you.
That's readily available. I've got a file in my files.
I'm just trying to figure out what period it would have been where the blacks had meetings on their side, and the whites had on their side.
That was in the organizing effort. It would have had to have been in late
'36 or early '37. Then after the company actually recognized
Who was he?
He's from out of Pittsburgh, New Kensington. He came up in the New Kensington plant, which is now defunct. Has been for ten years, about. It outgrew itself.
Was he an organizer?
He was an organizer in the early days. He was the president of the Aluminum Workers International union at the time the unions were being formed. He spent a lot of time here in Badin. I knew Nick in the international office. He was absorbed into the Pittsburgh office of the Steel Workers. Still had the service unions from the top level to the other eleven; there were twelve levels at that time. Then later he went into Washington as the director of organization in the A F of L-CIO. He was in that position when he died. He was still in organization. He was an organizer; there's no question about it.
During all those years, were there pretty much organizers here most of the time?
Not from the time the election was held and it was affiliated with the
Steel Workers in 1944. I don't know how much you understand about the
steel workers' representation. It's a chain of command. You had an
international representative who was out of the Pittsburgh office—— or
he might not have been out, but he was paid by the Pittsburgh office of
the Steel Workers—
That organizers came in.
You might say they left. And even at that point, there was never that many here, and it was about the extent of it. On this list—and this is an amazing thing to me; I got to analyzing it a while ago, and this is the one place that you'd seem to be that it wouldn't be as strong as others—except for two people on this list who were out of the. . . . This is the charter of affiliation, where I left these names, only eight people who were charter members of this Local 303. There was John Carrick and John Fultz. There was three, really. Lonnie Baswell and John Carrick were in the pot room department. John Fultz was a fireman out of the mechanical department. And the others were in the power division. So the nucleus of the original organizing effort started back there with O. B. Lackey and McCroskey, Dean Culver.
And O. B. Lackey worked where?
In the power division. That was in the generation at the powerhouses,
L. A. Stiller?
And Shankle was in the rotor station. It was still in the power division. One was down on the river, and the other was in the plant location itself, within the plant gates.
And who was John Carrick?
John Carrick was in the pot room. And Lonnie Baswell was in the pot room.
John Fultz?
John Fultz was in the mechanical. I never quite figured that one. I knew John well.
And then there's Fincher?
[Lela] Fincher was the office secretary. She married Dean Culver. She was a member of the local at that time, and I had been excluded, because the Steel Workers' constitution excludes people who do not work within the mill itself. "Or a jurisdiction thereof," or some terminology or language of that thing.
But she married Dean Culver.
That's when he was president of the local. They married after he left the presidency. I know of another history tied to that fellow, too, but it gets into the UTW and TWA, which gets into the history and the attitude of people in this part of the country, and the split in the textile union in 1950.
Where does O. B. Lackey come into. . . .
O. B. Lackey was the first president of A F of L, the Aluminum Workers. And Dean went on the payroll of the TWUA, the Textile Workers' Union.
So he was pretty much the spearhead, then, of the original union
I would say, from that nucleus of about a handful of people, that was the spearhead.
How do you think he developed these union sentiments, out in this isolated community?
You have to analyze individuals. Where did I develop mine, except in the background of my mother and father's nature of wanting to help your fellow man. That has to be in everybody that. . . . Because I'm a firm believer, and I've been convinced of this many a time, the membership will cull out those who do not have the dedication towards helping your fellow man. You do not put in the hours necessary without having a dedication about it. The pay is not there. Of course, now you get all kinds of attitudes about the pay of the union people. It cost me money in the twelve years I was involved actually actively. I know it cost me money when I went on the state payroll and travelled the state. Fifteen months, and I found out I could not afford the job.
So it's a matter of O. B. Lackey, then, feeling that the union was going to help his fellow man.
Yes, I think that's right. And Dean Culver probably had the stronger feeling.
By improving the working conditions in the plant?
Yes, and I fail. . . . Because those fellows in the power division had a different type job from the actual labor viewpoint. They were in a control room or something of that nature. Every single one of them were switchboard operators.
Where would he have learned about unions, O. B. Lackey?
That would take a history from the point that he came to work here sometime before the early thirties. And I have never took the time. I have wondered. . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . the conditions are in the plant. But at the same time, we have a pride in the job that Alcoa has done, not only just in Badin but Alcoa nationwide. Alcoa set back until the government tried to break it up right after the War, when they gave Reynolds all the DPC plants. And they broke up the aluminum monopoly. But it got Alcoa off their rear, and they had to get into research. This is the best thing that ever happened to Alcoa and . . .
To actually face it, although Reynolds got competition. Alcoa started a
hell of a research program. There's no question about it. The things
they've gotten into, and still are. There are some things in the science
and technology today that Alcoa developed. Maybe the space program
wouldn't have been what it was had it not been for the Research Testing
Laboratory right out of Pittsburgh in New Kensington. [unclear] [unclear]
One thing that's occurred to me is that in some ways the presence of the union here, which would keep the situation for workers very much under control and very beneficial for workers, in some ways helped Alcoa to be a better company, to be looked upon not with as much resentment as an industry which treated its workers less well would receive. So in some ways the union has helped the image of Alcoa.
It has. I'm convinced of that. It's part of the same ball of wax; it has
to be. This is true. . . . I've been in other locations. I spent
considerable time down at Alcoa, Tennessee. And all they've got down
there is what I call them Tennessee mountaineers, and that's a hardy
group of people. They'll just as soon fight you as to look at you,
except when you get in good with those people they'll do anything in the
world for you. And they'll walk out and hit the brick before you. . . .
So you don't think there's the same specialness in Maryville that there is here in Badin.
Not when it comes to Alcoa employees. Somewhere back through here I think
we've all missed a chain of influence that Alcoa has had on its
employees since the early days in the thirties, that you try to fit that
to the general concept of the way the national picture looks in the
treatment of people and the welfare of people. It doesn't deviate so far
from the national, but it's a little ahead.
There are some people who are saying that this special feeling and this high morale of Alcoa workers is kind of changing because of. . . . McAlister, for example, has been quoted as saying men are not as important as production, and it's production before safety, and that this has signified a real change in the morale at the plant. This seems to be a new development. How do you feel about that?
Frankly, in my own, and I talked to the man probably a dozen times before
I retired, but my outside impression. . . . I'm trying to convince
myself that there hasn't been a change in Alcoa's management attitude.
Rather, I think it's in the personality of McAlister. I think, frankly,
the man is putting up a front which he doesn't believe in his dealings
in the civic organizations and this sort of thing, in fact, the Board of
Trustees. And you see him at all these things without seeing anything. .
. . This is my measure, probably as much as anybody, and I've heard it
since I retired: "Hell, you never see him out there in the plant." And
this is a mistake, with anybody here. [unclear]
You sort of tend to feel like he's not just reflecting any change in policies in Pittsburgh, but it just has to be the way he is.
Maybe I'm wishfully thinking, and I have nothing concrete to go on, but
I'm convinced; I hear too many people who make their statement about it:
"Oh, the s.o.b. [unclear]
Do people also hold him to some extent responsible for the withdrawal of Alcoa from its civic role in this town in a lot of ways?
They haven't gotten around to that yet.
You think that's next?
I think that's next. Now the true colors are. . . .
But do you think he was dispatched from Pittsburgh to get all the buildings knocked down here in Badin and to eliminate the town buildings?
Yes. Now let me tell you a story about Alcoa's operation. The plans that Alcoa is making today, what they're doing today is for implementation ten years from now. Because I saw the set of blueprints for this plant, that was built and put in operation in 1960, in 1954. The whole thing.
You mean they're trying to expand Alcoa, and they're going to take over this property?
That is my thinking, because, you see, if you look at the plant and
what's surrounding it, there's not much other way to go except to the
north,
So you think their next plan is extrusion in that downtown area.
Yes. So that the land is not available. You couldn't say that Alcoa has kept other industry out. You can't come in and build a plant, just some little fly-by-night outfit. I don't want that kind in here, and I don't think the people do. And there's not an industry could move in. They've pretty much controlled, because they owned everything for miles up and down the river, lumber and everything else. When they started in '57, they started to divest themselves of forestry and that sort of thing.
What does this mean for the people in the town? The people came here because, as you were talking about before, Alcoa recruited them. And they set up this town so that people would stay here. And now their hiring policy is such that they don't just hire from people in Badin anymore. And McAlister just about told me himself that they were trying to kind of divest themselves of this company-town image and trying to cut their ties with the community. What do you think this all means for the people in this town who have this special feeling about Alcoa?
I think Alcoa, for the financial gain, there's going to be a cost that's
going to be expensive. They approached me in 1956 or '57, about
disposing of the water and sewers, which was just not being implemented.
And I bucked it. And I still buck it. I think it was the wrong thing.
Alcoa established this town; they hired people and brought them in here;
and this is one of the [unclear]
So you don't see this as a paternalistic attitude that Alcoa has in
They're gone. They're over and done, as far as Alcoa's attitude is concerned.
But I see a little bit of weakening of that shield or attitude, because now they're opening up a development. Originally there was houses back over across behind, if you know where the VFW hut is. That section back there, the land is being offered for sale, along the old railroad tracks back to the brick dump. They're going to sell off more lots, because Alcoa's employees. . . . God knows, I wouldn't even attempt to say what the bulk of it is, for people who are commuting. And that's going to be a problem for Alcoa to deal with one of these days, too.
In what way?
The expense of commuting. When you travel all the way from down in Morgan. . . . And there's six colored people down there, and they've stayed on the shift;they've traded and cussed and quit and everything else and all stayed so they could ride in the same vehicle, God knows, for thirty-eight years that I know of. And they're still driving. But now one of these days. . . . And people who live in Salisbury and Albemarle and all for fifteen (fifty?) miles, it's going to be a tremendous cost. And that's why property in Badin is so damned high. This house doubled in price, in value, in two years.
Because workers at Alcoa want to move from the outside areas into town?
They're looking for their own welfare, too. Those people are thinking for
themselves. This is all part of this diversting, see. Actually, they
started divesting themselves of real estate and houses in `57. That is
nothing new; it just drug without anybody really forcing the issue.
You mentioned S. A. Copp before. Was it much of a struggle for S. A. Copp and Holmes, who came in after him as works manager, to remove this paternalist feeling about the people in town? Did they have to really be educated about this, or did they just die out, and that's how it stopped?
So he had learned the mistakes of S. A. Copp.
He had learned them. And he was sent here. . . . See, this is what's
happened. That's what I'm saying, a twenty-year plan, at least ten years
in advance. If they have a certain job to do, Alcoa has the employees,
they can reach and pick, and here's the man for the job. And there's
some smart people sitting up there in that ivory tower, we call it,
that's been in the thing more than one day. When you go up on the top
floor, and the thirty-foot tinted window panes, and see the whole city
of Pittsburgh, it is an ivory tower. There's something in it today. And
the first Holmes that came in here was to destory this paternalistic
attitude, and he did a pretty good job of it. In later years, if he was
sober enough to get out there. [unclear]
Do you see the possibility sometime in the future of the people in the community of Badin organizing and incorporating the place, forming a. . .
Well, you know, if Alcoa had been smart, that was my counter-proposal:
Now if you want to divest yourself of this thing, we'll guarantee you
we'll incorporate it, and this is the union spokesman speaking. It
hadn't been too long before then that we moved in on the precinct level
down there. We got the board together, and we had about thirty-eight of
us, I believe, went into the Democratic precinct meeting. Well, they'd
been going along, two or three of the. . . . Jack Lanning and Ralph, who
lived next door; they lived next to me at that time on Little Kirk
Place. There'd be about two or three of them go in there, and they'd
elect officers, and they weren't doing nothing. Alcoa controlled the
politics, and we got tired of it. We moved in there, and we cleaned
house. I can still see that night. The ones that were there, there was
two left, and they went out the doors front and back, began to
telephone. By the time they got back, we done had all the officers. And
we kept it for two years. And we taught the people in the Alcoa
management and our own people a lesson, and we got it across to them:
you go out and you get active, and you go out and you vote. And this
locality, this precinct, is still one of the highest percentage voting,
and it started back at that point. It's been God knows how many years
ago. And we threatened them at that point, and had they been smart, they
would have gone all the way at that point. We would have incorporated
the town. We were determined to do it, because we went back and talked
it over in board meetings. Carried it back to the board and carried it
to the membership at the next
Do you think that would be a good thing right now?
At that point; now it's not.
Now you don't think so?
No, because you're asking the people to incorporate into a hell of an expense. There's no way you could ever sell. . . . I would not, in all honesty, expect them to. . . . Well, we're going to have to have two and a half million, and those figures were compiled three years ago, what it would cost to replace this sewer system. Two and a half million. God knows, it'd be ten million now, to replace the sewer system. And there's not many years that the people in the county are going to have to pick up Alcoa's burden, and this I resent, and I think other people in the county are beginning to show resentment. I would be resentful of it. Alcoa's kept it all these [years]; now it's wore out, and they want us to build a new one, you see. And this is going to create an image of Alcoa that's not good, and this is why I don't think this is what Alcoa wants in the top level. It has to be one big attitude change in the top level management of it.
So do you think they'll get smart back in Pittsburgh and see that maybe McAlister is getting Alcoa into trouble down here, and they'll pull him out?
I think he's got two years at the most. I think he has two years, and he's going to be fired.
That's been the rumor about town, that McAlister was down here for two years, and once he finished his job he was going to go back. I'd never heard anybody explain to me what they thought that job was to do, really.
He's had me from the word go, in the first meeting we had. He called all
the so-called executives and officers. And I wasn't even an officer; [unclear] [word of disgust]didn't get out of it.
And see, old Paddy Ross, he's sitting around, and he's telling us what
to do and what not to do. I think I did the job that they pushed me
into, but I wanted to get out of it. And this is the extent, that he got
us all together, and this was his program. I could have punched it full
of holes then if I'd been sitting across the bargaining table with him.
I've always been idiot enough to take on the biggest one. That's the one
it's easiest to punch the holes in. "The bigger they are, the harder
they fall" and that, still a true saying.
As Davy Crockett said, "Know your rights and go ahead [unclear]
I think the very fact that Alcoa did divest themselves. . . . I never like to get into church politics, but I have to agree, I cannot rebut the statement, and this is Rev. Hunter. My opinion was, Alcoa found them a patsy.
How?
You know, they both came to Badin about the same time. I'm not a Presbyterian; I'm not a Baptist; I'm a member of the Methodist Church, which is a carry-over from the Lutheran, which I was going when I was thirteen years old. But how he stays in this church, I fail to see, with the resentment of the people against him. He's done a good job selling the people in his church. The woman next door came one night. I said, "You're a good neighbor of mine, and I will not get into an argument with you. I am opposed to it. I will sign no petition because I do not, and my opinion from '57 has not changed, and I prefer that we just drop it."
Oh, Rev. Hunter's trying to get people to incorporate, is that it?
I wouldn't be surprised.
Not now, no. This would accomplish what they're after, in my opinion.
You know how I think they respond to that. They say, "Well, people have become accustomed to Alcoa taking care of them, and they don't take care of themselves now, and I will do for the people what they will do for themselves. I'll meet them halfway." I've heard McAlister say that to me, that that's the policy that he professes.
I think you're right. That's my sentiment.
The thing is, though, that that sounds like a real smooth statement, but what's beyond that is that they have plans for the future where they want to cut their ties.
Because they do not want this added expenditure. They saw it coming almost twenty-five years ago, '57. And I think, frankly, at that point, had Alcoa's top management attitude about . . .
. . .gets on your property taxes. It's beginning to squeeze me, as well
as everybody else. And you've got the county water system instead of
having the forerunner. [unclear]
But this is part of the thing that McAlister came here to do. And I think tearing down all the buildings was just to get rid of the. . . . Of course, they ought to have been off the tax books years ago. Vacant property has got a different evaluation from buildings, whatever the repair status is or lack of repair. And this is the one thing he hasn't accomplished yet.
To tear down the buildings. Well, I think that is very interesting.
And I tell you, in all fairness to the man, within two years he's going to accomplish it, either through Hunter. . . . He's misguided, he's. . .
That's going to be because the people who own them are going to die in
the next two years. That's why. It's a test of wills.
He only scratched the surface of knowing the people in Badin and the real history behind the formation of the local union. It had a hell of an amount [to do] with what Badin is today. The people in the Alcoa plant.
I think those buildings are very symbolic to me, because it is like the people's attempt to hold on to something that was here. They have meaning because people want. . . . Even if they're crumbling and falling down. You know, Vera Mason keeps those things in her store; she doesn't want to take them out. And the three sisters who own that pharmacy have got that marble top on it, and they've got that little sign for the ice cream cones still up there. They want to keep something there that is what Badin used to be.
But you know, I understand that they've weakened and they've sold. Just
in the past week. You're right, but there's a general reluctance in us
all, and that's one of the things I learned: don't change the status
quo. If
That's the way I look at it.
. . . I would certainly like to be clued in as to what made this town. It
was the people that made this local union. And there were management
people that were behind us over 100 percent.
It was part of local management behind you?
They were behind it, because they recognized. . . . There was a little
bit of selfish thing. [unclear]
Let me just try this theory out on you and see how you think of it. What impresses me is how much Alcoa seems a part of the natural setting, an institution almost as permanent as the river there. Of course, the river is the reason why Alcoa came, and so they sit side by side, again, another image to me that is very meaningful. That both of these institutions are things that almost determine the people's psyches, the organic relationship of what governs this area, the two of those things together. And the river was there first, and the industry came because of the river, and then the people came to both of those places that were both there. Most of the people who came had some attachment, and the industry did not disturb their land. They could maintain an attachment to land. As you say, you have a garden, and you fight your beetles in your garden, and you try to get your planting when it doesn't rain. But nonetheless, you've still been involved with working in this heavy industrial development, and both of these things kind of govern your existence, an attachment to land, also an attachment to this industry. And it's been a good industry which has given people good wages with benefits, has accepted the presence of a union, has worked along with it in a way that's benefitted both them and the workers. So it's been kind of a. . . .
A joint effort.
A joint effort and a group of forces that came together in one place to make people in control of their lives, have enough money to live the kind of lives that they'd like to have, while at the same time not disturbing their atmosphere, their environment, and not disturbing their ties to their land and their ability to be able to garden and to go fishing, to go swimming, to go hunting, perhaps, in the mountains. It's accommodated both, perhaps, the rural traditions in which they grew up and also the need to be in the present-day moneyed economy. And the union, of course, is one of the significant features in that, but it's also that Alcoa has become sort of a permanent part of people's psyches here. It's almost as natural as the river.
Yes, it is. I have tried in my own mind to analyze that relationship
through the years, and I think perhaps when I interrupted and said it's
a joint effort. . . . And this probably goes back to management, perhaps
not plant manager level but higher than that. But somewhere in the top
management leadership in Alcoa there's been this concept of good,
faithful employees being compensated. And if I had to say it bluntly,
one thing that the union can be proud of is that we nudged them along a
little faster than they probably would come. There has been—and this has
to be true—a wonderful relationship between plant management in Badin
and the local union officers. I think the good Lord has acted to send
their managers, and the good Lord has let the rank and file elect the
person for the time. I can take that list and almost spell that out.
There was a time when the hard-nosed person came along, needed in that
area. Maybe the good Lord waved a stick, and the people said, "Well,
we'd better get. . . ." And then there was a time when a pacifist
attitude, "Just take it easy for a while." And he came along after I
did. But the summary, I think, is we were both headed the same
direction, as far as the employees of Alcoa. We used different
tactics.our side of the table. And there's
times in meetings that I've been with Alcoa management, in grievance
meetings and just discussion of problems in the plant, that you couldn't
tell who was on what side of the table. And this is unique within
itself. The nature of bargaining started changing in the early fifties,
very soon after I entered office. They were down to earth, fact for
fact, not pounding on the table and this sort of thing. It changed. And
in the period before then, that's the only way you got through: beat on
the table. And that's not the way to get attention. And if Badin is
unique, that's the people. It's not the people who represented them. I
didn't have any part of it; I had the people behind me, the majority of
the people, in everything I attempted, and I think that's been true
overall. That's why I say we were headed the same direction. We used
different tactics, went a different route, to get there, to accomplish
it. I think that's why probably somewhere you have to knit that effort
together, the
Would you say that the company or management wasn't exactly aggressive in its approach to improving the conditions of workers, but that they were responsive?
They've been responsive all through the years.
Which is really different from a lot of other companies.
And the '56 strike. Now it wasn't true in 1949, the ten-week job. That
was a bellwether, no question about that. It was taking place
everywhere, not just in Badin, but every industry had within a two-year
period the same battle. In '56 there was the attitude to avert a strike,
on the local level. But top management had a different attitude. And
here the personnel department at the Pittsburgh level who packed up and
went home. Maybe Spike Turner didn't know that was going on; this is a
decision they made by themselves. We'll never know what happened the
next day. But there's [unclear]their problem.
You know, another thing McAlister said to me that time when I talked to him, he said that again, "People in Badin come to me and they say, "Well, why don't you hire my son?" "Why don't you hire my grandson?" "I've got this niece here who needs a job." " And he says he doesn't like to do that because that's still the paternal, family system. And he wants to get away from that, because this isn't a company town, and Alcoa doesn't go along those paternal ways. Is that another way in which you think it's a kind of a front for cutting the ties with this town and divesting itself of responsibility?
It's a front, because that kind of a paternal attitude, that concept, has
been out of date for at least twenty years, as far as it applied to
Badin, to my knowledge. Maybe the managements in the Badin plant used it
as a hedge to divert employees away. They diverted it through the local
union. It might have been that they wanted less confusion, less people
to have to deal with, and this going through. I think, in my opinion, he
should be less concerned, or anybody in the plant, about any attitude
such as that. That's way down
Does it have anything to do with who made up the ranks of management? Where do they come from? Were they part of the community?
No works manager that's ever been here came out of the local plant. Every one channeled out of the Pittsburgh office. I can understand it, but I can see perhaps. . . . This is probably as sad as (probably says?) what I said about a ten-year plan, a ten-year program. Every single man who's on the way up goes into the Pittsburgh office, and he spends a minimum of a year, and more times than not two years, in the Pittsburgh office before he's sent out as a works manager. Why, if he's got the ability? Are you indoctrinating?
Huh? This is a good question.
Yes, they sure are.
Are you indoctrinating him? If you agree that yes, you are, now what
direction are you indoctrinating? Which direction did it take: to
implement the policy that's been in existence for thirty years, or to
change it? Did it take that long to spell it out to him? Can he read
writing, as the saying goes? But in every single case, the management
person goes through that Pittsburgh office. Perhaps this is it: maybe
they don't trust their own judgment. Well. . . .
Maybe it's because they really want to impress on that person, "You're spending two years here getting ready for what your next job is, and you damn better well do what we". . .
But I think it's fairly subtle. I mean it's a socialization process, to some extent.
Well-l-l-l . . .
To pick a man up out of a plant, like the Badin plant. And it's happened.
There was one man that went there and he stayed there two years, and
they sent him out to Wanatchee [unclear]
Thinking back to what you were saying about your policies and restructuring the lines of [progression], and the integration problems you had to deal with during the fifties, it reminds me of the—I guess it was settled out of court—charges that Clyde Cook brought against Alcoa for the back wages that were paid to people who had been discriminated against. What kind of an effect did that have?
None. Clyde Cook mentioned. . . . I'm mentioned in that suit, and I wasn't even a union member myself at that point. I could not have been a union officer; I wasn't even a union member at this point.
You mean he claimed that you were a union officer?
I checked the record myself. The president asked me to go because I knew more about what that old record was than anybody else. And Clyde Cook was never a union member.
He was never a union member?
Not according to the card records, and this was supplied by the management.
But his charges or whatever are not filed through the union; they're
That was a class action, is the right word.
After he brought charges, then other people joined in the suit, and he's got that list of 200 . . .
And you know, I do not to this day know what the disposition of that case was? I think Alcoa paid him off just to keep from going any further with it, and I think this was by agreement.
Out of court, yes.
I can't prove it, but it seemed to me that that's where it should have gone. I could have gotten involved, but there was no point, and I had nothing to submit either way, against him. But I could have said what our records showed. Had the judge subpoenaed them, we'd have had to take them, but otherwise, unh-uh. We don't let them look at our records any more than we let. . . . Now some records are public knowledge, such as the recording secretary's. There's nothing secret about that. But that's as far as it goes. How we implemented those actions is something else; that's internal work. But I have the opinion that Clyde was an opportunist at that point. I'm saying it frankly. He was used by other people to make this action.
He was used by other people?
Yes. That's my feeling.
Why, because his. . .
He did not have a case. He was not a union member. He never applied. Now
whatever Floyd Culp might have told him as department head in the
construction department. . . . But what Clyde says he's telling— he's
still alive, and he didn't subpoena him or even mention him—that he was
promised a brickmason's job. There's nothing in the record that the job
was
END OF INTERVIEW