Into the Factory
January 1972, Jon joined fellow activists organizing in industrial Milwaukee. He set his sights on the American Motors Corporation (AMC), knowing that the UAW local there had forged a militant history. Both AMC Local 75 in Milwaukee and Local 72 in Kenosha were outliers in the UAW and had successfully fought for decades to maintain a unique tripartite of rights: 1. The right to strike over all grievances; 2. 100% voluntary overtime; and 3. One steward for every 35 workers; terms that surpassed any contract in the Big 3 (GM, Ford, and Chrysler.)
May 1972, Jon landed a coveted job on American Motor’s assembly line. For the next thirteen years, motivated by a vision of revolutionary change, Jon embarked on a path of class struggle, fighting for the rights of working people and justice for women and people of color. Jon not only championed the day-to-day fight for economic survival and fair treatment, but simultaneously agitated for important political struggles that educated workers as to the class vs. class nature of the capitalist system.
Jon’s first months on the line unveiled three important lessons. First: the need to establish himself as a leader and take-no-shit union militant. When Jon walked off the line after being denied his break, the supervisor fired him; moments later, Jon’s steward instructed him to return to his job. Out of the box, Jon gained the respect of his fellow workers and set his sights on becoming a frontline steward.
Two: when management, in cahoots with the local union president, scheduled Saturday overtime, Jon learned to harness spontaneous anger. He xeroxed contractual provisions that provided for voluntary overtime and got word out. Spontaneous resistance jumped off, with mass refusals to report on Saturday. Management cancelled overtime, educating young workers, of which there were hundreds, to the awesome, exhilarating power of collective action.
Three: while spontaneous solidarity succeeded against forced overtime, organization was key. Jon pulled together the Fight Back Caucus of roughly a dozen, mostly young vets, workers of color, and women. Fight Back began to meet and make collective decisions on how to organize.
AMC sales grew hot, leading management to announce a line speed-up (with no additional hires). Fight Back issued its first flier at the plant gates, sparking mass, organized resistance. Senior workers taught younger workers how to ride the line (only work at a contractual ‘normal pace’.) Refusing to work at an excessive speed, workers filled repair stations and the roof with half-built car bodies, forcing management to retreat and hire additional workers.
Word circulated that management, in collaboration with the local president, planned to fire Jon. April 1973, top management, in cahoots with the FBI, orchestrated Jon’s discharge. Senior workers counseled Jon to reject arbitration and rely on the membership to vote to strike to secure his rehiring. When the membership meeting convened, hundreds attended to support the motion to schedule a strike vote. Despite Jon rallying broad support, the union president falsely claimed the hand-counter had broken and ruled Jon had lost the voice vote.
1973 Discharge
Jon filed an unfair labor practice charge at the NLRB. The NRLB judge raked AMC over the coals, blasting the AMC’s campaign to malign and discharge Jon as McCarthy-like and ordered his reinstatement. Determined to prevent Jon from being rehired, management, in collaboration with the FBI, pledged to never let Jon walk back into the AMC plant.
For the next two and a-half years, while the NLRB case crawled through the courts, Jon sought other factory work. In Milwaukee, however, dishonorable discharge from American Motors constituted the kiss of death, as if AMC and the FBI had pinned a scarlet letter on Jon – “Do not hire – troublemaker.” Jon’s only option for returning to the industrial working class was to scavenge the lowest rungs of the employment ladder: the unorganized, low-wage, super-exploitative tanneries.
Into the tannery, foundry, and steel fabrication plant
Pfister & Vogel (P&V) hired Jon on the spot, as he was the only white guy seeking work as a ‘tannery rat’ in a stinking, maggot-infested tannery. Jon forced himself to suck it up and learn about other distinct sectors of Milwaukee’s working class. He adopted the attitude that every experience, no matter how undesirable or physically difficult, imparted a deeper understanding of working-class conditions and how to organize the struggle for a more equitable system.
After a stint at P&V, Jon landed a job as a third shift welder of Mack Truck axles at Crucible Steel. Crucible resembled an antiquated Dickens-like foundry with clouds of silica dust clogging the air. Days short of making it off a ninety-day probation into the Steelworkers union, the FBI caught up with Jon and again orchestrated his discharge.
Knowing he had to outwit the FBI and the Milwaukee police department’s “Red Squad,” Jon searched for a union job that might offer some level of protection once off probation. Avoiding detection, Jon landed work at a turn-of-the-century steel fabrication plant Pressed Steel Tank (PST). FBI memos document that the Bureau notified PST of Jon’s employment, but after his probationary period. Jon had already joined the Steelworkers local, making it difficult for PST to fire him “without cause.”
Midway through employment at PST, where Jon unloaded red hot high-pressure steel tanks surrounded by asbestos particulates floating in the air, Jon ducked out of work to head north to the Menominee Reservation where the Menominee Warriors Society, composed largely of Vietnam Vets, had seized an abandoned abbey.
Armed and dug-in, the Warriors Society demanded that the abbey be turned into a medical facility of which there were none near the reservation. Surrounded by heavily armed, overtly racist Sheriffs who had blockaded the abbey, the situation was dire. Jon rallied support from his comrades in Milwaukee, who arrived to join the tribe’s march that broke the siege, leading to the abbey and surrounding land being sold to the tribe for $1.
Returning to PST, Jon pulled together a rank-and-file Unity caucus. Despite workers at PST not being steeped in a militant union history like AMC, and despite the weakness of the Steelworks local, Unity led a militant eight-week strike, which entailed sabotaging scab trucks, fighting to win back a striker’s repossessed car, and taking on the Steelworkers International to win strike benefits.