Eddie Coppedge and Oscar Pretlow, two of the men who helped lead the USWA unionization effort, talking union on the company gate in 1978.
Today President Obama traveled to Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia to make the point that the sequester will hurt real people, and cost real jobs.
Yet nowhere in the media coverage did I see mention of the workers' union, USWA Local 8888 - - or it's storied history.
The 19,000 welders, painters, inspectors, mechanics and other who formed a union with the Steelworkers in 1978 at the Newport News shipyard overthrew a company-controlled union that had been in place for nearly forty years. They achieved this as part of a workforce that was half white, half black, and increasingly female. Through a union, they sought economic security in deeply insecure times. The Civil Rights movement greased the wheels of their victory. Their insurgency had been started up by four African-American men who were dissatisfied with the pace of ending discrimination at the shipyard under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It was driven home by increasing numbers of African-American and female workers who believed they should have an equal access to the best jobs in the shipyard and who turned to the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) to help them secure that right.
Tenneco, Inc - - the conglomerate that had owned the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock company for ten years - - refused to honor the workers election victory. But the workers did not wait for the law to slowly churn out justice. They struck their Navy contractor employer for 82 days in order to force the company to recognize their union, even as the governor’s guardsmen met them with dogs on the picket lines and the city police stormed the union hall, beating strikers with abandon.
The photo at the top of this blog shows one of the workers being beaten up by the local police in 1979 during the strike- - the officer in the middle is the chief of police.
USWA Local 8888 went on to build a mixed-race, mixed-gender local union that mobilized its members to shake up local and state politics, and which remains an active progressive presence today.
And in the event that there is a sequester, the Newport News workers will have a union to help them make sure that any layoffs or cuts are done fairly. Cold comfort, perhaps, but they are in a lot better situation than the millions of workers who will be hit who do not have a union.
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