My Own Story

I became a father at a very young age and I married at age 17. In order to support my family I had to leave school and find a job. I worked at a car wash for minimum wage for a year before finding a better paying job (.50 an hour more) at a bottling plant as a forklift driver. I was told by everyone I knew that since I had no high school diploma or a college education, that's probably the highest level of employment I'd ever be able to get.

I had no time to go back to school at that point in my life, I had a family to support. I worked along side of older men who told me they had been working in that bottling plant for 20 and 30 years. I was amazed that they had been there all that time yet they were being paid just slightly more than I was at age 17! I simply would not accept the notion that I would be a lifer in that bottling plant. No way! But what could I do without the college education that I was told I needed as the key to success in life?

Well, I went on to many wonderful careers. And I did so through believing in myself and amassing my own education through the circumstances I lived through as I took the necessary steps to better my own life. I worked at that bottling plant for six years. Six years of very hard physical labor. But it wasn't mindless labor because I was always thinking of ideas and ways I could better myself.

I believe the key to my eventual success was that I was always thinking and trying to imagine what I could do with what I had and the circumstances I was in to make my life better. In my situation way back then it came in very small increments. One of the first things I noticed at the bottling plant when I started was the uneven pay scale amongst all the laborers. I could see that some of the men often called in sick, arrived late for work, came back late for lunch, etc. And I noticed there were little cliques amongst the employees but I never got involved with any of that.

I never missed a day's work, I always showed up on time and I always did what I was told. But when raise time came every year I noticed that I and a few others were always bypassed and the less efficient workers seemed always to get a pay raise. I soon found out why. That certain clique of men who always got the pay raises were on the foreman's bowling team and were members of his hunting lodge. Many of them spent their weekends out at the foreman's house brown-nosing him, doing personal chores like painting his house, raking his leaves, etc.

I was young and I had long hair. The foreman didn't like "hippies", as I was told - never mind the fact that I was the best worker in the plant. I had long hair and I didn't bowl or hunt and I didn't have my nose up his ass. So I began to weigh out my options. I was doing back-breaking physical labor for a boss who didn't even appreciate it and I was being underpaid. I could quit but what other jobs could I get? I'd basically be trading one minimum wage job off for another.

I soon became aware that the Coca-Cola bottling plant in the next city me was essentially the same type of bottling plant that I was working in, yet their employees were getting approximately 30% more pay across the board for the same duties I and my co-workers were doing. The difference, I was told, was that the Coca-Cola plant was a Union plant represented by the Teamsters Union. At age 17 I had no idea what a Union was or why I should want to be in one. But on my own spare time I learned.

I eventually discovered how and why Unions became a part of the American work force and the role they played in assuring equal pay and fair labor practices for all working people especially during the era of the early part of the 20th century. I realized that unfair labor practices were happening at my place of employment and there wasn't a thing I could do about it because the work force at the bottling plant wasn't represented by a bargaining force.

The rules were simple at the bottling plant. You work under the unfair rules of Terry, the foreman or you quit. Terry, the foreman was the King. He was also a first class asshole. We were his Subjects and he had his favorites, his brown-nosers. And his brown-nosers were not rated by merit of their job performance but by their spineless ass kissing. And the rest of us were discriminated against by not getting pay raises and being made to do the most menial undesirable jobs because we simply only wanted to do our day's work and then go home to our families without becoming involved with the Terry's bowling league and hunting lodge.

So, I began stopping off at the library each evening after work and studied up on labor laws and labor Unions. Over the course of the next year I learned that we, as a workforce of the bottling plant could choose to be represented by a Labor Union. In our case, and due to the nature of the industry of the bottling plant, the Union that would represent us would be the local branch of The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America.

The Union would provide us with bargaining power and insure all the employees of certain things that didn't exist at the bottling plant, like fair treatment to all employees and pay raises based on merit and seniority, not ass kissing and boot-licking. It all sounded great to me and I wanted to do all I could to get that bottling plant unionized. But the fact of the matter was I would soon find out that organizing a Labor Union single handedly would prove much more difficult than I had ever imagined.

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