[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 165 (Friday, November 19, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2481]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                COURAGE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 18, 1999

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I am inserting this statement regarding my 
constituent, Gordon D. Ladd, which shows the courage and perseverance 
he displayed in organizing the first union in northern Vermont in the 
1940s, into the Congressional Record as I believe the views of this 
person will benefit my colleagues.

  Gordon D. Ladd--First President of IAM Lodge in Derby Line Vermont 
              Organizing A Union in Vermont in the 1940's

       In 1943 I requested an interview with the superintendent of 
     management at Butterfield Corporation in Derby Line Vermont 
     to request a wage increase and my request was denied 
     emphatically. I informed him that I would return.
       I met a friend of mine who used to be a coach, a hockey 
     coach, and he had relatives in the plant. This guy I met, 
     Bert, you could call him, he was a machinist for the railroad 
     in Island Pond, and he belonged to the machinist's union. So 
     he asked if we had a union up there and what the wages were. 
     We were good friends, he was coach for a long time, but 
     anyway, I told him that wages were very low at my workplace, 
     and he said ``Well, do you think they would be interested in 
     the union?''. I said ``Well, yeah I'll talk to a few.'' So, I 
     did.
       When I went up to see the boss that first time he asked me 
     what I was making. I told him ``65 cents an hour''. I had 
     started at 45 cents and worked three years--I got a 10 cent 
     raise each year. And it was 65 cents, and he, ah, he's a 
     rough little character, he slammed his fists down on his desk 
     and he says ``by god,'' he says, ``that's the highest we will 
     ever pay at this plant''. So then I got up and said ``We'll 
     see about that, and I'll be back.''
       So now I went to the shop, talked to several guys, they 
     were all interested, all enthused about it, and said they 
     would support a union. So then I get back to Burt at Island 
     Pond, and told him to send us up a representative. It was 
     then less than a week and the Machinist representative had 
     arrived from Albany, New York. And he talked to me, he came 
     to the house a few times, and then we called a meeting, and, 
     more and more, one meeting after another, at first it was a 
     small amount, a few men, but then they got bigger and bigger 
     crowds.
       Management of course fought us tooth and nail. Well, one 
     thing I can remember in particular. The general foreman, he 
     was under the superintendent, he was putting something on the 
     union representative's car, on the front end of it, come to 
     find out, spikes on a rope. And he was seen doing that, and 
     we called him on it, but he denied it of course. You see they 
     hit just right and they could blow the tires.
       They did little annoying things. They'd send us one of 
     these, what we'd call suckers down, always coming down and 
     talking to me, trying to find out things, you know. I just 
     told them I knew nothing. Another one of these 
     superintendents came down one day and says ``We know you're 
     the head of the union,'' and I said ``I've got a perfectly 
     good right to according to the laws''. And he didn't have too 
     much more to say.
       We also learned that the company had hired an electrician 
     for the purpose of organizing against the union, see he was a 
     company plant. So he got up and threw a scare, said that if 
     we had a union we would lose our bonus, a 10% bonus every six 
     months. So that killed the first drive right there, see. And 
     they tried every little trick, they sent the people down that 
     I knew, they'd come down and fish around, try to get 
     information from me. Then they called me, offered me 10 cents 
     an hour more, if I'd stop the union organizing. ``We'll give 
     you 10 cents an hour raise, but I want you to keep it quiet, 
     I don't want you to tell anybody.'' Then they'd say, ``If you 
     tell me the guys that are dissatisfied in the shop, give me 
     their names, we'd give them 15 cents an hour more.'' And I 
     said ``Just a minute, if everybody gets 15 cents and hour 
     we'll go along with it, but other than that,'' I said, ``no 
     way''. You can pick out a few, that would just start trouble.
       So then we call the meeting, the machinist's union, and we 
     get a hall and call the meeting, and that was the one where 
     we lost the election the first time.
       I don't remember the exact vote total but it was close. But 
     then comes the good part. We later learned that the company 
     sent down foremen and group leaders and had them vote too. 
     But the fact is they shouldn't have been able to vote because 
     they were management. They even sent down 3 or 4 women down 
     from the office to vote, and the vote was for production 
     workers and these were office workers. They shouldn't have 
     been able to vote either but management wanted more to go in 
     the ballot box.
       So we petitioned for another election. And once again 
     during the vote the company starting sending down foremen and 
     group leaders to vote. But this time our union representative 
     said no way. The Labor Board Representative was there and we 
     challenged the right of these supervisory men to vote. The 
     Board Representative put those votes, I think there were 26 
     of them, in a special envelope. This time we won the election 
     by a pretty good margin. That was in 1944.
       Another little thing here. I was in a barber shop and the 
     big shot manager from the venier mill came in. My barber was 
     my landlord, we were renting the house, and he asked me 
     something about the union. And this management guy from the 
     mill, he says ``That union'' and he used a few cuss-words 
     ``won't last six months!'' Well it's a 55 year later and the 
     union's still there. But the funny part is, in about a year 
     and a half, they plopped the union in at the venier mill.
       Well, the main thing at my plant was wages, because plants 
     in the state, we checked around a little bit and some of the 
     plants were paying, at that time, double what we were 
     getting. We checked around, because some of the guys, 
     neighbors in Newport were working down in the Springfield 
     machine shops, at places like Jones-Lampson. When we heard 
     what they were getting, we thought ``Well, we should be 
     getting about the same.''
       I was elected as the first president of the union lodge in 
     1944 and served for seven years. We did pretty good with 
     improving wages and getting benefits--we got health 
     insurance, a pension plan. I've collected from the pension 
     plan for 19 years now, and we got pretty good medical. We 
     didn't have either before the union. It definitely pays to be 
     union.

     

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