Would you cross a picket line?

No theoretical issue here. I had this question land in my lap 6 months after college while working at the Detroit News, way back in '95.

The answer now is the same as it was then: No, you do not cross.

 

But you had resumes out, right?

Did you get flack for that?

 

Did not. Silly me, I believed we could all get along.

Then, that last night, before they shut off the networks an hour before the planned walk out (Macs dead at 5, walked at 6), I kinda thought maybe I should dust off some resumes.

First night on the line was surreal.

Next day, woke up and wondered what the hell I was going to do.

Decided to go to NWI (that's northwest Indiana) to get help from one of my best pals to update the portfolio.

And my bosses at the Detroit News were very good to me. My eventual boss in Seattle called Detroit, wondered who might be available to cherry pick. My DetNews managers put us in touch and I moved west for three years.

I stuck it out as long as I could. Struck in June, started in Seattle in August. Ain't long but I'd only been working a little longer than I was holding a picket sign.

 

So no one cares that you leave, as long as you don't cross that line?

 

They did not care.

Or, better said, they were not bothered that I left when compared to crossing.

I'd like to think they would have liked for me to have stayed. But no, they didn't hold it against me for going.

 

shockey -- oh, I get what you're saying, for sure. I just wrote someone a PM that basically said, it's not like I had a choice in this. It's not as though I had to walk the difficult path that you did to find my personal truth about unions.

(And by the way, as hardline as I am about organized labor, I find it admirable, if also a little sad, that you're still harboring guilt about your four days crossing 17 years ago -- hell, another 17 years of penance, and even my dad might forgive you.)

But you're right, this has always been a black-and-white issue for our family, and that's made it easy for me to see it that way. When you're told something from the time you can first understand its meaning -- even before you can really understand the stakes of it -- it just becomes gospel to you.

Like I said before, looking through the hoarfrost of my school bus window at my parents stamping their feet to keep the blood flowing, I couldn't really comprehend what they were doing, exactly. But I knew that it must have been important -- otherwise, they'd just go inside and get warm.

Which brings me to shotty's question. (And the feeling is mutual, by the way.)

In a lot of ways, Michael's given you my answer already.

Was that strike the easiest time of our lives? No. It was hard on all of us. But with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that our family's eventual success was born that winter. Because of that strike -- and because it held, because the union won -- my parents were able to have secure, well-paying jobs with good benefits and pensions that allowed us to become the classic immigrant success story.

If that strike didn't hold, because people like my parents had crossed, we would have been far worse off in the long term. As crappy as that winter was, it was our investment, as a family, in our new future in our new country.

You know, just thinking about it now, I'm not sure my parents have any idea what kind of effect that strike had on me. I just know that in my memories and in my heart, I believe that winter made us.

And I would say that, ultimately, more families have been made by unions than have been hurt by them. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure strikes have torn families apart. The history of organized labor is littered with disasters. But it wasn't that way for us; that wasn't what I saw through that school bus window.

I really don't see how I could have come out any other way.

 

Hey, that's as good an answer as anyone could ask for. I can appreciate that.

 

Solidarity, my brother.

 

At my last stop up north, the shop I worked at came close to striking.
And I can honestly say I don't know what I would have done. Living paycheck to paycheck tended to weigh heavily on my mind. I'd like to say I would have walked the line, but when push came to shove, I don;t know what I would have done.
Parents were Republican/pro-business, uncles were Democrats/pro-labor. I tend to take after my uncles.

 

That's what I meant. Thanks for answering.

 

What you have to keep in mind is that even if you don't belong to a union, or have never belonged to a union, or disagree with the whole concept, what is undeniable is that virtually every right you have as a worker, conveyed the the government, is because of unions. Without them there is no minimum wage, no child labor laws, etc. Even if you don't belong, or have never belonged, you have benefited.

 

I was with the Free Press during the strike mentioned in the Times article above. I was 54 and pretty much at the peak of my career. After being on strike for several weeks and with no progress in sight, I had to ask myself: "I am a journalist or am I a Unionist?"
I grew up in Texas where there were virtually no unions and the Free Press was the only place I ever worked where you had to belong to the union . . . I had little trouble answering the question...I was a journalist first and I crossed the picket line.

Five years later, I retired at age 59 and the taste of that strike has been a foul one in my mouth ever since