[Vision2020] A Wisconsin Labor Family Memoir

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Greetings:

The internet is an amazing medium.  My writings draw comments from all around the world.  

Some young Iraqi Kurdish journalists called me one morning and asked me about the freedom of the will.  I think I made a mistake in advising them that for their political situation it was free action (not having unnecessary physical or legal barriers to their political freedom) rather than free will that should be their concern.  A person has no free action if there are bound by a chain head to foot and gagged, but if free will exists (a power truly our own and no one else's) then that person is still free in that sense.  These young Kurds were only interested in the latter and did not want to hear any fancy distinctions.

Well anyway, this fellow e-mailed me in response to my column on public unions, and I have his permission to reprint this eloquent labor family memoir.  It makes the argument far better than any intellectual or statistical rant that I can make.

Labor Solidarity Forever!

Nick

A WISCONSIN LABOR FAMILY MEMOIR

By Chris Schmidt

The past few days have been a highly charged and emotional time in Wisconsin.  I flew to Madison from Florida to take part in the organized labor rally around our Capitol on Friday in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s budget bill that effectively takes all teeth out of almost all public employee unions.  I faced a significant amount of criticism and disapproval for traveling so far for an organization and institution that I’ve been insultingly told by others is irrelevant and just plain wrong.  I’m glad I came to Madison, am leaving with a warm heart and sense of fulfillment, and hope to return again very soon.

My passion for organized labor is quite intense.  My grandmother’s family came to this country in the early part of the 20th century from Greece.  Like most eastern European immigrants of the time, her family was the tired, the weary, the poor, and the huddled masses… and was also largely ignorant of the workings of an unregulated industrial free market economy.  My grandmother’s (or as we called her, “yia yia” - the Greek word for grandmother) father held a series of unregulated industrial jobs in Sheboygan, working hard and long hours to support his wife and their seven children who survived infancy.  He passed away from heart failure at a relatively young age in the 1930’s, leaving his family subject to the charitable whims of a laissez-faire world, their survival reliant on the charity of others and a very minimal state stipend (this was pre-New Deal and pre-Social Security). 

My great-grandfather’s early death can largely be attributed to working in an unsafe paint factory that operated seeking only profit and disregarding all else.  He breathed in toxic fumes for long hours day in and day out and this, in not a long amount of time, did him in.  Being the oldest girl, after her father passed away yia yia was forced to leave public school after the 8th grade to help care for her younger siblings, the youngest of whom was 9 at the time.  My grandmother’s childhood, like many of her generation, and unfortunately, like many of today’s generation, was not one of comfort or whimsicality. 
 
After my yia yia met and married my grandfather (“papou”, the Greek word for grandfather) she held a few factory jobs throughout Milwaukee, eventually gaining employment at the American Motors plant in town.  Employment at the American Motors plant also came with membership in the United Auto Workers, and my yia yia was introduced to organized labor.  My grandfather, who also had no high school diploma (and whose own family was bankrupted after having lost their small pool hall/candy store business in the Great Depression) obtained a factory job at International Harvester, also a union company.  

With two union incomes, my grandparents experienced economic stability for the first time in their lives, and began to live their version of the American dream.  They were able to purchase a house in Milwaukee, raise three daughters, and have my grandfather’s brother and father live with them as well.  Two union incomes were able to lift these two people out of squalor, and allow them to provide a dignified life for themselves, their three daughters, and two additional family members.  My grandparents worked for the rest of their lives in these union factories, and enjoyed a respectable income throughout the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. 
 
These benefits did not come without sacrifice, however.  Both my grandfather and grandmother labored intensely hard at their jobs, coming home exhausted and often injured.  Because they were in a union, however, on the job injuries were taken care of, their jobs were guaranteed to be waiting for them when they recovered, and appropriate medical treatment was assured.  These hard and laborious working positions also had long term effects on my yia yia and papou’s bodies.  

My yia yia worked both sewing car upholstery, and installing floor panels at American Motors, leaving her, by the age of 60, essentially deaf and reliant upon hearing aids to hear anything.  She also suffered, as a result of her job, arthritis in both her hands and feet so debilitating that her toes would curl over each other - converging in a point at the end of her foot, and her hands so crippled she was unable to extend any of her fingers in a straight line, essentially making her extended hand look like a topographical map of a mountain range.  Her fingers were so deformed she had to cut her fingernails with a scissors because a regular clipper wouldn’t work.  Long hours of standing and lifting took a toll on her lower body as well, and her knees were disabled to such an extent she was unable to walk at the end of her working life beyond a slow hobble. 
 
Thankfully, the UAW had the foresight to see that these medical issues that resulted from factory work would be coming for their members, and my grandparents enjoyed excellent health care in her retirement.  They also had a respectable pension that allowed them to sell their house and move to a comfortable but humble condominium and live with dignity for their final ten years.  Entering a union was tantamount to entering the middle working class for these two first-generation Americans.  Without their union jobs they would have had a lower income, lower benefits, and an ending to their lives that likely mirrored the destitute poverty of the beginning. 
 
Because my mother was able to grow up in this working class family, she did not have to make the same sacrifices that my yia yia did as a child, and my mother was able to graduate high school and attend a vocational school to become a florist.  She worked for 20 years in flower shops, non-union jobs, that paid better than the minimum wage, but not really high enough to support a family and with quite meager benefits.  Instead, as in most families, my father was the primary breadwinner, bringing home a comfortable income and providing the normal employee benefits families need for life.  

My father worked as a supervisor at a refrigerator manufacturer and we lived a comfortable lifestyle.  Unfortunately, my mother’s middle adulthood somewhat mirrored my great grandmother’s, and when I was 8 my father was diagnosed with cancer and passed away about a year later, leaving my mother to raise me and my brother (4 at the time).  I have Chrons disease, and after my father’s COBRA policy expired, we were left to purchase health insurance on the free market.  No one would insure a pre-existing condition such as Chrons disease, however, and it was a very rough time for my family and my mother in particular. 
 
By the grace of God and her own hard work, my mother obtained employment as a secretary at a satellite office of the Wisconsin teacher’s labor union, and she was able to rejoin the ranks of the organized labor movement.  My mother works hard for her union job, is paid a living wage, and our family had once again been given the security of respectable income, health insurance, and a stable retirement plan.  Our family’s relatively short jaunt into the non-union labor sector resulted in catastrophic economic instability, and, thankfully, organized labor welcomed my family back with open arms.  

My mother has now been able to perform meaningful work helping, via Wisconsin’s teachers, all of the public school children of Wisconsin.  She and my step-father have appropriate healthcare for maladies that come with advancing age and a retirement plan to give them security when they are too old to work.   My brother and I were able to have healthy, stable, and well-balanced childhoods, and obtain educations and careers in the arts and law.  I have every confidence that my great-grandparents from Greece would be astounded if they could see the economic advancements their progeny have made, and those advancements have only been possible through union organizing and labor. 
 
I am currently a healthy young adult, work in the legal information industry, and am a licensed attorney in the state of Wisconsin.  I marched this weekend to say thank you to organized labor, because without it, I would have none of the advantages and benefits I now enjoy.  I also marched to honor the hard work of my mother, and of my grandparents.  I know that my grandparents are in heaven, and are smiling down with pride at both me and my brother for marching for the rights that they stood up for.  May the memory of my yia yia and papou be eternal and the rights that they worked and sacrificed for not disappear, fade away, or be ripped apart, but rather be enjoyed in solidarity by future generations to come.