A union’s meaning lies in its capacity to turn around personal frustration beyond the individual to a larger commitment to the collective good. Their hands slew the steers and linked sausages stretching to infinity. The story of this union is visceral, written by the men and women of humid gut shanties and stinking tank rooms. The pamphlet describes the role and purpose of the union: Orear’s passion about the dire workplace conditions packinghouse workers faced and the hopes that stirred them was captured in a 1968 pamphlet that he wrote with Stephen Diamond to mark the 25 th anniversary of the founding convention of the United Packinghouse Food and Allied Workers Union. “I’m one of those that is giving leadership to the working force that’s going into the union….And it’s going on all over the country. “It was a wonderful time for me because I was this young fella and radical ideas are coming nowadays, I feel like I’m on the cusp,” he said in a 2008 interview on WBEZ. He was given the job, because he was one of the activists who could spell, he explained years later to me with a chuckle. plant began trying to unionize in the mid- 1930s, one of Orear’s first tasks in the movement was to become an editor of the Armour Cleaver, a weekly handbill for the union drive. People don’t know his name,” says Larry Spivack, president of the Illinois Labor History Society and regional director for AFSCME Council 31. It was always about other peoples’ contributions. “He was the agent of change for some of the most important things in American and labor history but it was never about him. A co-founder of Illinois Labor History Society, he fought to preserve the places, struggles and words that have marked workers’ march towards progress. The experience also became a doorway for Orear into a lifetime of labor activism, and ultimately a place as a spokesman and guardian of labor history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |