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Weir, Stan (audio interview #4 of 6)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This fourth of six interview sessions with Stan Weir was conducted some three months after the previous session. The interview was recorded in Weir's home in San Pedro. 3/3/1991
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- 2020-09-21
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- *** File: lhsweir12.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-6:28)... Weir discusses his immediate family and meeting his future wife, Mary, at a dance in 1946 when she in her senior year at Berkeley, where she was majoring in English Literature. He was working at Chevrolet, and looking for dances, he and a buddy crashed a Masonic dance. The first thing he saw was Mary in a red dress with a gold belt. He danced with her all night and tested her by talking about the sailor's union and '34 strike. He wanted to be sure that she wasn't anti-union and serious, because he was ready to marry. It turned out her family had a coal miner background. When Mary graduated, she moved in with him. They were married in April 1947 by a Justice of the Peace, who was the father of a shipmate. Mary's parents were divorced and her mother lived with them for a while and saw that Weir was serious and it was all right. The Workers Party recruited Mary. (6:28-13:10)... The wife of a shipyard machinist worked at the shipyard housing project on the Berkeley-Albany line. You had to be a veteran or work there to get in, so Mary got a job as a nursery school teacher. Weir's changing jobs didn't affect their married life because they had no children until 1953. He was never out of work. Jobs were plentiful, and he was young and had experience for his jobs. He was a painter and for a while a cab driver in Northern California. In LA he was a dairy worker, freight handler, industrial laundry driver. He got the freight job through the former captain of their high school basketball team who was a Molokai (the Russian, pacifist sect that lived in ELA until many emigrated to Mexico). Generally, he worked loading and unloading trucks, but sometimes in a rush they'd give him a semi with a 24-foot box to drive, for which he didn't even have a license. At one point he recalls being a member of four union locals. (13:10-19:53)... Weir changed jobs and went to work at Brookfield Farms, as an inside man working from midnight, running all machines and putting out loads for drivers. Then, through the union, he got the industrial laundry job. He became head of the bargaining committee, and was fired. Kim, Weir's first daughter, was born in 1953 in the middle of the laundry fracas. It was a terrible time for them, but they never discussed Weir's political activities. They had another child twenty-two months later while Weir was working at the Larchmont Safeway as a grocery clerk, member of the Retail Clerks, Local 660. At the first meeting they were told, if you get into any trouble, you'll be judged by your peers. They meant employer charges, so they were prepared for disciplinary action. Weir never knew anyone who took a grievance to the union. They worked it out with the powers in the store. (19:53-28:46)... Weir worked at Safeway and General Motors. The Teamsters were still following him and getting him fired, but there was friction between the Teamsters and Retail Clerks unions. Safeway wasn't intimidated. But Weir hated the Safeway job and took an offer to go back to GM. [He digresses and talks about the changing ethnic demographics of Hollywood, where some Blacks were living, and the eastside, which was becoming solidly Mexican.] Stan and Mary gave the house where they were living to Weir's mother, and they rented a place in Compton, four minutes from work. When he lost his job at GM during a slump in 1956, they moved back to San Francisco and he got a job painting. There was a wildcat strike against Reuther's contracts the week he was hired, but he knew he needed to shut up and listen and learn. He didn't like Los Angeles and liked San Francisco, where you could stand on the Embarcadero and drink coffee with friends on a sunny day. (28:46-30:53)... A socialist friend, who owned a real estate agency and integrated more Blacks into housing than anyone else, got the Weirs temporary housing in the Oakland Hills and then in Albany. In 1956 she helped them buy a seven-bedroom house in Oakland for $10K, with $1K down. He worked fixing up that house for two years, and when they moved to Berkeley, they sold it to Clinton Jenks, organizer for United Mine and Smelter Workers, who was featured in the film, Salt of the Earth. End of tape. *** File: lhsweir13.mp3 (0:00-4:40)... Together with the Black painter and carpenter who lived with them, the Weirs worked long and hard fixing up the seven-bedroom house they bought. They were the only White family in a Black neighborhood, and although they didn't experience any discrimination, their three year daughter did. So they moved to a mixed neighborhood of Asians, Blacks and Mexicans in Berkeley. Mary reduced her work to part time, went back to school, and got an M.A. at UC Berkeley in Early Childhood Education, and a doctorate at University of Illinois when they moved back there in the '60s. (4:40-9:10)... Blacks had been moving into North Oakland since 1942 and white flight was beginning to occur. Weir's Oakland neighbors, some of whom were longshoremen who owned their own homes, implored them to sell to a white buyer, so that the neighborhood wouldn't become all Black. They sold their house to Clinton Jenks, but when his teen-age children didn't want to change schools, Jenks sold it to Blacks. It was turned into a rooming house for community college students and was still there in 1991. (9:10-10:43)... Weir applied to become a longshoreman in 1958 and started working on the docks in June, 1959. He wanted a good job, doing something he knew and liked, and he was a skilled deck hand. This was the closest thing to going to sea, and it paid well and had good benefits. By this time, he describes himself as more conservative now. The Independent Socialist League (ISL, formerly Workers Party) had dissolved into the Socialist Party, and by 1957 he was out of organized politics. He couldn't be influenced by any radical party. (10:43-12:37)... Weir wasn't aware of major changes coming to the longshore industry. He didn't see it, and the leadership wasn't sounding an alarm. There was no Modernization and Mechanization (M & M) contract yet and only one automation contract and one automated ship, a Matson, on the whole coast. A hammerhead crane was required whenever containers were being moved, so there were three of them installed in 1958, at Alameda, Hawaii, and the local Matson dock. It was the beginning of containerization. (12:37-16:25)... The M & M [Mechanization and Modernization] contract was in negotiation in 1959; the term automation was dropped in favor of modernization. Weir was registered as a B man. They weren't allowed in the union and paid only maintenance and hiring fees for the union hall, not the assessments that A men paid. [Note: hiring hall fees and assessments combined were the "dues"]. The two tiered A & B system was voted down in 1957, so Bridges waited and then asked for just a couple of hundred, which soon expanded to over a thousand men. There were already B workers in Stockton for five years. The B men were segregated in the balcony at meetings and couldn't vote. (16:25-19:11)... Weir describes the two tiered classification in the ILWU. Although the B workers couldn't advance, they weren't worried about their status initially because they were told that it was just a form of probationary membership and they'd be classified as A workers in a year. Then, under the M & M contract, it seemed that control of recruiting was being taken away from the Locals and given to Bridge's top ILWU committee and the top committee of the Pacific Maritime Association, the owners' umbrella group. Within six months the B men saw that it would be longer than a year and urged action. At the executive level, a Bridges man proposed that the B men elect their own representatives, which immediately revealed who the B leaders were. When Weir and two others were elected, their records were immediately searched, and the two others, both of whom were Black, were fired in two months. (19:11-24:20)... Although 70 percent of the B workers had relatives with an A classification, no one stood up on the floor and protested their treatment. The men were backing them quietly but couldn't get in trouble directly. Four years later, they were still B men and Weir was their only rep. Local 10 had tried to bring them in in one year, but Bridges' executive board, the Coast committee prevented it. Bridges put out a flyer stated that as a Christmas present they would start taking the B workers into the ILWU in December 1962. The Local got ready to initiate 375 B men, not including Weir, and they were sworn in May, 1963. However, Bridges, who attended all Local meetings, took the floor tried to stop it. The secretary-treasurer told him that it had been done and signed off at PMA. Bridges reversed it, however, and those men were demoted back to B classification again. (24:20-31:02)... In an incident that Weir describes, Bridges called the motion to elect three reps for the B workers out of order and eliminated all elected jobs for B men. In Local 10, the standard operating method was to appoint an investigating committee to eliminate any bad B men. About 65 percent of the B men were Black and 90 percent of those who were fired were Black. End of tape. *** File: lhsweir14.mp3 (0:00-5:15)... Charges were filed against Weir for chiseling 13 1/2 hours. The Star Committee investigating committee sent him to the union records office to be cleared and come back. He had his hours book for four years that disproved the charge, but the union sign-in sheets to support the charge had disappeared. Weir begins to describe his firing, a discussion which continues in the next segment. (5:15-16:27)... Weir was fired, and afterwards accused of 23 1/2 hours chiseling and failing to pay dues timely eight times. At a later federal court trial the "star" group admitted meeting secretly and inventing secret ex post facto rules. New York attorney Burt Hall called it a bill of attainder. Not one Black A man defended the 82 who were fired.* They had come in during the war years and felt that they owed Bridges. Their B sons and nephews called them Uncle Toms. Weir believes that the whole B set up was tied in with the M & M contract and new technology becoming a reality. *Weir provides a long explanation of the loyalty of these Black workers to Bridges. (16:27-19:00)... Weir believes that he was fired because he was an elected leader. He was bringing more B men to the meetings than the number of A men who attended, even though they remained segregated. If 750 B men were to come in a full fledged members of the union, it would change the lines of power. (In fact, years later, former B men were running the local.) Bridges refused to let democracy take its course. Despite this situation, no Black organizations spoke out, not even The Sun, the Black newspaper. One more militant Black newspaper paper published an article that Weir had written for New Politics magazine. This was the first time the Black community had heard of what was going on. (19:00-22:50)... Weir did get some support. For example, after the firing, he had occasion to tell James Baldwin the story. Baldwin wrote Bridges, asking him not to betray Stan Weir. The fired men formed an organization, Longshore Jobs Defense Committee, and after a fruitless search for a lawyer, finally found one and filed suit in 1964. They were thrown out of District Court. The Ninth Circuit reversed for lack of due process and ordered a trial. The court also commented on the grievance offer made. (22:50-28:15)... Bridges turned around and sued those who backed them, including Bayard Rustin and Michael Harrington, for libel. He kept it going for four years, only to drop it on the eve of the trial. The main case lasted until 1980. The same District Judge sat through the six-month trial with eyes closed and essentially adopted the ILWU brief as his decision. The Ninth Circuit Court changed in the course of the sixteen years. Although they ultimately affirmed that there had been no due process in the union and that it had a set of rules plaintiffs didn't know, they said that it was legitimate for an employer investing in new technology who needs a higher-grade employee. This lengthy court battle took its toll on the legal team and everyone involved. (28:15-30:55)... Those sponsoring the lawsuit against the ILWU couldn't come up with $5,000 for the appeal, but Weir got $5,000 on the waterfront for the appeal in hard cash, delivered in a brown bag. However, their lawyer was mad that he had to go through the appeal. He had turned against them, beaten down by sixteen years of litigation on a contingent fee, plaintiffs paying only costs. He had 57 clients, each with different facts. It should have been a class action before a jury, but there weren't such rules then. He wound up praising the ILWU lawyer to his own clients. End of tape. [Note: a discussion of the appeal continues on the next tape.] *** File: lhsweir15.mp3 (0:00-3:45)... Weir notes that the eye opener for him was the Pacific Maritime Association's attorney (Richard Ernst) historical account of the relationship with the union, ending with the comment that the union had matured enough that it and PMA could work together. By 1959 the union was allowed to participate in recruitment, and by 1963, in firings, and plaintiffs were the result. A ruling for on behalf of the plaintiffs would disrupt labor peace, but a ruling for PMA and ILWU would produce class peace. A former PMA lawyer, who had been active on the case, testified that they had been told to get Weir, regardless. It was a frame-up, and Weir's name was mud from day one. The judge didn't even open an eye. (3:45-8:55)... Weir discusses how the M & M (Mechanization and Modernization) agreements impacted work of the waterfront. The union had been operating under the 1934 rules, which were arbitrated by Roosevelt's National Longshore Labor Board and made into a contract that included joint control of the hiring hall and a 2100 pound limit on man made sling loads. But the loophole, which became apparent in 1957-60 with the first automation, was a provision allowing the employer to introduce labor-saving devices at will. (8:55-13:38)... Weir traces the work pace changes in the longshore industry, which included doubling the weight limit. According to the employers, the changes led to an 86 percent increase in productivity; 300 percent according to the union. In other words, Weir note, the workers were financing the advent of containerization by the added work load. The San Francisco workers, Bridges men, didn't know that the San Pedro Local (13) was striking over M & M. Bridges warned them to accept what they viewed as a "yellow dog contract." Bridges told them he was going to take the sweat out of longshoring, but the men voted heavily for it to get work back to their port. [Weir notes that Herman Benson included a copy of the contract in paper of the Association of Union Democracies (Issue 13)]. (13:38-18:14)... The new contract also got rid of the sanctity of the gangs in the hold, who were the most militant workers. If you fired one man in the gang, you had to fire them all, which meant six men if discharging and eight if loading. The rule was changed to four men plus two to four swing men, but management could fire the swing men singly instead of a whole gang. In addition, the hold men were B classified, without full union membership, without good representation. Bridges also offered retirement at age 62, instead of 65, with three years of pension, $7,900, paid by the union. Retirees at 65 got the $7,900 in cash but then found out they were taxed on it. The effect of the age 62 rule was to get rid of the '34 strikers. (18:14-23:01)... Weir discusses the second Mechanization and Modernization contract, especially the clause (paragraph 9.43) that gave the employer the right to hire "steady men", ILWU men, directly, rather than out of the hiring hall. They would get a guaranteed wage, higher than the other workers. When Bridges came with a contract containing the clause, the members told him to take it back, and when he returned with the same provision, the union voted 96 percent to strike. The steady men were brought back into the hall, and morale rose, but then they were slapped with a Taft-Hartley 80-day cooling off injunction. At the end of the cooling off period, they they voted 93 percent to strike. It lasted from 1971 through 1972, and Weir claims that it was the biggest and longest strike in the history of the country. In the end, Bridges wore them down. End of tape.
- SUBJECT BIO - Stan Weir was a rank and file activist and organizer in the auto and longshore industries in California. Raised in Los Angeles, Weir attended UCLA briefly after graduating from high school in East Los Angeles. He joined the Merchant Marine when WWII began and his political education began on the first ship on which he sailed. His class consciousness and view of industrial unionism was heightened as he came into contact with the organized left through the Sailors Union of the Pacific. After the war, Weir worked in a variety of unionized jobs in both southern and northern California. He helped to foment a brief wildcat sit-down strike in the East Oakland Chevrolet plant. Beginning in the late 1950s, and for the next five years, his activism on behalf of other ILWU members who were classified as "B" workers eventually forced him out of the union. And despite the lawsuit against the ILWU that he filed along with other representatives of the "B" workers, he later resumed work on the docks in San Pedro. Weir remained an independent labor and socialist activist throughout the years, regardless of the particular jobs he held, and in the mid-1980s founded "Singlejack Books" in an effort to bring affordable "little books" to workers. Singlejack Solidarity, a collection of Weir's writing was published posthumously by University of Minnesota Press in 2004. The lengthy oral history with Stan Weir was conducted by Patrick McAuley while he was a graduate student at CSULB. A transcript prepared by Weir's wife, Mary, is on deposit at the Wayne State Labor Archive. The original recordings and accompanying summaries are on deposit in the Archive of California State University, Long Beach. TOPICS - courtship; employment history; birth of two daughters; unemployment; return to San Francisco; and purchase of fixer-upper home;renovating home; experiences with reverse discrimination; white flight in Oakland; Weir becomes a longshoreman; beginning of containerization; Weir becomes removed from sectarian politics; two tier classifications in ILWU; firing of B workers, largely Black;Weir's firing; trial; victimization of Blacks; Longshore Jobs Defense Committee; Ninth Circuit reversal; lawsuit lost by plaintiffs after 16 years; Bridges libel suit;Modernization and Mechanization agreements; longshore automation, 1957-1960; work pace changes; containerization; San Pedro Local strike over M&M; second M&M contract ; strike vote; Taft-Hartley injunction;
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