The Everbrite strike was one of the first labor struggles for The Worker. The United Electrical workers were battling for their first contract at a factory that made electric advertising signs. Strikers taunted scabs on a daily basis. We brought publicity and supporters for weekly rallies. One evening strikers, scabs, and cops were tussling. In the scrum, one of the policemen dropped a huge ring of keys at our feet. I scooped them up and furtively dropped them into a nearby sewer. Was this revenge against the cell hall “screws” – or was I just trying once again to do more than I should? My good friend, Jon Melrod, spearheaded the support work along with Sara Farrell — he with the bullhorn and she always snapping photos.
When Nixon’s wage price controls were lifted and oil shocks sent up pump prices, we experienced a strike wave in Milwaukee. There were shut downs at AO Smith, Harley Davidson, Crucible Steel, the Port of Milwaukee, and Briggs & Stratton, a maker of two cycle engines. Our articles publicized the demands of each and tried to give an understanding of the larger context. We weren’t so out of touch that we ended every article with a call for socialism or revolution. But as things developed, there were some dogmatists in our national office who wanted us to do just that.
We covered the wildcat strikes and the union reform movement in coal country, the walk offs against speed up at General Motors in Lordstown Ohio, African American militancy in Detroit, and the postal workers’ shut down of the bulk mail center in New Jersey. Combined with Black militancy and the mass movement against the war, we saw the stirrings of labor as the third part of a trifecta. Many of us were intellectuals and students of history. We studied theories of capitalist crisis and convinced each other that the system was on its last legs. We were in our early twenties. We had a passion for social justice and craved action. We were still learning to understand the living interconnections between consciousness, action, and the concrete conditions.
Watergate gave us a good political issue. I noticed that sales jumped when The Worker headline said, “Throw the Bum Out”. Nixon was the second president in a row who failed to achieve a pro war consensus among the elite power blocks. We felt like our movement was on the upswing.
Every March 8th, we publicized our International Woman’s Day event. It never included any coalition building with any traditional women’s liberation groups. Instead we insisted that the event needed a working class focus. On the Equal Rights Amendment, the position of the RU was that passage would endanger protective legislation for women in the workforce. I clearly remember the disapproving looks that I got from my mom and my sisters when I argued this position.