Unions

I first became familiar with unions reading the newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s. Reading about a Union President’s assassination when I was 10 years old and learning that the Mafia was controlling the unions inspired my decision to become a Personnel Director and fix it.

I also saw lots of labor strikes in the newspaper. I heard and read a lot of information that led me to believe unions were corrupt.

I was pre-disposed to prefer self-reliance and individual achievement, but didn’t see these values operating in the labor unions. They were rioters demanding more power and money.

I read the American Communist Party goals published in 1920 and concluded that the union movement was a collectivist group aligned with the Communist goals.

I learned about the Communist takeover of Russia from stories told by Russian immigrants fleeing from Russia and landing in New York.

Our labor is a commodity and should be subject to the law of supply and demand to control the price. In the real world, wages are based on market rate. Unions push for above market rate wages and benefits and eventually companies with unions can either overcharge their customers or close the plants and move. Unions also attempt to ruin the relationship between management and labor. 

Although my view of US labor unions was negative, I did like the old Guild System and like the idea of apprentices learning from master craftsmen. This idea was often employed in family businesses and I liked the idea of family businesses.

I like certification training and licensing for skilled trades like construction, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, roofing and driveways.

I also liked professional association groups. I was active in ASPA (American Society for Personnel Administration) in St. Louis and started an ASPA chapter in Salina to get an annual wage survey and was a National Officer for Kansas.  I also started the MAHTPA (Metro Atlanta High Tech Personnel Association) group in Atlanta to get an annual wage survey. I also encouraged the start of a CAD (Computer Assisted Design) group in Atlanta. 

I spent most of my growing up time in St. Louis. This is a well-run blue collar city with a lot of good leaders and good people, but the unions were everywhere because Missouri isn’t a “right to work” state.

My brother was hired by McDonnell Aircraft and they put him through the apprenticeship program to become an Electrician.  He ended up on the IBEW bargaining committee, but his goal was to negotiate to improve productivity and job content. His wife worked for Southwestern Bell Telephone and they were all union. I saw some of the union propaganda sent to their house and it was awful.

One of my college summer jobs was at Granit City Steel and it was union. Working one night I saw someone walk into the plant, climb in the crane and crash stacks of steel plate all over the plant. The foreman told me that the union steward had done it, because there were rumors that the plant would have layoffs and they wanted to create work. I predicted that this company would fail and later they did go bankrupt.

I was a musician during my high school and college days and when our Blues Band became the house group for the Livingroom on Gaslight Square a union rep came to the club and told us to sign up and join the musicians union. We did sign up and it didn’t cost much, but we didn’t want the owners to have problems because of us.

My first Personnel job was at Kearney National, an electrical utility hardware provider. It was 1967. We had Teamsters who had organized with the excuse that their founder, James R Kearney was too rich.  The Teamsters controlled who got hired in the plant.  They would just send cronies to the Plant Manager to put on the payroll.  I learned that we had a “bookie” working in receiving. I was asked to serve on a 3 man team to create a report on our current business. The head of the group was the Corporate Treasurer for our owner Dyson Kissner, The second guy in the group was the Chief Financial officer of the Kearney Division. I was the financial analyst who pulled the numbers together.  It was clear we needed to close the plant and move the operation, so that’s what we recommended.  They did close the plant and bought a similar company in Tucker Georgia to merge into.

In the 1960s, the Kennedy’s went after the Mafia and sent a lot of them to jail, but they just transferred control of the unions back to the Communists.

My next Personnel job was at Monsanto Headquarters handling compensation for the Textile Division. It was 1968.We had large non-union plants in the Southeast making nylon and acrylic man-made fibers. Part of my job was to make sure our compensation was competitive to avoid unionization. The Oil and Chemical Employee’s Union conducted annual organizing drives but never succeeded. I became well versed in union prevention from ensuring that our managers were not jerks, to keeping our compensation competitive. We made unions unnecessary. Monsanto offered me promotions to the locations including one with a 30% pay increase. I turned it down. My dad had married his job and lost his marriage and I wasn’t going to do that. I also had things I wanted to do that I couldn’t really do quickly at Monsanto.  I converted the Textile Division jobs to the Monsanto Corporate system and left.  I loved Monsanto. Our VP was the founder of ASPA and the staff was the best in the world.

My next Personnel job was at Washington University, to set up regulatory compliance, install the Personnel function at the Medical Campus and automate everything I could. It was 1971. I was interviewed by Bill Danforth, the Chancellor and was hired. I move to Washington University, because I wanted to personally win a campaign to prevent a union from organizing a company.  I knew they would try to organize Washington U.  Sure enough, within 6 months I had a petition from the SEU. I secured an LM-2 report of SEU financials and got a copy of one of their contracts. I met with the Chancellor and Vice Chancellors and the law firm. I showed them what I had and told them what came next. The Vice Chancellor for the Medical School asked me what I thought the employees should do.  I told them that the employees should not join the union, annually. The lawyers smiled and the Chancellor told me to take charge of the project. I met with the 90 black housekeeping employees and told them what was happening and what they were going to be asked to vote on and gave them a short class on economics. I didn’t blame them for this. They liked me. In our third meeting, one of the employees told me he didn’t feel respected. I knew who he was talking about and I told him I would try to help. I met with his supervisor and the Housekeeping manager and told the supervisor that this was all about him and he needed to be more respectful to his employees. When I met with the employees the next week they were all smiles. The supervisor had done a 180 degree turn from being a straw-boss to being a leader. To cement the deal, I asked the Medical School Business Manager to have a few meetings with them.  He was sure to be on the bargaining team for management and they needed to get to know him.  He worked with them to find ways to make their jobs easier and get more done. He did great and loved it. We won that election with 80% of the vote. After the election, two of the housekeeping employees came to see me.  They asked me who benefitted from this trauma.  I said: “We all did”.  They then told me that they were checking the undercarriage of my car every afternoon to make sure Guido and Vinny, the union organizer hadn’t put a bomb under it.

Part of my activities included installing affirmative action to satisfy HEW. I had joined one of our Med School Faculty Chairs and we applied for and received an NIH basic improvement grant of $20,000 to buy cage washers for our 90 black Animal Caretakers and set up AALAS certification classed to become Certified Animal Lab Technicians. I was told I had been elected Education Chair for AALAS and had to deliver a paper at their convention. I gave my “how I did it” paper. I was the only non-vetrinarian in the room.

After this victory I got a visit from the Affirmative Action Officer from the Main Campus. He told me that the Main Campus Personnel Director was leaving to go back to industry and Chancellor Danforth wanted to know if I would take the job.  I told him that I would prefer that Mary Weiss, the current Assistant Director be given the job, because she knew all the policies like the back of her hand.  I told him that if Danforth agreed, I would come to the main campus as Assistant Director and would take charge of union negotiations and continue to handle the automation projects and develop more effective management tools. Danforth agreed. Mary Weiss was set to retire in 4 years, so I tried not to act like the Prince of Wales when I moved to the Main Campus.

I finished the automation and personnel records went paperless. I got one of the unions on campus to decertify and I learned that the other union food service operation was going to be contracted out.

I wanted to install the Monsanto Compensation System at Washington U. as an upgrade. I wrote all the job descriptions with progression ladders based on skill and selected the compensation survey matches to go to a true market-based system.

When it came time for Mary Weiss to retire, I suggested that Danforth talk to Gloria White, the black Affirmative Action Officer who had been with the University for 20 years and had just earned her law degree. I had my fun and I was ready to return to industry. Danforth agreed. I had been hired back to industry.  During my final week, everybody came by to thank me for working with them.

My next Personnel job was at Schwan Foods in Salina Kansas. It was 1975. We had 1400 employees including 200 semi-drivers. We made Tony’s frozen pizza, sandwiches, corn tortillas and Schwan;s ice cream  They had a large sales force operating throughout the US. The Schwan’s trucks would deliver cases of frozen food to customer’s homes. They were at $150 million in sales in 1975 and we took that to $650 million in sales by 1979.

They hired me to help keep them union-free. But I went there to automate their production facilities. I did install lots of processes aimed at making unions unnecessary, but I also automated the plant and the general administration group I managed. Again, Marvin Schwan wanted me to move to Marshall MN to take the Personnel Director job there, but my wife didn’t want to go anywhere that cold to live, so once again I turned down a promotion. I recruited a guy from Minnesota to take that job.

I worked with Marshal IT to add a computer to the office in Salina and recruited the Systems Administrator to run it. I took out the timeclocks and replaced them with magnetic strip cards to computerize payroll. I got the plant to sell waste cheese, meat and crust to the farmers and sell the tomato paste drums to a local company. I replaced security clock rounds with a computerized security system with one guard in a room with cameras and sensors and another one in a car outside with a secure band radio. I replaced keys with magnetic strip cards to log activity. I had sensors placed to monitor our ammonia refrigeration units and lowered our insurance costs. I got to gather a lot of low hanging fruit. I expanded employee development to include testing, coaching and counseling. We promoted from within and the workforce was very smart. I felt like I had done everything I wanted to do. Then I got a call from the company up the street and they wanted to talk.

My next Personnel job was at Rickel Manufacturing in Salina. They had the UAW for the past 12 years and it was killing them. It was 1979. I had lived next door to their CFO and knew the problems. I also knew their Personnel guy. I liked the management team. I didn’t mention decertifying the UAW when I was hired until the Operations guy asked me what I wanted to do with the union. I told him they needed to go. He got excited and joined me to make it happen. In our first meeting with the union guys I told them that they would no longer have the run of the plant. Grievances were not to be done on working time. They would not be coming to the plant.  We would hold contract negotiations off-sire. They went nuts and filed 100 nuisance grievances and called OSHA. I found out where their other units were. They covered a 4 state area. I started calling chambers of commerce offices to find out where they were.  I published a book called the “710 Club” and sent it to all the companies. I got a call from Hesse Truck in Kansas City. That guy wanted to coordinate sending the union president to meetings to maximize his travel.  Negotiations stalled. A new company opened in Salina advertising to hire the same kind metal fab, welding and painting we did and they were paying more.  I matched their rates and published new rates for our employees.  The union had a fit.  One of the UAW shop stewards got a decertification petition from NLRB and walked it through the plant. The union was notified and they filed a disclaimer that in effect removed the UAW from our Company. Rickel was a privately owned company. The owner didn’t know the Japanese were coming to the US with their own agricultural equipment and a plan to take over. We did know this. We called a broker and with the owner’s agreement, got a deal to sell Rickel to AgChem, our main competitor. AgChem didn’t know the Japanese were coming either. They bought the company. We suggested they keep the Operations guy and the rest of us would resign.

I had secured a consulting project to install a Personnel system in Saline County government, I immediately started that project. I wanted some time to plan my next move. It was a 3 month project that included creating a salary survey for Kansas Counties and a formal Compensation system. It would take 3 months.  I got an offer to visit Atlanta. We flew there to meet the owner and Marlene looked at houses. She loved Atlanta as I knew she would.  She wanted to go to Dental Hygiene School and there was a school in Dunwoody. She asked how Hayes was. It was flaky, I told her. She asked “What do they need?” “Everything”, I replied. She said, “Let’s take it; you can find a real company here later”.

My next Personnel job was at Hayes Microcomputer Products. It was 1983. Again, they wanted me to keep unions out, I said ok.  The real problem was that they were facing a very steep ramp-up curve. Hayes made the modems every PC needed. They had 150 employees doing $35 million a year and needed to begin to triple their throughput immediately.

We did have the CWA try to organize us in 1984, but we killed it with a 25 cent across the board increase. A few months later I installed a real compensation plan with market rates and everybody got another raise.  I had to start the Metro Atlanta High Tech Personnel Association to set up a survey that would yield real market data. I cancelled our health insurance and established a Medical Plan Trust to self-insure. I had nurses doing case management as patient advocates. I enlisted the entire staff to review the policy manual and revise it. They did a great job. We finished the ramp up in 1986 with 1200 employees and $200 million in sales, but component manufacturers were having problems developing the powerful microprocessors we needed. It was clear to me that I could go. I was exhausted but happy with what we had accomplished. I got a tip that there was another job nearby I might like.

My next Personnel job was at Electromagnetic Sciences, Inc. (EMS) It was 1986 and the Reagan military build-up was kicking in. EMS had 350 employees doing $35 million a year and were looking at multiple defense projects that involved both design and assembly. We grew to 1200 employees doing $120 million a year by 1993. I joined the Board of the American Electronics Association as the HR Chair in 1987 and served with a dozen Atlanta electronics company owners and executives for years. They approached me at a board meeting in 1993 and said” “Go on your own and we’ll keep you busy” I laughed and they pulled out project lists. I looked at the lists and realized it amounted to a 3 year backlog. I was always planning to go on my own and this looked like the time. My final project at EMS was to terminate the regulation burdened toxic pension plan and establish an Age-Weighted defined contribution plan to replace it.

My final Personnel job was to start NTL Human Resources Management Consulting, a private consulting practice. I launched this in my basement. It was 1993. I started with 6 companies and grew it to 45 companies by 2009. All the work came in via “word of mouth”. I would get a call from a company who had been referred to me by someone they knew. I would go “on-site” for meetings. I could do most of my work at home. It was perfect. My projects included handling emergencies, managing start-ups, acquisition work, regulatory compliance, compensation, recruiting and general management consulting. I was always the physics-loving Personnel guy and did a lot of engineering recruiting. This was a big part of my practice. I knew what they did. They knew that I knew and they appreciated that.

I was a union buster, but I was also a turn-around manager and change agent. I would take a job to accomplish specific objectives and when I was satisfied, I would move on to the next company to do whatever they needed to accomplish at the time. I was driven by curiosity and wanted to learn how to do everything.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader