The Street

 

 

New York’s Most Dangerous Job

When a man has nothing left, he can always sell his cohones – Ernest Hemingway

 

 

            During the fall of 1968, I was living with my girlfriend Irene in a tenement apartment on 5th street between Avenues A and B.  The Lower East Side had the worst crime statistics of any neighborhood in America. I’d been out of work for two months, was flat broke and frantically reading the want ads when I came across one that said: Drivers Wanted.  No experience necessary. $30 per day. That was decent money back then.  The timing was perfect as I’d recently tricked the motor vehicle bureau into issuing a chauffeur’s license, despite being underage.

            Early the next morning, I drove my old black Studebaker over the 59th Street Bridge to the Long Island City address. I walked into the greasy, back street, industrial slum garage, past mechanics working on cars, into a small side office with an overweight man sitting behind a desk.  About a dozen other men stood around just inside the doorway, joking and hooting as men will do in an industrial setting. One of them was boasting of his sexual exploits at a recent party when an obese gentleman in a sleeveless T-shirt cut in with a profane remark. The group tumbled upon itself with arm punches and howling laughter as if this were the most amusing thing they’d ever heard. Eventually the man at the desk noticed me and asked, “What do you want, kid?”

            Explaining that I was responding to the ad, he asked to see my driver’s license. I willed for him not to calculate from my birth date that I was underage, and he didn’t.  I was given forms to fill out, led back into the garage, and told to sit in a blue Checker car. A few minutes later, I was joined by a man who drove me around for ten minutes, showing me how to work the meter and two-way radio, while explaining various code numbers used as shorthand when communicating with dispatchers. “Now go out in the street and make some money,” he said as I dropped him off at the garage.

 

            Still uncertain of my actual job description, I spent the next few days driving up and down main thoroughfares in the best neighborhoods, constantly on the radio asking if there were any calls for me, occasionally getting one, and responding to hails from the street. I worked every day from 5am to 5pm, coming away with about twenty dollars per shift. It wasn’t much per hour but considering I’d been unemployed for two months and survived the winter in a torn denim jacket, it felt like a lot of money. One morning I brought the vehicle back home to show Irene. She looked out the window and said, “Oh, that’s a gypsy cab.”

            As time passed, I began wondering why everyone else was making twice as much as me. I finally asked a friendly coworker who responded, “The money’s in the ghetto. Most of the calls are in South Jamaica.” I started working there and my earnings rose to thirty dollars per shift; still not comparable to other drivers who’d grown up in the neighborhood and didn’t lose time getting lost on dead end streets and broken-down roads, but at least the ad was now fulfilling its promise and I was starting to enjoy the hustle.

 

            There was always talk about robberies at the garage but I wasn’t overly concerned working the day shift. I rode around with my doors unlocked, accepting anyone who wanted a ride, radio or not.

            One evening, I picked up a young mother with a toddler and two men who lived with them. We drove through Jamaica trying to find a supermarket willing to cash her welfare check. Every time she left the cab, one of the men would start torturing the three-year-old. He took out a magic marker, drew all over the boy’s laughing face, and then suddenly changed his demeanor. “Why you make your face such a mess? I’m gonna burn you!” He took out a cigarette lighter, lit the flame, and naturally the terrified child started crying.

            On another occasion, the child was told he was no longer wanted and to leave the cab. When threatened again with burning, the boy opened the door and started running. His tormentor pursued him, screaming, “What do you think you’re doing, running away?!” He picked up the screaming child and twirled him violently overhead. By the time his mother returned, the tears had nearly dried.

            It felt pointless to intervene with this bizarre, dysfunctional family. Lecturing them about children’s rights wouldn’t have changed who they were, but might have gotten me killed. In retrospect I should have calmly radioed the dispatcher to provide my location, slipping in the code 007, which meant police assistance needed. But it never occurred to me at the time because I’d only experienced law enforcement as persecutors to be avoided.

            Unable to cash the check, the group politely bid me good evening, paid the $3.50 fare and departed. I drove back to the garage contemplating a gruesome demonstration of how psychotics and sociopaths were born and bred in our society.

 

            I’d avoided working nights but one day ended up using the cab to chauffeur Irene around on errands and worked the late shift to make it up. I was terrified but nothing bad happened and the earnings were sensational. Since I was inherently nocturnal by nature, I wound up transferring to nights. Two burly dispatchers, Big Mike and Big Mel, alternated between day and night shifts. Late one night I received a radio call:

            “Pick it up 15, pick it up 15!” Big Mike hollered over the radio static.

            “Yeah, yeah, this is 15!  15 here!” I responded, referring to my car number.

            “What’s your 20 mister? What’s your 20 (location)?”

            “I’m at Liberty and one-six-two, my friend.”

            “10-4. You go to Archie’s and pick up Joey.” Big Mike was referring to a notorious after-hours club, situated in an inconspicuous old house on Sutphin Boulevard, offering gambling and prostitutes to the community. Several drivers I knew had been robbed by its patrons.

​

 

The Picket Line

 

 

Anatomy of a Decertification Drive

He who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven like a thunderbolt – Sun Tzu (The Art of War)

 

            In 1992, Kmart opened a distribution center in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Within a year, its workers had been organized by ACTWU. Management refused to negotiate in good faith, resulting in a bitter three-year-long first contract fight. 

            The union assigned a young organizer named Anthony Romano to the campaign. He was a rich kid who, upon graduating from Harvard, visited South Africa for several months during apartheid to study with the African National Congress. Anthony fancied himself the next Che Guevara, but without the experience or battle scars to back it up.  He cultivated local union leaders based purely on being outspoken, with little regard for whether they understood what they were speaking about, and organized around utterly unrealistic expectations for a first contract.

            Fortunately, wiser professionals ran the corporate campaign, successfully tarnishing Kmart’s national reputation, and in 1996 management finally signed a contract with generous economic increases and solid language provisions.  But what should have been a celebratory ratification turned into several hours of bitter arguments between those who realized we’d won a great victory and others who’d been seduced by Anthony’s delusions. The contract ratified by only sixty percent. Shortly thereafter, the union was renamed UNITE following a merger.

            Anthony’s inner circle of hotheads was elected to the Local 2603 executive board (committee) and an incompetent buffoon was assigned as their business agent. Warehouse management was equally dysfunctional and the situation unraveled into utter chaos.  A year later the union rep was fired and I was assigned to straighten things out by any means necessary.

            My insertion into the warehouse didn’t involve starting a fight. Everyone was already busy fighting everyone else. Instead, I slowly gained the workers’ trust by delivering results. I separated legitimate grievances from stacks of nonsense, got numerous terminated employees reinstated, corrected safety violations and meticulously enforced all contractual rights. In the process, I educated executive board members that frivolous cases had to be dropped in order to settle the good ones. Management came to realize they were dealing with a professional who could either work with them or make life miserable, depending on their responses. The second contract resulted in good raises and further solidified employee entitlements.

 

            The inside of the distribution center (DC) was a fascinating marvel of technology. One side of the building contained trucking bays where Receiving Department workers unloaded and sorted merchandise for forklift drivers who transported it to modules.

            The modules were like giant erector sets, three stories high, occupying most of the enormous building.  Each module was reserved for specific product categories. When a Kmart store requested inventory, a picker (module worker) would receive the order, locate the appropriate cartons and then place them on a conveyor belt headed toward the Shipping Department. An elaborate maze of conveyor belts towered above the entire operation and miraculously sent every box to the right truck, courtesy of computers and bar codes. The DC employed seven hundred hourly workers on three shifts.

            During 2001, Joe Wells was enticed to leave Walmart and become the new plant manager. Rory Ford was hired as his assistant. Both were clean-cut young men in their thirties.

            On March 13 2002, I was visiting the employee breakroom with Local 2603 president Calvin Miller, a maintenance worker who was a Vietnam vet with lifelong PTSD and prone to unpredictable outbursts of temper. But he was loyal to a fault and over time came to understand that our job wasn’t about winning arguments but rather winning grievances. We walked down long aisles with tables on either side, shaking hands, discussing issues and distributing leaflets.

            We were nearly finished when I spotted a short, muscular black man walking toward us, who we hadn’t previously engaged. I approached to hand him a leaflet but he pushed it away shouting, “I don’t want that damn shit! The union ain’t shit! You ain’t shit!!”

            “Why do you feel that way?” I calmly asked.

            “’Cause I’m from Philadelphia and we had a union there and it wasn’t worth shit and this one ain’t either. Don’t make no difference ‘cause this spring the union’s gonna be getting voted out of here!”

            “What makes you so sure of that?” I inquired as he continued walking closer to me and raising his voice.

            “You just wait and see! This spring there ain’t gonna be no more damn union!”

 

            It’s impossible for a moron to get under my skin and make me feel personally insulted, but the level of certainty behind the man’s tirade sent up a red flag I couldn’t ignore.

            “Who the hell was that?” I asked Calvin once our antagonist had walked past.

            “His name’s Daryl Copes.”

            “Tell committee members to be on the lookout for anti-union activity and take notes. I don’t have a good feeling about this. The decert window is about to open.”

            “What does that mean?” the local president asked.

            “This is kind of complicated, so bear with me. Under the law, during the period beginning 90 days and ending 60 days before the contract expires, workers have the right to sign a petition, asking the National Labor Relations Board for a new election to decertify the union. If only 30 percent sign, the election is scheduled. From that point on, management has the home court advantage. They hold employee meetings, lie, make threats and false promises to influence how people vote.

            I have a lot of experience dealing with this and there’s no such thing as a decertification campaign that isn’t secretly organized and run by the company. It takes professionals to run a campaign. Most of what I just mentioned is illegal but difficult to prove to the Board.”

​

​

​