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Happy Labor Day

1K views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  macmikeman 
#1 ·
From a retired IBEW member, happy Labor Day to all of my brothers and sisters out there. Stay safe and enjoy your favorite protein prepared to your liking on the grill along with your favorite beverage(s) this weekend. How's that for political correctness?

Unions have gotten a bad rap in public perception for as long as I can remember. Most people will associate unions with Jimmy Hoffa, organized crime ties, and wildcat strikes. Boomers like myself can recall when auto workers would get a 10 cent/hour raise a new Chevy would go up $500 because of "increased labor cost" if coal miners got 15 cents over 3 years, the power company would get a rate increase because of increased fuel costs. Corporate America has fueled this fire for many years and liked to blame everything on the unions.

We all remember reading and studying Samuel Gompers, George Meany, and Cesar Chavez and their roles in the early days of unions. One name that is always left out is George Berry. If you have a few minutes this weekend, do a web search on him. Mr. Berry was the president of International Printing Pressmen and Assistants Union in the early 1900s. In my opinion, Mr. Berry was a true visionary and was green nearly 100 years before it was cool.

Mr. Berry had the novel idea that unions should spend their dues money to further their members. This idea was obviously quickly squelched and unions determined that lining politicians pockets was better use of the dues money and they should all move their headquarters to Washington, DC to facilitate quicker and more discrete handoffs.

I don't want to give you the whole story, but during the early days of the offset printing press there were good paying job opportunities for pressmen, but no employer was willing to pay to train their employees. Mr Berry convinced his union to buy a parcel of land in Hawkins county, TN and move their headquarters there from Cincinnati, the place was called Pressmens Home. He proceded to build a training facility and bought what was then the latest version of an offset press and would bring in members to train on the machine.

In addition to the training facility, he built a hotel, and a sanatorium since back then there was a high rate of TB among printers and it was thought there was a link to printers ink. He also built a self sustaining community; they raised their own beef, poultry, vegetables and fruits in season, had their own dairy heard and egg production. They built a dam on the Clinch river and included a small hydro-electric plant, had their own wastewater treatment, telephone system, drinking water. It was said the only thing they bought was salt and coal.

In full transparency, my father was a pressman and trained there himself. This place is located about an hour's drive from where I grew up and we would drive through there when we went to visit my grandparents. This was the most beautiful pristine valley you have ever seen, the place was kept immaculately. It was always mowed, trimmed, every surface looked like it had a fresh coat of paint on it. The pressmen moved out I believe in the late 1960s and someone bought it to build a golf resort that never took off. At one time it was thought to be haunted but I don't believe there's anything left to be haunted. I drove through there last April going to an uncle's funeral and it's all pretty much fallen in with the exception of the old dairy barn that looked like someone made a pretty cool house out of.

I once again urge to do a web search on George Berry and/or Pressmen's Home. Hopefully this will give you a warm fuzzy feeling about unions if you don't already have one.
 
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