Strike Duty

Thousands of Verizon landline workers are currently on strike. To maintain service, "the company is using managers to take their (the strikers') place". This news report brought back comically bittersweet memories.

All members of management really should "work in the trenches" at some point in their career. You don't appreciate that air-conditioned cubicle and the opportunity to go to the rest room on a whim until you sweat out a day on the loading dock and have to schedule your bathroom visits for lunch and morning or afternoon break.

Strike duty is even more difficult. I spent the summer of '74 "riding shotgun" on tractor-trailers out of our strike-bound plant north of Tamaqua. Loading and off-loading the trailer was no fun. Getting jeered as we crossed the picket line was embarrassing. Worst of all was my life in the hands of a fellow management guy who had the required license but hadn't driven a "big rig" in years. Didn't we have a few adventures blocking traffic as we attempted a wide right turn (his fault), failing to secure our load and having it roll off the back and down the street (my fault) and losing our brakes and careening down Blue Mountain in free fall (God's fault)?

All of which was great training for the Great Strike of '75. The company housed us in the cheapest motel near Washington, DC. After a 12 hour workday, all we wanted to do was eat and collapse into bed. Unfortunately, every high school in the Mid-West scheduled their Senior Class Trip to Our Nation's Capital during the strike and the more frugal schools booked rooms at our motel. Our much-deserved slumber was broken by fire extinguisher fights in the hallways and constant telephone calls in the middle of the night - "Yo, Josh! You can get porn on Channel 57 on the TV. It's scrambled, but so what? Oh, you're not Josh. Sorry."

One school group was into bowling. The kids rolled bowling balls up and down the halls through the night. Nothing disturbs one's repose quite like the crescendo of sound as an Ebonite 16-pounder rolls past one's door and smashes into a wall.

Verizon's strike will eventually be resolved. But the lessons that Verizon management is learning on strike duty will be a permanent legacy. "My God, settle with the Union. I'm not going back on strike duty."