News Story From the Past

This week I was digging through dusty boxes of family detritus and came up with something I hadn't seen before - a news article about Dad testifying for the Senate Rackets Committee. I'd heard a little about this from Mom, but the article made the whole story come alive.

The article's pretty yellowed and fragile, so I thought I'd just duplicate it here for you guys to read, if you're interested. There's no date on the article. Hopefully, I'm not breaking any copyright laws.

Frozen-Pie Worker Testifies on Freeze
A frozen-pie plant worker told the Senate Rackets Committee today that Nathan W. Shefferman's labor-relations firm helped freeze one union out of a food factory and then helped another get a "very poor contract."

The witness, Gary Long, testified that the Morton Packing Co. secretly ordered him to form a "spontaneous" committee of workers to prevent the CIO United Packinghouse Workers from organizing its Webster City, Iowa, plant in 1955.

But later, he said, the company cooperated with the Bakery Workers Union in recruiting members and signing a three-year contract which gave a raise of only five cents an hour.

A Packinghouse Workers official said his union wanted rasies of 2 to 46 cents an hour for the Morton workers.

Cooperation
Mr. Long said one employee of Sherman's firm, Labor Relations Associates, worked with him to fight the Packinghouse Workers and another later signed up members for the bakery workers.

Before Mr. Long testified, attorneys for the frozen-food firm - now a division of Continental Baking Co. - tried to put the case on ice, claiming the testimony would prejudice their defense against National Labor Relations Board charges filed against the firm by the Packinghouse Workers.

The committee refused. Chairman John L. McClellan (D., Ark.) said the group tried not to interfere with criminal trials but could not defer its work for the outcome of a civil action.

Beginning
The Morton case was the opening gun in an investigation of Mr. Shefferman, 70-year-old Chicago labor relations counselor to some 300 firms across the nation.

Sen. McClellan said, Mr. Shefferman's firm was "apparently dedicated to the proposition that no employer need deal with a labor union unfriendly to their interests."

The chairman said the Taft-Harley Act put restrictions on management as well as labor, and the committee would investigate whether there has been "a deliberate and calculated effort to circumvent and defeat these provisions on behalf of management." (UP)

byline: Washington's sprightliest society columnist - Evelyn Peyton Gordon in The News.

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Another Movie Review

Okay, not much going on around here, so I'll talk about another movie. Seems to be a good way to get some convervation going.

Sunday night we watched "Frost/Nixon." I wasn't sure what to expect really, but I found it fascinating. I would say our family is not traditionally impressed with Richard Nixon; I remember Grandpa Long being very vocal about him. The Watergate incident has always been fascinating to me - the twists and turns, the secrecy, the apparent inability of Nixon to be honest and to recognize when it was time to give up the pretence. I have watched "All the President's Men" again and again, always finding something new in it.

I had no background on the Frost/Nixon interviews. I remembered David Frost as a tv personality, but didn't really get that he wasn't a serious newsman, so that part of the story was interesting. But I really appreciated the portrayal of Nixon's personality. Much of what I saw supported by gut instinct about the man, but there were a couple of surprises, too, and the unfolding of the story was interesting to watch.