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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I've always wondered about this and have tried to research it on the web to no avail. I'm glad you were able to find this article. Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteYes Kathy thank you. Our family has a few times actually lived some American history, but we have lost the stories because the people who knew the stories mostly took their stories with them to the grave. I remember Grandpa Long talking about an uncle who was a policeman in Chicago in the "good old days", but we never actually asked what side of the family this came from. It is one of the stories that is lost forever! Thanks for helping preserve this one.
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