[NYTr] Les Leopold to speak on his new bio of Tony Mazzochi - Dec 6 NYC

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Andy Pollack - Nov 5, 2007


Below the event details is a great review of the book.

The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Fall 2007 Program Schedule
Thursday, December 6, 2007

Book Talk: Les Leopold, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The
Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi Time: 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Tamiment Library on the New York University campus. The address is 70
Washington Square South, 10th Floor (West 4th Street between LaGuardia
and Greene Streets), New York, NY 10012. Tel: 212-998-2630. Additional
Information Please contact Michael Nash (212-998-2428) or Marilyn Young
for additional information.

http://www.kclabor.org/an_appreciation_of_the_labor_par.htm 

Labor Advocate Online 

The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony
Mazzocchi 

An Appreciation of the Labor Party's 'Founding Brother' 

Reviewed by Bill Onasch

We don’t do a lot of book reviews. This is our first of a biography.
There are some good ones of earlier labor/political leaders such as
Eugene Debs, John L Lewis, and a recent release of one about James P
Cannon. But over the last several decades there hasn’t been much
material to work with. One can imagine how exciting and inspiring would
be the life story of Lane Kirkland, Ron Gettelfinger, or Andy Stern.
But when I heard a biography of Tony Mazzocchi was in the works I could
hardly wait to get my hands on it. I thank the folks at Chelsea Green
Publishers for furnishing me a review copy

My few personal encounters with Tony were within the Labor Party
Advocates movement, during the last several years of his life. But I
had heard much about him over the years, always associated with
important, progressive struggles. I had already pegged Tony as the most
far sighted, class conscious American union leader of the post-World
War II era. This new book reinforces that conviction

Within the labor movement there are quite a few who recognize the
indispensable role Tony Mazzocchi played, while serving as the
legislative director of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers (OCAW), in
getting OSHA passed. Many know of his involvement with the struggle at
Kerr-McGee that claimed the life of Karen Silkwood--immortalized in
film by Meryl Streep. He became identified with the ups and downs of
the fight for single-payer health care.

Fewer are aware of his probing pioneer work in building labor alliances
with the civil rights, environmental, student, antinuclear and antiwar
movements. And too few are aware of his final major project, the
launching of the Labor Party.

Such a figure presents a real challenge to a biographer. Even the most
exceptional men and women who affect history are complex humans like
the rest of us. Tony pulled off some amazing victories in his nearly
six decades of dedication to the labor movement–he also made his full
share of mistakes. Revered by many, respected by most, he was by no
means a saint in his personal life. Drawing a fair, rounded picture of
this remarkable leader was far from easy--but Les Leopold gets the job
done.

Leopold writes,

“Tony was a big-picture organizer who couldn’t sit still. All the time
I knew him, he traveled the country incessantly, crusading for
universal health care or a labor party -- leaving too little time to
spend with his six children from two broken marriages. He would start
ten different projects at once, tossing the details around like confetti
while others swept up behind.”

The biographer was a major contributor to both the projects and the
sweeping up. Leopold was one of a group of young people recruited by
Mazzocchi in the Seventies to put their intellectual skills at work in
rebuilding a class struggle labor movement. One project was the Labor
Institute where Leopold served on the staff, and later as director, for
over thirty years. Over those decades he collaborated closely with the
subject of his book and got to know him personally as well.

While not exactly an “official” biography, Leopold clearly had the
confidence of Tony and this helped him to gain interviews with numerous
family, friends, collaborators -- and even some adversaries who had to
grudgingly respect Mazzocchi. Their comments offer valuable insights
into both the thinking and character of Tony Mazzocchi.

But Leopold gives us much more than personal recollections and
anecdotes. The reader gets a bonus history lesson as he situates every
phase of Tony’s tumultuous life in the broader social, economic, and
political context. Among these topics:

- The final battles of World War II, and the liberation of concentration
camps, which a teenage Mazzocchi saw first hand. 

- The great post-war strike wave in 1946. 

- The 1947 passage of Taft-Hartley, and its passive
acceptance by most mainstream labor leaders. 

- The Communist Party’s support of the Henry Wallace campaign in the
1948 presidential election. 

- The purge of the “red unions” from the CIO. 

- The McCarthyite witch-hunt. 

- CIA involvement in American unions–including Tony’s.

- The mass civil rights movement of the '50s-'60s.

- The Vietnam war and the student radicalization of the Sixties.

- The rise of the modern environmental movement.
-
 The emergence of what’s come to be known as Globalization.

And much more. Living up to his subtitle, Leopold examines not only the
life but the times of Tony Mazzocchi.

This book is, of course, not for everybody. It’s not going to be
snapped up at airport gift shops. But for anyone committed to the labor
movement, or any of the other movements for social change, it is a
“must read.” Once you start you’ll continue not because you “must” but
because it is both educational and fascinating.

Tony was discharged from his European combat service in the Army in
time to see the greatest labor upsurge in American history. All the
pent-up demands and grievances suppressed during war time erupted in to
massive, militant, and mostly successful strikes.

His initial views of this turbulence were shaped by family and friends
who were in or around the Communist Party–which at that time had
significant numbers of members, and leadership positions, in much of
the union movement Tony was urged to go in to industry to advance the
class struggle and he landed a strategic, good paying job at a Ford
assembly plant. Tony never adjusted to the hard work and boredom and,
after being laid off in a few months, decided that would end his career
in auto. While recognizing the value of such work, and respecting those
who did it, he never concealed his personal aversion to such drudgery.
He had GI benefits to fall back on and he used them.

Tony, in fact, didn’t hold down a truly steady job until 1950 when,
again at the urging of CP friends, he went to work at the Helena
Rubinstein cosmetic plant, then located in New York City, soon to move
to suburban Long Island. That proved to be a long gig indeed as Tony
rose quickly in the union there.

There’s no doubt his Brooklyn CP friends and family circle were helpful
in launching Tony in to what blossomed in to a promising situation at
Rubinstein. Their best attributes of pursuing militant trade unionism,
and unflinching opposition to racism, helped shape Tony’s long view.
But Tony never joined the party and soon diverged from the party line
on many strategic and tactical questions. He staunchly opposed
red-baiting but he kept his own counsel as an independent socialist.
Over the years he collaborated with a wide range of political allies.

Tony’s first major project in local union leadership was something
quite relevant to today’s sorry state of collective bargaining--a
successful campaign to eliminate a previously imposed two-tier wage
structure. This was the first of numerous victories that strengthened
union solidarity, put more money in members pockets–and made Tony a
very popular guy.

Local 149 was to be his base through thick and thin throughout his
career. Tony organized this modest sized local of initially 500 members
into a dynamo within the New York labor movement and the international
union. They provided militant solidarity pickets to other unions on
strike. Their mobilized membership resurrected a dormant Democrat Party
on the Island and became acknowledged “players” in politics both in the
city and the suburbs. Leopold’s detailed documentation of these varied
struggles makes compelling reading.

Tony’s early outlook on electoral politics also flowed from CP
influence. The 1948 Henry Wallace campaign that the CP, and some unions
they influenced, had been so prominent in, proved to be a dud and
serious retribution was meted out by the union bureaucrats that had
helped Truman to survive challenges from both left and right. Since
then the CP has always supported Democrats and aims to build a
progressive wing within that Establishment party.

At one point in the Sixties, after playing a major role in rejuvenating
the local Democrats, Tony was on the verge of running for congress--but
then Democrat leaders explained the facts of life to him. He could be a
“player” but was too radical to represent the Democrats in a major
office. His campaign might jeopardize the whole ticket. To the great
disappointment of his followers, he backed away from a confrontation
with the Democrat machine. It was to be another twenty years before he
initiated a serious campaign for a Labor Party.

But what a twenty years those were. He helped found SANE–the dominant
peace group in America before the student radicalization around
Vietnam. He hooked up with consumer crusader Ralph Nader on numerous
projects in a close relationship that would last for his life. He
embraced the early environmental movement and sought to both advance it
within the union and to bring worker concerns to scientist/activists
such as Barry Commoner. He took on the nuclear power industry–which
included OCAW employers. And, of course, there was the victory in
establishing OSHA.

Many radicals and militant unionists, in the course of bumping up
against the class collaborationist policies of most mainstream union
officials, adopt an anti-leadership outlook. Many shout “we are all
leaders” which translates in to no leaders. This approach has kept once
promising opposition movements in unions disorganized, with a blurred
focus of the real forces at work. Over time they become less promising.

Tony often mockingly introduced himself at gatherings frequented by
such radicals as a “union bureaucrat.” He demonstrated that it didn’t
hurt democracy or militancy one bit if class struggle fighters held
leadership positions. From 1965 on Tony, except for one short period of
“exile,” held various national posts in the OCAW–legislative director,
health & safety director, vice-president, one term as
secretary-treasurer. He twice ran for president, losing narrowly both
times. His last position was “special assistant to the president,”which
he held until OCAW’s painful absorption by the Paperworkers in the
thankfully short-lived PACE.

During all this time Tony made some mistakes–but never sold out and
never tried to disguise his class struggle perspective. If any thing,
he seemed to become more radical and impatient in his final years. He
recognized as few others did that the unions would not survive without
a broader social and political movement. He chose as his last big task
to try to jump start a Labor Party that could pull together and give
leadership to the many battered fronts of American class struggle today.

Tony didn’t live to see this project through to victory. The Labor
Party was already falling on hard times when he lost out to an
untreatable cancer a few months after the party’s 2002 convention. It
remains to be seen whether this initiative can become the mass workers
party so sorely needed by American workers. But the vision of such a
party is the crowning achievement of Tony Mazzocchi’s legacy to the
labor he so loved.

About the Author

[The webmaster of the kclabor.org website is a paid-up member of UAW
Local 1981—the National Writers Union. During the 70-80s, while
employed at Litton Microwave’s Minneapolis operations, he was elected
to various positions in UE Local 1139, including Shop Chairman and
Local President. In 1980 he took a union leave from the plant to work
on a successful UE organizing drive at a Litton runaway plant in Sioux
Falls, South Dakota. When Litton began shutting down its four
Minneapolis plants Onasch was selected to be a worker representative in
a Dislocated Worker Project administered by Minneapolis Community
College—where he became a member of the Minnesota Education
Association. Returning to his home town of Kansas City in 1989, he soon
began a 14-year stint as a Metro bus driver. During that time he
published a rank and file newsletter, Transit Truth, chaired a union
Community Outreach Committee that organized public protests against
cuts in transit service, helped organize a privatized spin-off at
Johnson County Transit, and served a term as Vice-President of ATU
Local 1287. He has also been involved in US Labor Against the War and
the Labor Party since those organizations were launched and represents
Midwest chapters on the Labor Party Interim National Council. ]

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