| New York governor Al Smith was often called "The Happy Warrior," but the man I know who was best suited to that title was Wells Keddie, a labor studies professor, stalwart union member and social activist at Rutgers University. Keddie, who died recently at the age of 80, was a fighter without rancor -- there was something about his temperament that allowed him to be affable and welcoming even with his opponents. Even when he was up to his eyebrows in academic infighting and negotiations with the university (he was a bulwark of the American Association of University Professors), Keddie came across as a serene man enjoying life to the hilt.
He was also a walking encyclopedia of labor history and its lessons -- lessons that have become more relevant than ever, with unions everywhere on the ropes and the Republican administration in Washington apparently intent on recreating the predatory mores of the Gilded Age. I last spoke with him about a year ago, as I was starting a round of research into a Hudson County labor war of the early 1930s, and I could hear he was suffering from a condition that left him barely able to speak. That was the unkindest cut of all for a man who was one of the championship talkers. |
| Back in my bright college days, I took a job at the Livingston College cafeteria and discovered that the state in its infinite wisdom allowed Rutgers to pay its student peons less than the mandatory minimum wage. (I don't recall how much less, but in those impoverished days having that extra money would have made things a bit easier for me and other students trying to buy textbooks, pursue our interests and even maintain a bit of a social life. If it sucked for me, I can only imagine what it would be like for working class people in rock-bottom jobs trying to support their families -- which is why the standard issue winger arguments against raising the minimum wage cut no ice with me.) Some friends and I agreed that it was time to unionize the student workers, and we set about trying to win coverts on the QT as we scraped plates and washed monkey dishes.
As it turned out, we were re-enacting, on HO scale, the trials and setbacks of hundreds of other union agitators. One of the student managers, whom we considered our natural enemies, got into a tiff with the cafeteria boss and was summarily fired. Her fellow managers started talking about getting organized, and we joyously made common cause with them. The student manager would get her job back, we would get minimum wage for all the student workers, and everything would be hunky dory. Or so we thought.
Do I have to tell you we got played like a hand-me-down fiddle? As soon as the student manager got her job back, all other causes were forgotten and the minimum wage matter went down the crapper. It took a student activist named Susan Kozel to get the university to stop nickel-and-diming its student workers and just pay the frigging minimum wage. Thanks, Sue.
The point of this story is that after we got cleaned like fish and hung up to dry, we took our story to Wells Keddie, who listened with rueful amusement and explained just how many times our little drama had been played out. He chuckled while he did it, but he wasn't laughing at us. He knew from experience that some fights don't end well, and that other people had been scammed the way we had been, only they'd paid a higher price for it than the chagrin we suffered. But he was clearly pleased that somebody had made the effort, and we were able to salvage that bit of pride from our little foray into Norma Rae territory. "Don't let the bastards get you down" could have been one of his own slogans.
Wells touched a lot of other lives more deeply than mine, and after you read his obituary, you should read this tribute and this appreciation. Wells died as a man of integrity, surrounded by a big family and many good friends. May every one of us meet our end as well as he did.
Cross-posted at The Opinion Mill. |
