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s I was channel-surfing one afternoon last month, I stumbled on the keynote speech given at the 1999 Commencement ceremony here at Hampshire College. The speech was a gritty, articulate, accusation:  “You go out into the world and you... live in sort of a liberal, p.c. existence, where you join the local food co-op and you make sure that everything's organic in your life, and you say all the right things to all the right people—you do all of that good stuff, but you can't tell me who all of the people are here at Hampshire College, that clean your toilets, or scrape the gum off your floors, or change the light bulbs in the classrooms.” 

The speaker was Michael Moore. The video recording of his speech was unprofessional; the camera swayed around Moore's face and past it. I looked through the online archive of other Hampshire College commencement speeches. The commencement speeches from 1998 and 2000 had been transcribed and posted on the website.  There was no record of Moore's speech in '99—nor of the student address given this year (i). I met that year's student speaker, Carlos McBride, by chance on a babysitting job. He asked me if I knew where to find the tape. The version I viewed had been made available through UMass's student-run access channel—not Hampshire's (ii).

Moore continues: “I got a letter from one of the students here, who was talking to me about one of the custodians named Marty–”

Moore was interrupted by overwhelming applause, cheering, and students chanting, in repeated unison, “MAR-TY, MAR-TY!”  Moore paused,then pressed on. “Marty changes the locks, I guess, or is an expert locksmith here. I was really touched by this letter, that a student would care to discuss a custodian here at the school... I realize that the people here at the college, the people who work here, don't have a union, and have struggled for some time, many of them, to try and form a union here at this college, and that these efforts have been resisted by the administration.” 

The last half of Moore's sentence was drowned out by more applause and cheers. Seated behind him, the administrators of the college looked grim; Gregory Prince, the Hampshire’s president then, looked particularly uneasy, wearing a sweaty, forced grin as he watched Moore plunge through the noise toward his point.

“You see,” said Moore, “it's no longer about left versus right, liberal versus conservative.  It's top versus bottom. It's top crushing bottom. It's 'have' versus 'have not': that's the world we live in. It's not about the fact that the administrators here are good people, or good liberals, or progressive thinkers. It's about the fact that they probably don't understand how really good it is to have your workforce unionized, that it's actually good for the school, it's good for the workers, it improves morale, improves productivity.” The applause that followed overwhelmed the low-grade microphone of the camera recording it with deafening static.

In the last ten years, there have been two union drives at Hampshire, two votes about whether to unionize, and two losses for the pro-union workers of the school. The first vote was in January of 1995, but it'd been building for months before that. The controversy began when a group of Physical Plant workers, dissatisfied with their working conditions, made known to Greg Prince, and to the administration at the time, their intent to join the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE). Despite advice from several colleagues, higher-ups, alumni, and friends to take a position of neutrality regarding unionization, Mr. Prince decided to take a strong stance against the organization of Hampshire workers. In a far-from-neutral move, he responded to the Phys. Plant workers by releasing a series of letters downplaying the merit of unions. When Mr. Prince's letters failed to quiet the workers' demands, he ordered the college to hire a union-busting Springfield law firm.

The next union drive, of '96-'97, involved not just Phys. Plant workers, but all “non-professional” staff. Mr. Prince treated this unionization attempt as he had before: he hired the same law firm; released more anti-union letters; authorized the release of additional “informational literature” discouraging union membership.

In November 2006, a group of Hampshire students organized a teach-in, open to the entire campus. Their intent: to bring to light the college's past efforts to prevent its employees from forming a union. On November 8, twelve years after the first union drive's start, ten years after the second, and seven years after Moore's speech, I made my way through a cold wet night to attend the lecture. I expected to be met with a near-vacant classroom and decade-old ideals.

The hall was almost empty when I got there. As I found my seat and opened my notebook, students began pouring in. There was a panel of two professors and two guest speakers.  As the lecture began, people were still crowding through the double-doors; they set up extra chairs, sat on steps, leaned on the snack table. Kate Traub of the Students for the Freedom to Unionize( SFU) had organized the lecture. She introduced the panel to the growing audience, then stepped back to allow the first speaker, Laurie Nisonoff, to tell her story.

Nisonoff has been teaching at Hampshire since 1974; she is a large woman who brings knitting with her everywhere she goes. She tends to ramble when she speaks. She began by making clear that she was, unlike us, no stranger to the futility of union drives at Hampshire: 1974 was the year of the first attempt to organize. It was a struggle represented by the clerical workers and librarians of the college, who were, of course, mostly women.  This drive, like its successors, failed.

Nisonoff described the wages and annual salary increases when the college began. The wages of the staff, faculty, and administration were all “linked”:

• Those who earned $15,000 a year or less got a seven percent increase.
• Those who earned $20,000 or so got a six percent increase.
• Those who earned $25,000 or more got a five percent increase.

What essentially happened, Nisonoff explained, was that the college’s highest paid people became annoyed that lower-wage-earners might ever match their salaries. Of course, such equity was only a theoretical goal. It was far from ever being a financial fact. Nevertheless, wages were “de-linked,” and the gap between staff and faculty began to increase. After the initial “de-linking,” the benefit packages for each income group were also changed. For a time, the right of workers to receive free tuition for their children (to attend Hampshire) was also revoked. Fortunately, this was soon reinstated.

The next speaker was Ferd Wulkan. Wulkan is a serious looking man with a serious looking mustache. He's an ombudsman for the union at University of Massachusetts (UMass).  

Wulkan explained:  UMass has a union because it’s a public school. The university’s administration is required by the laws of the National Labor Relations Board to permit organizing by UMass workers. Because Hampshire is a private school, its administration is not bound by the same laws.

Wulkan said he was enlisted to help with Hampshire's union drive of 1997 because of his UMass experience. His first advice was to insist that the 1997 drive not be limited to Physical Plant workers. He believed that if all the staff voted for a union, there would be a greater likelihood of getting one.

As Wulkan began to describe Skoler and Abbot, the union-busting law firm hired by the college, Margaret Cerullo, the speaker next in line, interrupted him. “How much money did it cost the college to pay that law firm?” Cerullo asked. Ferd answered: “Close to a quarter of a million dollars.”

“At Skoler, Abbott, & Presser, We're On Your Side.”  This is Skoler, Abbott’s motto. It’s displayed on their website. 

This is Skoler, Abbott’s mission statement: “For over 40 years, Skoler, Abbott & Presser has practiced exclusively labor and employment law, representing only the interests of management and employers. With two offices in Massachusetts—its main office in Springfield and a branch office in Worcester—Skoler, Abbott is one of the largest law firms in New England specializing in the practice of labor relations and employment law exclusively for management." (iii)

Wulkan said that the tactics employed by Skoler and Abbot (and therefore by Hampshire as well), “created a climate that was divisive.”  Skoler's goal, he said, was to seize upon the feeling that it was “less fun coming to work” since all the “union stuff” had started, and to use this as an argument against the union.  Wulkan said that this strategy was an old one:  during the 1920s and '30s, corporations had used it to create anxiety among workers who were trying to make up their minds about voting for a union.

According to documents from Hampshire's own archives, Skoler coached Hampshire management to release notices and “Fact Sheets,” to Phys. Plant discouraging unionization.  “Fact Sheet One,” shown below, was released to only one branch of Physical Plant:

  

Fact Sheet One's release aborted the distribution of other sheets. The administration seems to have realized the gravity of their content.  Pro-unionists called such Fact Sheets “red-baiting.” Greg Prince quickly denied knowledge of the Fact Sheet's release.

Margaret Cerullo began her speech by describing how Hampshire took advantage of the “family politics” of the workplace. “Usually when workers refer to the workplace as 'like a family,' they mean they cover each others' backs,” Cerullo said. Hampshire played up the idea that to unionize would be to ruin Hampshire’s “family feeling,”: Even without a union, Hampshire workers could switch work days when they were sick with free days when they weren't; instead of being confined to campus, workers were free to leave during their lunch break to run family errands. Cerullo said such freedoms were deceptive:  They were the exploitative tactics sprung of paternalism. Paternalism, said Cerullo, was when employers were generous to their workers in order to enhance their power over them. (“If you’re good, Daddy will let you stay up late. But only if you do what Daddy says.”) In a paternalist working environment, said Cerullo, employees are “asked” to work extra hours, or “asked” to do things outside the parameters of their jobs. Not “told,” Cerullo said, but “asked.”

Kathy Adams, the last speaker, said she was often “asked,” to put in such extra “family” efforts when she worked at Hampshire. By the end of the union drive she found herself disowned. “I'm still nervous speaking in a crowded classroom like this,” she said to the packed lecture hall, “even though I'm used to being behind a pulpit now. When I was at Hampshire, I spent most of my time in rooms like this—setting things up.” 

Kathy had run the Custodial Department of the college’s Physical Plant during the Nineteen Nineties. After she voiced disillusionment with the methods of the college’s 1997 anti-union campaign, she was demoted. (Kathy is now in the process of becoming a minister. She wants to do something to combat at least some of the evils of this world.)

“For twenty-eight years,” Kathy said, “Hampshire was my home.” The three speakers who'd preceded her had recited facts.  Kathy had come to tell her story. She was no babbling worker-turned- sour. She was well-educated and very aware of her place in the world.  “I'd like to begin by acknowledging my privileges,” Kathy said. She counted on her fingers: “I'm white. I'm middle class. I'm Christian. As a minister, I'm a figurehead of the Christian church. Before you enter into a dialog about those who are marginalized, you need to recognize your privilege... We need to enter into a dialog like this in humility.”

She said the college made lot of promises to staff—including herself—at the start of the union drive. When someone brought up a problem, administrators would say, “When this is over, we're gonna fix that.” It was easy, she said, to be convinced that the college was a family—that the family was willing to grow, to change, without any “help” from outsiders.  That’s what Kathy believed until she sat in on a meeting with Skoler, Abbot. It was the meeting in which they discussed the release of the Fact Sheet 1. What became known as the “red–baiting” Fact Sheet. When Kathy heard the sheet’s contents, she objected: “I said, 'Excuse me?! Do you know what we teach here?'” 

Everyone in the lecture hall laughed. At the irony. At the hypocrisy.

After her outburst, Kathy said, she wasn't invited to any more Skoler meetings. Then, she said,she was demoted. The college named her “ Director of Special Programs.” Her new job came with a pay-cut: Five thousand dollars less a year. Her new office was the back of a UHaul truck. The college said the UHaul was only temporary.

One day, after a couple months in the UHaul, while she was sitting in the cab of the truck, it dawned on her. “I said to myself, you know what? This stinks.” She put in a call to one of her pro-union friends on the staff. She asked a couple of questions, then she joined the drive. 

Kathy ended her speech with a challenge. “Call the treasurer's office,” she said to the students in the room. “Ask 'em about it. Just for fun. If you need something to get to them, just use my name!” She told the students: As students, they were the only people at the college who could afford to speak to the issue—and not be threatened for doing it. “What you're really trying to do,” Kathy said, “is get an apology.”

I'm not sure that getting an apology is what Students for the Freedom to Unionize are really trying to do.

SFU representatives spoke—briefly—after Kathy. They passed around a petition for the audience to sign, imploring the college’s new president, Ralph Hexter, to allow workers to be “card-checked.” If a majority of workers were to sign cards indicating their support of a given union, the cards could then be submitted directly to the NLRB. Though the employer is not required by law to recognize the union as a representative for these employees, the NLRB is. The advantage of “card-checking” as a method of organizing, as opposed to a campaign and then a vote, is that there is little room  an anti-union efforts to affect the process.  If Hampshire’s administrators—its President, its Vice President, and its Treasurer—were to heed SFU’s petition, “card checking” would create a workplace environment in which employees weren’t afraid to try to unionize.

The teach-in was the first SFU meeting I'd ever attended. I decided to attend another. I had misgivings about the existence of such a group on campus—the SFU kids were rich, they definitely weren't working class, and their cause was nearly ten years lost. I admit that, on my way to the second SFU meeting the following Thursday, I was half-suspecting (and half-sadistically-hoping) to end up seeing little more than an anarchistic circle jerk. I talked about this with my roommate, Jeff (iv) before I left for the meeting.

“Yo,” Jeff began, shaking his head, “those kids are just so up on themselves... like they even know what it's like to have to work for a day of their lives. My mother,” he said, nodding knowledgeably as he spoke, “before she got a promotion at her school and everything, we had almost no income. You know, we were living off food stamps.”  He gives me a look. “You think one of those SFU kids ever had to live off food stamps? Ever?”

Jeff was right. The SFUers are the Salvation-Army-chic brand of college kid: rolled-up, ripped jeans, bare feet, cobwebby T-shirts with obscure logos. You can still see the trappings of their upper-class lives: Expensive new cars. High-gig laptops. Six-figure credit lines or trust funds or both. They'll soon have a college education under their vegan-imitation-leather braided belts. (In fact, so will I.) Karen's words still ring in my head—The first step is to acknowledge your privilege.

The kids in SFU are privileged—but at least they’re willing to use their privileges to promote social justice. They may never have lived off food stamps, but on whatever small a scale, in however self-righteous a way, the SFUers are fighting for the underdogs they'll never be. 

I went to their meeting.

It was a tactical planning session. They intended to confront the college’s president at an upcoming, Monday morning “Breakfast With the President” meeting. “Breakfast With the President” is a time-honored Hampshire tradition in which the college president descends, once a week, to eat Sodexho-Marriot (v) tater tots with the people who pay his salary. “It's a good way to get publicity,” Brendan McQuayde, a Division II World History student said.  “Hexter can't just brush us off when he's surrounded by the whole student body.”

Apparently, Hexter still did that, albeit charmingly. 

Taryn Biggs, one of the newest and most proactive members of the SFU, later told me about what happened at the Breakfast. “Hexter has this amazing ability to give positive answers that are actually not answers, to try and get us out of the way.” She reminded me that Hexter's specialty is what Alex, a Division II philosophy student, has called “verbal gymnastics”: Hexter publicly encourages an effort without addressing the actual cause or issue behind the effort. At Breakfast, Hexter enthusiastically accepted the SFU’s petition. He said he'd “love to set up a forum in which we can have a dialog about all this.” 

Hexter's vagueness seems in keeping with his approach to the union question thus far. In September, 2005, The Climax, Hampshire's student-run newspaper, published an exchange of letters between Hexter and the SFU. Hexter wrote that he, “would guide Hampshire to respect all the rights and freedoms of individuals to weigh their options just as I would respect the outcome of a unionization election... But I will not subject the College, or myself, to a gag rule. (vi) Hexter explained that if any union-related information were circulating at Hampshire, and if he sensed it to be false in any way, he “ would insist [that] the President's office… provid[e] any information… that's requested or, if …there are information sheets that are going about that don't appear to me to reflect the truth, I might even say what I personally think, but I don't think that constitutes coercion.” 

While conducting research in the Hampshire archives, I noticed something about the names of the 1997 anti-union advocates: most of the 1997 anti unionists are still working at Hampshire. Many of the pro-unionists seem to have either quit or been fired. The small number of pro-union voters still working here keep a low profile, but there are a few.

Michael Moore, in his speech, talked about the importance of cultivating relationships with workers on campus, not as workers, but as fellow human beings and supporters of a cause. Moore said: “[Y]ou need to go out...in this world that you are going out into today, and have the sense that it's not just the few of you [liberals], you are not just a part of a small group of people, that there are lots of people that feel this way: The 'Martys' of this world, that you should get to know, who share the same platform, the same feelings, the same values that you have. It's very important that you do this.”                   

I was curious about the 'Marty' in Moore’s speech. I was curious about who Marty actually was. Did he still work at Hampshire? Did students still love him enough to applaud the mere mention of his name? Did anyone even remember him?

A Phys. Plant worker who I know, not only remembered him, but recommended him to me as an interview subject. He set up a meeting between us. Martin Rule still works at Hampshire. He’s a carpenter for Phys. Plant as well as Hampshire's only certified locksmith. He’s a Hampshire parent. In fact,he’s the father of two sons. He’s also an ex-marine. He holds a construction supervisor's license and a journeyman's carpenter's rating from the Department of Labor of the U.S. Government.

Marty and I met for lunch one day. He's tall and confident. Looks and acts a bit like Dan Ackroyd. Casual and friendly. A master storyteller. He drives a white Hampshire College mini-van, and, like all Phys. Plant employees, he’s not too shy about steering it up, onto every sidewalk and lawn around campus. He's very proud, but his sense of humor saves him from being conceited. His jeans and T-shirt are a bit worn; his large glasses rest on the bridge of his nose. When he speaks,he leans forward slightly, gesturing with his rough wide hands. He likes to go into detail. Except when I ask him about the union drive, back in 1997. His answers to my questions are always the same: “I can't talk about it. I still work here.”

I went looking for another source. I found one. He agreed to talk about the 1995 drive and the 1997 vote. But—he insisted on anonymity. He’s older, now with a mortgage and kids in college. If Hampshire fired him, or forced him out, like Kathy Adams, how could he find another job?

This is the gist of what he told me:

After the first union drive in '95, many of those who were pro-union began to face workplace discrimination: Supervisors went out of their way to be generous to those who stood against the union, allowing sick days and time off to them while denying such allowances to the others. Loyalty was rewarded. “Disloyalty” punished. Father knows best. When the '97 vote came along, many workers locked themselves in their homes, unplugged their phones, and simply refused to participate in the vote at all. Ten years later,they’re still afraid. The bills they owe—house payments and college tuition—keep them in line.

The fear tactics Ferd Wulkan, the UMass organizer, referred to have served their purpose:  Though students may have an “open dialog,” complete with posters and guest speakers, it is a dialog absent the very people—the workers—it concerns. As romantic as heroism for a cause may seem to students, the greater romance for the working class is in escape.  Escape is the foundation of the American Dream: to achieve it, you've gotta grit your teeth around your pride and swallow it; you’ve gotta smother your impulse to damn the man and kiss his ass instead. Then, maybe, if the dollars and cents of your painstakingly balanced checkbook fall just so, you can succeed. You can escape the rat race. You can retire.
As Kathy Adams said, Hampshire students have an obligation to demand a union since, as students, they have nothing to lose. They are, essentially, an untouchable class.  No one will kick them out of Hampshire for denouncing the college’s hypocricy. They won’t risk losing all they've worked for by demanding a dialog—in fact, they’ll be commended for it, however patronizingly. The survivors of Hampshire’s last union drive are watching and waiting. Maybe this time.

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Correction
After Michael Moore made his 1999 Graduation Ceremony speech, Hampshire College asked him to provide the college with a copy of his remarks so they could be posted on the College's web site. Moore was unable to do so: His remarks were extemporaneous. Since Moore could provide no written text, the college had nothing to post.

 

Editor's Note
In the first weeks of 2007, the new Democratic Congress passed a Bill entitled THE EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT. This bill would streamline the process of union organizing. If it were passed by the Senate and signed by the President,employees would simply have to sign cards in order to authorize the formation of a union in their workplace . Collective bargaining would follow. As of now, card signatures can be rejected by employers who have the right to conduct mandatory workplace information sessions, prior to the casting of secret ballots.

 

Extended Bibliography
“Fact Sheet 1.”  December 1994.  Hampshire College Archives.  Harold F. Johnson Library, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.

Hampshire College Change Team.  “Why We Want A Union.”  Undated.  Hampshire College Archives.  Harold F. Johnson Library, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.

Oliver, John.  Letter to Gregory Prince.  7 July 1997.  Hampshire College Archives.  Harold F. Johnson Library, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.

“Physical Plant Mission Statement.”  Hampshire College Website:  Resources:  Physical Plant.  23 August 2006.  15 October 2006.  <http://www.hampshire.edu/cms/index.php?id=96>.

i. “Event Archives.”  Hampshire College Website, News Section.  Updated January 9, 2007.  Accessed 12 January 2007.  <http://www.hampshire.edu/cms/index.php?id=119>

ii. Moore, Michael.  Hampshire College Commencement Speech, 1999.  ACTV, Public Access Channel 12.  3 November, 2006.

iii. Skoler, Abbott, & Presser P.C. Home.  Copyright 2005.  16 October 2006.  <http://www.skoler-abbott.com/>.

iv. Indicated names have been changed, at the request of the subject(s).

v. Sodexho-Marriot is a contracted company, unlike physical plant or the other staff positions at the school; during the union drive, a Sodexho worker, Larry Archy, was brought in as head of Physical Plant.  Because he was hired by this contractor and not by Hampshire, he could not unionize with the rest of the Physical Plant staff:  Pelissier, Tom.   Happy at Hampshire:  A Union Organizer's Account of Union Busting at Hampshire College in the 1990s.  Pages 5-6.  N.p.:  np, nd.

vi. “Correspondence Between President Hexter and the Students for the Freedom to Unionize.”   Features Section. The Climax, Vol. 1, Issue 1.  September 28, 2005. The Climax Archives Online.  17 October 2006.  <http://climax.hampshire.edu/0401/sfu.php>