By Suzanne Miller
People often ask me what I’m reading these days, and I always have to shamefully explain that I’m not reading anything and that in fact, I haven’t finished a book in a long time. It recently occurred to me that I am actually reading all the time, but only in the capacity of editing this newsletter- reading and editing the articles that the officers submit to me, each one at least three times. So, I’m reading plenty, but never a book.
However, that all changed a few weeks ago when a customer friend gave me this book: Three Roads: Labor, Music, Ecology. I knew from previous conversations that his brother, the author, was active in the labor movement, and I was eager to dive in.
I did not have any experience with a union before I joined NALC. That is quite the opposite of Joe Uehlein (pronounced U-Line, just like those catalogs we hate to deliver). The first few chapters introduce us to his vast labor history in Ohio. Growing up, his father was one of the founding members of the Steelworkers Local 1104, his mother an organizer in the Clothing Workers Union. Together they both contributed to the building of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), one of the two predecessors to today’s AFL-CIO.
Ever since I began participating in our union, I have compared it to life in the church. I was busy every Wednesday again, there were lots of meetings, and the same people always end up doing all the work. Well, Uehlein reinforced my theory. He writes that his family’s “entire social lives revolved around the union.” From picnics to ball games to picket lines, the union was the center of it all. He goes on to explain his early jobs in many different trades. Much of the work was clearly unsafe; I wasn’t sure if maybe I was reading parts of The Jungle instead. He describes aluminum shavings in eyes as a regular part of the job at the aluminum mill and standing in a food of water on the assembly line at a printing plant. It all makes a day delivering mail feel pleasant, which mostly it is.
Uhlein educates the reader about labor history and strikes from Pennsylvania to Mississippi and beyond while perfectly painting a picture of cities made of factories and mills and working-class neighborhoods. At that time in those places, the environment was not only not discussed, but you were run out of town if you tried.
Regardless, there came a point when he could no longer pretend it wasn’t important. When I was in Cleveland a few years ago, I learned that the Cuyahoga River caught on fire in 1969. Well, Uehlein was there for that, and he explains how that was part of a shift in how people looked at all that smoke coming out of the mill and the chemicals being dumped in the rivers and the soil. It was a change in history that he would be a part of.
I have always been concerned about how wasteful the Postal Service is. (Do we really have to wrap the tubs in all that plastic, just to be thrown away when they arrive at the next place?) I am grateful that my station recycles bottles/cans and the plastic wrap that magazines come in, only thanks to a team of volunteers. When you look at the big picture- all the emissions from our enormous gas-guzzling fleet for example- it can seem over-whelming. So, I very much appreciate Uehlein’s drive to make the planet cleaner and safer all while protecting jobs and workers. The two paths simply don’t meet a lot of the time. He writes, “I’ve devoted much of my life trying to bridge the gap between the labor and environmental movements. I’ve argued that both share a common interest in combining economic and social sustainability with environmental sustainability. I’ve argued that ‘jobs versus the environment’ is a false choice.”
His stories are woven with tales of the music of the time. From Pete Seeger to the Beatles to Grateful Dead, Motown, and many Uehlein family sing-alongside, the author explains how the music shaped his life AND how he used it as a tool in fighting unfair labor practices throughout his long and fascinating career in the American labor movement. Uehlein explains he was “seeking the chemistry of vision, art, and action.”
This book has ransacked hotel rooms, actual pitchforks, baseball, picket lines, puppets, death threats, cool vans, politics, and guitars. Something for everyone.
Joe Uehlein will be in Portland on October 3, and he’s bringing his music. Come buy a book, have it signed, and listen to some incredible tales and songs.
