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There is only one place in the world that makes Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil: the Reynolds plant in Louisville, Ky.   So what that means is the 325 Steelworkers who work there manufacture the entire world’s supply of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil.

As Jack Coates, who served as president and business agent of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 155 for nearly 17 years until this June, explained, from annealing—baking the aluminum in huge ovens—to packaging the finished product, the members of Local 155 engage in every step of making Reynolds Wrap.  They also make off-brand aluminum foil, with occasional contracts with companies like CVS, Walmart and Sam’s Club.  So truly, USW Local 155 supplies the world with aluminum foil. 

For the entire 65 years Reynolds has fabricated aluminum foil, there’s been a Reynolds Wrap factory in Louisville. The headquarters and production remain an iconic part of Louisville’s landscape, although the factory is now owned by the Rank Group and no longer by the Reynolds family.  

To make Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil, Steelworkers take 30,000 pound coils shipped from Hot Springs, Ark., and temper them in annealing ovens to make the metal workable.  When the aluminum comes out of the ovens, it is suitable for milling.Steelworkers then run the aluminum through six sets of rollers to flatten it to the appropriate thickness for home use: usually .6 mils (or .006 of an inch) for standard household foil.  It goes to the ovens a second time to bake off any chemicals that might contaminate food and is then cut, spooled and boxed.   (more…)

By Barry Craig
History Professor, Author

Dave Suetholz says he got fed up with “the right wing’s effective use of the echo chamber through its network of reactionary think tanks and media.”

So the Kentucky labor lawyer climbed aboard his American-made Ford pickup truck and drove across the Bluegrass State seeking support for a Kentucky Labor Institute (KLI).

His travels bore fruit. Says Sy Slavin, Ph.D., KLI acting director:

If you look at the seven months since we have been in operation, the record is impressive. More than 60 articles supporting labor have been published in blogs around the country. We have had an op-ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

(more…)

Don McNay

By Don McNay
Award winning financial columnist and structured settlement guru

The Wall Street Journal posted a story about Portfolio Recovery Associates, one of the nation’s largest debt collectors, using the signature of a woman named Martha Kunkle, who died in 1995.

Although she died in 1995, Kunkle’s signature has apparently shown up on thousands of affidavits submitted since her death by Portfolio.

You can read the entire article here.

I can do Portfolio Recovery Associates one better. As noted in a column that I wrote shortly after my mother’s death, MBNA claimed to have spoken to my dead mother about a credit card, even though she had died months earlier.

I’m not sure what connection that bill collectors have with the unliving, but it is obviously a strong one.

Here is the story about my mother:

MBNA Claims to Have Talked to my Dead Mother
“I’ll be coming home, wait for me” ~ Righteous Brothers, Unchained Melody , (theme from the movie, Ghost)

My mother allegedly died on April 2nd, 2006. I say allegedly because a collector representing MBNA said he talked to her on June 21, 2006.

Until I saw a letter from Dale Lamb, I felt pretty certain my mother was dead. (more…)

Don McNay

By Don McNay
Award winning financial columnist and structured settlement guru

My father was a professional gambler and used to carry a roll of money that he called “walking around” money.

Walking around money is what the SEC settled for in the Goldman Sachs case.

$550 million is walking around money to a company like Goldman Sachs. It is less than 5% of the $10 billion in bonuses it paid itself last year.

Maybe “walking around” money is an understatement.

The stock market understood that Goldman got the best of the deal. Goldman’s stock price surged 4.43% on rumors of a settlement. As the Huffington Post pointed out, the stock gain was probably enough to cover the $550 million fine.

Also, Goldman got a monkey off its back. It can go on without a lawsuit hanging over its head. If the SEC had taken the time to do a through and complete investigations, who knows what they would have found. (more…)

Berry Craig

 By Berry Craig
Professor of history, West Kentucky Community and Technical College

Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan says Ron Paul, the state’s Republican Senate candidate, is so vehement in his opposition to the right to the freedom to form unions and bargain contracts that when an anti-union Republican front group sent out a candidate questionnaire, Paul indicated his opposition to workers’ rights across the board.

Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist and the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), is running against Louisville Democrat Jack Conway, Kentucky’s attorney general. One or the other will succeed retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, whom unions consider one of the most anti-labor lawmakers in Washington. 

The state AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed Conway this month. 

The questionnaire was sent to Paul, Conway and to Bluegrass State U.S. House candidates by the Coalition to Protect Kentucky Jobs, a corporate group that is against the Employee Free Choice Act. The group says it will publish candidates’ responses to its survey.

Meanwhile, Conway declined to answer the questionnaire, which focused on the Employee Free Choice Act. Conway favors the proposed measure, which would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions. (more…)

Berry Craig

By Berry Craig
Professor of history, West Kentucky Community and Technical College

Tim Miller doesn’t buy the coal industry’s claims that nonunion mines are as safe as union mines.

He survived a 1989 methane gas explosion and fire that killed 10 other miners at the nonunion William Station No. Nine Mine in his native western Kentucky. Miller helped recover the bodies.

All 10 men were more than fellow miners. “They were my good friends,” says Miller, now an international representative for the Mine Workers (UMWA).

From 1979 to 1997, Miller dug coal 1,000 feet underground at the mine and can’t forget the human toll: 28 fatalities in 18 years.

We finally organized that mine in 1997. It was bankrupt then. But it lasted almost seven more years under the UMWA banner. There wasn’t a single death from the time we organized the mine until it closed.

Pyro Mining Co. owned the mine, and so the deadly explosion is sometimes called the Pyro Mine Disaster. “I’ll carry that with me for the rest of my life,” says Miller, 50.

His office is in Madisonville, the Hopkins County seat. His desk is about 27 miles from the Pyro mine site and about 10 miles from the Dotiki Mine in Webster County, where two miners died last month in a roof fall. “Dotiki is also nonunion,” Miller says.

The double fatality followed an April explosion at the Massey Energy Co.’s nonunion Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia that left 29 coal miners dead. The blast was one of the worst mining disasters in years.

Inspectors had cited the Upper Big Branch and Dotiki mines for multiple safety violations. Ultimately, the Pyro mine superintendent pleaded guilty to hiding hazardous conditions at the mine and attempting to cover them up.

Admitting he hadn’t looked at mining accident statistics recently, the vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association told the Beckley, W.Va., Register-Herald he wasn’t “aware of any measurable statistical difference between” union and nonunion mines.

Miller says his experience and a mountain of data prove the coal industry is dead wrong: Union mines are much safer than nonunion mines.

In a UMWA mine, you have a real say when it comes to safety issues. Members of our safety committee that are elected by their fellow union workers travel with mine inspectors.

Because they are in the union, safety committee members can point out problem areas the company hasn’t addressed and not fear retribution from the company, Miller said. Also, any UMWA miner can leave a work area he or she feels might be dangerous, again without having to worry about retaliation, he added.

I know the law says you have the right to withdraw yourself from an unsafe area. But in a nonunion mine, you know if you do withdraw, or if you speak out about safety problems, your days on the job are numbered. The company might not fire you right away. But they’ll get you in one of those bogus layoffs. So people are scared to speak out—scared they won’t have a job if they do.

Miller was 19 when Pyro hired him. He ended up at the William Station Mine, which is in Union County. Union, Webster, Hopkins and Muhlenberg counties are the heart of Kentucky’s western coal field.

The nonunion coal operators paint the picture that MSHA [the Mine Safety and Health Administration] is the enemy and the UMWA is the devil that tries to take money out of your pocket.

He’d been mining coal for about three years when he witnessed a retirement “ceremony” for a veteran miner in his 60s. It helped make Miller a union man.

About 15 minutes before quitting time they gave the old fellow a little going away cake and the superintendent handed him a pocket watch. The old fellow had tears in his eyes. But he wasn’t getting a pension or health care. All he had was his Social Security. From that point on, I knew what I had to look forward to without the union.

Miller embraced the UMWA. He helped in organizing drives that eventually resulted in the mine going union.

But it was too late for his 10 buddies, who lost their lives on Sept. 13, 1989.

Miller says he was working in another part of the mine when the blast occurred. Thick smoke made it doubly difficult for rescue teams, including Miller, to search for the miners, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

One of the guys had a pulse when he was found. They did CPR on him, but he didn’t make it.

Miller said he and the other would-be rescuers had to wear heavy oxygen tanks, which made recovering the bodies even more arduous. “But I was thinking if that was my body down there, I’d want somebody to get me out.”

Miller and his mates sewed makeshift body bags from wing curtains, heavy cloths that are draped in shafts to improve ventilation.

We cut the curtains off, wrapped them around the bodies and pinned the curtains with nails. We put them on a flat car and carried them out—about seven miles. It was a long way.

***

Berry Craig is the author of True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon & Burgoo and Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War.  He is a member of a member of AFT Local 6010.

Berry Craig

By Berry Craig
Author of “True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon and Burgoo”

The snow-softened rubble of the Continental General Tire plant at Mayfield, Ky., reminds me of a scene in “New in Town.” We rented the movie from a video store the other night.

Lucy Hill, played by Renee Zellweger, is a high-powered corporate executive from sunny Miami. She’s been sent in snowy wintertime to a small Minnesota community similar to Mayfield, my hometown, first to downsize, then close, a food processing plant that her company owns. Plant secretary Blanche Gunderson, played by Siobhan Fallon, accidentally finds a list of workers Hill plans to lay off. She gently confronts Hill.

“I made that a long time ago,” Hill protests. “I made that list before I even knew you.”

“It’s OK to pull the rug out from under folks as long as it’s nobody that you know?” Gunderson replies. “It’s OK because we’re just silly Podunk Minnesotans, right?  We talk funny and we ice fish and we scrapbook. We drag Jesus into regular conversation. We’re not cool like you, right? So we don’t matter.”

German-owned Continental finished pulling the rug out from under Mayfield three years ago. Our economy hasn’t recovered from the loss of the plant. It might not ever. Opened in 1960 by the U.S. company General Tire, the plant produced car and truck tires. Most went to auto plants in Detroit and elsewhere for new vehicles. At one time, the Mayfield factory provided jobs for some 2,200 union and 400 salaried employees.

In 1987, Continental bought General Tire, which ultimately became Continental Tire North America. In 2007, Continental shut the Mayfield factory after several months of drawing down production and laying off workers. A salvage firm bought the plant and is demolishing it for scrap.

I wonder if Continental figured Mayfield plant workers were “just silly Podunk” Kentuckians who talk funny? It doesn’t get nearly cold enough to ice fish in the Bluegrass State. But scrapbooking and talking Jesus are common in these parts.

Continental claimed it had to close the Mayfield plant. The company said the factory was too old, too outmoded and had the highest production costs of any of its North American factories.

The plant union, United Steelworkers Local 665, tried to help Continental keep the plant going, says Terry Beane, who was the last president of Local 665. The union offered to extend our labor agreement and commit to workforce restructuring, if the company would make an equal commitment to invest in the plant and this community.

Beane and Wayne Chambers, the plant’s last vice president, even met with Continental executives. Said Beane:

The Germans looked me in the eye. They looked Wayne in the eye. They said they appreciated our comments on good old Mayfield. They also said:

“We are a global company, and we are going to build our tires wherever we want and as cheaply as we can.”

“Wherever” meant low-wage countries overseas or nonunion Continental facilities stateside, Chambers said.

Nothing else in “New in Town” reminded me of what happened to the Mayfield plant. In the movie, the workers end up buying their factory and running it themselves.

The Hill character goes with the workers. She’ll be plant manager and apparently the new bride of Ted Mitchell, a union official and widower played by Harry Connick Jr. You get the idea that Lucy, Ted, Blanche and everybody else are going to live happily ever after.

I’ve never heard of a real corporate executive who had a conscience attack and sided with workers at a plant he or she was about to downsize or shut. I don’t know of any members of Local 665 who have found better jobs than the ones they had at the factory.

Chambers works part time for the Steelworkers helping former plant employees get their health benefits. Beane fills snack machines for a local vending company. The tire factory, which won awards from car manufacturers for quality tires, is fast becoming heaps of crushed concrete and snapped off steel girders. It looks like images of bombed-out World War II buildings you see on the Military Channel on TV.

Every day, cranes with red, yellow and lime-green arms knock down more of the factory, which sprawled over several acres. The crane arms bob up and down like the bald heads of buzzards picking at road kill on busy, four-lane U.S. 45 North, which runs past the plant site.

Says Chambers:

People worked at the plant from all over western Kentucky and even Tennessee. Now all those good jobs are gone. It’s just like in the Depression.

Chambers knows Mayfield is not the only town that is minus a big plant. “All across the country, people are in the same bad shape,” he said. “It’s all because of corporate greed. These big companies just want to make all the money they can. They ship our jobs out of the country and don’t care who gets hurt.”

What Continental did was legal, thanks to right-wing Republicans and to some “Blue Dog Democrats,” most of them from Southern right-to-work states. They’re always glad to keep government and unions “off the back” of Big Business.

Big corporations and their friends in politics, the pulpit and the media, call busting unions and shipping jobs and production abroad or to “right to work” for less states “free enterprise.” (The “free enterprisers” also blame “greedy unions” when they close unionized plants.) When conservatives say “free enterprise,” they mean union free. They also mean free of meaningful government regulations that do things like safeguard the lives and limbs of workers on the job, protect consumers against dangerous products and shield the environment against pollution that can make us sick or even kill us.

Heaven help the republic, “free enterprisers” declare, if government does anything significant on behalf of “silly Podunk” workers against the avarice of big corporations like Continental.

Go ahead and slam me as a “socialist.” But I’d like to see Congress slap a hefty tax on companies—foreign-owned or domestic—that move plants from the United States to low-wage countries. I’d like to see a law passed that would give workers a real say in how their companies operate, like workers have in Sweden, whose workforce is nearly 70 percent unionized. (Count me in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, too.)

A more accurate name for “free enterprise” is “social responsibility free enterprise.” Continental didn’t feel any responsibility toward its employees or to our town, indeed to our region. Profit, not people or the communities where they live, mattered most with the company. Of course, there are dozens of other corporations like Continental, which closed another unionized ex-General Tire plant in Charlotte, N.C.

Chambers and Beane won’t have Continental tires on their vehicles. Nor will I and many others in and around Mayfield. As Chambers notes:

The tires [Continental is]…shipping to this country aren’t any cheaper to the consumer. Sometimes, they cost even more.

He cites a newspaper advertisement for a tire store in Paducah, near Mayfield.

It was in the Paducah paper. There were five different brands in the ad. Size for size, Continentals were the most expensive.

Scorn me as “naïve,” or as a “bleeding heart,” too. But I don’t see how downsizers and plant closers can live with themselves. I guess that makes me “just another Podunk” working stiff unwise in the ways of “free enterprise.”

Admittedly, I don’t “drag Jesus into everyday conversation” very often. But I thank the Good Lord that the basics of my Presbyterian upbringing have stuck with me to age 60. I try hard to live by what Christians call the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” (The same principle is also found in other faiths.)

Five days a week, I drive one or the other of my American-made cars past the tire plant going to and from the community college in Paducah where I teach history. It saddens me to see less and less of the plant standing each time I go by. I know the Good Book says we’re supposed to love people who harm us. But I also get angry when I see Continental’s handiwork.

The Continental bosses, who make big money, live in big houses and drive big cars, probably don’t give Mayfield a thought. But they ought to visit our town, drive out Highway 45 and watch the rubble rise. They also could tool around town and see the empty store buildings and the open spaces on our court square where other stores have been torn down.

The “Conti” brass could bring publicists from the PR division of Continental Tire North America, which is headquartered, not coincidentally, in South Carolina, a “right to work” state.

The flaks could take pictures of the ruins of the Mayfield plant for one of their glossy-paged annual reports for stockholders. After all, what happened where I live was good old American “free enterprise.”

***

Berry Craig is a member of AFT Local 6010