I started working for the Ohio University Food Service Department was I was on 13 years old. It was back when CB Radio was really big. I had bought a “rig” from a friend of my dad’s. Almost every evening I was on the air talking with some guys in the area. One of them—“Charlie Brown”—was Jeff Young, who was the Food Service Manager of Baker Center. He asked me if I wanted to work and I said yes. My first job was pouring coffee and putting out cookies for an event at Siegfried Gallery. That led to being a substitute—“sub”—in the Baker Center dishroom on weekends. Some weekends I was the only guy doing the job of three. It occasionally looked like a Marx Brothers movie as dirty dishes piled up on one side and clean dishes piled up on the other side of the dishwasher.
I continued working for Food Services while in college. I worked in the Irvine Dining Hall all four years. In fact, I turned out the lights the last time on the dining hall before it was converted to classroom space. My first two years I worked the food line, doling out food. My last two years I was a checker, checking IDs of the students entering the dining hall.
In the Spring of my Junior year, there was an attempt to organize a student workers union. Led by Bruce Mitchell who worked at Nelson Dining Hall on the South Green, it became a movement that eventually encompassed all of the dining halls. (Bruce Mitchell later founded, and still runs, the Athens News.) Bruce and his co-workers were branded “radicals” by most of us but we were sympathetic to the idea.
Over the course of several weeks were talks with the university to convince them to recognize a student workers union. But OU was adamantly opposed. So things came to a head. I vividly recall a meeting of student workers on a Sunday evening in March of 1974. We met in an auditorium in Bentley Hall. Some local new media were there along with four shop stewards from the local AFSME union that represented the cooks and janitors at OU. What struck me as odd was that before the AFSME people spoke Bruce Mitchell asked all of the media to leave the room.
One of the shop stewards then told us that the union was supportive of what we were doing and “behind you all the way.” The next day we went on strike.
The week before had been beautiful weather. Sunny with above average temperatures. But, of course, the week we go on strike it was windy with snow flurries. So I did my time on the picket line. I chose the location at the bottom of Union Street, where it intersected with the so-called “backway” to the West Green. On one corner was a gas station. Many years prior, there had been a house in that spot, where we lived when I was just a baby.
Monday afternoon, just before 3pm shift change, several of the cooks and janitors drove up. Since I was from Athens, and had worked in Food Service for many years, I knew most of the people, or they knew my parents. We said “hi” to each other. A couple of them told me that they had been instructed to drive to work, but if they encountered a picket line, they were supposed to turn around and meet at the fairgrounds. So the first day was easy, almost festive.
Tuesday night was cold. There were about 10 of us manning the picket line. Around 2am, one of the city’s street sweepers came lumbering down Union Street. It went past us but did a u-turn and pulled in to the gas station, which was closed. The driver hopped out and starting talking to us. Then one of the picketers said, “Oh man! In the summer back in Cleveland I’ve always wanted to get a job driving a street sweeper. I think it would be really cool.” The driver said, “Well, why don’t you take it for a spin around the block.” “Really?” “Sure.” So the guy from Cleveland climbed in to the cab of the street sweeper. The driver gave him a quick orientation, then the student took off up Union street.
The street sweeper weaved its way up the hill, coming close to hitting cars parked on either side. Fortunately, at 2am in Athens back in the 70’s there was no traffic on the street. The street sweeper eventually went out of sight. The driver seemed unconcerned and continued to chat with us.
About 20 minutes later the street sweeper comes weaving back down Union Street and pulls in to the gas station. The student hops out, “Ah, man! That was so cool. Thanks for letting me do that.” “Oh, no problem.” The driver gets back in and drives off down Union Street.
About a half-hour later, the street sweeper comes back and pulls in to the gas station. The driver opens the door and hands us a 6-pack of beer. “I thought you guys might like this.” Then he drives off into the night.
Around 4am that Wednesday morning, a car with some of the leaders of the strike came by. They wanted to tell us that the 7am shift change would be really important. The AFSME members were going to try to go to work, unless we were really aggressive. We were told to yell at them and bang on their vehicles. Well, I wasn’t going to do any such thing. I knew these folks. They knew my parents. And I was going to have to work with them when the strike was over.
Shortly before 7am, cars started coming by. They all came up to our picket line and turned around–except for one guy. He shortcut through the gas station lot, almost hit a picketer, and proceeded to the West Green. The whole event lasted about 15 minutes.
Later that morning, I and couple of buddies wandered over to the West Green, behind our dining hall, Irvine. While we were there, one of our managers came out with coffee and donuts for us. We had a great relationship with everyone we worked with. The students who worked in Nelson dining hall, not so much. They paid a price when they went back to work.
A short time later, we were approached by a guy who said he was the supervisor for the company hauling the trash for the university. He told us he was sympathetic to our cause but needed a reason to stop the trash pickups. He opined, if there was a threat to his drivers’ safety–like a gunshot through a windshield–he’d have justification to pull his men out. So a stranger is asking us to shoot a gun at one of his trucks. Yeah, right. We quickly said, “no way”.
We fully expected our strike to continue for several more days. As long as we had the backing of AFSME, it put the university in a tough position. Managers and other administrators had been keeping the dining halls open.
That afternoon came word that the strike was over. Not because we won, but because AFSME had decided to go back to work. Apparently, they received some concessions from the university. The local newspaper the next morning showed the Director of Personnel and the AFSME President walking together back to work. The Union had used us as leverage to get more for them. It turned out to be a better learning experience than I could get in any classroom.