HISTORY FOCUS: •PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC •SACRAMENTO MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT •SIERRA PACIFIC POWER

19. DEFECTION IN THE MAKING

As the rift between the Bay Area locals and the national UWUA organization grew wider, and with the government’s Taft-Hartley Act tightening the screws on labor unions in general, the dream of one union on PG&E seemed to be drifting out of reach. Recalls Don Hardie, at that time chairman of the UWUA Local 169 grievance committee:

“It became obvious that we were falling apart ourselves, irrespective of all the outside pressure from the Taft-Hartley bill or anything else. It was a mess.”

The UWUA, as a vehicle for organizing one union at PG&E, had run out of steam. The company, sensing the union’s disunity, became tougher to deal with, according to Hardie. Clearly a new strategy was needed, some bold act that could break PG&E workers out of the logjam they were in and get the organizing campaign moving again. A defection was in the making.

In January of 1948, Local 169 (Contra Costa County) passed a resolution warning that unless the UWUA amended its policies “the loss of the workers’ support for the CIO on PG&E would be the price.” It was about this time that Hardie got a telephone call from Ron Weakley. Weakley had decided it was time to get out of the UWUA. As Hardie recalls the event:

“Almost out of the blue, Ron called me about exploring the idea of saving what we could and getting out. We were both on our days off at the time, so we went over to [IBEW] Local 595 in Oakland. Ron’s stepdad was a member of that local and friends with the business manager, man name of Rockwell. So we asked to see the business manager there and we went in to talk to him.”

An International representative was also present at that meeting and got on the telephone with Oscar Harbak, the IBEW vice president for the Ninth District in San Francisco. By that afternoon, Hardie and Weakley were in San Francisco meeting with Harbak.

Weakley and Hardie were, of course, not alone in their feelings about the UWUA. Much of the UWUA’s local leadership at PG&E was prepared to jump ship. But they weren’t prepared to just walk into the embrace of IBEW Local 1245. With some 5,000 members in eight locals, the UWUA in the Bay Area was a substantial political force, and as long-time CIO activists they had their own ideas about how a union should operate. They worried that the IBEW, which for six decades had operated primarily as a craft union, might concentrate too much on the interests of linemen at the expense of other classifications. Hardie recalls:

“This was probably our main concern, that whatever we got out of the IBEW it would be something that would function democratically and not discriminate because some are journeymen and some aren’t. We wanted to get some kind of a framework that we thought would work and would ensure solidarity and democracy at the same time.”
The IBEW, on the other hand, had its own concerns. Some people in Local 1245 genuinely believed that the CIO philosophy was too radical. For years they had looked upon the UWUA people virtually as the enemy. Coming to some kind of accommodation just wasn’t going to happen over a friendly cup of coffee.

Merry Smalley (left) and Sam Cooper
auger across main Highway 101 by-road
that leads into San Quentin prison. 1947.
(Courtesy Sam Cooper)

Local 1245 Business Manager Ron Weakley, International President J. Scott Milne, and Local 1245 Senior Assistant Business Manager L. L. Mitchell, about 1954. Milne, as IBEW 9th District Vice President in the 1940s, was instrumental in securing the original charter for Local 1245 in 1941. In the late 1940s Milne assisted Weakley and Mitchell’s efforts to organize one union at PG&E under the IBEW banner.

20. LOCAL 1324: THE BRIDGE TO ONE UNION

Perhaps one man more than any other grasped the historic opportunity contained in Weakley’s and Hardie’s proposal. That man was J. Scott Milne, who in the late 1940s was IBEW’s International secretary in Washington D.C. A former utility worker himself in the Pacific northwest, Milne was a firm believer in industrial organizing. Before assuming the post of International secretary, Milne had served as IBEW vice president for the Ninth District in San Francisco, where he was instrumental in securing the original charter for Local 1245 in 1941. Obviously he realized that the IBEW, however successful it might be in the more rural areas, had virtually no support in the Bay Area. Now suddenly the way might be opening for the IBEW to organize a system-wide election that would bring all PG&E workers under one union.

First, of course, the rest of the UWUA leadership in the Bay Area had to buy the idea of switching over. In June of 1948, delegates to the Bay Area Joint Council, representing the eight UWUA locals in the Bay Area, authorized a meeting with IBEW officials to negotiate the terms for a system-wide election on PG&E. The San Jose delegate opposed the talks and Oakland was split, but the talks were supported by delegates from all other areas.

To give members of these UWUA locals a vehicle to switch over, the IBEW agreed to charter a new IBEW local. In October, the IBEW petitioned the NLRB for a system-wide election on PG&E and the following month chartered IBEW Local 1324. To prevent friction with Local 1245, whose cooperation would be needed in the coming campaign, the IBEW put both locals under direct International supervision.

One of the great American labor organizing campaigns of modern times was about to begin.