1. L480 Senior Seminar:
Labor and Social Movements
Ruth Needleman
Black + White = Red:
Rank & File Coalitions in the USWA
by Mike Olszanski
Fall, 2000

3. Black + White = Red 1 Olszanski Fall, 2000
In the 1950’s, sixties, seventies and eighties, Black and white steelworkers
who joined together in a dissident rank and file movement were labeled
“outsiders,”“dual unionists,” and most often “Reds.” In fact, as Needleman has
pointed out, whites and African Americans who worked together were very often
labeled Reds on that basis alone. Why was this the case? Was this red baiting
merely a political smear tactic used to discredit challengers to the leadership’s
hegemony and to divide and conquer the rank and file movement? Or was there
more than a grain of truth to the accusation? What in fact were the roles of left
wing individuals and organizations in the rank and file movement? I will argue
that there was in fact a lot of truth in the slogan Black + White = Red.
What is generally called the rank and file movement within the United
Steelworkers of America (USWA) traces its roots to before the union’s organizing
days under the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC). As political
economist Philip Nyden has noted, SWOC was largely a grassroots union
movement built by pre-existing rank and file groups—“autonomous local
networks”—as he calls them. In the first instance the movement to organize the
union was in fact almost identical with the rank and file movement.1 To the degree
that it was autonomous, and built from the ground up, the SWOC wasa rank &
file movement, according to some movement theorists. As John Sargent, first
president of USWA Local 10102 put it in 1969, “We talk of a rank and file

4. Black + White = Red 2 Olszanski Fall, 2000
movement: the beginning of union organization was the best type of rank and file
movement you could think of.”3
Based in a number of locals especially Local 1010 (the “Red” local) the
rank and file movement in steel had roots in the original SWOC organizing drive.
From the 1950’s it on supported various insurgents who sought to unseat the
conservative “official family” leadership of the union. It also campaigned for
democratic reforms in the steelworkers’ constitution, including minority rights, the
right to ratify contracts, against the Experimental Negotiating Agreement (ENA)
for militant social (versus business) unionism, etc. In addition to the
Communists, Socialists and other leftists who had built SWOC, the rank & file
movement allied itself with and at times included a movement of highly class
conscious as well as race conscious African American steelworkers that had
developed along side it. The “oppositional consciousness”which developed among
black workers, described by Morris, in fact led them to develop class
consciousness soonerand to a higher degree than white workers.
As I will show, the seeds of internal dissent, the seeds of an independent,
separate, anti-leadership, oppositional, insurgent rank and file movement, as well
as a separate but overlapping black movement within the Steelworkers Union were
sown the day that John L. Lewis put loyal CIO and United Mineworkers assistant

5. Black + White = Red 3 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Phillip Murray in charge of the incipient SWOC. Murray in turn appointed a
controllable, token Black—Boyd Wilson—his special assistant at the USWA
founding convention in 1942. These actions signaled that the union was to be a
tightly controlled, top-down organization with little democratic control.
Lewis’ aim was clear: the organizing drive in steel had to be inclusive—
especially of Reds and Blacks—in order to succeed, but ultimate control was to
reside, jealously guarded, with top leadership. The cocky Lewis, asked by an aid
whether he didn’t fear loss of control to the Communists he had hired as organizers
quipped, “who gets the rabbit, the hunter or the dog?”4 The CIO founder harbored
no illusions concerning the Communists, nor did he intend to allow democracy or
rank and file control of the new unions—they were to be tightly controlled top-
down organizations from beginning to end. Though rank and file efforts largely
built SWOC, which tookcontrol of previously existing local organizations in many
mills, Pittsburgh would be the seat of ultimate power. Blacks as well as Reds were
needed to build the union. As steel organizers found out in 1919, if Blacks and
other minorities weren’t included within the union, racism would be used to divide
and conquerit. Class-conscious and skilled organizers, the Reds knew this better
than anyone.5 Once the dues were rolling in Blacks were relegated to invisible
status in the USWA, Reds and other radicals and militants were driven out, as
Jesse Reese, Oliver Montgomery, Curtis Strong and others have pointed out.6

6. Black + White = Red 4 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Blacks were, as Aldon Morris points out, generally more class conscious
than whites, because they had already developed race consciousness and
oppositional consciousness. Some of the most class conscious white and Black
workers joined The Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party (Trotskyists) the
Socialist party, or one of the Unemployed groups organized by the left.
Pre-existing organizations like the churches, Unemployed Councils,
Amalgamated Association lodges, company unions (ERP’s), Garvey Clubs, and
other Black and ethnic groups were used to build SWOC by left wing and Black
organizers. Rank and file leaders emerged on the shop floor, helping to educate,
agitate and organize their fellow workers into the union.
As Jo Freeman points out, one of the requirements for movement building
is the existence of pre-existing, co-optable communicationsnetworks, a sense of
shared grievances, and a precipitating crisis.7 To these requirements should be
added the idea of consciousness,in this case class-consciousness, which as Aldon
Morris argues, is also plays an essential role in the development of social
movements.8 The grievances shared by steelworkers of the 1930’s are well known,
the crisis of the depression well documented. Black and white workers had formed
local communications networks and organizations around common interests and by
the 1930’s had been radicalized by the tragedy of the depressionand were

7. Black + White = Red 5 Olszanski Fall, 2000
demonstrating what one historian called a high level of “class-consciousnessin
action.”9 Some of the most class conscious black and white workers joined the
Communist Party (CP), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) the Socialist Party, or
one of the left-led organizations like the unemployed councils in those early
depression years. These organizations were using direct action to fight the hunger
and home evictions which came with the joblessness of the depression. They
empowered workers, who had come to understand that capitalist institutions and
government would not save them unless they took direct action for themselves.
All the left wing groups had in common a Marxist analysis of Capitalist society,
which defined existing political economy as a class struggle between workers and
capitalists. All insisted that the labor movement, in order to succeed, must unite all
races and nationalities of workers as a class. Thus among white-workers, leftists
were the most dedicated fighters for minority rights, becausethey understood the
civil rights struggle to be an indispensable part of the larger class struggle.
Claiming but 80,000 to 100,000 members at its peak, the Communist Party
of the United States (CPUSA) was no mass organization.10 Still, in the 1930’s
workers and the unemployed recognized the leadership, dedication and abilities of
Socialists and Communists as legitimate opponents of capitalism. Trotskyists and
the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)played a role in the building of a militant labor
movement in the thirties and afterward, and aided in the raising of its class-

8. Black + White = Red 6 Olszanski Fall, 2000
consciousness.Trotskyists worked in the Socialist Unemployed Leagues in the
early thirties, which eventually merged with the CP's Unemployed Councils in
1936, forming a National Workers Alliance which claimed a membership of
800,000.11 While the SWP only claimed 3,000 members nation-wide by 1941, the
Department of justice claimed to have proofthat the number exceeded 5,000. 12
The influence of Communist and Socialist Party members was much greater
among the working class poorthan their tiny numbers suggest. They consciously
played the role of an advanced cadre, which while fighting alongside workers,
would constantly agitate, educate and organize their brothers and sisters as well.
Many CIO organizers, like African American Communist Jesse Reese would
benefit from experience gained with the unemployed movement led by the left.
Hired at Youngstown Sheet & Tube in East Chicago in 1929, in the early
thirties, Reese was recruited by Communist Claude Lightfoot to organize a Hunger
March through downtown Gary. Reese went to Washington with the march and
was later assigned by the Communist Party to work within the Indiana Harbor
Youngstown 1011 lodge of the old Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel
Workers to bring them into SWOC. Here was an example of the use of pre-
existing networks—the Amalgamated and the CP—to build the union movement.
The conscious inclusion and recruitment of African Americans by the CP, based on
its understanding of the need for uniting the working class across racial lines,

9. Black + White = Red 7 Olszanski Fall, 2000
provided SWOC organizers who knew what they were doing. “The Communists
built the union,” Reese told Staughton Lynd in 1973 “After we got the union
built…Philip Murray…fired every Communist Organizer…and the union’s been
going back, back, back ever since.”13 Indeed, by 1948 Murray had thrown in his
lot with the CIO’s anti-Communist Walter Reuther in purging Communists and
other progressives. Reds—and Blacks—had come to be seen by top CIO
leadership as a cold war liability.
But in the organizing days Blacks, "..a population that had catalyzed
unionization."14 were actively recruited by SWOC and CIO organizers, joining in
large numbers. Reese, long time card playing friend and neighbor of George
Kimbley, recruited him into SWOC out of the Gary chapter of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA)—the Black separatist organization founded by
Marcus Garvey. Walter Mackerl, also a UNIA members, formed “The Brotherhood
of Hewers” among Gary steelworkers in his department in the early 1930’s.15
SWOC also sent African American UMW Communist Hank Johnson
from Texas to Northwest Indiana to sign up Blacks. Mackerl, Kimbley and Stanley
cottonjoined Johnson’s Gary SWOC Committee in 193616

10. Black + White = Red 8 Olszanski Fall, 2000
At Inland Steel in Indiana Harbor, Black Socialist Bill Young, a member of
the Amalgamated Association since 1927, joined with white Communists Nick
Migas, John Sargent and others to organize SWOC Local 1010. Multiracial and
left-led from the beginning, the rank and file movement at “the Red Local” would
incorporate African Americans in its leadership from the beginning. Local 1010
officer Young, whose father was beaten on the streets of East Chicago during the
1919 steel strike, was elected by fellow workers because of his radicalism and
heroic behavior during strikes, as well as his political savvy and leadership ability.
In 1978, Young told CBS TV's George Herman about being clubbed on the head at
the 1937 "Memorial Day Massacre" at Republic Steel in South Chicago, where ten
union men (three from Local 1010) were killed--gunned down by Chicago's finest.
"They beat me pretty good, but I was on the picket line the next morning," the
eighty-something retiree told CBS. Why did he join the union? "You had no
rights the boss was bound to respect," Young declared.17 Because of the
integration of Black with radical white leadership, there would be no independent
black caucus and not even a black-led slate at 1010 until Bill Gailes, vice president
under Sargent in the late 60’s broke away from the Rank & File caucus in 1970.
Most oppressed,someclass-conscious Blacks accepted radical ideas, and
recruitment by radical groups, as freely as immigrants familiar with leftist ideas
from their European backgrounds.

11. Black + White = Red 9 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Nick Migas, an open member of the Communist Party and organizer for
SWOC in the thirties, learned about socialism, as well as the destructive influence
of racism, early in life from his father--an IWW member--and "Big Bill" Haywood,
the Wobblies leader.
"When I saw how the companyworked againstthe
workers, especially the foreign born workers who were in no
position to defend themselves, it kind of roused my feeling about
those people not getting a fair deal We had a lot of Mexican
workers in my departmentwhere discrimination was practiced.
They were constantly kept on small, menial jobs--scrap yard,
labor gang, furnaces--dirty, menial, hard work. And no chance
of promotion. That'swhy the union swept like a wildfire through
the mills."18
Migas, an ally of left-wing Local 1010 President John Sargent, and “Wildcat
Willie” Maihoffer, led a wildcat strike in #1 Open Hearth when the company
refused to promote a black man to second helper on the furnace. Many of the white
workers were southern, and tended to back management's position. At a meeting
inside the plant at which the plant superintendent Gillies vacillated, Migas lectured
his fellow workers on racism:
"...discrimination starts, maybe, with a Negro, but next it
will go to the Mexican worker...and then it will go to the
Kentuckian, the hillbilly... .Then a so-called hillbilly won't be
able to work in a steel mill. And where will it stop?"19

12. Black + White = Red 10 Olszanski Fall, 2000
The man got his job. Migas was later elected President of USWA Local
1010 in 1945, having served briefly on the USWA staff until he was fired for
supporting insurgent George Patterson in a bid for Director of District 31 against
Joe Germano. Challenging USWA President Phillip Murray over his cold war
foreign policies at the 1948 convention, where he was an elected delegate, he was
beaten by goons. Later red-baited out of the union (though he himself claimed
he always wanted to go back to the farm anyway) Migas is one more example of
how leftists, who also happened to be some of the best fighters for minority rights,
were removed. 20
Movement theorists Piven and Cloward supportthe idea that Trotskyists and
especially the CP, were "an instigating force" in agitating and mobilizing the
workers to action, but stress the spontaneity of rank & file action, quoting John
Sargent:
"you had a series of strikes, wildcats, shut-downs, slowdowns, anything
working people could think of to secure for themselves whatthey decided
they had to have."21
True, the self-effacing Sargent found himself,
"fortunate to be caughtup in a great movement of the people in
this country. And that doesn't happen very often in one's lifetime
...a movement that moved millions of people, literally, and
changed notonly the course of the working man, but...the

13. Black + White = Red 11 Olszanski Fall, 2000
relationship between the working man and the government ...and
the boss, for all time in this country." Workers were "gonna
have a union, come hell or high water. nothin' was gonna stop
em."22
Because of the extreme modesty of truly important rank and file leaders
like Sargent, his emphasis on spontaneousself-organization has perhaps been
exaggerated. Self-organization is never totally spontaneous, nor is it leader-less as
John well knew. On the contrary, the most class conscious left wing rank and file
leaders—including but not limited to the Communists—formed, as I have said, a
kind of cadre in the mills. A leader of the CP's Young Communist League (YCL)
in the early thirties, who apparently left the party before the fifties, Sargent clearly
understood the role of organization and resources and especially left leadership, in
building SWOC. He himself demonstrated the importance of principled leadership.
He saw a union leader’s convictions—especially of the socialist variety—as an
antidote to the widespread opportunism that enveloped the labor movement,
especially after the purges:
"A young fella who becomes active in the union, whohasn'tgot a
broader perspective than just the union, sees the union as a
stepping stone to security for himself, either to get a job in the
union...orto use the union to get a job with the company, as a
foreman, for instance...Itwas that way once you got the check-
off. Unless the guy hasa socialist viewpoint, or some kind of

14. Black + White = Red 12 Olszanski Fall, 2000
broader view-point of whatthis whole thing means, you're not
gonna get good leadership."23
My own union experience supports Sargent's view of the importance of
a leftist perspective. It was the leftists who were most often correct on the issues,
who did the most and best union work. While charismatic national leadership like
Lewis’ had value, so did leadership on the local level and the shop floor. Here
communists, “fellow travelers” and socialists excelled. Their reward: redbaiting.
When I started at Inland's Indiana Harbor Works late in 1963, John was again
running for president of the 18,000 member Local 1010. My introduction to union
politics was an introduction to red-baiting, as all through the mill I saw posted
Xerox copies of excerpts from Sargent's testimony before HUAC, with "commie"
scrawled across them in red marker. Despite being cleared by HUAC's 1958 Gary
inquisition, as reported on the front page of the Gary PostTribune, John Sargent
was viciously redbaited until his retirement from union activities due to a heart
condition around 1967. His Rank & File Caucus overcame it, and he won his last
term as Local 1010 president in 1964.24
Much has been made of the World War II CIO no-strike pledge,
dogmatically supported by the CP. CP Chair William Z. Fosterin fact later
acknowleged the party had erred in its slavish adherence to the pledge. President
Sargent's 1943 letter to the War Labor Board, threatening to strike Inland in

15. Black + White = Red 13 Olszanski Fall, 2000
defiance of the pledge, brings into question Sargent's (and other rank and file
leaders’) adherence to any "party line" during the war years, but adds weight to his
image as a militant, independent, rank & file oriented leader.25 Such rank and file
local leaders would largely control several large basic steel Locals in the USWA
until they were driven out by the red purges of the 1950’s. Local autonomy and
rank and file control of the locals was under attack by Pittsburgh USWA Leaders
from early on. It was largely the loss of this autonomy and control—democracyin
action, if you will—which changed the rank and file movement in steel from
merely the heart and souland muscle of SWOC into an oppositional movement
trying to wrest controlof the union from top leadership.26
Along with the likes of Hank Johnson and Jesse Reese, Curtis Strong is an
example of the kind of oppositional and class consciousness developed by Black
leaders of the USWA’s rank and file movement. Blacks like Strong and 1977 Vice
Presidential contender Oliver Montgomery would form coalitions with the left-led
rank and file movement—on their own terms. Strong started at U.S. Steel’s Gary
works in the midst of the SWOC organizing drive, in 1937. Eschewing what he
believed was second class status in a white dominated union, Strong formed an all
Black caucus, the Sentinel League in the coke plant in the mid 1940’s, later
expanding the group into a plant-wide Black Caucus called the Eureka Club. With

16. Black + White = Red 14 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Rayfield Mooty, Oliver Montgomery and others, he would help put together the
National Ad hoc Committee in the USWA in 1963.27
In Youngstown Ohio, African Americans Oliver Montgomery and Jim Davis
began to organize an independent Black Caucus at Youngstown Sheet & Tube
USWA Local 1462 in the 1950’s. Montgomery, college educated and greatly
influenced by A. Phillip Randolf, strongly believed that Blacks should coalesce
with any anti-establishment union groups they could—butonly after they had
established their own independent, identity-based Black Caucus. Montgomery and
Davis joined Randolf’s Negro American Labor Council (NALC) in the early
1950’s. Highly aware of and anxious to avoid red-baiting, Montgomery, like
Randolf sought to demonstrate to Local 1462’s Blacks that the Black Caucus was
free from the influence or controlof any party or ideology and committed solely to
the interests of African American Steelworkers.
A. Phillip Randolfclued us in. He said, “I know every spectrum of
politics from the shallowest red to the deepest red. I know all of ‘em..” He
said, “you gotta do your own thing. “ He said, “They’re gonna call you
that. They’re gonna label you that. Butyou have to show them and prove
to them that you’re an independentmovement, and thatyou’re for the
Black cause.” He said, “the main thing is that the Blacks must understand
that you are simply trying to free Blacks, thatyou’re not part of any
internationalideology.” Thatway, we were able to show that we’re an
independentmovement, that we’re not controlled by Moscow or anyone
else. And a lot of the leftists at the time got very angrywith us, because we

17. Black + White = Red 15 Olszanski Fall, 2000
would never let them…wewould work with them temporarily, or we’d
coalesce, butthat’s because we were going the same direction. But we
were always ableto maintain thatindependencebecauseA. Philip Randolf
convinced us thatthat was the key. He said, “Once they can sufficiently
label you, they’ll destroy you with your own people. That’swhatyou have
to guard against.” Becausethemoment you stuck your head up, Bingo!
When Barbero and EddieMann and FrankLesaganich—everytime those
guys would stick their head up in the Local, they would get slaughtered.
They would redbait them.28
Curtis Strong agreed with Montgomery on the need for strong, independent
Black organizations, but thought differently about Communists. Life-long
personal friend and ally of union brother and alleged Communist Al Samter, his
experience convinced him of the important contributions of the left to the union as
well as the Black struggle, and the need to confrontredbaiting head on:
Of course, you realize thatif you form a strong caucus—Black, white or
green or whatever—and if you have unity in that caucus, and if you believe
in each other I don’t give a damn whatthey label you, they couldn’t turn
you and I againsteach other, we’re friends, we’re both working for the
same cause. So they say, “He’s a Red.” Well I don’t give a Goddamnif
he’s a blue. Is he working for the advancementof us? That’show I
survived. I ran for office in the Local. We had a meeting one night, and on
every chair there was a leaflet with my picture on it printed by the
CommunistParty…distributed by the staff . Of course, my attitude was
“SO WHAT?” OurSub-districtDirector, his job was to redbait Curtis
Strong, and he did a pretty good job.29

18. Black + White = Red 16 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Strong had appointed Samter, white, his assistant griever in the 1950’s.
When Samter was called before the Gary HUAC inquisition in 1958, Strong stood
by his friend and ally and refused an order by USWA leaders to dump him. 30
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Blacks like Strong and Montgomery were
organizing largely among African Americans, but also began to form coalitions
with an emerging left-led rank and file insurgency in the USWA. The Dues Protest
Movement of the fifties and sixties, and later the Rank& File Team, organized by
white Trotskyists Ed Mann and John Barbero in Youngstown, Ohio would benefit
from an alliance with Ad Hoc. So would local rank and file caucuses and the CP-
led National Steelworkers Rankand File, organized by George Edwards.
In Local 1010, the CP-led Rank & File Caucus was by this time still a
largely multi-racial center-left coalition which among other things, worked to
integrate local businesses. 31 Local 1010’s Rank & File also played a role in the
dues protestmovement, represented by a national Dues Protest Committee (1956)
which supported the first real challenge to the entrenched top USWA leadership.
The DPC was centered in Youngstown, Ohio, and organized largely by Ed Mann
and John Barbero of Local 1462. It supported Donald Rarick for USWA president
in 1956, who died before the election. Mann and Barbero would later form the
national Rank & File Team (RAFT) in the late 1960’s.

19. Black + White = Red 17 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Ad Hoc, put together in 1963 by Rayfield Mooty, Montgomery, Strong, and
Blacks nation wide, demanded 1) a Black Civil Rights Committee director, 2)
more Black staff and 3) a Black on the International Executive Board. Like the
DPC, Ad hoc was accused of dual unionism, but the charge was not as easy to
make stick. Led by 1011 president Jonathan Comer, Ad Hoc pressed its demands
with a massive picket line around the 1968 USWA convention in Chicago. 32
USWA Secretary Treasurer I.W. Able would use the supportof Ad Hoc, as
well as the national rank and file movement, when he challenged MacDonald for
president in 1965. Abel was supported byrank and file groups from all over the
country as well as Ad Hoc, to whom he promised to put a Black on the Executive
board. After it became apparent that Able’s policies represented no real change in
the top-down policies of the union, RAFT, and the Rank & File Caucus at 1010,
would supportinsurgent Emile Narrick for USWA president in 1969.33 Ad Hoc
would loosely coalesce with RAFT also nominating independent African American
Carl Stokes for USWA vice president, who received rank and file movement
support
By the late 1960’s alleged Communist Jim Balanoff had replaced John
Sargent as chair of the now more formally organized Rank & File Caucus at 1010.
Balanoff’s CP roots had provided him with an understanding of the need for rank

20. Black + White = Red 18 Olszanski Fall, 2000
and file control and the vital importance of racial unity. Still, when 1010
president Sargent took ill and Black vice president Bill Gailes filled out the
remainder of the term, the Rank & File Caucus refused to supporthim for
president. Thus, when Balanoff ran for president in 1970, Gailes ran against him,
fielding a largely Black slate for the top Local Union offices. Balanoff lost by a
razor-thin margin to Jesse Arredondo, who lead a largely Mexican slate into office.
The Rank & File Caucus would not regain controlof the Local until 1976, after the
Balanoff leadership regained Black supportwith the return of Gailes to the fold,
and the slating of his choice—Bill Andrews for 1010 vice president.34
The issue in the early 1970’s became the Experimental Negotiating
Agreement (ENA)—a no-strike pledge signed by I.W. Able without consultation
with the membership or local leaders. ENA—a democracy as well as a militancy
issue—focused the oppositionof RAFT, National Steelworkers Rank and File and
rank and file and left groups all over the country. In District 31, The very political,
ideologically diverse Right to Strike Committee, included Trotskyists,
Communists, Maoists, the “New Left” and Social Democrats of all races.
Most came to it with pre-existing left-wing affiliations. Largely a left coalition, the
Committee was Co-Chaired by Alice Puerala (identified with the Socialist
Workers’ Party) and Al Samter (identified with the CP).

21. Black + White = Red 19 Olszanski Fall, 2000
At the same time (1973) young Local 65 president Ed Sadlowski announced
his candidacy for Director of giant (120,000 strong) Chicago-NW Indiana District
31, challenging tyrannical Director Joe Germano’s hand-picked successorSam
Evett. Sadlowski’s campaign, including a government-ordered rerun that brought
him the Director’s position, galvanized rank and file movement in the union
nationwide. Sadlowski received the unqualified, though highly critical, supportof
virtually every progressive in the district, and especially the left. For his part, he
would keep his distance, at least publicly, from the left. He cultivated support
among women, Blacks and other minorities, however, and his campaign
“celebrated diversity” in a way not visible since the SWOC days.
With Sadlowski in the District 31 office, and rumors circulating of a bid for
the USWA top office, rank and file organizing exploded in the region, and
elsewhere. Curtis Strong and others formed a District 31 Black Caucus, and the
multi-racial left-led District 31 Women’s caucus began to get organized with the
CP’s young Roberta Wood, and older Black activist Ola Kennedy as Co-chairs.
And while these caucuses aggressively addressed race and gender issues,
respectively, their left-wing and rank and file orientation integrated them firmly
into the growing national rank and file movement. A fledgling District 31
Environmental Committee also emerged at this time, addressing coke oven

22. Black + White = Red 20 Olszanski Fall, 2000
emissions as an in-plant and community pollution as well as a racial issue—since
the majority of coke oven workers were African Americans. Its founders included
the author and the CP’s Paul Kaczocha later president of 6787. It would later play
a role in stopping construction of a nuclear power plant by the local electric utility.
When Sadlowski announced for the USWA presidency in 1976, his new
FightBack organization was supported by virtually every rank and file and
progressive Black group in the country. It slated Ad Hoc’s Oliver Montgomery for
Vice President, as well as Marvin Weinstock—a Jew—Andrew Kmec and Nash
Rodriguez—a Mexican—for the International Executive Board. Fight Back
became, in the minds of thousands of steelworkers, the national rank and file
caucus. Unfortunately, Fight Back was tightly controlled from Chicago by
Sadlowski and a select group of insiders including campaign manager Clem
Balanoff, hired staff George Tyrell and Ed James from the UMWA rank and file
group Miners for Democracy. Fearful of losing control, most probably to left wing
elements, Fight Back failed miserably to develop grassroots rank and file activists
in many locals. A media darling, the charismatic Sadlowski tried to use his
considerable media exposure and publicity to substitute for serious grass roots
organizing. His rambling, largely incoherent interview with Penthousemagazine
hurt him as much as helped him on the shop floor.35 As Ed Mann pointed out,
Sadlowski trusted the few staff reps who joined Fight Back more than the many

23. Black + White = Red 21 Olszanski Fall, 2000
rank and filers, because he was himself a staffman.36 Many of us (Fight Back
supporters)also resented the (advisory) role played by liberal attorney Joe Raugh
and other celebrity Sadlowski supporters. Sadlowski’s defeat in 1977 was quickly
followed by the demise of the organization, which turned out to be little more than
a campaign vehicle for Ed Sadlowski’s presidential bid, at least in the minds of its
leadership. 37
1976 saw the sweep of local union elections by Rank & File Caucuses at
18,000 member 1010, 7,000 member 6787, 8,000 member 1011 and election of
record numbers USWA Constitutional convention delegates on Rank and File
slates in several areas including Pittsburgh, the Minnesota Iron Range and
District 31. The 1010 Rank & File Caucus elected alleged Communist Jim
Balanoff and nearly a complete slate of officers to the executive board and full-
time grievance committee offices. At Bethlehem Burns Harbor Local 6787, the
CP’s Paul Kaczocha led a Rank & File Caucus slate into office.
At U.S. Steel’s homestead works, 24 year-old independent socialist and civil
rights activist Michele McMills joined with John Ingersoll and Ron Weisen to
form 1397 Rank & File, to challenge the lack of democracyin the USWA.
The organization had great success with young white males, who saw the Local
union as corrupt, bureaucratic, and undemocratic. While they would not win the

24. Black + White = Red 22 Olszanski Fall, 2000
presidency of the Local until 1979, they elected several delegates to the 1976
Convention and a full slate of 11 delegates to the 1978 Convention.
After they elected him Local Union president, the 1397 Rank & File caucus in
power fell more and more under the personal control of Weisen, adopting many of
the undemocratic tactics of its opponents. LocalUnion newspaper editor McMills
and Ingersoll left. McMills later complained that the caucus had become
“exclusionary” failing to supportwomen and minorities, “I tookit personally as a
woman, and there weren’t very many black faces in the Rank and File at that time,
and it was just an affront to what we fought for, I thought…” 38 Without the kind
of guiding ideology referred to by Sargent, and without a larger rank & file
movement to relate to, a number of local groups would either be co-opted orfall
apart.
Perhaps the last hurrah of the national rank and file movement was the Right
to Ratify fight organized by Rank & Filers from Local 1010, 6787, 65, 1011 in
District 31, Homestead Local 1397 and the Minnesota Iron Range and Canadian
Locals. Flooding the 1978 convention with delegates and resolutions supporting a
constitutional right of rank and file members to vote on all contracts, Rank &
Filers came closer than ever before to changing International Union policy. But
the tyrannical Lloyd McBride used the numerous staff men/delegates to control the
convention and stifle debate. The issue was put off to the Basic Steel Industry

25. Black + White = Red 23 Olszanski Fall, 2000
Conference of Local Union presidents, where it was defeated. It was at this
convention in Atlantic City that Ed Sadlowski and District 31 Director Jim
Balanoff, nominal heads of Fight Back, essentially publicly dissolved the
organization, refusing to assume leadership of the convention struggle, or endorse
the continuation of a national organization.39 While the right to ratify contracts was
finally achieved with the dissolution (by the steel companies) of industry-wide
coordinated bargaining in basic steel, the rank and file movement, as a national
force, was all but dead by the 1980’s. As District 31 Director Jim Balanoff told
Philip Nyden, “Our mistake in ’77 was that Steelworkers Fight Back didn’t stay
alive. You need an organization.”40 Or, as Clem Balanoff put it, “When Eddie said
it was over, it was over.”41
In 1979, Black 1010 Vice President Bill Andrews, who had assumed the
presidency when Jim Balanoff was elected District 31 Director on the Fight Back
slate, was elected president on his own hook. Andrews would serve nearly four
consecutive terms as 1010 president. The Rank & File Caucus under Andrews,
deserted by Mike Mezo and many fellow white “progressives,”would evolve into
a mostly effectively Black caucus until his appointment to USWA staff in 1987.
Balanoff would serve only one term as Director. His defeat by the “Official
Family’s” Jack Parton underlined the failure of the Rank and File movement to
consolidate and hold on to power in its stronghold, District 31.

26. Black + White = Red 24 Olszanski Fall, 2000
With the demise of Steelworkers’ Fight Back came the dissipation of the
rank and file movement in steel as well as the national and many local Black-white
center-left progressive coalitions. Having failed to consolidate a national grass
roots organization, the movement, absent its charismatic leadership, slowly
withered. Time will tell whether a new generation of steelworkers can or want to
revive the goal of truly multi-racial, rank and file control of the Steelworkers’
Union.

27. ENDNOTES
1 Phillip W. Nyden. Steelworkers Rank and File. Pp. 20-23
2 Bill Maihoffer and several others were president of Local 1010 under SWOC. When the first
constitutional convention of the USWA was held in 1942, Local 1010 was issued a
charter on which Sargent is listed as Local Union President.
3 Frances Fox Pivens and Richard A. Cloward. Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed,
How They Fail. P 150
4For leads to the source of this quip, see Zeiger, page 83, footnote 54. Also, Robinson
(p 83) quotes Meany as attributing the quip to Lewis in a discussion with Dubinsky, who
opposed hiring Communist organizers.
5 Art Shields. On the Battle Lines, 1919-1939. Shields claims the core of the CIO’s organizing
staff was made up of some sixty CP organizers. Page 216.
6 Jesse Reese, quoted in Rank & File, edited by Alice and Staughton Lynd. Pp. 91-106; Oliver
Montgomery,, Interview by Mike Olszanski, January 6 & 7, 2000.
7 Jo Freeman. Waves of Protest (Social Movements) Pp.7-8
8 Aldon Morris. “Political consciousness and Collective Action”
9 Lizabeth Cohen. Making a New Deal. New York: Cambridge University Press. (1990) page 356
10 Howard Fast. Being Red. Page 86.
11 Piven and Cloward. Op cit., Pp. 68-76
12 I. F. Stone. The War Years, 1939-1945. Page 72.
13 Jesse Reese, quoted in Rank & File, edited by Alice and Staughton Lynd. Pp. 91-106.
14 Lizabeth Cohen, page 354.
15 Ruth Needleman. “Union Coalition Building and the Role of Black Organizations: A study in
Steel” pp. 9-10.
16 Ruth Needleman, “Black Caucuses in Steel,” New Labor Forum, Fall/Winter 1998, page 41.
17Irv Drasnin, producer, CBS Reports: Inside the Union, 1978.
18Alice and Staughton Lynd, Rank and File, page 167.
19Ibid., page 169.
20Ibid., pp. 170-178.
21 Piven and Cloward, Op cit., pp. 147-153.

28. 22John Sargent, interview with Mike Olszanski, 1978 and in CBS Reports: Inside the Union, and
quoted in Rank and File, edited by Alice and Staughton Lynd, Boston: Beacon Press,
1973, pp. 105-110.
23John Sargent, interview with Mike Olszanski, August 13, 1978.
24See Gary Post Tribune, February 11, 1958, front page (Courtesy
of the Calumet Regional Archives).
25Calumet Regional Archives (CRA) Box 1, File Folder 24, letter to War Labor Board, signed
Jack Sargent, President, Local 1010 USWA, circa 1943.
26 Piven and Cloward, as well as Philip Nyden, argue that the trend toward bureaucratization and
top down leadership was largely dictated by structural forces which necessitated
compromises with the steel companies and control of rank and floor militancy in the
interest of consolidating the union organization. They fail to acknowledge that Lewis and
Murray set up SWOC and the USWA constitution (1942) and bureaucracy in the
beginning in order to facilitate tight control from the top.
27 Needleman, “Union Coalition building and the Role of Black Organizations: A Study in
Steel” page 15. Also presentations.
28 Oliver Montgomery, Interview by Mike Olszanski, January 6 & 7, 2000.
29 Ibid.
30 Ruth Needleman, “Union Coalition building and the Role of Black Organizations: A Study in
Steel” pp. 20-21
31 Joe Gyurko. Interview with Mike Olszanski, also, Betty Balanoff, interview with James Lane
and Mike Olszanski
32 Jim Davis and Oliver Montgomery, interview by Mike Olszanski, January 6 & 7, 2000.
33 Phillip Nyden. Op cit., Pp.38-51.
34 Bill Gailes. Interview with Mike Olszanski. February 2, 1998
35 See James Lane and Mike Olszanski. Steelworkers Fight Back Steel Shavings, (2000)
36 Nyden, op cit., page 84.

29. 37 Jim Davis, an Ad Hoc leader, told Nyden, op cit., that Sadlowski “ignored Ad Hoc when early
campaign strategies were being mapped.” Footnote, page 88
38 Brett M. Reigh. The Rank and File Movement at the Homestead Steel Works USWA Local
1397 from 1977 to 1986. Masters Thesis, Indiana University of Pennsyvania. (1997)
page 42.
39 I was a delegate to this convention, and personally pleaded with Sadlowski and Balanoff to
assume leadership of the rank and file delegates assembled there. Their refusal, and
their recommendation that we not form a new national organization, coupled with the
dissolution of Fight Back, put the nails in the coffin of the national rank and file
movement, in my opinion. For my part, I followed their lead and spoke against
forming a new organization, much to my later regret For a graphic depiction of the
convention floor fight, see Irv drasnin’s 1978 CBS documentary film Inside the Union.
40 Quoted in Nyden, op cit., page 100.
41 Clem Balanoff, Interview with Mike Olszanski, December 9, 16, 1998.