The campaign to organize the concrete forming industry in 1971 drained the bank account of Local 183. With winter approaching, remittances of union dues from employers were substantially reduced so we did what every business has to do in lean times: we cut costs, paring everything down to what was most essential. Even with that, we were barely getting by. At the end of the year we were forced to postpone sending our monthly per capita transfer to the International, headquartered in Washington. It was a considerable sum and not sending it was a serious breach of the union’s constitution.
The breach came at a difficult time. The International wanted to establish a pension plan for Ontario and Eastern Canada. It was intended to be completely under U.S. control with contributions coming from employers as part of the contract agreement with locals like ours. My objection was simple: the money was coming from our members and we wanted to control the pension plan here in Canada. Reilly was then manager of the Ontario Labourers District Council and he reported my objection to the International in an unflattering light. Washington went ahead and announced the plan with the Hamilton Local. The entire general executive board of the international was set to travel to Hamilton to underscore the importance of the occasion.
It was a difficult time for me personally, as well. In the spring of 1972, Rita was pregnant with our second child. While we were visiting my relatives in North Bay during the Easter season, our car was rear-ended by another vehicle. We were worried for the health of the baby. To make matters worse, Rita had to undergo breast surgery. The doctor decided it was in her best interest to go ahead with the procedure despite a risk to her pregnancy. We knew consequences could be serious and we were under considerable stress.
In the midst of all this drama, I had received a phone call from Peter Fosco, president of our International from 1968 through 1975 (later, after his death, he was succeeded for two decades by his son, Angelo). His secretary had tracked me down at the hospital and put me on hold after curtly telling me, “The general president wants to speak to you.”
I was at Rita’s bedside and I was annoyed at the intrusion. Can you imagine anyone, today, boss or co-workers, calling anyone while they are in the middle of a family matter like a birth or surgery or even a funeral, and demanding to talk business? I was stretched to the limit between work and personal family matters and I was furious. The pressures of work meant I was stealing time from my family. Back then this was standard operating procedure but that did not mean I did not resent it.
Fosco was an old man and he was quite pleasant on the phone which calmed me down a bit. “Look,” he said. “We will be in Hamilton on Sunday with the general executive board and we’d like to meet with you and your executive board. Our Canadian vice-president will call you about it, but don’t tell him I called you first. I’m sure we can work out our differences.”
Just as he said, the Canadian vice-president called me the following day. He was a man for whom I had little time. I thought he was incompetent. He had barely finished telling me about the Hamilton meeting when I snapped “I know” and hung up. I was still upset about Rita, so perhaps I was a little short.
I called a special executive board meeting of Local 183 and brought everyone up to speed. We decided to play along and participate in the International’s pension plan but to ask Washington to waive our per capita dues for three months. That Sunday at precisely 10 a.m., I accompanied Mike O’Brien, the secretary treasurer of Local 183, and Frank Palazzolo, an executive board member, to the banquet hall where the launch of the Internationals’ pension fund was to be celebrated. The place was closed.
Not knowing what else to do, we hung around, thinking we might be early. About an hour later, Henry Mancinelli, the business manager of the Hamilton local, showed up and asked us why we were not meeting with Fosco.
“That’s why we’re here!” I said.
“Not here,” he said. “They’re waiting for you at the Royal Connaught Hotel in Hamilton.”
We had wrongly assumed that the meeting was going to take place at the hall. We had to scramble to find the address of the Connaught and to get there. Although we arrived just fifteen minutes after talking with Mancinelli, we were an hour and fifteen minutes late. Fosco was furious and in no mood to listen to our excuses.
“Shut up!” he screamed at me. “We’ve had enough of your games. We will put the local under trusteeship and get rid of you!”
Well, we were shocked. A deep silence gripped the room. In addition to ourselves, Gerry Gallagher and Jack Dillon were there, having driven down together. Gallagher knew Hamilton well, having first arrived from England to settle in Burlington. He had found the meeting without any trouble.
It was a humiliating experience. When we finally left the Connaught to go to the banquet hall, we found that nobody dared to speak to us or be around us. We were the skunk at the garden party. I was furious. I resented Fosco’s threat after I’d given my life to the union and made untold sacrifices to defeat the formation of an independent Canadian union, which would have spelled the end for International building unions operating in Canada. I was also insulted on behalf of our membership.
On our return to Toronto, O’Brien and I held a meeting to decide our next move. First thing Monday morning we went to the bank and secured a loan to pay the arrears of the per capita tax in an effort to neutralize an issue that could put Local 183 in trusteeship. We sent the money super-express delivery to Washington that day but on Wednesday we got a registered letter from Terry O’Sullivan, secretary treasurer of the International, advising us that we were in a serious violation of the union constitution over the unpaid per capita tax and that they would be taking drastic action against us. I immediately sent a telegram telling him there was a lack of communication with his office because we had already paid the per capita tax. A few years after all this, I was told that it was the International’s intention not to cash our cheque so as to bolster its case against us and allow it to take us over. Someone in their office screwed up, or, more likely, just did his job and cashed the cheque and we dodged a bullet.
The International was not done with us, however. A couple of days after, we were notified that its controller and his assistant were going to carry out an audit of our books and it was our duty to give them “our full cooperation.” Sure enough, the following week the controller and his assistant arrived and spent a week at our office checking the books. After they left, they were required to attend a special meeting in Washington to discuss their findings and our situation.
A few days before this meeting, O’Brien suggested I call Fosco and try to explain again why we had been late for the meeting and offer an apology. “The old man looked genuinely hurt by our perceived lack of respect,” he said. I was hesitant at first but I followed O’Brien’s suggestion. I played phone tag with Fosco for a couple of rounds but then I found myself on the phone with him and he was charming. I told him what had happened and said I was sorry. He was all smiles and benevolence, telling me we must work together and, of course, I wholeheartedly agreed. It was an enormous relief. The general president, empowered by the union constitution, wields a big stick and a good working relationship with him is essential to providing the local union membership with the best representation.
I was later told by a source in Washington that the controller had found everything in order, leaving the International no avenue to pursue further action against us. And, in the 1980s, long after Fosco had passed, and with his son in charge, I ran into the controller at a conference in San Diego. He told me he had been surprised how good our records were. In the U.S., he said, his audits of local unions almost always resulted in trusteeship. He recalled meeting with the Canadian representative of the International at the King Edward Hotel after he had been through his books. The man had been disappointed to learn everything was in order. He even asked the controller to “create” something to justify trusteeship. The controller, a man of professional integrity, refused.
Before the year of our audit was over, I was asked to meet over a drink with Terry O’Sullivan, the secretary treasurer of the International. I was a little apprehensive. Terry was a former Marine, tall and well built. He was in Toronto as chairman of the newly established pension plan and we met at the King Edward. I asked Gallagher to join us, thinking their shared Irish heritage would melt some ice.
Terry came out swinging, immediately reading the riot act to me and emphasizing the power of the International as a warning not to mess with its authority. I stood firm and reminded him there was a border between Canada and the U.S. We would co-operate, I said, but we would not be dictated to. Gallagher told me afterwards things started off so heatedly that he was bracing for a fistfight. Terry was tough but fair and he changed his tone as we went over the issues. By the end of the night, we had become friends.
O’Sullivan and I forged a constructive relationship which, unfortunately, lasted only a short period. He had resigned by 1975. The International held a lunch in his honour in Chicago which I attended. After his farewell speech, he came down from the stage. There was a space around him and I walked towards him to wish him good luck: “Terry, now that we understand each other you are leaving!” He smiled and shook my hand. In 1999, his son Terence M. O’Sullivan became president of the International, a position he holds today.
On a happier note, our second child, Lisa, was born on June 3, 1972. Everything turned out well. Afterwards the doctor came out to congratulate me because at that time fathers were generally not welcome in the delivery room. The first thing I asked was, “How is the baby?”
“Fine.”
“And the mother?”
“Fine also.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
He looked at me and said: “What kind of a father are you?”
“Why?”
“Don’t you want to know if it’s a girl or a boy?”
“Oh yes, Doctor, what is it?”
I was so relieved that everything had gone well and that our fears over the car accident and surgery were groundless that I had forgotten to ask the gender.
“It’s a girl!” he said, and then walked away looking somewhat disgusted with me.