Temco Corporation and UAW Local 390 Were Formed in 1945
After WWII, a new aircraft production company was organized on
the eastern side of the old North American Aircraft facility in Grand Prairie.
Old timers can remember moving government materials from the
west to the east side so that they could be claimed by the new Temco
corporation. The company made household appliances and anything else they could
get. Later on they remodeled airplanes and, finally, began making new planes.
The new union was Local 390. The war was over and the union was
changing. Walter P. Reuther was elected head of the UAW-CIO in 1946. He would
be its president until his death. American unions were extremely strong as they
demanded the wages they had foregone as part of the war effort. Strikes and
other union activities were more numerous in 1947 in America than they ever
were before or since.
The archives at UAW Local 848 have very little mention of Temco
or Local 390. It has been speculated that the company founder, Robert
McCullough allowed the union in and avoided any dramatic fights. Retirees
really loved McCullough. He lived into the mid-1990s.
Many former North American
workers came back to work at Temco. Retirees active in the 1990s, Dorothy Reid,
Kathryn Thomas, Pancho Medrano, and M.A. "Ma" Farris were among them.
Ma Farris was a champion organizer. If a union local can be said
to have a mother, then Ma Farris was ours. By all accounts, this petite woman
signed up thousands of members to our union! Her great contribution was to be
the hardest working, steadiest, most relentless union builder that the Local
ever knew. Before work, after work, during every break, and through lunches,
sister Farris walked the aisles talking to workers. She carried union cards
with her everywhere she went. She never sat down, but ate her sandwich while
she walked. At the next break, she would come back to exactly the same place
she had left off before then continue asking aerospace employees, "Are you
in the union yet?"
Medrano also recalls that
Farris was also active in fighting for the rights of minorities. When the union
threw itself into stopping the poll taxes, Farris was always on the front
lines. "She was for anything, everything the union did!" Medrano
testifies.
Collecting poll taxes so that union members would be able to
vote was a major task in UAW-CIO Local 390. Poll taxes were not done away with
until November 9th, 1963.
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The Nation Turns Mean (Texas Was
Already)
The situation for unions in America changed dramatically during
and after the strike wave of 1947. The nation went on an anti-worker rampage.
The anti-union Taft Hartley law was vetoed by President Truman, but passed by
Congress over his veto. Among its objectionable features was a section
empowering states to misname themselves "right to work" states.
Unions in those states lost the right to declare a closed union shop. With
unions thus weakened, wages and working conditions became a disgrace in those
states. Texas was one of the first to take advantage of the Taft Hartley
provisions.
Actually, Texas was "Right to work (scab)" before Taft
Hartley legalized it. The phrase was actually invented by a Dallas Morning News editor.
It got so crazy in the Texas Legislature in 1947 that one
Congressman made a (joking?) proposal that would have abolished unions,
confiscated union members' property, sent their families to concentration
camps, and lined up all union members against a wall and had them shot! Eight
Texas legislators voted for it.
Three separate reasons have been given as to why Chance Vought
Aircraft Company moved to Grand Prairie from Connecticut. The Company says they
needed longer runways to develop jet aircraft. Others say that the government
asked them to move out of an area where military industries were highly
concentrated in case of another war. Union leaders assert that Chance Vought
came to Grand Prairie because the Chamber of Commerce assured them that they
could avoid having a union to deal with.
Howard Smolleck remembers coming to Grand Prairie with the
company. He believes they moved in order to find cheap labor. He recalls that
most of the workers they brought down from Connecticut had little interest in
unions. Smolleck remembers being threatened with firing if he talked union at
Chance Vought. Nevertheless, he stood at the front gate to hand out union
fliers.
Even in that climate, the union organizers were able to collect
enough membership cards and enough petitions to get an NLRB election called.
The vote pitting UAW-CIO against IAM-AFL, IBEW-AFL and "no union" on
August 3, 1949, came out a resounding victory for our side and UAW-CIO Local
893 was formed. The electricians got their IBEW craft union, but the IAM lost
out entirely.
The membership cheerfully turned down the
company's first contract proposal by a unanimous hand vote, then went on with
the kind of hard struggle that characterized their entire union existence.
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The Factories Practiced Segregation
Even though there were few African Americans
working in the plant, they were always more numerous in the union. A February,
1943, newspaper article describes a meeting of the AFL-CIO featuring
International President R.J. Thomas: "About 100 persons attended the
afternoon meeting, including about twenty-five Negroes," it says.
Union meetings were never segregated, but
virtually everything in the workplace was. Pancho Medrano remembers that
virtually all African Americans were confined to working in restroom cleaning,
but as World War II went on and the manpower shortage became more acute, some
of them were placed in sand blasting or in paint stripping. These were among
the most dangerous and undesirable jobs.
All Blacks had to use tin cups by the water
fountains rather than use the water fountain itself as whites did. The cups
were inscribed: "Colored". The company did nothing to discourage
violence against Blacks, according to Medrano.
Sam Brown, who many years later would serve as
Co-Chairman of the Retirees' Local, worked in the stripping pit. They toted
heavy airplane parts in. Paint was removed with strong chemicals that put fumes
all over the workplace. As Sam remembers it, every African American that came
to work at Temco was immediately asked to join the union. As far as Sam knows,
every one did.
In 1951, after Vought had moved to Grand Prairie and been
organized by the UAW, Local 893 President Charley Scott decided to appoint his
good friend Herschel Matthews, an outstanding African American union activist,
into a vacant steward spot. According to Johnny Walsh, one of the members of
the grievance committee threatened him with a gun, but Scott did it anyway. The
color line for union officers was broken finally and completely!
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