The late Helen Gan (pictured above), a 52-year IBEW 1245 member, won top honors in the International Labor Communications Association contest this year for her editorial and video opposing Proposition 32 last year. Her husband, Richard Aston, accepted the award on her behalf at the Oct. 25 Advisory Council meeting in Vacaville. His moving remarks about the value of labor unions are reprinted below.
“Labor unions transformed the lives of millions of people” – Richard Aston
I appreciate this award for several reasons. I was born in … Wales. In the 1920s Wales was the biggest coal shipping port in the world. The coal mines were owned by…the richest man in England.
In the late 1920s, depression came, the mines closed down. Unemployment in South Wales was 80%. At that time there was no such thing as medical insurance, no such thing as unemployment insurance, no benefits whatsoever. Both of my grandfathers, my father and innumerable uncles worked as coal miners. When those mines closed down, they lost their jobs.
One of my grandfathers was lucky in that he got a job as coal trimmer. The coal trimmer works on a ship. The coal comes down a chute in the center of the ship. The trimmer, with a shovel, distributes the coal around to make the load even. The trimmers knew the job was dangerous. What they knew, but what the coal companies refused to admit, was that the greatest danger was inhaling the coal dust.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that coal companies in England said yes, there may be an association between coal dust and black lung disease. Up until then they refused, there was no compensation whatsoever.
Six months before I was born, in 1933, my grandfather coughed his lungs up, literally according to my mother, who remembered the blood-soaked bed. My father was temporarily lucky. When he could no longer work, [he got] a parttime job training his lordship’s racing greyhounds. That only lasted a short while. My father was too sick to do that. When I was six years old, my father died in the same manner as my grandfather.
There was no such thing as pensions for miners, no such thing as any kind of compensation. My mother did get the state widow’s pension. It was the equivalent of $1.20 a week. That amount had been set in 1869. It was 1/6 of an average worker’s wage. By 1933 that was meaningless. The rent on our small apartment that had no electricity, no hot water, no bathroom, an outside toilet, was $5 a week, so the $1.20 was meaningless.
When I came to America in 1949 I arrived in New York with $60 in my pocket. After that I was a member of the Cooks and Waiters union, the Teamsters union, the Sailors Union of the Pacific, IBEW 1245, and the teachers union. In all of those jobs I had benefits from the union.
When Helen and I got together we had a good life. She had 10 days of sick leave, holidays off, vacation pay, unemployment insurance, health benefits—when she got sick 5 years ago she had a major operation. The bill for that was $100,000, if we had to pay it. Luckily we belonged to Kaiser, because of the union, and we paid $10 per visit—a miniscule amount.
So all along the way are lives benefitted by the union. In just one generation, labor unions transformed the lives of millions of people, giving them benefits their parents couldn’t even dream would exist. So my appreciation goes out to all union workers because you’ve made life better…. All I can say is, I appreciate this as an expression of your thanks, and I also want to say my thanks to all of you, to all union workers, for the things you have provided to millions upon millions of people.