Remembering Ron Weakley 100 Years After His Birth

Ron Weakley, the founder of IBEW 1245, would have turned 100 on January 24, 2015. We celebrate the centenary of his birth with this remembrance, originally published in the Utility Reporter in 2007.

by Eric Wolfe

Ronald T. Weakley’s first encounter with workplace injustice came on the day of his birth.

His father, a hardrock miner and member of the militant Industrial Workers of the World, had been blackballed for union activism. The only way Earl Lloyd McDoolin could work was under a phony name. When baby Ron came into the world on Jan. 24, 1915, the name entered on his birth certificate was the one his father had made up in order to hold a job: Robinson.

A stepfather, William Weakley, later replaced McDoolin as the center of Ron’s family life, but unionism remained central to Weakley’s childhood experience. William Weakley, initiated into the IBEW in 1905, worked as a lineman as well as a construction electrician.

“He was very active in the union, particularly in strikes,” Weakley once re-called. “The St. Louis car strike was a big one in which he participated.”

When his stepfather went broke during the depression, Weakley left home and wound up in the Sacramento Valley working on farms and orchards. There he witnessed firsthand the hardships faced by farm workers and developed a life-long sense of solidarity with the farmworker cause.

Next came a short stint at sea in the merchant marines. A short stint that made a lasting impression.

“They didn’t  have any  rights or  anything else  in  those days,” Weakley said. “And  the food was  full  of  weevils. You washed with salt water. Bed bugs. Looked like hell. No air conditioning. Hardly any decent potable water to drink, nowhere to wash your clothes except salt water. It was like Captain Bly.”

Weakley said he  learned the hard way about discrimination against union members.

“I  got fired off  a  ship because I was a member of the Marine Firemen’s union,” he  said. “They didn’t give  me  a nickel. They kicked me off in Baltimore.” He  caught a freight to  Mobile, Alabama and eventually found his  way  back to San Francisco, where he took a job as an oiler for Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Co. in Oakland.

Weakley worked the graveyard shift, at straight time. His memories of the job were not fond ones.

“The  wages were lousy, the company was  lousy. I was  getting $12  a week. I gave  my mother $8 and I kept $4. It was hard work.”

 

But shortly after his  19th birthday, in 1934,  Weakley found himself swept up in one of the epic labor struggles of the 20th century. Harry Bridges, the charismatic longshoreman leader, launched the   San  Francisco  maritime   strike, which was  about to  become the great San Francisco General Strike.

“We  all  went out on  strike,” recalled Weakley. “We  didn’t  have a  union, but we went out on strike anyway. The whole works just  shut down and walked out. Everybody was fed up.”

The  strike was  serious business and would  eventually  culminate   in  the police shooting deaths of  two strikers on “Bloody Thursday.” But for a 19-year- old kid full of working class moxie, it was the chance to fight on the side of  the angels.

In one of many actions, strikers encircled  the Howard Terminal in  Oakland, holding the scabs inside. The police, in turn, encircled the strikers, cutting off their supplies.

Weakley and some of his cohorts “borrowed” an unattended tug boat in San Francisco, loaded it up with supplies, and took the tug across the bay under cover of night, with Weakley serving as diesel mechanic. They pulled up to the dock in Oakland, where men awaited to unload sandwiches, cigarettes and other supplies for the strikers.

“Then we beached the damn thing on the mudflats at low tide and just disappeared,” Weakley recalled in 1990, relishing the memory. “The paper said Pirates! ”

Allied Imperial gave a nickel-an-hour raise as the strike was being settled, but Weakley decided to join the Navy instead. Four years later, after he was discharged, he  landed a  job  with the Bay Area  Key  Transit  System, working the 1939 Treasure Island World’s Fair.

Twelve years later Weakley would be leading a new union representing those Key System employees as  well  as  thousands of workers at Pacific Gas & Electric and many other California employers.

Those 12 years were epic ones in  the history of American labor. The  journey began in  1940,  when 25-year-old Ron Weakley walked into PG&E offices in San Francisco and got  hired on  as a laborer at $4 a day.

Formidable Challenge

PG&E  was a formidable challenge to labor organizers seven decades ago,  but it didn’t take Weakley long to find people willing to take the company on.

In early  1941  he  met with a small group of men in the bar of a run- down hotel in Concord. Many of them, Weakley included, were watch engineers at  PG&E steam plants in the East Bay. They  were proud men who believed they got  little respect on  the job  and that their wages  and working conditions were obnoxious. They also agreed that to get the strength they needed to deal with PG&E, they would have to  organize the entire company—top to  bottom,  north  to   south, east to  west, men and women, physical and clerical. One big union on the system. Weakley stood out.

“He  acted like  he  had the experience and the background to  know what to do  and what to expect. And  we just  followed,” recalled  Ray  Michaels, one  of the men attending the meeting.

“We were united in a single purpose to get a union,” Weakley explained in 1962. “We  weren’t yakking about how unions had too  much power and how we didn’t need one, like some poor misguided souls today. We sought a union to regain our dignity first and then to improve our wages and conditions.”

On April 17, 1941 Weakley and his fellow  organizers obtained a charter from the Utility Workers Organizing Commit- tee (UWOC), affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). A year later, they petitioned  the National Labor Relations Board to  represent PG&E physical employees in the East  Bay. The NLRB certified the UWOC  on  June  20, 1942.

But PG&E wasn’t about to roll over. The company simply refused to bargain. And PG&E wasn’t the only  problem.

A second union, the IBEW, had a following among some PG&E linemen that dated back to the early  1900s. IBEW was an old-style craft union affiliated with the American Federation of  Labor and not interested in organizing “unskilled” workers. But feeling threatened  by  the industrial campaign brewing at  PG&E, the IBEW  launched its  own company- wide organizing drive and chartered Local 1245 in 1941 to carry it out.

From the beginning there was  a  raw edge to  this contest. L.L. Mitchell, who sided with the IBEW,  remembered fist-fights on the docks in the late  1930s  between linemen loyal  to the IBEW and those inspired by the CIO. When the two organizing drives began  in  earnest in 1941, feelings only intensified.

PG&E, able to play  the unions against each other, seemed to  have the strongest  hand.

But PG&E was  trumped by World War II. The National War Labor Board did not tolerate PG&E’s  stalling tactics and in late  1942 began imposing settlements.

An Audacious Move

Over  the next couple of years, Weakley   and  the  UWOC   gained  contracts at  PG&E  locations throughout the Bay Area, while IBEW organized the outlying areas. In 1944  both unions succeed in getting master agreements for all of the territory they controlled. The  contracts weren’t great, but they were a beginning.

After the war, though, Weakley’s dream of one big  union seemed to  be  slipping away. The  two  unions had fought each other to a standstill. And there was trouble brewing within the UWOC,  which in 1946  gained recognition by  the CIO  as a  national  union—the  Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA).

America after the war  was  in the grip of anti-communist hysteria, and the labor movement was  not immune. At the UWUA’s  founding convention in 1946, Weakly and other California utility workers came under attack.

“They depicted us on the West Coast as ‘Red  Hots’ (communists) and so  forth,”  said Weakley. “They created enemies in order to get control of the union.”

The  abuse was even worse at the 1947 convention.

Longshoremen leader Harry Bridges, under attack himself by “anti-red” forces  within the CIO,  sympathized with Weakley’s position. He told Weakley that his  union of utility workers could headquarter at  the Longshoreman’s  hall   if they got kicked out of the UWUA.

Weakley, the former merchant marine and Navy  veteran, began to think about jumping ship.

Accompanied by one of his close associates, Don Hardie, Weakley met secretly with IBEW officials in Oakland. They proposed a deal, which in  essence was this: we’ll try  to  convince our members to come over  to the IBEW and help you organize PG&E if you let us run our local how we want it run.

“We  decided to dump (the UWUA) and join  the IBEW,  with a view  toward achieving  what  the  company  feared most of  all,  which  was building one system-wide industrial union on  these properties,” Weakley said.

In late  1948,  IBEW headquarters in Washington DC established a new local to accommodate Weakley’s forces: IBEW Local  1324.

It was  an audacious move on  Weakley’s part, and full of risk.

PG&E  fought him every step of  the way,  red-baiting him mercilessly during NLRB hearings to establish the scope of the proposed bargaining unit. The  national leadership of the UWUA, outraged at  the prospect of losing its  foothold at PG&E, put up ferocious resistance. The leaders of IBEW Local  1245,  which had been fighting Weakley tooth  and  nail since 1941, didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

But Weakley had  support  where  it counted: from the rank and file leaders who shared his  vision and recognized his   leadership.  Those stalwarts of  the Utility Workers Organizing Committee included Don Hardie, Tom Riley,  Ray Michaels, Mert Walters, Stan Dahlin, Les Glasson, Ed White, William Haars, Ed Hanlon, Bill Kennedy, Milt Ingraham, Gene Hastings, and many others whose names were never captured in print.

Their job  was  to convince their fellow workers to follow them into the IBEW.

“Many people  got hurt in this process  and much bitterness prevailed. We (faced) company finks, commies, imported industrial agents, and a  hostile business  community,” Weakley said. “While we were at it we had a ball fighting among ourselves and I can assure you that at more than one meeting somebody called the cops.”

It took three years for  the IBEW to completely defeat the UWUA in system- wide elections at PG&E, and to consolidate the old Local 1245 with the new Local 1324 (as well as some other IBEW jurisdictions). The name of the newly consolidated union would be  Local  1245.  A reborn Local  1245.

Weakley was  the obvious choice for Business  Manager  of   this  mammoth new union, but a  representative from the old  Local  1245 contested for the position.

“My  people wanted me, and some of his wanted him,” Weakley recalled many years later. “So finally they said you  two go out and talk it over and come back and tell us which it’s going to  be.  They gave  us a bottle of liquor and said go up to your room and talk about it.”

Weakley emerged as business manager. The  bottle was still mostly full.

Taking on the World

In 1952 Weakley beat back a last  challenge from the UWUA.  Finally unified, the new IBEW Local  1245  was  ready to march.

“We  cancelled all  our contracts, took strike votes and took on  the PG&E and all  other employers in  our jurisdiction and the world in general,” Weakley said. The  IBEW,  which had subsidized the long organizing drive, said it  was  now time for  the local union to fly on its own.

“So we had to get  a dues increase the same time we were trying to get our first system-wide contract,” Weakley recalled in  1990.  “And  I was  faced with running for election in the middle of all this.” Having a unified membership gave the union new clout with PG&E. L.L. Mitchell became Weakley’s lead negotiator.

Wages began to  climb. An ambitious program  to   improve  “fringe benefits” was launched. The   union gained the power to take grievances to arbitration.

Weakley never wavered from his early belief that workers everywhere had an inalienable right to be in a union. In the

1960s, under Weakley’s leadership, Local 1245  organized  Pacific Gas Transmission, the United States Bureau of Reclamation, Merced Irrigation District, Nevada Irrigation District, Richvale Irrigation District, the City of Healdsburg, the City of Redding, the City of Santa Clara, Truckee-Donner  Public Utility District, the Tri-Dam project, and Plumas-Sierra Rural Electric.

Line  clearance tree trimmers working on  PG&E property were also  organized: Davey Tree  and Pacific Tree (later known as Asplundh).

In 1964 Local  1245 gained jurisdiction for Outside Line Construction work.

“If  they wanted to be organized, we organized them,” Weakley said.

Under  Weakley, Local   1245   also   organized attendants, porters and food service workers at  a Navy  hospital. The union organized part of  the Naval air station in Alameda, a group of x-ray workers, the  Citizens Utilities phone company, and BART technicians.

In some cases the International office took away these new units and  reassigned them to other IBEW locals. Weakley  was  outraged by  this interference. But he  was  the consummate practical politician, never so  concerned about saving face  that he  would shoot himself in the foot. He saved his energy for serv- ing the members who elected him.

At PG&E, the union bargained a percentage contribution toward employee health premiums.   It also  bargained a stock savings plan—the first in  the gas and electric utility industry.

Vacation   allowance  was    increased. Sick   leave  was   expanded.  Time-and- a-half for  overtime was   negotiated. A new Master Apprenticeship  Agreement formalized the training for  12 different classifications at PG&E.  Safety conditions were improved.

Paid meals was  a big issue. “It used to be  they just  worked you  and dumped you  and that’s it,” said Weakley in 1990. “Now they have to  provide a  meal, or money in lieu of” after a certain amount of time worked.

The  union won larger pensions, now fully  paid by  the company. The  union also  negotiated a  new fully-paid long- term disability plan—the first in the industry.

And  after decades of disputes over hours, the union negotiated an historic Hours Clarification Agreement.

Mixing It Up with Members

As leader of the union, Weakley didn’t seal  himself off  in  the castle tower. He attended unit meetings when he  could, and he  wasn’t  shy  about mixing it  up with disgruntled members.

At  a  unit meeting in  San Francisco, with 300 members in attendance, Weakley was  confronted by a member upset by something he had written in the Util- ity Reporter.

“I  had written a  column  wherein  I had pointed out that our people were not only  skilled utility workers but also skilled musicians, photographers, artists and had all other types of attributes.”

As Weakley recalled it, a member stood up and said, “Hey Weakley, what’s all this intellectual stuff  I’ve  been reading in your column in the Utility Reporter? As far as I’m concerned you’re an intellectual asshole.”

People applauded.  Weakley knew he had to  respond. “So  I  said, ‘Well,  I’m better off than you  because you’re  just a plain asshole,’ and people applauded that, too.”

Weakley and the member were able later to patch things up.

On  another  occasion Weakley was publicizing the death benefit the union had just  established. He was proud of it, figured it would help solidify members’ support for the union.

“I trumpeted that at  a  meeting once down south, I think in Fresno, and a guy got  up and said, ‘Big deal, you  gotta die to get it.’ ”

learned, as all business managers do,  that members sometimes ignore everything the union has accomplished  for   them—all the wages and benefits—in order to  focus on  a  single complaint.

Weakley attended  a  unit meeting in San Jose  to discuss a change in the way wages were determined–a  change that ended up benefitting troublemen.

“This guy  got  up—he was  half  gassed —and he  said, ‘It costs me  just  as much to  get  a  bottle of  milk   as  it  does the Troubleshooter so  why  should they get a wage settlement?’”

“If you  didn’t buy  so much wine,” Weakley responded, “you might be  able to afford more milk.”

The  member, Weakley said, “stormed out and drove away—in a Mercedes.”

Members were always full of surprises. When the phone rang, there was no telling what might be in store.

“Once we  got  a  call  from a  woman in Salinas wanting a thousand dollar check. She said she  was the wife of a guy who just   died,” Weakley recalled.  She wanted the death benefit. Weakley told the woman that the union required a death certificate as proof.

“She  said, ‘I don’t need any  proof because I  shot the guy  last night.’” The woman was calling from jail.

The union eventually paid her the benefit “because she was the guy’s  wife and he was dead.” Weakley said he  believed the union later amended the plan.

Democracy for Members

Weakley was  a personable man, comfortable among the members. But he was  also  a man with an eye  on  the big picture. When Local  1245  was  being established under his  leadership, he thought long and hard about how the union should be structured.

“The  old 1245 was a centralized thing, the executive board had all  the power and that was it,” he  once said. The CIO locals that  he   helped organize in  the early   1940s, on  the other hand, “were very democratic, but so democratic that we  could hardly ever  get  a  majority to agree on anything.”

Weakley decided to  borrow elements from both traditions.

Like the old Local 1245, the new union had a strong business manager, someone with the exclusive authority to  hire and fire  staff  and to represent the union in dealings with the employers.

From the CIO,  he  learned a strong commitment to  democracy that he wasn’t prepared to surrender under any circumstances. He believed that a union must be “based on the fundamental policy of control that begins and ends with the membership of the local.”

More than 50 years later Local  1245’s structure still embodies this principle, with a  democratically elected business manager, officers and executive board. Local units based throughout the union’s jurisdiction give  members an opportunity to participate on a regular basis and to elect their own unit officers.

But the crown jewel in this democratic structure, and Weakley ’s pride and joy, was  the creation of an Advisory Council of rank and file members who are  elected by region and who have the power to challenge Executive Board decisions.

By  a  majority vote, members of  the Council “have the authority to  order a referendum—it goes out to  the entire membership to vote on  it,” Weakley explained. “So  that’s a pretty heavy hammer on centralized dictatorship.”

The  Advisory Council  rarely exercises this authority, but did so earlier this year when it challenged the Executive Board over two decisions concerning qualifications for serving on the Executive Board. The  members, voting at  over  100  unit meetings, sided with the Advisory   Council on   one decision, and with the Executive Board on the other.

While   Weakley  clearly  loved the challenges of leading a progressive union, the job also  took its toll.  Once in the early  1950s, before the dues structure was fully worked out, Weakley had to cut  staff.

“One of the members I had to lay  off  committed suicide,” he recalled. “That wasn’t very  easy for me  to take.”

Another committed suicide after leaving the staff.  “I always felt  a sort of personal responsibility   for  some of  these things that happened to  some of the guys. There’s been a lot of tragedy along the road,” said Weakley.

The   stresses  of  union  work probably contributed  to   several divorces. Weakley’s own first marriage fell apart in the 1950s.

But Weakley, always resilient, married again in  1955,  to  Ethel Loesch. It was easy  to  see  why  they might end up together. Like  her husband, Ethel Loesch Weakley came from fighting stock. Her mother, a  Russian immigrant living  in Connecticut, once sheltered a group of West  Virginia  union miners who were hiding from Pinkerton goons.

Ethel was still with Ron  52 years later, when he died on Oct. 11 at their home in Molokai, HI.

Weakley remained  keenly interested in  union and world affairs to  his  last days. In 2003, Local  1245 named its new headquarters in Weakley’s honor. At the grand opening, invited to  make a  few remarks, Weakley showed he hadn’t lost his combative edge.

“I note that another Ronald — Ronald Reagan — has his name on a federal building,  and an airport, and now an aircraft carrier. That’s  quite a  distinction, very impressive. But there’s one thing that I have over him: he’ll never have his name on a union office building!”

But Weakley’s true legacy is not contained in a building. His legacy is the union itself, and the strength it continues to give working people to act together for the betterment of all.