Weakley Remembers: Tales from the Early Days of IBEW Local 1245
Editor’s note: Local 1245 founder Ron Weakley, who died in October 2007, loved to tell stories–from the early tumultuous days when the union was being organized, to the sometimes bizarre situations he found himself in during 20 years as the union’s business manager. He asked that these stories not be published until after his death.
(L.L. Mitchell) was the main guy in our negotiations. Of course I ran the negotiations, but he was head of the committee and the major spokesman.
This one year, I think it ’56, but I’m not sure, we had a real tough time. We had two turn-downs. Before the third round of negotiations we agreed to get together–Thompson and Bonbright on the company side and Mitchell and I–we agreed to get together and review exactly where we stood, because it had been so long things were getting kind of mixed up.
So we took each article on each side and said what our position was on each issue to get the record straight. It came to something, I forget, it was either holidays or sick leave or something. And the company said, Our position is X” and Mitch spoke up and said, We’d never agree to a thing like that.” And Thompson said, Well, I don’t know why not. You proposed it three months ago.”