National Affairs: Indigestible Union

Eighteen months ago, as pink-faced, power-hungry Teamster Chieftain Dave Beck was leaning out across the nation to gobble non-teamsters into his big union, a rich and succulent ragout of manpower was uncovered at his very elbow. The independent Aero Mechanics Union began a lingering, unsuccessful strike at the Seattle plants of Boeing Aircraft Company.

The situation seemed to be made to order for Beck. Like most employers, Boeing was not at all averse to his guarantees of iron union discipline and labor peace. Beck licked his chops and prepared to dump Boeing’s 15,000 employees into the kettleful of fruit canners, clerks and dry cleaners whose dues were already pouring into the teamsters’ treasury.

The aero mechanics, however, proved surprisingly indigestible. They called off their strike and set out to fight Beck with billboard displays, radio programs and full-page newspaper advertisements. They described Beck’s newly founded local at Boeing as the “foul-hatched, illegitimate offspring of a power-crazed dictator . . .” They also had the impertinence to use heavy-handed humor in bearding the heavy-handed czar. One ad featured a drawing of an old-fashioned privy which was entitled the “Beckhouse.” Another pleaded: “Don’t go Beckward.”

Last week when Boeing employees voted to choose a bargaining agent, the aero mechanics won, 8,107 to 4,127. Dave Beck, in his own home town, had taken the worst licking of his zooming career.