Mary Winzig and the Powell’s Books organizing drive, 1998-2000

April 21, 2008

Introduction by Harvey Schwartz

Mary Winzig was the founding president of warehouse, retail and allied workers Local 5, which represents employees at the nation’s largest independent book company, Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon.

Mary Winzig was a shop steward, a member of the Organizing Committee, and a key figure in the 1998-2000 unionization drive that brought more than 400 Powell’s workers into the ILWU under a new charter. I interviewed her in June 2001, ten months after Local 5 secured its first contract with Powell’s. Our discussion focused on the Powell’s organizing drive, which attracted much community support and media attention.

MARY WINZIG

Edited by Harvey Schwartz,
Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection

I was born in Houston, Texas, in 1964. My parents were Republicans, but odd Republicans. They told me never to cross a picket line. When President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981 for going on strike, my parents said, “That’s not a good thing.” So I learned something about labor from an early age.

I got interested in politics as a student at the University of Texas. There was an anti-apartheid drive because UT had money invested in South Africa. There was a free speech movement because they were arresting people for speaking on campus during non-designated hours. I met folks from Central America and I joined the UT Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.

In 1987 I went to Washington, D.C., for a big protest march against Reagan. Going to school during the 1980s, when Reagan was president, opened your eyes if you were not blinded by business school. After college I worked for Pueblo to People, a Houston group that helped cooperatives in Central and South America sell their goods for a living wage.

When I was 28 I came to the Northwest, partly for the cool climate. I hate hot weather. If you want to know about global warming, go to Houston. Besides, I was really tired of Texas. The state was getting so conservative! I got a job in Portland at 23rd Avenue Books and stayed for two years. But the store was small and I wanted more responsibility. So in 1995 I got a job at the Burnside Street store of Powell’s Books.

During orientation at Powell’s, the human resources guy, who was the owner’s cousin, said, “I just want you to know that there was a union drive a couple of years ago, but we don’t need a union here.” Immediately I thought, “Oh, if you’re willing to say this right off the bat, you must really need a union.”

What I heard about that union drive was that they tried to organize just the big Burnside store, which is just one of several Powell’s shops. They realized too late that they needed to organize the rest of the company. They never did get enough pledge cards signed to get a union certification vote with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

What happened to us was that we felt desperate. Management pulled so many things all at once that we had the momentum and the anger to sustain us.

I started working at Powell’s right after they computerized. Powell’s went from a fairly small family business to a multi-million dollar corporation. There began to be a split between management and the workers. Management began thinking more about the bottom line, more about themselves than about what the workers needed. When I started at Powell’s upper management would say hello, talk to me and even help me shelve. But as time went on, management pulled away.

By the time we unionized, management didn’t have personal relationships with us anymore. I think this worked to our advantage, because they were so out of touch. It also helped that we liked each other. We got stronger as we went along. We became family. I don’t think management had that.

Michael Powell, who owns the company, is a liberal. To his credit, he opposes discrimination and censorship. But people need a living wage. After I’d been working at Powell’s for five years, despite stunning performance reviews, I was making eight-something an hour. People who had been there longer were making only 50 cents, 75 cents more.

It’s great to be against censorship, but when people are having a hard time making rent, an employer has to come to grips and do right by his workers. If you are going to be the planet’s bookstore, get online and be a multi-millionaire, you need to give people their fair worth. Michael Powell wasn’t doing that.

We felt degraded, too, when the company restructured our jobs. Before we were working in areas we understood and enjoyed. But suddenly I would be shelving in railroads or automotive that I didn’t know jack about. I couldn’t help customers anymore. This sort of thing happened across several departments at the Burnside store, which had the most Powell’s employees. Many of us saw  what we’d liked about working at Powell’s disappearing.

What affected every employee, though, is that they eliminated the compensation group made up of workers and managers that had set up a plan to get people equal compensation. They decided instead to give us small raises based on merit, which in many cases meant raises based on favoritism.

Friends of mine and I talked about how we needed a union. Little did I know, but other people in the Burnside store were having similar conversations. Many of us felt we had nothing to lose. We were making crap wages, and even if we got fired, we felt we could always make crap wages somewhere else.

When they eliminated the compensation group, Marty Kruse said, “Let’s meet at Ringler’s Annex, the bar down the street, and discuss what we’re going to do.” I wasn’t at that initial meeting, but some of the people I had talked to were. Those who attended decided, “Let’s start a union.”

I was at the next meeting, which was in September 1998. We invited the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, the Wobblies) and the Teamsters to meet with us at the same time. This was a little naive. It put the union people on the spot. We met at a private house late at night after Powell’s closed. Weirdly, the cops showed up. I thought, “We’re getting watched already!”

There were 30 of us at the meeting. These people ultimately became the Organizing Committee, but at this point we didn’t know what we were doing. People were all talking at once. Finally one guy took charge and had us introduce ourselves. The UFCW and the Wobbly organizers answered some questions, but things didn’t seem quite right yet.

 

Then Jobs with Justice suggested we try the ILWU, which was democratic and represented a bookstore in San Francisco. In October we met with Michael Cannarella, the ILWU Columbia River organizer, at the longshore Local 8 hall. Some of our group had looked into the history of the ILWU and learned about its militancy and support for different causes. When we met at Local 8, Michael gave a good spiel, and those of us who were there decided to sign cards that night.
Once the main organizing drive started, the company held a series of meetings with the workers. These were commonly at the Powell’s corporate office. Michael Powell would sit there with his top managers and ask how come we didn’t take our concerns to him, his door was always open. But he’d been a very private person until the union drive began. Then he was like, “Hi, how are you?” We thought, “Where are you coming from? Where were you?”

Peter Olney, the ILWU organizing director, Cannarella, and Paul Bigman, the Puget Sound organizer, predicted that the managers would have these meetings. They said management would tell us they were sorry and if we just didn’t unionize things would get better. We told the workers who were skeptical of us that this would happen. When it did, those workers felt, “Wow, they know what’s going on.” It made us look smart. That helped us in many ways.

One way it helped was in overcoming this class thing that existed. Many people working at Powell’s had college backgrounds. Some said, “Longshore? I’ve been to college. Why do I need a dock worker to represent me?” This was even though some longshore workers made five or six times as much money as Powell’s employees. It also helped that Bigman had gone to Reed College, because a lot of people from Powell’s had gone to Reed.

It was hard talking to some people, especially in other stores away from Burnside, where we had no contact at first. Some folks at the technical books store complained, “Here’s this union being thrust upon us.” Finally at one of the management meetings I stood up and said to those people, “You’re mad, but don’t blame the union, blame me. I was one of the first to bring in the union.” That felt kind of like outing yourself. I thought, “Can’t go back now!”

Michael Powell shook his head and looked over at me like he was thinking, “Oh, no, a voice of reason.” I was taking responsibility. It was not what he wanted to hear. Others of us went to management meetings held at various stores. They said, “If Michael Powell’s going to give his spiel, well, here’s our spiel.” This was quite brave and wonderful.

The company also sent letters to our homes. We never got letters before, but now managers sent letters signed with their first names. One letter identified us as the wrong union. Our members said, “You’re telling us the union is bad, and you can’t even do the right research?”

When we were organizing we had people we called communication stewards. We had stickers I labeled “Peter Olney papers,” because Peter loves those stickies. There were charts with people’s names and locations and we would pick workers to talk to. I had a group of 10 or 12. When we were making decisions or having a meeting, we would contact those people to let them know what was going on.

We got help from the outside from progressive community groups like Jobs with Justice and Art and Revolution. ILWU longshore Local 8 and marine clerks Local 40 from Portland and longshore Local 4 from nearby Vancouver, Washington, were always at our picket lines and rallies. Some of us wore punk clothes, and we looked different from waterfront workers, but they would be there with their banners. Their nickname for us—which they didn’t tell me about until a year ago—was “the Bisexual Vegan Union.” This was all in fun. They were really supportive.

In December 1998 we started wearing union buttons. I gave one to Billy Bragg, the singer, when he came into the Burnside store. He said, “Mary, you’re doing Woody Guthrie’s work.” That was inspiring. At a concert that night he dedicated his song, “There’s Power in a Union,” to the Powell’s workers. This led to our first mention in The Oregonian, the Portland paper, which is usually no friend of unions. That felt like, “OK, you’ve gone another step. You just got to keep going.”

In early 1999, when the NLRB election for union certification got closer, the company sent out more letters. They said how costly dues would be, so we kept announcing that the workers voted on the dues. We had to do a lot of education to counter their misinformation. In April we won the election, 161 to 155. I think it was so close because people are afraid of the unknown, even though there might a better future with a union.

But as soon as we won and reality set in, people came forth to help us. Some who had voted “no” and had refused to wear a button or a sticker were willing to serve on our bargaining committee. It came down to, “Who do you trust more, management or us?” People could see that we had their best interest at heart. It helped, too, that when we put together a bargaining team, we made sure there was equal representation throughout all the stores and locations. We elected one person each from Beaverton, Hawthorne, tech, travel, and Hoyt the warehouse, and I think two from Burnside. We didn’t want it to be Burnside-centric.

The company employed Larry Amburgey, a union-busting lawyer, to bargain with us. He sat across the table and insulted our team. Amburgey was there to take the heat off Michael Powell and to stall the process. One of the best things we did is have open negotiations where any Powell’s employee could watch. I think that idea, which was brilliant, came from Peter Olney. People could see how their co-workers were being treated. It also put pressure on management because they could see 30 or 40 workers trooping in.

“There was a parade headed for the Burnside store. The cops yanked the permit and started beating people and trying to run them down with their down their horses, motorcycles and four-wheelers.” Photo by Harvey Schwartz

We asked for better wages, reinstatement of the compensation group, the same healthcare, the union shop and a successor clause. Michael Powell fought long and hard to try to have an open shop. We tried to tell him he was putting himself in the same company as George W. Bush, who supposedly he didn’t like. Ultimately we were able to come to a compromise, so a limited number of people who didn’t want to join the union could stay out. Fewer than 20 signed up for that, and later some of those joined the union anyway.

We had to have a series of demonstrations and short strikes before we finally got a contract. Once Art and Revolution, which does visual street theater, made these huge puppets for us. We staged the marriage of the puppet Larry Longshore to the puppet Michael Powell. Larry Longshore was holding a union contract. At the same time, there was a carpenters’ union conference in town and 300 of their people joined our rally.

The Teamsters helped us, too, by sending their truck around the block at the Burnside store blaring really bad ‘80s music. Some of the more friendly middle managers, who actually did the work on the floor, said, “If that truck goes by one more time, you’ll get that contract!” We also used a lot of written material that Marcy Rein, The Dispatcher  reporter, prepared for us.

In April 2000 management was still stalling. The ILWU International Convention was coming to Portland during May 1-5, and somebody on the union side said to Larry Amburgey, “You should sign an agreement before May. You don’t want the convention protesting you.” Larry said, “Take it to the streets.” So we did.

Management underestimated us again. A lot of amazing things happened convention week that turned the campaign around. On May Day there was a parade headed for the Burnside store. The cops yanked the permit and started beating people and trying to run them down with their horses, motorcycles and four-wheelers. All the Powell’s stores were on strike over an unfair labor practice issue and a lot of us were there. The Burnside store was still open though.

Later that day, at 4 o’clock, all the ILWU convention people marched from their Hilton Hotel headquarters toward Powell’s. I went with them. Powell’s was surrounded by cops in riot gear. I could see my co-workers being pushed up against the wall by cops with bully clubs and shields. Helicopters were overhead. It was horrible and scary. It looked like a war zone.

As we marched up, Brian McWilliams, the president of the ILWU, approached the head of the police. The cop said, “There’s just a bunch of anarchists across the street.” Brian looked at him and said,  “Those are our people. We’re going across.” We started to march. Some cops took a few swings, but there were more than 400 ILWU people with us, so the cops moved away. When we joined our people across the street, everybody was clapping and cheering like liberation was at hand. Powell’s shut down early. That made people believe what a union can do.

The opening ceremonies of the convention were the next morning. About 50 of us from Powell’s walked in and everybody was chanting, “ILWU.” I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. I gave a speech about the people I was working with and the union we were joining. The convention passed around ILWU tote bags and the delegates filled them with money for strike relief. On May 4 the convention marched to the Burnside store again and we held a hands-around-Powell’s rally with the ILWU delegates. We shut the store down once more, too.

We went on strike again on Memorial Day and people who had never worn a button or even signed a petition were walking the picket line. I knew then we were going to win. We went into federal mediation and now negotiations were totally different. The workers couldn’t watch this time and the mediator negotiated between the two bargaining teams that were in different rooms.

The contract proposal agreed upon called for an 18 percent raise over three years. We retained our health care. Now there was a grievance procedure, so we couldn’t be fired at will. The compensation group was put back in place. We didn’t get the successor clause we wanted, but I don’t think Powell’s is going anywhere. We got a profit-sharing program, so if a customer goes through our website we get a percentage of the sale price. The vote in favor of the contract that August was 293 to 37.

After we won our contract we were on the cover of The Oregonian. Of course, that contract symbolizes much more than its various clauses. We have a sense of community at Powell’s now that we never had before.

When I visited the International library in San Francisco, there was this glass table with all these medallions that looked like they came from when Harry Bridges was around. Beside them was a Local 5 button. I thought this represented such a blending of past and future, longshore workers and booksellers. Today unions have to expand their jurisdiction to survive. It clicked for me then that what we had done together was pretty cool.

[Editor’s note: Powell’s and Local 5 still have the internet-based profit-sharing program established in that first contract. If you go to www.powellsunion.com to order books, 10 percent goes to the workers at no extra cost.]