Fred Pecker: passionate “rebel with a cause” led Local 6 through successful organizing campaigns

Fred Pecker, who led Local 6 members through difficult times by helping workers organize, win strikes and fight for immigrant rights, passed on December 20, 2018, following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Challenging times

Pecker joined the ILWU in 1985 after getting hired at Guittard Chocolate when Local 6 had several thousand members, a small fraction of the 19,000 workers on the books in 1946. The first decline came in 1950 after Teamster officials spent $1 million to raid Local 6 warehouses and attack ILWU leaders as “unpatriotic communists.” The second drop began in the 1970’s as companies moved from the Bay Area to exploit low-wage labor, first in Mexico, then China. When those foreign-made goods arrived in containers to West Coast docks, most bypassed ILWU warehouses in favor of non-union facilities in California’s Central Valley, Inland Empire or the deserts of California and Nevada, where unions were scarce. That process was still underway when Pecker emerged as a new leader at Local 6 while another 12 shops closed and 800 union jobs vanished in three years from 1991-1994.

Humble beginnings

Pecker’s first Local 6 job at Guittard involved cleaning-up piles of chocolate that spilled onto the factory floor. “I was on graveyard and would walk around with a tray and scraper. Chocolate was just coming out of packings on the tanks and oozing down the sides of machines. It was beautiful.” His wife, Susan Solomon added, “It was the only job where he came home smelling better than when he left.”

Radical roots

Fred Jonas grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Queens, New York, which he said was “kind of like where Archie Bunker lived,” referring to the conservative, working-class television character in the 1970’s sitcom, “All in the Family.” Unlike Archie, Pecker’s family had radical roots that included socialist grandparents who immigrated from Europe. His father Calman and mother Sylvia joined the American Communist Party when they were young, but quit after becoming disillusioned. Both remained strong union supporters and were active in their teacher unions. Pecker said his mother “told us if we ever crossed a picket line we were going to have some broken legs – and she was a non-violent person!” His father “kept everything inside” and “wasn’t a real communicative person,” because of trauma suffered during WWII, when he was sent behind Nazi lines to scout during the bitter-cold battles of the Rhine and famous bridge at Remagen.

“Be with people”

Despite reticence, Fred’s father conveyed sage advice about how his son could be an effective radical. “He used to tell me that going out at night with a bucket of paint and writing something on a wall wasn’t going to start a revolution. He said that it takes being with people.” His parents also emphasized the importance of unions and solidarity, saying, “the only way we get anything in life is by sticking together.”

A 14-year-old Teamster

Using that advice, Pecker began working with union members at a young age, learning about people and unions. He got his first summer job on a Manhattan street-corner “shape-up,” where temp workers were hired for short-term positions at Teamster warehouses and delivery routes. Although he was only 14-years-old, Pecker worked 16-hour days and soaked up information about the Teamsters Union from seasoned union men who taught him what they knew, including unsavory details such as payoffs that were part of the job. These early warehouse and delivery jobs continued during his middle and high school years, and became useful when Pecker explored a career in teaching.

Falling in love

In 1977, Pecker was taking education classes at New York’s State University in Buffalo where he was joined by Susan Solomon. The two had met over a decade earlier because their parents were friends, political allies, and worked as teachers. Fred and Susan fell in love, started living together when Fred was 18, and married two years later. Susan’s parents and grandparents were San Francisco natives and political radicals. Those views cost her father a public school teaching job when he refused to sign a “loyalty oath” that required him to renounce his leftwing political views. Such oaths were eventually weakened by the courts, but destroyed many families and caused suicides during the 1950’s.

Teaching and learning

After Fred and Sue finished their teacher training, they thought about moving to San Francisco, but Fred was deeply connected to New York. Sue spent their final years in New York getting a Master’s degree in Education and working at a co-op nursery school while Fred worked at an early childhood center in the South Bronx, one of the state’s poorest neighborhoods. The staff at his center was in the middle of a campaign to win a better union contract. Pecker jumped into the conversations, sit-ins and street actions. He experienced his first union defeat at his next job where teachers helping children with parents caught in the criminal court system tried to organize a union. That drive ended when some union activists were fired. “I learned that it’s kind of hard to tell people to put your ass out on the line, if you don’t have somebody who’s standing with you or unless everybody’s ready to walk,” he concluded. Soon after they moved to San Francisco.

Coming to California

When they arrived in San Francisco in 1983, both took classroom teaching positions with low-income preschoolers at the Head Start program, and immediately began organizing parents and fellow teachers to improve conditions by forming a union. The campaign was successful and workers eventually secured a contract, but management responded by firing Sue for being pregnant with their son Herschel – something that was illegal but common 45 years ago. Fred remained a while longer but was later forced to resign. With both out of work and a baby on the way, they badly needed a job. Sue’s family was in a position to help, thanks to deep ILWU roots that included uncle Leroy King and the Patton family who had worked in distribution and warehouses for decades. Pecker got some casual work on the waterfront but it wasn’t enough.

“I was looking for work and Leroy King sent me to the Local 6 hiring hall where I registered with Henry McKnight, who was the Business Agent,” explained Pecker. “Henry had a good enough relationship with Guittard Chocolate that he was able to send people to work there and he got me a job.”

Connections with Leroy King

The connection to Leroy King was important, but Pecker also proved himself and became a leader in his own right. Their leadership styles were different, but Pecker always held enormous respect for King, who managed to survive many decades of ugly racism and political attacks. During the 1950’s, uncle Leroy and aunt Judy had been hounded without mercy by the FBI for having joined the Communist Party. Their inter-racial marriage caused them to be evicted from many San Francisco apartments. While King later softened his radical politics, he remained connected to Local 6, was a player in the ILWU, a fixture at the city’s Labor Council, and San Francisco’s longest-serving city commissioner until he passed in 2015 at the age of 91.

Rising from the ranks

Pecker had only worked a few years at Guittard Chocolate when he was elected Chief Steward. Soon after, he was elected a Convention Delegate and Trustee. In 1991 he was elected to be a full-time business agent, helping workers at Guittard and dozens of other shops. He helped organize social activities with workers and their families, using picnics and holiday parties to build solidarity. The overwhelming challenge of that era involved “runaway shops,” a process Pecker said was “in full swing” when he became a new leader in the 1980’s and early 90’s. The coffee industry, once a mainstay of Local 6, had been hit hard with closures at Folgers, Hills Brothers, S&W and Safeway. Liquor warehouses such as Hiram Walker were also moving away, along with massive paper and printing supply warehouses that once served the vanishing Bay Area printing trades. Besides seeking lower-wages, many companies were victimized by “leveraged buy-outs,” a process developed by Wall Street to acquire profitable companies, bury them in debt, then sell-off parts of the business to make a profit – often killing the original company in the process.

No help from politicians

Pecker said, “these were not situations where the company was looking for a way to stay in business. The companies had made a business decision and just wanted to keep things calm until they shut.” Local politicians were sympathetic but had no power. Presidents Reagan and Bush did nothing during their terms while thousands of factories closed each year. Congress finally passed a weak law called the “WARN Act” in 1988, but it merely required large plants to notify workers 60 days before closing. Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 as a “New Democrat” who made a priority of courting wealthy donors, corporate executives and Wall Street bankers to lobby for his NAFTA “free trade” agreement with Mexico. Workers and unions were largely ignored.

Pensions become defining issue

The larger economic and political changes hurt all unions, including members at Local 6, where the once-powerful “Master Warehouse Agreement” was jointly negotiated with the Teamsters following a truce reached decades earlier with the rival business-friendly union. Local 6’s pension plan was also hurt because fewer active workers were supporting the plan’s growing number of pensioners. Most Local 6 leaders were reluctant to discuss the pension problem because there was no easy solution. The problem could be ignored, but it was only growing worse. Benefits could be cut, but nobody wanted that. The third alternative, which Pecker supported, was to organize more workers into Local 6 to make the union stronger and improve the pension plan. This was the option Pecker favored, but he got little support from other Local 6 leaders because organizing was so difficult, risky and could destabilize the Local 6 political order.

Choosing to organize

Pecker organized new call centers in the Bay Area that hired people to raise funds for non-profit and progressive political causes. He worked with the International Union on an innovative campaign to help bike messengers organize – a campaign Fred enjoyed because of the colorful characters involved and unconventional tactics they employed. But the largest and most successful campaign was one developed with the International Union to help workers build power in the East Bay waste and recycling industry. Local 6 already represented some workers in the industry, but hundreds more were still unorganized – and many of the existing contracts were lacking. Pecker wisely began the campaign by organizing to improve the existing waste contracts, believing those struggles would develop new leaders and organizing skills among the rank-and-file. The next step called for Local 6 members with those improved recycling contracts to help organize their non-union counterparts in the East Bay.

Recycling workers campaign

Pecker’s ambitious plan came together on February 2, 2013 when 150 workers and family members filled the Local 6 hall in Oakland for a historic “Convention of Recycling Workers.” The event was conducted mostly in Spanish and chaired by rank-and-file recycling workers. Union officials, including Pecker and International Secretary-Treasurer Willie Adams, took a lower profile. A wide range of special guests attended, including new allies from the environmental movement and supportive politicians. A Catholic Diocese leader pledged his support and recalled that his own father had been a member of Local 6 many decades ago and had joined militant organizing campaigns to win improvements.

Historic Convention

Pecker spoke briefly, outlining a vision to transform the recycling industry throughout the East Bay with good wages, benefits and new rights, including health and safety protections. The State’s top two OSHA officials attended and supported the campaign. Pecker emphasized that a militant approach was needed, and the plan was adopted by everyone present.

There were many challenges, including large numbers of undocumented immigrant workers who were eager to fight for the union, but vulnerable to employers calling-in “la migra” to punish troublemakers. Immigration experts spoke at the Convention and stayed afterward to address those concerns. Another problem involved the Teamsters Union that represented East Bay waste drivers and had secured good-paying jobs for members. They initially supported the recycling workers’ campaign, then collaborated with waste companies to prevent recycling workers from winning dramatic improvements.

Trouble with Teamsters

Tensions with East Bay Teamsters had flared earlier in 2007, when ILWU’s predominantly low-wage female, Latina workforce at Waste Management honored Teamster and Machinist Union picket lines. This was when the Teamsters were locked-out for more than three weeks. ILWU members stood firm despite having no warning, no savings and no right to unemployment insurance. Promises by Teamster officials to protect Local 6 from company retaliation never materialized. Without support from the Teamsters or Machinists Union, Waste Management went ahead and retaliated against Local 6 by outsourcing dozens of call-center jobs and suing the ILWU for supporting the lock-out. Pecker was furious, but there was little he could do.

An impressive victory

Despite these and many other challenges, Pecker prevailed in leading a successful campaign in multiple cities that transformed the East Bay recycling and waste industry – raising standards and putting hundreds of workers and families on a path out of poverty. New contracts were signed, more workers joined Local 6 and existing contracts were strengthened.

Disappointments

While Teamster officials failed to stop recycling workers from winning these dramatic improvements, Pecker continued to have concerns, noting that Teamsters had recruited a former Local 6 official with better pay – allowing them to monitor internal issues at Local 6 and quietly intervene on occasions, including during the recycling campaign. Pecker recalled how similar tactics were used by Teamsters during their 1950 raids against Local 6, and more recently at Local 17 where they recruited a former ILWU official with a good-paying job who then encouraged workers to leave the ILWU and affiliate with the Teamsters. At Local 6, mounting problems with the pension provided a new opening for the Teamsters, who held meetings with Local 6 members who were told they could join the better-funded Teamster pension – if Local 6 workers would agree to transfer control of their Master contract from the ILWU to the Teamsters, which eventually happened. It was a bitter pill for Pecker, who tried but failed to rally support for an organizing strategy that would strengthen the Local 6 pension and avoid a future Teamster takeover.

Another setback occurred when Pecker lost his reelection bid by two dozen votes for Secretary-Treasurer in 2017. He’d held the top post at Local 6 for five terms, beginning in 1997 when he defeated a controversial incumbent. Following the ILWU tradition, Pecker returned to his job at the Guittard chocolate factory where he started 34 years before. He remained active in the SF Labor Council, the

ILWU Northern California District Council and Jobs with Justice. He had continued to be a fixture on picket lines and protests, where he met and made hundreds of friends during his three decades in the Bay Area Labor movement.

Love of music

Besides his love for unions and devotion to social justice, Pecker was passionate about music. He played the electric bass and performed with the ILWU Blues Band at union events during the late 1980’s and early 90’s. Pecker said he believed “music is something that brings us together,” and was fond of quoting the pioneering radical Emma Goldman, who once said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution.” His taste in music was wide-ranging and detailed, including familiarity with obscure blues artists from the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Kansas City and Chicago. He was familiar with performers in West Africa and groups in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil. He had a deep love for all forms of African-American music, including gospel, soul, rhythm & blues and funk – but was especially devoted to jazz and had an encyclopedic knowledge of players along with a massive recording collection, which he donated along with his musical instruments and equipment to the Oaktown Jazz program that trains and mentors young jazz players in Oakland.

Recognition and reflection

Pecker was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer in the Spring of 2018 and enrolled in experimental drug trials, but ended chemotherapy when the cancer failed to respond. He received dozens of friends and family members at his home in San Francisco’s St. Francis Square – a cooperative housing project of 300 units sponsored by the ILWU in 1963 that was the first racially-integrated site in San Francisco. He remained at home during his final months and days, living with his wife Susan, son Herschel and daughter Naomi. Pecker was unable to attend the ILWU 37th Convention in June, 2018, where delegates in Portland unanimously passed a resolution to “honor, recognize and celebrate his characteristic determination, grace, good humor and concern for others.

You have stood strong with us, Brother Pecker, and we now stand with you and your family during this challenging time.”

San Francisco’s Labor Council honored Pecker a few days later with their own resolution praising his decades of service to the labor movement. Similar honors were bestowed by San Francisco officials who welcomed him to City Hall on December 4, 2018, during a meeting of the Board of Supervisors, who presented a special resolution praising Pecker’s decades of devotion to worker justice. It was his final public appearance; he passed peacefully surrounded by family on December 20, 2018.

Celebrating his life

A celebration of Pecker’s life brought hundreds to Local 10’s Memorial Hall on February 23, 2019. The event reflected the breadth and depth of his many friends and followers. Musicians from the Oaktown Jazz project played and sang. Family and friends shared stories, honored his many contributions, and shed a few tears. ILWU International President Willie Adams attended the event and praised Pecker as “a man of courage and principles who helped transform Local 6 and got it on track.” Pecker is survived by his wife and lifelong partner, Susan Anne Solomon, son Herschel Simon Pecker and his partner Courtney Elise Hight, and daughter Naomi Clara Solomon and son-in-law Bradley Ryan Allen – in addition to many loving aunts uncles, cousins, cousins-in-law, and chosen family, without whom his family tree would have been incomplete.