ISBN: 9781933392646 Year Added to Catalog: 2007 Book Format: Paperback Book Art: Black and White Photos Dimensions: 6 x 9 Number of Pages: 544 Book Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Release Date: November 15, 2007
Download a PDF of the American Prospect review, June 2008.
Library Journal Review
by Duncan Stewart, Univ. of Iowa Libs., Iowa City
Leopold (cofounder & director, Labor Inst. & Public Health Inst.) tells the story of radical unionist Tony Mazzocchi (1926-2002), who grew up in left-wing New York. In 1953, Mazzocchi, a World War II veteran, followed his employer, Helena Rubinstein, from New York City to Long Island and rebuilt his union, Local 149, United Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers, which became the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) International Union in 1955. The author shows how Mazzocchi thus strengthened America's labor movement, not to mention the local Democratic Party, mixing radical politics with union fights for better wages and better work conditions. The result: a militant and popular union local. Mazzocchi used his national position at OCAW to work with scientists and environmentalists to improve workplace safety, environmental laws, and economic equality. His radicalism angered conventional unionists, especially those assisting the CIA abroad. He irritated corporations, and was considered a threat to and by the FBI. Leopold's admiring biography shows Mazzocchi as that rare radical who escaped the Red Scare and continued through old age to weave together leftist politics and strong unionism with the goal of improving life for all Americans. Highly recommended for medium to large public libraries and all academic libraries.
I just finished reading Les Leopold's biography of Tony Mazzocchi, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor. I finished it in about a day. It's that kind of a read, an old-fashioned page turner for anyone interested in the working class and the history of the labor movement in the United States.
Most of the reviews I have seen online dwell on Mazzocchi's environmental accomplishments as the labor leader who opened up lines of communication and cooperation with environmentalists.
That is certainly part of the story, a big part of course. But Mazzocchi was much more than a good occupational health and safety guy at the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW).
Mazzocchi fought to preserve the vision of labor and a better world for workers throughout the long dismal decline of labor in the last half of the twentieth century. He was just old enough to have witnessed the great battles of the CIO as a dyslexic youngster, where he cut his teeth in a working-class culture of struggle in the seething world of New York City radicalism.
After serving in WW2 as an anti-aircraft gunner, he plunged into union politics in the city, allied briefly with Communist Party militants who were trying to hang on as the Cold War bore down on the working class. He learned from them, but was never a pawn. He also learned quickly to hate routine mind-deadening labor, hence the book's title. His attitude toward such work took a little from Utah Philips' wobblies and hobos.
His local at the Helena Rubinstein plant on Long Island defied the conservative trends in labor well into the fifties. The local's newspaper was called "The Militant."
As a political activist he revived the Democratic Party on Long Island and probably could have been elected to Congress. He decided against running for tactical reasons.
His work in his local was a springboard into OCAW's national politics. He was a shrewd, patient infighter in union bureaucratic battles, and finally used his Health and Safety position for two cliff-hanging runs for the Presidency of OCAW. His losses were to some extent due to his refusal to make the kind of "give me a job" deals that usually decided such elections.
His connection with Karen Silkwood sprang from his ground-breaking work in occupational health. He brought a young cadre of medical people into the workplace field, allied with Ralph Nader, and saw the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) be signed by no less than Richard Nixon.
The book is full of gripping horror stories about workplace conditions. Then there is the horror story of the CIA's involvement in the top leadership struggles of OCAW. I'm not going to recount them here, buy the book and read for yourself.
What really gripped me about the book, however, was following Mazzocchi's career as it arced through labor history. Brilliant as he was, Mazzocchi could not overcome the grinding historical forces that brought us to where we are today, with an industrial union sector hollowed out by plant closings, the leadership of complacent business unionism, and the resulting demoralized workforce.
Mazzocchi's last battle, to build a Labor Party, ran head on into these forces. After an enthusiastic start during the disillusioning Clinton years, the Labor Party was set back by the continuation of the unions clinging to the skirts of the Democratic Party, even as it took workers' money and gave nothing in return.
It was Nader and the Green Party that rode the angst with Clintonism into the 2000 elections, bringing down the charges of "spoilers" that Mazzocchi feared for the Labor Party.
He lived long enough to see the 9/11 events and the ensuing right-wing surge. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2002, still full of fight and ideas right up to the end.
In a different era, Mazzocchi might have been a Debs. Instead it was his fate to "rage against the dying of the light." We can learn from him, however, as I did from my reading of Leopold's book, to never succumb to bitterness after a defeat. Time and again he picked himself up and often won over old enemies in the course of fighting a new battle. If cancer had not taken him in 2002, I am sure he would be out with us today, looking for what could be done in the gathering menace that capitalism confronts us with in 2008.
Jon Flanders is a member and former president of IAM LL 1145 and a member of the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO.
Tony Mazzocchi hated work. Don’t get me wrong. He was the hardest working labor leader I’ve ever met. The work he hated was the coerced, soul-numbing labor performed by untold millions in factories, offices and other hierarchical workplaces. Not only did most workers have their spirits crushed and their humanity demeaned on a daily basis, they were also routinely and knowingly exposed to toxic substances and hazardous conditions.
When I was a young union activist, it was Mazzocchi’s irreverent attitude to work that first endeared him to me. He was a breath of fresh air. “I’m not opposed to layoffs,” I remember him saying; “I just think that they should be done by reverse seniority. With full pay and benefits! It should be just like prison: you put your time in and get out.”
Les Leopold captures this sensibility and places it in a historical context in an important new biography on Mazzocchi’s life. An activist and leader in the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW, now part of the Steelworkers), his career spanned the entire second half of the 20th century.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LEADER
Along the way Mazzocchi helped build one of the most dynamic and democratic local unions in the country, led the fight to liberate the OCAW from CIA-dominated business unionists, and birthed a powerful grassroots movement that established the legal right to a safe workplace. He linked that movement with the environmental movement, and was the key catalyst in the founding of the Labor Party, which he led until his death in 2002.
Tony Mazzocchi proposed an anti-corporate, alliance-building alternative to the mainstream post-war unionism that relied on cooperation between labor, management and government. “What Reuther was to building centralized bureaucratic unionism,” said long-time labor activist and sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, “Mazzocchi was to democratic unionism.”
In his two heartbreaking campaigns for OCAW president in 1979 and 1981 (he lost both races by less than 3 percent of the vote), Mazzocchi called for a mass labor mobilization to resist the growing global attacks on working people at a time when labor arguably still had the power to do something about it. When Ronald Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers in 1981, Mazzocchi wanted to seize National Airport.
After being fired by the International, Mazzocchi helped mobilize the “lost battalions” of the labor movement to fight concessions and build solidarity throughout the 1980s. He later returned from political obscurity to win election as secretary-treasurer of the OCAW and used that position as a bully pulpit to pull together a national movement for independent labor politics.
SAFETY AND HEALTH PIONEER
Tony Mazzocchi is best known for his pioneering work around occupational safety and health, and Leopold’s book tells the stories of the uranium miners, asbestos millers, and chemical workers whose experiences gave rise to this movement. His chilling chapter on the Karen Silkwood case is the most succinct summary of her story yet written.
Mazzocchi drew on his experiences in the movement against nuclear testing to assemble a cadre of young scientists and doctors to provide validation and technical expertise for rank-and-file activists confronting the dangerous conditions under which they worked. Turning the top-down model on its head, these recruits empowered union activists and leaders to wage the fight on their own terms.
Mazzocchi also understood that the growing environmental movement was a natural ally. He pointed out that toxic exposures did not stop at the plant fence line and that the exposures suffered by workers were usually many times greater than those suffered in the community.
Mazzocchi insisted that unionists learn to take this alliance seriously and told environmentalists that their programs were doomed if they didn’t respond to the legitimate job concerns of those working in polluting industries. “There is a Superfund for dirt,” he would say, “There ought to be one for workers.”
The fight to establish the right to a safe job, according to Mazzocchi, would not be won by lobbying Congress, but would require a broad mobilization. In fact, he saw in this mobilization a powerful new lever that could revitalize a class-based movement of working people.
“A PARTY OF OUR OWN”
The nurturing and support of this movement was Mazzocchi’s life work and legacy. He thought a movement of this scope could only be built by “setting the terms of the debate”. Like all militant unionists, he understood that if you let the boss control what issues came to the bargaining table, you were bargaining against yourself.
Mazzocchi began calling for a labor party in the 1970s. In the late 1980s he was joined by the OCAW and many other unions and activists battered by the unrelenting corporate offensive. In 1996, the founding convention of the Labor Party attracted more than 1,500 delegates and the endorsement of six national and hundreds of local and regional unions.
Understanding how difficult it would be to build a labor party within the shell of the two-party system, Mazzocchi knew that a viable labor party had to be built upon the institutional support of organized labor. This would require finding ways to build the party’s strength while the unions continued to work for “lesser of two evil” Democrats. The party, he realized, must be provocative without being marginalized. And it would have to avoid both the narcissism of spoiler candidacies and the compromises of fusion parties.
Most of all, Mazzocchi understood that the fate of a labor party was entwined in the prospects for a dynamic, revitalized labor movement. Much as he predicted, the Labor Party grew during the brief labor upsurge of the mid-1990s and declined in the face of the defeats and demoralizations of the Bush years.
New York City labor leader Ed Ott recently called Mazzocchi “the man who never sold out.” Tony Mazzocchi’s life story has the capacity to inspire a new generation of activists. Mazzocchi would have looked at today’s crisis-ridden and divided labor movement as a passing phenomenon. He would have taken heart from the slow and steady progress of activists in South Carolina who are building a labor party in the heart of the right-to-work South and he would see the potential in the growing movement for national health care.
Mazzocchi would argue that, given the utter failure of the mainstream model, his alternative vision was bound to prevail. “They call me a dreamer,” he would say. “They call me impractical. But look at the mess that they’ve made of things. Isn’t it about time that we tried something different?”
Mark Dudzic is the national organizer of the Labor Party and former president of OCAW Local 149 and OCAW District 8 Council.
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