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Oklahoma Observer Editor Frosty Troy

October/November 2001 IBEW Journal

Thank you. I was at the hotel and I called my wife when all of the chaos started this morning in Oklahoma City, and I said, "Helen, I don't think I can make this speech today." And she said, "Oh, you're Irish, get your Irish up, get mad." I'm sure that there are a lot of Americans that are angry today, and they ought to be angry. I'll tell you, before it's over, we're going to kick some ass.

I never fly into this beautiful city and see that bridge that I don't have my heart go boom. The first time I saw that bridge, I was bringing my brother home from Korea in the spring of 1950. He was killed on Heartbreak Ridge. Wow.

My daughter is flying to New York City in the morning with four friends. They already have their tickets to the Broadway play and their hotel reservations and everything. You don't know. You know neither the time, nor the place nor the moment. But I'd tell you one thing you know, if you come to Oklahoma there's only one newspaper, I'm ashamed to say, in that entire stay that's pro-union, and you're looking at the editor.

I covered the right-to-work fight there in 1964, and I'm covering it again today. And it is the most venomous, ugly thing you could imagine. I never thought I would live long enough in over 40 years in American journalism to see my fellow newspapermen in Oklahoma and editorial writers write the kind of garbage that they've been writing about organized labor there. Little bitty Oklahoma. Let me tell you what we've got.

We've got 94,000 union members. Those unions also represent 14,000 non-union members who pay the agency fee because they don't want to belong to the union. They're 6.4 percent of the working population of the state of Oklahoma. Then you tell me why anybody would start attacking them.

Well, I'll tell you why. First of all, the campaign is led by the single sorriest newspaper in America, the "Daily Oklahoman" in Oklahoma City. Unbelievably bad newspaper, unbelievably bad. You know what they've been printing in recent weeks? As I look out on this audience, I presume that you're all gay, you're all radical feminists, and you're all thugs. That's what they've been saying about the labor movement in this country.

And they're running a commercial right now in Oklahoma statewide that says of the $40 million in dues collections every year, that is being remitted to East Coast racketeer labor union leaders. That's the kind of garbage that they're putting up with there.

Well, I've already been on two statewide debates. I've got two speeches at churches next week. I've got a radio debate coming up. And I'll tell you what, I think before it's all over with -- I love the people of Oklahoma, I know the people of Oklahoma very well, and I think with their innate sense of fairness, that we'll really, really beat that thing September the 25th. I really believe that.

You know, I never dreamed that I'd be standing in front of you. I never dreamed a member of my family would be in organized labor. I come from mercantile interests. My dad was a dry cleaner; my brothers, a couple of career military people; a doctor, a couple of lawyers. Well, you can have two failures in any family.

And now I've got a son in law enforcement who belongs to a union in Oklahoma City. And let me tell you how important unions are if you don't already know, if there are any young people in this audience. He's one of these kids with a real conscience. Well, he's 35 now. He's not a kid. But he found some really corrupt stuff going on, some theft.

And, you know, he came to me, and he went to our parish priest, and he said, "What do you do in a case like this? You know what's going on. You know it's bad. You know it's wrong. What do you do?"

And I said, "Well, Phillip, I hope I raised you and Marty, your mother and I -- we hope we raised both of you to do the right thing." And he did the right thing.

And three days after he blew the whistle and that person in management who had done all of the stealing had been dismissed -- three days later, they had him up on charges. You know what he did? He didn't have to call a lawyer. He didn't have to go home and get a gun. He called his union rep. And his union rep met. Boy, they brought the brass in there. And that union rep said, "You'd better drop this stuff. All this is harassment because he did the right thing, and we're going to bring all the resources of this union down on your head. So what do you want to do?"

And they dropped the charge against him, which was just a bogus charge anyhow.

God bless the unions. Last year, last November, I was sitting in my office, and this young couple came by without an appointment. I was busy. You know, I had a jillion things to do. But my wife came back. She's the publisher of the paper. I'm the editor. And Helen, Helen of Troy -- get over it -- Helen said, "This couple said they've got to see you and they're not going to leave until they get to see you."

I said, "Well, send them on back." And back they came. Here's a little lady. I found out she's 23. She's a single mom, got two kids. He's a young guy. He's a single guy. And they both work in the warehouse at Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City. Hobby Lobby, if you don't know, is a national firm.

And they sat there, and they said, "Mr. Troy, would you please help us? We're trying to organize a union, and you wouldn't believe what they're doing to us. You wouldn't believe the fear and the intimidation and the threats."

And I said, "Well, why are you trying to organize a union? Tell me about working conditions there."

And said -- well, you know, the retail stores -- this super Christian that owns the company, he brags about the fact that they don't open on Sunday. No, they don't open on Sunday. But she said, "The warehouses do, and we work. And guess what? We work forced overtime. I went to my supervisor, and I said I have two little children and I want them in Sunday school. I want to take them to church on Sunday, and I'll even work extended hours during the week. Could I please do that?"

"No."

And the young man said, "They started bullying me and telling me that I was going to be in real trouble physically if I didn't shut up and if I circulated any more of those cards to sign."

Then they all came to work one day, and you know what was on their desk? This little sponge. You know what it said? "Don't get soaked for union dues. Vote no."

Well, they came to the right place. Boy, I wish you had read my cover story about that so-called super Christian and his company.

I'm so tired of people using Christ's name to oppress somebody in this country. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it.

Well, if you think one little old newspaper with only 25,000 circulation can't make a difference, after my cover story came out -- and I didn't go into all the detail about what they did to those kids that were trying to organize out there -- boy, after that, guess what? They closed the warehouses on Sunday. No more forced overtime.

They apologized to the workers if some of management and some of these lawyers they had brought in had been too aggressive. And it's not -- you know, the thing that drives me crazy when I hear people say -- this is what our governor in Oklahoma, Frank Keating, says. Of course, you've got to know him. He does the work of two men: Laurel and Hardy. The little jerk. It takes him 90 minutes to watch "60 Minutes."

You know what he says? Well, unions were a good thing once upon a time, but they've outlived their usefulness. Oh, once upon a time, unions were swell, but not anymore.

What do they mean "not anymore"? You know what's happened since January 1st of this year? Over 800,000 employees in this country have lost their jobs on downsizing alone. Lucent -- if they didn't have a union at Lucent, do you realize that those people would be on the street? And instead, they had a retirement package a lot of them, and a lot of them have a separation package. And they're going to get some help before they have to find another job.

God bless the unions. I don't know of anybody else that's negotiating those kind of deals for the working people.

Did you see what those jerks did in Alabama at Wal-Mart? Forced overtime, working those butchers to death in the meat markets. So they said, "We want to organize. We want a union. This is too much. Management won't even listen to us."

Did you see what Wal-Mart did? They closed every meat market in the entire state, and now they only sell packaged meat. Well, that will be a long, rainy day in hell before I ever spend another dollar at Wal-Mart.

They put $36 million out of their foundation in a program to kill the public schools with vouchers. $36 million. Shame on them. If old Sam Walton, whom I know, who I met once -- if he was still alive, he would be ashamed of those boys and what they've done to that company, the greed that they have developed in that company. And it didn't just stop there.

Look at the latest issue of the "Oklahoma Observer." And we're just a little tabloid. Who needs unions? It isn't that unions are just fighting for working people in this country. The national union organizations are financing the programs that are going around the country and exposing these God awful things with NIKE and these God awful things with all these -- this one happens to be my cover story, this time happens to be on American Samoa. They took these little old people from Vietnam, 200 of them. Their fees were so high as guest workers in American Samoa -- their fees were so high that it would take up to four years just to pay the company back before they could start drawing a salary.

Listen to what they did. They were held as indentured servants. They were beaten, kicked, and slapped. All this has been documented, finally, by the U.S. Department of Labor. They were malnourished. They were fed watery gruel of rice and cabbage. They lived in dirty, rat-infested barracks. They were cheated on their wages. The American Samoa minimum wage is $2.60. They were being paid $1.22. Just incredible.

Oh, and the manager would come in and watch the women shower. He would invite them into the office and say, "Oh, I'm your father. I'm your father figure," for sexual molestation reasons. And let me tell you, thank God, thank God for organized labor in this country because it was their investigators who went down there, and I want you to know that that so-called factory is now closed.

And it's going on all over the country. Organized labor. Did you see all the problems we've got in this country right now with the declining economy? Did you see the figures last week? Productivity was up another 2 percent. For the year, it's averaging over 2 1/2 percent. You know who that is, don't you? That's organized labor. Those are union jobs that are really producing in this country.

Who files more patents nationally and internationally than any other country in the world, huh? Who has the greatest economy in the world? Japan's practically belly up right now; West Germany, 15 percent unemployment. And here we are, just moving along just in spite of who's in the White House today. Of course, my dream is to give George Bush an SAT test.

We've got one of the most superb career tech programs in the nation. School to work that would take your breath. Ask any of the delegates here from Oklahoma. We just opened our 52nd regional center. One of the biggest problems that I preach against over and over and over and usually to big business groups -- I speak to a lot of them. And I keep telling them over and over again, let me tell you, the biggest stupidity going on in this country today is the going-to-college syndrome. We need technical workers. Everybody isn't meant to go to college. That's the dumbest thing we've ever done.

Now, if you're college material like my daughter, boom, you know, off to law school. Did swell. She's a juvenile public defender. Doing just fine, doing God's work every day with some of the most saddest families you'll ever encounter and some little old kids that have never been hugged or loved in their lives.

And there was my son. He went up to Oklahoma State University, and he spent one year. His roommate told me, he said, "I don't think he's going to class." So I drove up, walked into his room unannounced, and I said, "Phillip, are you going to pass anything but beer?"

I got him out of there and got him in a program in a little college in southern Oklahoma, and did just fine. Different gifts. If you don't remember anything else I say here today, God gives us different gifts, and this is the country to find your gifts in, whatever they are. Some people can do one thing, some people can do -- I'm not the editor of the "New York Times," but boy, let me tell you, I've worked my heart out with the gifts God gave me trying to make a difference for real honest-to-God ordinary people in the state of Oklahoma.

And then one day I'm on the way to the airport going out of state to make a speech, and it's my misfortune to hear Rush Limbaugh. Oh, boy, is he a union hater. And the guy that called in was the president of the American Pilots Association because American Airlines was getting ready to go on strike.

And Rush Limbaugh was practically beside himself saying, "Well, I just can't believe people with your education and your training and at your salary level would want to affiliate with a union."

Well, Rush, I don't know if I can talk fluent to explain it to you, but that's how they got their salary structure is through the union, you dumb ass.

You know poor old Rush. His ambition is to die in his own arms. Geez.

Wow. What a country. The last country in the world anybody's breaking into. I've been a lucky little old kid from southeastern Oklahoma. Let me tell you a little bit about my background. I was one of 11 kids, number six, ten boys and then one little girl. Oh, she wasn't spoiled. Whoa.

And my dad was a dry cleaner, and I never knew a man that worked harder. He'd come home, close that dry cleaner at 6:00, and his clothes would still be wet from sweat. And boy, he's the hardest worker. And he used to say, "Listen you kids, make something of yourself. Boy, you're in this country. You're in a country where you can do it. I don't care what you do. If you pump gas, you run the best service station in this town. But, boy, you make something of yourself. Find out what you're good at and go for it."

Now, this is a little town called McAlester, Oklahoma. And believe it or not, that's where a lot of the carbon mines are, tremendous. The Choctaw Indian nation own tremendous coal reserves over there. But they leased them out to people like Lone Star Steel, and you know what they did? They brought in those Italian families from Sicily, and they lived in company housing and they were sold to the company store.

And those are the kids I grew up with and knew. And I'm dating one of these girls one night. Her name was [?] Janicele Jones. And, of course, back in those days you couldn't honk out front, you had to go in and meet her daddy. And I went in to meet her daddy. He was about drunk as a skunk sitting there on the divan, and you know what he had the gall to tell me?

He said, "Listen, I'm a tough dude. I may not look like it now. But when I was a young man, when I first moved here," he said, "that Pat [?] Hanratti came down, he was trying to organize those miners." And he said, "Damn bunch of white trash from Europe." And he said, boy -- "They gave us axe handles." And he said, "You're looking at a guy that's broken a lot of heads. And I'm telling you that because you're with my daughter tonight, and you better be careful." And I said, "Well, I got news for you, I'm not with your daughter tonight." And I left.

You know why? Because my grandmother used to tell me those stories. My grandfather was a doctor. He opened the first non-Indian hospital in the Twin Territories that became Oklahoma. And the miners, they used to bring them in. She was telling me one time about bringing them in, wagonloads, and they were fused together, the flash fires in the mine, the bodies were fused together. You know, all they had then were canaries. And if the canary quit singing, you knew the oxygen was gone, and, boy, get out of this mine. And then here he's sitting there bragging about being a strikebreaker.

Well, let me tell you, Jack London said it better than I ever could. I want you to hear the description of a scab.

"After God hand finished the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, he had some awful stuff left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared to a scab. For betraying his master, he had the character to hang himself. Well, the scab hasn't. There's nothing lower than a scab."

We've worked hard and the unions have moved us every step of the way in Oklahoma. Of course we're a poor state. They keep claiming in this right-to-work thing, well, going to make us rich. Well, the corporations in Oklahoma really want to bring in some people so they can pay them higher salaries, don't they?

Quite to the contrary. Everything we've got in Oklahoma we've had to work for. Everything you've got, you've had to work for. And you know what scares me to death? We're losing the trade union movement in this country. Thanks to letting corporations flee over there. Thanks to crummy places like American Samoa. Do you know why Wal-Mart can say, "Buy American, we sell only American"? Because American Samoa is an American possession and they're only paying $2.60 an hour, when they pay anything at all. So that's a lie that corporate America tells.

J.C. Penney's and all the others run as fast as they can go, General Electric, anywhere they can take some of our jobs. Well, we're going to rule the day. Because, let me tell you, trade unions built this country solid from the ground up. And let me tell you about New York. When the rubble clears and we've had the funerals and we've punished those who are guilty, do you know who will be rebuilding New York City? The trade unions, God bless you.