We Are the Union: Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing

7. Carrying the Memory of Agitation: A Dialogue between Keith Thomas and Dana Cloud

7 Carrying the Memory of Agitation A Dialogue between Keith Thomas and Dana Cloud This exchange—referred to by both Keith Thomas and Dana Cloud as a “postmortem” on Unionists for Democratic Change (UDC)—was edited and compiled from two conversations: The first is a recorded interview between Dana Cloud and Keith Thomas in Wichita, Kansas, on July 17, 2001,the evening after a small demonstration at the union hall earlier that afternoon; the second source is a series of letters exchanged in summer 2006. I asked, Do you think you could have/should have done anything differently? Thomas replied, “Well, winning would have been nice.” Here Thomas complicates my arguments that mistakes and misdirected focus are to blame for the decline of the union democracy movement at Boeing. Dana Cloud: Why are there no more union activists in Wichita? Keith Thomas: Well, you saw a good example of that at the union today. There weren’t a whole lot of people there. DC: That might be because there wasn’t anything exciting or pressing on the docket. Just because things are quiet for a time doesn’t mean the movement is over or that people are pessimistic or ignorant. KT: When we were active, there was always something to talk about. There was always a lot of participation when we were active. But I think by the same token most of the people in our local were knowledgeable about stuff, saw the action we took time after time. DC: You were part of galvanizing workers around issues that were already there. The opportunity was there, and the UDC filled a need. I think that need still exists. 154 . Chapter 7 KT: When I started as an activist, I’d be cussed all the way to the podium and all the way back. Just one obscenity after another, and that went on month after month. When we started this, I used to be the lightning rod, being the most vocal one. We figured they’d go after me and I’d just be the lightning rod and we’d have them wasting a lot of their ammunition on me and others would be able to get elected. I didn’t always run for the top office, though some people like to make that claim. I ran for a variety of offices. DC: What happened to Unionists for Democratic Change? Why did you disband the organization around the time of the strike? KT: There were a lot of reasons for disbanding the caucus. The most important reason is that it just wasn’t working. It was like we reached a point where we were just demonstrating how much of a beating we could take. No matter what we did, the leadership of the IAM [International Association of Machinists] was going to sell out the rank and file to serve Boeing, and there was no way that we could stop them. The people were quite willing for us to fight for them, but they quite simply weren’t going to join in. After the last contract before the layoffs started, I had a guy call me up in the plant and tell me how stupid I was for saying that it was a bad contract and provided no job protection in spite of the fact that the IAM hacks said that it did. He was laid off a few months later, as were a lot of others that voted to accept the contract. I would have rather been wrong. The IAM’s failures somehow made it more difficult to get people interested in doing something about the way things were turning against them. A lack of fresh bodies should be somewhere close to the top [of a list of reasons], followed by depleted resources. Since we Figure 10. Keith Thomas leading an informational picket outside IAMAW Local 834 on July 14, 1999, in Wichita, Kansas. Photo by Dana L. Cloud. Carrying the Memory of Agitation · 155 had set up an EIN [Employer Identification Number], we felt that we should cover our legal bases by officially shutting the caucus down. I think that the personal toll in terms of health, marriages, finances, job (keeping it), etc. are also factors. There is no reward system for reformists as defined by the general population. In spite of all the rhetoric, people really do things because it’s the right thing to do. It...