all legal fees and expenses for the representation of the plaintiffs in the case of Freeman et al vs. “On five separate occasions, management employees, and high level executives of the American Motors Corporation, have disclosed to me that said corporation has signed a written fee agreement to pay the law firm of Foley, Foley. Next, Rudy acted in a manner atypical of many in leadership of the labor movement, who generally feared young, outspoken militants and political radicals: he swore an affidavit that attested to facts indicting the company for surreptitiously funding the litigation. The whole theory of the labor movement is that as one person you can’t stand up to the corporation, but you have to act together - an injury to one is an injury to all.’” John Drew and Jon Melrod. ‘The main thing they’re after is to quash that paper and to stop the printing of the truth about supervisors. and the company would look like heroes for coming to the assistance of the plaintiffs.’” Maddox said, ‘the company wanted to stop all the derogatory articles that were filled with lies. In an ensuing conversation, Austin showed Rudy a memo revealing that corporate Industrial Relations counsel Alex McCloskey had authorized AMC to pay plaintiffs’ legal costs.Īs David Moberg wrote in the Chicago Reader, “Kuzel knew from past conversations that Maddox and other managers disliked Melrod, Drew, and Ohnstad, whom they considered communists. Austin responded that he doubted it but agreed to find out. Rudy relayed his suspicions to Local 72 president Sylvester, and the two confronted the director of manufacturing, Gil Austin, demanding to know if AMC was financing the lawsuit. My first reaction was they shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing. In one of our issues, Freeman’s number came up.Īs Rudy explained in an extensive October 1983 Chicago Reader interview, “I suspected that they were going to be subpoenaed. “Why,” he wondered, “were all the addresses being requested those of workers who had lodged complaints against infamous Scab of the Month Stevie Freeman?” In every issue of Fighting Times, any supervisor engaged in egregious acts of sexism, racism, or just downright anti-employee behavior was tagged with the moniker “Scab of the Month,” often leading to concerted pushback by union militants. The seemingly innocuous query sparked Rudy’s curiosity. Rudy noticed a management secretary being handed a list of employees and asked for their addresses. On a cold winter day, Rudy Kuzel (at that time Local 72’s substance abuse representative, for union members suffering from substance abuse problems) serendipitously observed a seemingly inconsequential occurrence that a less discerning person would have ignored. The pivotal discovery occurred almost by happenstance. The litany of allegations asserted that Tod Ohnstad, John Drew, and I had “damaged” the plaintiffs by publishing false articles in our shop-floor newspaper, Fighting Times, that caused severe emotional distress as well as loss of reputation and damage to their careers.Įarly in the winter of 1983/84, as if manna had fallen from the sky, we fortuitously gained incontrovertible evidence of what we had suspected: AMC was surreptitiously financing and directing the litigation. The September 15, 1980, headline in the Racine Journal Times blared, “3 at AMC Sued for $4.2 Million.” The defamation suit had been filed by four supervisors and the son of a superintendent at the Wisconsin American Motors Corporation (AMC) plant where the three of us worked. Melrod faces termination, dodges the FBI, outwits collaborators with the boss in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, and becomes the central figure in a lawsuit against the rank-and-file shop newsletter Fighting Times, as he strives to build a class-conscious workers’ movement from the bottom up. In Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War, author Jon Melrod recounts a political and deeply personal thirteen-year journey to harness working-class militancy and, in his words, “jump start a revolution” on the shop floor of an American Motors auto assembly plant. About ten thousand young student radicals left campuses to take jobs in US industries like auto and steel with the goal of bringing about transformative, fundamental change to the capitalist system. Over a million students considered themselves revolutionaries. By 1970, US polls estimated that over three million people consciously wanted a revolution.
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