Chapter 15: Class Struggles

Randy Peters

I LIKE MY JOB running a shoe lasting machine at Covington Shoe Factory. It’s good steady work and with my wife working as well, we’re managing to raise our kids in a healthy environment most of the time. I have to stay alert so the leather is properly aligned on the last before it’s vacuum-formed. I pay attention to what I’m doing. But Sally and I still daydream about one day going to Hawaii and having a real vacation.

I’m a Dexter; that’s what I was told. A person who is best suited to working with his hands. Somehow my wife, Sally, was classed as a Dexter, too, though the principal handwork she does is typing. In fact, it seems that about ninety percent of our classmates at Covington Central High School were classed as Dexters. I know some didn’t finish school when they received their classification; they just quit and went to work. Sally and I both finished with hopes of going to college and really making something of our lives. But no college was interested in ‘wasting scholarships’ on a Dexter. And there was no money to pay our own way, so we went to work. That was twenty years ago.

At one time, cobblers would have been considered Cognoscenti. They worked with their minds as well as their hands. There are still a few around. I even spent time on weekends hanging out with one of the last cobblers who still handcrafted shoes. I learned a lot from him, but in a factory producing nearly a million pairs of shoes a month, it’s one man, one job. I insert the form in the rough cut upper and use a machine that combines pressure and steam to mold the shoe to the last. Then the machine trims the excess leather away. The shoe, complete with the last, is sent down the line where the sole is stitched in place and trimmed. The joke that runs down the line is that we lasters create heathen shoes because they have no soles.

The work isn’t stressful, though injury is certainly not unknown. A break in concentration and a hand could be caught in the last and formed into a shoe. I have the current record for fewest rejects of all the lasters. I’ve held most of the jobs on the assembly line at one time or another, but as soon as I found the last, I knew it was where I wanted to stay, especially since I work on the high-end products—formal men’s shoes. Everyone on my line is proud of what we produce.

You need to take a break sometimes, you know. When the noon whistle blows and the machinery shuts down for fifty minutes, I hustle to one of the lunchrooms with my bag lunch and join several buddies to play cards. Of course, we can’t gamble on the company grounds, but none of us have money to waste on that anyway. The guys mostly enjoy playing pinochle. You have to sit carefully on the rickety folding chairs and not lean on the table. The lunchroom’s a place where any subject can be talked about—mostly sports and job gripes, but occasionally women, wives, children. The women workers in the plant usually use a different lunchroom or sit away from the card players, so I don’t know much about what they discuss. The guys, though...

“What gets me is that we only got a nickel an hour increase last year. It was an insult. What good is an extra two bucks a week? And this year nothing?”

“It didn’t even cover my baby’s birth. Why are doctors so expensive, anyway? We didn’t borrow money to go to school.”

“That machine on line seven is a deathtrap. The guard on it’s been broken for months. I told them flat, I won’t work that one until it’s fixed.”

“Anybody else getting pushed to work overtime? They’re not even offering a bonus for working weekends.”

“Bet Mr. Moneybags got a bonus. On our backs.”

“We should write a letter and send it to the big boss. Tell him we’re not going to put up with this anymore.”

“Hey, Randy. You got a typewriter at home. Why don’t you type it up? I’d volunteer but we sold the typewriter to pay for the baby. We’re selling everything else we can.”

“Why me? They won’t listen to a Dexter.” I’d done a little griping, too, but writing a letter was serious business.

“You’re smart. You read books. Type up a letter like it was in one of them books you read.” It was true. Sally and I spent nearly every evening reading. And not just dime novels. She’d brought home a book on the socio-economics of class structure from the library a few weeks ago and it was really interesting.

“Well ... I suppose I could. We’d better write down what it is we want, though. If we can agree on what we should ask for. Let’s make a list.” One of the guys grabbed an announcement off the bulletin board and turned it over so I could write on the backside. I had a stub of a pencil I sometimes used to mark uppers I reject at the last.

That turned our lunchtime meetings into brainstorms about what should be done. I brought more paper with me from home and took notes, the pinochle cards forgotten. I noticed the women no longer sat quietly on the other side of the lunchroom. They were right with us listing out the issues we should write about—sick pay and time off for childbirth. Sally and I went over the notes and started composing the letter in the evenings. That weekend, she typed multiple copies up for me to distribute at the plant and get comments on. She sure liked the idea of challenging the Promoters. She felt she should have been classed as Inquirer, but she’d been working a part-time job to help raise her younger brother and sisters when the classifications came out and school automatically gave her a Dexter certificate. She was stuck, just like me. It was like the school didn’t believe anyone there could be anything but a Dexter. I’m so glad we found each other. My head would go numb if I didn’t have such a smart wife.

“So here it is. Everybody should read it and make sure I wrote what we really want. Pass copies around to the other departments and night shift. I don’t want to suggest something that doesn’t agree with what you said and everyone wants.” I read the letter aloud and waited for responses. The free pair of shoes each year was something Sally had added but it sounded good. No one who worked in the factory could afford the shoes we made.

“We shouldn’t put this around where any of the supervisors can see it,” Barbara Workman suggested. “We don’t want them thinking we’re plotting something.”

“Right,” Jim Baggins said. “Even if we are.”

A week later, the copies got back to me—smudged and tattered but still legible. There were a few notes from people suggesting ridiculous things like free meals in a company cafeteria but mostly it was approved as written.

“That’s real good. Now you should sign it on behalf of the employees of Covington Shoe Company. And send it in the mail. If it comes from the post office, it always looks more official,” Barbara said.

Sally typed a fresh copy that night with two carbon copies. She kept one and I thumbtacked the other to the bulletin board in the break room. I signed the letter and addressed the envelope to the CEO of Covington Shoe Factory. The boss wasn’t a bad guy. He always came around at the holiday to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. If anyone could answer the employees, he could.

“Peters, you stepped in a pile of dogshit when you wrote this. I got it from a VP who told me to talk to you since you’re in my management line. Nobody upstairs is even going to talk to you about this. Just sit on it and don’t rock the boat.” The shift supervisor on my line was firm in what he passed on from up the management chain. “Truth is, you did a good job of spelling out things we’ve all been thinking. I wish I had better news,” Bill Barton said. He’d only been promoted to supervisor a year ago and I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to have trouble from his line.

Suddenly, my lasting machine didn’t look so good and friendly anymore. I saw all the problems with the system, and instead, it became just a job I had to do. And it was a job I needed. Our family barely scraped by on my salary and Sally’s piecework job as a copy typist. My kids were going to the same shitty school I went to and probably wouldn’t have an opportunity to become anything but a Dexter. I worried about what waited for them when they had to get a job. The shoe factory was the largest employer in the city with over six thousand employees. But jobs like that weren’t always easy to come by.

“We can’t just let this drop. They need to know that we’ll strike if we don’t get our demands heard. I’ll bet the boss didn’t even read the letter,” Davy said at lunch. The news had spread fast and there were twice as many people in the lunchroom as usual.

“What do you want me to do about it? I typed and signed the letter. They could toss me out on my ear. I’ve had this job eighteen years and even if you’ve got eighteen years of shoemaking experience, that translates to exactly none in construction or road grading.”

“Send another letter and tell them we’re ready to strike if the company won’t make a deal with us. They have to at least come to the table and discuss the problem. That’s what it’s all about,” Jim Jeffries said. He was a good guy and seemed to always have my back lately.

“Yeah. I suppose I could do that. We’ll need to circulate it to the other shifts and departments again. I’ll have Sally help me put something together.” I went home that night dejected and upset. I hadn’t had an upset stomach in years but that night I could hardly eat a thing. If I did this, it was almost sure they’d fire me. I had to ask how much I trusted my co-workers to continue the battle now that it was started. And would Sally trust me to get something else?

Sally did. She typed up the letter and we made the duplicates like we had before.

We, the employees of Covington Shoe Factory, call upon the management to hear our grievances and meet our demands as stated in our previous correspondence. We have certain requisitions that can no longer be delayed. We remain ready to meet and negotiate a settlement in the next week.

Sincerely,
Randy Peters
Representing the employees of Covington Shoe Factory.

The letter was approved by the workers. I addressed the envelope and put it in the mailbox, followed by a dozen fellow employees who wanted to witness that it had actually been mailed. I sighed. This was going to turn out badly, I knew. But my co-workers were with me. And my wife. She kept saying I had management potential and might get reclassified as a Promoter.

That evening, we sat with the newspaper and began circling job possibilities in the want ads.

“Peters! You’re fired! Clean out your locker.” It wasn’t Bill, my line supervisor, who shut down the line. It was the department manager. Without a laster, the line couldn’t make shoes. “The rest of you, make yourselves useful elsewhere. We’re looking for a new laster if you know your place and can do the work. Apply at the front office.” The manager turned on his heel and went back to the office he seldom emerged from. Bill laid a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry about this, Randy. You’re one of our best workers. But I warned you not to push it. Come on. Let’s clear out your locker.”

I shuffled dejectedly to the locker room where I had a clean pair of coveralls, my lunch, and a note from my wife that said she loved me and was proud of me. What would she think now?

Bill looked over my shoulder and I became aware that things on the factory floor were a lot quieter than usual. He rushed onto the floor and saw everyone in the department moving toward him.

“What in bloody hell is going on here? Get those lines up and running. You can’t just leave here,” he shouted. There was a note of fear in his voice and I started toward him to make sure nobody did anything stupid like trying to take things out on Bill.