END OF AN ERA: Local 879 was a leader for labor

The local has been blessed with a series of innovative leaders and an active membership who extended the reach of the union beyond the walls of the plant and the nearby union hall in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood.

The final chapter of Local 879’s history is being written as the last Ford Ranger rolls off the assembly line Friday and the plant is shuttered. Of the approximately 800 workers remaining, about 125 will transfer to other UAW-represented plants in the Ford system, while the others – mostly temporary employees hired in the last few years – will be looking for new jobs.

Proud history
Ford Motor Company was the last major automaker to be organized by the United Auto Workers. A sign in the Local 879 hall marks the date of the union’s charter – June 21, 1941 – noting “Prior to the union, we had sweatshop working conditions, no seniority, indiscriminate firing,” then lists the many ways the local has improved its members’ lives, from higher wages and good health care to supplemental unemployment pay and free legal services.

Those benefits took time to achieve, however. Early leaders of the union had to fight for basics like doors on the men’s toilets. (Foremen wanted to be sure workers weren’t wasting time). El Hendricks, hired in 1949, helped lead a wildcat strike when supervisors started arbitrarily suspending workers on the assembly line.

“We told the guys, get off the damn job and follow us,” he recalled in a 2008 interview. “And when they [foremen] told us either go back to work in 15 minutes or go home, and we all went home, they couldn’t operate the plant because they couldn’t run the trim line. So the whole operation had to shut down.”

One of Local 879’s first presidents was Ray Busch, for whom the union hall on Ford Parkway is named. Hendricks, who went on to hold several offices in the union, said Busch had a broad vision of what a union leader should be.

UAW officers Bob Killeen (left) and Gene Neuman (right) met with Congressman Bruce Vento.

“One of the things that he taught – that [UAW national President] Walter Reuther always taught – was that if you’re going to be a labor leader, you also had to be a community leader. And you become involved in the community, in politics, because what we gain at the bargaining table we can lose at the ballot box.”

Over the decades, numerous elected officials, from candidates to local office to presidents of the United States, have greeted workers during shift changes at the Ford plant.

Dignity in the workplace
While Busch has his name on the hall, the best-known Local 879 leader may actually be Bob Killeen, a local union officer who went on to serve many years as a representative for the international union. His wide-ranging interests included pushing Ford to improve the quality of its products and organizing support for farm workers, bank employees and other workers outside the auto industry.

“Dignity in the workplace is something we heard at the kitchen table all the time,” his son, Bob Killeen, Jr., recalled in a 2008 interview. “And whatever it took to gain that worker the dignity, that was pretty much what my dad’s life was about.”

Killeen launched a total quality management program that focused on improving the quality of every aspect of production at the plant. While the members of Local 879 had a reputation for militancy at contract time, they also set consistent records for productivity. Killeen and others argued that productivity meant little if Ford wasn’t making and selling a quality product.

Similarly, he fought within the UAW and the broader labor movement for justice for all workers. He organized rallies to support the United Farm Workers’ grape boycott and was the only major union leader to provide early support to a struggling group of women trying to organize a small Minnesota bank – the Willmar 8. In 1987, Killeen was part of a group of outspoken Minnesotan unionists who challenged national AFL-CIO policy backing right-wing regimes in Central America.

Local 879 supported other leaders, like Presidents Tom Laney and Rod Haworth, who reached out directly to workers in other countries. In 1990, the local hosted a visit by workers from Ford\’s assembly plant in Cuautitlan, Mexico, then funded organizing at the plant through an “Adopt an Organizer” program.

When Mexican union organizer Cleto Nigno was murdered, workers throughout the Twin Cities plant wore black armbands on the shop floor.

Local 879 continued its pursuit of economic and social justice by becoming an early member of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, formed to challenge passage of NAFTA and other free trade deals.

UAW Local 879 members went to Washington, D.C., for numerous rallies and lobby days.

Strikes, innovations
Over the decades, Local 879 made steady gains at the bargaining table. Several Twin Cities officers participated in national union negotiations with Ford.

A Local 879 committee gathered in front of their goal for the 1958 round of bargaining.

Workers survived a 47-day strike in 1967 – the longest in Ford’s history – and another walkout in 1976. In the 1990s, Local 879 pioneered a new weekly work schedule of four, 10-hour days. Controversial when it was launched, it soon became common across the company. Many union members favored the schedule because it gave them a three-day weekend and they touted the environmental benefits of eliminating one day of commuting.

The union created a unique partnership with Ford and the Minnesota State Colleges & University System to open a training center next to the plant in 1999. Workers were trained on new equipment, like robots, and the facility was available to students from outside the plant as well.

As rumors swelled that the plant would close, a succession of local union officers, building chairman and activists fought to save the facility, seeking to get it retooled to produce an energy-efficient, “green” vehicle. But their efforts fell on deaf ears at Ford headquarters in Detroit.