The Truckers

By Kenneth Crowe

THE TRUCKERS. Tommy Kerrigan and Helmut Knall are uneasy allies dedicated to transforming the nation's largest union, the Truckers International Union, into a progressive force capable of dragging the American labor movement out of the quagmire that is sucking it under. Tommy emerges as a legendary hero experiencing great triumphs and tragedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth Crowe
• Release date: Oct 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452403441

Kenneth Crowe

Kenneth C. Crowe was a labor reporter at Newsday and New York Newsday from 1976 to 1999. He is the author of COLLISION/HOW THE RANK AND FILE TOOK BACK THE TEAMSTERS. Published by Scribner's in 1993, COLLISION tells the story of the Teamsters' rank and file reform movement, culminating in the election of Ron Carey as president of the union. Crowe won an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 1974 to study foreign investment in the United States. In 1978, Doubleday published AMERICA FOR SALE, Crowe's book on foreign investment in the United States. Crowe was a member of the Newsday investigative team whose work won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

DECEMBER, 1990

Tommy Kerrigan stood on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge looking down on the Newtown Creek and thought something he would never say aloud to anyone but Cobb Wowka for fear of Jonahing himself: He was going to win.

A bitter December breeze, following the crooked path of the polluted creek between banks lined with drab warehouses and oil depots, seared his face. Behind him the heavy flow of tractor trailers and cars filled the roadway with an ugly roar and the stink of diesel. He scanned the Manhattan skyline, lingering on the art deco Chrysler Building. He was turning his gaze onto the Citibank Tower in Long Island City with the Queensboro Bridge on its horizon when a trucker blasted his horn. Tommy swung around smiling, his right thumb up. Another trucker, following, sounded his horn, and another, and another as they roared past.

Billy Hurley and Mario Cresci were stationed with big placards: HONK FOR TOMMY K on either side of the bridge, Billy in his trench coat and fedora on the Blissville side, Mario, with his green and white Truckers for Tommy Kerrigan windbreaker and blue and red Truckers union ball cap on the Greenpoint approach.

On almost every Tuesday morning for the past 20 years, Tommy had spent about 15 minutes alone on the hump of the bridge as a prelude to stopping in at the huge Review Avenue Grocery Warehouse. He stood with rain whipping across him, in the heat of July and August, stomping through deep snow, and often on perfect days with gentle breezes and soft suns. Ideas and solutions to the endless problems of running Local 1890 poured into his head unbidden in these moments alone. He looked at his Timex watch, then signaled Mario with a wave to come along. He set out at a brisk pace for the warehouse a block away in Blissville. An ache pierced his back and slid into his right thigh as he walked. Billy, leaving the placard leaning against the rail for Mario to fetch, fell in just a step behind Tommy, glancing over his shoulder, his eyes flickering along the parked trucks and cars on the street. Out of a habit, picked up from 20 years on the NYPD, Billy pressed his upper arm against the 9mm in the shoulder holster on his right side, a reassurance it was there. Tommy stopped outside the gate security shack just long enough to flash his ID card as president and business agent of Grocery Warehouse Workers and Drivers Local 1890 of the Truckers International Union. He strode onto the property, ignoring the uniformed guard's familiar plea for him to wait until the front office cleared his visit.

Tommy and Billy went into the cavernous warehouse filled with the thunder of the steel wheels of the electric jacks on the concrete aisles. The pallets carried on the forks of the jacks were stacked high with cases of dog food and beans, detergents, pastas, crushed tomatoes, canned fruits, topped with big boxes of toilet paper and Kleenex--whatever a corner grocery store or a supermarket needed. The selectors, pressed by quotas and straw bosses, were totally focused on rushing to fill orders for stores in Brooklyn and Queens and the western Long Island suburbs. Trucks were waiting to be filled at the loading docks. There were screams of ‘fuck it’ and ‘come on’ in the traffic jams of the busiest aisles. ‘Move it. Move it. I'm gonna write you up.’

They went directly to the break room, whose dull green walls were covered with Elect Tommy K campaign posters. Warehouse workers were hunched over heavy, worn wooden picnic tables, eating lunch at 8 o'clock in the morning, playing chess or cards, reading newspapers. The chatter stopped when they realized Tommy had arrived. Hey Tommy, they shouted in greeting. He went to the center of the room, shaking hands and bantering with the men he knew so well. Tommy, whose short wavy hair was more blond than grey, slipped out of his hooded parka, dropping it on a bench. He climbed stiffly onto the table, a slight, not very tall man in a brown Irish tweed sports jacket and slacks. He put up one of his broad hands in greeting.

Good morning brothers and sisters. There were two women among the 40 selectors and loaders. This is where I began and maybe this is where I'll end up if I lose this election. He spoke with a distinct, nasal New York accent.

You're gonna win Tommy, a shop steward shouted.

Today, the count begins down in Washington. I came here today to thank you for everything you've done for me. I couldn't have come this far without the support of the brothers and sisters of Local 1890. What you guys and gals here and throughout the local gave me in money and time in this election was unbelievable. Local 1890 is the greatest. You're the greatest.

They whistled and cheered.

Hey Tommy, a bearded member in a plaid shirt and dirty union cap shouted, You gonna invite us to the TAGOF, you win?

Tommy smiled. I'm going to tell you what I told Matty Krause back in 1970 when he was national director of the Freight and Warehouse Division. Some of the old timers can tell you the whole story, but I'll give you the short version. After we took the local from the Belinskys and I was elected president, the company was testing us, violating the contract left and right, the way they still do if you give ‘em a chance. They laughed in acknowledgement. "I came here for one last meeting to tell them to either back down or we were walking right out the door. Guess who is waiting for me that morning? Big Bernie Soloway, who was a little boss in those days running the Review Avenue Warehouse, Gerry Kennedy, director of labor relations for the Delivery Company, and our own Matty Krause.

Kennedy says he picked up Matty in Washington that morning in a Delivery Company corporate jet intending to head straight down to Miami for the TAGOF when they decided they better detour to New York to nip this little problem in Review Avenue in the bud. TAGOF? I said, `what's that? Matty Krause thought that was hilarious. He says to me, Kid you are still so wet behind the ears. TAGOF is The Truckers Annual Golf Outing and Feast. Knowing Gerry, next year you'll be his guest. I told Matty, I don't play golf and I don't sleep with the boss.

The roars of laughter and the broad smiles that filled the break room exhilarated Tommy. He laughed with them. As the merriment of his audience began to fade, Tommy, exercising a timing learned in two years of campaigning, turned his voice fierce: Today twenty years later, Matty Krause is the international president of the greatest union in the world and Bernie Soloway is the big boss, chairman of the Delivery Company. I'm promising you brothers and sisters, when the count is in this weekend, Matty Krause will be out on the street with all the time in the world to play golf with the bosses and his mob friends and there won't be any TAGOF anymore. The members' dues are gonna be spent on the members. And, I'm gonna treat Bernie Soloway the way I did years ago when he was a little boss and we made him back down. He's not pushing Truckers around any more. The party's over. He's gonna give us a share of the pie we baked and stop changing good full time jobs into part-time jobs or he's gonna have a national strike on his hands.

Tommy K, Tommy K all the way, they chanted.

He stepped lightly off the table onto the bench and the floor, the pain in his back gone. Billy picked up his coat, following Tommy through the crowd of his excited, happy supporters, watching the faces. Billy's eyes never stopped working.

Tommy went out onto the loading dock with the chief shop steward and the morning steward flanking him, Billy was the rearguard. There was more shaking of hands and wishes for good luck from drivers and loaders.

The warehouse manager, in rolled up shirt sleeves and a tie, stepped into the cold from the security shack with a clipboard in hand. Good luck, Tommy, he said, extending his hand.

Yeah, Tommy said, keeping his hands in the pockets of his parka, looking straight ahead past the man. He shook hands with management only at the opening of negotiations and to seal a deal.

Outside, Mario waited leaning against Tommy's Four by Four. Tommy slipped into the driver's seat. He dropped Mario and Billy at the Neptune Diner near Local 1890's union hall on 31st Street in Astoria. Then he drove to his mother's house on 48th Street, a two-family brick that he and Alice had shared with his parents for almost ten years until they moved to Melville out on Long Island.

***

He went in the back door of the house that opened into his boyhood bedroom, just a long step away from the kitchen. His mother, Mamie, was standing by the stove with a heavy iron grill straddling two burners and a tea kettle on another. Tommy went directly to her kissing her on the cheek. Henri Maitlin Serre, a New York Daily Globe reporter, rose from his chair at the kitchen table to shake Tommy's hand. Mamie put two more pieces of rye bread with cheese and barely-fried onions on the grill while Tommy hung up his parka in the front hallway closet. He came back into the kitchen still in his sports jacket, a signal that Serre's presence meant he was on the job.

Never had a grilled cheese and onion sandwich before, Serre said, holding up the remains of a half.

Cures depression. Lifts the spirits, Tommy said, watching Serre write those words in his notebook. He had learned on the campaign trail to entertain reporters with pithy quotes and anecdotes that portrayed him as a unique union everyman from the industrial wasteland of Queens on a quest to transform the notoriously corrupt Truckers International Union.

Serre told him how Mamie described Tommy's vision of a buffet: grilled cheese on white, grilled cheese on rye, grilled cheese on pumpernickel, grilled cheese with ham, grilled cheese with bacon, grilled cheese with tomato, and especially grilled cheese with barely-fried onions. And big kosher dills. And a pot of tea. She told him she used to pack three cheese sandwiches every day for Tommy's lunch in high school, that his only complaint about the Army was that they didn't serve grilled cheese every day.

Tommy smiled. Reporters invariably were delighted by his simple tastes, an anomaly in the Truckers. His mother slid his grilled cheese from a worn spatula onto his dish. He ostentatiously sniffed the sandwich with the care and drama of a Frenchman dealing with a red wine. He bit into it, sighing with exaggerated pleasure. The very, very best.

Serre made more notes. They bantered about the art of making great grilled cheese sandwiches, while Tommy finished his usual lunch of grilled cheese, a dill pickle, and hot tea--made with rapidly boiling water and steeped for four minutes. At his mother's he drank Lipton's. At home, Irish or English Breakfast tea.

Serre asked, Who is that pug-faced character who usually walks around with you? Your bodyguard?

Tommy was irritated by Serre's description of Billy. He telegraphed his displeasure with a stern expression and a long pause before responding. Billy Hurley. He's an old friend from the neighborhood. He's a retired New York cop. Detective. He's not a bodyguard. He's doing me a favor, watching my back, liaison to the cops, that sort of thing.

You need someone to watch your back? Serre asked, delighted.

There's a lot of wise guys and just plain tough guys in the Truckers. They've never liked me. I don't play the game their way.

Well that's why you're running, aren't you. Now could you tell me about Alice Carroll?

That one, Mamie said softly. Serre perked up.

What's there to tell? Tommy asked parrying for a moment to find a seemingly casual answer to a question never before asked. He knew he should smile, but couldn't. I like to leave my family out of stories about me and the union. Neither my wife nor my kids are involved in the Truckers. This is my life. Their lives are separate.

Serre smiled. He was peeved by the assignment to follow Tommy around this week for a big story if he won and a modest one if he lost. He expected him to lose. After the results were in, no one would care that an obscure Trucker from Queens was married to the nouveau celebre, high-priced photographer Alice Carroll. Tommy K would continue to be a curio in stories about her. Serre decided to chide his subject. That's not a very good answer Tommy. I'll be honest with you. I'm not going to press you on Alice Carroll, unless you win. I'm told by a source who knows the Truckers inside and out that you don't have much of a chance. But if you win, you're automatically a public figure, the head of the biggest and baddest union in the United States, and then the public has a right to know all about you and your family.

Tommy shoved the remains of his sandwich into his mouth. As soon as he swallowed, he said with an anger he couldn't keep out of his voice: Your inside source doesn't know shit from shinola. I'll tell you something, if I surprise you and everyone else by winning this election, don't bet on me telling you anything more about my wife than I told you today.

CHAPTER TWO

Cobb Wowka looked self-satisfied, but old and tired, out of place in the Washington Hilton bar crowded with men in pin-striped suits and yuppies of both sexes laughing and talking. He was leaning over a pile of French fries, dipping one at a time into ketchup and into his mouth with his left hand. His right hand was locked around a double Jack Daniels on the rocks.

Am I interrupting an intimate moment, a man and his food? Tommy asked.

Haw, haw, haw, Cobb roared. Come ere, little buddy.

He was a hugger. He stood, towering over Tommy. He wrapped his arms around Tommy pulling him across his distended belly, wheezing from the effort. He held Tommy at arms' length, a shoulder in either of his big hands, worker's hands. You got it buddy. The way the votes are coming in, old Matty can't catch up. It's all over, but the official announcement.

Hey! Tommy said jubilantly, knowing a happy reaction was expected. His Irish roots made him quick to laugh at witty remarks, but often the joy soaring through his inner being in moments of triumph emerged as a small, reserved smile, puzzling himself and those around him. He had learned to produce elation as needed. ‘Thank you God,’ Tommy said to himself. He gripped his campaign manager's right hand, shaking it, Cobb, this couldn't have happened without you.

The people on either side were caught by Cobb and Tommy's exuberance, tuning out their companions' chatter to eavesdrop and surreptitiously examine the pair.

The right candidate, the right campaign, the right time. We did it together buddy. Cobb hugged him again sobbing. His emotions weren't sealed under any kind of ethnic reserve. He waved come on over across the room to Billy Hurley, who hesitated reluctant to leave a spot near the door nicely positioned to watch the flow of people into the bar. Tommy waved too, drawing Billy, to join them. A young man in an impeccable suit and regimental tie moved a seat over to open a space for Billy, who took a Black Bush on the rocks to join the celebration, but still alert sat with his back to the bar.

To the Truckers, Tommy said raising his glass.

To the rebirth of the American Labor Movement, Cobb said. The three touched glasses and drank.

Cobb and Tommy quickly fell into a dialogue filled with glee over the local by local, region by region results of the count over the past three days in which the incumbent International President Matty Krause had been left behind from the outset. The colloquy on obscure numbers and bits of names bored those around them, who returned to their own conversations about football and office politics. Billy wasn't listening and had no interest in the pattern of victory they chuckled over. He sipped his whiskey, running his eyes over the bar's patrons, searching for the slightest signal of tension or danger.

Leaning close, almost touching Tommy's ear, Cobb whispered that Fred Laughton, the court-appointed Election Officer, had pulled him aside for an off-the-record conversation, telling him what he already knew, that Matty Krause didn't have the chance of a snowball in hell unless he got every vote counted on Friday. But the tally would go on until next Tuesday. Buddy, you got to declare victory on Saturday morning so we make the front pages of the Sunday papers. Anyone who knows simple arithmetic can see the race is over.

I'm going to call New York get the guys from my local down here to stand with us when we make the announcement.

Right on, buddy. Just tell them to keep their mouths shut. Not even tell their wives. Then we got the problem of Helmut Knall and TFOCC. How do you want to handle that?

Tommy knew from the question that Cobb had a solution in mind. Tell me?

We invite him to the press conference. He sits in the audience with everybody else. You thank him graciously for backing you. We're booking a party for the entire slate and key campaign workers and of course the guys from Local 1890 in a nice little bar in Georgetown. We're not going to invite Helmut. Eleven of your vice presidents are TFOCCers. If one of them invites him, there's not much we can do about it. If he's rude enough to ask why you didn't invite him, you say, I assumed one of the TFOCCers on the slate would call you.

TFOCC did a lot for us.

Not for us. For their agenda. Never forget that. We happen to be for the same things so they backed you. I've been giving this a lot of thought. Now that you won, Helmut and crew might get a little hungry for a piece of the action, which is okay, but we want to keep them at a certain distance. Don't let them get the notion they're gonna run this union instead of you.

I'll give `em a couple of jobs. I'm sure we can find an opening for Helmut in Alaska or Hawaii.

Right on, buddy. They slapped palms in a high five.

Tommy took this as an opportunity to say goodnight. The drive from New York was catching up to him. He and Billy had taken turns at the wheel, enduring a fierce sleet storm on the Jersey Turnpike and an hour in bumper to bumper traffic outside of Baltimore because of an overturned tractor trailer.

Hey, almost forgot. I met an old buddy of yours, Iggy O'Hara. Says he knew you way back when. Said he was over at Matty Krause's headquarters and it was like being at a funeral. He gave me his numbers. Said he'd love to come to our victory party. Want to invite him?

No, said Tommy. He left Cobb still sipping Jack Daniels at the bar with a fresh order of French fries coming.

***

Later that night, Cobb brought Matty Krause to Tommy's room at the Hilton. President Krause wanted a few minutes alone with you Tommy, he said respectfully.

They shook hands solemnly, the slight, energetic challenger and the worn incumbent, who had a cigaret in hand and a hacking cough. Krause, whose thick black dyed hair was a grotesque mismatch with his heavily wrinkled face, exuded the melancholy of defeat. Tommy signaled Cobb and Billy out of the room with a nod of his head. We'll be in Billy's room, Cobb said.

Tommy asked Krause to sit down offering him a beer or Irish whiskey, perhaps a soft drink. There was a bowl of pretzels and a cutting board with cheddar cheese and crackers. Krause asked for a whiskey, straight. He took his drink to the couch by the window of the smallish room, walking with some difficulty, breathing hard. He sat with his head bowed over the drink he held in two hands, like a priest at the moment of sacrifice.

I probably don't have to tell you, but you got it locked, Krause said looking up, tears involuntarily rolling out of his baggy eyes. I've heard people talk about rejection, and how it just takes the spirit out of a man. I thought that was all bullshit until tonight. They came out of the woodwork for you Kerrigan, and my guys sat on their asses. He couldn't go on, the words faltering under the heave of a barely suppressed sob.

Tommy experienced a surge of pity for the man he was tumbling from the highest, most powerful office in the union. He knew Krause's history. From dock worker at 15 loading freight in the wind-swept Cleveland train yards, harshly cold in winter, murderously hot in summer; two years later, the year was 1937, he was the first one on the dock to sign a Truckers card. Krause fought as an infantryman with the Third Infantry Division in World War II, was wounded and won a Silver Star in Italy. After the war he became an interstate driver in Cleveland Truckers Local 2407. At 28, with the blessings of the Cleveland mob, he was made a business agent. The happiest day of his life, he always said, was when Steamer Staski called him to the Marble Palace in 1960 to make him an international rep. Five years of proven loyalty later, he ran on Steamer's ticket and was elected as an international vice president. Steamer appointed him national director of the Warehouse & Freight Division, considered the most important post in the union after international president.

Matty Krause was at his peak, a powerful, overbearing man on the day he traveled to New York in 1971 to order Tommy to give the Delivery Company the contract it wanted. Usually when Krause showed up a rebellious local leader backed down quickly. Tommy looked him in the eye and said, No way. Krause said to Tommy: You just shot your wad kid. You'll never be anything in this union. Yet the wily Krause sensed this kid was the dangerous kind, a thick-headed upstart with balls, who was in the right--and knew it. And he was backed by a bunch of true believers. Krause told Gerald Kennedy, director of labor relations for the Delivery Company that the company would have to fold on this one.

Tommy watched Krause swallow his whiskey in a gulp.

Let me have another one Kerrigan, the old man said sounding more like himself.

Tommy poured the drink, resisting a temptation to throw back at Krause his remark that had welled up so often in his memory over the past 20 years: ‘You'll never be anything in this union.’ Instead Tommy said, President Krause, I appreciate you coming tonight. Shows what a standup man you are.

Yeah, Krause said. What's done is done. I'm here to talk to you about the future of the union. You're going to find out running the international is a hell of a lot more complicated than running a little local.

I'm up to the job.

Maybe. Anyhow, I'm here to offer my help. I ran a pretty good international, so if you're smart you'll talk to me about who should be kept on and who can be dumped without causing waves.

Are you shitting me, Tommy said coldly. You think I'm gonna be some puppet on a string? I'm gonna do what I did at Local 1890. I'm gonna get rid of all the bums and make this into a real union that stands up for the members instead of playing footsie with the bosses.

Anger brought Krause to his feet with a resurrected fierceness: You got elected on a lucky fluke, only you don't know it. You haven't changed from when you were a kid Kerrigan. You still don't know your ass from your elbow.

CHAPTER THREE

The silvery tinkle of the door bells announced Tommy's arrival in Lucien's, Bibi Goldman's restaurant on Madison Avenue with the eclectic menu: ‘a little French, a little Italian, a little American, a dab of Jewish, and steaks from the Argentine. Some restaurants have a core menu. We serve only specials. But there's always hamburgers and patatas fritas for kids and broiled fish with lemon for those who don't or can't relish the specials.’ Bibi, who was sitting alone in her white chef's uniform at the copper-faced bar, sipping her favorite Sicilian red wine and paging languidly through the New York Globe's Sunday magazine, bounced off her chair. Ohhhh, she sang, leaping across the space between them. She wrapped her arms around him.

She led him by the hand through the swinging door into the kitchen, where she turned to embrace him again, drawing him down to her lips for a deep, lingering kiss. I'm so proud of you. I wish my grandfather could be here. Lucien's was named for Lucien Goldberg, the labor poet, who wrote the epic poem, The Zealots, still read by the Lefties, about the Truckers Uprising in Minneapolis in 1934. "The Sunday Globe had a wonderful story about you on the front page today. They