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    Wildcat
    Wildcat
    Wildcat
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Wildcat

    By William Trent Pancoast

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Wildcat is a book that has been banned by the United Auto Workers International Union: General Motors and the United Auto Workers lock horns in this tale of a go-for-broke wildcat strike. Wildcat is set in Vietnam-era, 1970 Ohio at a General Motors stamping plant--lots of laughs and labor history, and a not-nostalgic look at what Vietnam cost us all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Trent Pancoast
    Release dateOct 8, 2011
    ISBN9781465987624
    Wildcat
    Author

    William Trent Pancoast

    William Trent Pancoast's novels include WILDCAT (2010) and CRASHING (1983). His short stories, essays, and editorials have appeared in Fried Chicken and Coffee, Night Train, The Mountain Call, Solidarity magazine, US News & World Report, the Union Forum and numerous other labor publications. Pancoast recently retired from the auto industry after thirty years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. In recent years, he has been an adjunct professor of English and first mate on a Lake Erie charter fishing boat. Born in Galion, Ohio, in 1949, he has a B/A in English from the Ohio State University and attended the graduate school of Miami University.

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      Book preview

      Wildcat - William Trent Pancoast

      I used to tell Bill Pancoast that he was going to get his ass kicked if he didn’t shut up. I’m glad he didn’t listen to me. Wildcat is the story of the auto industry no one ever believed when I told it.

      —Ken Kreiger, retired autoworker, 41 years service

      Bill Pancoast's Wildcat is a funny, sad, and thoroughly convincing portrait of autoworkers—many damaged by war, broken dreams, or substance abuse—dependent on a General Motors plant in fictional Cranston, Ohio, during the Sixties and Seventies.  After reading this moving story, I once again asked myself: why is the subject of work so often neglected by today's fiction writers?  Fortunately, we have Pancoast to fill in some of the blanks.

      —Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

      Most novelists haven't been anywhere near an auto plant, let alone worked in one, but Bill Pancoast has. Wildcat takes us inside a spontaneous strike at an Ohio stamping plant in the Vietnam era, showing how righteous anger, insane hijinks, and bloodshed can break out when workers decide to do something—anything—about brutal and boring working conditions.

      —Christopher Phelps, Associate professor,

      American Studies, University of Nottingham

      Just when General Motors is facing its biggest challenge, along comes Bill Pancoast’s Wildcat. This gritty story follows a team of autoworkers back in GM’s oil-spattered glory days. Whether you’re reading about security captain Big Bill or line worker Bobby Finnegan, Wildcat reveals the slimy underbelly of the car industry with a muckraker’s finesse. Pancoast’s knowledge of factory operations, his portrait of labor—and human—relations in America’s heartland, recall Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, as well as Ida Tarbell’s exposé of the Standard Oil Company.

      —James Reiss, author of Riff on Six

      In most of the recent books, articles, and analyses of General Motors, few armchair critics have bothered to write about the company’s attitude toward the rank-and-file workers who build its cars. Fortunately, we now have Bill Pancoast, a front-line autoworker in one of GM’s key factories for many years, to thank for filling that void. In this slim volume, Pancoast packs in accounts of the company’s behavior before, during, and after wildcat strikes, the union’s response, and the very human stories of life and death on the line. For those trying to understand why the auto industry is where it is today, Wildcat will provide some of the answers.

      —Dave Elsila, editor of Solidarity, 1976-1998

      WILDCAT

      A novel

      by

      William Trent Pancoast

      Blazing Flowers Press

      WILDCAT

      WILLIAM TRENT PANCOAST

      COPYRIGHT WILLIAM TRENT PANCOAST 2010

      PUBLISHED BY BLAZING FLOWERS PRESS

      AT SMASHWORDS

      THIRD EDITION

      FIRST PRINTING

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      ALL OF THE CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS, AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

      INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: SMASHWORDS

      Once again, as always, for Deb

      And for the people who do the work

      Part I

      Chapter 1

      November, 1970

      Wildcat

      The security chief barged into command headquarters. It’s this simple, he said, glaring around the room at the other officers and guards. The plant manager wants his turkeys back.

      The chief was referring to the thousands of frozen birds in the Chevy dump trucks parked at the Cranston General Motors plant main gate on this day before Thanksgiving in 1970. The guards had been handing out the company gift of turkeys as the autoworkers left work that day, but then had come the wildcat strike at two p.m. The shop chairman, president, and shop committee of this local United Auto Workers union had walked through the General Motors stamping plant hitting E-stops, shutting down the presses, stopping fork lifts and tow motors, motioning for the men to follow them. By two-thirty, the parking lot was nearly empty, and the four security officers on turkey detail had been forcibly relieved of duty by eight union pickets who continued handing out the birds.

      I wished I’d had my gun, one of the young guards said.

      Yeah, if we’d had our guns we could have held the turkeys, chimed in one of the other fellows who had been on the gate.

      Just shut the fuck up, the chief said. He laid out a well-worn map and began assigning sectors to the lieutenants. The four square miles of the plant grounds were divided into six sectors, and the chief assigned one to each of the lieutenants. Both captains would be on sector one today for the assault up the hill to the main gate. Big Bill, one of the captains who had been passed over for the chief’s job, rubbed his hands, each the size of a picnic ham, as he thought about kicking a little hillbilly ass on the ramp.

      Each of you, and he nodded at Big Bill, then at the other captain, will have six men and a lieutenant. We are going up that hill, and we will take back our turkeys. The other men will secure the gate. We will move the dump trucks into the executive parking garage as soon as we take possession. He picked a dozen of the toughest out of the forty security guards. He had hired many of them, and he knew that five of the twelve were just back from Vietnam, half fucking crazy yet from their time in the bush. He would have possession of the plant manager’s stupid turkeys shortly.

      We taking side arms? asked one of the lieutenants assigned to the assault force.

      Hell no, the chief spat. Look, you got a handful of dumbfuck hillbillies up there. They got our turkeys. We’re going to take them back. You’ll have your sticks and riot gear. Just push them out onto Route 30, and they can run or get run over. We’ll have two snipers on the roof just in case.

      Across the street at the union hall, the parking lot was full, cars spilling onto the edge of the state route running through this Ohio town that fifteen years earlier had welcomed the General Motors plant. Seen from a distance, the haphazard assemblage of vehicles looked like a junkyard, most of the pickup trucks and cars showing long, red streaks of rust. Up close, the bald tires and worn interiors were visible. These guys weren’t getting rich working at GM, or if they were, they weren’t spending their money on the product they made twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

      Milt Jeffers, the shop chairman, leaned back in the leather chair in his office in the new union hall and popped open another beer. He took a long swig, then sat forward and peered over his sunglasses. What the fuck you mean, what are we going to do with the turkeys?

      Well, I just wondered….

      Fucking idiots, everywhere I turn, Jeffers said as he stood up and tossed his car keys to Jimmy Hatfield, his personal assistant. Take my car over there and fill the trunk up with turkeys.

      By now the second shifters had formed a single-file line on the highway as they saw the turkeys being handed out. One man in each dump truck was tossing the frozen birds, which were then handed down the line of men to the waiting cars. Crazy Jack was in charge of the operation and seemed to know all the workers, shouting to many by name as they approached to get their Thanksgiving turkeys, courtesy of General Motors and the United Auto Workers. Jack saw the chairman’s Cadillac do a U-turn and swing towards the line of cars, and he stepped forward, holding his hand up to stop the next car. The chairman’s boy buzzed the electric window down and popped the trunk release all at the same time. Fill her up, he shouted, and flipped his thumb at the now open trunk.

      That goofy son of a bitch, Crazy Jack muttered and motioned to the guys to put their turkeys in the trunk. The back end of the shiny, new car was beginning to sag when Jack heard the crack of a rifle. Hell, he

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