PUBLIC NOTICE PAGE 7

 

 

I: There's a real break bet ween the kind of people

who go to college and get graduate degrees and the
6 kind of people who work year after year after year.
l nN D: You know the whole thing on that is

you can't find life in a book. You can have twenty
years of education and walk out that school door and
you'll be lost. I think that everyone who gets an
education, you know, it's beautiful, but I think if a
person was educated in life before he went to college,
I think he'd have a lot more ability to perform his
daily tasks than to go to college and then work into
life. Take Phil. I think he's learned a lot of things
in 8 months, things that will carry through the rest
of his life. When we first started going, you know,
Phil was sort of like a ball, he'd bounce back and
forth... you know, Phil's whole theory of how he
doesn't want to hurt anybody, that’s heavy, I don't
want to either. But when it comes down to the fact
of who gets hurt, the working people or the people re-
sponsible, I think it changed Phil's outlook in a lot
of ways.

B: One thing I've learned, with all of my education,
is that intelligence and education are not necessarily
related. While I have a great deal of education, I've
met a great many people who are extremely intell-
igent who just didn't have the benefit of the education
thatI had. WhereI came from you went to college,
and sol did, There was no question about whether
I'd go to college.
TTT

It is often tough to think of the 3
trash man as someone just :
like you. Heis. He wants :
his life to be easier, so he is
asking you to not stuff so much
damn trash in the can, to avoid
filling plastic bags with grass
trimmings until they bust, to
avoid putting big chunks of glass
at the top of the can where they
will cut his wrists, to put those
cans close to the curb, to replace

B: Uh, good kids.

D: Or nice kids, and they used an example of us
being like a little kid drawing on the refrigerator
with a crayola.

B: The whole idea of kidding around

implies when you kid someone, they will kid you
back. But when a boss kids a subordinate, it's
implied that a subordinate doesn't have the same
power to kid back, and that's where the anger is,
created.

I: Would either of you at least concede the fact that

- Purdy is a hard worker, putting in time on weekends,
and working a lot of overtime without compensation
like his wife said on the radio?

B: He puts in a lot of time, he’s got a tremendous
amount of energy and works really hard. I don't
think anybody... since the Sanitation Workers organ-
ized in May...I don't think anybody has said the man
does not work hard. He's a regular workhorse, He's
to be commended for that. Our complaint is his
relationship with the workers.

Someone
Just

Like
You

I; Dennis, you've gone out of your way to stand
up for your rights as a worker, and for the rights
of your fellow workers, so what motivated you in
particular to say, "No more, "to this?

D: Well, because it has changed my life, my whole
lifestyle a lot. I wanted my folks to be proud of me
for something I've done in my life. Both of them are
still living and I want both of them to remember
something good I did in my life. I don't think I'll all bottomless cans and buy lids
ever be a doctor or something like that, but you know for the topless ones. Thank you.
I've gotten more out of this than I would have achieved SJUUUCUUOVOUEONESONEGOUENONEOOOUOUOUONEUOUOOESUQUOUONOCEENOOOOUOUOAOUOUOUENENEUEE
in college. Because what's the backbone of the count- D: I couldn't even finish high school.

ry if it's not the working people. The wife fights
with me constantly now, and if I had five kids, like
some of the other workers, I can imagine some of
their wives saying, "You'd better not do this, you'll
get fired."

 

TEEPE

B: Eighty percent of the people I finished high - school
with went to college.

D: We lived on a farm and we farmed 640 acres and
we milked a lot of cows and we had pigs and chickens
and mv brother was one year ahead of me in school
and my dad had three heart attacks and the doctor
said'no more'.So me and my brother, one night, _
while my dad was in the hospital, we talked and de-
cided that since Eric was one year ahead of me he
could go ahead and finish school. I dropped out and
took on the chore of farming which was a pretty

heavy chore likeI sat on a tractor from, Christ,

6:30 or 700 in the morning until 10:00 or 11:00 at
night. My mama would bring food out to me. My

dad couldn't do it until finally I just had to quit school.
I can't say I never had the chance. I've got the chance
now. But I know so many people who have college
educations who don’t have any more than I've got.

B; And in favor of Dennis too, I'd like to say that
some people just have more ability. Dennis has a
lot of ability.

I: This is a bit off the subject but Dennis, there's a
rumor going around that you won a fishing contest
when you were nine years old by filling the fish with
lead shot. We want to know about the veracity of that
story.

D: Yeah, I did.
B: Did you really ?

D: Yeah, I did. See, we lived at Mary's Lake when
we were kids, See, it was sponsored for children only
- - and they had fishing contests and stuff like that

and yeah, I sure did. I think my brother helped me
and he's a policeman, We stuffed a little bitty old fish
and it weighed like twelve pounds. . . it was just a
little bitty old fish and it was pretty obvious.

B: WelllI didn't go to college to make money.
D: Well, that's how I look at it different.

B: I think that one thing a lot of people I work with
didn't understand is that I had no intention of going
to college to get rich. And a lot of people think that
I was foolish. To spend that much time and money
to go to school.

I: O.K. Phil, you went to college, you've got a B.A.
in philosophy. Why are you throwing garbage ?

P: Well, I originally got a job throwing garbage to
put myself through graduate school. AndI picked
up 15 hours of graduate credit, then I got involved
in all this stuff and so.college had to just get put
aside. I don't know whether I ought to go back or
not , but that was my original intention.

D: What do you think Phil, that you've learned more
about life from this deal, or do you think you learned
more about life from college ?

P: Well, they're just different. It's just two different
ways of looking at the world.

 

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I: Do either of you guys think you're playing a role,

like you 're the great democratizers, or feel related
to anything beyond the. immediate situation of organ-
izing the workers in Lawrence ?

D: I'd kind of like to run for the City Commission.

I think I'd get about two votes. I think the role I'm
playing in all this is that I want the working people to
have a job they can do and go home and be at peace
because they have guidelines to protect them about what
their rights are,

B: It's a question of dignity, I think it was apparent .
because I was raised to be a person who gives orders
rather than takes orders, I was raised to believe
‘that I would go to college and would be some kind of
manager, andI didn't really meet the working people
until I started working. AndI saw my toes get
stepped on and it really made me angry. Am I don't
like to see myself, or anybody else, robbed of their
dignity. And I remember a while back my mother
told me she was embarrassed to tell her friends what
I did for a living. AndI said to her, "Isn't there
dignity in honest work?" And she said yeah, AndI
said there you are. Would you rather I was a

crook or something? And she said no. But that’s the
thing, there's dignity in honest work. Whatever a
man does for a living, or a woman does for a living,
there's dignity in that. It takes all walks of life, and
all kind of people to make the world. And there
should be respect for everybody. 4

D: Self-respect. For a man to be treated like a

man 1s something, for a man to be treated like a
number or a piece of machinery, I think it's a whole
different world, you know. I think that's management's
whole problem, they would like to just assume that
working people are just there to benefit them. Be-
cause if they get a job done the cheapest way, ‘if

labor does, that's gonna make management look good.
The cheapest they can get it done, the better for them.

I: But do you think that these problems are ever gonna -
get taken care of as long as you've got a management
class on one side and a working class on the other ?

B: Well see... somebody
has to do the work and somebody has to tell people
what to do and to make sure the job is done in a pro-
per manner.

I; You're saying then, that workers aren't going to
be able to be responsible for their own supervision ?

B: I'm just saying that the relationship between
labor and management does not have to be an antag-
onistic one, Idon't think labor wants it to be, but

I think until we feel that we have dignity, and we're
treated with respect as human beings and treated in
a fair manner, then the relationship will appear to
be antagonistic. Because I think the kind of worker
you have today, he's not just a bum. He knows what
goes on outside of his home, he pays attention, he
votes, he's more intelligent. When I
started working sanitation I was told I was the first
person to go to college at all and then work at Sanitation
for more than two weeks, and now you've got three
college graduates there. I imagine we've got a lot

of people down there right now who have at least been
to college. I don't know. So I think you've got
a more intelligent worker. I think workers have a
better sense than ever of their own rights. They're
more willing to stand up for them.

D: You know, we're willing to let management be
management... you asked if it's ever going to get any
better... what's in the crystal ball for the future. It's
gonna all come down to one thing and that's recogni-
tion of the right for us to be protected by law, the
right for us to voice our opinions about our working
conditions and safety, about our wages, and wrapping
all of this up with recognition is what it's all about,
Then we ‘ll let management play their role, and we'll

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