They can't do that ... well, they just did!
Stories that shouldn't die with me
When I left my corporate tails with Frito Lay, I’d just dodged a bullet and kept my new job in Connecticut after staling out a record number of Fritos in the new high-rise warehouse. The new plant was built as a non-union facility except for my trucking operation, under a Teamsters contract. The drivers were brought over from an old Rhode Island plant that was Teamsters.
Frito-Lay was a staunchly non-union company. While we had unions from building the company by buying and merging small chip companies, the philosophy was to be as non-union as possible. Even the route salesmen were Teamsters union in cities like Boston to the north. About a year into my tenure at the plant, things got really interesting.
One Friday, near quitting time, a call came in from one of our drivers delivering to one of our Boston warehouses. The Frito Teamster sales drivers there had declared a strike and wouldn’t let him leave the warehouse. My manager contacted me, and I called the union Business agent back. He explained they were shutting down Boston over contract negotiations with our headquarters, and our tractor-trailer couldn’t leave. He agreed I could send a car to get our driver and leave the rig behind the picket lines at our facility.
I sent someone to get him and called the New England sales VP to break the news. I explained what was happening, and he immediately said, “They can’t do that!” To which I replied, “Well, they just did!” The sales types, especially at the VP level, were pretty proud of themselves, and he would call and straighten it out. I’d been through strikes at my father’s company, so I contacted my chain of command and began preparations for dealing with it.
By Monday morning, word came from high in Dallas Headquarters that we’d notified our major stores in the Boston area, and we’d pull out of Boston and let them picket empty warehouses. I loved it because Frito had deep pockets to fight it, which my father never did. Week one came and went when the Boston teamsters decided to fight back. They set up a picket line at our non-union plant because it had Teamsters drivers.
That brought the big guns out of Dallas with orders to keep the plant running. Jimmy Hoffa was long resting under the concrete at the Meadowlands by now, and the Teamsters were short on sympathy for one another. Our Connecticut teamsters’ head agreed to let his drivers (our drivers) deliver the loads, but they couldn’t ‘cross’ the picket lines to do it.
Things were about to get interesting. I’d driven picket lines before, but no one else at the plant had done so. The local HR head and I were named strike coordinators, and it was game on. We assigned plant and distribution supervisors qualified to drive big rigs through the picket lines and down the highway, where we would meet one of our drivers and switch. The HR guy and I would lead a convoy of twenty trucks through the picket line in the morning. My first run through, they keyed my car, which was no surprise.
On day two, the picketers caught on and would follow us, and when we went to switch drivers, they’d jump out with a picket sign, and our driver would say No can do. That would lead to driving further down the road and trying again. To counter this, we would run thirty trucks in the convoy with ten empty and confuse the picketers following. We ran all trucks during daylight hours with one exception. We would resupply at night from our Rhode Island plant to our Connecticut plant, where Fritos were made. In week three of the strike, the picketers caught on.
The negotiations between our headquarters labor relations folks and the Boston Teamsters had broken off, but not before they addressed our night resupply runs. We received word there might be trouble. Sure enough, all hell broke loose on Friday night when we thought we’d concluded another successful week. A minivan pulled up in front of two of our rigs, the door flung open, and several shotgun blasts were leveled at the radiators of our tractors.
That led to weekend meetings and conferences to address the situation. Our days were now twelve, fourteen, and sometimes sixteen hours to keep the plant running. My wife told me she’d feel sorry for me if I wasn’t enjoying it so much, which I was. Our headquarters safety guy was a former Texas State Trooper who arranged for us to ‘employ’ twenty drivers from Birmingham, Alabama, to break the strike. They would be arriving on Sunday.
I had to restructure our resources for new duties. I assigned a new supervisor, a former school teacher, to charge the new crew, which was quickly dubbed the Bama Express. The teacher turned supervisor, we’ll call Tommy, had to drive an hour to Hartford to retrieve this motley crew flying in on US Air. We had no idea what a chore that would be.
I rented vans for Tommy to ferry our ‘new’ drivers from the airport to the local motel, where we’d made a deal to house them. I got approval to rent a car for the HR guy and me to lead the convoys through the increasingly rowdy picket line and save my car. I had to commit to the local Ford dealer to pay for any repairs required when I was done. I had no idea how much that was going to cost. Our plant had a training room in the middle, and we had set up to review the rules of engagement with the new driving crew.
When Tommy finally arrived with our new crew, they could be best described as the village people on steroids. To say they were an eclectic crew would be putting it mildly. They walked into the training room, bags in hand, and sat down classroom style in front of our HR guy, whom we’ll call Jim. He was a former University of Tennessee linebacker and not a wallflower, but their guys had him looking worried.
Jim went through our rules of engagement, how and when they’d be paid, and the dos and don’ts. The fellow sitting in the front row next to me had a black briefcase on the table with both hands on it. I made small talk before we started, and he informed me he’d recently been released from prison. I didn’t want to know what he was in for. The fellow on my other side was a happy-go-lucky six-foot-four Alan Jackson look-alike with a big cowboy hat and two missing front teeth.
As Jim finished his remarks, he reiterated that there was to be no violence. The criminal next to me held up his hand and asked if we had not had trucks shotgunned. Jim said yes, but it was isolated. The fellow patted his briefcase and said, “Jimmy, they shoot at me, and there will be trouble.” I didn’t have to guess what was in the briefcase. We would ride at 7 AM.
Jim and I lined up the first Bama Express convoy, which was twenty tractor-trailers long. We started at the back and walked to the front, where my Ford rental sat with early battle scars. As we reached the second truck in line, it was driven by the recently released criminal with the black briefcase. As we passed, the driver yelled, “Hey, Jimmy!” When Jim and I turned, he had a big smile on his face, and with his right hand, he made the shape of a gun and said, “Jimmy, bang-bang!”
We turned, and Jim said, “That guy scares the hell out of me.” Before I could respond, I noticed Alan Jackson in the first truck was smiling from under his big white cowboy hat while he taped a rebel flag to the mirror of our car. I broke the news to him that he had to take it off. He took it off, and we found out later he stopped down the road and put it back on. It was a bad idea, since, to all our surprise, at Frito-Lay, eastern Connecticut was a hotbed for the KKK. We had one black driver of our own whose home had been shot at multiple times.
We got in our car and led the convoy down the quarter-mile hill to our front gates. The entire property was fenced, and our gates were sliding twenty-footers that we locked when the plant was closed. Our instructions to the drivers were to stay bumper to bumper, leave no space for the picketers to get in between, and cut the convoy short. My job driving the lead car was slowly moving the picket line out of the way, and then the convoy followed.
The picketers’ union had heard of the Bama Express, so they were out in force and rowdy. We’d requested support from the Connecticut State Police, but they were union and refused. Since there were no local police, we added another HR person to my car to film the goings-on. I got through with a few more dents and scratches in my car and more specific threats to consider.
Near the middle of the convoy was the black driver with two teeth. He missed a gear at the gate, and the picketers rolled the plant gates shut in front of him as they cheered their perceived success. It was short-lived because two teeth hit the gears and ran over the gates, smashing them flat to the ground and sending picketers running wildly away. The remaining ten trucks likewise sent the mood on the picket line sideways.
The next twenty-four hours set the tone for what was to come. All the trucks returned within an hour of our expectations, so we were cautiously happy. Tommy was in charge of getting the Bama Express fed, to the motel, and paid. Upon returning to the plant, the drivers demanded to be paid in cash daily. We provided Tommy with two thousand dollars in cash, small bills.
On his first night as paymaster, he sat on a motel room bed, with the drivers lined up out the door. He was counting out cash for the first driver when he felt a cold, sharp object on his throat and nearly passed out. Standing behind him was Alan Jackson, holding a large switchblade to his throat, saying, “Tommy, give me the cash”. Tommy instantly handed him his bag of cash over his shoulder. When he did, Alan Jackson let out a huge laugh and said, “I’m just kiddin’ you, man”.
The next few days were crazy. The first night, we had lots of vandalism of our trucks inside the fences of our property. Tires were slashed, radiators with crowbars rammed into them were broken, and windows were broken. That meant they had scaled the fence and come through the woods to do their deeds. We needed security and discovered the Rhode Island State Troopers rented themselves out as a security force. We hired them.
The next morning, bright and early, a carload of picketers waited at the end of my driveway in the woods where I lived. They harassed me as I drove to work. That night, our RI State Police crew arrived and were all business. Dressed in black, tactical gear, and carrying Uzis. Jim was nervous, and I explained to them that we didn’t want anyone carried out on a gurney. They nodded with as much assurance as our guy with the black briefcase. As it turned out, their mere presence began to settle things down.
On the second night of Tommy’s duties of tucking the Bama Express into bed, a funny thing happened. Alan Jackson wanted to get back to the motel, but Two Teeth wanted to swing by a drug store on the way to the motel. They got into a small argument when Alan Jackson said, “Clarence, what are you going to buy at the drug store?” He replied, “I need some toothpaste.” At which Alan Jackson said, “Man, you only got two teeth!” And Clarence says, “Yeah, but I’m takin’ care of those two”. Everyone had a laugh, and Tommy got his toothpaste.
On day three, after the convoy left, we got a call to find that Alan Jackson had totaled one of our trucks. He was speeding and lost control, and the tractor was a total loss. The next day, day four, the picket line began to fizzle. It was at half strength, and the edge was off. On day five, one of my supervisors and I joined the picketers for breakfast at a local diner, where they would meet before going to the picket line.
They were cordial, good guys trying to make a living and doing what some believed in, and others just went along. They were receiving twenty dollars a week for picketing. I explained the futility to them. I told them not to look at it right or wrong, but as a strike coordinator, I had a blank check to spend whatever was needed to win the battle. It was sobering to see good employees dejected as they were.
By the end of the first week of the Bama Express, the Boston Teamsters caved and agreed to Frito-Lay’s terms, which included transferring all employees from the union health insurance plan to Frito-Lay. This was a killer for the union because they knew that the next contract, Frito would also take their pension, dissolving the need for the union. It was part of our labor group’s plan, and it worked again and again around the country.
As we wound down, we had to get the Bama Express back to Birmingham. Our travel department made the arrangements to fly them up on US Air, but when they tried to make arrangements for the return flights, US Air refused to fly them. We never knew what happened on the way up to cause their refusal, but we had a problem. Our travel department made arrangements to bus them from Hartford to Birmingham, and we decided not to tell them until they got to Hartford. Tommy would break the news.
They left three vans for the hour drive, and we at the plant began to relax and return to normal. Then my Admin summoned me for a call, Tommy was on the phone and was upset. I got on the phone, and he explained that when he told them it was a bus home, they refused and told him he couldn’t leave until we got them airline tickets. Tommy and I were discussing our options when the criminal with the black briefcase interrupted us and wanted to talk with me.
I explained to him that US Air refused to fly them back, so we were stuck. He said, “Ed, do you want me to unstick you?” I was intrigued and said, “Sure, and how would you do that?” He said, “Well, Ed, that’s not your problem. Do you want me to take care of it?” I asked, “What do you need to take care of?” Black briefcase man said, “Two grand and Tommy and his crew go home, and we take the bus.” I told him to let me talk with Tommy. He still had his wad of cash for the daily payroll, and I made an executive decision: pay him and get out of there.
In this adventure, I soon shared my decision with Jim, my fellow cohort. As head of HR, he said, “I don’t want to know that.” As for my Ford station wagon, I’d end up paying the dealer over nine thousand dollars to fix the damage from the strikers. It was 1983; we could probably buy the car.
Life soon returned to normal, but we all had stories to tell. Little did I know that a few years later, long after I left Connecticut, I’d be called on to find another Bama Express for an upcoming strike. And I would be grateful that I’d befriended and stayed in touch with my Jersey lawyer friend, who was a phone call away.
Stories that shouldn’t die with me.