Between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I worked at the General Dynamics Shipyard in Quincy. At one time, it was the largest employer on the South Shore, with three shifts and more than 10,000 employees.
I was a Pipefitter, Third Class-Unskilled.
Great title, eh? Yeah, everyone knows that when you add 'third class' or 'unskilled' to a job title it really helps self-esteem. Put both of them in the same title and you are really making your point.
At the shipyard, your hardhat was color coded to your job. Pipefitters wore baby blue hats that showed off all the dirt at the bottom of the hull. That summer I installed liquid level indicators in soon-to-become fuel and water tanks that were five stories high inside the ship. I also unexpectedly learned a lot about productivity, a little about patriotism, and some things about greed or laziness that have stuck with me.
There have been a lot of outstanding contributions labor unions and their leaders have made to the development of our workforce and work practices, but the leaders of the union I belonged to had no part in making a contribution to anything, other than lining the the pockets of its members, short term. But that union did contribute to my education. It taught me how to stop working because I needed a pipe. As a pipefitter, I wasn’t allowed to CARRY pipes, I was only allowed to FIT pipes. If I needed a pipe, I needed a ‘Chaser’ to carry it for me. Yes, even from one end of the ship to the other. Even from the dock to the deck. It could take days to get a pipe through the archaic ordering system. This rule, among many, significantly drove up the cost of operating that shipyard and cost the US Navy, and taxpayers, a ton of money.
And in the 'significant knowledge' category, the union rules also taught me that if I was in the restroom, which were called _ _ _ _houses in the local language, I didn’t have to leave. You read that right. Once you were in there, you didn't have to come out. Our area had one 40 stall open-air, but covered and walled, always packed to the gills restroom, or actually, it was a rest area. It was where I, and many others, slept most days. I could stay in there for hours, or until the smell chased me out. Can you imagine a 'home away from home' like that? Phew. The contract specified that you couldn’t regulate how long….you know what should take. To stay productive, upon entry, I gathered all the Boston and New York newspapers and read them cover to cover. Even did a crossword puzzle or three. Even at 19 I was into time management and multitasking.
I also learned that a 160 pound kid like me, a college soccer player in peak shape, who could fit through a 15" by 24" hatch in the deck that his 275 pound supervisor couldn’t fit through, was basically unsupervised. In fact, in the very lowest reaches of the ship at the bottom of those five-story fuel and water tanks, reached only by a very long, and very scary, five-story ladder welded to the bulkhead, there were stacks of flattened cardboard boxes assembled by men who I assume had large supervisors. The cardboard was used for sleeping during the shift.
And finally, I also learned about Pete’s. One of the mechanics who was taking me under his wing and teaching me how not to be productive and how to avoid getting caught doing nothing, brought me one time to Pete’s Grille, Founded in 1958.
Here was the deal: at 11:29, a minute before the 30 minute lunch period started, 250 workers drifted from the ships and warehouses and docks and gathered in lines at the timecard shed inside the South Street Gate. Everyone punched out at 11:30 when the whistle blew and, ran, yes ran, across the street to Pete’s to get a seat. When you entered Pete’s, every single seat, picnic table style, all 250 of them, was preset with a ham sandwich and an open quart of Budweiser sitting there. They might have varied the cold cuts daily, but I was lucky it was ham & cheese the time I was there. It was free to get in, and you paid $2 to get out and were back in the timecard shack at 11:59 to punch back in. No IDs were necessary. With the shipyard dirt all over me, including my face, I looked of age. Guys my age were in Vietnam wishing they could have a beer and a ham sandwich in a place like Pete's so no one was going to hassle anyone.
All this took place when the boats we were 'working' on were needed a half a world away. Did I mention that drug use was rampant on my ship? Did I mention that it took me three weeks to weld pipes into a guard rail around one of the engines? Did I mention that I had no training on how to use a welder? As a 19 year old I can tell you that, given what I was watching on a daily basis, I wasn’t sure how the boats floated.
Not too many y
ears later General Dynamics decided to abandon the Quincy Yard since their costs were so much higher than the shipyards they were bidding against (go figure) and thousands of high paying jobs were lost. Just before the final death knell, there was some buzz about the workers buying the shipyard to keep it alive. A friend of mine, who also previously worked there laughed at that and said simply: “the people who are trying to buy it are the same greedy pigs that are causing it to close, if they had worked harder or had been more honest it would still be open.”
I’m sharing this story because the one thing we all have in common with those shipyard workers is this: we control the future of our organizations: whether they grow or shrink, whether they succeed or fail, whether they last for years or close. Those ‘greedy pigs’ who were milking the clock, sleeping during their shift, and having lunch at Pete’s should have known at the time that they were killing their organization, one Bud at a time. But apparently they didn't give a _ _ _ _. They were all about themselves, ever
yday and everyway. What you do when no one is looking does make a difference. That summer I learned one of the most important lessons a 19 year old can learn: character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.
