WEBVTT
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:06.000
Interviewer: What do you think the union should be doing?
00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:52.000
Sam Bielich: The union should go beyond the gates of the mill and work in
the community. Find out what's going on and find out what the Red Cross.
Find out what the Red Feather Agency is. Find out what these different
organizations and camps are doing. I did that. Help fight. Get the people
in in the community to know that you're doing something other than trying
to fight the mills all the time. Help! Help! Don't look too much to what's
the union do going to do for me?
00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:28.000
Bielich: What are you going to do for the union? So and that's the way I
felt and that's the way I had offers. I built my offices. I worked with my
people. We all felt that way. We had a pressure association here that has a
camp out here, Zinnia and Opal, and they wanted some cottages up there. The
local union I belong to turned around, got them lumber, build them a
cottage named one after Philip Murray. And these are the things I wanted to
do. These are the things I want to do now.
00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:31.000
Interviewer: Do you think the union then should be active in the
community?
00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:37.000
Bielich: Yes, I definitely think the union should be active in the
community politically.
00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:38.000
Interviewer: In other ways.
00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:49.000
Bielich: Yeah, in the community and politically, too. They should. When
you're active in the community, you automatically become active in the
community, too. In politics.
00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:53.000
Interviewer: You don't feel the union is quite doing that now?
00:01:53.000 --> 00:02:40.000
Bielich: No, I don't. I don't think doing it here lately and it's not it's
not doing that. It's not doing that so much. It's getting to be a more of a
get together club than it is. Well, what are we going to do about this
group here or that there about housing? I was on the first housing
committee in Pittsburgh. Selling the idea to the membership to tear down
the slums and build these homes. And and it always a Black question come
up, you know, and I told them we have to get the Blacks out of there and
put them in decent homes.
00:02:40.000 --> 00:03:26.000
Bielich: What they do after they get it's not our fault, but you give them
an opportunity to get away from it. If they're sick and the disease
spreads, it'll get around to the white people, too. So let's eradicate
things like that and let's live decently. But there again, what are you
going to do? Some Blacks will come out. Become productive summer. Just
don't give a damn. Some whites will. Some don't. Some. Some. Some members
of the union are always weren't. What am I going to get out of it? I don't
care about nobody else. When I was in the union, we had committees. I had a
man on the committee. He didn't want to get paid or anything else.
00:03:26.000 --> 00:04:08.000
Bielich: And I said, Well, what would you like to do? He says, I'd like to
go ahead and visit the sick members. Talk to them, see if they need
anything. Very good. Here's a man volunteer, and he did that and he found
out he had to do a lot of traveling. And the only expense he wanted, he
says, How about bringing it up here? Make a motion on the floor to pay me
my gasoline for visiting these members. So we did. Now we don't have men
like that anymore. See, he was there and he retired in it. So now we have
people retired like myself on a staff who is active with the senior
citizens.
00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:51.000
Bielich: Keeping them in touch with the laws and what's going on and how
that's working outside the gates and getting, you know, some of them like
to steer away from the unionists and that and read unpleasant things about
the union. But at the same time, he's getting $700 a month pension, right?
Yeah. I don't. Give me that stuff about you. You got to remind them once in
a while. As soon as you tell them that, then they change their position.
And I know some people are forming or making a nice pension. A whole lot
more than me.
00:04:51.000 --> 00:05:37.000
Bielich: And I got to remind him the only reason you got it. Because one
time we was going out to organize Foreman and the foreman, one of the
union, and the company started screaming. They said, Look who we going to
have on our side there. So they made them all part of management. Every
form was a part of management. So they give him this extra savings plan and
extra participation in a program, a pension program and stuff like that. So
when they when they get pension, they get a lump sum settlement, they get a
pension from the the pension fund that they participated in.
00:05:37.000 --> 00:06:18.000
Bielich: And they also get the same pension that the steelworkers get. So
they they benefit too, by they got to remind them guys and some of them
will say, sure, it is. But some of the former bosses you talk now, the
company gave us it. They didn't give you nothing. I can see I give you
nothing. Everything you get, you got to fight for. I'm not. I don't I never
was angry at him for that reason, thinking that way because I always felt
that. Country, free speech and all that. I have a right to think that way.
But if I can convince them the other way.
00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.000
Interviewer: Then you will.
00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:32.000
Interviewer: Do you think that the changes that you see in the union or
maybe because it's easier for them now, the people who are in there now
didn't have to fight the way you fought?
00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:45.000
Bielich: Oh, that's. Yes. They got all these things. Every three years.
Every five years it gets 13 weeks vacation with pay.
00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:51.000
Interviewer: How long did you work before you got any vacation?
00:06:51.000 --> 00:07:50.000
Bielich: I think I got once I got one week vacation and once it's turned
to get two weeks vacation, I was out of the mill. And so all years I didn't
work. All I said I was. Oh, I got fired about six times and I quit her
dozen times because of I didn't get a promotion or I get in a fight with
the boss. And I started working at about 1915. I left in I left in 44, and
I went down to employment office and asked them how many years seniority I
had. They figured out, you see, started in 1915. You're quitting now. You
got 14 years seniority. I lost it all, so I had 14 years and I got them 14
years because I was married. I couldn't be quitting as a-- I got married
when I was 29 years old. So I did a lot of things there from the time I
started work till 29.
00:07:50.000 --> 00:09:11.000
Bielich: But after I once got married, I thought I could try to make the
best of it. I have some responsibility to make things better for me and my
children. This is one of the things I have to do. I my wife sometime and
she was wondering whether I was doing the right thing or not. So I had to
get her on my side too. I told her it would be best for her because my
father, he didn't care. You know, he was Serbian and he's bullheaded, too,
you know, he gets mad and he fights his bosses. But my mother was kind of
worth it. My sister sisters are worried because at that time, he had called
an armed police beating your head. And and the police here in 1919 was
beating it down when they had to strike in 1919, the steel mills. So. That
was so hard. You have a lot of guests, and that's what Phil Murray wanted.
He didn't want people who could put the noun and verb in a proper place,
right? He wanted guys with courage and clean talk. He cared how you talk as
long as you get the guy.
00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:17.000
Interviewer: Overall, it seems to me then that your union activity was it
made a good life for you.
00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:50.000
Bielich: It did. It did. It. Did. It. Did. It did. I am joining. I just
wish my wife was with me so she could enjoy it. But I'm enjoying life. My
children are good. Hope you won't throw me out. She's always worried about
me. She wants something to eat. Or don't you want to eat? Why don't you
eat? And I'd go to my daughter's. My son's up in New Hampshire. The same
thing.
00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:54.000
Interviewer: Is there anything else you'd like to say?
00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:21.000
Bielich: For one thing, I could. I don't know who's going to listen to
this, but if he gets some union men to listen, I want to say to you, to the
men in that plant, never drop the union. If you stay with it all the time,
work hard. Do good for yourself and and everybody else. That's all I want
to say.
00:10:21.000 --> 00:11:21.000
Interviewer: I thank you, Mr. Bielich.
