Meyers: a 'coal miners' son'

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the January 25, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

If radicalism and militancy are inherited characteristics, it's easy to understand why George A. Meyers is chair of the labor commission of the Communist Party USA: His mother's family came from County Wexford in Ireland where his great grandfathers - both active fighters against British imperialism - were hanged by the British. "One of them was hung by his thumbs," George said with a grimace.

Of his father's family, Meyers says his great grandmother's was one of the first families to move into the Georges Creek Valley of Maryland. All the men on both sides of the family started out coal miners. (Meyers' father, who went to work in the mines before he was 12, died of Black Lung and one of his uncles was killed in the mines when only 15.)

An interview with Meyers is punctuated with salty words and gales of laughter as he talks of the trials and tribulations of one who has been in the ranks of the class struggle for more than 50 years.

Meyers, who graduated from high school in 1930, got what he calls his "first steady job" in 1933. "We did all kinds of things to make a little money before then," he remembers. One way was to play sandlot football - at 6'3" and 225- pounds-plus, Meyers played tackle and fullback - and baseball, where he played in the outfield and batted cleanup.

Meyers has been batting cleanup ever since: beginning as a rank and filer who helped the 10,000 production workers at the giant synthetic fiber plant, owned by Celanese Corporation of America, organize a union in 1935. "We had heard about the San Francisco General Strike of 1934 led by Harry Bridges. We thought if they could do it so could we - and that if we didn't do it, no one would do it for us."

"And when I say it was a 'steady job,' I mean 'steady,'" Meyers said. "Many times we worked 16 hours straight, often seven days a week - and all for 22 and a half cents an hour. Keep in mind that this was in the days before the Wagner Act. There were no representation elections - when you thought you had the muscle, you went to the employer and demanded that he recognize the union. If he didn't ...."

Meyers said it took a strike in 1935 and again in 1936 - he was a picket captain in both - to "convince" Celanese to recognize the union and to agree to a first contract. "My department was key in those fights. If we sat down - and we did - the whole process would 'freeze.' Even the threat of a sitdown was enough to get results."

Meyer's conversion to unionism was not an act of faith. Instead, he said, "it was an act of survival."

Meyers, like many other young workers, spent the first year at Celanese trying to figure out a way to get out of the mill: Temperatures above 100 degrees; sometimes 140 and the stinging fumes of acetate. The noise - the scream of row after row of spindles. "You had to put your lips by another's ears just to be heard," Meyers said. "Since we all chewed tobacco to protect our throats from acid spray, the trick was to talk without spitting tobacco juice in your buddy's ear!"

To this day Meyers suffers from lung damage caused by a combination of lint and acetate fumes. Meyers said that the first night on the job he entered the plant together with four others: "Three of them just turned around and left - job or no job."

Following the strike of '36 Meyers was elected to the executive board of what had become Local 1874 of the Textile Workers Union of America, CIO. His leadership skills and proven abilities resulted in his election as recording secretary, then president of the local and, eventually, president of the Maryland/DC CIO Council.

Meyers joined the Communist Party in 1939 - a decision he sees as consistent with what he learned as a union leader. "We had been able to organize Celanese and win some concessions - some respect and had improved our lives. And the CIO had been able to organize the steel, auto and other mass production industries. But the boss was still the boss and we had to keep fighting the same battles over and over again."

Meyers said he came to the conclusion that Celanese - "and all the rest of them" - had the system on their side. "That meant to me that we had to change the system. And the CP was all about the business of doing that. So I joined."