HERMAN BENSON, UNION DEMOCRACY HERO

Herman Benson spent most of his long life on an endless quest: to make unions better through democracy. He died last week at age 104 still working to fulfill that noble goal.

          Five decades ago, Benson founded the Association for Union Democracy, a small but potent organization that has played a huge role in helping and inspiring reformers in the unending struggle to oust passive or crooked union officials.

          Benson’s crowning achievement came in 1991 when along with labor lawyer Susan Jennik, then AUD’s executive director, convinced a judge to direct a court-appointed elections officer to oversee every aspect of the first rank and file election for the top officers of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Reformers were convinced that without outside supervision the union hierarchy and their local union allies would have rigged the election to keep the old guard in power. Instead, a clearly-honest election resulted in the late Ron Carey becoming international president of the IBT.

Local unions should be building blocks of democracy with Herman Benson remembered as the visionary of that ideal.

  

         

         

         

Discovering A.H. Raskin’s review of COLLISION by Kenneth C. Crowe

One of the great disappointments of my writing life was the failure of the New York Times to review COLLISION, my book about Teamsters for a Democratic Union and the election of Ron Carey to the presidency of the union in 1992.
When COLLISION was published in February, 1993, I was told in confidence by Moe Foner of 1199, the hospital workers union, that A.H. Raskin, the great labor writer, had written a review of the book for the New York Times. Moe was a mutual friend of both Raskin and me.
I so looked forward to reading what Abe Raskin (whom I greatly admired) had to say about my book. Eventually, COLLISION was reviewed by the Washington Post, Newsday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer; the list goes on of major newspapers and magazines all over the country. But it doesn’t include the New York Times.
Raskin, who had been ill for some time, died at the age of 82 in December, 1993.
I had always wondered whether he finished the review and then: I was roaming the internet where I discovered a reference to Raskin’s papers including “Review of Collision by Kenneth C. Crowe undated.”
Finally, I could read what Raskin said about my book.
I went to New York University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, where I discovered that the Raskin papers had been processed in 2011 by project archivist Daniel Michelson.
I love Abe Raskin’s review. These excerpts explain why:
“In ‘Collision’, written by Kenneth C. Crowe, we find an accurate, brilliant, fact-filled chronology of the plight of the rank and file in their attempt to take back the reins of power.
“For the student of labor wishing to be well versed in the inner revolution of the rank and file against the stronghold of the mob, this book will serve as an invaluable source of information...
“Citing the difficult rise to authority in the blatantly non-democratic Teamsters, the book describes the struggle of those such as the brave and devotedly committed union patriot, Ronald Carey and his 35 year ascent to his present position as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.”
(Raskin gives credit to TDU for the significant support that rank and file organization gave to Carey.)
Raskin continued: “In years to come ‘Collision’ will be viewed as an invaluable reference book, an encyclopedia of the post-Hoffa Teamster era.”
Raskin’s assessment of the significance of COLLISION as “an invaluable reference book” has proven true. COLLISION has been cited in numerous civil and criminal lawsuits, research papers, and labor books.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

Three radically different novels

Over the past year, I have uploaded three radically-different novels, OOOEELIE, THE HERO, and THE TRUCKERS, onto the web primarily via Kindle, Amazon, and Smashwords.
Writers often tend to tell the same story in different forms in their train of books. Obviously, I have successfully avoided that dip in the road:
OOOEELIE’s protagonist is an Airedale, the reincarnation of a canine creature on an interstellar journey who crash-landed on earth tens of thousands of years ago. Ever since, as in all good dog stories, Oooeelie has been trying to find a way home to his planet in the Sirius (Dog Star) system. He has come down to modern times through a chain of lives as a dog with two natures: the superior being and the animal.
Ryan Garrity, whose dream of a career as a professional soldier was shattered on a battlefield in Korea, is the protagonist of THE HERO. Ryan is a bookstore operator, who suffers from the guilt of failing to have expressed gratitude to the soldier who courageously saved his life. After returning to civilian life Ryan’s savior is killed saving a young woman from an onrushing subway train in Queens. The plot of THE HERO spins around Ryan’s effort told against a background of mysticism, arrogant duplicity and murder to determine why the soldier was denied a Congressional Medal of Honor.
THE TRUCKERS is a novelistic sequel to my nonfiction book, COLLISION, about Ron Carey’s successful campaign to capture the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from the union’s old guard. There are two protagonists in THE TRUCKERS: Tommy Kerrigan and Helmut Knall who are uneasy allies dedicated to transforming the nation’s largest union, the Truckers International Union, into a progressive force capable of dragging the American labor movement out of the quagmire that is sucking it under. Tommy emerges as a legendary hero experiencing great triumphs and tragedy. Helmut is the unwavering force behind the Truckers rank and file reform movement.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.