Meetings At Strip Clubs

When I was first elected as Chief Shop Steward for our Union, that placed me on the executive board of our UPIU Local, which included Champion Paper's box plant, as well as the bag plant where I worked. Executive meetings were not held at the Union Hall but, I soon found, they were held at a strip club.

I didn't drink and I had zero interest in strippers, and very little actual work was done because no one could hear anyone over the volume of the music and conversations going on at other tables. I put up with it a couple of times. Then, I was pulled over just as I pulled out of the parking lot after one of these strip club meetings.

Since they didn't even allege that I had violated any traffic laws, I guess the assumption was that anyone leaving the strip club was likely to be drunk. Indeed, they made me go through a field sobriety test, although I had been drinking diet cokes all night. That was embarrassing, particularly considering that everyone who actually was drunk was passing by.

I was a Christian at the time, but I wasn't a particularly strong Christian, so it wasn't so much that I objected to the practice on religious grounds. When our international representative or someone from the national UPIU was visiting, I could see taking him out, as a way of getting to know one another. But when it was just the executive committee from the Local Union, we knew each other; we didn't need to bond.

After the second time, I objected to the strip club meetings. I told them I didn't even care if they wanted to go out to the club after the meeting and charge their drink to the Union if that was what it was all about, as long as they didn't conduct any actual business outside of the meeting.

There wasn't much of an argument about it, except for the anticipated stuff about how they had always done it that way. Maybe it was a long tradition among those who worked at the box plant, but I was elected to the committee in the second year that we were unionized. They did go out to the club sometimes after meetings, but I wasn't the only one who didn't, and they were paying for their own drinks.

If there were any hard feelings, they didn't make their way down to the rank and file because I was elected vice president of our Local the following year and kept that position until they closed our plant. Then we started holding our executive meetings before the regular meeting, which made more sense.

 

I had considered that refusing to do that would hurt my standing among the others on the executive committee, but then I wasn't particularly interested in moving my way up in the Union anyhow. I only ran because the people who were elected the first year were doing things stupidly. As it turned out, as far as I know, I was the only one from our plant who was offered a job with the Union, which I've spoken about elsewhere in the forum.

 

I tried that, at the state level.