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NEWS & LETTERS, JUNE 2003
A fitting tribute to a worker's life
Please accept this contribution to your appeal in memory
of my father, Paul Kelch (1917-2003), who died last month. As I said at his
memorial, Dad was something of a hero to me, although "heroic" is the
last way he would have characterized himself. In fact, he was one of the most
self-effacing human beings I've known. There were three aspects of his life that especially
speak to me in these troubled times. At the start of WWII, Dad was eager to sign
up, but seeing the horrors of war he became a soldier who threw his gun in the
river and never wanted anyone close to him to have anything to do with war. After the war, he was a strong union supporter for 30
years in UAW Local 212 at Chrysler in Michigan, especially in enforcing health
and safety rules. This was the period when the union movement was a force in
tremendously expanding access to education and health care that my generation
grew to take for granted and is in mortal danger now. Finally, Dad's unionism was as a rank-and-filer who
didn't hesitate to go against the union. He was one of the leaders of a wildcat
strike against the introduction of time-study. This was the beginning of the now
pervasive use of computer technology that lords it over truckers. (See
"Chrysler truckers wildcat against time-study tyranny" June-July 1970
NEWS & LETTERS.) Those three moments--opposition to war, worker
solidarity, and a struggle for genuine democracy in our everyday working
lives--reveal a direction that is the opposite of our world of permanent war and
terror. --Ron Kelch |
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