Garrett County (Md.) Road Workers Strike of 1970

BY LEN SHINDEL

April 7, 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of a pivotal event in the history of Garrett County, Md.  On that day in 1970, 139 workers in the Garrett County Roads Department commenced a strike demanding Garrett County’s Board of Commissioners recognize their affiliation with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).  One week later, two of the three county commissioners voted to fire the striking workers, bringing maintenance of 700 miles of roads—many still unpaved—to a halt.

            The conflict, the longest public worker strike in U.S. history, lasted more than seven months. It led to a virtual political revolution in Garrett County that moved citizens, who to this day have never voted for a Democrat for president, to oust three Republican commissioners and elect three Democrats. The new commissioners immediately recognized AFSCME Local 1834 and rehired all of the striking workers before Christmas of that year.

            In early 2019, a determined group of Garrett County residents launched an effort to win a state historical road marker to commemorate the struggle. 

            In January 2020, the State of Maryland Historical Trust approved the request. For the past several months, this writer has collected oral histories from roads strikers and community residents about the conflict.

 

Memphis Sanitation Strike Spurs National Organizing

The Memphis sanitation strike of 1968, that pivotal clash of race and class, had thrust the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees into the national limelight. In the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, AFSCME organizers were winning battles across the U.S. to affiliate their union with hundreds of local associations of public workers.

In 1969, three Garrett County roads department workers went to the Western Maryland Central Labor Council’s office in Cumberland, Allegany County.  Members of the Garrett County Road Employees’ Association, formed in 1957, they met with organizers from AFSCME to begin planning a campaign for affiliation.

County roads workers, like Leo Miller of Jennings, born to a farming family, were happy to have a feisty international union take up the battle cry.

After completing Army service in Germany during the Korean War, Miller returned briefly to Garrett County, but soon headed for Cleveland where he worked, for a time in unionized industrial plants. Leaving the big city behind, Miller returned to Garrett County. While still working the family farm, he was hired in 1966 by the roads department as a truck driver. Soon he was elected as a representative of the Garrett County Road Employees’ Association, represented by attorney Jack Turney, later a district court and orphan’s court judge.

Despite signing successive three-year agreements, by 1969, many of the association’s original goals were still unmet. They included a seniority system and pay, instead of “compensatory time” for the overtime hours workers stacked up in the often treacherous plowing of the county’s deep snows. Despite regular increases, pay was so low that many of the road workers could have qualified for food stamps.

Sworn to secrecy about the Cumberland meeting, the three road workers went back home to enlist Miller and others like John Filsinger, hired in 1955, a founding officer of the road employees’ association, in a campaign to affiliate the association with AFSCME.

Filsinger, a son of German immigrants who grew up on a farm in a family of 10, was recruited to the roads department for his widely respected mechanical ability. “My daddy was always about being fair; about fair pay,” said his daughter, Deb Frantz.

Garrett County Commissioners Oppose Recognition

In March1970, four representatives of the roads workers met with the three Garrett County Commissioners, Hubert Friend, John Ross Sines and Allen S. Paugh, asking them to recognize AFSCME as the official bargaining agent of the workforce. The association’s latest agreement was due to expire in June 1970.

Commissioner John “Ross” Sines, 38, a farmer, the son of Pine Grove Church of the Brethren Minister Jonas Sines, refused to recognize AFSCME, citing the commission’s current agreement with the association.

Elected to the commission in 1965 after a door-to-door campaign in the thinly settled county, Sines, then 33-years-old, had promised to keep taxes low, even opposing investing county money to build Garrett Community College.

“I met a woman [back then] whose car got hung up on an (unpaved) road,” said Sines.  “I asked her if she wanted a college or the road paved,” says Sines. He acknowledged that workers in private industry, like his brother and other relatives, who worked at Bethlehem Steel’s plant at Sparrows Point near Baltimore, had the right to form unions. But Sines believed unions should have no place in the public sector. He says the county’s leading businessmen and bankers, who opposed unions in their enterprises, supported his stand.

Still farming at 87, Sines expresses pride in his record maintaining the county’s roads. “I didn’t expect to get any thanks,” says Sines, who said he could have qualified for food stamps like the strikers. He volunteered his time to plow snow during heavy storms, installed a new clutch in a truck and traveled east to pick up a blacktop machine in Glen Burnie, Md.

Sines found an ally in his opposition to AFSCME in Hubert Friend, 61, the commission’s president, also a farmer. That left Allen S. “Dick” Paugh Sr., also a farmer, at odds with his fellow commissioners. Paugh was a strong supporter of Garrett College, Community Action, the county’s new social service program, and supported union recognition.

Strike!

            On April 7, Garrett County’s road workers set up picket lines at county garages in Oakland, Grantsville, Accident and the county’s quarry at Sang Run, demanding the commissioners reverse their opposition to recognition.

By majority vote, the commissioners advised strikers they would be fired if they did not return to the job by April 13.  All but 13 of the workers refused the back-to-work order. The refusal set in motion a confrontation that turned the quiet county—until then so different from neighboring Allegany County and its more dominant organized labor tradition—into a union battleground more like the United Mine Workers turf in Harlan County, Ky.

Strikers’ wives played an important role in the struggle from its inception. They joined their husbands in a march around the courthouse in Oakland on the very day they were ordered to return to work.

Kitzmiller resident Donna Evans, wife of striker Rodger Evans, from coal miners’ families, joined the support activities. “Our whole family supported us [during the strike]. I knew some of the road worker’s families before the strike. I got to know more during the strike,” said Mrs. Evans, who, four years later, began working at Garrett Manufacturing Co. in Deer Park, as a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

Court Injunction Resisted

            The county’s attorney, W. Dwight Stover, persuaded Circuit Court Judge Stuart Hamill to issue a Show Cause Order to the union by May 15. The union responded by appealing the discharge of the road employees as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

As the potholes grew wider, so did the tension between the commissioners, the strikers and residents who wanted some labor peace and uninterrupted roadwork by crews who also built the county’s bridges.

Local newspapers, the county’s venerable The Republican, founded in 1871, and the upstart The Citizen, published by Virginia Rosenbaum, an Allegany County-based surveyor known later for her campaign against fluoridated water, provided extensive news stories and opinions on the shocking polarization roiling the county.  Both papers carried syndicated columns by rightist and segregationist writers, yet took very different positions on the strike.

The Republican criticized the intransigence of the commissioners, but      also cautioned against giving AFSCME “union shop” status where all workers would be “coerced” to join the union and levied blame on the union for individual workers who threatened violence if they were not rehired. The paper printed long letters to the editor, several from former State Sen. Clifford Friend, opposing the strike, letters by strike supporters, and full-page ads purchased by the union.

The Citizen lambasted Sines and Friend for opposing the union, even suggesting a taxpayer revolt because the commissioners were still paying a handful of workers who refused to strike, while the strike itself kept them from going to work on the roads.

On April 27, strikers, their wives, and supporters conducted a sit-in at the Garrett County Courthouse. Board of Commissioner Chairman Friend called Sheriff James E. Frantz to clear his office so Friend could leave. A Baltimore AFSCME representative was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Judge Hamill prohibited the strikers from picketing on county property. AFSCME responded with a 62-car caravan of through Oakland, filled with local union members and supporters from Baltimore and other cities on the route west.

Controversy Stirs With Black Support

            Garrett County, near totally white, had a reputation as a place wary of outsiders of all colors. Oakland attorney Tom Doyle recalls the prevalence of “revert-back” clauses in land instruments that prevented the sale of properties, including former church buildings, to black people.

Against this history, the appearance of numbers of black AFSCME members from Baltimore in the caravan and, later—during a confrontational juncture of the strike—was opportunistically seized upon, not just by opponents of the strike, but by The Citizen as well.

In her May 7 issue, Rosenbaum wrote: “The appearance of the Negroes had a dampening effect on trade in Oakland…It’s been reported that the blacks found Deep Creek Lake very attractive…The [commissioners] will be pleased to learn that they have opened up a new source of vacation money for Garrett County.”

Community Engagement Intensifies

Local citizens began showing up at Commissioner meetings to complain about the worsening condition of roads. One citizen, Michael Phillippi, brought an automobile repair bill, asking the commissioners to pay for his damages.

Several members of the Mountain Top Ministerial Association, led by Thomas Crogan and James F. Remley, met with the commissioners offering to help mediate the dispute. Sines told them to go about “saving souls” and leave the county’s labor problems to the commissioners. Still other groups and individuals showed up at the Commission, opposing the strike, supporting the hiring of replacement workers.

Donations of money, food and clothing rolled in. Md. Gov. Marvin Mandel and Sen. Joseph Tydings sent checks to help the strikers.

Tom Bernard, a lifelong Republican and real estate agent provided a building for strikers (across from today’s Wal-Mart on Rte. 219) to distribute food and clothes. “Some of the roads workers asked if they could use the place,” says Bernard. “I wasn’t a union supporter, but I was a Christian. I said, just use it,” said Bernard.

Dave Beard, vice-president of the Garrett County American Federation of Teachers, who later served as a county commissioner says, “We [teachers] supported the roads strikers. We brought them hot chocolate and pizzas and spoke with them. They were out in the cold. We built rapport.”

“Solidarity was a word I heard a lot around the house,” says Terry Rinker, the son of Calvin “Leo” Rinker, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge who was active in the strike and later elected president of Local 1834. Rinker remembers his father forming close friendships with a multiracial group of AFSCME members and leaders as he deepened his involvement.

Battle of Opinions

The strike’s supporters and opponents battled on the newspapers’ opinion pages. Former State Sen. Clifford Friend, in a letter to The Republican, said: “Once the Union is designated as a bargaining unit for the men, the Union officers could call strikes because some worthless fellow had been demoted or fired.”

The union, in a full-page ad in The Republican, signed by134 strikers, wrote: “We are asking for the same right that tens of thousands of public employees in this State already have … We could have called this strike two months ago when the snows were heavy … We are striking when our strike does not have a harmful effect on the entire county. Please give us the same understanding and consideration that we have shown for you.”

Dynamite

In June, the Washington Post carried a headline “Dynamitings Heighten Tension in Garrett County Road Strike.” The story reported on explosions on property of two commissioners—Sines’ driveway—the fence around Friends’ farm and on two of the county’s bridges. The bridge crossing Cherry Creek, near the intersection of State Park Rd. and Rock Lodge Rd., had been under reconstruction and was destroyed. Striking member Paul Cosner was sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty to dynamiting Friends’ fence.

Strikebreaking Fails

On July 2, The Citizen reported that commissioners had unsuccessfully attempted to entice a private contractor to conduct road maintenance. On June 25, the commissioners ran an ad in The Republican seeking 83 workers to replace the strikers.

On August 4, Sines and Friend secured a bus to carry the newly hired strikebreakers through the picket lines. AFSCME members, including reinforcements from Baltimore, flattened tires and broke the windshield of the bus, parked in Oakland’s city lot, near Englander’s.

David Ettlin, a cub reporter for the Baltimore Sun, followed the county commissioners, police officials and the strikebreakers to a meeting at First National Bank after the incident. He and other reporters gathered, their ears against the door of the meeting room. He said he heard someone loudly excoriating the police for not making any arrests in the vandalizing of the bus. “Why did you let those N— on the bus? We don’t have any N— in this county,” asked the voice behind the door, says Ettlin.  Sines says he doesn’t remember the meeting. But, when asked why the strike lasted for more than seven months, he blamed AFSCME support from Baltimore’s Council 67 for prolonging the strike.

Sines rejected Paugh’s requests to ask for state mediation of the strike, blaming Gov. Mandel for prolonging the conflict. He says, “I called the governor’s office and talked to Mandel. I yelled and said if there’s any bloodshed, it’s on your hands.”

On August 24, AFSCME’s then well-known International President, Jerry Wurf, visited the picket lines and met with the county commissioners. Wurf offered to submit the dispute to arbitration. His offer was rejected.

The conflict moved more decisively into the county’s political arena. The union proposed a slate of commissioner candidates for each party’s primary who, they contended, would settle the labor dispute. Hubert Friend decided not to stand for re-election. Sines and Paugh contended.

On Sept. 3, strikers with children were deemed eligible for financial assistance by the state. Beverly Beard was working at the Garrett County Welfare Board. She says, “I’m 5 feet tall. I weighed 100 pounds. They [strikers applying for welfare] were big guys. I was terrified to death. They were getting bad publicity in town. But they were nice.”

Strikers relied upon family members and sought work to survive the strike. “My parents had beef cattle. They saw that we had meat,” says Mable Butler of Jennings, wife of deceased striker Berman Butler.

“I worked construction with [fellow striker] Ray Artice,” says Troy Wakefield, hired only two months before the strike. “We put in a sewage line at Deep Creek State Park. “The union was good to me. The union made one payment on my house and a couple smaller ones.”

The Citizen reported on Sept. 17 that Garrett County’s 52 percent turnout for the primary was the highest in the nation. Sines and Paugh were defeated. Asked why he ran for re-election considering the anger he faced for not fixing potholes for eight months, Sines says: “I wanted to take Dick Paugh with me [to defeat].”

In November, three Democrats, Wayne Hamilton, Bernard Guy and Earl Opel were elected as county commissioners. A few weeks later, they signed a tentative agreement settling the strike, recognizing the union, agreeing to rehire all strikers and improving overtime pay and seniority provisions.

Many county residents from that era see the strike as a turning point, not just for the road workers, but also for the county. Leo Miller says: “I think the strike was good for the county. After the strike things settled down, it kind of had an uplifting effect [on wages and the economy].

Garrett County roads workers have not seen any strikes since 1970. A few years after the strike, they elected Cathy Lyons, a Kitzmiller native, the sole woman on their crew, president of Local 1834. Lyons had previously been denied an interview by the county and filed a gender discrimination complaint to win her hiring. AFSCME assigned John Gates, a black former backhoe operator on Cumberland’s roads, as a staff representative to work with Lyons and local members. Despite these progressive steps, Garrett County still does not enjoy state-sanctioned, countywide collective bargaining.

Duane Yoder, the internationally recognized president of Garrett County Community Action, says: “The shift in the political situation [after the strike] created the [county’s] first strategic planning effort. I can’t imagine that change happening without the dramatic change [the strike precipitated]. The county commission soon returned to Republican dominance. But the new leaders were more supportive of Garrett College and more willing to invest in tourism, the arts, culture and economic development.

“The homogeneity of Garrett County retards our progress,” says Yoder. The strike is, he says, an example of the axiom that, “You create change by creating turmoil.”

That turmoil was only lightly felt in county garages after the strikers returned to work alongside those who refused to strike and new hires. After his return from prison, Cosner, now 78, apologized to Sines and Friend for his actions.

Several of the strikers agree with Sines that the county’s asphalt plant should never have been contracted out to Keystone Paving Co.

Today a road on Garrett College’s campus is named for Allen S. Paugh Sr.. Sines visited Paugh in the hospital before his death in 1986.

Recently Sines paid another visit to Sheldon Whitacre, a strike participant, now confined to an Oakland nursing home.

Whitacre’s wife, Nadine, now 73, recalls supporting the strikers at the Garrett County Courthouse until her then three-year-old son “got rowdy.”         “[Ross] Sines was set in his ways. But, so was I,” she said. “I can’t hold anything against Ross. He stood up for what he believed in.”

 

• A dedication ceremony will be held on Friday, April 24th at 11:00 a.m. during the unveiling of the historic road marker commemorating the 1970 Garrett County Road Workers Strike. The ceremony will take place on Rte. 135 outside the Garrett County Roads Department Administrative offices (2008 Maryland Highway). A luncheon will follow the ceremony. Please RSVP to lshindel3@comcast.net.

 

• A discussion on the strike will be held on Wednesday, May 6^th at 6:00 P.M. at the Ruth Enlow Library in Oakland.