Historical Road Marker Request

 Name:                         Garrett County Road Worker Strike of 1970

General location:     State Rte. 135 (Maryland Highway) near 2008 Maryland Highway- office of Garrett County Roads Department, Mountain Lake Park, Md. 21550

Classification:          Event

Proposed Text:

“Garrett County Road Worker Strike of 1970”

 On April 7, 1970, 139 employees of the Garrett County Roads Department went on strike asking the Garrett County Commission to recognize their affiliation with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). After months of active involvement by citizens, including members of the clergy and political leaders, the strike was settled on November 19, 1970. It was the longest public worker strike in U.S. history

Significance:

Garrett County is the second-largest county in Maryland, located entirely within the Appalachian mountain range, which includes the highest mountain in Maryland (Backbone Mountain.)

The Garrett County Roads Department is responsible for maintaining approximately 680 roads and 127 bridges. These county employees design, manage and construct the roads, bridges and associated structures. They work out of garages in Oakland, Accident and Grantsville.

Garrett County receives an average of 106 inches of snow each winter, creating dangerous challenges for roads employees clearing snow and long days repairing damage in the spring.

Historically, road workers in Garrett County were selected for employment directly by the county’s commissioners. The commissioners didn’t require a long probationary period to find the most suitable employees. Most were already known within the tight communities of the county for their work ethic and skill as farmers, loggers, coal miners, construction workers or employees of nearby factories, like the paper mill in Luke, Maryland or a number of others, like Kelly Springfield Tire Co. in neighboring Allegany County.

For the last several months, I have been interviewing veteran road workers and their managers, with the goal of publishing a book about their work and their strike next year, on its 50^th anniversary. Many of the county roots of the men and women I have interviewed date back to the 1800s.

Calvin “Leo” Rinker’s son, Terry, told me how his dad was hired by the roads department in 1958 after returning home, a combat veteran, wounded during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. Leo Rinker tried farming and then worked at the Celanese textile mill in neighboring Allegany County before applying for work on the county roads. The pay was low, but, said Terry, Leo Rinker didn’t mind hard work and he knew he and his co-workers could improve their lot, said his son.

The year before Rinker’s hiring, on January 30, 1957, representatives of the newly formed Garrett County Road Employee’s Association met with the county commissioners. They presented a constitution and bylaws of the association to the commissioners for approval. They proposed a nine-hour, five-day week with pay equivalent to their current six-day week. They also requested a seniority system and additional vacation days and holidays. On April 28, 1958, the road workers and commissioners reached a settlement of their issues.

For the next 11, years, the employee’s association and the commissioners met periodically and reached settlements.

In 1969, road workers were still intent upon establishing a seniority system and winning pay for overtime in lieu of comp time. In the hopes of gaining more leverage and support, they voted in favor of merging their association into the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

In March 1970, the workers requested formal recognition of AFSCME from Garrett County’s board of commissioners. The commissioners, contending they had an agreement with the Garrett County Road Employee’s Association (reached in June 1968) that did not expire until July 1970, refused to grant recognition.

139 of 144 road workers went on strike on April 7, 1970, demanding the commissioners recognize their union.

Two of three county commissioners, John Ross Sines and Hubert Friend, gave the striking workers until April 13 to return to work or be terminated. The workers stayed out and were fired.

During the next eight months, until the settlement of the strike on Nov.19, members of the surrounding community engaged in unprecedented civic activity that was widely covered and editorialized in the Baltimore Sun and two Garrett County newspapers, The Republican, founded in 1877, published by the Sincell family, and in The Citizen, founded in 1961 by Virginia Rosenbaum of Allegany County that carried comprehensive stories and 29 banner headlines.

On April 20, nine ministers from the Mountaintop Ministerial Association met with the county commissioners offering to help mediate the conflict. They were rebuffed.

On July 27, Gov. Marvin Mandel offered to supply a mediator to help the parties reach agreement and settle the strike. The commissioners refused mediation.

Numerous citizens appeared before the commission at successive meetings urging for recognition of the union and settlement of the strike.

Caravans of union supporters arrived from Baltimore with food and clothing for the strikers. The strike continued.

As the start of the school year and winter approached, both The Republican and The Citizen, in editorials, urged the parties to reach a compromise and get crews back on the roads.

Strikers and their families went door-to-door urging their fellow citizens and others in their churches and community organizations to vote for candidates who pledged to recognize the union.

On Election Day, three Democrats replace the three Republican Garrett County commissioners in a county that has never voted for a Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

On November 19, the three incoming commissioners, Wayne Hamilton, Bernard Guy and Earl Opel, signed a memorandum with members of AFSCME Local 1834 offering to rehire striking road workers and recognize their union, contingent upon another formal vote by road workers to choose AFSCME as their bargaining agent.

The end of the strike ushered in a period of atypical calm for such a heated clash. There were no reported conflicts between strikers and non-strikers or managers on the job once they returned to work. Even at its height, the closeness of the community and its families lent an air of civility to most interactions between people on both sides of the strike. Leo Rinker, for instance, was one of the most active strikers, later elected president of Local 1834. His brother-in-law was W. Dwight Stover, an attorney who represented the county commission and sued the union. But Terry Rinker remembers no animosity between the two at family picnics and gatherings.

“Garrett County is a laid back place. People keep their thoughts to themselves. We were raised that way,” says Leo Miller, 82, who served as a representative in the Garrett County Road Employee’s Association, participated in the strike and retired as a supervisor in the Grantsville garage. Miller still maintains a cattle farm, rising at 4:30 a.m. each day. “Seems like nobody held a grudge [after the strike],” says Jim Fike, 82, another striker and supervisor.

Many Garrett County residents I have interviewed agree with another Garrett County native, a nationally-recognized social services expert, who says the political changes of 1970, a direct consequence of the civic engagement that accompanied the strike, were an impetus for the adoption of new programs and new perspectives on economic development and other challenges that have survived the test of time in the county.

Riding around Garrett County and Deep Creek Lake, the state’s largest lake, one might not imagine that it was once the home of the longest public worker strike in U.S. history, a strike reported on in the Washington Post, the New York Times and Newsweek. There has not been a strike in Garrett County since 1970 and roads workers and other public employees have constructive, healthy relationships with the county board of commissioners, its chairman Paul Edwards and vice chairmen, James Hinebaugh and Larry Tichnell.

The lessons of history are important. So are the struggles of working families in our communities. Next year will mark the 50^th anniversary of this unique Maryland labor event. It deserves to be commemorated with a state highway historical marker.

Download: Garrett County Road Workers Strike letters

(PHOTO CREDIT: Maryland Historical Trust)