Subseries: Doherty, Ken J.

INTRODUCTION

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
Scope and Content Note: Born in La Crosse. Worked in a small Kroger store while in high school and vocational school.

DESCRIPTION OF KROGER STORE WHERE DOHERTY WORKED WHILE IN SCHOOL
Scope and Content Note: Small store on the north side of La Crosse. No electric refrigeration; cake ice kept butter and eggs cool. Everything in bulk; bagged sugar, dates, coffee. Coffee ground for each customer. Waited on customers. Kept produce fresh overnight by laying wet towels on it. Worked six days a week, including much night work when items were readied for the next day and bulk items were broken down. Two windows on either side of the entrance were used for display, one for produce and the other for canned goods. Often would find the canned goods display tumbled down overnight because a truck had roared past.

DESCRIPTION OF KOLLER STORE DOHERTY ALSO WORKED FOR WHILE IN SCHOOL
Scope and Content Note: Joe Koller had a small chain of about five stores, a larger one of which Doherty later worked in. No charge for deliveries, so many deliveries. “Sometimes you'd no more than get back from a delivery and they'd call up and want a dozen eggs they forgot. So you'd have to go out again.” Full-service and everything in bulk. Store very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.

HOURS OF WORK AT KROGER AND KOLLER (1934 TO 1936)
Scope and Content Note: Was taking only one class in high school while working at Kroger, and he and the manager were the only employees, so worked long hours. Store open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., but he would work past 6 p.m. Open until 9 p.m. on Fridays. At Koller he worked fewer hours because he was attending vocational school. Worked after school and on Saturdays. Both stores were closed Sundays.

WAGES AT KROGER
Scope and Content Note: Made a dollar a day for 11 to 13 hours' work. At Koller he earned 20 cents an hour. “I always figure that working by the hour is better for anybody; then they don't abuse you by making you stay too long.”

BOOKKEEPING, CHECKING OUT, AND CREDIT AT KROGER
Scope and Content Note: “Everything was more or less done in just a cheap five-cent tablet and a pencil that probably cost two cents. No typewriters, no adding machines.” Customer orders were tallied on a pad, and the total rung up. No one ever checked the addition. Because of the Depression, everyone wanted to charge their purchases, which was not allowed by the Kroger Company. The manager, however, had to permit credit in order to maintain business. He would write charges on the wall in the back room; and, when the account was settled, that charge would be scratched off the wall. Because of the hard times, “you really got gyped out of lots and lots of money.” One store on the north side of La Crosse supposedly lost $20,000. “Everybody lost money.” Doherty's Kroger store was a little more fortunate than some others because it had not been in business too long and did not remain at the same location very long.

KROGER MANAGER MADE $19 A WEEK; HIS WIFE WORKED ON BUSY DAYS

KEEPING PRODUCE FRESH IN THE 1930s
Scope and Content Note: Carried only the basic items--carrots, cabbage, radishes, celery, lettuce, oranges, lemons, grapefruit. Sprinkled with cold tap water hourly. A more advanced store in La Crosse had pipes in the produce rack which sprayed a cold mist 24 hours a day. In the summer, produce would keep for only about one day. If anything was left at the end of the day, it would be sold for half price the next day. Only small quantities were ordered, and small quantities--maybe a half dozen of each item during the week and a dozen and a half on the weekend--were purchased.

KROGER MANAGER MADE DELIVERIES EVEN THOUGH HE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO
Scope and Content Note: “You were continually going out of your way doing favors.”

DELIVERIES TO THE KROGER STORE
Scope and Content Note: Two or three times a week at night from Madison. Truck driver had a key and unloaded items into the store.

KEEPING PRODUCE FRESH BETWEEN DELIVERIES
Scope and Content Note: Some vegetables would keep if they were simply kept out of sunlight; other produce kept on ice in large galvanized cans.

SIDEWALK DISPLAYS
Scope and Content Note: Every morning some merchandise was put out on the sidewalk under the awning. “You sold just as much stuff right off the sidewalk as you sold in the store.” Summer items included fruit, grocery items on sale, chicken feed and salt blocks. Winter items included frozen hog parts, lutefisk, herring, smoked carp, and chickens farmers brought in. These things had to be placed high enough so that dogs running loose could not get at them.

MEAT IN GROCERY STORES IN THE 1930s
Scope and Content Note: Bologna, hot dogs and cold cuts, but not much else. Most meat was sold through meat markets. “Everything was separated in them days.... Everybody else is infringing on everybody else's business now.”

BARTER WITH FARMERS
Scope and Content Note: Farmers would bring in meat they had butchered and dressed, and the store would give them an IOU from which was subtracted grocery purchases. In the summer, farmers would bring in apples and cucumbers.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION OF THE OPERATION OF KOLLER STORE
Scope and Content Note: Much like the Kroger store. Manager would pick up fresh items in the morning at the main store in the chain. There was a store manager, a meat cutter, Doherty, and another person who handled deliveries. Everyone did everyone else's work when busy. Mostly men worked in stores then. Koller had a fresh meat counter, about seven or eight feet long. Refrigeration was too expensive and unreliable, so ice was used for cooling.

INVENTORY AT KROGER
Scope and Content Note: Someone from the Kroger Company came in quarterly. “You tried awful hard to have this money that people owed you on the back wall... cleared up.”

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

ORDERING AND STOCKING AT KROGER AND KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: There was no back-room storage; everything had to be on the shelves. Did not have to order full cases. “There was very little bookwork, and everything was done, you might say, right off the cuff.” Carried two or three cases in at a time and put the items right on the shelves. No price marking; prices were posted on the shelf below each item.

PRICING AT KROGER
Scope and Content Note: Customers were always comparing Kroger prices to A & P. Price changes, however, had to be approved by the district supervisor.

STORES OFTEN BOUGHT LARGE QUANTITIES BECAUSE PEOPLE WOULD BUY LARGE QUANTITIES FOR CANNING
Scope and Content Note: Some even canned meat. Some meat smoked, some hung out to freeze during the winter.

MORE BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
Scope and Content Note: Father owned a couple farms, one of which Doherty lived on until he was five. Father then moved to La Crosse to work in the rubber mill. Studied woodworking at vocational school but had no particular aim other than to get a job. Went to work for the Sweet Shop in 1936. “A steady job...was better than a high school education.”

PRESERVING EGGS DURING THE WINTER
Scope and Content Note: People would store up to thirty dozen eggs in “glass” in their fruit cellars. The yolks might “start flattening out a little bit...or break,” but the eggs did keep for the winter.

WORK AT THE SWEET SHOP
Scope and Content Note: Went to work there in 1936 and learned the ice cream and candy making business. Paid $8 a week and was promised he would have the opportunity to buy the business, but the owners never retired. Served three years in the Army beginning in 1942. At the Sweet Shop, made candy and ice cream all day and worked in the confectionery at night.

WENT TO WORK IN THE PRODUCE DEPARTMENT OF THE MAIN KOLLER STORE IN 1948
Scope and Content Note: Koller Super Market had been sold to Ernie Grindler, and a friend of Doherty was assistant manager. He accepted their offer of employment because it meant more money, fewer hours, working only one night a week, and no holiday work. This was his first supermarket experience. The Sweet Shop owners tried to get him to return, but he refused; was married and had a child by this time. He did all the produce department work, but, at first, that was not enough to account for a full-time job since people still preferred canned to fresh produce. Thus, he also worked the dairy and frozen food sections.

PRODUCE TRAINING
Scope and Content Note: Mostly on-the-job training, though he did go to produce school in Milwaukee for three days. Also, a trailer travelled the state and would set up near a produce wholesaler (in La Crosse, it was A.J. Sweet) and use that wholesaler's produce to demonstrate how to set up a produce rack, how to trim and package vegetables, how to fill produce racks to their best advantage, etc.

DISPLAYING PRODUCE
Scope and Content Note: Mirrors on the back of the rack. “You'd stand back a little ways, and you'd have your vegetables all in front of this mirror and then you looked back in the mirror, and, gosh, it looked like you had a rack in there that was about 20 foot long.... It really looked beautiful.” Some stores would use colored lights in addition to mirrors to improve the appearance of the produce. Colors of fruits and vegetables were mixed. “Ribbon-like display.” Some, for a while, had no mirrors, but rather open spaces so the racks could be filled from behind without getting in the way of customers. This did not work out very well, however, because it narrowed the aisles, and also produce would be stored behind the racks, making it difficult to get at the rack. Cleanliness, freshness, and attractive displays were important. “Attractiveness would always sell merchandise.” Rotation, though this was sometimes defeated by people who would dig to the bottom in order to get at the fresher items. Rotation at least once a day.

THE ARRIVAL OF SELF-SERVICE
Scope and Content Note: The Koller store Doherty worked in was remodelled before he came and was the first self-service supermarket in La Crosse. In the early days of self-service, the shelves were high, and customers had to use “claws” attached to a long handle to reach the high items. Clerks would do this for elderly customers.

END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

TRUCKLOAD BUYING OF PRODUCE AT THE LARGE KOLLER STORE
Scope and Content Note: In the late 1940s, people still did considerable canning, so the store would often purchase in large quantities, like 500 crates of peaches to be sold at 99 cents a crate for a weekend sale, Potatoes also. For a few dollars, the trucker would leave his trailer for a week, and the produce would be sold right out of the trailer. Koller store was located on a busy street, and people would see the sign and the trailer and pull in.

STOCKING AT THE LARGE KOLLER STORE
Scope and Content Note: Had a chute to the basement storage area, so trucks could be unloaded right into the basement. Stocking of shelves was done during the day because there were not many customers, and they did not mind stocking going on while they shopped. Today most stocking is done at night.

LAYOUT OF THE LARGE KOLLER STORE
Scope and Content Note: Hard items first and soft items, like bakery and produce, at the end. To minimize shoplifting losses, small, expensive items like cigarettes were up near the checkouts. Had three checkouts, though the third one used only at busy times.

CHECKER-STOCKERS AT KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: During slow periods, checkers would stock or clean near the checkouts.

DOHERTY INSTALLED LA CROSSE'S FIRST FULLY SELF-SERVICE PRODUCE DEPARTMENT
Scope and Content Note: He did this in the early 1950s shortly after seeing the demonstrations in the trailer which had stopped near the A.J. Sweet Company. “My boss didn't even tell me to.... I guess I surprised him even.” Everything was pre-packaged and priced, and the scales were removed from the produce department. Some things could be purchased by the store already pre-packaged.

CUSTOMER REACTION TO ARRIVAL OF SELF-SERVICE
Scope and Content Note: Negative at first. Many men refused to use shopping carts, referring to them as “baby carriages.”

MORE ON INSTALLATION OF SELF-SERVICE PRODUCE DEPARTMENT AT KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: Customers did not like the idea, fearing they would get one or two bad items in a package of ten. To combat this, the store put up a sign in the department and also advertised in the newspaper that any rotten produce item could be returned and exchanged for two items of the same kind. Managers from other stores would bring in their produce heads to see Doherty's department and talk about it with him. In general, managers resisted the change, but the change was inevitable since, eventually, produce arrived at the store already pre-packaged.

MORE ON PRE-PACKAGING--PRODUCE AND MEAT
Scope and Content Note: Pre-packaging of meat came after pre-packaging of produce. Where once there were 50 meat markets in La Crosse, today there are only two. Individual customer preferences were still serviced, however. If someone did not want a whole bag of oranges, the bag would be broken up for them. The advantages to the store of pre-packaging were it cut down on the number of people needed to wait on customers, it made rotation easier, and items of lesser quality could be mixed in with better quality items thereby cutting down on shrinkage. If customers tore open bags themselves, they would have to return to the produce department to have the items priced since checkers knew only the bag prices.

MALE SHOPPERS
Scope and Content Note: Prior to self-service, some produce was pre-bagged because men shoppers did not want to take the time to select and bag their items. “It was really a lot more fun to wait on men than it was women, for that reason, because they didn't really take you to task on everything.... They just grabbed it.”

MAJOR CHANGES DURING DOHERTY'S 20 YEARS WITH KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: “We tried to go along with the times as much as possible....” Small line of self-service meat put in to provide customers with a choice. Self-service produce. Combining dry rack items with refrigerated rack items so that entire produce department, except for island displays of sale items, was refrigerated.

THE “MARK-DOWN TABLE” IN THE PRODUCE DEPARTMENT
Scope and Content Note: Contained produce which had started to spoil and was reworked. Many customers on fixed incomes shopped this table. Koller store was closed Sundays, so a couple of hours before closing on Saturday, both produce and meat departments would begin marking down items which would not keep over Sunday. Many people were aware of this and took advantage of it. The “mark-down table” was necessary in order to maintain a clean produce department. Doherty insisted it be kept away from the better produce and out of the flow of traffic; its regular customers were always able to find it. Usually everything on this table was half price or less. Very important that items on this table clearly marked as being reduced in price so that customers could not complain of the inferior quality.

DOHERTY WORKED AT KOLLER ABOUT A YEAR BEFORE BECOMING PRODUCE HEAD

END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

DOHERTY'S DAY AS PRODUCE MANAGER
Scope and Content Note: Vegetables covered the night before with cellophane or towels to hold in coolness. First thing in the morning, remove those covers and begin working on green vegetables. “When the greens look bad, the whole store looks bad.” Clean out wilted green vegetables and replace with good merchandise. “I think a person just automatically started at the lettuce every morning; seemed like that's the most important vegetable....”

IMPULSE BUYING
Scope and Content Note: “The big four” of the produce rack are lettuce, celery, carrots and cabbage. They made more sales than all the rest of the vegetables. Usually they were placed at the head of the rack, but sometimes at the end in order to force customers to shop the whole rack, thereby picking up some impulse sales. Doherty used to pick up shopping lists dropped in his department and compare them to what people actually bought. He concluded that 90% of the customers were impulse buyers. People made impulse purchases because of cleanliness, quality, freshness and display.

CONTINUATION OF DESCRIPTION OF DOHERTY'S DAY AS PRODUCE MANAGER
Scope and Content Note: Once things were set up for the day, most of the rest of the day was spent making sure rack was fresh, clean and well supplied. When the rack was all set, worked on trimming and packaging vegetables. This done throughout the day. About noon, racks restocked, but not necessarily rotated. Back to packaging until about 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. at which time restocking was done to prepare for the evening when there usually were no produce clerks on duty.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN PRODUCE AND MEAT DEPARTMENTS
Scope and Content Note: Packaging all day long in the meat department also. Meat had only a skeleton crew at night. Because of strict health regulations, much cleaning necessary in the meat department.

CONTINUATION OF DESCRIPTION OF DOHERTY'S DAY AS PRODUCE MANAGER
Scope and Content Note: Department cleaned at closing time, and those items which could not survive an unair-conditioned night were put in the cooler. Other items covered. Koller got produce deliveries daily. Shortly before Doherty left for the day, the three produce wholesalers in town would call him and take his orders for the next day. They would deliver in the morning shortly after Doherty arrived at work. Truckers would unload the trucks themselves; they had to do this in order to keep the business because, with three wholesalers in town, it was quite competitive.

PRODUCE SHRINKAGE
Scope and Content Note: Wholesale companies would give credits if merchandise, as delivered, was unsellable because of quality or quantity. Often the truck driver would have Doherty check the merchandise before unloading. Generally, once Doherty took delivery on something, it was his responsibility. Merchandise could be returned the next day if the quality was inferior but not simply because sales were slow. Profit on sales had to be large enough to cover items which were reduced in price or thrown out. “If you're supposed to operate on 25% profit, you better increase your profit when your stuff is fresh so that when you throw stuff out, then you still make your 25%.”

INVENTORYING IN PRODUCE
Scope and Content Note: Actually a visual inventory was done each day in order to order properly for the next day. A closer inventory was done each Saturday between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. “That was just to show you if you didn't make enough money that week” so that corrections could be made the following week in order to make the proper showing at the end of the month when the monthly inventory figures went to a certified public accountant. Only meat and produce received this kind of close inventory attention; groceries were inventoried only once every three months.

RECEIVING PRODUCE
Scope and Content Note: Had to make sure quantity delivered was the same as quantity listed on “the slip” because if the slip is signed and the merchandise is not actually there, “it's tough cookies.” Delivery men were not above shorting one store and selling the merchandise at the next; “that was all profit for their pockets.”

BACK-ROOM PROCESSING OF PRODUCE
Scope and Content Note: Packaging, bagging and reworking. Reworking consisted of trimming away wilted leaves, taking bad items out of packages and repackaging. “You didn't want your customers to see you doing that sort of work,” so it had to be done in the back room. Sometimes rework could really back up.

MORE ON PRODUCE DISPLAYING
Scope and Content Note: “Very important.” Displaying varied from store to store, but Doherty tried to put the more perishable, “soft items” toward the front and the “hard items” toward the rear. Tried to keep out-of-season items in stock by getting them from outside the country. Soft items are placed first in the rack so they will move better. “I don't think they know what they want to buy in fruits 'til they see it.”

MORE ON PRICING PRODUCE
Scope and Content Note: At Koller's, a 25% profit was expected in produce. In order to account for shrinkage, the mark-up would be 25% over “selling price,” not 25% over cost. For example, if an item cost the store one dollar, 10% over selling price would be 10% of the dollar plus another 10% of that figure. (Thus, the one dollar item would be priced at $1.11.) This mathematics did not have to be done by the produce head or clerks because fruit companies provided little “hand calculators,” hand-held little wheels which made the calculations easy.

END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON PRICING PRODUCE
Scope and Content Note: Marking up over selling price rather than over cost was done to cover shrinkage and also to make more money. While Koller was satisfied with a 25% mark-up in produce, today, most produce departments try to operate at a 40% mark-up. Meat department mark-up is about 30%. In groceries, the mark-up used to be about 15% but is in the 20% to 25% range today. All of this is due to the higher overhead today--wages, repair costs, etc.

PRODUCE DEPARTMENT IS EXPECTED TO ACCOUNT FOR 10% OF GROSS SALES

EXTENT OF DOHERTY'S AUTHORITY AS PRODUCE HEAD
Scope and Content Note: Outside of maintaining a clean and fresh department, the only way to increase sales was through advertising. Doherty eventually was responsible for produce department advertising. Had to use adjectives--sweet, juicy, crisp, fresh, green. “You had to use adjectives that... when the people read it, they were getting hungry already....” If Doherty wanted to run a trailerload sale or another big sale, he had to go through the manager, because he would need the manager's guaranty of sufficient advertising and because he would need the manager's authority if the big sale was likely to infringe on another department's floor space.

DOHERTY AND LOCAL 640 OF THE RETAIL CLERKS INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION (RCIA)
Scope and Content Note: Koller was organized about 1950 to 1951. Doherty was elected recording secretary of the local about six months later. Held that post the longest but also held several different offices. He was quite active; he and his wife would often do nearly all the work for “smokers” which had food, beer, door prizes, etc. Because of all this free work for the union, he could generally get any office he wanted. RCIA International Representative Murray Plopper tried to convince Doherty to become a business representative, but the hours and travel made him uninterested.

ORGANIZATION AND THE UNION AT KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: Doris Meyers, a union activist (who later married Murray Plopper), signed up everyone in the store except one checker who was the boss' sister. At that time, the RCIA avoided representation elections unless it was fairly confident it could win. After organizing, “the boss made it very miserable for us because he was very mad about it. We didn't dare stand around a minute of the day then..., but he got rid of that attitude in a short while.” Toward the end of Koller's existence, Doherty was the only full-time union man left in the store; he spent a good deal of time convincing part-timers that the union was good for them because of seniority rights and higher wages. The owner had a “mean disposition”; and, when he got “ornery,” the employees would have the business representative come in and make him “cool it.”

KOLLER EMPLOYEES
Scope and Content Note: The store had been under new management for about two years when Doherty went to work there. The new management retained at least two of Joe Koller's former employees--one who, when the store eventually closed (1969), had been working in the liquor store portion for 55 years, and a meat cutter who had been working there 40 years. Ernie Grindler was the owner and store manager, and Doherty's friend, Don Forrest, who had gotten him the job in the first place, was assistant manager. When the union came in, Grindler made Forrest ineligible for membership by calling him the manager. At its peak, the store had about 18 employees; Doherty had a full-time clerk helping him in produce. At the time of closing, the grocery department had only three checkers and a part-time stocker, the meat department had only two full-time meat cutters and a part-timer. The store closed because it had not been improved, and business had declined drastically. Doherty never had any problems with the people who worked under him, because “it is easier to show a person something what to do than it is to holler at them....”

LOCAL 640
Scope and Content Note: Monthly meetings. Dues were $3 a month, $3.50 if the member did not attend the meeting. Good attendance at meetings. Stewards signed up new employees and collected dues from those who did not attend meetings. Doris Meyers worked in a store, but she “was very union-oriented” and did a lot of organizing.

END OF TAPE 3, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

ORGANIZING OBSTACLES
Scope and Content Note: “Sweetheart managers,” who would have parties for workers, threatened closing and layoffs, etc. The local made strong efforts to organize unorganized stores with informational picketing and the like, but to no avail.

SERVICING OF LOCAL 640
Scope and Content Note: In the early days, International Representative Murray Plopper did the organizing and servicing. Later hired business representatives with other locals. Local bosses and union representatives from each store would sit in on negotiations, but generally, lawyers from the chains and the business representatives, sometimes with help from Plopper or Bill Moreth of Local 1401, would do the actual negotiating. Independents, like Koller, would pretty much let the chain lawyers handle things and then sign the same contract. The local never had a strike but did take strike votes for leverage. “We always had it in our mind that we were never going to strike the whole organization in town. We were going to pick...what we figured was the store that was holding up the whole process....”

MOST COMMON PROBLEMS THE UNION DEALT WITH
Scope and Content Note: Managers would ignore seniority lists and play favorites when it came to giving time and a half and double time work. Also, raises were not always properly implemented. The contract clause providing for promotions within the store had “a lot of loopholes.”

DISCIPLINE
Scope and Content Note: Habitual tardiness usually resulted in a three-day suspension. Unexcused absences from the store and abuse of sick leave were other reasons for discipline. If someone left early and had someone else punch out for them, that would result in a three-day suspension. Theft and drinking on the job resulted in dismissal, and the union would not fight it. The union usually did not infringe much on store discipline decisions.

GOOD RELATIONS WITH THE AMALGAMATED MEAT CUTTERS AND BUTCHER WORKMEN (AMC&BW) LOCAL
Scope and Content Note: Mutual agreement to honor each other's picket lines was never tested.

MERGER OF RCIA LOCAL 640 WITH RCIA LOCAL 1401
Scope and Content Note: “It didn't do La Crosse any good.” La Crosse could not afford to hire a business representative, and negotiating was being done by the Madison local anyway. The promised greater strength in numbers did not materialize. Chain stores continued to move out of La Crosse, and the independents were not organized. Only one union food store is left in La Crosse--Super Valu.

LOCAL 640's PEAK
Scope and Content Note: Peak membership was about 375 to 400 and occurred in the late 1960s. Koller was the last food store organized in La Crosse. Membership growth after that was the result of organizing Montgomery Wards, which later decertified, and the growth of the business of organized stores.

SPIE'S SUPER VALU ELIMINATED THE EXPENSIVE HELP
Scope and Content Note: In 1969, Doherty got work with the Super Valu. He worked there about ten years. Four or five months before he retired, a new owner (Spie) bought the store and got the union to agree to give 90 days instead of the usual 30 days to try out the existing employees. The new management proceeded then to lay off most of the high-seniority employees and to erase the seniority (except for wages) of the long-term employees who were retained. Doherty's hours were cut to 24 a week. He figured he was going to be laid off before long because of his age (62) and his seniority. The business was not doing well, and the manager told Doherty he would be cut to 16 hours, which would put him in the part-time category and end his vacation and fringe benefit rights.

END OF TAPE 3, SIDE 2, Part 2

INTRODUCTION

DOHERTY TOOK LAYOFF RATHER THAN A CUT IN HOURS
Scope and Content Note: Because he would lose his benefits and make less money than he would on unemployment, Doherty requested to be laid off. An agreement was reached whereby Doherty would be laid off after two weeks and would be kept at 24 hours a week for those two weeks.

HOW DOHERTY CAME TO WORK FOR SUPER VALU
Scope and Content Note: After leaving Koller [on the tape, Doherty mistakenly says Super Valu instead of Koller at this point], Doherty went to work in a foundry. He heard Super Valu was looking for a produce man, and he wanted to get back under an RCIA contract in order to improve his pension. He applied and was hired. “That's how I improved my pension ten more years.”

AFTER SUPER VALU, DOHERTY WENT TO WORK AT WEAVER'S WAREHOUSE FOODS
Scope and Content Note: He began drawing his pension but wanted to find part-time work. He did not want to retire completely until he was 65. He found work as a clerk in the non-union Weaver's Warehouse Foods. He could not work in a union store because he would have to stop drawing his pension. “That was so silly.”

DOHERTY'S WORK AT SUPER VALU
Scope and Content Note: The work was about the same as at Koller, but there was a lot less “grief” because he was not the department head. Twice refused to become produce head. “I was able to sleep a little better nights.”

AFTER LEAVING KOLLER, DOHERTY CEASED UNION ACTIVISM
Scope and Content Note: He wanted to be “just one of the members.” Did attend meetings. No one from La Crosse remained an officer after the merger with Local 1401.

WORK AT SUPER VALU WAS MORE DIFFICULT THAN AT KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: “...(A)wful physically hard for me at Super Valu because there, we had to unload trucks.” This situation was improved later when a dock was installed and merchandise came on pallets.

STRESS AS PRODUCE HEAD AT KOLLER
Scope and Content Note: “That's why I give it up. I was just mentally exhausted. I didn't want to think any more. I just wanted to put my brain to bed at night and let it sleep and not let it stay awake all night.” The job was making him sleepless, nervous and irritable. “So I just hung it all up; everything--being a union officer....” Lack of interest by union members was getting frustrating.

DOHERTY'S WORK AT WEAVER'S
Scope and Content Note: Mainly a check-in man; checked in local vendors. Ordering and displaying for the store label in the bakery department. Also took care of returnable bottles. Once, caught a pop truck driver trying to steal empties.

DOHERTY'S ASSESSMENT OF GROCERY WORK
Scope and Content Note: Liked the work. Liked being produce head because “it was almost like operating your own little store in a big store.” Would not have liked working in the grocery department.

END OF INTERVIEW