The Interviews
In all, fifty-nine hours of interviews were conducted. Interviewees included:
ROBERT AKAMATSU (Audio 939A), interviewed for three hours on December 16, 1981. A clerk and assistant manager between 1945 and 1979 for Piggly Wiggly and Eagle stores in Madison, Mr. Akamatsu grew up in California, spent three years in a Japanese-American “relocation center” in Utah during World War II, and then found his way to Madison. Mr. Akamatsu says the greatest changes he witnessed during his grocery store career were unionization and the impersonalization of work. The interview also extensively covers his experience in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II.
HAROLD W. BREITHAUPT (Audio 947A), interviewed for three hours on January 6, 1982. Mr. Breithaupt worked in his father's Beloit store in the 1930s, owned his own small grocery store between 1946 and 1950, managed other Beloit stores until 1968, and then became a business representative for Local 1444 out of Madison. He provides excellent descriptions of store layout and work conditions, good insights into employee-management relations, and the official union viewpoint on the industry and its changes. He also helped analyze and explain union contract clauses. The interview includes an interesting discussion of his transition from store management to the Clerks Union.
KENNETH J. DOHERTY (Audio 957A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours on February 10, 1982. His interview is useful for the descriptions of small-scale grocery operations in the 1930s, for his very detailed discussion of produce department work (he set up the first self-service produce department in La Crosse), for his observations on customer psychology, and for his discussions about Local 640 of the Retail Clerks (he was an officer for nearly twenty years).
HENRY E. DUBINSKI (Audio 965A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours on February 4, 1982. A former meat cutter and store owner, Mr. Dubinski now is the secretary-treasurer of Meat Cutters Local 73A in Milwaukee, a position he has held since 1963. The interview covers the years from the late 1930s to the present but focuses on changes in supermarkets and the Meat Cutters union since 1963. He responds openly to questions about the reasons for Local 73's “friendly receivership” from 1960 to 1963, union bargaining strategy, relations with the International and Milwaukee's Retail Clerks, and much else. He especially provides good insights and information on contract provisions over the years, a campaign to organize delicatessen workers in 1964, productivity, the specialization of the meat cutting trade, and the operations of central meat-processing plants. Mr. Dubinski also comments on the purposes and activities of the Midland Joint Council, a “rump” faction within the Meat Cutters which he and two other midwestern secretary-treasurers formed in the early 1970s to counter the influence of locals from the East and West at International conventions and other gatherings.
FREDERICK F. GARTZKE (Audio 959A), interviewed for two-and-a-half hours on January 9, 1982. Mr. Gartzke recalls much about his boyhood Depression years and his first jobs as a delivery boy and apprentice meat cutter in Oconomowoc. He provides detailed descriptions of making sausage by hand and of breaking down sides of beef, and also good insights into ways management sought to increase productivity while he was a meat cutter in Lake Geneva and Burlington stores between 1942 and his retirement in 1979.
PAUL R. HAMPEL (Audio 953A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours on January 22, 1982. Articulate and knowledgeable, Mr. Hampel provides important details and insights about the history of meat cutting and meat retailing, and Meat Cutters Local 73 in Milwaukee. A meat cutter himself, Mr. Hampel joined Local 73 shortly after it was formed in 1934. He was president and business representative for the local from 1953 until 1958, when he was defeated in a re-election bid. (He shortly thereafter left Milwaukee to work for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters International in Chicago.) He describes meat markets in the 1930s and 1940s, the change-over to self-service meat departments, union organizing drives during the 1930s, and important strikes against A & P and the Shinner Markets in Milwaukee in the 1930s. The Shinner “union recognition strike” resulted in two United States Supreme Court decisions. Mr. Hampel is especially good at relating local union developments in the 1930s to federal labor legislation and to broader aspects of American labor history.
CONCHERA L. HANNON (Audio 958A), interviewed for three hours on February 22, 1982. Born in Sicily, Mrs. Hannon immigrated to America when she was still an infant, worked in her father's small grocery store in Madison's Italian-American community during the 1920s, and continued working in various Madison-area grocery stores for over fifty years. She vividly recalls keeping books for her father and other daily store activities as a youngster, but is equally good in recalling her work as a substitute manager during World War II, and the important changes in food stores that occurred until she retired in 1975.
ETHEL H. HENNING (Audio 951A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours on January 20, 1982. Mrs. Henning provides perhaps the best descriptions of customer relations and the details of being a grocery store checker. She worked almost continuously as a checker in Janesville from 1943 until 1974, and was co-winner of a Wisconsin Checker-of-the-Year contest in 1959. Mrs. Henning also was an officer of Clerks Local 1139 for about twenty years, and provides details about union activities and an important strike in 1960.
ROBERT L. HESLIP (Audio 968A), interviewed for five-and-a-half hours on February 25, 1982. Over the last thirty-six years, Mr. Heslip has performed almost every possible job in a grocery store, and has held every job outside of the meat department except checker. He rose from stocker to department head to assistant store manager to manager in various La Crosse and Portage stores. Besides the details he gives about various department operations, he also helps us better understand the work of store managers and their relationship to parent companies.
MARY A. KAZMER (Audio 961A), interviewed for two-and-a-quarter hours on February 6, 1982. While Mrs. Kazmer worked in various Kenosha, Delavan, and Fort Atkinson stores for over twenty years, perhaps the most interesting part of her interview concerns her experiences in a neighborhood Chicago store in the 1930s. She is a strong union supporter but found her work in a non-union store in the late 1970s to be quite rewarding. Mrs. Kazmer laments the increased work pace and the neglect of customer relations.
ALICE L. KOHN (Audio 970A), interviewed for two hours on March 6, 1982. Except for two years in Texas during World War II, Mrs. Kohn worked steadily as a checker in Delavan and Elkhorn stores between 1941 and 1975. She describes the problems of dealing with rationing stamps during the war, how checkers had to stock shelves when the store was not busy, how the store was organized by the union, and how clerks were affected when National Food Stores closed its Wisconsin outlets in 1975.
WALTER C. MCMAHON (Audio 960A), interviewed for two hours on February 27, 1982. Mr. McMahon began work for A & P in 1947 as a checker and stocker but soon became an assistant store manager and then full manager in various Wisconsin stores. The company relieved him of his managerial duties in 1971 but allowed him to stay with the company as a night stocker in one of its Madison stores. The interview focuses on his experiences as manager of the Baraboo A & P for twelve years. The discussion reveals the work of a manager, the relationship between the store manager and the parent company, the union from a manager's perspective, the growing problems of a small town store in a big chain, and the declining emphasis on customer relations over the years.
JOHN PUENT (Audio 954A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours an January 15, 1982. Mr. Puent moved to Madison from his family's Missouri farm in 1934, worked for a time at Madison's Oscar Mayer plant, a Wieboldt's meat department in Chicago, and in various Madison meat markets and meat departments. He describes meat market and meat department operations in great detail, comments at some length on union affairs (he was an officer for many years), and discusses productivity concerns and customer relations from the perspective of both a store employee and a meat department manager.
R. FAYE ROIDT (Audio 962A), interviewed for one-and-three-quarters hours on February 18, 1982. Mrs. Roidt's food store work experiences were quite varied. She began work in the mid-1920s in a Chaseburg, Wisconsin, general store, worked from 1940 to 1957 in a Viroqua independent store owned by a somewhat eccentric dynamo who also ran general merchandise business in the grocery store basement, and then worked until 1973 in Viroqua Piggly Wiggly and Super Valu stores. The interview is most useful for her discussion of small-town, pre-self-service grocery stores and for her observations on the increased work pace in later years and what that has done to customer relations and work satisfaction. She is the only interviewee in this project who expressed significant reservations about unionization in the food retailing industry.
MILDRED SHINDEL (Audio 969A), interviewed for one-and-three-quarter hours on March 15, 1982. Mrs. Shindel has worked in various service and self-service stores in West Allis, Milwaukee, and Waterford. Perhaps the most useful part of her interview concerns her work during the 1930s, although she also provides perspectives and details about customer relations, employee-management relations, and unionization.
WALTER R. STOKLOSA (Audio 963A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours on January 26, 1982. Mr. Stoklosa learned the meat cutting trade first from his father in his parents' Polish meat market in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s. He learned more from meat cutters in the meat department of Goldblatt's department store before moving to Janesville in 1945, where he worked for the next thirty-six years in National, IGA, Kroger, and Piggly Wiggly stores. A head meat cutter from 1947 to 1981, Mr. Stoklosa provides good descriptions of typical work days and management's productivity concerns during the 1960s, and especially the changeover from service to self-service in the meat department during the 1950s2. Mr. Stoklosa learned the meat cutting trade first from his father in his parents' Polish meat market in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s. He learned more from meat cutters in the meat department of Goldblatt's department store before moving to Janesville in 1945, where he worked for the next thirty-six years in National, IGA, Kroger, and Piggly Wiggly stores. A head meat cutter from 1947 to 1981, Mr. Stoklosa provides good descriptions of typical work days and management's productivity concerns during the 1960s, and especially the changeover from service to self-service in the meat department during the 1950s. A past president of Meat Cutters Local 358 in Janesville, Mr. Stoklosa was a meat department manager who thinks of himself as having been part of “management”--a seeming contradiction, given his union activities, which Mr. Stoklosa nevertheless had no difficulty reconciling during the interview.
RAYMOND E. TOELLE (Audio 966A), interviewed for three-and-a-half hours on February 12, 1982. Beginning as a clerk and assistant manager in various Kroger and National stores in Wisconsin Rapids, Green Bay, and Escanaba, Michigan, stores between 1947 and 1950, Mr. Toelle then worked as an assistant manager in Milwaukee National stores between 1950 and 1977, and as a dairy department manager for the next two years in a Milwaukee A & P store. His descriptions of the various stores and the work he performed in them is very valuable, especially his accounts of store managing. Also useful is his account of the demise of A & P and National stores in Milwaukee. The interview also considers the changing status of food store clerks over the past thirty-five years. An officer of Retail Clerks Local 1469 (and later Local 444), Mr. Toelle provides important details about retail unionism during the twenty-five years he was active in union affairs.
PAUL L. WHITESIDE SR. (Audio 930A), interviewed for three hours on October 20, 1981. In 1948, Mr. Whiteside was president of Federal Labor Union 19322 at the American Brass Company in Kenosha, and also president of the Kenosha Trades and Labor Council. That same year, he agreed to help Retail Clerks Local 526 in Kenosha, and became business representative for the Racine Clerks Local three years later. By 1964, he also was the business representative for Meat Cutters locals in the two cities. Thus in this interview Mr. Whiteside was able to comment on changes in the food industry and among meat cutters and clerks during the last thirty years. In his frank and candid discussion, Mr. Whiteside talks about the importance of a strong labor movement to the success of clerk unionism, the role of women in food store work, and changes in meat cutting. He also helps piece together the recent history of the two retail unions.
JUNE J. WUTHRICH (Audio 964A), interviewed for ninety minutes on January 21, 1982. Mrs. Wuthrich worked on and off for thirteen years between 1959 and 1978 as a meat wrapper in various Monroe and Janesville stores until a physical ailment forced her to retire. She clearly made her job an extension of herself--something that is especially evident as she discusses her attempts to help elderly customers. She provides insights into male-female working relationships, the value of her union, and the specific nature of her work. There also are some details about a 1978 meat department strike in Janesville's Super Valu store, her role as a picket captain, and the scorn with which some Super Valu clerks treated her.
CHARLES F. ZALESAK (Audio 981A), interviewed for three-and-a-quarter hours on April 23, 1982. A Racine meat cutter during the 1930s, Mr. Zalesak pursued other work before returning to the trade in the 1950s. Moving to Madison in 1958, he became business representative and then secretary-treasurer for Local 502, holding the latter job until he retired in 1975. Mr. Zalesak's interview is largely anecdotal and very useful for the richly detailed insights he provides on contract negotiations and union-employer relationships generally. Indeed, Mr. Zalesak recreates bargaining sessions and grievance discussions and much else. The interview also reveals Mr. Zalesak's unhappiness about his local's merger with Milwaukee's Local 73, and his pride in gaining substantial insurance and pension benefits for union members.
Abstracts to the Interviews
The interviews were processed at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin according to the Society's TAPE processing system. TAPE is an acronym for Timed Access to Pertinent Excerpts. The TAPE system results in an abstract of an interview as the principal finding aid instead of the costlier and more time-consuming interview transcripts. Abstracts to each of these interviews are below.
The tapes for each interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion, and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher may listen to distinct topics without listening to all of the material on the tapes. For instance, the user who wishes to listen on the Robert Akamatsu interview to the topic on “Seasonal Leaves from Internment Camp” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 03:30 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “three minutes, thirty seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “Seasonal Leaves from Internment Camp” continues until approximately 04:30 at which point discussion of the next topic (“Akamatsu's Brother Went to Idaho”) listed in the abstract begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “Seasonal Leaves from Internment Camp” give further details on what appears on the tape between 03:30 and 04:30.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However, the abstract will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Transcribing the Interviews
Transcripts of the interviews had to be made to facilitate the grant objective of publishing a collection of remembrances about food store work and unionization. Final transcripts evolved through four stages. First, working transcripts were prepared and then checked for accuracy by reading the draft while listening to the taped interview.
Next, the transcripts were edited for continuity, style, and relevance. Interviewers' questions were deleted, although occasional italicized explanatory material was inserted to smooth transitions or provide background information. Subject matter was rearranged to provide coherence: for example, discussion about a particular subject which occurs in several places throughout an interview was rearranged so that it now appears in just one section. The interview itself was arranged in a narrative, “life-history,” fashion. False starts, tangled sentences, and audible pauses were deleted. So were some contractions and speech mannerisms which may be distracting to readers. Left intact were most figures of speech and mannerisms which help make interviewees' spoken words distinctive, and which give depth to an interviewee's identity on the printed page. Passages which are redundant or not germane were also deleted.
