Interview
With Roy Groenert, UTW's Organizing Director who works out of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and who came out of the same UTW local as Schaufenbil, I [interviewer James Cavanaugh] travelled to Chicago's O'Hare Airport on December 5, 1978, and met with Schaufenbil at the O'Hare Hilton. Schaufenbil originally had planned a meeting in Chicago for that evening, but, even though that was cancelled, he still made the trip to Chicago to keep our appointment. He was eager to have his union's side of things included in the TWUA Oral History Project.
The main purpose of the interview, which lasted only a little over an hour, was to do just that - to get the UTW version of TWUA/UTW relations over the years, of the lack of merger between the two unions, of the 1952 secession of George Baldanzi and several TWUA locals to the UTW, and of George Baldanzi's role in the UTW. To all lines of questioning, Schaufenbil did indeed give the official UTW version. Unfortunately, none of the original UTW leaders are still with the union, and the union's official version of its history is based on several myths, which Schaufenbil, having been in a top headquarters position only since the 1950s, repeated as gospel. Also, he did not respond to probing on sensitive matters or contradictory statements. The interview, however, is not without merit. The UTW's version of its own history and of the history of the TWUA is important for an understanding of why the two unions never merged. Also, Schaufenbil was able to provide some information about Baldanzi's move to the UTW which no other interviewee in this Project was able to give. Furthermore, he explained time and again the major official excuse why the UTW could never merge with the TWUA - the TWUA's joint board system.
Abstract
The tapes for this 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 by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic on “Schaufenbil's Early Years in the Labor Movement” should locate the place on the second track of side one, tape one, where the voice announces the 00:30 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “Thirty seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “Schaufenbil's Early Years in the Labor Movement” continues until approximately) 03:20 at which point discussion of the next topic (“Organizing the Prairie du Chien Woolen Mill”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “Schaufenbil's Early Years in the Labor Movement” give further details on what appears on the tape between 00:30 and 03:20.
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 when used with the index will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Index
There is a master index for most of the TWUA Oral History Project interviews in the collection-level finding aid.
