when answering the phone. Then he bellowed: “You just fucked me!” before breaking into near-maniacal laughter. He launched into the disputatious patter of a union boss: “Yeah. Ouch. Pay ten more an hour. Tankerman—not a lead tankerman—makes forty dollars and forty cents. Okay—so that’s okay. Thirty-four dollars. That gives me something to push at them.”
In 2015, the Dodger and the Hammer were going to take on the biggest challenge of their new partnership. It was time to renegotiate the labor contract with Georgia-Pacific. The brutal negotiations of 2010, which lasted eighteen months, had left the union scarred and nearly broken. When that contract was about to expire in 2013, the IBU didn’t negotiate but chose to preemptively surrender. With the backing of the union members, the Hammer and the Dodger told Koch that they wanted to “roll over” the 2010 contract, meaning that they would accept all its terms and keep it in place for two years. This cemented the defeats of 2010—including the low annual pay raises—but it allowed the union members to keep their pension and spared them another draining battle.
In 2015, the union members made it clear that they didn’t want to roll over again. They wanted the Dodger and the Hammer to fight for something better. It was around this time that Steve Hammond started drinking every day. Drinking had always been a part of life at the warehouse. Guys would share beers in the parking lot after a shift. Hammond used to drink Scotch on special occasions, sipping a glass of expensive Glenlivet now and then. After starting his full-time job at the IBU, he started drinking Scotch weekly, then nightly, then switched to the cheaper stuff, like Dewar’s and Johnnie Walker Red.
“Pretty soon I was drinking a half to three-quarters of a bottle a day,” Hammond said. “I’d just sit [at home] every night and get blasted. Then I’d fall into bed, wake up, feel like shit, and go in and go to work.”
If Hammond’s drinking had become toxic, so had life inside the IBU. A weird dynamic had developed between the union officials and the employees. It was sort of like the dynamic between a parent and an angry teenager, an intimate bond that was woven with threads of resentment and dependence. Back in the 1980s, union members considered the IBU officials to be like spokesmen—the union members decided what they wanted, and the union delivered the message. Now the union members seemed to consider the IBU officials to be like a second layer of management. They thought the IBU officials were somehow in charge, somehow capable of bargaining for a better deal with Koch, and somehow in the position to resolve disputes with Koch management at the warehouse. Hammond believed that this modern view was exactly backward. The real strength of a union came from its members, and their willingness to stick together and strike. It didn’t come from the union office. And yet, all the union members kept turning to the union office, seeking solutions.
The Dodger got an early lesson in this dynamic after he became regional director and negotiated the contract rollover in 2013. The IBU members agreed to the rollover, but only grudgingly. Dodge felt the rollover was their only choice. After just a few contacts with Koch, Dodge quickly learned the limits of bravado as a negotiating tactic. Koch was unmovable. “Guys in California get thirty dollars an hour. These [IBU] guys get forty! How the fuck can I go in there and try to get them big raises? You tell me—please! I have no idea,” Dodge said.
When Hammond had joined the union, the members met every week. Now they met once a month (excluding July and August). The meetings used to draw two hundred people. Now they drew about fourteen. Most members who attended were on the union executive board, meaning that one or two members showed up who weren’t required to be there. When large numbers of union members did show up, it was to complain. And when they complained, they wanted Hammond and Dodge to solve their problem.
“You almost feel like you’re Mom and Dad in there,” Hammond said. Life in the warehouse seemed to get worse by the day, and the union should have made things better. Disengagement and cynicism were contagious.
The discontent throughout Georgia-Pacific went beyond economic concerns. As productivity and profits increased, serious injuries had increased in tandem. There was something broken with the system, and the problem was intractable. Senior leadership