Labor Pains

Jeffrey Ruthizer

Description

Inspired by Scorse’s 2019 hit movie, The Irishman, this memoir tells a real story of combat in the toughest arena of them all—the broadcasting industry’s union negotiating table.

For well more than a century, unions and companies have experienced a state of push and pull. Confrontations occasionally led to war. Some battles became legend. Hollywood movies were made and books were written. Because the broadcasting industry is in the public eye, its labor struggles often became very familiar to the American audiences. But much remained behind the curtain.

A battlefield commander at the bargaining table for more than four decades while at ABC, NBC, RKO, and The Walt Disney Company, author Jeff Ruthizer was not just a participant in but was also a major strategist handling the peace and struggles with actors, technicians, directors, musicians, and writers. His companies were, and remain, world famous.

In Labor Pains, he tells the story of gaining his sea legs in his early days of his first tour of duty at ABC during broadcasting’s Golden Age of the 1960s. He gradually rose in the industry to assume top labor command upon his two-decade return to ABC before retiring in 2009. Legendary titans up to and including his last CEO, Disney’s Bob Iger, ran these companies and looked to Ruthizer for advice.

Slugging it out when necessary, through the bitterness of unwanted strikes and lockouts, Ruthizer narrates tales of kicking, discomfort, and ultimately joy on the broadcasting industry delivery table. Interspersed between turbulent times were moments of calm necessary to prepare both the body and the soul for the next battle looming on the horizon.

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Biography
• Entertainment
• The Walt Disney Company
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665706797
• Langue: English

Extrait

LABOR PAINS


A Tale of Kicking, Discomfort, and Joy on the Broadcasting Delivery Table






JEFFREY RUTHIZER








Copyright © 2022 Jeffrey Ruthizer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.



Archway Publishing
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0678-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-0677-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-0679-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021909091



Archway Publishing rev. date: 8/24/2022



CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue

Chapter 1 Pains Out on the Horizon
Chapter 2 My First Tour of ABC Duty Begins
Chapter 3 Growing Into the ABC Job
Chapter 4 Detroit Is More Than Making Cars
Chapter 5 The Peacock Network Flies High
Chapter 6 The Dying Days of News Film
Chapter 7 Rescue From Vietnam
Chapter 8 RKO Enters Stage Left
Chapter 9 Tires, Tennis Balls, Rockets, Movie Stars, and Broadcasting
Chapter 10 The “Traveling-Most Man in the Company”
Chapter 11 Shocks, Surprises, and Scholarships
Chapter 12 Hollywood and Reagan
Chapter 13 A Special Birthday Gift
Chapter 14 The RKO Story Continues to Final Credits
Chapter 15 Beginning My Second Tour of ABC Duty—What It Was Like to Work for Tom and Dan
Chapter 16 Preparing for the War We Hoped Would Never Come
Chapter 17 The Jacket Goes Around My Shoulders
Chapter 18 The Importance of Being Credible
Chapter 19 The ’90s Begin
Chapter 20 The Supreme Court Bench Meets Denny’s Bench
Chapter 21 The “Final Four” Saves Us at the Buzzer
Chapter 22 ABC News Hits the D-Day Beaches
Chapter 23 Life, Labor, and Good Fortune Under Disney
Chapter 24 Saying You Have an Open Mind Means Never Having to Admit It’s Closed Like a Steel Trap
Chapter 25 Hitting Our Way Out of a Sand Trap
Chapter 26 The Battle Escalates After a Near Pearl Harbor
Chapter 27 It Gets Cold and Lonely in New York During the Winter
Chapter 28 A Lost and Wandering Battalion Gets Rescued
Chapter 29 The Millennium Arrives for Disney
Chapter 30 Planning for More Olympic Gold
Chapter 31 Bob Iger Assumes Command
Chapter 32 The Truly Last, Best, and Final Contract

Epilogue



INTRODUCTION
Mine of course were of a different variety, but labor pains they were nevertheless. Sometimes excruciating, these pains featured all of the initial excitement, accompanying nausea, periodic discomfort, frequent medicinal relief from heartburn, and more than occasional kicking.
Stretching out for more than four decades, they also encompassed the ultimate, rhapsodic joy of a series of difficult but yet splendid births on the broadcasting delivery table. There were many hundreds of these extraordinary moments until one day the labor pains miraculously disappeared upon my retirement from The Walt Disney Company in 2009.
Suggested to me over the years by others patiently listening to my labor tales as a possible title for my life experiences, this memoir got kick started in 2019 with the publication of a non-fiction book. In Hoffa’s Shadow, authored by Jack Goldsmith, dealt with ’75’s mysterious disappearance and murder of the legendary Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa. The work featured as one of its central characters a Detroit Teamster official named Chuckie O’Brien. At one point in the investigation into Hoffa’s disappearance, as related by Goldsmith in this book about his stepfather, O’Brien was fingered as the chief suspect. Never charged by the authorities with any crime, it was clear that O’Brien was nevertheless no ordinary union official.
This particular book got my rapt attention when I read its review because I had known O’Brien. He and I once had a near physical altercation during one of my earliest bouts in the labor arena. That was a half-century ago, in 1971, during a strike involving our performers at ABC’s broadcasting stations in Detroit, Michigan. While I was a young lawyer representing the company, Chuckie was a young Teamster official who had somehow gotten himself enmeshed in another union’s labor dispute.
Having told this particular story many times over about our almost coming to blows, I felt destiny was directing me to write my story. As I started doing so, I began adding a number of other accumulated labor pains over my 45-year legal career.
My commitment to writing these assorted tales was considerably strengthened with the 2019 release of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winning movie, The Irishman. In that film, O’Brien again appeared as a real life character prominently involved in Hoffa’s life and disappearance. If it is good enough for Scorsese, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro to hang out with Chuckie O’Brien, I reasoned, it was good enough for me to tell the story of our almost coming to blows.
As perhaps another sign of destiny, I was to learn that O’Brien had retired from his Teamster position and moved with his wife in later years from Detroit to Boca Raton, FL. That’s a town close to mine. So, I asked myself, why not a lunch between former adversaries and recount old tales of labor pains long forgotten. It was, however, a bit too late because his phone was disconnected when I found his number and called. Shortly later in February 2020, his obituary appeared in the pages of the The New York Times.



PROLOGUE
“Captain Nathan Brittles”
Most readers are unfamiliar with labor negotiations except through what might be picked up from TV news reporting, movies, descriptions in newspaper accounts, and anecdotes to be read in this and other books. What goes on and how deals are actually crafted, neither exactly an art nor a science, is a complicated and often bewildering subject. This was particularly true in the entertainment industry where we had so many unions—performers, writers, directors, technicians, and stagehands, not to mention musicians, editors, camera operators, makeup artists, and hair stylists. Even truck drivers, motorcycle couriers, and a lonely projectionist or two.
Yes, there is, as I discovered from many hundreds of experiences over a lifetime, a great deal of kicking and discomfort on the delivery table before any of the ultimate joy can ever be felt.
Not only is the making of a labor deal often a difficult task, equally challenging is the daily living. Occasionally in hot combat with one, we were always getting ready for talks with another—or several. It was a never-ending demonstration of problem-solving at the highest, often most intense levels. And it displayed the frequent inevitability of human conflict. These pages will draw the reader’s attention to only some of the highlights and low points of my career while first gaining experience as a young government lawyer and then in the far more challenging and disruptive corporate labor relations world in the volatile entertainment industry. In four major test kitchens I labored over hot stoves—learning how labor chefs went about trying to make tasty dishes that sometimes though just came out hash.
When that career ended in 2009, I went riding out into the retirement sunset. It was much like one of my most favorite movie characters, Captain Nathan Brittles, from RKO’s and director John Ford’s 1949 western classic, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, starring John Wayne. Part of Ford’s and Wayne’s “Cavalry Trilogy,” the year is 1876. It’s right after General George Custer’s 7th Cavalry defeat at the Little Bighorn 800 miles distant in the northern Montana Territory. Near the end of the movie there’s a touching scene when Captain Brittles, played brilliantly by Wayne, has just led his young lieutenants, John Agar and Harry Carey Jr ., in a victory over the restless Native American tribes. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye.
At that moment of victory, Brittles looks at his brand new, silver pocket watch retirement gift, with its bland but at least to him emotional sentiment—“From C Troop, lest we forget”—inscribed on its back. Its hands tell him he has just officially, at two minutes after midnight, retired from the US Army. Brittles is then seen after his long and successful career as a captain of cavalry riding off into the sunset for his final retirement days in California.
Such a great movie, I could talk about it at any hour and sometimes did during long breaks in negotiations when we played movie trivia late into the night. I actually learned a few lines from Wayne’s Brittles that helped in my negotiating career. One that stayed with me was, “Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness.” I always tried to follow Wayne’s sage advice whenever I could when I was deep in my own cavalry battles across the bargaining plains.
The Brittles role always resonated with me. It did so particularly after my own retirement and ride not out west to the new frontier settlements in California but rather my drive south to the new retirement development