This question was at the heart of Hammond’s last battle with Koch Industries in 2016. And this question was at the heart of a troubling trend inside Georgia-Pacific. Confidential data from inside the company showed that the number of worker injuries at Georgia-Pacific was rising steadily each year, as Koch pushed workers to maximize profits and increase production. The rate of both small injuries and serious injuries was on the rise. Burns, amputations, and deaths on the job were increasing year over year, even if the public wasn’t aware of it. Hammond did not have access to this data and was unaware of what was happening. But he saw firsthand that the pressure on workers was intensifying. It was his job to put into practice the theory that an injury to one was an injury to all, and to show that workers might still have power to determine the conditions of their workplace.
In 2015, Hammond still worked in the little IBU office on the second floor of the Longshoremen’s union hall, but he had a new boss. Gary Bucknum had stepped down as regional director and was replaced by a man named Brian Dodge, who went by the nickname Dodger.
Dodger was short and wiry, but he had the aura of an imposing union boss. He spoke in loud, staccato bursts, and his blue eyes gleamed with intensity. He had striking features, with a square jaw, spiky white hair, and commanding, deep-set eyes. He made it clear in passing conversation that he carried a knife on his person at all times. Shortly after he took the job, Dodge gave Hammond his own nickname, “the Hammer,” which didn’t fit Hammond’s owlish presence but seemed fitting for a union man.
The Dodger and the Hammer sat side by side in the cramped office. Hammond often remained silent while Dodge took phone calls from IBU members up and down the Columbia River. “Hey, brotherman,” Dodge said 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 at Georgia-Pacific was aware of the problem, from CEO James Hannan down to the managers on the factory floor. But nothing they did seemed to slow the injury rate between 2010 and 2018. In 2014, the number of worker deaths spiked to a level that hadn’t been seen since the early 2000s. Concerns were mounting at the highest levels. “What we do is kill people at Georgia-Pacific,” said one longtime employee at Georgia-Pacific.
* * *
When Koch Industries purchased Georgia-Pacific in 2005, it inherited a new monitoring system at the company, called TRAX, that recorded a wide variety of metrics about the company’s operations. This information was collected in a centralized database for analysis, allowing Koch to improve safety and increase productivity throughout the company. Analyzing data in the TRAX played a vital role in helping Koch boost profits and helping Georgia-Pacific pay down the billions of dollars loaded on its balance sheet after the acquisition. A key metric recorded by the TRAX system was workplace injuries and accidents.
Between 2005 and roughly 2009, the TRAX data set was spotty. The company was still engineering the system, figuring out what to record and training employees to enter data into it. By 2010, TRAX was fully operational. That year, the system recorded a total of 579 “OSHA recordable injuries” across Georgia-Pacific, meaning injuries that were significant enough that they must be reported to the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That year, one worker was killed at Georgia-Pacific.