A Rank-And-File Voice: Labor Poet George Fish

Mel Buer: Welcome back to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, dreams, jobs and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and The Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

I first met George Fish at the Labor Notes conference in April, where we shared a cigarette break outside of the conference hotel and talked briefly about what it meant to us to be part of the labor movement. The energy at the conference was incredible, and the optimism surrounding such a gathering was truly infectious. Before he went back inside to attend the conference, George shared with me some of his poetry about working in a union grocery store. For this episode, we had an interesting conversation about his life, his work as a freelance writer, and his current work as a unionized grocer.

Welcome to the show, George.

I think a great way to start off this conversation is to talk a little bit more about your work at Kroger and your work with the UFCW. When did you start organizing with the UFCW?

George Fish: You know, I didn’t go into my job to organize the working class, I went into my job because I needed a paycheck. I got a job there very late in life, in 2015. My first day of orientation, I joined the union and have been an active member since.

I’m reaching my fellow workers on my job right now, because our contract comes up in a year. We were very dissatisfied with our 2022 contract. We got a very pro-company contract, so I’m trying to organize people so in a year we can get a better one. My fellow workers are concerned about pay, cost-of-living adjustments, more time off, paid sick days. So I’ve been talking to my fellow workers and following the advice I heard from Labor Notes, of 80% listen 20% talk, getting to know my fellow workers. I think I’m well-regarded as a union activist, and I hope to encourage them.

Part of what I feel is important is letting my fellow workers know that they are the union — it’s not the union rep, it’s not the union officials, it’s not the stewards, it is us, the rank-and-file. I think a lot of people have taken inspiration from what the Teamsters and what the UAW were able to do because they had a rank-and-file voice. That’s what I’m trying to do within the UFCW. I’m very glad to be a union member, because I have protections. I worked 14 years in non-union shops as a temp, and of course, had no rights. I’ve got this job security, and I tell you what — unions are a working man or woman’s best friend.

Mel: I agree. I didn’t have union representation until I started this job at The Real News. The difference between the work I was doing in non-union shops, or teaching, or working as a freelance journalist, it’s night and day. I really appreciate the ability to have more say in how the workplace runs, and to be respected for that. You have just described yourself as a sort of Gramscian, intellectual, working-class poet. When did you start writing poetry? What inspired you to start writing?

George: I had for a long time wanted to be a writer. Unfortunately, I had an alcohol habit, so I was drunkenly talking about writing, instead of really writing. Back in the fall of 1980, I was in my early 30s. I was in enforced sobriety for lack of money, and I actually wrote a short story that got published, and I was so excited that I started pursuing it from then on. In 1984 I had my first article in In These Times, I worked on a staff of a small magazine here in Indianapolis.

I started poetry Christmas Eve, 2004. I was in an angry mood from my ex-Catholicism, and I wrote a bunch of very angry, irreligious poems, just as kind of a therapy. I put them aside and two weeks later saw that a couple of them really worked out. So then I started pursuing poetry, and published my first poem in 2007 in the Indianapolis-based Tifton Poetry Journal. I’ve had about 30 poems published nationally, mostly in small Indiana publications, but also in the website New Politics and the Blue Collar Review.

Unfortunately, writing doesn’t pay anymore, so I have to keep my day job at Kroger where I’m a produce stocker, and I’m an older worker. I’m now in my late 70s, and I can’t afford to retire. I don’t get that much in Social Security, but I do get a small pension for the union. I was really grateful for the union making sure that I got my pension money before I was too old to receive it or dead.

My wages unfortunately make up 69% of my income, so I still have to work. It’s a physical blue collar job, I’m on my feet eight hours a day, heavy lifting of 50 pound bags of onions and potatoes, 40 pound boxes of bananas. It gets tiring. I do it because there is so little social safety net, even for the elders that should be too old to work. I would have such a drastic drop in income that I would really be hurting. So I write whenever I can, because writing is my life-blood. It gives me a sense of wanting to live, and be a part of life and contribute. It’s good to be alive after a rough time growing up.

Mel: Do you explore any of these experiences working at the age that you’re working, are these some of the themes you explore in your poetry?

George: My poetry can be very eclectic, I’ve written a lot of things. I guess they’re all explored indirectly. I had a hellish childhood being raised Catholic in small towns. A lot of that was in the Pope Pius XII era, before Vatican II. I became an atheist at 18, when I entered college. I write a lot of irreligious poetry that is theologically correct — I get back at the Catholic Church by skewering it with my poetry. But my first poem in Blue Collar Review is based on a true story of an encounter with an obnoxious manager at Kroger. It’s an honor to use my poetry to reach my fellow workers.

Mel: I am also a born and raised Catholic, and grew up in the Catholic Church. Probably had quite a different experience than you did, but still walked away from my relationship with that faith at a younger age.I went to high school in the Catholic Church, then I went to a Catholic Jesuit university for two years in Colorado. It was a natural progression into various stages of education that is controlled by the church, and then fell out of it quite quickly.

I also had struggles with alcohol, and found there was no room for both faith and my addiction at the time. I felt sort of left behind by God, and I used to write poetry about the same stuff. You get angry when you grow up in a faith like that, and you find that your life circumstances don’t quite match up with what you think is supposed to happen.

I think that poetry specifically has this unique characteristic where you can have those conversations with the pieces of your life that you are most affected by. Are there other moments in your writing career in the last 30 or so years where you found that writing has particularly helped? Whether it be the alcohol, or the questioning of your faith, or other moments?

George: I want to thank you for sharing. Yeah, we have very similar parallel experiences. When I started writing on a regular basis, I was writing for small magazines that had deadlines. It helped me overcome my horrible habit of procrastination, because editors just didn’t mess around when you didn’t make deadlines. It helped me break through procrastination because I had to be good, fast. I was an active freelance writer journalist who had to produce something every week or every month, so I did it.

Mel: What was the focus of your journalism beat?

George: Lots of things. I wrote for many left publications, Indiana themes. I wrote about how the Indianapolis Colts extorted the city to pay for an expensive stadium for The Current. When Indiana signed a religious freedom act that discriminated against gays, I wrote a poem about that that was published in New Politics. So I’ve combined my political and other interests with my poetry and writing.

Mel: Do you ascribe to a certain type of leftist politics? Is there a specific ideology or political tradition that you identify with?

George: For a long time, I was part of the Trotskyist far left, but now I consider myself an anti-authoritarian Social Democrat, a Democratic Socialist in the sense of Michael Harrington, ​“the left wing and the feasible.” I know that my days on this planet are numbered. I want to see results in the here and now, for me, and for my fellow workers. One of the big issues that concerns me is the Republican threats to Social Security and Medicare, which at 77, I rely on.

I was very, very enthusiastic about Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and wrote an article on New Politics praising Bernie Sanders’ 2016 candidacy. I think revolution is a will-o’-the-wisp, I don’t think it’s going to happen. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do things to make our lives better in the here and now, and that’s what my politics is about.

Mel: I tend to agree, a sort of pragmatic politics at this current moment.

George: That was one of the things that was so exciting about the Labor Notes Conference this past April; it’s obvious now to me that the left wing of the labor movement is now a mainstream part of the labor movement. It’s not a fringe. When 4700 union activists from all over the country gather in one spot, you know you’re not a fringe. You may be a minority voice, but you are an important voice in the labor movement itself now, which is so different from the old meanie Kirkland, at AFL-CIO.

Mel: I was going to ask, in the last couple of years, there is this sort of resurgence of positive thinking about labor organizing. It’s like the clouds broke and the sun came out for the first time in a long time. What is the most exciting thing, based on your experience of unions in the past, about seeing this resurgence in labor activity?

George: I think in the emergence of the organization I’m active in, EW4D. Taking a cue from what was done in the Teamsters and the UAW in trying to democratize a very top-down union, the UFCW, which represents over a million people, especially in groceries and food processing. It’s been an honor to be able to participate with EW4D and the good people who are involved with it, who are seasoned union militants.

Mel: It’s really exciting to see that not just the UFCW, but other unions, are taking on this inspiration of creating reform movements inside of unions. They care so much about the way the union operates, and they want to see it improve. They want this to be a new generation of union activists who are participating democratically within the institution of the labor union. And I think that is a really exciting piece of this new era of union organizing.

George: It took a long time for UAW For Democracy to win, but it did. It took a long time for Teamsters for a Democratic Union to make a difference, but it did. One man won the vote, which encourages the rank-and-file to participate. It gives us a sense that we ourselves are the union. When we have a voice, we really feel empowered to make a difference in our unions.

Mel: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about your writing, to talk about your poetry. It’s been a joy talking to you, and I’m really glad that we finally had a chance to sit down and really discuss what makes your writing and your life experience unique.