Interview with Timothy L. McMurtry, June 29, 2015, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Jameel Russell: Okay, today is June 29th, 10:16 in the morning. I am Jameel Russell, the interviewer. The oral historian is Mr. McMurtry. This project is titled Oral Histories of Plant Closings in Milwaukee. Okay. Let's start by can you tell me a little bit about yourself and where you were born?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Okay, My name is Timothy McMurtry, Sr. I was born in Waterloo, Iowa July 28, 1945. Came to Milwaukee approximately September 1947 and have been here ever since. After the service -- well, I went to Riverside High School. Left Riverside, went to the service. After the service went and got a job at A.O. Smith. This was approximately June 1967.

I got out of the service in June of 67. Got the job at A.O. Smith in August 67. 00:01:00Worked there for the next 33 years. And I left approximately January 2000.

Jameel Russell: Okay. Do you have any children, wife?

Timothy L. McMurtry: I'm married, have three kids, two sons and a daughter. Daughter is the oldest. I've got one son, Timothy II, he works for Mueller Communications. I've got a second son, Todd. He's in the military presently stationed in Colorado.

Jameel Russell: What school did your children go to?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Well, it was Custer and Wauwatosa West.

Jameel Russell: You say you worked at A.O. Smith a long time.

Timothy L. McMurtry: Thirty three years.

Jameel Russell: Thirty three years. Did your company provide pensions?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Yes, they did.

Jameel Russell: Okay, because the plant closed down. What was the African-American community like before like while A.O. Smith was open?

Timothy L. McMurtry: While A.O. Smith was open the African-American community basically was middle to upper -- middle to upper middle class status. Like people had jobs, people had homes, people had cars. The dream was to send the kids to college. But that was shared like not only people at A.O. Smith but all the other manufacturing places that were situated in the Milwaukee metropolitan area.

Like Harness Riggers, even the breweries. There was a lot of jobs. When there was jobs there was a lot of them. And I had people that started when I started at A.O. Smith didn't like what they was doing. After a week they left, and 00:03:00before the second week was over they was employed someplace else. Like these were family supporting jobs, like I said, where you could have a house, a car and aspire to send your kids to college.

And that was the general mind set.

Jameel Russell: You said a few places, other places. Do you know specifically what other places they worked at?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Harness Riggers, Grave Foundry, Patrick Cudahy. I'm trying to think of what the names of these places were before the names changed. Like the names are all changed now. But it was all the heavy manufacturing like where they make the mining equipment, those place. Where they had foundries, 00:04:00those places. We had breweries, those places.

All these places supplied family supporting jobs, like I said, including like Patrick Cudahy at the time was supplying family supporting jobs for people. As opposed to now whereas virtually no jobs in the immediate metropolitan area. I'm seeing like from the north side from where A.O. Smith was all the way to the south side where Patrick Cudahy is.

Like thousands and thousands of jobs have been eliminated, moved or factories just closed. Even Briggs & Stratton right over here like from my location not that far from here. Master Lock from our location not that far from here. We're supplying family supporting jobs. And like if you go 20 years with the 00:05:00median income growing, less than three percent in that 20 years you are taking that family supporting job pay to family scuffling job pay.

And that's what happened in the interim since I've been retired. And that's been, you've got to consider, though, it's like 15 years; 15 years is a lot of change all to the negative, all seeming against the inner city. Even though the inner city is the biggest economic mover in the state, the whole state seems to be turning to trying to be like Tennessee or South Carolina or one of those states where they don't have nothing that people are trying to get away from.

You don't have that much industry. But you can see downtown on the river front they're constantly building new apartments. The lakefront trying to build new apartments. And I'm trying to figure out where those people that stay in those apartments come from other than someplace in Illinois. Because there's no jobs here to support that of, you know, building or, you know, apartment availability and capacities and stuff.

I don't see it because we don't have the industrial base no more.

Jameel Russell: How as the work environment at A.O. Smith? Was it like a lot of influence with drugs and stuff like that? I heard people was really drug dealing and stuff during.

Timothy L. McMurtry: When I first started working at A.O. Smith they had approximately 5,600 people working there. And with 5,600 people you get 00:07:00everything that the community provides. It can't be no different than the community, it's a reflection of the community. They had riffraff, they had people that had a job for cover more or less. They had people that really, really, you know, needed a job.

And you had from one extreme to the other extreme. Those extremes was up and down and left and right. You had people on the fringes, but you had the mass in the middle, you know, hard working because the work out there was hard doing what they had to do to get by doing that hard work. And an atmosphere that was not really conducive to Blacks and whites working together.

But the common thing was kind of like, hey like you know, you can't be white and 00:08:00begrudge me from having this job here in the city because I know why I'm here. But the fact is you're white and all the doctors, all the lawyers, everybody I see as white, why are you here? That's the question. But then like I'm saying it was, you know, whatever the community could support you had it out there because we had such a large workforce.

By the time I retired I guess the workforce was down to something like way less than 2,000, yeah.

Jameel Russell: You said like racism was prevalent back then. So A.O. Smith itself was it segregated? There was a part where Blacks would work at and whites would work at?

Timothy L. McMurtry: No, you had Blacks and whites working side by side. But there was that animosity about, you know, like, hey, I'm white and I'm supposed to be better than you. But you're working here, too, so you've got to try to, 00:09:00you know, overcome that in the job. You had to overcome attitudes in the job. You have to realize what the times were. Like I said I started in 1967. In 1967 Milwaukee was way more race averse than Milwaukee 2015 is, even though we are the most racist city in the country now.

It was worse then. So, yeah, you had to keep that in mind. But you had a job, you had a family, you had things that you had to do to support your family. You wanted your kids to, you know, aspire to do better than what you did. And that was a common theme of everybody that came through the door and punched a clock. But how that break down is I'm white and you're Black, hey, it's got to be 00:10:00something different because I'm white and you're Black, that thing played out however it played out.

Jameel Russell: What was the wages like? Was it a constant throughout the whole time AO Smith was open, or did it start to decrease when it started to close down?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Well, that's a hard one to answer because in my career out there I've always strived to make the most money that my seniority would allow me to make. You had some people that the job they got walking in the door was the job they had when they walked out the door. You had some people coming through the ranks and getting into mid management and stuff.

I stayed in the union. Like I said as far as I was concerned I tried to make as 00:11:00much as I could that my seniority would allow. So that meant being able to adapt to different jobs. Like they had production work. They had transportation work.

And then the production work they had like incentives. Like you got paid $2 an hour, but then you got paid 30 cents for each piece you made. So the more pieces you made you could take whatever that base money was and make it $5, $10, $15 an hour at the time. And in 1967 if you was making --

-- $8,000 a year you was pretty much top of the food chain around here. You could get whatever you want done. Because you've got to consider like you can take $20 and go the grocery store and get food for two weeks. The wages were commensurate with the time.

So when they say family supporting, it was a little better than family supporting. It allowed you to have vacations. It allowed you to have that boat if you wanted it. It allowed you to not worry about your kids having school clothes when school started and that kind of stuff. So the actual numbers 00:13:00they're kind of blurred now, but what you were able to do with it is what stands out.

Jameel Russell: You mentioned earlier you were part of the union. Can you say specifically what union you was in and what they did in the community?

Timothy L. McMurtry: It was DALU 19806. I was a union steward. And there was committees within the union. What they did for the community was the community where we worked at we had like neighborhood Christmas parties. We had coat drives. When I say neighborhood Christmas party we'd have kids from the neighborhood come to the union hall and a Christmas party.

Boys got gifts, girls got gifts and candy and stuff, little food, you know. 00:14:00Just stuff like that to kind of endear us to the neighborhood as opposed to ostracize us from the neighborhood. And that was pretty much a lot of the neighborhood involvement. We participated in a thing called Laborfest.

On Labor Day all the unions would get together and have an activity. As other unions did community things. There wasn't no stuff like we got now where you go out and build houses and stuff. It was just that your union would show up and deliver stuff to various little organizations in the community. Just little things like that.

Jameel Russell: Did more African-Americans specifically come over to the union 00:15:00when the plants closed down and all those jobs were taken away from them? Did they come to the union and basically have a say about what was going on?

Timothy L. McMurtry: No.

Jameel Russell: No? Why not? Why do you think?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Well --

-- generally speaking the union had two functions. One function was to make sure that the work rules were observed and utilized by the company. The other function of the union was to not let a whole bunch of knuck heads that did not know how to demonstrate that they wanted and needed jobs to lose those jobs.

And people got shortsighted. They could always see somebody who they felt should not be there be served by the union more than they could see the union making sure that the work rules was enforced by the company. And so then, therefore, they became like I wouldn't say ostracized, they just didn't see a need for the union.

Much like today. People don't understand what happened to really make unions necessary. What made unions necessary was the fact that you had never in the 00:17:00history of mankind where you had a benevolent employer. Even this guy with this credit cards billing company with his under 40 employees that was in the news recently talking about, hey, I'm going to take a make everybody make at least $70,000 a year.

Okay, you say, hey, that's a benevolent employer. Nah, because it's a shrewd business plan. You endear the people to you, you have them forever, and hopefully they'll give you three or four times production than they was giving 00:18:00you prior to doing that. But even there I'd imagine there are some instances where people think that their rights are being violated, and there's a need for somebody to step up and say it.

Like you say, hey man, I'm going to go and me and the boss we cool. So I'm going to go talk to the boss and try to get more money. Ten of you are all doing the same job for the same money. Is it cool that you can go and ask the boss for more money because if he says, yeah, I'll give you more money, I'm going to take some money from three other people that you're working with to make up for the money that I'm giving you.

But you ten are still doing the same job that used to be for the same money. 00:19:00Now, what kind of animosity does that create? Neither way to even out and just make it a level playing field for all of you all. So rather than that one guy getting more money and three people more money I'll give all of you a little bit more money. These unions they came about because if you think back to the days of Ford Motor Company.

Think back to the days of Carnegie Steel when they had six and seven year olds working in factories. They'd work eight hours a day and their parents would work 16 hours a day. And you try to get away to even the playing field, and 00:20:00that's what the job of unions is supposed to be. Depending which side of the playing line field you was on it was either good for you or a detriment to you.

If you was on the side where you have to give up something for the betterment of the whole you was against it. If you was on the side where, hey, all of us together we can achieve more as a group than as an individual then you was for it. But it was never a question about the need for it. There's always a need for it. Just as you know to stop people from money grubbing. You did not not want the person you was working for to make money because you wanted the job.

In order for you to have a job, they had to make money. In order to make money 00:21:00you wanted to be able to do the things that you work for and the money you made at the same time. And so you had to, you know, drift to a union. Like now the amount of union participation is at pretty much an all time low because you've got things like right to work, and everybody thinks that that's cool.

And everybody thinks that companies have the element. You be in Tennessee and here comes a car company saying, hey, I'm going to come down here and give you all some jobs. Anybody that was working on the farms making subsistence money. I'm going to give you a couple dollars more than minimum wage money. So 00:22:00hallelujah. You be at Wal-Mart you been working 20 years you say, hey look, I can't do nothing with the money I'm making.

I say what you talking about? I say, hey, I work at Wal-Mart and I still got to go on Badger Care. What's up with that, and I've got a full-time job. My reasoning is to say, hey, I'm going to give everybody $9 right away, and the next year I'm going to give you $10. It takes $15 in today's money to have a family supporting job. So you went from wherever you was to $9 for this year. Next year you go to $10.

Fifteen is still over there. And without a union, without nobody, you know, to argue for you, without nobody to give a collective to bring the workforce together that $15 is still way away, an illusion. You've got places like 00:23:00McDonald's. What is this, entry level jobs for kids. They're not entry level jobs for kids. At some McDonald's you've got people older than me working there.

That ain't no kid, that ain't no entry level job. And if it is an entry level for kids what you want them to do, you want him to be able to buy his books when his school come around? You want to be able to buy clothes and stuff. What do you want to do? Just get enough money to go out and buy a bag of weed? What? What you planning what you wanted to do with that money. So, yeah, it's still a tossup.

Jameel Russell: Do you know why specifically A.O. Smith closed down? The economy and the way it was going that is why it closed down and everything else? Went in a totally different direction?

Timothy L. McMurtry: A.O. Smith shut down basically because they was able to 00:24:00outsource a lot of the operation. And as part of the outsource they sold the other corporations that was doing business outside the State of Wisconsin. The part of A.O. Smith that was over there on Capital, the water works, striving is still going strong.

Strong as ever. When I left A.O. Smith part of the reason I left was they had this thing called NAFTA. And under NAFTA if your job was shipped to another country you was able to get, you know, monetary compensation and a chance to train for other jobs within the place where you worked.

I had done most of the other jobs in the place where I worked. And I felt it was time for me to go because, like I said I had 33 years. There were some guys out there that had 10 or 15. And I was moving out of the way because I could make it. I was tired of working. I could make it, and they needed those jobs.

So I just eventually took the buyout and left. Some people didn't get a chance to do that. A lot of people didn't get a chance to do that. A lot of people thought when they went from A.O. Smith to Tower that that was going to give them some longevity. Some other people took the approach that when they went from 00:26:00A.O. Smith to Tower that that was the handwriting on the wall.

So however you gauged yourself on that thought until you got out. That's what you did, and that's what you wound up with.

Jameel Russell: A.O. Smith did you guys get compensation when they closed down from NAFTA and stuff? Did they give their employees the money for like pensions and stuff?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Yeah, I got a pension. Part of it comes from A.O. Smith, part of it comes from Tower.

Jameel Russell: So A.O. Smith did they sell their pensions over to Tower?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Not totally. Like I said part of my pension comes from A.O. Smith, part of it comes from Tower.

Jameel Russell: Is it the same amount or how does that work out?

Timothy L. McMurtry: About the same amount. Because I had more time in A.O. Smith, the A.O. Smith is a little bit bigger. But it's not -- you can't buy a month's worth of gas for your car with the difference.

Jameel Russell: Was Tower like near as successful as A.O. Smith when it took over?

Timothy L. McMurtry: it depends on what you call -- Tower was a holding company. They wanted to get into the automotive construction business by acquiring places that was already in that business. They thought it was something coming up that there was going to be a great big future in.

As the auto industry started to consolidate, and as the economy and the businesses of holding companies started to change, it became nonproductive to have that here in the State of Wisconsin due to the fact we were what they called a closed shop.

If you worked here you had to join the union. And they felt the union benefits cut too deeply into their profits. So they you know was able to acquire other companies like A.O. Smith. And eventually the, you know, stuff they didn't move 00:29:00down to Mexico moved to those other companies that they had.

And I'm not sure if that's still a large part of that holding company's business now. Because you see the consolidation. You know you've like Volkswagen owns 20 nameplates. You've got a lot of automotive companies owning a lot of different nameplates.

Like it would be hard for somebody to believe that Bentleys and Volkswagens were made by the same people. And stuff like that. That's how the consolidation went.

Jameel Russell: How did you feel when A.O. Smith closed down? Did you hear stories of specifically African- Americans and did they say -- like any of your friends call you and let you know about them closing down and how it affected them?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Yeah, like Milwaukee is not that big. And when I left I was still in contact with people who was working. It wasn't like I left and we stopped going to the same places and stopped doing the same things. It was just I wasn't working no more. And it affected Black and white pretty much the same. I'd say it affected the white more than it affected the Black due to the fact that most of the Black workers lived within a 30 minute drive of the place, 30 00:31:00minutes being real extreme.

Where the Blacks lived that far away from the factory. The white compadres on the other side two, two and a half hours away from the factory. If you live two hours away from A.O. Smith you had a whole lot more invested in you trying to have a job than somebody who lives 15 minutes away.

Most of the white guys I knew that were still working when A.O. Smith shut down they had to pound the pavement to find other jobs mainly because of the things, the toys that they had, the toys that they wouldn't let Black people get. I had 00:32:00a house almost paid for so I ain't that stressed.

On the other hand you've got that cool boat, you've got that trailer, you've got that cabin up north. You out here living in Pewaukee someplace, Kewaskum. You've got that multi-hundred thousand dollar house you trying to get paid for and you didn't have your wife working. There's a stress on you that I didn't have, that most of the Black people didn't have.

Whatever category you set up you're going to have a certain percentage bleeding into that category.

Jameel Russell: Did things around your community like start to change when the plants closed down, A.O. Smith and stuff? Because you know parents were able to pay for their children to go to school and stuff, and now that they can't do that they start calling the streets and stuff like that. And even the union itself their numbers went down drastically almost basically by half, the membership went down.

Timothy L. McMurtry: When you're talking about union membership you mean like citywide membership?

Jameel Russell: Yeah.

Timothy L. McMurtry: Actually our union virtually dissolved as far as union activities go. A union activity we would like our last years before anybody knew anything about it was getting ready to close or whatever, but we was in your heyday like, the union will say some stuff like, man, it's wintertime out 00:34:00here, and I see a lot of our guys coming to work with those little denim jackets and stuff.

A lot of our guys they're not dressed for the weather. So the union went out and contracted to design and buy jackets for all the members. They did that twice. You might have seen some of they jackets, the burgundy jacket with gray sleeves with the union emblem on the side.

It was a gray jacket with a hoodie built in with the union thing on the side. 00:35:00And there was a way you'd be out shopping someplace and you see somebody in that jacket you knew you had a kinship with that person because he was from A.O. Smith. The union would take a Sunday in August and went out to the Milwaukee County Zoo.

They had catered food. They would get the kids a couple ride tickets. They would pay for your parking. And each union member would bring as many as ten guests. Now, Saz's was the caterer. They missed that.

The zoo missed the fact that they had like all the tickets that they sold for the rides and the various exhibits out there they missed that. The stores and other places that we got that they was giving out as raffle prizes and whatever they missed that.

Plus the people, families missed the whole thing. It was just to show that whenever the union did something more than just the people involved in that direct union benefitted. It was a community benefit. Now here's Saz's where you've got --

They got 6,000 people you've got to feed. And you know that that's going to happen year to year to year to year. On that one day you've got 6,000 people to feed, you've got that pretty much in your business plan for that year. Here it is at the zoo. You know you've got paid parking for this many people every year.

You got that in your business plan. Here it is you're going to sell 20,000 tickets, you have to have that little train ride they've got at the zoo, and some of the exhibits you have to pay to get in to see at the zoo, here it is 00:38:00you're going to have 20,000 tickets sold for those things for one day every year.

Like this is a big economic mover. And we decided to buy jackets. Like, hey everybody who made jackets wanted to be the seller of 2,000 jackets. So without the union being there now that is not happening anymore. Like we're not going to Wal-Mart and Best Buy to get $20,000 worth of little shit to give out.

That's not happening anymore. Like the impact was, you know, it was a large impact on the community by that stuff the union was doing in the community.

Jameel Russell: The African-American community do you know any like short-term effects that you can contribute to A.O. Smith closing down in the African-American community?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Yeah, the African-American community by the time A.O. Smith shut down was taken out of --

Timothy L. McMurtry: The economic effect on the African-American community of Milwaukee when A.O. Smith shut down was dramatic short-term, mid-term and long-term. Short-term was the people that had jobs they no longer have jobs. The mid-term was the people that was looking for jobs lost a place to find a job.

The long-term was the people was working and sending their kids to college. Now you're going to dramatically reduce the number of kids that was going to college, that would come out of college without owing that $40,000 average that kids come out of college owing. So, yeah, it was dramatic. And look around here at that vacant lot over there.

You go to North Avenue there's still a lot of vacant lots. You go down 27th Street it's not a high -- there's not a lot of places to shop because nobody has got the money to put into anything to have you come to shop because they don't 00:41:00know the median income and the people that surround them.

Now, on the whole not just A.O. Smith shutting down but all the manufacturers leaving Milwaukee contributed to that. But in this immediate area right here the people that move out to Glendale or Menomonee Falls or whatever, when you cut their lifeline it's an effect.

Jameel Russell: Okay, let's say you went outside and went down the street somewhere, what specific things would you see happening when A.O. Smith and the plants closed down? Like did the crime rate go up higher? Were there more drugs and things sold and stuff like that?

Timothy L. McMurtry: When the plant closed and you went outside you probably saw more quality of life issues not being addressed. Like somebody was renting this house over here. They were cutting the grass, they were shoveling snow.

They lost their job. The owner of that house he don't live there, he lives someplace else. But he can't get over here to cut the grass or shovel the snow. That house might become abandoned depending on if the owner can come up with 00:43:00tax money to keep ownership of his property.

If it becomes abandoned, you know, drugs represent, you know, the amount of sorrow that's in the area that's got people turning to drugs other than turning to other things to ease their existence. So light is what we're talking about.

Jameel Russell: The people that was doing this were they mostly like teenagers or really young kids or something like that? Was it basically the next 00:44:00generation getting involved with these things that was going on?

Timothy L. McMurtry: I'm saying if you became a high school graduate and you didn't have nothing to do, you didn't have no grades to go to college, you didn't have no place to go to work what you going to do? That became a problem. That became the issue. You have people more worried about building expressways and figuring a way for you not to have that construction job than building something in your neighborhood.

Hey, I watched Northridge get built and close.

Jameel Russell: Why did they close that?

Timothy L. McMurtry: Closed down. Possibly the people in the area didn't have the funds to keep it up. Southridge is still working. Bay Shore is still working. This Mid Town used to be called Capital Court. Capital Court closed down, too. But then they came up in there with a new idea and made it Mid Town. They didn't come up with no new ideas for them people over there on the northwest side where Northridge was.

Northridge was being supported by a whole lot of people that had family supporting jobs. And with the family supporting jobs that means you've got transportation to get there. And if you've got someplace where you can't get to, you know, what's happening, and that's what happened. Look at downtown. 00:46:00Downtown used to be vibrant. Downtown used to have stuff that you'd go shopping for.

When was the last time you bought something from downtown?

Jameel Russell: Can't even remember.

Timothy L. McMurtry: That gets to be an issue. When was the last time you went downtown to the show? Wisconsin Avenue used to have four or five upscale shows. You didn't have to go out to the suburbs to see first run opening night movies. You could go downtown and see them. As jobs leave, one category of jobs leave, another category of jobs don't show up.

So like the manufacturing jobs they all dwindle. And there's other things that people in those manufacturing jobs was doing dwindles. You go to the service 00:47:00sector, the service sector is fine on the top end. But the curve to get to the top starts here. You've got McDonald's workers, you've got people, data entry workers.

Now you've got people actually working with computers. Now you've got people you know actually doing the service. And the service is some type of financial service. But the thing is it comes here, here, here, here and then starts to go up here. Manufacturing started here and went to here right away, and that's the 00:48:00difference, what kind of activities you want to do.

Got to service the kind of job. I kind of live downtown. I'm going to try to be near that job. You look at Schlitz Park, what happened to Schlitz Park before it became Schlitz Park? What happened to all those businesses in Martin Luther King Drive when it was called 3rd Street?

Now it's called Martin Luther Drive from Center Street all the way down to --

-- Juneau. Once it gets to Juneau then it becomes something else. Martin 00:49:00Luther King Drive, Old World Third Street, Water Street and that whole area right there. But from Center Street to the beginning of that area which is about Juneau what happened? People used to shop down there. There used to be things to do down there.

Now the biggest thing down there is the place that sells kitchen supplies, Crown Hardware. And that whole stretch was viable businesses down there. You've got that little stuff happening on North Avenue and stuff. They've got a Subway sandwich shop and a sports apparel shop

But long term, when I was a kid Crown Hardware that's down there about Brown, and that Fern place is right there on the corner. Used to be activity down there. Used to be like -- you familiar with Harley's , the men's store?

There's a store called Brill's , same level back in this time. There were Gimbels Schuster equivalent to Boston Store down there. Used to be movie 00:51:00theaters down there. There used to be a decent grocery store down there.

But look at that area from Center Street down to Juneau and that's just indicative of what's happening. It's probably all not a direct result of, but it's partially a result of because you don't get no planning now for that. You don't get no visions of doing things for that because your prospective customer or client is harder to find now.

Jameel Russell: That's all I have for you today. Thank you for the interview.,

Timothy L. McMurtry: It's been my pleasure.