Paine and Gain

An outgoing union boss waxes philosophical about his career and the state of labor in Philly.

by Doron Taussig

profile

EXITING, SAGE LEFT: As head of the city's white-collar workers' union, Thomas Paine Cronin wanted the labor movement to support progressive issues. Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

There is a framed black-and-white photograph on the coffee table outside Thomas Paine Cronin's office. It shows two people. On the right is a bearded, unsmiling middle-aged white man. This is Cronin, the head of the city's white-collar workers' union. Beside him is a terrifically unhappy-looking black man: W. Wilson Goode, former mayor of Philadelphia. The men are looking in different directions, each feigning obliviousness to the other's presence, like strangers caught walking down the street in step. Toward the bottom of the frame, someone has attached a sticker with this caption: "Are these two guys thrilled to see one another?"

On a recent Thursday, as a visitor eyes this historical document, Cronin emerges from his office. He is beardless now, and has aged considerably from the time of the photo, although he doesn't look particularly old. At 64, he has the thick, healthy arms of a weightlifter. He's also smiling easily. Two weeks shy of retirement, Cronin's air is that of a man opening a beer at the end of a long day. He leads his guest to a couch, where he notes a pile of cardboard slabs.

"These are old picket signs," he says. "Most of [them] I've worn."

Some of the placards bear predictable slogans, such as the one demanding a fair contract for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME, Cronin's union). Others, such as the one that reads, "Say "No" to Scabs ... Support the NFL Players Union," are atypical. But then, Cronin has never been a typical union leader.

A typical union leader is elected by his members and works to improve their circumstances. Cronin has spent his career trying to persuade the Philadelphia labor movement to think bigger, support other progressive issues — to expand beyond "Labor" and become "the Left." A fiery, combative man, he did this at a time when labor was, in many ways, on the defensive.

Now, as his working days dwindle, Cronin can reflect on his efforts: his unlikely journey to radicalism, his battles with six mayors, his attempts to find solidarity with Latin American workers — which got him banned for life from Honduras. Most importantly, he can consider the basic questions everyone asks at endings: Did I do right? And did it matter?

Back in 1996, Cronin was interviewed by City Paper. The first question for the reputed leftist was, "Were you a red-diaper baby?"

While it's easy to imagine Cronin as the spawn of Trotskyite factory workers, he was actually raised, by his mother and stepfather, in a military environment. God and guns were constants as the family moved around the country. But something about Cronin never meshed with conservatism. Perhaps it was his middle name, "Paine," an homage to the American liberal Thomas Paine from Cronin's father, Philadelphia public defender Joseph Cronin. Joseph had divorced his son's mother when the boy was a baby and played little role in his early life. But when Tom hit his late teens, the senior Cronin reached out with a 13-page letter and invited him to Philadelphia.

Required Reading
Daisy Fried, 20 Questions with Tom Cronin, CP 1996.

Cronin would later say that his father wasn't much for affection but gave a good ideological schooling. The curriculum at Joe Cronin University partly involved surrounding Tom with black people. First, the young Irishman was sent to box at a gym at 23rd and Columbia streets. He took to the sport, sparring with up-and-comers like Joe Frazier (a "fat kid" at the time), and also earned insight into the conditions in mid-20th-century black America. A couple of years later, Joseph used a connection to get Tom into Cheyney University, a historically black school. There, Cronin was pulled into the civil rights movement. In his first protest, at a politician's home in Chester, he acquired a busted head and an arrest record.

"Another brick in the process of radicalizing me," Cronin says.

After that, it was a tight leftward spiral to conscientious objector status, and to Mississippi, where Cronin organized voter-registration drives and dodged an assassination attempt. Two black men overheard local Klan members planning to invite Cronin for a beer, then bludgeon him to death (the Klansmen spoke freely in front of the black men, as they would around livestock); they told a farmer Cronin knew, who told Cronin.

"Sure enough, this guy pulls up in a pickup truck, asks me to come out with him," Cronin recalls.

When Cronin asked to bring some friends along, the guy said no. So Cronin declined. He remained in Mississippi for several months afterward.

By 1970, Cronin had returned to Philadelphia to devote himself to progressivism. He took the civil service test and got a job investigating racism for the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. It was a gratifying gig, but Cronin found it unpleasantly ironic that his agency worked to ensure Philadelphians due process in employment disputes while denying the same to its staff. At the time, blue-collar municipal employees were unionized, but people in jobs requiring degrees were not. It wasn't long before Cronin was organizing the city's white-collar workers.

AFSCME District Council 47 was chartered in 1973, with 2,400 members (today it has 6,500). Cronin rose easily into leadership, and was elected president in 1980; he quickly earned a reputation as a firebrand. Cronin wasn't just paid to win good contracts — he believed passionately in redistribution. And so he was willing to call for strikes (he led three), support other unions, and be a physical presence on picket lines.

"When I was in the South, Dr. Martin Luther King preached nonviolence, and I believed in that," he says. "I've also believed that if your family is attacked, that you have a right to defend yourself. I have contradictions as a human being."

On at least one occasion, Cronin knocked a bellicose counterprotester out. He wasn't charged for the incident, and though he's been arrested for others, he's never been convicted.

In his 27 years as president, Cronin negotiated contracts with every mayor from James Tate to John Street. (He liked Goode and Frank Rizzo, whom he remembers as sincere.) How good a job he did depends on your definition of "good." In the '70s and '80s, the municipal unions secured contracts so plump that they threatened to help break the city's bank. In the '90s, the unions made concessions (though not without a fight: Cronin is quoted in Buzz Bissinger's A Prayer for the City screaming "You assholes!" at city negotiators). Today, Philadelphia's public sector work force does fairly well, especially with pensions and benefits, considering the financial state of the city.

But the key phrase here is considering the financial state of the city. Cronin has been a different kind of labor leader precisely because he doesn't accept things like city finances as a given. He weighs in on matters bigger than contracts; he would tell the city to change its finances by raising taxes on the wealthy, for instance.

To take a broader example: Cronin believes there's not enough affordable housing in Philadelphia. There could be, but the federal government has cut housing aid.

"That money's gotta go to the war," he says. "To blow up Iraqi houses."

So what should labor do? Oppose the war, Cronin says.

Over the years, he's taken heat for this approach: "I will never forget making a speech on nuclear disarmament, and having union members say, 'What the hell is he doing?' ... If there was a nuclear war, your labor contract doesn't mean much."

In the '80s, Cronin's philosophy took him to Honduras and El Salvador to oppose U.S. foreign policy. After giving a speech in Tegucigalpa, he was arrested and brought to the American Embassy. Looking out the window at U.S. aircraft carriers, he was told he was being deported and banned for life for interfering with the internal affairs of the Honduran government.

"If I wanted to go back today, I [couldn't] get in," he says, smiling.

Though he might blanch at the word, Cronin is now a patriarch among Philadelphia progressives. Kathy Black, of AFSCME and the Coalition of Labor Union Women, calls him a mentor, and John Braxton, a union leader at the Community College of Philadelphia, extols Cronin's historical willingness to support other unions.

In some ways, Cronin is leaving labor — today is his last day on the job — in a state that pleases him. Though his successor has yet to be determined (there will be an election), the local labor council is as unified as it has ever been. And SEIU 32BJ has begun engaging a range of causes [Cover, "A Broom to the System," Sept. 13, 2007]. It's merging labor into the left.

At the same time, though, Cronin's era was one when labor largely declined. And next year, after decades of protecting the benefits of public employees, AFSCME will sit down to negotiate a contract with a city that will want those benefits cut. Philadelphia will soon be spending one out of four tax dollars on pensions and benefits; it's another crisis — "deja vu all over again," says Cronin — and it raises the question: Were all those picket lines, all that work to keep labor relevant, simply a Herculean delay of the inevitable?

Cronin doesn't think so. He understands that labor may have more tough times ahead. But he rejects the idea that he's been fighting for some anachronism from last century. To him, worker solidarity and wealth redistribution are timeless necessities.

"It reminds me of a sign I once saw in a gym where I was working out," he says. "It had a picture of a young man sitting on a bench in a locker room, and it was clear that [he'd] had a tough workout. The caption was, 'There is no finish line.'"

(doron@citypaper.net)