Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

day I would say that half of the force signed up, half of the shift workers signed up, the
operators, the steelman helpers as they were called then. Most of the fellows came from
Alton and Wood River and Edwardsville and of course Roxana and Hartford and surrounding
towns, East Alton. And then they went there and signed up and they had a meeting later
on and elected officers.
There was no noticeable change except that they had grievances with the company and meetings
with the company. How quick they signed the contract I don't know, I really don't
know. We had a number of strikes at Shell from 1936 until the time I left in 1967, maybe
a half a dozen. I'm not sure that's right, maybe four or five or six.
Q: Do you remember the first occasion for a strike?
A: No, I think it was 1936.
Q: Oh?
A: I'm pretty sure that the record would prove that right. And, oh, it only lasted maybe
two weeks or ten days. Whether we set up a picket line and you were assigned picket duties
- there was never any real violence until they had that big strike, 1'11 get to that later
on. As I had mentioned before that I don't think we ever had over fifty men, staff and hourlypaid
and clerical force, in our entire career, I mean in my entire career. Of course it dropped
terrifically in the last ten years of my career there.
And if I recall it, we had four shifts there. We worked thirty-six hours a week I think at
that time. That's all we worked. And in 1931 and 1932 it was strictly a seniority. And
the operators had their own seniority lists and the pipefitters had their own, and the machinists
had their own. And the instrument men and the laborers, which was a big local -
the laborers, the pipefitters and the machinists and the engineers were the four biggest locals.
And the operating engineers was the largest. But each had their own separate local
with separate officers and they had their own separate seniority lists.
The bricklayers had their own union, and I think at that time the riggers and the hoisting
engineers were in our union. And I always thought maybe the operating engineers might
have been the wrong local for us to belong to because it didn't sound like they were - we
were one of the first refineries that the International Union of Operating Engineers ever
had jurisdiction over. Later on the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] came along
and they had an oil and atomic workers union formed then, and I believe that the Standard
Oil refinery still belongs to them, what's left. And I think they have a number of refineries
down in the south and out west.
But after that 1936 strike, why - as I said I don't think it lasted very long - we went
back to work. And well, you're going to have interim troubles and departmental troubles. I
think things rode along pretty good. Of course the war clouds were coming on. That's what
it was, the war clouds were coming on. And we were working thirty-six hours a week, here
I'm going to say I let the 1930's run out of time. I'm in the 1940's now. Well with the first
draft registration - registered in 1940, I think, at least I did I believe, and I think there
was a number of fellows in service in 1941 and 1940. They were in the service when Pearl
Harbor happened and prior to Pearl Harbor wasn't there - the guys over thirty-five got
to come back home that were in service for a certain bit of time? I think they released
them and they called them back in the day after Pearl Harbor.
I can recall Pearl Harbor. We were living on Washington Avenue. We were bringing up
a new SO 2 Plant in my department. It was a new system to form some special engineers
and chemists. I think it was SO 2 and we were doing something to gasoline for aviation
fuel, having to meet government qualifications, specifications I guess would be a better word.