John P. Morris, a battle-scarred Teamsters firebrand who rose to vice president of the union and was called ÿthe last of the Molly Maguires,ÿ died on Sunday in Philadelphia. He was 76 and lived a few yards from his old union hall there.þþThe cause was complications of arterial surgery, his daughter, Nancy Morris, said.þþMr. Morris founded Teamsters Local 115 with just seven members in 1955. An aggressive and innovative organizer with a reputation for honesty, he boasted 2,700 members when he was ousted in 1999 in a power struggle with the Teamsters president James P. Hoffa.þþWith a twice-broken nose and an assortment of scars, Mr. Morris was a formidable presence on the picket line or at the negotiating table. He wrote a strike manual used at Harvard seminars for labor officials and created a training school for rank-and-file militants. þþÿThey came from far and wide,ÿ said Dr. Arthur Shostak, a professor of industrial sociology at Drexel University in Philadelphia. ÿIt allowed people to network and share ideas and talk about alternatives to capitalism.ÿþþMr. Morris specialized in organizing smaller companies and showed little remorse if they buckled under the weight of a settlement. ÿGet them a health benefit,ÿ he said of his contract goals in a 1993 interview in The New York Times. ÿGet them vacations. Get them clean bathrooms. Get them safety rules.ÿþþHe relished a good fight. His daughter, who worked with him, recalled his saying, ÿNo strike is a good strike until it lasts 12 weeks.ÿ Local 115 often harassed companies during strikes with pounding music from a flatbed truck; ÿWe Will Rock Youÿ was a favorite.þþJohn Paul Morris was born in 1926 into a long line of labor militants, and raised in Mahanoy City in the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania. His grandfather, for whom he was named, spent seven years in prison for his role in the Molly Maguires, an Irish-American secret society that battled the coal companies and rival ethnic gangs.þþAfter a year of college, he married Jean McCarthy, who survives him, along with his daughter; a son, John P. Jr., of Camp Hill, Pa.; three brothers; three sisters; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. The couple moved to Philadelphia, where Mr. Morris was a shipping clerk at Lit Brothers department store. There he organized his first strike, winning a raise after stuffing live pigeons into the sleeves of fur coats during a sale.þþHis honesty grated on some. A government wiretap in the 1970's caught a mobster saying he wanted to get rid of Mr. Morris because he would not sell out his members. þþBut as Local 115 grew, so did its reputation for violence. In 1994, the chief federal magistrate in Philadelphia cited a litany of assaults and threats linked to it. In 1998, several associates of Mr. Morris were charged with beating protesters during a visit to the city by President Bill Clinton, for whom Mr. Morris had campaigned in 1992.þþEventually, the aura of violence became a weapon in the hands of his union enemies. In 1999 Mr. Hoffa removed Mr. Morris from Local 115, accusing him of stockpiling guns, assaulting members and misusing money. Time magazine labeled him the ÿlast of the Molly Maguiresÿ and union officials suggested that he wanted to disrupt the Republican National Convention and that he was preparing for ÿwar.ÿþþMr. Morris said he was merely preparing for a strike. In a lawsuit, he contended that his removal was punishment for being vice president under Mr. Hoffa's predecessor and rival, Ron Carey. Mr. Carey was elected president in 1992, promising reform, but stepped aside in 1997 after a federal oversight board accused him of diverting union money to his 1996 re-election campaign.þþÿHe is the last of a stripe of union leader who never saw the world through a glass darkly, who employed exclamation points freely, never doubted and never retreated,ÿ Professor Shostak said. ÿThey're not making them like him anymore.ÿþ
Source: NY Times
