STORIES FROM THE SERVICE INDUSTRY : VOICES OF LABOR RING OUT IN THEATER

It is in the tiny struggles of individual peoples that the great moments of history are most truly revealed.

--Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-German revolutionary theoretician, 1871-1919.

“People ask me, ‘How do you explain that you unload boxes all day?’ I had a girlfriend who didn’t want people to know what I did for a living.”

Retail clerk Larry Weiner, 37, an activist in United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1442, was one of 13 union members taking center stage at the Mark Taper Forum recently to dramatize what it’s like to be a service industry worker.

The show was called “The Greatest Stories Never Told--Voices From the New American Workplace.” The stories were about the tiny--and not so tiny--struggles of day-to-day life in the part of the economy that is growing most rapidly. Nine out of every 10 new jobs created in the United States between now and the year 2000 will be in the service sector, according to government studies.

The storytellers included a bartender, a computer analyst, a firefighter, a flight attendant, a high school teacher, a registered nurse, a surgical technician and a telephone operator. Their presentation was a mix of personal biographies and descriptions of workplace struggles, triumphs and fears through songs, stories and occasional didactic soliloquies.

“I deal with maybe a thousand people a day, and they’re not thanking me for saving their lives,” Weiner said, his long legs supported by knee pads that are an integral part of his workday uniform. “Most of them want to know why we’re out of the advertised special or why we don’t have the 18th ingredient in Grandma’s lasagna recipe.

“I try to turn that disappointment around with a joke for the store’s sake and their sake. You’d be amazed how many lonely people come into a supermarket looking for more than food. There’s Morbid Mary the tabloid lady who can tell you every time a baby’s born singing Christmas carols. I listen to her and show her respect. I’ve got no apologies for what I do for a living.”

Some of the stories told by Weiner’s colleagues on stage were dramatic--nurse Hope Fierro and firefighter Michael Kaemerer describing how they saved lives:

“It’s dark, smoky, hot,” said the stocky Kaemerer looking out into the audience. “We’re crawling and feeling around. Can’t hardly see for the mask and goggles and the dark. Hey! On the floor, next to the bed,” Kaemerer exclaimed, talking faster and faster.

“We all scramble, crash, push through the door. Lift and pull. Heave. Drag to the front--CPR--oxygen. Wow, a save!”

Most of the vignettes were less compelling if no less important: secretary Cynthia Cuza explaining how she saved her boss time and money; letter carrier Jackie White relating dread of drug dealers on her route; flight attendant Becca Goldstein lamenting the decline of flight crew teamwork as a result of two-tier wage systems; social worker Jess Barajas conveying the travails and the joys of turning a juvenile’s life around; computer analyst Henry Walton describing his panic at being asked to design a program that will eliminate his job.

They were the sort of stories a labor writer hears at the end of long interviews on a picket line--the sort of stories that don’t often get into newspapers and even less frequently are shown on television.

The workshop was a joint effort by the Taper and the Labor Institute for Public Affairs, the media production and distribution unit of the AFL-CIO. Gordon Davidson, Taper artistic director, said there was a natural alliance between the two groups.

“The voices of working people, people who have built this country, and are the foundation of our community, are not heard often enough on our stages or seen on our television screens,” Davidson said. “We, at the Taper, have always tried to make things that happen on the stage more relevant to the lives of people in the community.”

Tom Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, the second-ranking position in the 13.5-million-member federation, came to Los Angeles specifically to see the presentation. He addressed the audience--made up of many union members--afterward.

“The workshop is a way of trying to get people’s attention on service workers and to explain to people who those workers are, what they contribute to society, what their needs are and how unions meet those needs,” said Donahue, who got involved in the labor movement more than three decades ago while working as an elevator operator in New York.

The Taper event was among many labor theater presentations currently being put on around the country. Auto workers, hospital employees and laid-off steelworkers have been taking the stage recently too, attempting to present their lives in honest, thoughtful and dramatic fashion.

In a recent article in the United Auto Workers monthly magazine Solidarity, the union’s Roger Kerson wrote that there is now more labor theater afoot than at any time since the Great Depression.

At that time, the International Ladies Garment Workers took over a closed Broadway theater, renamed it Labor Stage and produced several plays, including “Pins and Needles,” a revue starring union members that was designed to spur organizing.

For most of the participants in the Taper show, it was their first time on stage. Eight were women, five were men; blacks, Jews, Latinos and WASPs among them.

And for many of the union members in the audience it was their first time at the Taper.

Other attendees included liberal Hollywood types that the Labor Institute for Public Affairs hopes to entice into making worker-sympathetic entertainment that will reach a broader audience. “We hope the work we do here will encourage people in television to reflect the true voices of working people,” said Larry Kirkman, director of the institute.

A major theme of the presentation was that service workers, though not highly paid, play valuable roles in society and should be accorded greater dignity.

As veteran telephone operator Roberta Hosler sees it, the principal problem with her job is that she’s no longer permitted to do it the way it ought to be done. “The emphasis isn’t on service anymore but on how fast you can do it,” lamented Hosler, a member of Communications Workers of America Local 9400.

“You must fit the office AWT--Average Work Time--which in most offices is 32 seconds per call. . . . It might take you a couple of minutes to really help someone and the whole time you’re talking with them, you have this feeling of dread--that your AWT is shot to hell. And if that happens too many times a month, you’ll be called up for discipline.”

The need to be “on,” the need to always be hospitable, especially in moments of considerable stress, is a particular concern described by almost all these workers. It may have been conveyed best by bartender Mary Stieger of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 11 in a Peggy Lee-like song called “Smiling,” which she co-authored with Michael Silversher, the workshop’s musical consultant:

Smile when I’m happy, smile when I’m not.

Smiling’s my profession, in case you forgot.

Do you want the usual? Try something new?

Whatever you feel like, it’s what I’m paid to do.

A lot of people in the highly enthusiastic crowd said they hoped the workshop will be presented again soon. In an interview after the show, director Victoria Ann-Lewis said that is likely to happen in February, perhaps again at the Taper. Then it might be put on at union halls or high school or college campuses. “Obviously, it will have a future. But the shape of it is not clear,” she added.

Three months ago, Lewis met her “cast” for the first time. None of the 13 had met previously. They were recommended by union officials to participate in the project, said Gina Blumenfeld, associate director of the labor institute’s Los Angeles office. Teacher Phil Newman and union organizer Kimberly Miller had extensive singing experience, but most were novices and, like computer analyst Walton, said they couldn’t have imagined in their “wildest dreams” that they would ever be on stage at the Taper.

“From the day these people walked in, they started becoming a community.”

They also grew in self-esteem. “It really has changed the way I think about myself,” said Joe Woods, 41, a surgical technician at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital and a member of Service Employees International Union Local 434. “I never had to get up in front of an audience before. What I learned will be a great asset to me.”

Walton also said the experience had changed him in several ways, including gaining greater understanding and appreciation of the jobs of the other workshop participants.

“I’ve learned to respect every profession in a way I never did before. In fact,” Walton added, “I’ve become an overtipper.”