AllBetter

Exploring Labor, Addiction, and Recovery with Brian Eddis

• Joe Van Wie • Season 3 • Episode 68

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Imagine being drawn into the world of labor, addiction, and recovery through the eyes of Brian Eddis, a political ward leader in Northeast Philadelphia. With an intriguing background that spans construction work, politics, and union organizing, Brian opens up about his personal journey and the challenges faced by the labor movement. We delve deep into the complexities of addiction, the implications of unemployment, and the vital role of unions in upholding the dignity of the workforce amidst shifting economic landscapes.

We navigate through the profound impact of emerging technologies on labor, and the rising tide of unemployment. As we unpack the harsh realities of interest rates, inflation, and student debt, Brian offers an insightful perspective on how these factors are redefining the middle-class life. We also grapple with the grim relationship between unemployment, addiction, and the loss of dignity that often accompanies labor.

In a compelling narrative, Brian takes us from the construction site to the political arena, highlighting the transformative power of hard work, dedication, and loyalty. We explore the rapidly changing face of labor, and the urgent need for innovative strategies for unions to stay relevant. Wrapping up, we shed light on Brian’s inspiring recovery journey, the importance of mentorship, and the changing attitudes towards substance abuse in the workplace. This episode is a rivet

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Speaker 1:

Hello and thanks again for listening to another episode of All Better. I'm your host, joe Van Lee. Today's guest is my friend, brian Eddis. Brian is a political ward leader in Northeast Philadelphia. He was raised in a blue collar family and is open about his recovery. Brian has a rich history he's a political staffer, political campaigner, a local 98 employee and in leadership at the Building Trades Council. Today we talk about Brian's entry into recovery, the relationship between labor and addiction, unemployment and the rise of addiction. Also the relationships between organized labor and a healthy and active democracy. We also speak a little bit about the future of unions with the rise of technology, especially artificial intelligence, what the union is doing to prepare for that in job training and preparing its membership for job placement with its new education center. Let's meet Brian. Hello, we're here with Brian Eddis. Brian, I met a few years ago on some political races, fighting and organizing for labor. We had an immediate rapport. I'd like to thank you, brian, for coming up.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Joe. I appreciate you inviting me.

Speaker 1:

Brian, what's your official title now? What's the handle? You go by.

Speaker 2:

I am the business agent for the Philadelphia Building Trades construction. We cover the five counties of southeastern PA, including Philadelphia.

Speaker 1:

How many people does that entail for that part of the organization?

Speaker 2:

We boast well over 55,000 members as part of our council. Similar to the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, we're the umbrella organization that represents all building and construction trades.

Speaker 1:

I want to get to that Before we take a slow walk towards labor. Your position, your vocation, your mission. Where did you grow up? Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2:

I've lived my entire life in Philadelphia neighborhood called Longcrust. It's in the lower end of northeast Philadelphia. It's a blue collar, poor to middle class neighborhood.

Speaker 1:

Would you consider your childhood pleasant? Was it rough down there? What was going on?

Speaker 2:

I always say I came from a love and home. Wasn't a lack of love, but on paper certainly lots of dysfunction. My mother was 17 when she was pregnant with me, 18 when I was born. I grew up in my grandparents' basement. I didn't meet my father until I was seven years old, direct results of addiction. Like I said, definitely a love and home. I didn't miss a meal, so I wasn't that.

Speaker 1:

Without missing a good Irish meal. What was your understanding if you had to look back, say pre-drinking, of what? The term alcoholic drug addict? What context would you frame that in your young mind? What did you think that condition was?

Speaker 2:

Sure, I mean, I know, at family parties, functions, events, it always centered around alcohol and typically as a young child there was an attraction there for me for drinking because it was always associated with fun. Unfortunately, the nights didn't always end in fun A lot of police calls, fighting, a lot of chaos. That always centered around alcohol and what the end of the night looked like.

Speaker 1:

So you're really from Scranton, exactly?

Speaker 2:

Exactly Like I was saying same breed, different litter. The only difference between Northeast Philadelphia and Northeast PIA is the bluebird. I guess you could say yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And in regards to that same question, just on the opposite side of the spectrum here, was there any understanding at an early age, early being, say, even to your teenagers, of an idea of recovery, even if it was just in general, say, alcoholics, anonymous or a 12-step group treatment centers? What was did that exist in your reality?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. Again, alcohol isn't running my family, it gallops. My grandfather, my mom's dad, got sober when I was about five years old. My father got sober at eight years old. So the fact that they were able to get sober through alcoholics and on anonymous is really why I feel like I'm where I'm at today. Otherwise, God knows which direction my life would have gone.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so you did have an early understanding, a familiarity, that there's a place that exists where this can treat addiction to alcoholism.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely, although they got sober. My father got sober. He used to always joke around and say early years of sobriety, he was saving up to buy a hoagie. But because he got sober, there was a chance and there was really hope.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So in long the lines of your connection with alcohol, what did alcohol do for you that maybe couldn't be accomplished by yourself, especially the first time you got drunk? Or you remember that before feeling that was like, wow, this is it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no. So I had an uncle who was nine years older to me and I used to remember sitting with him and his friends, being very, very young, and watching them bounce the quarters into the shot glass cups, playing the drinking games and all that and having fun. I think I was fifth grade. After one of his parties there was a couple of Guinness cream, alas, that were left over in the refrigerator. So I snagged them from the refrigerator, put them away, hid them somewhere. It was summertime, me and another buddy of mine. We ended up drinking them back to train tracks and they were warm, disgusting. But that feeling that I got of taking myself out of myself and feeling that buzz was definitely a change in moment for me, because I didn't always feel so good about myself.

Speaker 1:

Let's just say yeah, yeah, I think that's a common story. It's the common denominator and it seems to be the first thing you need to understand in recovery is that drinking is a solution to something else and drinking doesn't work anymore. I'm screwed. I hear that story a lot, so do you. How did the consequences get higher? It seems like, if I'm not mistaken from the way you described it, if your addiction started taking off, did it run, in contrast, against your grandfather and your dad? Were they sober then? Maybe in the height of your addiction, was there this dynamic that there's people around you that know what's going on?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah. So my grandfather was involved in AA. He would take speaking commitments, but I want to say it was probably after he was sober, about 10 years or so he was helping his brother, my uncle, also struggling with addiction. He ended up dying out in California due to this disease and he wasn't really as active in AA in recovery, but he was still a good member and would always answer the call. My father he is very well known throughout this region in recovery. He has dedicated his life to AA. So for me, when I was doing my thing, I would never bring my stuff home. I was always out on the streets drinking and drugging and that doesn't mean that I didn't bring some stuff home.

Speaker 2:

I was always getting in the fights and doing some nonsense. Really, my drinking took off in high school, I would say by the time I was a junior in high school. There wasn't too many days in there going by where I wasn't drinking, sometimes five, even seven days a week, because, again, it really was a solution for me for all the things that I was feeling as a young teenager.

Speaker 1:

If I can just lay on top of this, if it makes sense, the story of labor had to start early on September 10, 2012, roscoe Breul, august. Monsieur Nancy cataro, in KELOLAND, a job and an identity and what a wage is. Is this story already started in your life? Is it interwoven into that neighborhood? How did that kind of lay on top of or underneath your addiction at that?

Speaker 2:

time. Yeah, no, and thank God for for IA and thank God that you know my dad got sober and, you know, dedicated his life to IA. You know the labor roots for me, you know it's really deeply rooted in my family. My great-grandfather was, you know, skookle County. My dad's side of the family, his father was all Skookle County, you know he was. My great-grandfather was an organizer treasurer with the United Mine Workers and then my grandmother's father he was an organizer in the CIO before they merged with AFL and you know I think they merged and I think it was 1955. Before they merged there he was an organizer with the Machinist Union and then my dad, once he got sober for a brief time in the 90s, he was also an organizer in the Teamsters.

Speaker 2:

You know and you know I used to walk picket lines when I was like nine or ten years old. You know with him. You know and I saw what the hard fought sacrifice that was made, you know to get better wages and standards. You know in the workplace at a very early age and you know it just really became a passion. You know witness in firsthand the type of battles and fights you know that would happen you know with with labor unions. And for me, you know I'm a fighter, I'm from Philly, so so I was really, really attracted to that.

Speaker 1:

Any good boy would be right that's I. The first time I got a real flair for it was the first film, like, like, could see it visually. What proceeded me, not in labor, but Jimmy Hoffa, when Nicklasen played Jimmy Hoffa, the scenes where they would just be preparing to march, yeah, like when I was a kid. I was trying to compare. How is this not a war movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah with Danny.

Speaker 2:

DeVito just so he's having pistol whip and somebody was.

Speaker 2:

that was great yeah yeah, yeah, now, and and that's the thing that people forget, you know not in the you know far distant past. You know people died. You know, for organized labor, lives were lost. You know, and and the way it was explained to me was that a lot of times with labor disputes and fights, you know you would need to take, you know, as a worker you would need to take that black eye, the broken arm, the broken leg, broken ribs, you know, figuratively, to give the company, you know, black eye just to kind of get a fair shake. You know, again, it always goes back to, you know, wages and standards. You know, in the industry, and that's really what we're fighting for. You know, we're fighting for the workers that they have to say and that we, you know, are able to come up with a good agreement that both sides may not be exactly thrilled about, but both sides get their fair share.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to depart from your story and come back to what produced your recovery. But while we're here, I mean this is what I wanted to discuss with you and be a little more educated on, or some of my listeners and I like things that start with, like you know, grounding principles labor, labor. 10,000 years of labor. Let's fast forward. You know we're only a couple hundred years away from when you were born. You would have been attached to a plot of land in Europe. If you're from a Western culture, other minorities or in a disproportionate, we're always exploited.

Speaker 1:

Last couple hundred years you find the rise of our country, let's just say the last 120 years. There's the real labor movement that's substantial, that gets complex, that fights for human dignity. That kids and where I grew up are in a mine six days a week for 10 hours. John Mitchell, and you know the Scranton iron furnaces kind of. I think a lot of people are out of touch in my area with how many battles were fought in the streets, even in our town, scranton, that produced the substantial freedoms we get to experience as Americans. I don't think there is freedoms without organized labor and any, or we'll lose them. Can you speak to why what I'm saying may be right, like in that sense, like real liberty has been been provided by organized labor.

Speaker 2:

You are not only right, you are spot on. Organized labor has always been the point of the spear, fighting for all families, not just union families, but all working families. And at the end of the day you know from the history you know up until present, you know we're on the front lines. You know organized labor is always in the front lines and that can you know, transfer from you know wage and standards in the workplace to even. You know when we're talking about addiction. You know, you know, for for us. You know families. You know we go through. You know crisis and all families have. I don't care who you are, you know, no matter what creed, color, sect, denomination, you know religion you believe in. You know families go through. You know trials and tribulations when it comes to to life. You know, as I've heard before, life gets lifey sometimes, you know, and things and things happen. You know, but but organized labor has always been one of the front lines of all those battles. You know they really really have.

Speaker 1:

So I gave like a broad description of stuff we are removed from, like child labor loss and stuff. But let's focus, even the last 40 years, things that I think my generation already takes for granted at a basic job of holidays, off, paid holidays, over time. Fmla writes how do people, how are they received by the workforce and what did labor? Have the organization have to do with that?

Speaker 2:

And again that all goes back to the battle and the fight. You know that again, it was brought to you by organized labor. We don't have holidays, right, we don't have vacation. We don't have, you know, good wages if it's not for organized labor. And I even think today, some of the challenges that we're faced with, you know, as younger adult and people that are coming out of you know high school currently.

Speaker 2:

You know a lot of times you at least for my generation, your generation too, joe, because I think we're relatively close to the same age you were looked at or frowned upon if you didn't go to college. You were looked at as a failure. You know, and I even remember my grandfather loving the death. I didn't go to college. Right out of high school I went to work. You know I went to work, you know, in the teamsters, and I remember my grandfather because you know you're, you're so smart like what a waste, what a waste it is that you know you're not going to college. Well, fast forward, you know, 20 plus years later, you know, I think we're all realized, we're all saying that, like, college is not the solution for everybody, right, and we need those manufacturing jobs, we need those good, paying middle-class jobs, you know, in order to provide, you know, a middle class life, and and that again doesn't happen, or at least you don't have those type of wages, if it's not for organized labor yeah, it's, it's.

Speaker 1:

That's a complex thing. You see, like that, that generational thing pushing hey, be a lawyer, be a doctor, like even two generations behind us, and everyone goes to college. You, you get a hundred thousand dollars worth of debt for you know paper that shows that you're trainable, yeah and what?

Speaker 1:

what's the property owned with that, what's the asset? And then for the next 10 years you're trying to make enough money that you just borrowed to purchase you know the up a piece of land which, preceding education, was your right to liberty, that you can own property. There's, there's, there's a kind of amnesia to the history of labor and property rights providing freedom, and, and now we're being told how to consume to get into freedom. I guess that's its own story, but I I see labor, and not only from being friends with you, my understanding where I'm from, it runs in tandem with protecting democracy. I don't see a population having a voice that threatens not only big business rights, dignity, but the actual act of democracy. If people can't organize a voice, they're not threatening to anybody that's.

Speaker 2:

It's the truth. It's the truth and you know. You see the, the battles with the big banks. You know they always seem to. You know come out on top. You know it's. It's usually always passed down. The cost is always passed down to the poor in the middle class.

Speaker 2:

I just I don't see any other avenue for. You know, people from my neighborhood in order to get out if they're not able to get, you know, good, middle-class, paying jobs and and not to, not to. You know, keep belaboring this, this, this point. But, like I, I'm thinking to myself today.

Speaker 2:

You know, with the, with the rise of interest rates, you know with inflation, and you know the cost of, you know, goods and and you have that hundred thousand plus dollar debt. You know, are you going to be able to afford to buy a car? You know, where are you going to live? How are you going to raise a family? You know we are at a turn point right now where it's just almost like impossible to get ahead. It's like you need to make 150 thousand dollars plus a year just to be middle-class. You know, if you're a kid with college, with debt, that's coming out and going into the workforce and you're getting all four jobs of you know 50 thousand dollars. Well, guess what? 50 thousand dollars in 2023 is not with. 50 thousand dollars was back in 2008, you know it hasn't changed.

Speaker 1:

But you know profits have changed, margins have changed for owner, but like wages have not changed and inflation keeps going up and it's not matching the cost of wages. Now you're you're centered in Philadelphia and you know unions and labor have been, I guess, the right target to destroy if you want to fight for big business and an ownership class to have enormous margins and not recognize the labor that produced those margins with any fair or equitable distribution of it. When you don't have organized labor, no one could combat that. The government's not going to catch up if a population's not complaining. Or I mean you could just look at France. There's kind of some admiration.

Speaker 1:

I'd never say I admire France, but the sense that they're in the streets over retirement ages. I think there's been a real loss of that here because of so many damaging hits. Say to automakers in Detroit what you've seen in other brothers and sisters of labor. I want to talk a little bit. The point I'm trying to make is unemployment in skyrockets. You had a labor force there. They had some unions who fought hard, but the labor changes. There's a market shift of either production or technology that attacks labor. I'm not talking about greed attacking labor. I wanted to focus on technology attacking labor market forces. This gets tough. There's a relationship I always see with unemployment and addiction when it rises, or the loss of the dignity of having a job or wage that's protected. Addiction can replace this distress. What are you guys doing to discuss I know you're in the trades but the loss of maybe technology replacing some of these services? Is the union having discussions of what that could look like in the next 10 years?

Speaker 2:

For us in our business, as we like to say for me as an agent. I don't get paid to tell you what's down at the end of the block. Anybody can tell you what's going on down at the end of the block. I got to know what's going to happen or what's going on around the corner and how you get that answer can be a complex issue as far as labor and unemployment and the trades in particular.

Speaker 2:

For us, we go to work. Every day that we go to work, unlike a lot of other industries, we're working ourselves out of a job because once that project is complete and it's finished, the job is over. Without unemployment as a safety net, we're going to be not only poor but we're going to be out of a house. Our kids are going to be struggling. We really, really rely on unemployment compensation. In Pennsylvania unemployment compensation has not been raised in decades. I think it was the last number. It was like $576 or something like that after they take the tax count. I don't know what family in today's standards can survive on $576 or whatever the number is now if it's over that number, I don't know what family can really survive on that on a weekly basis. For us that sometimes can just pay the bills. As far as how we're able to fight, we're fighting with Harrisburg right now in order to raise the rates for unemployment, Our neighbor in the state of New Jersey, I think they're well over 300 hours more weak when they're unemployment compensation wages.

Speaker 2:

There are other industries and how is it directly connected with addiction. Let's just say this when people are getting sober, it's not because life is grand and things are bad. Typically, when you're getting sober, all scorecards read zero. That's what it was like for me. I was on the brink of the wife leaving. She was pregnant with my son. At the time, my daughter was before she was even three years old. She was like two and a half years old. I was laid off. I couldn't get to work. I have first hand life experience of knowing what that's like. If it's not for unemployment, what do you do at that?

Speaker 1:

point. What did you do? How did that produce your recovery at the end of the road?

Speaker 2:

It was a bit of a fast track for me, even though my initial feeling and thought was how dare she leave me? Doesn't she know how good she has it? Because, again, drinking and drugs cloud in your mind and your thoughts and your feelings. I was really disconnected from reality. But after some time of being at home alone because she had left and gone to her mom's house and I couldn't get up for work, I couldn't get out of bed. That was an eye-wakening moment for me.

Speaker 2:

The pain got great enough, as they said, I started to really reflect and take a look at how bad things were. For a long time, my last couple of years of drinking I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I was really sick of the person I had become. Thank God my dad was sober. Thank God that he was in my life and I was able to turn to him and ask for guidance and direction. He didn't get involved in my recovery, he just put me in touch with the right people, spiritual giants. I got picked up.

Speaker 2:

I was taken to my first AA meeting and I remember walking down the steps of that meeting thinking that I didn't belong there because I was in Alkeneston Avenue. I didn't lose my house. Things weren't the worst. One of the first things that was shared with me when I had said that was how low do you want your bottom to be? Do you want to lose everything? That's what's going to happen.

Speaker 2:

I went into that AA meeting and the guy that was speaking he was sober well over 30 years. He was probably in his later 70s. The first thing I thought was I'm not going to relate to this guy. I don't have any common with him. From the time he spoke to the time he finished, I related to every single thing that that man had shared and the scene was planned Again good news, bad news with my dad being sober. I always thought, well, I know my dad's sober, I know how not to be an alcoholic. But what I didn't know was that once I took that drink and that drink took me, all bets were off. I was no longer. I no longer had a choice with the outcome of my day or my night or my week was going to be, because I got that taste on my lips and I couldn't stop.

Speaker 1:

When did you realize that recovery was more than just not drinking? There was going to be some other fundamental things that either had to change or that you wanted to change. That you're like okay, drinking was just kind of the beginning, but the plug in the jug.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a great question. I was just sharing this with my girlfriend, catherine, which, by the way, I ended up getting divorced after getting sober. But that's life, life gets life, as they say. But I was just having that conversation, thank God, and you know, joe, you can get sober and life doesn't always get better. You don't always make the right choices and you can end up going down the wrong path, even in sobriety. But thank God, I was put in touch with the right people, like I said, spiritual giants, men of honor, dignity, and I was going to the right amoebaings and the things that I would hear from them is one of the most spiritual things you can do in sobriety is pay child support, take care of your responsibilities.

Speaker 2:

You know, when I had a lot of debt coming into sobriety, financial insecurity was certainly a big big thing for me.

Speaker 2:

I remember too I learned early on in sobriety, like some of the cliches that you would hear in the rooms, that alcohol gave you the wings to fly but took away the sky, and that really hit home for me, because for drinking and me and my life, that was always a solution.

Speaker 2:

And then getting sober, going AA and just being so bottle up because I stuffed everything down. I was not one to share where I was really at mentally and emotionally. And then all of a sudden, I'm in the room and you want me to talk about where I'm at and what's going on, and I'm like, hmm, I'm not really there yet. So I just kept bringing the body and, as they say, I kept bringing the body and eventually the mind showed up and because of the men in the rooms of AA, I was able to share exactly where I was going and getting that good, orderly direction, as they say, and making better life choices. And little by little, instead of digging that hole deeper and deeper, I started to fill it in and things started to get better. And so my answer to that is is that you get plugged in with the right people, and for me, it was men in AA who would help me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's real, and that is the first thing that happens is the connection starts already. You trust a guy, you can tell them what's going on, and then the fantasy and the secrets get fade away and you start to become whole again. And in that process that I know you experienced, when did it become apparent that you're going to be drawn towards labor leadership or the union. How did that evolve? If you had to give a summary, from around the point of early sobriety to present day, what did that look like? How did that happen?

Speaker 2:

So I remember being on the bar stool, my addiction and thinking like I could do, that I could be a business agent. But that dream was just not possible and, honestly, in early sobriety I was just trying to stay sober, so I really didn't know where my life would end up taking me. I actually ended up getting hurt. I was sober, I was working on a big mall. I had a freight elevator door come crashing down on me and I had three herniate discs, nerve damage going down both legs. My kids were young.

Speaker 2:

Every doctor that I went to see whether it be the workman's comp doctors or my personal doctors they all told me that I needed to find a new line of work Because if I continued working in construction my quality of life would be terrible by the time I was 50. So I could have just hanging up and retired. At that point I don't think I was even 30 years old yet I was maybe 30 or 31 years old. So I was collecting work in his comp and exploring different career paths. I looked at possibly being a real estate agent.

Speaker 2:

I had some time in my hands. So I got involved with my local union, with the bricklayers, and I got involved with the politics and I really learned firsthand what politics delivered look like, as it's related to organized labor and the building trades, and that passion just really really took off. Prior to 2009, I don't even think I had an email address. I didn't know how to send an email, necessarily because I graduated from high school in 97. And computers may have been in the class, but it was like the old school dark screen with green letters.

Speaker 1:

Just knocking on it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. So I started getting involved with politics with my union and I wasn't getting paid from the local, from the union, I was doing it because I thought it was the good of the union. And I ended up just really jumping all in and I started chasing it and I started getting involved in political campaigns.

Speaker 1:

And then I eventually political campaigns outside of the union not like an office. And was that looking like at the state level, county levels?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So the first campaign that I ran was in 2012. It was for a state representative. It was a seat that was held by a Republican for 33 years prior to that. This is a Democrat and he wasn't running against the incumbent, he had retired and the district itself was actually getting redistricted out. So I had managed the campaign. I worked and volunteered on a handful of other campaigns in like 2010 and 2011.

Speaker 2:

But this one I was the manager and, like I said, prior to 2009, I didn't even never send an email, but again my back was up against the wall, I guess you can say, in the sense that I needed to find a new career path. I was sober, I was getting sober and thank God that I was and I just again I showed up 85% of it is showing up, fake it to you and make it, as they say and things just kind of took off and really it was a passion. It was something that I really loved. I loved the action. I loved, like you know, putting in the long hours and fighting I guess you can say, not like physically fighting, but just, you know, fight for the win, you know, and things just really took.

Speaker 1:

Well, I probably met you in 2014-15. You were already an old vet by that.

Speaker 1:

You were in some dog fights and getting some support here for statewide candidates. You knew exactly what you were doing, so you kind of get this tutelage of a good mentorship. The desire and then the physical situation forced you to a new skill set, but it went into a skill set that you could be a leader and represent the guys that you're cut from your brothers. How did it look like? How did you run for a seat in the union? How does that look like to someone who would not be familiar with that? Is it similar to a race? You put your hat and your name in a hat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so for me because of the success that I had in the political world and running campaigns. You know I had a couple people that really, you know, witnessed and saw the talent that I had. But I and I actually worked briefly as a Chief of Staff for that State Representative and then eventually even down the City Council. But that's really not where I felt like I fit in. You know it was. I loved, I really enjoyed helping people, but my heart and my passion was always with. You know, labor. You know with the unions and I got an opportunity to become an organizer. You know with Local 98, you know, under John Docherty, and you know I worked on, you know, some campaigns but my heart was always with you know it was always with the organizing efforts. When it comes to creating hours, you know, for the members and fighting for the members and fighting for, you know, better wages and standards in the workplace.

Speaker 1:

And for those that don't know who Johnny Dock is, they're just living on the moon when it comes to.

Speaker 2:

American labor, yeah, yeah yeah, you know, actually John was very influential and powerful, you know, in labor politics, you know. He, you know, put the labor movement on his back for quite a while and led the fight, you know, and the level of success could not be, you know, denied. You know the type of success that he had over his career.

Speaker 1:

Well, what would you say were the most, three most important things that you learned under, under watching him be one of the last kind of stalwarts of protection for labor, and it seems that he made Philadelphia, this impenetrable place, still left for labor, because a lot of places I mean they're getting picked off and there seem to be an organization in Philadelphia and a commitment to politics and having a voice. What were your takeaways that maybe you'll always keep with you and what are the things you feel, maybe in the last three or four years, now that you're leading the way you are, that you had to either change or new tools that you think the union has to use moving forward?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the one thing that I didn't need to learn, you know, was was hard work, dedication and loyalty. You know, and I and I saw that firsthand you know he just cared passionately and he would always pound everybody. You know agents, organizers that you know. This is not a job, this is a lifestyle, and it's 24, seven, three, 65. And there's never a time where you cannot take the call from a member. You know when, when they need something, they need something to fight for them, you know. So that is, that is something that, like I said, was already there for me, but watching it firsthand and seeing how that unfolds was was definitely an experience and something that I'll never, ever, ever stop doing. You know, just just, really, at the end of the day, like it's really about the members and it's really about, you know, creating hours. You know, and organizing and making sure that. You know that. That you know, like I said, the. You know, seeing what's down at the end of the block is good, but we need to see what's around the corner. You know, and creating a 10 year plan, you know, for labor movement, because that's really how things move in our industry. You know you can, you can plan for you know what's going to be 3068 for now, but you really got to think about what's going to be happening.

Speaker 2:

You know 10 years from now and you know working on that Supreme Court race in 2015. It was the first time in over 300 years you had three vacancies on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And we know from labor's position. You know that was not only critical for survival. You know for labor unions, because that's ultimately where you know all decisions. You know and you know for organized labor, because per round wages are always on the table. Right to work is always on the table. You know, and and if we, you know, at the end of the day, if those three seats end up being won by Republicans, their mindset and their ideals aren't always fit with us, not to say that there's not pro-Labor Republicans out there, because there are you know your ideology is clear it's labor who gives a shit if they're protecting your labor.

Speaker 1:

That's who you're voting for.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and that was a great year because John's brother won that seat. Kevin, Yep, he sure did, and you know he was a larger than life character, if anyone doesn't have context and he was a real leader. His hands always amazed me. It was like big catcher. Before I step off at Johnny Doc, were you there? Did he beat the crap out of some of your guy trying to jump on him? And I mean he had to be 70 years old. I heard he could still toss some dude at the work site.

Speaker 2:

So I was not there, you know, for that. And yeah, the guy you know attacked him and you know he had to defend himself, you know, obviously, you know there was another story that was maybe shared or said you know, but yeah, that's that's, that's that's what I heard happened. The guy you know went after him. You know there was a little bit of a scrap and John had to defend himself. And I guess, you know, because the guy didn't win the win, the fight, you know he had a different story to tell.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was clear to anyone who knew him and was around the scenario, but there was a sense of just awe his age, stature and you know he always had the sharpest sweaters I've ever seen that he would. He's a big dude. So, looking forward and in the future, I guess some ideas organization may be considering is is there programs or incentives or plans in the future that labor will be part of? You know, new skill training, not only protecting jobs is? Is there A way to preemptively like stave off, say, ai or new emerging technologies that could do more sophisticated services that are now trades? Is there discussions to start saying maybe labor and the union should be part of new skills and trainings, almost like education, I mean?

Speaker 2:

what would that look like? No, and as I'm thinking now and I do, I really did the level of gratitude that I have for AI and sobriety is really unmatched At the end of the day. I'm thinking now about how blessed I really feel between my father, johnny Doc, and then now Ryan Boyer, who's the business manager building trades. I'm really really blessed by having direction and guidance from some of the best and greatest labor leaders that I can ever come before. But Ryan has put in place, with a lot of our pre-apprenticeship programs, our inclusion, diversity in the trades when it comes to having women, people of color, having every opportunity in order to get into the trades. But in a lot of these pre-apprenticeship programs we're talking about just being stating the art of cutting edge, making sure that the workforce really reflects what the neighborhood looks like. And as far as AI and a lot of stuff, joe and I can talk to Ryan about having you coming down and doing a tour of the Sam Staten Junior Pre-Apprenticeship Program.

Speaker 2:

I would talk to that. You got to see this place. It looks like an accredited, top class Ivy League college when you walk through this building and they have all types of innovative training that they go over. And then even over at Local 98, you got Mark Lynch, who's the business manager over there. They have a whole training where you pop on these glasses. It's interactive and they can place you anywhere in the world and you can work in a safe environment and you can work with a nuclear plant, you can work in a life science lab and you put on these gloves and these glasses and you're literally doing it like an innovative way. That is decades and light years ahead, like you said. It's funny when you said about Scranton being 10, 20 years behind sometimes. Philadelphia has always really led the charge when it comes to the building trades in this country, whether it be the way that we have our organizing efforts or the way that we go after the work that's going to be coming down the pike in the next 10 to 15 years.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's exciting stuff and I was very curious about that. So, in lines of any of those 55,000 members, they start not showing up for work one day depression, maybe messing up at the job, and you know it's addiction related. What is the kind of protocol that you guys use to approach somewhat addiction? Or they approach you and need help. What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so fortunately for me, when I was early years of sobriety working on the job with the tools a lot of times you can know when somebody's really going through a difficult time I was one of those guys that was going through a difficult time and being able to meet other men or women on the jobs that are in sobriety was a blessing, because you got your head in between your legs and you're in your full shame and guilt and remorse and you're struggling with life. Fast forward now, 2023, many of our trades we have mentorship programs. We have a drug and alcohol specialist that work directly for individual trades unions and I feel like the opportunities or at least I don't want to call promotion because it's more about attraction as we're taught but a lot of the programs that are out there aren't like hitting, like they were 10, 20, even 30 years ago, where it was unheard of to talk about that. On a job I remember at certain points hearing about people would bring 30 packs onto the job. That doesn't happen anymore.

Speaker 2:

I had a wrestling coach.

Speaker 1:

that would the coach they would drink at wrestling practice.

Speaker 2:

It was just great life yeah yeah, listen, and I know we're always constantly evolving and dealing with different things. I remember being on the job site walking down the hallway like I got a baby rat on my pocket. Instead of calling the park assets, they call them work assets because you need to take them in order to keep on working, because you get banged up in our industry. But there really are. I don't think it's as much of a secret now with the opportunities and the programs that are out there, whether, if you get your opportunity to get into a job.

Speaker 2:

But the real success that I've seen personally has been through AI or NA. When you're really struggling and having that person to turn to that you can talk about, like when you're struggling with life or you're struggling with the bills or you're struggling with, you know, fighting with your significant other, your spouse, and you don't have to turn to a drink or a drug in order to get that solution, but you can turn to a person and they can talk about their experience and how they were able to stay sober through a difficult time. That's really the most powerful and impactful thing that I've seen in my time in recovery. We have that network down here in Philadelphia. You know AA and NA is really, really strong in this region.

Speaker 2:

We went through the pandemic and getting to a physical meeting may have been difficult and tougher people, but I was just at a meeting last Friday, you know, and the woman that was speaking, you know she was a, you know, a Zoom baby. I guess you can say you know where she did her most entire recovery, you know, on Zoom meetings, you know. So there are really lots of ways in order for you to talk to another person you know in recovery that can share their experience, you know, and give you some hope that there's a solution and that there's a way out of it.

Speaker 1:

Well, brian, we're winding down and I promised you 50 minutes, but before we kind of wrap up here, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think you'd like to say about how to contact the unions or people reaching out for help, or something I didn't ask?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I mean, I don't know if we really missed anything. We talked about just letting things flow. I think they did. You know, when it comes to, you know AA, or you know I got sober and alcohol is anonymous because my drink bone, you know, is connected to my drug bone. But everything always started and stopped with it with a drink with me, and that's really where, in fact, I even, like, even said at one time I started smoking, you know weed to slow my drinking down, you know.

Speaker 2:

And then that became like you know everything, but no, truthfully, you know if I'm giving advice or if I'm making a suggestion to anybody, that's, you know, struggling. You know staying sober, you know. You know jump in. You know jump into this lifeboat, you know, don't, don't jump out. You know for me, you know it was always a and I'm going to be very polite and I say this, but like you know, kind of like, if things go wrong in life, you know what I mean like just just hang in there, just just stay in and you can turn to another person. You know in the alcohol is anonymous or NA or whatever. You know recovery you step into, you know for that, for that solution, because nothing justifies a drink or a drug.

Speaker 1:

I do that, Brian. I want to thank you and anything coming down the pike. I'd like to reach out soon. I hope you come on again sometime.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate the time. Thank you, man. Thank you Bye.

Speaker 1:

I'd like to thank you for listening to another episode of All Better. You can find us on allbetterfm or listen to us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts, stitcher, iheartradio and Alexa. Special thanks to our producer, john Edwards, and engineering company 570 Drone. Please like or subscribe to us on YouTube, facebook, instagram or Twitter and, if you're not, on social media, you're awesome. Looking forward to seeing you again. And remember, just because you're sober doesn't mean you're right.