Akron Life February 2022

HISTORICAL 330

HEFNER SAYS THAT DESPITE ALL THE STRUGGLES, WORKING IN THE RUBBER INDUSTRY

OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) being started. We had a pow erful rubber worker union here in Akron and around the country. … It wasn’t a death trap to work in the industry. The unions could’ve been more flexible.

it did hurt. It just gave the companies more ammunition when they finally started exit ing Akron, to throw that out there and say that the union wouldn’t work with them. They weren’t wrong in some instances. But everybody knows that the real reason they left Akron is that they didn’t put any money, or very little, into equipment and modernization of the facilities. They ran them into the ground. And when it came time to expand or get new equipment or new plants, they headed south where the unions were not strong.

As Hefner concludes in his Akron Stories interview, “Akron took a lot of blows during that time, but still, we survived.” Like a Phoenix rising, Akron has found its way in the 21st cen tury. The renaissance of down town in the 1990s, starting with Canal Park and Inventure Place, then Lock 3, has influenced peo ple to come back to the heart of the city as they once did. While Goodyear and Bridgestone/ Firestone are still here in some capacity, the soul of Akron will always be rubber.

WAS PRETTY GOOD WHILE IT LASTED.

Hefner: General Tire turned out to be a damn good com pany to work for. At most of the rubber shops in Akron, during the ’60s and ’70s, you had your flare-ups and your strikes, but working conditions were not that bad. They were good places to work. The unions made progress over those years with safety and

We had some ridiculous rules that the companies would every once in a

while want to tweak or get rid of. But the unions were very stubborn. It took years to gain those rules, and they weren’t going to just fold on some of them right away. But

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