Inventing Onself: Blending Buiness and Poliitics

This is an autobiographical adventure story depicting how one can overcome adversity by using education and experience to reinvent oneself. In 1989 the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) went out on strike against the Pittston Coal Company which operated 52 mines in Virginia West Virginia Kentucky and Tennessee. The union boss Richard Trumka thought by harassing Pittston Company outside directors and their employers with fabricated innuendos boycotts and character assassination he might cause an ambushed director to pressure company management to soften their bargaining position. Bill Craig was a Pittston Company director and vice chairman of Shawmut Bank the second largest bank in Boston. He became the Unions number one target. For years Boston and Massachusetts have been governed by liberal leaning politicians dependent upon union contributions for re-election. None of the other Pittston Co. directors lived or worked in communities with pols so closely linked to union ties. The UMWA an independent union lacked members outside the coalfields. Needing strikers to make trouble in Boston Trumka offered to have his union join the AFL-CIO to advance his political ambitions while adding muscle to his picket lines promoting business interference. Strikers blocked entrances to bank offices and access to the authors home. They printed and distributed hate literature while trashing businesses and private property. In support of the union the Boston City Council authorized the withdrawal of $20000000 of city deposits from Shawmut Bank to pressure the author to cave to the UMWA demands. At age 58 Craig quit his job in order to lift the unfair burden placed on the bank. He turned the unplanned early retirement from Shawmut into a bonanza by reinventing himself.