Very interesting. My husband Bill worked for Seppala& Aho. He started on the form crew and eventually was the general manager of Monadnock Fabricators in Rindge NH, a division of Seppala & Aho. I remember the chicken bar-b-ques and the lazy boys well. One year we received a fiber glass canoe as our gift. Marty Seppala was a great story teller. He was good to his men.
Just for the record: The first house or construction project Martin Seppala built was in the latter 1930's when he built the house at 39 Temple Road in New Ipswich which is across from the town field basketball court. Arline Somero was Martin's aunt and she needed her house to be built. So she talked to her sister Annie who was Martin's mother. So at 15 years old or so with no construction experience Martin built the house for his aunt with a little guidance from her. Years later I asked Martin about it and he confirmed the accuracy of the account.
My father, Arne Jussila, came from Northern Michigan-The Copper Country-looking for a job in response to an ad in the Fitchburg Sentinel, regarding a company named Seppala and Aho that was looking for a bulldozer operator. His good friend from the Copper Country, Hugo Walgren, who had relocated to the Fitchburg, Mass. area and was the owner of the clock shop on Main Street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, had summoned him by phone to come to NH and inquire of that position. That is where my father met Ruth Somero on the doorstep of Hjalmar Aho’s home right there in New Ipswich, NH, up from the S&A offices. The companies 3rd annual barbecue was taking place and she was the nanny for the Aho children. Well their parents were away, celebrating the employees of S&A.
I am enjoying these excerpts from the history of Finns in New Ipswich because I grew up alongside these people. As for Martin Seppala, no one would dispute the fact that he was an upright and remarkable man. Certainly, his hundreds of descendants feel that way. But I am going to take issue with his comments about unions. Unions—the honest unions adhering to their founding principles—care about and fight for the rights and needs of their members, for fair pay, benefits and job safety. Those benefits were lacking at S&A, and a major reason that they were able to underbid and secure so many construction jobs. While it's nice that S&A workers got an annual company barbeque and a Lazy-Boy recliner did they get a living wage? No they didn't. In the summer of 1967 I signed on for my second term of summer employment with S&A, spending most of those 3 short months building the Sterilite plant in Townsend. My brother and I worked alongside people like Billy Kivela and Ken Kangas, who can testify to what I am writing. It was hard, hard work, 50 hours a week, 9 hours per day Monday thru Friday and 5 hours on Saturday mornings. And there was no overtime if you lost a day's work due to rain that week. Zero benefits, nada, bupkus. I was 17 and my brother, David, was 16. We were children, doing dangerous work like helping erect steel girders and joists 25 feet above the ground. Forget the fact that our pay was $1.75 an hour. A grown man, married with a family, was working as a welder there with us and earning only $2.00 an hour. An inflation calculator will tell you that $2.00 in 1967 was worth the equivalent of $18.00 in 2023. Can a man support a family on $18.00 an hour with no benefits? And this kind of work was not like spending the day indoors clerking in a store, for example. I still recall the day I was tending for two masons who challenged each other that they were going to lay five hundred eight inch concrete blocks in one day, with me building the staging, shoveling the mortar and carrying the blocks to them as the wall went up. At the end of that day I did a rough calculation and figured that I had moved at least 50,000 pounds of materials that day, not on the stable ground but on swaying staging up to four levels above the ground. For that I got $1.75 an hour. At first my brother, age 16 and working his first job, was assigned to run the cement mixer, a machine that would rip your arm off if you weren't careful. Then, when the factory walls were up, he and I climbed up 25 feet in the air to assist with steel erection and welding. We balanced on six inch wide girders and walked on unwelded joists only four inches wide. The Lull forklift would raise up the heavy steel joists, maybe 30' long, and we would position them on the edges of the steel I-beams to be welded. And that is when my brother's career in construction ended. Because in adjusting a joist for welding the welder on his end of the joist tugged on it too much and my brother's end slipped off the I-beam with his fingers curled under it, pulling him head first down 25 feet to the ground. He didn't take his first breath until I raced to a ladder and got down on the ground to shake him awake. His bashed-in hard hat saved his life, and later was displayed in the S&A office as a warning to others. David spent the weekend at Burbank Hospital with a concussion, not knowing what had happened to him. He was let go and I heard of no workers compensation. The work he was doing at age 16 was likely a violation of child labor laws, the kind of laws enacted because of those nasty unions Martin Seppala fought. Yes, S&A prospered and grew, and many decent people were glad to have worked for them. And it was certainly a better life than what their grandparents told them about starving back in Finland. But, Martin Seppala, if you were alive today I'd tell you that you were in the wrong to fight unionization, just like Elon Musk, Howard Shultz and all the other billionaire CEOs who profit from the labor of others are wrong.
Like most circumstances there are always 2 sides to every story. I admire what Martin and Hjalmar did and my take is they meant to do the best for their workers and at the same time remain competitive. I appreciate the unions as an advocate of the worker and the role they play in the balance of power between a corporation with resources vs individual laborers with little resources. However I did not get the impression that Martin was anti-union, he said he would let his workers choose via a vote. He objected to the union's arm twisting and having the company force the workers into a union. I have sympathy for Bill Thoms' brother and maybe at 16 he shouldn't have been in that position. The pay seemed low for the risk and heavy labor required. The problem occurs, in my opinion, when either side gets too greedy. Corporations can be nasty as well as unions. It seems that what was a 2 party situation became a 3 party one. Unions became self-propagating entities with high paid executives that were no longer part of the work force. Union rules sometimes made no sense. An example: in 1960 I watched a worker using a hand saw as he was installing foundation forms for Boston's Prudential Center. I asked him why he was using a hand saw. He said union rules would not allow him to use an electric saw because he job title did not permit it. From 1958-1961 I worked for $1/hr at Tricnit. Bill Kivela worked there as well in 1960 and later at Seppala & Aho. I intend to ask him next time I see him how the 2 companies compare.
Agreed. As for Tricnit as a model workplace, well, I remember two of my sisters teasing each other by saying, "You will end up working at Tricnit." Or "You will end up married to Robbie Kaarto." (BTW, all of us Thoms kids really like Robbie and are still in touch with him from time to time, but—you know.
My mother and sisters did work for Tricnit. My mother for 21 yrs with no paid vacation. So she organized all the low level workers and petitioned the company for a 2 wk paid vacation. She won and then left Tricnit for a job at Hitchner's manufacturing in Wilton. It's an unfortunate reality that there is a global workforce willing to, or forced to, work for low wages. I try, and it's hard, not to buy 'made in China' products. Thus I don't have an Iphone or Apple computer.
I have Samsung & Acer products instead (I don't think TVs and phones are made in the US) and I drive a Honda (made in the USA) and a Chevy truck.
Very interesting. My husband Bill worked for Seppala& Aho. He started on the form crew and eventually was the general manager of Monadnock Fabricators in Rindge NH, a division of Seppala & Aho. I remember the chicken bar-b-ques and the lazy boys well. One year we received a fiber glass canoe as our gift. Marty Seppala was a great story teller. He was good to his men.
Just for the record: The first house or construction project Martin Seppala built was in the latter 1930's when he built the house at 39 Temple Road in New Ipswich which is across from the town field basketball court. Arline Somero was Martin's aunt and she needed her house to be built. So she talked to her sister Annie who was Martin's mother. So at 15 years old or so with no construction experience Martin built the house for his aunt with a little guidance from her. Years later I asked Martin about it and he confirmed the accuracy of the account.
Impressive accomplishment
My father, Arne Jussila, came from Northern Michigan-The Copper Country-looking for a job in response to an ad in the Fitchburg Sentinel, regarding a company named Seppala and Aho that was looking for a bulldozer operator. His good friend from the Copper Country, Hugo Walgren, who had relocated to the Fitchburg, Mass. area and was the owner of the clock shop on Main Street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, had summoned him by phone to come to NH and inquire of that position. That is where my father met Ruth Somero on the doorstep of Hjalmar Aho’s home right there in New Ipswich, NH, up from the S&A offices. The companies 3rd annual barbecue was taking place and she was the nanny for the Aho children. Well their parents were away, celebrating the employees of S&A.
I am enjoying these excerpts from the history of Finns in New Ipswich because I grew up alongside these people. As for Martin Seppala, no one would dispute the fact that he was an upright and remarkable man. Certainly, his hundreds of descendants feel that way. But I am going to take issue with his comments about unions. Unions—the honest unions adhering to their founding principles—care about and fight for the rights and needs of their members, for fair pay, benefits and job safety. Those benefits were lacking at S&A, and a major reason that they were able to underbid and secure so many construction jobs. While it's nice that S&A workers got an annual company barbeque and a Lazy-Boy recliner did they get a living wage? No they didn't. In the summer of 1967 I signed on for my second term of summer employment with S&A, spending most of those 3 short months building the Sterilite plant in Townsend. My brother and I worked alongside people like Billy Kivela and Ken Kangas, who can testify to what I am writing. It was hard, hard work, 50 hours a week, 9 hours per day Monday thru Friday and 5 hours on Saturday mornings. And there was no overtime if you lost a day's work due to rain that week. Zero benefits, nada, bupkus. I was 17 and my brother, David, was 16. We were children, doing dangerous work like helping erect steel girders and joists 25 feet above the ground. Forget the fact that our pay was $1.75 an hour. A grown man, married with a family, was working as a welder there with us and earning only $2.00 an hour. An inflation calculator will tell you that $2.00 in 1967 was worth the equivalent of $18.00 in 2023. Can a man support a family on $18.00 an hour with no benefits? And this kind of work was not like spending the day indoors clerking in a store, for example. I still recall the day I was tending for two masons who challenged each other that they were going to lay five hundred eight inch concrete blocks in one day, with me building the staging, shoveling the mortar and carrying the blocks to them as the wall went up. At the end of that day I did a rough calculation and figured that I had moved at least 50,000 pounds of materials that day, not on the stable ground but on swaying staging up to four levels above the ground. For that I got $1.75 an hour. At first my brother, age 16 and working his first job, was assigned to run the cement mixer, a machine that would rip your arm off if you weren't careful. Then, when the factory walls were up, he and I climbed up 25 feet in the air to assist with steel erection and welding. We balanced on six inch wide girders and walked on unwelded joists only four inches wide. The Lull forklift would raise up the heavy steel joists, maybe 30' long, and we would position them on the edges of the steel I-beams to be welded. And that is when my brother's career in construction ended. Because in adjusting a joist for welding the welder on his end of the joist tugged on it too much and my brother's end slipped off the I-beam with his fingers curled under it, pulling him head first down 25 feet to the ground. He didn't take his first breath until I raced to a ladder and got down on the ground to shake him awake. His bashed-in hard hat saved his life, and later was displayed in the S&A office as a warning to others. David spent the weekend at Burbank Hospital with a concussion, not knowing what had happened to him. He was let go and I heard of no workers compensation. The work he was doing at age 16 was likely a violation of child labor laws, the kind of laws enacted because of those nasty unions Martin Seppala fought. Yes, S&A prospered and grew, and many decent people were glad to have worked for them. And it was certainly a better life than what their grandparents told them about starving back in Finland. But, Martin Seppala, if you were alive today I'd tell you that you were in the wrong to fight unionization, just like Elon Musk, Howard Shultz and all the other billionaire CEOs who profit from the labor of others are wrong.
Like most circumstances there are always 2 sides to every story. I admire what Martin and Hjalmar did and my take is they meant to do the best for their workers and at the same time remain competitive. I appreciate the unions as an advocate of the worker and the role they play in the balance of power between a corporation with resources vs individual laborers with little resources. However I did not get the impression that Martin was anti-union, he said he would let his workers choose via a vote. He objected to the union's arm twisting and having the company force the workers into a union. I have sympathy for Bill Thoms' brother and maybe at 16 he shouldn't have been in that position. The pay seemed low for the risk and heavy labor required. The problem occurs, in my opinion, when either side gets too greedy. Corporations can be nasty as well as unions. It seems that what was a 2 party situation became a 3 party one. Unions became self-propagating entities with high paid executives that were no longer part of the work force. Union rules sometimes made no sense. An example: in 1960 I watched a worker using a hand saw as he was installing foundation forms for Boston's Prudential Center. I asked him why he was using a hand saw. He said union rules would not allow him to use an electric saw because he job title did not permit it. From 1958-1961 I worked for $1/hr at Tricnit. Bill Kivela worked there as well in 1960 and later at Seppala & Aho. I intend to ask him next time I see him how the 2 companies compare.
Agreed. As for Tricnit as a model workplace, well, I remember two of my sisters teasing each other by saying, "You will end up working at Tricnit." Or "You will end up married to Robbie Kaarto." (BTW, all of us Thoms kids really like Robbie and are still in touch with him from time to time, but—you know.
My mother and sisters did work for Tricnit. My mother for 21 yrs with no paid vacation. So she organized all the low level workers and petitioned the company for a 2 wk paid vacation. She won and then left Tricnit for a job at Hitchner's manufacturing in Wilton. It's an unfortunate reality that there is a global workforce willing to, or forced to, work for low wages. I try, and it's hard, not to buy 'made in China' products. Thus I don't have an Iphone or Apple computer.
I have Samsung & Acer products instead (I don't think TVs and phones are made in the US) and I drive a Honda (made in the USA) and a Chevy truck.