Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo Laton Mccartney (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Full Charge,” as O’Connell was known at Bechtel, also had his defenders, chief among them Steve junior, who, according to a number of company officials, regarded him almost as a surrogate father. Of more immediate importance, O’Connell enjoyed a longtime intimate relationship with George Meany.

The two men’s friendship dated back nearly twenty years to the bitter strike at the Joppa, Illinois, atomic-energy plant. Ending the walkout, which centered on a jurisdictional dispute between local workers and the national labor federation, was a crucial test for Meany, who had only recently taken over as president of the AFL. The stakes were also high for Bechtel, which was just then entering the nuclearpower industry, as well as for O’Connell, who had just been named the company’s first labor chief. Out of that shared self-interest, the two sons of Irish-Catholic immigrants fashioned a deal. Under its terms, Bechtel 167

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agreed to fire all the 1, 500 workers who did not strike at Joppa, and rehire only those of whom the AFL leadership approved. In return, Meany agreed to enforce a no-strike pledge while Bechtel finished construction of the $830 million plant.

The agreement, which was enforced only after a number of violent incidents, paid off for both men, and they had subsequently become close. O’Connell had invited Meany out to his encampment at the Bohemian Grove, flown him to California for golf and gin rummy weekends with Steves senior and junior, vacationed with him at the Bechtels’ fishing camp in Jasper, Canada. Meany, in turn, had introduced O’Connell to the whole of the U.S. labor establishment, which thereafter seldom, if ever, quarreled with affable John O’Connell’s employ er. “John dedicated himself to knowing George Meany,” said a former Bechtel director. “As a result, Bechtel projects in the United States never experienced any real major problems. That was O’Connell’s contribution. “4

At the Washington meeting with Shultz, O’Connell contributed again by offering to arrange a golf get-together with Meany at the Augusta National Country Club in Georgia, site of the Masters Tournament. Shultz accepted at once, and so, after a friendly phone call from O’Connell, did Meany. Several weeks later, after a friendly contest on the same links where Dwight Eisenhower had spent so many vacations, the two enemies repaired to a cottage alongside one of the fairways and over cocktails and Cuban cigars, thrashed out their differences. “It was all done extremely discreetly,” said Nixon aide John Ehrlichman.

“George enjoyed the golf and the talk with Meany. He got a lot done and was extremely grateful. “5

Under O’Connell’s sponsorship, the golf weekends continued at a rate of one a month. Soon, Meany’s vehemence about the Philadelphia Plan began to lessen. He also started to pare back his opposition to Nixon’s price controls, agreeing to cooperate if the president appointed an independent three-member commission to administer them. W ith Shultz acting as go-between, Nixon accepted the suggestion, appointed Meany one of the commission’s members and, at the same time, named him a member of the President’s Productivity Commission.

Before long, Time was hailing Shultz as “the only Nixon administration official trusted by AFL-CIO President George Meany. “6 In large part because of that relationship, Meany saw to it that the AFL-CIO

refrained from endorsing Democrat George McGovern, thus all but guaranteeing Nixon’s reelection. “It was a moment to ponder and 168