A few months back, dear readers, I sent a Facebook direct message to Sue Geckle. She’s the president of the Ellicott City and Western Howard Democratic Club (EC&WHDC) and someone we can always turn to for help of any sort. The day I messaged her, though, I was inquiring about the position of Vice President of EC&WHDC. Colleen and I had heard both that position and that of secretary of the same club were available.

“Robert, I was just going to message you about the same thing,” Sue said to me. It’s funny how these things work out, I thought to myself. The person who was stepping down from the position was named Bryan Coster. At the next meeting of EC&WHDC, Colleen and I met Bryan and his wife, Lisa. The latter was stepping down from the position of secretary of the club. We liked Bryan and Lisa right off the bat. They have this incredibly loving energy. I felt kind of bummed that BrySa (Bryan and Lisa) were vacating their posts in the club, because they seemed like they’d be fun to work with. So when I got myself and the rest of the executive board name tags–including Karin Emery, who took on Lisa’s position–I got name badges for them emeritus name badges too. At the club’s Labor Day picnic I gave them to my new fave couple.

“That is so sweet. Come here, you!” Bryan said. He pulled me in for a big hug. Regular readers of this site know that RoCo are are major hug people. Colleen did, recall, coin the phrase Hugersole From Ebersole™ based on the epic hugs that Delegate Eric Ebersole (D-12) gives. I was so moved by Bryan’s immediate warmth, too. I thought of the Costers sweetness as I drove up to their home in Marriottsville to talk to Bryan about his career in labor organizing. I rang the doorbell, and I heard a dog bark. When Bryan opened the door, he introduced me to Clarence. He was the white West Highland Terrier more excited to see me than anyone in recent memory. I immediately thought of Senator Clarence Lam (D-12). I’ve got local politics on the brain, readers! Clarence Coster isn’t named after Lam it turns out.

As Bryan and I sat down to chat, I realized my first question was almost embarrassingly basic. I asked Bryan what union he’d been with. He’s so kind he smiled at a question I felt like I should have known the answer to. Bryan’s union was the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB). Included under the heading of boilermakers is iron ship builders, blacksmiths, forgers, and helpers. You can see more about this labor union on its official website.

“We build iron ships, submarines, smoke stacks, that kind of thing,” Bryan told me. Bryan started out as a boilermaker helper in 1968. He told me college wasn’t for him, he’d found just before starting out in the trade. But the way he got involved in labor organizing made me think it was probably just that his learning style wasn’t one that was rewarded in a traditional school setting. He used to keep a boilermakers labor law handbook in his back pocket and read it whenever he had a chance. His fellow helpers would consult him when they had new ideas about their field. He could recite laws on demand, sometimes not even lifting up his welding mask before answering.

“Bryan–that’s incredibly impressive. I’m not sure why college wasn’t right for you, but it’s not because of a lack of aptitude,” I said in my oh-so-Robert-ish, gushy way. Bryan chuckled.

See what’s up at our sister blog, Political Poetry Pastiche.

Sue Geckle, our friend and the president of EC&WHDC said Bryan was always “a pleasure to work with.” She also remarked on his knowledge of arcane and Byzantine laws, calling him the go-to person for rules and procedures the club is bound by.

When I continued to marvel at his ability to recall labor law and parliamentary rules on demand, Bryan tilted his head to the side and smiled.

“It’s fun to me,” he said, shrugging. He likened it to reading the instructions for use that come with a new TV. I said that was a great example, because even I, someone who loves TV, find those torturous to interact with.

Marvels In DelMarVa

The chapter of the IBB that Bryan worked with covered Maryland, two counties in Delaware, and two counties in Virginia. Bryan was the Bull Steward for Sparrows Point Steel Mill. He ran for Vice President of the Union, then President, and most recently Business Manager. The last position is the highest one in the union. At 32 he was the youngest Field Construction International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Business Manager at the time. That’s when I had to stop him and offer my thoughts on an issue weighing heavily on my mind.

“We have got to come up with a new title for this group. It’s like EC&WHDC: I feel like I need a nap every time I say the full name!” We had a good chuckle about that. I granted him permission to go on, then. He’s so polite and deferential I feel like I needed to do this. Six months after Bryan lost his third election for the same position, the president of the National Association of Building Trades Union, an umbrella organization that covers all the crafts, asked Bryan to be a lobbyist for the those folks in Annapolis. He did that for eight years. Next, Governor Paris Glendening (D-Md.) asked him to come on staff in his office to negotiate agreements with the unions. He did that for almost two years.

“Organizing is tougher than people think it is,” Bryan said. The unions members want everyone to be union–someone’s union, but not necessarily their own. That’s because the bigger a union is the more scarce the jobs are, complicating things. The non-union workers are historically afraid of the monolithic and at times intimidating structure of the unions, on the other hand.

“So you have to convince the union people that they want the non-union workers in the union, and you have to convince the non-union workers that they should be in the union. It takes time. It’s a long, slow process,” Bryan said of his career. It involved a lot of cultivating relationships to understand the various interested parties’ needs and then fashioning a deal appealing to all out of them. Not exactly a cake walk! But it’s so very important. I asked Josh Friedman, a member of the Democratic Central Committee why he’d say labor organizing is important.

“Do you like weekends? Do you like health care?” he responded. I sure do. It reminded me of how this country–the world, really–took advantage of one of society’s most vulnerable populations, children, before they simply couldn’t for fear of legal repercussions in the form of child labor laws. I thought of how Vince Culotta, the manager of local dining hot spot Cured/18th and 21st told me that he knows from his long career in the restaurant business that if people can skirt health concerns they will.

“My greatest accomplishments were in the eight years I worked as a lobbyists for the Building Trades,” Bryan said. “I was able to get legislation passed that strengthened safety and/or working conditions for all workers, not just union members.” It wasn’t just about a cushy deal for union members. It was about a salutary working environment for everyone.

Now and Then

“It’s sad to say mostly the way I stay involved now is that I’m going to these guys’ funerals,” Byran said of the boilermakers who frequently fall ill from asbestos exposure on the job. I was just at a funeral service on Tuesday,” Bryan told me. I felt bummed about this, and more so when Bryan told me it wouldn’t be so easy to find someone to talk to for thoughts on his career in organizing, as most of the people he worked with in the 1970s and ’80s were either dead or suffering from early dementia from asbestos exposure on the job. And even more so when Bryan told me he’s doing well right now, but even he hadn’t totally escaped ill health effects.

I almost scolded Bryan for giving me depressing news, which I regretted. Keep it together, Robert is becoming one of my interview mantras to myself. But Bryan kept on smiling. I was plotzing, but he was nonplussed.

And: Colleen spoke to Sen. Guy Guzzone about his Maryland political career.

Unquotable Coworkers

Even without asking his former colleagues to weigh in, I could see something fascinating. That is, Bryan’s job contained the central tension inherent in all democratic politics, the need to persuade people with different interests of the same thing. And he was good at it, clearly, given how long he was in it and how in-demand he was as an organizer. That’s big.

“My mission as an organizer was to protect the jurisdiction, to protect the work we did have, and to negotiate the best contracts possible,” Everything was always moving, Bryan said of the elaborate systems and networks he worked within and in relation to in reaching satisfactory labor deals. Bryan told me that when he first got involved, unions used physical intimidation to get things done.

“But then we started accomplishing things by passing laws. We were going to beat ’em with a suitcase,” he said, and we both laughed.

On a typical day at work, Bryan would go into the office to get some paperwork done, then visit job sites to see what was going on there, and then go to meetings galore.

“We were meeting to death,” he told me. That got us both to laugh more.

The thing Bryan could have used more of during his union days, was more organizers, he told me. He laughed at how simple it sounded, and I could immediately see how it was true. Labor organizing is expensive, he said, because it takes time.

Come Join Us…Or Don’t?

Why, I asked Bryan, would anyone not want to be in a union?

“Because it’s new to them, first of all,” Bryan said. He explained that in addition, The Greatest Generation, that of his father, was more comfortable within their means than subsequent ones. If you”re concerned with constant, high, even increasing income, you’re less likely to stand in a picket line. The workers’ strike, of course, is the way unions get things done now.

So, I asked Bryan how he’d convince people to be in the unions. He’d tell them some important information: everyone union would be given transparent wages, i.e., pay that they could compare against that of others to make sure it’s fair. They’d have healthcare apprenticeship training, too..

“You can better yourself,” Bryan would tell people. “Some people went for it, some didn’t.” The people who didn’t were often having Big Business whisper in their other ears that it would leave if everyone became union. “Most of the time they’d give them a raise right before a vote was to happen. Another dollar an hour or something. Wow–40 more dollars a week!” Bryan said, laughing.

But once a person became union, Bryan would tell them in his pitch, the union could negotiate a better deal for them.

“The minute there’s no more unions in this country, we’ll all be working for minimum wage. There’d be nobody to protect the wages,” Bryan said.

Telling Words and Phrases

I always go back to basics when I conduct my interviews for rocoinhoco. I, the Ro of RoCo, get carried away with abstract ideas about my subjects’ personas and particular performance of the drama of the human experience. Also, I find that I fixate on words or phrases that stand out to me. Bryan used the word “organizing” to describe his career. I wondered about the reasons we call what he did as a labor unionist “organizing.” This is the conclusion I came to: we call it “organizing” because it involves arranging disparate interests into a cohesive unit working toward one goal: a just deal for all. As such, it’s a job basic to democracy, that system of government that concerns itself with governing bodies that represent their stakeholders’ interests.

“I used to get a kick out of how we were called Big Labor and the other side was called the company representatives. They’ve got the money and we don’t, and we’re just asking them to split it with us. We got into a lot of arguments with them in Annapolis.” Included in “them” were Republican lawmakers. They would try to weaken labor laws, Bryan told me, because labor traditionally gave its money to Democratic candidates.

Republicans often get their support from the company side,” Bryan said, again managing to sound sanguine even while telling me something demoralizing.

“They could always beat us money-wise, but we could beat them with people. If there was a bad bill coming up in Annapolis, we’d bus people down to Annapolis and have people protesting with signs,” he said.

Most of the time, then, Bryan said, bad bills got voted down in the state legislature because the unions had people power. I sighed with big relief. Something–for heaven’s sake, something!–was more powerful than money in contemporary U.S. culture. The unionists in Maryland didn’t have to worry too much, he went on, because Maryland’s still a Democratic legislature.

“Delegate Shane Pendergrass (D-13) was always a big supporter. Delegate Frank Turner (D-14) was one of my best people. And then Delegate Terri Hill  (D-13) is a big supporter, too. Clarence the dog’s ears perked up at this. His tail came alive with alertness. Perhaps my new terrier friend has a mystical connection to Senator Lam, after all.

Nothing’s Black and White

But some things are read all over, as the old joke goes about a newspaper. In this case, “looked at all over” would be more accurate. I was slowly making my way out to my car now, looking all over their home, which The Costers’ had decked out in detailed holiday fare, including a winter garden scene of miniature people and edifices that Lisa’s desk overlooked. She works from home for her communications consulting business. Bryan’s red sweater, matched the red accents around their home in the form of dishes, flowers, candles, and more.

On my way out, I told Byran, “I have to look at these before I go.”

I made my way into the living room to the left of the front door where he and Lisa had arranged pictures of the extended Coster family. He proudly showed my pictures of his three children, siblings, and parents–a handsome bunch!

Clarence the pup joined us, and a couple times I caught him looking up at me eagerly. He even accompanied me out to my car to see me off. I thought, as Bryan waved goodbye and I drove away, how very much a Coster Clarence is. He’s partial to people, propriety, and warm feelings. I found this especially helpful on a cold day like today on which Robert and I were to continue packing up our trailer and take boxes out to our moving truck. We’re permanent HoCo-ers now, remember, and we’re in the market for a place to call home.

Also: See what Rev. Paige Getty of UUCC told me!

I wanted to ask Bryan one more thing, and I considered going back to do it. It was a little too goofy even more me, TBH. It’s always good to leave a little mystery in a friendship, something to be discovered, anyway.

“What on Earth do the Costers use in their hair?” I thought to myself. It always looks fabulous. I once saw Lisa at an EC&WHDC meeting at 7:00 p.m on a Tuesday., a time at which I generally look like a Dementor who’s slept under a bridge, and she looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of one of those hairstyle books they have at the salon. And during our interview, I caught myself looking a couple times at the coiffure atop Bryan’s head. It looked oddly good for just sittin’ around the casa with a random website person! What a strange, strange place to look, Robert, while someone’s talking to you! Anyway, for now, I knew the beginnings of union organizing. Hairstyling would have to wait.

Labor heroine Emma Goldman once said, “I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” The Costers, readers, feel no need to choose between the two. They have both happiness and handsomeness.

Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.