Former union leader still fighting for jobs, and life

Source: Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, IowaNov.迷你倉 17--WATERLOO -- Lyle Taylor has never been afraid of a fight. And he's not going down without one this time either.The former Rath Packing union leader and president is still conducting business as president and co-founder of Black Hawk Economic Development. Two weeks ago, he conducted a board meeting from his bed at Cedar Valley Hospice. He also watched a granddaughter's college soccer match on a laptop computer.Now back home in Hudson near his wife, Marge, and surrounded by family, Taylor is where he wants to be, hoping to get as much mileage as possible out of his ailing heart."I'd like to spend time with the grandkids this summer," he said. He and his wife have four daughters, 18 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.This is the fight of his life, but it's the latest of many battles in his working life. He fought for the livelihoods and security of employees of Rath, which closed 30 years ago next year and liquidated in 1985 after years of financial troubles.It was a death that Taylor, rightly or wrongly, shared blame for. It wasn't for lack of trying on his part."I knew I had to do something. That's why I gave up my union pension. I could have stayed in the union, worked for the international union, and be drawing three-quarter pay right now," he said. "How much do you think I get from Rath right now? Eighty-six dollars a month for all those years."He and family members recall the long nights, the late-night phone calls from distraught employees and families. The closing of Rath was like a death in the family to the community. Taylor still bears the hurt of that loss.He tried to save the company, assuming its presidency in an employee buyout. He even had American music legend Johnny Cash ready to promote Rath products in one plan submitted to bankrupcy court. But it ultimately proved to be too little too late."It went down so fast we never got him in here," Taylor said of Cash.In retrospect, Taylor believes company board members knew Rath would not survive by the time he became president. In his first month, the company turned a profit for the first time in 12 years, but the situation quickly deteriorated.He won respect from some company officials he previously had gone eyeball to eyeball with across the bargaining table. After Taylor calmed upset workers who showed up outside the board room at one meeting, board mem儲存倉er and Waterloo attorney Chuck Swisher told him, "I'd go into a fight anywhere with you back to back.""He had a little temper, but he was fair," Taylor said of Swisher, now deceased. However, he suspects the deck was stacked against him, and the workers, with the city power structure."They wanted the smell out of town, and the union," he said.Rath died after 90 years in business in Waterloo. But Taylor spent enough of his life around agriculture to know that when something dies, it leaves seeds behind.That "seed," in Rath's case, was more than $1.6 million in federal grant money originally secured to recapitalize the Rath plant. The grant was salvaged from Rath's 1985 liquidation for Black Hawk EDC, the nonprofit entity created to secure that grant.Black Hawk's revolving loan fund, created from that recovered federal grant, was invested and grew. Over the past three decades it has made more than $23 million in loans to help a total of $189 million in private investment and create more than 12,000 jobs in Black Hawk County and surrounding counties.Over 20 years, the BHEDC also has provided more than $103 million in U.S. Small Business Administration loans throughout Iowa to help businesses finance some $297 million worth of projects creating another 3,300 jobs.The death of Rath motivated Taylor to do something to re-create jobs for the area."You drive down the street and you'd see a guy you worked with looking like a bum walking down the street. I thought, 'There's gotta be a way of getting those jobs replaced with something.' But it was not going to happen unless we got some people to back it."Fortunately, you got some good people," he said -- his board of directors and his staff, led by executive director Steve Brustkern.It is a legacy, Taylor says, that has long outlived Rath and will continue long after he is gone.And he's never forgotten friends who offered help along the way -- even in hospice care."The first day, they brought my breakfast and this girl walked in and was going to sing me a song."She said 'What do you want hear?'"I said, 'Do you know anything from Johnny Cash?'"She sang 'I Walk the Line,' " Taylor said, his voice quivering slightly with emotion. "Really something."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) Visit Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) at .wcfcourier.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉最平