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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int AA and Industry Migel Kinser, Tom V Part 1 of 2.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-aa-and-industry-migel-kinser-tom-v-part-1-of-2.mp3 Duration: 01:01:20
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This meeting is going to be chaired by one of our wonderful non-AA friends, one of our trustees, Harrison Price, affectionately known by your staff as Harry. And Harry was elected to the General Service Board in April of 1957. He has served there and on several of the committees, particularly the Literature Committee of the Board, with great enthusiasm and given us a lot of help. He is an associate professor in the School of Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University. He has been a frequent contributor to professional journals and a consultant to various study groups and to private companies on the subject of alcoholism. Harrison Price.
Thank you very much, Eve. I would like to congratulate you people on your 30th anniversary, and it gives me great pleasure to do so. I know that I should say something probably more humorous. I couldn't think of anything at the moment, however. I would merely like to offer you my most sincere and heartfelt congratulations on your movement, and above all, for the future. I would like to attend at least the next one of these affairs, God willing, and hopefully two or three more beyond that.
Never believe that you people do not have quite an influence, even on a secular community such as Toronto. Last night I came in here rather dusty and tired, and being a long-time Wisconsin resident, I had been raised on cold beer. And when I got in here last night, I noticed a sign across the street which said Ratzkeller. Now, Ratzkeller in Wisconsin means one thing, and that's tap beer, cold. So I immediately hide myself across the street after I got through with that long line and said to the bartender, I would like a cold stein of beer.
I had forgotten to take off this tag. He said, You ain't got no slip in here. You people put quite a crimp in a man's drinking. in the area of alcoholism. I refer to the pivotal institutions in American society, that of business and industry. Business values and industry values and work values permeate our lives. They strongly direct the basic trends and concerns and interests of a community. And to the extent that you people are able to identify the development of alcoholism programs, the development of the definition of alcoholism as an illness, the definition of rehabilitation as related to these pivotal institutions of business and industry, is the extent to which I am firmly convinced we will be making sharp headway.
One of the greatest barriers we have had to a realistic progress in this area has been the Skid Row image, the image of the Skid Row bum, homeless, without residence, without job, etc., etc., as the major characteristic of alcoholism in American life. And there could be nothing further from the truth. As you well know, alcoholism is spread rather evenly throughout the occupational distributions of American society. It's just as apt to be next door as it is to be on Skid Row. As a matter of fact, far more apt to be next door.
As a consequence, your particular program this morning on industry, I feel, is a tremendous contribution to the furtherance of the identification of alcoholism with the pivotal, basic institutions of our society. And I would like to congratulate you for including this very major aspect in your program.
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There is a second reason, however, that I find a great deal of satisfaction in operating as your chairman this morning. And that is that I believe you people have contributed one of the major notions in the area of industry programs. You people call it hitting bottom. Some of my academic colleagues and myself and a few others have twisted that around some and called it constructive coercion. You know, we academic people always have to jazz things up a little bit.
And in any event, you people have made the major contribution to understanding one of the fundamental motivational factors in alcoholism, namely coming to that fork in the road, realizing the extent to which life is unmanageable, and realizing the extent to which you have, in effect, hit your bottom. But also realizing the fact that you needn't dig a hole under that bottom, that organizations such as pivotal institutions of business and industry can help drastically with constructive policies of this kind of coercion, in which the company clearly says to the individual, we have great respect for your illness and great concern.
We also, however, are going to help build a constructive coercion underneath this by saying to you, you have every opportunity to be rehabilitated. But in the final analysis, we're not going to tolerate all that alcoholic thinking around here. And this has been the case in large numbers of instances. And that's the second reason that I feel very gratified to discuss and to comment on your contributions to industry programs.
At the same time, I think it is the function of a chairman to stop talking rather quickly. I heard a definition of a chairman recently. It's someone who sits a lot and says nothing. And in a chair, I presume. In any event, I think my function is to introduce to you people who have had very basic and longstanding experience with AA in industry. We're indeed fortunate this morning to have such a panel. And it is my pleasure to introduce to you those particular persons.
First, we will hear from Mr. Nigel Kinsett. Mr. Kinsett has been with the Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, for 23 years in various capacities in the Industrial Relations Department. And he has been superintendent of that department for the past 15 years. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and has had a variety of experiences with alcoholism programs. Over the past 15 years, he has developed, in relationship with AA, various approaches using his personnel department and his Industrial Relations Division to develop policies, rehabilitation approaches, and a meaningful relationship with AA in the process.
It is indeed a pleasure for me to introduce our first batter of the morning, Mr. Nigel Kinsett. Mr. Chairman, members of the panel, ladies and gentlemen, it's a real privilege to have the opportunity of appearing before this group on an important occasion such as this. You know, not being a professional, I wrote some of this down before I came, and I was going to say something like that anyway. But looking around here this morning at the people who are here, the kind of people who are here, the ones I saw out in one of the other rooms earlier and the speakers I listened to, I can really say that I mean that when I say it.
Now, I'm not in a position to qualify myself before you people in the accustomed way. I count myself fortunate, in fact, that I've not had to make those difficult decisions that you people have at one time or another before you became members of this fellowship. My only qualification for this experience is that I've been faced with the problem of what to do about alcoholics in industry in the plant where I'm employed.
And I must say the deeper I get into it, the more complicated it somehow seems to become.
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Now, as superintendent of industrial relations for the Algoma Steel Corporation, for a good many years this matter of dealing with alcoholics has been sort of an unofficial part of my job. Algoma Steel, by the way, as a matter of information, not advertising, is the second largest of the steel plants in Canada, the integrated steel plants, and about the 010th or 11th in size on the continent. At the steelworks in Sault Ste. Marie, where I work and where we have dealt with this program, we have about 8,500 employees, of whom 6,500 are hourly-rated production workers.
Now, I don't need to tell you people that not too long ago the basic approach of most industries to the question of alcoholism amongst its employees was to consider alcoholics as hopeless, irretrievable drunks and to fire them with the idea that this was good riddance and, as far as these people were concerned, it closed the books permanently. Then some people in industry became aware of the fact that some of these former employees, perhaps I should say now, either through AA or some other means, were able to stop drinking and resume a normal life.
But the stigma of being a drunk is hard to outlive, and most industries still felt that once a man became a drunk, he would always be one. They hesitated to give such persons another chance once they had them out of their hair. But undoubtedly, at the same time, a few people in these industries had an annoying feeling that some of these recovered alcoholics, as distinct from what we call practicing alcoholics, really deserved a better break than that.
And as a result, the gradual development of rehabilitation programs commenced. And when I say rehabilitation, I say it in the sense of reestablishing these people in their former jobs in industry. A program at Algoma first started, I think, because a man who had risen from ordinary production jobs to become assistant works manager and later vice president of industrial relations saw some of his boyhood friends get fired as a result of alcoholism.
Then later on, even though they had solved their drinking problem, but they still needed food, clothing, and shelter like any other person, they just couldn't get a job because of their reputation. This man took the chance of rehiring some of them, and this was the start of the program at Algoma. Now, my first involvement in the question of alcoholism was through this man. Perhaps because of my respect for him, I absorbed part of his philosophy.
The increasing belief that alcoholism was a type of disease rather than a lack of willpower or moral degeneration or what have you, seemed to be a reasonable supposition. In the earlier dealings with alcoholics at Algoma, each case was handled as it arose, but with no set program or procedure to follow. All too often, our judgment of the individual's real intention was poor, and I'm afraid that many a practicing alcoholic just got another chance at his job only to be fired again after a short time.
This tended to hurt our effort at rehabilitation of the genuinely recovered alcoholic, because supervisors in industry tend to take the time-honored attitude of once bitten, twice shy. You people know that if a supervisor will not take a recovered alcoholic back willingly and with an understanding mind, that it will be much more difficult for him to reestablish himself. So it is our belief that it is of the utmost importance that if a man is to be given another chance, we must first know that he really wants to quit drinking, that he is willing to seek, and that he has sought the help he needs, and that he has been able to remain sober for a reasonably long time.
This brings me to what we at Algoma consider to be the most important single part of the program of dealing with alcoholics. It is apparent that the one person who is best able to judge the sincerity of the effort of an alcoholic to stop drinking is another alcoholic. In the first place, he is in a better position to decide whether an individual actually is an alcoholic, Whether an individual actually is an alcoholic, and I might say that there are many people
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who try to ride along this program who aren't alcoholics. In the second place, he is better equipped to decide whether the alcoholic really does want to stop drinking, and if he does want to, but can't do it by himself, if he is willing to seek the help he will need to accomplish this. In other words, we must have someone who can guide us objectively in making a decision as to whether an alcoholic is a good risk for further employment.
So one of the central men in our program is, and I think always must be, a recovered alcoholic who is active in the fellowship and whose judgment of whether or not an alcoholic is ready for rehabilitation is objective and reliable. We at Algoma feel that most of the credit for any success which has been accomplished at Algoma in dealing with this problem rests more upon the shoulders of one of the members of your fellowship than upon any other single factor, and I refer to Jack Kay.
I think Jack got kidded about the fact that I was going to mention him. Jack has spent endless hours trying to help his fellow alcoholics solve their problems, and we are convinced that unless he thinks an individual has a good chance of making the grade, he will not recommend him for reemployment. Jack Kay, I might say, is a supervisory employee of the company, but he works with the leaders of the union organization equally as well as with management.
It is fortunate for the success of the program that both the company and the union will accept his judgment as far as individuals are concerned. This is important because the cooperation of the union is necessary for the waiving of certain seniority provisions in the labor agreement in order to assist in the rehabilitation of the employees whose jobs are included in a collective bargaining agreement.
At this point, I want to make it clear that I am at the moment talking for the most part of the rehabilitation of alcoholics who have reached the stage where it is necessary to discharge them because they are no longer able to perform their jobs in an acceptable manner. I realize that there is another important phase of the problem. This, of course, consists of attempting to help individuals before they get fired and so avoid the much more difficult period of adjustment which follows their discharge.
We attempt to deal with this phase through our plant medical department. Our medical director is a most understanding individual, and we try to steer employees who have a drinking problem to him. They don't all go, but some of them do. He also works with Jack Kay and other members of the fellowship in Sault Ste. Marie. Most of you will agree that the odds on a non-alcoholic convincing a practicing alcoholic that he is an alcoholic and that he must quit drinking are decidedly of the long-shot variety.
In our experience, though, a team consisting of the medical director and a dedicated and respected recovered alcoholic can be successful in quite a number of cases. However, for those alcoholics who do not respond, or those we could not and did not reach in time, it seems that discharge may well be the only successful spur which will lead an alcoholic to face up to his problem. And in passing, I might say this, that our plant is in a small town, it's the one large industry in the town, and when a man is fired from that plant in a specialized industry like the steel industry, it's an awful job for him to get another job anywhere whether he's an alcoholic or not.
And it seems to me that this is harsh, this is harsh treatment to ever have to fire the man and say, you know, you've got to get along. But sometimes it seems to be necessary. So much for the general background relative to alcoholics at Algoma. The phase of the program which has become more or less public knowledge is that which involves the rehabilitation of recovered alcoholics who have been discharged by the company because they could not carry out their work acceptably.
At the present time, there are some 75 recovered alcoholics working in our plant. Most of them haven't had a drink in years. They work in almost all groups in the plant and include superintendents, foremen, skilled workers, and unskilled workers.
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In many cases, the people with whom they work don't even know that at one time they were considered to be hopeless drunks. In other cases, they were known to be alcoholics, but because of the fact that they are now reliable and productive workmen and have proved that they can and did quit drinking, they are often respected as much because they did quit drinking as because for years they have been performing their jobs, whatever they may be, in an acceptable manner.
Employees who are discharged for alcoholism, whether it be officially attributed to absenteeism, poor workmanship, physical inability to do a day's work, insubordination, being on the job under the influence at any time, or any of the other results of alcoholism or heavy drinking fall into two categories which involve only minor differences in the method of handling. If the employees are not members of a bargaining unit, that's if they're supervisory or exempt employees or whatever you like to call them, they are dealt with by company representatives including the medical director.
In all cases, they are referred to AA and are told that a positive recommendation from AA is one of the requisites before they can again be considered for employment. If the employees are members of a bargaining unit, a meeting of the grievance committee is held at which the discharged employee is usually present. The local grievance committee of the union has given their full support to the program.
The discharged employee is told by both company and union representatives the conditions under which he will be considered for re-employment or reinstatement. At the meeting, the discharge is concurred in by the union. I say concurred in advisedly. Unions don't agree very often to the discharge of employees, but in this case they concur in it because of the program that is being followed. Following the meeting, a letter is sent by the company to the discharged employee with a copy to the union and the employment office.
This letter sets forth the conditions for future employment and for the probationary period which must be served before consideration will be given to the reinstatement of his former service and pension rights. This brings me to a description of what we call the AA program. You will all recognize that in a plant with some 8,500 employees, a program such as this must be completely controlled by one person or at most a small group of persons who work together and are thoroughly familiar with the problems involved.
This program consists of a one-page statement of procedures and four letters, more or less form letters, which are used with minor modifications in each case if and when an employee who has been discharged because of the results of excessive drinking has been placed on the AA program. These procedures itemize the requirements of the program. They are the results of a good many years of experience by perhaps trial and error, and we believe that they or at least similar procedures are necessary if the program is to be successful.
I'll deal with each of them very briefly in turn. Now, item one, that is the decision to place the employee on the AA program. This is based on two factors. One, the belief that his problems are related to his drinking habits, and we always consult our contact man in AA before this decision is made. Two, a determination of the man's suitability as an employee exclusive of his drinking problem. In other words, do we want him as an employee even if he does quit drinking?
And there are some cases where we don't. Once it has been decided to place the employee on the program, a letter is sent to him stating the conditions under which he will be considered for reemployment and outlining his ultimate status if successful. And this letter, I will quote the form letter, you have been discharged from the Algoma Seal Corporation as a direct result of your overindulgence in alcohol.
You have agreed to seek the help of qualified persons in a sincere effort to overcome your problem. The company is willing to cooperate with you by offering to consider you for rehiring. This consideration will only be given upon receipt of recommendations acceptable to the company, verifying that for a period of not less than six months, you have successfully
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participated in a program to overcome your problem. In the event that you qualify yourself for rehiring, it has been agreed that you will be given the benefit of your former plant service for rehiring and work opportunity only. For all other purposes, you will have the status of a new employee. You will be on strict probation for 12 months from the date of rehiring and may be discharged at any time should you display any evidence of unsatisfactory conduct.
If you successfully complete this 12-month probationary period, you will be granted your former plant service credits. And that includes his vacation privileges and pension rights and all the other things that go along with length of service. And if the men happen to be well along in years, the return of their pension rights is a very, very important matter. Now, item two of the procedures arises out of this letter.
This is that under no circumstances will we re-employ the man in less than six months from the time of his actual discharge. A further condition for rehire is assurance from our AA contact that the individual has successfully participated in the AA program, or in some cases some other acceptable program, for a period of not less than six months. Perhaps this seems like a harsh rule. It is harsh, but necessarily so, because our experience has been that if we shortcut this step, the chances of permanent re-establishment as a satisfactory employee are greatly reduced.
On the other hand, we have found that the majority of those re-employed on the recommendation of AA after this six-month period do re-establish themselves, even though some of them may have an occasional short slip, such as our chairman almost had last night. Now, item three, when a person who has been placed on this program has qualified for rehiring, he must first present himself to the Industrial Relations Department.
Usually he is accompanied by Jack Kay of AA. He is told again that he will be on probation, on a probationary basis for 12 months, and that if he is successful, his service credits and seniority will be reinstated at the end of that time. And he is then sent a letter confirming this conversation, and a quote from the letter, as a result of our conversation in my office on such and such date, you will be given an opportunity to again establish yourself as an employee of this company at as early a date as possible.
We draw to your attention the fact that you will be on strict probation for a period of 12 months from the date you are rehired. Any evidence of failure to continue your program of rehabilitation or of unsatisfactory conduct will result in termination of your employment with the company. In order to assist in your rehabilitation, the company, with the concurrence of Local Union 2251, and prior to the completion of the 12-month probationary period, is prepared to recognize your former plant seniority insofar as it may be necessary to provide work opportunity for you during the 12-month probationary period.
That is to say, the effect of that is that if the man had sufficient seniority to hold a job before he was discharged, even if there were layoffs, that he would still be able to use that to assure that he had a job during this 12-month probationary period. At the same time that this letter is sent, the employment office is instructed to rehire the individual under the conditions stated in the letter, and a copy of the letter goes into his personnel record.
Which brings us to item four. In many cases, a department in which the employee worked, or the former employee worked, is willing to take him back on his regular job once he has stopped drinking. This is generally the happiest solution. Sometimes this cannot be done. In this case, he is assigned to another department on whatever job is available. On whatever job is available and must work up from that point. In such cases, the new department is advised of the circumstances by a letter wedded in this manner.
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This employee was previously discharged as a result of his drinking habits. He has participated in a rehabilitation program for six months, and upon receipt of suitable recommendations, the company has rehired him on twelve months' probation with the hope that he has overcome his problem and will again establish himself as a good employee. We solicit your cooperation in this program and request that you advise Supervisor of Labor Relations of any irregularities such as absenteeism which occur while he is in your department.
Although we hope to limit the number of people who have knowledge of these circumstances, we would like the immediate supervisor to be notified. May I have the further items? The progress of the employee is carefully watched during the twelve-month probationary period. Regular assessments are made to determine his conduct and progress on the job. If there is any indication that the individual is drinking again, this is checked with AA, and if necessary, he is called into the office and given a final warning. If there is any further trouble, he is discharged.
If he is successful, at the end of twelve months, he is reinstated with all former service credits and rights. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this program may sound long and complicated, but in practice, this is not really the case. I can only say that it has worked successfully at our plant, and you should bear in mind that our plant is in a small town of about 70,000, and with one large industry in it, probably is not the same as problems in a large city.
A substantial number of recovered alcoholics have reestablished themselves as useful, respected members of our community. At the same time, Algoma Steel has retained the services of many skilled and productive employees that it would have been very hard to replace. In conclusion, I say that we at Algoma are convinced that a program for the rehabilitation of our employees who are unfortunate enough to be afflicted with alcoholism is not only a necessary part of the solution of a serious health and social problem, but it pays off for the company too.
Just why and how a practicing alcoholic can transform himself into a useful, happy, and respected citizen, I don't really know. As an individual, I feel that the 12 steps of AA hold at least one of the answers, and it seems to me that perhaps one of the most far-reaching of these steps, from our point of view, is the last one. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in our affairs, and Jack King has certainly done that.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I said at the beginning, I have been spared the necessity of making the decision that the members of this fellowship have all faced. And after looking around at the signs out in the hall there on the wall and so on, and I'm sure this is true, if I should ever have to make that decision, I know I could count on whichever one of you I could find nearest to me to see me through, because by helping others, I know you add to your own strength of purpose. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Kenseth, for that very down-to-earth and practical description of a specific company program. I'm always very sensitive about ranking anonymity, and as a consequence, I will try to communicate this message in a rather unique way. If there are two gentlemen here from the North American Aviation Incorporated who are seeking Don H., they will find him at the end of this session right around in here someplace. I'm not sure exactly where.
I believe I managed to get that across fairly well, didn't I? I can't resist the temptation of turning the tables on you people. The main reason I can't resist the temptation is because there are so many of you here. I have never seen so many AA's collected in one place at one time,
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so I'd like to take this chance to kill many birds with one stone and tell you about how I came to AA, because I've heard you people tell it many times, and I can't resist the opportunity. Actually, it was in 1947 at the University of Wisconsin, and as an instructor there, I'm the lowest man on the totem pole. There is nothing lower than an instructor in the academic world, even graduate students. And you find that you have nothing to do during the summer, and that literally means nothing to do, including nothing to eat, because you have no income. You work for nine months and that's it.
So I went to the extension division and pleaded with them to find me something to do. They were running kind of one of those early war on poverty programs for academic people. And they said, sure, we'll find something for you to do. We don't know exactly what, but you'll get something to do. Go back home and tell your wife and kiddies that they'll have something to eat. So I felt reassured until they announced about three days later what my assignment was to be.
I was assigned to the summer school of alcohol studies. And for a few minutes, this really startled me. I didn't know whether my past was catching up with me or someone up in the front office had it in for me or what, but it was a bit of a shock for a while. My assignment was to, as a behavioral scientist, study the literature, do one or two of the lectures, and go out and beat the bushes to get people to come.
And I can assure you that this was a rather unique experience. We had an awful lot of trouble getting people to even, I think we had about ten people there that first time. Then it rapidly grew and we had a tremendous program. But initially, my introduction to AA came in this process. I came to rely upon AA out in the state of Wisconsin as a source of contact, a source of knowledge, a source of information.
And I came to go to their meetings. I became quite fascinated with AA as a group and the tremendous impact you had. I came to study professional-oriented therapies and compare them with AA and to see that AA was doing just as good, if not better, in terms of a batting average as professionally-oriented efforts. That may not be necessarily true today, but it certainly was then. I discovered, in effect, that alcoholism was a first-class problem in industry, as well as discovering AA as one of the major ways of approaching it.
I discovered, for example, that in terms of job behavior, alcoholism accounted for one of the major absenteeism impacts. I discovered that one of the basic impacts on the immediate-line boss, the guy down there doing the job, was the alcoholic employee. You can paraphrase this very nicely by the boss who said to me one day, you know, if I had one other more like that guy around here, I would apply for early retirement.
A real impact on the welfare, the ongoing well-being of the immediate-line boss. And after all, that's the guts of industry. I went on to study numerous aspects of alcoholism as it related to the job, such things as various kinds of absenteeism. We discovered, for example, what I came to call on-the-job absenteeism. You're there, but you might as well not be. As a matter of fact, it would be much better if you weren't.
But you were there anyway. And we went on to study in a variety of places the number of accidents that were on the job to raise the very basic question, were there really very many job-oriented on-the-job actual work accidents that were any greater than anyone else? There appears to be good reason that there is not too many more. And probably the main reason for that was absenteeism. In other words, it's pretty hard to have a job accident if you're not there, which came to be a rather practical basic reason.
In any event, I have taken advantage of my opportunity to turn the tables on you and tell you how I encountered AA, and came to have tremendous admiration for it. I like to kid the people in the General Service Office that they haven't completely indoctrinated me yet, but they're sure doing a good job of working on it. In any event, I would like to move on with the program
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and bring to your attention Mr. Tom Zee, a member of AA for almost 25 years. In other words, a man with a vast amount of AA experience, and to match it, a great deal of experience in the introduction of AA-oriented industry programs. He comes from the Cleveland area, and as far back as 15, 18 years ago, working with the then-titled Cleveland Graphite Bronze Company in the development of a industry-based program.
He cooperated with them in the establishment of it, saw numerous of the basic problems, and is presently Chief of Personnel Services of Title V of the Economic Opportunities Act in the Cleveland metropolitan area. It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you someone who I'm sure can tell you much more about how he discovered AA and AA's impact on industry programs than can I. Tom? Tom? Tom? Thank you, and good morning.
Thank you, Professor, for a very complimentary introduction. I'm sure that I can only remember once when I received a more complimentary one. I was invited to speak in an AA group. The chairman didn't show up, and I had to introduce myself. This was very encouraging to me at the time. I discovered this morning, after I entered the hall, that you're never home free in Alcoholics Anonymous. I can lead a very effective meeting a very effective meeting if I'm allowed to lie a little bit.
Unfortunately, this morning I discovered the gentleman who I had occasion to call in 1939 and who served as one of my co-sponsors in AA. So, he knows my story as well, if not better than I. So, of necessity, it will be a dull session because I am forced to stick to the truth. When I was contacted and asked to speak at this session of the conference, I again was not home free because I very often have occasion to speak at AA meetings, and when I do, I give an AA talk.
On the other hand, I'm very often asked to speak at other functions, civil, civic, I should say. I've spoken several times at high school and psychology, high school, college psychology classes, business and industrial groups. On those occasions, I stay more or less to the problem of alcoholism and its several recovery programs. They ask me, however, to speak for a half an hour, cover some of my own story, and at the same time, touch on some of my experiences in regard to AA and or alcoholism and industry.
And in pondering this, I discovered that almost of necessity, my AA story, my vocational background, and my avocational background are must and are synonymous. For a 17-year period prior to 1939, I was very successful. I was very successful in accumulating for myself a very vicious reputation as a common drunk around the city of Cleveland.
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Very often as a result of the trouble that I would get into, I would find myself before the courts, and mainly possibly at the time because of my age, my family standing in the community, not because they were having anything in particular to do with me, and possibly because they would like to try to find out if possible exactly what was wrong with me, I would be referred to the eminent Dr. Royal S. Grossman, who is still head of the Psychiatric Division of the Cuyahoga County Courts, to be psychoanalyzed.
And the good doctor and I went round and round on several occasions, and it was invariably his findings that I was a hopeless and incurable alcoholic, and it was his stern recommendations to the courts that if they were to keep me alive for any length of time, then it was his recommendation that they keep me incarcerated. Of course, I like to feel that I had some very close friends as judges at that particular time, because that's exactly what they did for me.
I don't mean anything as palatable as 30 days in cost. It was usually a year, and I did several of those years as a habitual offender at the Warrensville workouts. There was one judge, however, on the bench, the late Louis Drucker, who was very much interested in the problem of alcoholism at that time and was very much interested in my case in particular. It offered all types of help, which I naturally didn't accept.
I used to visit him religiously each time I was released from the workhouse, but for one reason. The judge was always good for five bucks, and when I got out of the workhouse, I needed five bucks. But on this particular occasion, in addition to the five dollars, he gave me a telephone number and told me that this would put me in contact with a bunch of drunks that had somehow found a way of keeping each other sober.
I thanked him kindly, stuck the telephone number in my pocket, and hung on to the five dollars. Like most alcoholics, when our back is to the wall and we have no way to turn, we begin to grab for straws. And I found myself in such a position, and I grabbed for that telephone number and was contacted by my sponsors and co-sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous. Shortly after that, when there was an indication that I had accepted the program to some extent, the good judge got in touch with me, called me in, and gave me a session in investment.
He pointed out the fact that the courts and their agencies had invested a great deal of time and money in me, and in turn, I had certainly invested a lot of my time with the courts. He suggested further that when people make investments, they usually do it with the intention of making a profit. And he suggested at that time that I cooperate with the courts and bring my knowledge of what I knew of AA to them in the hopes of helping others.
And this I agreed to do. This, at that time, was the straw that broke the camel's back, because there was quite a bit of dissension and discussion around the area at that time when I presented myself to Alcoholics Anonymous. Number one, I was considered probably to be too young. Number two, I was one of the first ones, or the first one, in the area that brought a record with me such as mine, an established recommendation that I certainly was a hopeless and incurable alcoholic, and a jail, a police record, jail record that would take quite some time to read.
There were people in AA around the area at that time that felt certainly that if Alcoholics Anonymous was going to amount to anything, it would become a very exclusive fraternity, if you please, and by strict invitation only. But I shall always be very, very grateful to my sponsors and co-sponsors because it was those men who felt that Alcoholics Anonymous should be for anyone who had a sincere desire to stay sober.
And certainly they gave me every opportunity to accept this program in its entirety and make a success of it.
[00:50:01]
When you begin to deal with recovery programs in alcoholism, you almost immediately become involved with employment security for the people with whom you are working. And this naturally became some of my experience. I hadn't worked myself for a period of about ten years. I had no job, but I suddenly found myself contacting employers on behalf of the people that we were working with. And then, and certainly because I have learned a long time ago, there is a purpose and a reason for everything that happens to us in AA.
One of those miracles happened. After four months of sobriety, when I know today I had reached a point where I was able to accept the responsibility of a job again, I found one. Within five minutes of the courthouse, where I could visit every noon, and I discovered when I returned to work that I could work steady, that I could be there on time, and I also found that I could advance myself. Regardless of the work that I was assigned to, invariably I would find myself with the responsibility of the personnel.
And certainly when you're working in any company that has any number of people at all, somewhere in the neighborhood of three percent of them will be alcoholics, and certainly in my own companies, or the companies that I worked for, there was always the opportunity there to inject some sort of a recovery program. I did cooperate with an individual at Graphite Bronze. He came up with a formulated plan that was accepted and became one of the first industrial rehabilitation programs in industry.
It's still very much in effect. Basically, I think it is a formula used for any of the other industrial programs that I've heard about or read about. I discovered quite suddenly that it certainly doesn't pay to dangle a job, a spouse, or a jail sentence in front of an alcoholic as a reward to stay sober. I've discovered also the importance of setting an individual down across the desk and explaining to him the reason that he is an alcoholic.
And when you can give an alcoholic a fundamentally sound, acceptable explanation of why he is an alcoholic, point out your own shortcomings, you will for the first time have given him some justification at least that he might reconsider his own resistance to the help that has been offered him. We learned, too, that the relationship between the employee and the employer at that level can be very effective.
There seems to be a feeling between them that's entirely different than somewhere else, and this is one of the reasons that I am sure that programs within industry come up with a very greater percentage of success than the other ones. We work with the supervisors, as it has been mentioned. They can refer an idea to the personnel department, and we start from there. I've never once brought someone into the office and said that you are an alcoholic.
If you don't get sober and join Alcoholics Anonymous, you're going to be fired. We're very careful not to put that sort of an insistence in any of the programs that I've had anything to do. The educational portion of it is important. It's certainly a great help to an alcoholic trying to accept a recovery program to sooner or later have his supervisor give him a pat on the back, tell him he's doing a good job.
And as the word is confidentially leaked out to the other members of AA and the plant, it isn't long before some of his fellow employees is giving him a little bit of encouragement, and then more or less he lets these things happen, and the first thing you know, you will see them at an AA meeting. I think one of the most amazing things that I had the privilege of observing
[00:55:01]
was in one plant where one of the laborers was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and one of the executive management members was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And while these two people had absolutely very little in common in the plant, certainly it was a thrill to see them enjoying coffee together at an AA meeting. Recently, some of the major insurance companies of both the United States and Canada and probably in other parts of the world recognize the problem of alcoholism in industry, and they have come up with some very effective programs.
One group, for instance, points out that two million alcoholics on the payrolls of business and industry is costing business and industry two billion dollars a year. And as always is expressed first, yes, we know we have absenteeism as a result of alcoholism, but certainly they doubt very much whether it could amount to that amount of money. They forget that it costs a great deal of money to put a man on a payroll and get him to where he's paying the company a dividend.
And I disregard the absentee figure to some extent. I'll grant you that it is substantial. But I do know this, that some companies would have been a lot better off if they would have allowed certain employees to be absent without leave and paid them double time for it. I'm thinking, for instance, of a sweeper, an alcoholic sweeper, who through his negligence will allow combustible material to gang up in a certain place and eventually a fire starts and costs the company a tremendous amount of money and time.
I'm thinking of a machine operator, an alcoholic machine operator, through whose negligence costly damage to tools and equipment and machinery can result, if not personal injury to himself or others. I'm thinking of the production, the alcoholic production worker, who allows the quality and quantity of his work to deteriorate, and the inspector who will allow it to pass and eventually get to the customers.
The traffic manager, the alcoholic traffic manager, if you please, who will reroute materials over remote carrier lines so that he might pay his obligation to the agents who apparently, knowing of his weakness, supplies him with some means of drink. This is a costly item to a company. I'm sure we mustn't forget the executive management of these concerns, who in a drunken condition can contact customers and destroy that relationship, which certainly can be costly to a company.
Add these costs to the absentee factor, and I'm sure we might find that the $2 billion might even be a conservative estimate of what alcoholism costs business and industry today. AA to me has never been a club or an organization. It's been a plan of living designed to allow me to live a happy, normal life, designed to allow me to enjoy a fair share of happiness, contentment, and peace of mind. The 12 steps is our heritage.
The 12th step is our responsibility to perpetuate the movement of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can remember back in the beginning where we very often would refer to the fact that there must certainly be something miraculous in the AA program. And I'm sure that if there is, it's contained in the workings of the 12th step. Don't we say that the only way that you can get this program is to have someone give it to you?
The only way that you can keep it for yourself is to give it away. And the more you give it away, the more you will have left. Folks, this has been an exceptionally fine privilege. An exceptionally fine privilege to have the opportunity to be here to another international conference, and to again have the opportunity of meeting so many nice people, and in closing
[01:00:03]
may I close the way I do all of my talks, by wishing each and every one of you a continued life of happiness, contentment, and peace of mind through the ideals and the principles of AA. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tom. I think it could stand repeating as I listen to Tom that AA has played a very vigorous and vital role in the development of company-based programs and efforts to realistically confront the problem of alcoholism in American society.