Workin' on the Erie

By Clyde Weiss

The Erie Canal helped our nation grow. CSEA members are keeping it going for future generations to enjoy.

WATERFORD, NEW YORK

The famed Erie Canal is celebrating the 175th anniversary of its opening as the "Eighth Wonder of the World." With fly-bitten mule trains pulling barges through its waters and locks, the Erie blazed a trail to the West, built the East into an economic powerhouse and made Manhattan farmland a world-class city.

The original Erie went on to create a romantic image — in folktales and song — that lives to this day. Keeping the legend alive and the canal in good working order are some 220 members of Eastern Barge Canal Local 500 of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000.

John Tremblay, chief of this section of the lock, sets the old but trusty machinery in motion. Giant "rack arms" slowly push two 30-ton steel gates together with a grinding roar, trapping the Margiz II within. The 37-foot sailboat now floats in a 328-foot-long, 45-foot-wide lock. Tremblay opens two valves at the bottom of the lock, sending water cascading into the lower canal and turning it into a churning whitewater.

Within 25 minutes, 3.5 million gallons have emptied from the lock. Another set of gates are opened and the Margiz II — now 35 feet lower than it had been — is free to continue its scenic journey toward Waterford Harbor, where the Hudson and Mohawk rivers merge.

The lock, one of 57 along the 524-mile New York State Canal System (consisting of the Erie, Oswego, Champlain and Cayuga-Seneca canals), is again filled and made ready for the next boat to request passage — up or down river. Tremblay's lock is the second of what is called a "flight," a series of six locks that take boats over the Waterford Falls. This particular flight boasts the highest lift (169 feet) and the shortest run (three-quarters of a mile) of any canal lock system in the world.

"I've been around canals my whole life," says Tremblay, 39. "This is the perfect job. You meet interesting people, and you learn something new every day."

CSEA has represented Erie Canal workers since 1910, but in 1967 it won the right to bargain collectively for them and other public employees. Today, more than 265,000 public employees, retirees and private-sector workers are members of CSEA, the largest affiliate of AFSCME. About 500 of them work for the nonprofit New York State Canal Corp.

I've got a mule, and her name is Sal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie canal,
She's a good ol' worker and a good ol' pal,
Fifteen miles on the Erie canal.

Low Bridge, Everybody Down
(Thomas Allen, 1905)

Mule-drawn barges once made their way along the 363-mile Erie Canal from the Hudson River toward Lake Erie and the western wilderness. As commerce increased, a wider and deeper New York State Barge Canal was dug between 1905 and 1918, along roughly the same route as the old canal, and most of the original channel was abandoned. But the Erie's place in history was assured.

"The thing people need to realize is that — at the time the Erie Canal was first completed in 1825 — New York City was a small town populated with about 15,000 people," says Robert Brooks, director of the Canal Corp., which operates and maintains New York's canal system. "Basically, the Erie Canal not only made New York state, it made New York Harbor the premier harbor in the world. It also settled most of the Midwest and the West. It was a transportation network for goods and services and, most importantly, for ideas."

In the early 1980s, however, the state lost interest in maintaining the canal, and considered turning sections of it over to local governments. Outraged, CSEA launched a campaign dubbed "Don't Pull the Plug," which became a rallying cry for sports fishermen, boaters and canal workers alike. Not only did they succeed in keeping the canal under state control, their efforts also started a movement to reinvigorate an entire canal system that continues to grow.

The Erie Canal today is overwhelmingly a recreational waterway. According to the Canal Corp., more than 102,000 tour boats, rented recreational boats and personal pleasure boats traversed its waters last year, compared to 2,196 commercial (non-passenger) vessels.

I learned for to be very handy
And to use both a shovel and spade.
Sure, I learned the whole art of canallin'
And I think it an excellent trade.

Paddy on the Canal
(Author unknown; before 1853)

At the Waterford Canal shop, the largest of five maintenance facilities in the canal system, skilled CSEA members ensure that the canal and its historic lock system are passed on — polished and in good working order — to the next generation. Machinist Bob Bailey, 43, operates a planer, which cuts thin ribbons of steel from a new rail on which the lock valves will ride, so they open and close and let the water in and out of the lock. Working on such antique equipment, Bailey says, gives him a sense of the canal's early days, when commercial boats comprised its primary traffic.

"We're working with history here," confirms his colleague, machinist Roy Dietzel, as he grinds steel amid a shower of sparks. He laughs and adds: "I'm using a machine that was built in 1900. I went to toolmaker school, and they told me I'd never work with a planer like this."

Sitting at a device that wraps wire to create a power-generating coil is electrician Bob Kinns, 38. The lock components he fixes date from 1911 and require skills and practical know-how that he has learned on the job. "The way I look at it, we've got 10 dinosaur bones, and we're trying to build a whole dinosaur out of them," he says. "We found some old books, called people and asked people questions. We learned not only how to do this coil, we're finding out about many different coils" that will eventually require his expertise.

Maintenance assistant JoAnne Crawford has worked with Kinns for the past two years and finds it fascinating. "I love tinkering with things," she says. "It's not the same thing every day. Sometimes we work on one of the locks, other times on motors."

Although the equipment is quaint, it can also be dangerous. The old machines run on direct current, which is more hazardous than alternating current (AC), so they take special precautions. "Wherever the source of the power is, you lock it with your own personal lock and tag it with your name, beeper number and phone number, and no one should remove that lock except you," Kinns says. "Each lock has one key, and you have it in your pocket."

All hail to a project so vast and sublime.
A bond that can never be severed by time. ....

The Meeting of the Waters of Hudson and Erie
(Samuel Woodworth, 1825)

Mick Salls, 52, is another skilled craftsman who works on antique canal parts at the shop. "Anything that's wood, we do," he says. "A lot of stuff is mundane and repetitive, but then [becomes interesting] when we get into our winter work," when the locks are emptied and repaired. They make quoins — wooden discs that pivot with the gate and create a seal — and other unique parts that keep the lock system working.

"It's learned as you go along," says Salls' partner, carpenter Bill Felter, 48. "It's not something that somebody comes in and starts doing."

Both are glad that CSEA represents them. "Most of your outside carpenters are independents and wouldn't get a pension, wouldn't get a retirement system," explains Salls. "I figured that to match what I get here — vacation, sick leave, hospitalization — I've got to make some $30 an hour on the outside."

Canal Corp. employees continue to see their benefits improve through the efforts of CSEA. Its members recently approved a new contract that includes a 10.5 percent salary increase over four years, fully paid health insurance and prescription drug coverage after four years of employment.

... when from New York town to Buffalo
You've sailed the Grand Canal,
There's no schoolmate's tale can top you in the end.

Grandfather's song
(George Ward, 1988 ©)

Working on the Erie is "one of the best jobs in the world," says David Whaley, 52, a hydraulic dredge captain who has worked on the canal for 26 years, keeping it free of debris. "I light a candle every night when I go home because I have this job."

Whaley's grandfather, father and uncle all worked on the Erie. He himself laments that he will be "the last one in the blood line" to do so because his son and a daughter have chosen other careers.

For those who have spent their lives working on the canal, it's a way of life. Some retirees, like former dredge boat captain Donald Carney, 68, and former derrick boat captain Jerry Phillips, 59, cannot stay away. So they volunteer as deck hands on the Urger, a restored, 99-year-old tugboat that serves in effect as the ambassador of the New York canal system.

The two are laid off each winter, but, "come spring, we're just biting the bit" to return to the old blue and yellow tug, says Phillips. "There's a bond between you and the boat" — and also among crew members.

The Urger's powerful, 320-horsepower diesel engine (installed in 1949) propels it slowly toward Waterford Harbor, leading a procession of tugs that will participate in the Second Annual Tugboat Roundup. It's a popular event that tugboat captain (and CSEA member) John Callaghan helped organize as part of the 14th Annual Waterford Canalfest.

The 27-year-old native of Waterford remembers, as a boy, watching from his porch as tugs and barges passed by. After a stint in the Coast Guard, Callaghan felt the pull of the canal and returned home to work there. "We're part of a continuity that dates back to the original canals," Callaghan says proudly from the pilothouse of his tug, aptly named the Waterford. "It's like a calling to carry on that tradition and ensure that our children and grandchildren are going to continue to be able to use, enjoy and even work on this canal system, which we're going to give them."