Interview of Olga "Jo" Beltrame and Ed Beltrame, union officers and organizers with the United Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee and UPWOC Local 69. Part 1

Description

Olga "Jo" Beltrame, with her husband Ed Beltrame, discusses her career as a union officer and organizer with the United Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee and UPWOC Local 69. Beltrame talks about her childhood in Montreal, her father's union activity, coming to Detroit to find work at the age of 14, her experiences working at the Swift meat packing plant and what she later did to help organize meat packing plants, especially Swift's Detroit Hammond-Standish plant. The Beltrames both discuss unions and their shared union activities through the years, including their work in organizing meat packing plants across several states, the wage improvements and benefits which were won for workers, and their elected positions in the union. Ends abruptly. The Beltrames are interviewed by John Revitte, Michigan State University professor of Labor and Industrial Relations, and Joan Kelly, editor of the Michigan AFL-CIO newspaper. The first of two interviews.