Hayden Van Dyke
HIST 339
Interview 2 – Allen F. Layman
Interview Log
My second interview for the project was conducted with Allen F. Layman. Allen
is a 56-year-old white male who lives in Staunton. He is currently divorced and has a 25
year-old daughter out in Los Angeles. Allen works at the Western State Mental Hospital
in Staunton where he has been there for over 30 years. He has been a program manager,
psych aid, charge ward, and a P-14. The hospital itself is unionized and as such Allen has
partaken in the hospital’s union effort over the years and is currently the president of his
local chapter of the UE’s (United Radio, Electrical and Machine Workers of America).
The union covers many different types of employees and businesses including the Eastern
State Hospital in Williamsburg and William and Mary employees.
The location where Allen and I met was at the hospital inside his personal office.
Upon entering, anyone could tell that Allen is a very strong Democrat and does not have
a very strong affinity for President Bush in the least. Allen is a very sharp individual who
was very concerned by his fellow workers and spoke with emotion and personal stories to
fully illustrate certain elements of the topic at hand. When Allen speaks to you, it
definitely seems as though he’s uncomfortable being restrained in his chair and it showed
more and more near the end of the interview when he began to walk about the room to
illustrate stories through his body language. He had a lot of knowledge about different
topics related to his job and position including the right to work law, Virginia’s antiunion stance, problems within the hospitals and problems within the unions themselves.
Allen gave me some background information on paper and orally about the
history of the right to work law in Virginia, and how it has a racist background. He
argues that it was founded in the Jim Crow era basically in order to continue to keep
blacks and whites separated. He also felt there was racism currently seen in his union
and the councils that govern it. He shared a story about a labor council gathering in
Richmond where he and other council members were out voted because of racism. He
claims that several members of the board were sticking together because as he says, “they
wanted to get a little color on the board.” He was very adamant and offended by this
story and it showed in his tone, facial expressions and the content of his message. He
later made reference to another racial phrase. He talked about how the management of
the hospitals and also down at William and Mary used a “Plantation Mentality.”
Obviously relating to the plantation workers of the slave era, he said that many managers
were power-hungry and would make their employees do almost whatever they asked
because the workers needed the jobs desperately and the managers knew they could
abuse that knowledge.
Allen was a very in control type of person but for the most part was not
overbearing. One could tell that he was used to having to explain the situations
mentioned in the interview. I was also able to see the depth of his popularity among the
current workers and former workers in his union. I saw this twice when he received two
separate phone calls from workers at different locations calling with ideas on how they
could confront their management at their respected businesses. He was very well
balanced in that he could politely have me stop the interview and have a very in depth
and intriguing conversation with a worker he may or may have not known prior to the
interview and then end the phone call and jump right back in where he left off.
Allen was very direct and unafraid with a lot of the things he chose to say.
Talking about the union and people involved in it the way he did was very straight
forward especially when he used words like frustrating and angry often to describe a
situation. These kind of words allowed for more emotion from Allen to be associated
with the topic at hand which in turn made most of what he said very captivating and
interesting.
Allen had a very keen ability to illustrate ideas with real stories of people he had
encountered or had heard about. For example, when talking about the plantation
mentality, he told a story about a woman who had informed the management of her
degenerative arthritis in her knees, but was still forced to kneel on her knees and scrub
floor boards which in turn led to her having even further knee problems. Allen could
have just as easily gave me the definition of his view of plantation mentality, but instead,
like a lot of other topics and ideas, he told stories to fully illustrate the concept to all
those who would listen. And for me, the interviewer in person, he would forget about the
recorder and walk around the room while telling these stories picking props or acting out
certain actions so that I could not only better understand the concept through his words
but also through his body expressions. Another example of this concept which helped me
understand the need for unions, was when Allen talked about the girl would made
$17,000 a year. He said that she was making less and had a child and was getting
subsidized childcare and was a very hard worker at the hospital. He said she worked hard
enough to get a raise up to $17,000 a year and when she did they took away her
subsidized child care and now she was going to pay a lot of money every time her child
would go see a doctor. He described the details of insurance premiums and all of the
other aspects often over looked to fully illustrate the need for unions to get and maintain
these benefits for these types of employees making less than $20,000 a year.
Overall, Allen spoke very passionately and diligently about the workers who
don’t make as much as most and those workers in the union. He showed a lot of loyalty
for what the unions stood for, even if at times he didn’t seem to happy with some of those
individuals involved in the labor union councils. Just from my experience I can see how
important it is that to have people like Allen around, especially given the fact that labor
unions face such a difficult environment in the state of Virginia.