During the summer of 1978 I worked for a home products distribution company on the edge of downtown Philadelphia located in an old industrial building. I got the job through a friend who was in lower management.
The company had a strong union and most of the people working in the plant were minorities. Any new hire had a three month trial period of working there before they were admitted into the union. Now I was a temporary summer worker and was not expected to try and join the union but I was still initially treated like any new hire.
The company did not manufacture anything. They bought bulk quantities of products used in household repair and maintenance such as screws, clips, clamps, nuts, bolts, and lots of other materials used around the house. They packaged items into small quantities to be sold to consumers in hardware stores, grocery stores, dollar stores, etc. They packaged things like 6 screws in a container to be hung from a hook in a store. They were also very big on plumbing supplies for do-it-yourselfers.
Most of the time I worked there I operated a machine that took barrels of stuff and repackaged them into small little packages that went to the stores. It was boring work but paid ok for a summer job while in college. Actually I was just finishing up my college work and would soon be looking for a real job but this was fine for the moment.
It was fairly shocking how hard the company worked the guys who wanted to do good and join the union. They hired between ten and twenty guys every week and were constantly letting people go. Very few of those hires ever made it to the end to be hired into the union. Only once in a while was someone hired for long term but everybody who came on expected that they would be the one to score a real long term good paying union job. Most everyone there was from North Philly.
Although I was a friend of one of the junior managers, a veteran and a white college kid I still had to go through some of the initiation jobs and the first week there was really horrific. I was part of a crew that unloaded railroad box cars that delivered product to the plant. Now I had previously worked on a loading dock at UPS so how bad could it get. Well, a lot worse. There was one day when we had to unload several boxcars full of rolls of that pink insulation material for homes. It was a hot summer day and we were all sweaty. It was hard to believe how itchy handling that insulation made us. All day we carried that stuff. I couldn't wait to get home and shower. Some guys stayed on that loading dock until they quit or were let go. Fortunately I was quickly moved on but management made sure that everyone coming up through the company worked some time on those docks.
I looked up Hancock-Gross on Google Maps and found the location at 410 N. 21st Street which is about where I remember it. A lot has changed in that area and a lot has remained the same. Now the new Barnes Foundation Museum is a block away and it looks like the building is no longer being used industrially. I did remember hearing that they had moved and I know for sure my friend who stayed with the company for many years after I worked there moved with the company somewhere out of state.
Another thing I realized looking at the map was my father's company Brandywine Products was only a couple of blocks north of HC. I had been there many times with my father but never connected the location back when I was working down there.
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