Workers are picketing in St. Albans, Bluefield, Logan, Parkersburg and Clarksburg and are supported by other Teamsters locals who have set up picket lines across the state.
Members of the Teamsters Local 175 are striking against Coca-Cola over the company’s alleged refusal to compromise.
Workers are picketing in St. Albans, Bluefield, Logan, Parkersburg and Clarksburg and are supported by other Teamsters locals who have set up picket lines across the state.
Teamsters Local 175 President Ken Hall said the company won’t compromise on several grievance issues and employees have been without a contract for more than a week.
He accuses Coca-Cola of backtracking on signed agreements, including one over health insurance.
“After signing off on that language within an hour, their attorney called and said, ‘We can’t agree to that now. We have a person in our Charlotte office who doesn’t agree,’” Hall said. “We’d negotiated for over a week, it’s not like someone tricked them, they’re represented by council.”
Hall said Coca-Cola is trying to take away work from their members.
Last month workers rejected a contract offer after the company reached an agreement with the gas station chain Sheetz to use its warehouses and employees to transport products to their convenience stores.
“They want to direct ship their product from one of their bottling stores in somewhere like Roanoke, Virginia or Charlotte, North Carolina,” Hall said. “They want to direct ship it to a warehouse that’s owned by Sheetz and eliminate our drivers who go there, check to see what their order is, put their drinks on the shelves and merchandise it. They want to eliminate what they’re paying our drivers which will eventually result in layoffs. It’s bizarre.”
Hall said his experience with Coca-Cola’s competitor, Pepsi, is just the opposite.
“They don’t want to do that and they’re not doing that,” Hall said. “And they sell more drinks in West Virginia, so I think they have some idea of how to negotiate.”
Hall explained that the last time workers went on strike against Coca-Cola the volume of lost sales was high enough that two years later the company was still struggling to recover its numbers.
“This company’s mentality is unbelievable,” Hall said. “And part of that is driven, I think, that prior to them acquiring the West Virginia operation in the late 80s, they had maybe 100 unionized employees out of 4,000 and that was in Alabama. So they’re not accustomed to working with unions, frankly they despise unions, so every so often they decide, ‘We’re just going to take you on.’ So far they have not been very successful at it.”
Coca-Cola declined a request for an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting but in a statement said the company is disappointed the union initiated a strike.
“We’re disappointed the union decided to take our teammates out on strike but remain committed to working with them on an equitable resolution. We have a solid plan in place to continue serving our customers.”
St. Albans is the first location in the state that has been recognized as being dementia friendly — which means many people in the town are trained in techniques to make people with dementia feel welcome.
The town of St. Albans has designated Feb. 22 Dementia Friendly Day. The Kanawha County town is the first location in the state that has been recognized as being dementia friendly — which means many people in the town are trained in techniques to make people with dementia feel welcome.
For his radio series, “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents,” News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Walter Hall, the vice mayor of St. Albans, and one of the founders of the Dementia Friendly program, to find out what it’s all about and how it got started.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Let’s talk about making St. Albans being a dementia friendly city. What was the whole purpose of that? Why was that important to you?
Hall: Well, a dementia friendly community begins with education. And we were fortunate and blessed to have a young man in St. Albans that owns Braley Care Homes. Chris Braley reached out to me six years ago in 2016. He asked if I had an interest in helping him and St. Albans become a dementia friendly community. There are none in West Virginia. The one location at that time was in Minnesota. So it piqued my interest to become a dementia friendly community at the time.
My grandparents suffered from the illness; I had a neighbor doing the same. And so we started with one meeting between the two of us. A group is two or more, and becoming a dementia friendly community begins with a gathering. The gathering stage was gathering people to talk about the issues, and then identifying different folks in our community who could volunteer and help us make a difference. A year and a half later, we had seven or eight on our committee and the support of the local chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Douglas: What does it mean? What is a dementia friendly city?
Hall: So, dementia friendly means that we’ve reached out to our community partners, our churches, our nonprofits, our grocery stores, our police, our fire, our city employees, public works. To become dementia friendly, we developed a plan of educating our community. The first experience we had was at the Hansford Senior Center, and it was called a hands-on experience. We invited the general public, and we had some professionals there to speak. We had doctors, nurses, hospice, Alzheimer’s, and we had a hands-on experience. And we had close to 100 folks from the community show up for that event.
And we took them into a room, we put on the fatal vision goggles that distort your vision, we put on rubber gloves, and we put little pinto beans down in the tips of the gloves, because a dementia patient has a tingling or a numbness on the tips of their fingers. Every person that came into that room — we asked them to dress themself using color coordination. It was one thing that would put a smile on your face and love in your heart, because you really wanted to know what my family, my mom, my dad, my grandparents, my neighbor was experiencing.
Out of that exposure, we immediately had five new members to our committee, we developed a game plan and then we took it to our first business. The Grind is a restaurant that was on McCorkle Avenue. And we trained 11 employees, the managers, and spent an hour educating them on recognizing the signs of dementia.
Douglas: Let’s talk about that training for businesses. You go into this first business, and you teach the employees how to respond if somebody comes in who’s agitated or doesn’t make sense. What are they supposed to do? How do they react to that?
Hall: As an employee, they are to recognize the signs of dementia. We have pamphlets and brochures in the restaurant to recognize the top 10 signs of dementia. To do that, as an employee, is to be more patient, be more understanding and develop eye contact with the caregiver. We have these cards with our logo and on the back of it it says, “Please be patient, my loved one is suffering from dementia.”
Caregivers come into a dementia friendly trained business. And when the employee comes up, the first thing they are to do as a caregiver is to hand that card to the employee so that they don’t have to mention it or discuss it in front of them. Because our parents, our loved ones, can hear — they have some understanding of what you’re saying and can become quite agitated. Just hand them a little business card.
Douglas: They walk into this restaurant, and the caregiver hands a business card to the staff. And that gives them a heads up, “Hey, this person has dementia.”
Hall: The 15 businesses that we’ve trained now, that’s been part of the process over the past five years. We started with one. Now every city employee: police, fire, public works, our water and sewer. All these folks have been trained on how to identify the signs or understand what’s going on.
Feb. 22, 2022, last year, was the day we received the proclamation from the City of St. Albans recognizing St. Albans Alzheimer’s Day. It is always going to be on Feb. 22. And we will celebrate our first gathering and St. Albans local businesses that will be supporting our cause with 22 percent from those days receipts as a donation to the program.
Douglas: It’s all about education.
Hall: It’s educating our community. Shops, restaurants, markets, our streets, our neighbors, everyone and in six years we have a nice following and a nice group. We all help ourselves. You have to look out for one another. And by nature, we as humans have to interact with others. And we invite you to bring your mom and dad on out. Bring your grandpa, grandma, bring them on out, go to these businesses that understand what’s going on. Make your reservation.
You can go to Dementia Friendly St. Albans, our Facebook page, for updates on which new business we have. The most recent we did was the St. Albans Library.
Douglas: I think you told me before, at the time that you started, there was only one other city and that was in Minnesota?
Hall: I wish I could remember the town, but yeah, there was one city, one community in Minnesota, that had gone through the dementia friendly training. There’s a Dementia Friendly America that has their own set of rules. And then we have the Alzheimer’s Association which has their own set. I guess I should say guidelines of what to follow to become a dementia friendly community. And we got the support of both organizations. And we’re now recognized as a dementia friendly community and stamped and approved by each organization.
We are still the only one with West Virginia. We are working with a gentleman in Huntington, and Nitro has begun the process and have actually already had multiple meetings. I have a feeling that Nitro will be dementia friendly as soon as they get some people on board and businesses and get them trained. Then we’re going to move on into South Charleston — Mayor Mullins has shown an interest. [Charleston] Mayor Goodwin has shown an interest.
On this West Virginia Morning, it’s Dementia Friendly Day in St. Albans. The Kanawha County town is the first location in the state that has been recognized as being dementia friendly. For his special radio series, “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents,” News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Walter Hall, the vice mayor of St. Albans, and one of the founders of the Dementia Friendly program, to find out what it’s all about.
On this West Virginia Morning, it’s Dementia Friendly Day in St. Albans. The Kanawha County town is the first location in the state that has been recognized as being dementia friendly.
For his special radio series, “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents,” News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Walter Hall, the vice mayor of St. Albans, and one of the founders of the Dementia Friendly program, to find out what it’s all about.
Also, in this show, between the Roads to Prosperity and the federal infrastructure law, there is a lot going on when it comes to roads and bridges. In our latest episode of The Legislature Today, Curtis Tate spoke with state Transportation Secretary Jimmy Wriston and Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to discuss the state’s progress.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from West Virginia University, Concord University, and Shepherd University.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
A new bridge connecting Nitro and St. Albans through Interstate 64 is opening Friday.
A new bridge connecting Nitro and St. Albans through Interstate 64 is opening Friday.
The Nitro World War I Memorial Bridge construction is part of a $224 million project widening Interstate 64 through the Route 35 interchange in Putnam County. The project widens nearly four miles of the interstate to six lanes of traffic, expanding to eight lanes at the Nitro and St. Albans interchanges.
It’s part of the state’s Roads to Prosperity infrastructure program, which recently celebrated its five year anniversary. Officials broke ground on construction for this particular project in April of last year.
It’s set to move exit traffic from St. Albans starting Friday, with westbound traffic following the next day. Eastbound traffic is also scheduled to be switched from the Donald M. Legg Memorial Bridge to the new bridge within the next two weeks.
The Donald M. Legg Memorial Bridge is also scheduled to be replaced, with the existing bridge scheduled to be demolished once eastbound traffic is fully switched.
A grand opening ceremony for the new bridge over the Kanawha River is set to be live streamed on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Friday, Oct. 28 at 2:30 p.m.
As of when construction began in 2021, the entire I-64 widening project is slated to be completed in 2024.
A pastor in St. Albans has been helping residents of a local homeless encampment called Tent City get back on their feet. But not everyone in the town approves of the work he’s doing.
“They hate to move every night. They hate to bother people,” Stan Smith, a pastor in St. Albans, W.Va., said as he drove around the outskirts of town, pointing out the tucked-away thickets where homeless people have set up camps.
“They’re not trying to break into people’s homes. I’m not saying that some don’t,” he said. “But the majority of them are just broken people who want to be treated with respect and dignity and remain private and remain out of the public eye.”
Stan knows these camps well because he takes care of the people facing homelessness in and around St. Albans.
This past summer, Stan heard the sheriff was going to shut down the largest of these camps, a place called Tent City. When Stan heard the news, he did something big. He purchased the land that the camp was on.
The camp was on private property. Now that Stan owns it, he’s legally allowed to let people stay on it without the fear of them being made to leave. But a lot of people in town aren’t happy about what Stan’s done.
Community Pushback
“They call it Tent City but actually it looks like a lot of tarps and whatever these people can gather to put shelter over their heads, a lot of trash laying on the ground,” said Rick Willis, the administrator of a Facebook group called St. Albans — Taking Back Our Community. It has 4,500 members. A number that is nearly half of the population of St. Albans.
“The purpose is to return the community to its original glory,” Rick said. “You didn’t have homeless, wandering the streets, breaking into people’s houses, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.”
Rick’s group blames people like Stan, who offer services to the homeless. They say these services are enabling homelessness.
“You’ve got a church and a minister that bought a piece of property, that set up a tent city for some of the homeless vagrants,” Rick said. “Of course, there’s a lot of people supporting, there’s a lot of people that are very angry about what he did, you know, it was done kind of in the dark. It was unpublicized. But you know, St. Albans is still a small town and word got around.”
Stan said the backlash got personal.
“They took my picture, posted my address, posted my telephone number. Posted my wife’s business, posted her name,” he said. “Encouraged people to dump garbage at our house and at her business and at the church. And they did dump garbage at the church.”
According to Stan, whomever dumped the garbage on his church lawn did it as an act of revenge.
He thinks their rationale goes something like this: You’re enabling people who fill our city with garbage, so we’re going to dump actual garbage on your property. See how you like it.
But Stan points out that he didn’t create this camp. In fact, it would’ve been impossible for him to have started it.
According to local business owners, this tent city has been around for over 40 years. Stan has only been involved with this camp for about a year and a half.
Credit Courtesy of Stan Smith
/
Train tracks near the Coal River encampment.
‘This Is My Problem’
It started when he saw something tragic.
“There was a lady feeding an 18-month old baby out of a garbage bag that was in a dumpster,” he said. “And it was pouring rain and the baby was picking up pasta off the plate as fast as she could and putting it in its mouth. And I said, ‘There can’t be any more this, this is my problem.’ That’s what opened my eyes. And then coming down here, seeing these people.”
Stan said he had a lot of empathy for the camp’s inhabitants.
“They feel ashamed of where they are. I mean, I heard one of them tell me and the sheriff this spring, ‘who would want to live like this? Who would want to live with the backwaters coming up to your tent door, or with mosquitoes or bugs or poison ivy, or in this situation? We’d rather have houses, but we’re just not to that place’,” he said. “They’ve lost everything, by either bad decisions some other form of poverty that came to them. Are there people who have made major, ugly mistakes? Sure. But we have too.”
The Consequences Of Simply Surviving
We mostly see homelessness as an issue facing people in cities, But it’s a very real issue in rural areas. Being homeless out here presents a unique set of challenges, according to Dr. Sydnee McElroy.
“One would simply be the fact of transportation and distance,” she said.
Sydnee is a family medicine doctor in Huntington, and host of the medical podcast Sawbones. She said that outreach obstacles present a huge health risk for people facing homelessness.
“It’s a lot harder if you are experiencing homelessness in a rural area, depending on where you are to get to the services and places,” Sydnee said. “I think about that a lot when we discharge people from the hospital. We will, let’s say it’s a weekend and we can’t make them a follow-up appointment, will tell them to call. Well, if you don’t have a routine, if you don’t have a place that you’re always going back to, if your home moves about and you don’t have a phone number, that’s impossible. We have now created a situation that is impossible for you to solve.”
Living in a community helps people overcome those obstacles.
…in every study of life expectancy, one of the things that correlates best with a longer life expectancy is social connection, the more connected you are to other humans and to a community of people, the longer you live…
Don’t have a phone? Maybe a neighbor can lend you theirs. And Sydnee said the benefits of having a community go beyond being able to share stuff.
“The other thing I would bring up is that, in every study of life expectancy, one of the things that correlates best with a longer life expectancy is social connection. The more connected you are to other humans and to a community of people, the longer you live. It improves your health outcomes to have connections,” she said.
Social Connection
When asked about living in this camp, the residents didn’t bring up the flooding, extreme temperatures, mosquitoes. They chose to talk about how grateful they were. Grateful to have one another. To have Stan. To have a place to sleep at night.
One of the residents, Wallace, is from nearby Alum Creek.
“The people here in this area where the tents and stuff are, for the most part all get along real good together and make you feel real welcome here,” he said. “When I was told that I could move into this area here, that really did mean lot to me because you go in certain areas that you try to pitch a tent or if you just try to lay down on the side of the road, I mean the police had to do their job.”
“And most of the times, you can tell that they really don’t like running you out from there — it’s just a thought there that you know, for sure that you’re really not allowed to be there. But, I mean, it’s really nice that you can come here and get a tent and not have to worry about anybody coming along and telling you that you gotta leave or anything like that.”
Another resident, Jamie, is very grateful for Stan and his church.
“He would come in a pouring storm. And I mean, pouring like buckets of rain, it was freezing in the middle of the woods, to attempt to bring a stranger kerosene just to make sure they’re not freezing,” she said.
Jamie points out that in the arguments over camps like these, people often forget that each person facing homelessness has a story. A story where tragic circumstances have led them to places like Tent City.
“When you’re homeless, you lose so much you lose your dignity. I worked my whole life, always had a home. And because of domestic violence, I lost my home, I lost my property like that, and I met a lot of terrible people,” she said. “It seems like when you’re down, that’s when people are at their worst. And then along comes Stan and his wife. And you know, it was just like God saying, ‘Hey, you know, I’m still here with ya’.”
“He has done things for me that my family didn’t do. I felt really alone. I felt forgotten. I felt dismissed. And this perfect stranger came from out of nowhere, him his wife, that and the people that he worships with, came and they changed my life.”
Stan’s First Encounter With The Camp
“Somebody mentioned that there were a few people that stayed over here,” he said. “So one Sunday night, at about 7 o’clock, I walked the railroad tracks, and I said, ‘I’ve got chili and blankets.’ And all these lights came on down here like fireflies. And they came up and they said, ‘You’re the first person to treat this like a human in years.’ And they began to weep.”
Stan goes to the camp three times a week or more. He said he’d eventually like to move his church closer to Tent City when he has the funds. But until then, he’s going to keep doing what he can.
“I think we have to actively get involved. And that requires us getting down and dirty. It means getting our hands dirty in situations that we don’t want to be involved in because we want to live as Americans in a world that doesn’t have these problems. They’re all third-world countries, you know, that have these types of problems. But that’s not true,” he said.
“I don’t want to see anybody live like this. But we gotta start where people are. We can’t start where we want ’em to be. The reality is, they’re here. And what do we do to help them transition from here back into culture?”
Industrial promoter, land speculator, and railroad developer Isaiah Welch died at St. Albans in Kanawha County on February 15, 1902. He was about 76.
Like scores of other Western Virginians, Isaiah Welch went west during the California Gold Rush in the late 1840s. He came home without striking it rich. That would come later.
During the Civil War, he reached the rank of captain in the Confederate Army. He also served in the legislature of Confederate Virginia throughout the war.
After the war, Welch teamed up with famed Confederate mapmakerJedediahHotchkiss, who was investing in the fledgling West Virginia coal industry. Welch surveyed the rich Pocahontas No. 3 coal seam in southern West Virginia and wrote about it in a journal published by Hotchkiss. In part, Welch’s report led to a flood of investment in the region, including construction of the Norfolk and Western Railway.
The city of Welch, the county seat of McDowell, is named in Isaiah Welch’s honor. He purchased the land where the town would be built supposedly for only $100 and his sorrel mare. Isaiah Welch is buried at Bramwell in Mercer County.
