My grandfather Bruno Stello was a coal miner before there was a union. He worked on his hands and knees 14 hours a day, seven days a week for $12. My father-in-law, Edmund D. Hannan, was the first president of The Society of Motion Picture Film Editors [now the Motion Picture Editors Guild]. His guild card is number one. I am a union man. I joined Equity in 1965 in Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, and if everyone in our business were like him, we wouldn’t need a union to protect us. But we do. When I became a member of Equity it was and remains one of the proudest moments of my life. Without a union there would be no middle class, and without a middle class there is no democracy. Solidarity forever. Unions make America strong.
