I want to share a letter I sent to the Clarkston City Council today. I’m also sharing a separate Letter to the Editor of the Clarkston News. If they don’t publish it, at least you can see it here.
Letter to the City Council:
Subject: Pony Cycle
Dear Clarkston City Council (and especially council members Casey, Quisenberry, Rodgers, and Forte):
I’m writing as a Clarkston taxpayer who was angered to learn four city council members believe it is appropriate to spend $3,500 of my tax dollars to create a monument to the Hawke family in Depot Park. This Pony Cycle shell is nothing more than a family vanity project for Terry Hawke, since, as he advised you, he had already planned a plaque paying homage to his grandfather, father, uncle, and aunt before he ever appeared before the city council to make his original request. The tribute is undeserved, given the Hawke family’s abysmal treatment of its Clarkston employees in 1970 and 1971, demanding that they work during the holidays, then locking them out and closing the Hawke’s Clarkston facility, putting 28-30 employees out of work and leaving an empty building to sit in the heart of the city. This is not something the city should celebrate, let alone use taxpayer funds to honor.
The most charitable way to look at this vote is to conclude certain council members are enamored with what they believe is the Pony Cycle history (or their personal experience riding Pony Cycles) without being familiar with the rest of the history involving the Hawke family and the Hawk Tool facility in Clarkston. I expect more from the city council when my tax money is involved.
The Hawke family didn’t invent the Pony Cycle. And Hawk Tool manufactured this scooter for a mere five years as a side project, since it was primarily a tool and die company servicing the automative industry and the government. (Sources: Pony Cycle Facebook page, presumably managed by Terry Hawke based on the content; letter from Terry Hawke posted on the US Scooter Museum website, available by going to this weblink: https://usscootermuseum.org/ponycycle.htm.)
Given that you’ve agreed to honor the Hawke family in this way, I think it’s important to share the rest of the related Clarkston history with you in case you aren’t familiar with it; specifically, you should be aware of the way the Hawke family treated Clarkston employees and families. It’s unfortunate no former Clarkston Hawk Tool employee was available for comment as you were considering what is obviously nothing more than a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument.
I have nine years of experience in labor relations in the private sector working with the United Auto Workers [UAW] and with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers [OCAW] in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries, respectively. I found many things quite odd about the published news stories concerning closure of the Clarkston Hawk Tool facility (and frankly, quite awful).
I’m enclosing copies of a number of newspaper articles referring to the 1971 Clarkston Hawk Tool closure. (Please note the title of one of the articles erroneously states the Hawk Tool company was “started” by Henry Ford. The only connection between Hawk Tool and Henry Ford is that Hawk Tool bought unused property at the same location where there formerly was a Ford facility.)
If you take the time to review these articles, you’ll learn that:
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- Many Hawk Tool employees at the Clarkston facility were UAW hourly workers. Allen Hawke told the Clarkston News that, before the closure, the UAW and Hawk Tool had no major disputes.
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- The relationship between Hawk Tool and the UAW was so good that, rather than calling for a strike when the then-current contract expired, the unionized workers continued to work for several months after expiration.
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- Hawk Tool’s Clarkston UAW employees were purportedly “asked” to report to work on December 28th-30th, 1970 (between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day). While I don’t have a copy of the Hawk Tool labor agreement to confirm, the week between these two holidays is historically a paid holiday shutdown period for workers covered by UAW contracts in southeastern Michigan. Given the Clarkston News report claiming the employees were “asked” to come to work for three days during that week, that was likely the case for Hawk Tool employees as well.
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- Working on a contractual holiday usually results in additional pay for UAW workers (double or triple time, depending on the terms of the labor agreement). It’s extremely odd that apparently none of the unionized employees came in to work despite being “asked” to do so.
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- The Clarkston News reported the UAW and Hawk Tool dispute was over holiday pay. I think it’s reasonable to infer the company refused to pay holiday pay at least for December 28th-30th, inclusive. It’s also possible the company refused to pay holiday pay for the entire holiday shutdown period, since one Clarkston News article claimed the strike started on December 12, 1970, and another asserted it started on December 23, 1970. (The holiday shutdown likely would have begun after December 23rd, given the December 1970 calendar.)
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- Hawk Tool’s next action was to send its UAW employees a telegram advising them they’d “lost their seniority.” In labor-speak, this means the company was now refusing to recognize any bargained-for job protection or employee benefits (for example, health insurance), allowing the company to claim the right to treat its employees in any manner it wished. And, as you’ll see from the newspaper articles, the Hawke family didn’t treat its Clarkston employees well at all.
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- Despite the telegram, the employees reported to work on January 4, 1971. January 4th would have been the first regularly scheduled workday after the Christmas holidays based on the calendar. (This cuts against the two Clarkston News reports that employees were on strike as of December 12, 1970, or as of December 23, 1970, because striking employees don’t all try to return to work unless a strike has ended.)
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- On their return to work, the Clarkston employees discovered Hawk Tool had locked them out of the Clarkston plant and refused to allow them to work. As everyone knows – including the Hawke family – when you can’t work, you don’t get paid, and that means you can’t feed your family.
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- A long and bitter strike ensued. The Clarkston News reported allegations of property damage due to vandalism at the Clarkston facility and at other locations. Though vandalism is never excusable, it was likely the result of people losing their income after the holidays and being treated reprehensibly by Hawk Tool and the Hawke family. People who don’t hate their employers for perceived injustices tend not to behave this way, especially given Allen Hawke’s statement that the union employees had a good relationship with Hawk Tool before the Hawke family locked them out and the employees were unable to earn a paycheck.
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- The Clarkston News reported the area that is now our Washington and Main parking lot served as the UAW strike headquarters, and workers began picketing at 20 West Washington on January 7th. (This also suggests the strike began with the Hawke family’s decision to lock the employees out as of January 4th, not before the holidays. If the strike had begun in December, the picketers would have started picketing back then so they could earn their paltry UAW strike pay; that is, when they weren’t visiting local food banks to try to feed their families.)
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- The Hawke family never allowed the Clarkston employees to return to work at the Clarkston facility. Presumably, the continued loss of wages resulted in the workers eventually abandoning the picket line out of a need to eat and pay their mortgages.
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- The 28-30 employees who lived in Clarkston and the surrounding area lost their livelihoods as well as their ability to feed their 28-30 families. While there’s never a good time to treat your employees badly, the Hawke family apparently decided the best time to effectively fire all its employes was right after Christmas, just as the holiday bills for all their employees’ children’s toys started to roll in.
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- Hawk Tool announced it planned to close the company entirely by summer 1972 when its government contracts expired. (The Clarkston News reported the Clarkston facility was one of three branches, and the Hawke family business had apparently been humming along just fine at the other two). A cynical person would wonder whether the Hawke family acted deliberately to close the Clarkston facility to save the company money and decided locking the employees out – forever – was the best way to accomplish that, given that they seemingly wanted to wind the business down and apparently hadn’t pursued any additional government contracts to keep other company facilities in business.
When I researched Hawk Tool, I found no reference to any Hawke family generosity to the local Clarkston community. The only thing I found that involved charity was an article indicating Hawk Tool allowed a charitable organization to conduct a fundraiser that involved selling tickets for people to guess the time that a junker car fell through the ice on the Mill Pond in the springtime. Hawk Tool’s role in this was simply to “allow” the charity to use the Mill Pond to sink the car that had to be removed as the weather allowed it. The newspaper said Hawk Tool and Michigan Bell employees determined the time the car broke through the ice, but it’s unclear whether these Hawk Tool employees were volunteering or getting paid for their work on this event.
If the “yes”-voting council members were aware of the abhorrent way the Hawke family treated its Clarkston employees and their families and still approved Terry Hawke’s vanity project despite that knowledge, then they should be ashamed of themselves. This is not about breathing life into a junker Pony Cycle so Terry Hawke can bask in the glow of admiration from his adoring fans at his planned dedication of the Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument following the 4th of July parade; it’s about the Hawke family’s contribution to our city and the way it treated Clarkston residents – which is a net negative. Given the Hawke family history, it’s an insult not only that this monument honoring the Hawke family will permanently live in Depot Park, but also that Terry Hawke is demanding taxpayers pay any amount toward this project rather than offering his beat-up Pony Cyle as a gift the city could accept or reject.
Just because money is budgeted for one purpose doesn’t mean it’s there to be used for a shiny object that captures some council member’s fancies. If city council members want to reallocate money from one part of the budget to another to do something they think needs to be done, then they could have applied that $3,500 of taxpayer money for something we actually need – such as the sidewalk replacement slabs we couldn’t fully fund this fiscal year – rather than a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument in Depot Park celebrating a family that treated Clarkton families in such an abysmal way. We constantly hear how the city lacks sufficient funds for various projects, but as long as some city council members think it’s OK to waste money on a project like this, the city should never be heard to complain it needs to increase our taxes.
It’s not too late to fix this. The council should reverse its decision to subsidize this monument to a family that mistreated Clarkston residents and employees and left an empty building in the middle of the city. The city has not, to my knowledge, made any legally enforceable commitments that would require a taxpayer subsidy for a Hawke family monument. Only one of the four council members who voted for this needs to change his or her mind.
Attachments:
03-19-1964 – car sinking charity event – Clarkston News
01-03-1971 – lockout and telegram – Clarkston News 25-year lookback dated 1-3-1996
02-04-1971 – still on strike – Clarkston News
02-28-1971 – still on strike, picketing since 1-7 – Clarkston News 25-year lookback dated 2-28-1996
03-25-1971 – strike in 12th week, vandalism – Clarkston News
03-27-1971 – vandalism – Clarkston News 25-year lookback dated 3-27-1996
06-28-1973 – Clarkston facility for sale – Clarkston News
Letter to the Editor:
April 10, 2024
Dear Editor:
I write to express my disgust with the four Clarkston city council members (Quisenberry, Casey, Rodgers, and Forte) who voted to give away $3,500 of tax money to Walled Lake resident Terry Hawke. Mayor Wylie wasn’t there to vote, but both she and council member Roth were against this idea. Lamphier was absent.
Terry’s family owned Hawk Tool, a tool and die facility and automotive supplier that had a facility in Clarkton at one time. For a brief five-year period, the Hawke family manufactured Pony Cycles in Clarkston, a silly-looking scooter they didn’t invent. Terry plans to refurbish a beat-up Pony Cycle and install it as a monument in the Depot Park playground to include a plaque honoring his family.
The Hawke family treated Clarkston area employees and their families like garbage. They closed the Clarkston facility by locking union employees out of their jobs as they tried to return to work right after the Christmas holidays on January 4, 1971, despite having no issues with the union before this happened. A contentious strike followed that saw the UAW headquartered at Washington and Main and constant pickets in front of Hawk Tool at 20 West Washington. The strike never ended. The doors never opened. And 28-30 employees from the Clarkston area were left without an income while Hawk Tool continued operations at other sites.
And now we’ll be paying for what is essentially a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument to honor them forever.
Shame on the city council members who voted “yes” for this project.