Interviewer(s): A. Anand. Houma, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met Mark Cheramie and Eric Vizier at Penny and Ray Adams' home, where they seemed to have dropped in for a conversation and some food. Diane and I were there to talk to Ricky Cheramie, but often the conversation was general, and it turned out that Mark and Eric (who are cousins) had both recently lost their jobs for trying to organize their workplaces. They were both very outgoing and worked up about labor issues and local politics, and when I asked if they would be interested in being interviewed, they agreed. I contacted them some days later, and we set up a meeting. We conducted the interview outside the union offices, by the parking lot at a wooden picnic table, next to a swing-seat in the lawn. During the interview, every now and then a couple of people would come out, maybe to have a smoke, and go back in, one of whom was Michael Creivash (sp?), a local organizer who was described by Mark and Eric as an encyclopedia on unions and legal issues.

Mark Cheramie was born in 1963 in New Orleans and was a licensed deckhand by the time he finished high school in 1981. In 1985 he joined Doucet Adams as a Mate, and in 1992 he moved to Guidry Brothers, where he moved from Mate to Captain in two years. By 1994, he was First Captain. In December 2000 he was fired for Union activities. He is currently working as an organizer at the Offshore Mariners United union in Houma.

Both Mark's and Eric's cases against Guidry Brothers were up before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) at the time of the interview.