BY DAVID MARSHALL
AND MEG NOVAK
ST. LOUIS -At 12:01 a.m. on June 5, 6,700 members of International Association of Machinists Lodge 837 walked off the job at the McDonnell Douglas Corporation's giant aircraft manufacturing plant here. The strike comes three days after 86 percent of union members voted to reject what McDonnell spokesman Tom Williams called "our best, last and final offer."

The company's offer included the right to outsource work to nonunion outfits, its demand to merge job classifications, and a number of other provisions concerning wages, retirement, and health insurance that were unacceptable to the workers.

Of all the issues in the strike, workers on the picket line said the question of job security was the one that angered them the most. The union has lost 1,500 jobs over the last three years due to outsourcing.

"Their final offer guarantees only 5,000 jobs by the end of the contract," explained Darrell Cobel, a tool storage worker who has worked at McDonnell for 17 years. "We have 6,700 members. What are they going to do with the rest of us?" Other strikers fear that the company might be able to avoid even the "guarantee" of 5,000 jobs because of proposed contract language allowing layoffs in the event of "acts of God," the company's loss of contracts, and other business conditions.

"This company made record profits last year," one striker added. "Now they want to give us a 2.5 percent raise over four years after we haven't had a raise in three years. That's like rubbing our face in the grit."

Company spokesman Williams said that the plant will not shut down during the strike. "We will continue to build a product no matter what happens," he vowed. Some 1,500 engineers and white-collar workers were reassigned to assemble aircraft.

Meanwhile, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1 which represent 260 workers at the plant, has threatened strike action, and Teamsters Local 610 says it will honor the picket line.

The picket lines initially swelled to several hundred unionists as workers walking out of the plant at midnight joined busloads of others who had arrived earlier. Within hours, McDonnell went to court and obtained an injunction limiting pickets to four per gate. Local police departments have assigned some 75 additional cops to protect the plant and the company's world corporate headquarters, which is located in the same sprawling complex of buildings.

"Everybody I talk to understands why we're doing this," said Darrell May, a flight mechanic with 33 years in the plant, walking the picket line. "We're leading a fight not just for ourselves but for every wage earner in St. Louis and throughout the country. This is a fight that had to be fought."

David Marshall and Meg Novak are members of United Paperworkers International Union Local 960 in Peoria, Illinois.  
 
 
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