The Militant (logo)  
Vol.63/No.34       October 4, 1999  
 
 
Workers are stronger after year-long Continental Tire strike  
{front page} 
 
 
BY MIKE ITALIE 
ROCK HILL, South Carolina — After one year on strike, members of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 850 are returning to work, strengthened by their fight against Continental General Tire in Charlotte, North Carolina. By a vote of 876 to 289, the strikers approved a new contract with the company September 19. Roger Hall, a tire builder with 8 years at Continental General, said,"I never thought we would be out this long, but after giving back in 1989 and again in 1992 and 1995, people were fed up. That's why we were united; that's why we stood together."

Nearly 1,200 strikers, who had received contract summaries a few days earlier, attended the meeting at the Winthrop Coliseum in Rock Hill to debate and discuss the contract and cast their vote. When the 1,450 tire workers walked off the job Sept. 20, 1998, it became a test of strength between a company aiming to break the union and a united workforce determined to hold its ground, reverse previous concessions, and assert its rights and dignity on the job.

The final six-and-a-half year contract includes substantial pension increases for those with more than 30 years on the job, and offers buyouts to all workers in a company drive to reduce the workforce from 1,450 to 1,300 people. There is a $0.75 per hour wage increase over the life of the contract, cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) will be put in effect, and for the first time 12-hour shifts will be instituted.

Sixty days into the strike the company had begun hiring scabs, and ran production with over 700 of these strikebreakers along with supervisory personnel. Continental General president Bernd Frangenberg announced in January 1999 that"It will be a sticky point, but the [permanent replacements] are going to stay."

Under the contract, however, 900 strikers will go back to work immediately, and the remainder are guaranteed to return within six months while receiving 80 percent of their pay.  
 

Strikers never broke

The strikers never broke. They maintained their seven-day around-the-clock picketlines. Everyone points with pride to the fact that 99 percent of union members refused to cross the picketline in the year-long walkout.

Local 850 held rallies outside the factory gates, won support from workers throughout the Charlotte area, and began to reach out in solidarity with other unionists in struggle. Strike rallies were joined by workers from the two other Continental General plants in the U.S. — union members from the plants in Mayfield, Kentucky, and Bryan, Ohio, and workers trying to organize a union at the factory in Mount Vernon, Illinois. More than 30 Local 850 members attended the September 11 rally in Natchez, Mississippi, on the anniversary of the strike of Steelworkers against Titan Tire (see article on page 11). Local 850 also led 3,000 workers on September 6 in Charlotte's first-ever Labor Day parade.

Striker Brenda Roach, a tire builder with 26 years at the plant, pointed to"regional issues" involved in the strike, that companies think workers in the South"should only look forward to lower wages." When big-business papers like the Charlotte Observer print articles on the strike they often crow that North and South Carolina have the two lowest rates of unionization among the 50 states.

But like many others, Roach was happy to see the victory of 5,000 workers at the Fieldcrest Cannon mill in nearby Kannapolis, North Carolina, who voted in the union three months ago."It's been up for a vote a lot of times," she said of the textile workers election victory,"We in the South are stronger with unions."

Tire builder Greg Roseboc expressed similar feelings, asking"Why do we have to be treated like this? I saw more solidarity than I ever saw before, we didn't stand alone," he said, explaining the linking up of other labor fights in the region from Newport News, Virginia, to Natchez, Mississippi.

In the course of the strike the USWA International led a campaign focusing on the fact that the company is owned by Continental AG, a German corporation. Although full-page ads were placed in national and local papers claiming the problem was that"German executives are double-crossing American workers," workers on the picket-line and solidarity rallies did not present the issue as one of"Germans vs. Americans."

The big-business press took note of the settlement in Charlotte."Long wary of the Deep South, organized labor has made inroads below the Mason-Dixon Line this year to score some impressive wins," was the lead of an article in the September 16 Wall Street Journal, titled"Labor unions make headway in southern states."

"Labor's latest victory came yesterday when the United Steelworkers of America announced a tentative deal to return 1,450 striking workers to a Continental General Tire Inc. plan in Charlotte, N.C.," the article continued."Labor also scored gains this year in other Southern organizing campaigns. Last month, a Steelworkers local representing 9,200 people at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., ratified a contract ending a 15-week strike that brought workers significant wage gains. And in June in Kannapolis, N.C., the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees won a tentative victory in a lengthy battle to unionize more than 5,200 Fieldcrest Cannon workers."

While both the bourgeois press and USWA top officials described the Continental settlement as an unequivocal victory before workers even saw the contract, unionists in the Charlotte area had a variety of views on the deal.  
 

A range of opinions on the contract

Strikers expressed a range of opinions about the terms of the new contract. James Williams has worked 31 years at the plant."This is the best we're going to get and I'm taking it," he said. Like a number of other workers interviewed, Williams stated,"I plan to immediately retire. With this contract my pension will go from $850 per month to about $1,600."

Maintenance worker John Richmond, who worked 18 years at B.F. Goodrich in Akron, Ohio, before starting at General Tire 13 years ago, said he voted for the contract even though"I have mixed emotions. It's not everything we wanted, but it has reopening clauses" for pension benefits in 2003.

Williams did not like the new mandatory 12-hour work schedule, with overtime only paid after 40 hours worked in a week."People fought a long time for the 8-hour day," he pointed out,"and to go back to 12 hours is going back to the time of Andrew Carnegie!"

Strikers voting"no" on the contract expressed their dissatisfaction by pointing to the imposition of 12-hour shifts, a 75-cent per hour wage increase over the six-and-a-half year contract, and the six-month"transition period" in the bargaining agreement during which workers hired to break the strike will stay on the job.

The biggest issue for many strikers was having to go back to work with strikebreakers. Wayne Jamison, a 28-year veteran of the plant, was both happy and thoughtful while relaxing after the contract vote totals were announced. He spoke of his participation in the solidarity rally for Titan Tire strikers a week earlier, and explained that at Continental General"It's been a tough fight. But only 14 union members crossed the line. We could have toughed it out even longer if we had to." Jamison liked the contract because"there's an improvement in money and pensions, there's more than when we went out. The only problem," he concluded,"is that the scabs will still be in the plant. But they will be out in six months" and all the strikers will be back.

Jackie Knight, a cover operator with 13 years at the plant, spoke for most of the strikers when she said,"We stood our ground and stayed out together. So we won more together this time than the strike in 1989."

Pointing to another potential fight down the road, Knight said,"Now we're hoping the workers at the plant in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, will vote in the union and join us."

Mike Italie is a member of UNITE Local 1997 in Atlanta, Georgia. Roberto Guerrero from Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home