The Militant (logo) 
   Vol.65/No.41            October 29, 2001 
 
 
Workers walk out at General Dynamics
(front page)
 
BY ILONA GERSH  
STERLING HEIGHTS, Michigan--Eight hundred workers went on strike against General Dynamics October 15, setting up picket lines in three states after contract negotiations between the union and the military contractor broke down in the early morning hours.

General Dynamics Land Systems designs, manufactures, and supports land and amphibious combat systems for the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as other governments. It is a subsidiary of General Dynamics.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) represents 220 employees at the company's world headquarters in Sterling Heights, Michigan, just north of Detroit; about 470 at a production plant in Lima, Ohio; and more than 130 at another plant in Eynon, Pennsylvania.

Strikers say the main issue is health benefits. The company has "taken medical benefits away from the retirement package," one picket at the Sterling Heights plant told the Militant. "The average age of the workforce is 47, and many are going to be ready to retire in a couple of years. We gave it up as a concession during the last contract negotiations. But now they are making megaprofits and they can afford to give it back."

Indeed, General Dynamics is doing well. Last June the Army ordered eight Wolverine heavy assault bridge systems, at a total cost of $24.5 million. Earlier this year, the company landed a $4 billion Army contract in a joint venture with General Motors to design a wheeled armored vehicle as a first step toward replacing heavy tanks with a more transportable vehicle. The Marine Corps awarded the company a $712-million contract to develop the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle.

The designs are developed in the Sterling Heights plant, where some parts are also machined, and prototypes built at the Ohio Pennsylvania plants. Factory production of the vehicles after the prototype is approved is done at other facilities. Many of the UAW members at the Sterling Heights plant are salaried technical workers, including engineers, draftsmen, planners, and purchasers. Others are machinists, mechanics, and janitors.

Several of the strikers were interested to hear about how state government workers in Minnesota went on strike in spite of pressure from Gov. Jesse Ventura and the big-business media that with Washington's war against Afghanistan under way, now is not the time to strike. "It's unpatriotic that we have to be here in this kind of weather on the picket line," one striker said, referring to the icy chill of cold pouring rain, sleet, and 50-mile-an-hour gusts that the pickets had braved on the second day of walking the line.

"How can they ask us to sacrifice freedom to fight for 'freedom'?" another striker asked. "There's a problem if we don't have the freedom to strike."

The president of UAW Local 2075 at the Lima plant says that workers would return to their jobs immediately if equipment they make is needed in Afghanistan. "We would be back on our jobs. That's a no-brainer for us," he said.

But that opinion is not held by all the strikers. When an Associated Press reporter asked Al Logie, a mechanic at the Sterling Heights plant, what he thought about going on strike just as the U.S. government launched its war against Afghanistan, he said, "They should have thought about that when they gave our benefits away."

Ilona Gersh is a member of UAW Local 174, and works at Textron Automotive in Westland, Michigan.  
 
 
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