BY ROSEMARY RAY
JOLIETTE, Québec - Some 150 workers on the midnight shift at the Bridgestone/Firestone tire plant here refused to work August 22 and instead held a 10-hour union meeting in the plant cafeteria to protest the company's refusal to negotiate a new contract. The current agreement expired August 31.
At the company's request, municipal and provincial cops dressed in riot gear entered the plant at 5:15 a.m. and ordered the workers out. The company then locked the gates on the incoming day shift. The plant of 730 union workers has since remained closed.
Immediately after the cops cleared the plant, the workers, members of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (CSN), held a union meeting where they voted overwhelmingly to turn the lockout into a strike. CSN members say they will end their strike only if the company begins "serious contract negotiations" and guarantees no reprisals against the workers who occupied the plant.
CSN representative Henri-Paul Goyer told the press that the union is demanding the right to take unpaid personal days off in the new contract because workers are exhausted by the 12-hour shifts and the pace of work. "The plant works 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Goyer said. The unpaid days off would give the tire workers a chance "to breathe a little."
On the picket line outside the plant, Yvon Lauzon, who has worked at Bridgestone/Firestone for 25 years, described the grueling pace in the plant. "I have to put steel rims on 2,300 tires every shift - it's hard on your body, especially on the 12-hour midnight shift."
Lauzon said that company discipline has created a lot of resentment. "Come to work 10 minutes late and they put it on your record as an unjustifiable absence for the whole shift. Take a day off sick and you get hauled into the office," he said.
"Taking a day off for personal reasons or because your kid is sick is a crime at Bridgestone/Firestone," said Norman St. Louis, a union steward at the plant.
The company acts like a "dictator," according to one striker named Noel. When the riot cops came into the cafeteria "I thought I was in Tianamen Square in China," he said. Sending the cops into the plant was "a big mistake," added St. Louis. "They tightened the screw one notch too much this time."
One striker told St. Louis that they didn't have to accept "the Japanese way of doing things," referring to the plant's Japanese owners. St. Louis responded by saying, "It doesn't matter whether the boss is Japanese, American, or Canadian - all they want is to make more money and what we want is respect."
Several strikers said they didn't like the company's demand that new-hires get paid 30 percent less for the first three years. "Same work, same pay," was how Noel responded to the proposal.
Picket lines are up every day and the strikers say they'll be organizing special solidarity activities in the weeks to come.
Rosemary Ray is a member of International Association of Machinists Lodge 712 at Canadair in Montreal.