BY ANGEL LARISCY AND STEVE BLOODWORTH
PEORIA, Illinois - Top officials of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union called off the 17-month strike against Caterpillar, Inc., the world's largest producer of earth- moving equipment, December 2. Union officials made the announcement to striking workers as they assembled to vote on a company contract offer that day. The contract itself was voted down by 81 percent of union members.
Caterpillar has said it will call back strikers in small groups over the coming weeks, excluding 150 workers fired or indefinitely suspended for union activities during the strike and the in-plant skirmishes leading up to it.
The big-business press has been quick to gloat over the strike outcome. "Union on the Run," read a December 4 article in Business Week. "Union capitulation shows strike is now dull sword," was the headline the next day in the New York Times.
"The company said it would take the workers back in its own good time," the Times stated. This will not include all strikers, the article said, "in view of changes in operations during the strike." It quoted Caterpillar vice president Wayne Zimmerman as saying, "An immediate return to prestrike staffing of nearly a year and a half ago is simply not practical."
At the contract meetings UAW officials told strikers that if they voted down the contract union members would return to work under the less onerous conditions in existence in 1994, before the strike began. They explained that under National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rules, the company will not be able to impose provisions of their new contract until issues brought before the NLRB by the union are resolved. Many strikers, however, doubt the company will abide by this.
At UAW locals in Pontiac and Aurora, Illinois, strikers reported that local union officials argued that the company's offer was the best that could be gotten under the circumstances. Local 2096 in Pontiac was split down the middle with 52 percent voting against the offer. In Aurora and Denver, Colorado, workers voted to approve it.
The contract Caterpillar proposed to UAW members included a two-tier wage scale, no pay increase aside from cost-of-living raises for the life of the six-year agreement, and concessions in health care.
The day after the vote, Tom, a striker on the picket line in Pontiac, said the contract represented a "defeat for the whole labor movement. We had Firestone, Staley, and now this."
"It leaves us with no rights. There is nothing good about it," said striker Perry Brabham of UAW Local 786 in York, Pennsylvania. "It's the worst contract I've ever seen."
The company plans to implement schedules forcing union members to work more than eight hours a day and on weekends without overtime pay, until they have completed 40 hours in a pay period. The contract also allows the company to hire up to 15 percent of the workforce as part-time and temporary workers.
The contract Caterpillar plans to implement also establishes a strict "code of conduct." During the first eight weeks after strikers return to work, UAW members can be fired without recourse if they do, say, or display anything related to their strike unless it is "non- controversial and inoffensive." This includes a ban on the use of the word "scab."
History of fight
The more than four-year-old labor battle between
Caterpillar and the UAW began in November 1991 when the
company attempted to impose its "final offer," a
concessionary contract.
Union members went on strike for five and a half months. UAW officials ended the walkout after Caterpillar announced it would hire permanent replacement workers.
Although UAW members returned to work under the company's terms from April 1992 until the current strike began in June 1994, the fight continued within the company's facilities. Workers campaigned for a decent contract by wearing prounion T-shirts and buttons, and carrying out coordinated rallies in the plants and parking lots to make their cause known.
Caterpillar management retaliated by suspending and firing workers. These events sparked 10 walkouts beginning in the fall of 1993.
On June 21, 1994, more than 13,000 workers at eight plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Colorado began a system-wide strike demanding reinstatement of 14 fired workers and the resolution of almost 100 outstanding unfair- labor-practice complaints filed against the company by the NLRB.
Caterpillar has been running its factories with some 25 percent of union members who have crossed the picket lines, management and office personnel, as well as temporary workers and permanent new hires.
Discussion at contract meetings
More than 8,000 strikers, spouses, and retirees from
Peoria-area Local 974 met on December 3. On his way into the
meeting, Paul Miller, a union steward at the Mossville
engine plant, said he thought the contract was a "setback
for us entirely." At the same time, "I don't think it was
worthless to strike," he remarked. "I think we should stay
out."
According to a Peoria Journal Star reporter who attended the meeting, UAW international administrative assistant Richard Atwood, who is also a member of the local union, told the crowd, "The only people being hurt by this strike are our good members. We can't keep them on strike through another winter, through another holiday."
Local 974 president Jerry Brown said the union was "doing what we think is best. We're recessing the strike."
For over two hours union members reviewed the proposals and asked pointed questions.
Many workers were angry that the contract didn't rectify the situation of workers fired by Caterpillar for union activity. Others expressed concern about more firings when they return to work as the company attempts to curtail democratic rights and victimize people because of their union activity.
Some voiced disagreement with the decision to end the strike.
Angel Lariscy is a member of UAW Local 1494 in Peoria. John Staggs, a member of the UAW in Philadelphia, contributed to this article.