BY JOAN PALTRINERI
GREENSBORO, North Carolina - Eight prominent Black ministers, a state representative, an assistant to North Carolina governor James Hunt, and the president of the Greensboro Poor People's Organization led a December 17 protest of 150 people to the entrance of the Super Kmart store here. When police in full riot gear told them to disperse, the ministers and political figures knelt in prayer, in a carefully planned civil disobedience action, until they were arrested.
The community protest, the most recent expression of growing support for the more than 500 workers at the Kmart distribution center here, thrust the battle for a union contract to the front page of the local big-business daily, the News and Record, for several days in a row.
"We want to prick the conscience of corporate America," Rev. William Wright told the press. Wright, one of those arrested, is the president of the Pulpit Forum, a prominent group of ministers, many of whom are from the Black community and support the Kmart workers.
"We're involved because the workers came to us," Rev. Gregory Headen, pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church, said. "This is not just between corporate America and labor anymore. This is a community issue. These people are our congregations."
The distribution center workers, members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), have been engaged in the contract fight for more than two years. Pulpit Forum ministers recently launched a holiday boycott of three local Kmart stores with the union's backing. The boycott has helped build support for the fight in a city that is largely working-class and where many workers identify with the Kmart employees.
Kmart, a corporate Goliath with 2,167 stores across the United States and 147 in other countries, has refused to consider the union's demands for wage parity with other distribution centers, where workers are paid up to $5 an hour more and receive additional paid holidays and sick days. Earlier this year, the company offered a 20-cent-an- hour raise, a 15-cent increase over the raise offered in negotiations last year. Unionists considered both proposals an insult.
The new round of protests came on the heels of a December 2 union rally that attracted more than 1,000 UNITE members and their supporters from throughout the southeast.
Most of those who joined the ministers on December 17 were members of several church congregations. Tom Hayes of the Faith Community Church said many from his congregation joined the protest after Sunday services. They first became interested in the Kmart workers' struggle when a member of the church who worked at the distribution center suffered a serious injury.
Another protester, Kathleen, explained why she supports the Kmart workers' demands for parity. "I work in a small office," she said. "I do the same work as all the men. I can't prove it, but I know I don't get the same wages. It's not right. Black women are definitely discriminated against."
With support for the fight growing steadily, pressure on local politicians and businessmen to take sides has increased and divisions have surfaced.
"I certainly think there is an informal role for the mayor and city council to play," Mayor Carolyn Allen told the December 18 News and Record. "That basically boils down to urging Kmart to enter serious negotiations with their employees." In the recent mayoral campaign, Allen tried to straddle the fence between the union and the company.
Many city council members, worried that the labor dispute could harm efforts to attract more industry, have also urged a quick resolution.
"We're trying to lift up the image of our community," said council member Claudette Burroughs-White. "Now we have all these negative images coming out of the Kmart dispute." Local Chamber of Commerce leaders have asked for meetings with Pulpit Forum ministers to attempt to diffuse the issue.
"Kmart workers test the objectivity of all" was the headline of a December 19 lead editorial in the News and Record. The normally hostile editorial board called on "Kmart and the workers to bargain in good faith toward a fair result." The editors acknowledged the union's claim that workers here are paid less than those at other distribution centers and admitted that "Greensboro is not widely regarded as a cheap place to live. The fact that a comparable distribution center in Georgia has been in business longer than the one here hardly explains an inferior wage structure."
Joan Paltrineri is a member of UNITE Local 2603 at the Greensboro Kmart Distribution Center.