BY MARY MARTIN AND JIM GARRISON

ST. LOUIS, Missouri - The strike of 6,700 members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) against McDonnell Douglas Corporation, now in its ninth week, has been marked by intensified company attacks against the union.

These attacks include the introduction of some 1,200 scabs in the plant, escalated harassment of pickets both by company officials and security cops, and a hardening stance in contract negotiations.

At the same time, most of the 6,700 strikers remain determined to continue their battle against job cuts, reductions in pensions and health benefits, and other concessions.

"This company has been looking down their noses at us for so long they don't even know what we're capable of," Harold Sullivan, a precision tool grinder for over 33 years, said in an interview on the picket line.

District 837 of the IAM has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accusing McDonnell Douglas of illegal surveillance and harassment of its members on the picket line.

"McDonnell Douglas is ordering our members to picket dangerously close to traffic or face arrest for trespassing. At one gate picketers are being ordered to stand only 10 inches away from moving traffic," said IAM District 837 president Jerry Oulson in a news release. "Three members already have been hit by cars and its a miracle no one has been critically injured or killed."

The union also charged that guards with the hired security force, Assets Protection Team (APT), have screamed obscenities, made obscene gestures at several picketers, and tailed and videotaped strikers in their cars. APT is a division of the notorious strike-breaking outfit Vance Security Systems.

With federal mediation, the company resumed negotiations with the union on June 27. At that session, McDonnell spokesman Tom Williams said, "Everything from the previous offer is off the table," Subsequently, negotiations broke off on July 18 with no further meetings scheduled.

The July 21 St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that to date the company has brought in 1,200 strikebreakers to work with the 3,300 non-union employees already producing in the plant.

McDonnell president Herb Lanese boasted in a July 26 interview with the Post-Dispatch, "In many places, we have reached the highest efficiency we have ever had in the history of the company."

The machinists struck June 5 primarily over job security. The company plans to eliminate up to 1,700 jobs through outsourcing and job combination and also wants take-backs in pension and health insurance provisions. The workers here have not had a wage increase for the last two contracts. Since 1990 the union workforce has shrunk from 11,000 to 6,700 due to layoffs. The last strike by machinists at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis occurred in 1975. It ended after 13 weeks with the union membership returning to work for one cent less than they were making before.

A non-union employee component of 15,000 remains on the job at McDonnell Douglas facilities here. This includes engineers, supervisors, secretaries, medical personnel, and cafeteria workers. A 1994 organizing drive to bring 5,000 of these workers, called Free Enterprise Personnel (or FEP's) into the union was unsuccessful.

On a recent four-hour picket duty turn strikers shared with Militant correspondents their views on the strike.

"This strike really changed my view of the union," said Thomas Dell, a sheet metal inspector, and one of the younger workers, who has been in the plant for 10 years. "I was never really a hard-core union man, but I have a new respect for the union and the struggle of the workers. I never used to pay much mind to, say, a picket line set up at a grocery store. But when you're on this side of the line you see what's going on. I'll never ignore another picket line at a grocery store or anywhere else."

Another striker, Kim, who works as a janitor at McDonnell, angrily recounted her recent experience in trying to apply for food stamps and a Medicaid card for her daughter. She said she was turned away by a welfare office caseworker who told her she was a "greedy Mac worker" who didn't deserve these benefits. "People don't seem to realize that some of us, like single parents, are hurting already," she stated.

Other St. Louis-area unionists have begun to organize support efforts for the striking Machinists. In the past two weeks, members of the United Auto Workers union at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler assembly plants have conducted plant gate collections at shift changes. A total of $18,000 was collected.

A speakers bureau of strikers and district officials has been established to reach out to other unionists to win support for the strike. They have visited union locals in Illinois, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Machinist union members who work for Northwest Airlines in Minneapolis recently donated $2,000 to the strike fund, according to Jim Price, co-chair of the strike security team of District 837.

A strike solidarity march and rally is tentatively planned for Sunday, August 11, at 1:00 p.m. at the IAM District 837 union headquarters in Hazelwood, Missouri. For more information call strike headquarters at (314) 731-0603.

Jim Garrison is a member of United Auto Workers Local 110 at Chrysler in Fenton, Missouri. Mary Martin is a member of IAM Local 1759 at Northwest Airlines in Washington, D.C.. Danny Booher, a laid off member of IAM Local 1018 at U.S. Air in New York, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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