BY FRANK FORRESTAL
FORT WAYNE, Indiana - "Morale in the strike is good," said United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2209 member Bob Grundell. "Today about 25 people from UAW Local 598 in Flint and 35 workers from UAW Local 594 in Pontiac joined us on the picket lines."

Entering their third week on strike against the world's largest automaker, 2,700 UAW members remained solid in their fight for jobs and human dignity. The UAW workers here walked off their jobs March 14 after failing to reach a local agreement.

As the Militant went to press, UAW Local 2209 officials announced a tentative settlement in the strike.

"Tomorrow, a bunch of us are going to show solidarity by going to the picket lines at Mattel," said Grundell. On February 17, some 600 members of United Paperworkers International Union Local 7589 struck the toymaker Mattel at its only union-organized plant in the United States. The plant is being run by 300 management personnel and plans are afoot to bring in scabs on March 31.

UAW strikers on the picket line here are determined to put up a fight. The importance of this strike goes far beyond the city of Fort Wayne. Of GM's 123 locals, slightly more than half have local contracts. The big issue everywhere is jobs.

GM has made it known that the company's goal is to cut tens of thousands of jobs. GM has high stakes in this strike as it drives to lower its costs through layoffs, plant closings, selling of plants that GM deems unprofitable, and speed up.

The Fort Wayne Assembly Plant produces full-size pickup trucks. Demand for the trucks has slowed in recent months, swelling the inventory to more than an 80-day supply (60 is considered the norm).

At the six gates leading into the sprawling truck plant, the strikers have organized around-the-clock picketing. There is a steady flow of hot coffee, food, and warmth from the barrels of burning logs.

Teamster drivers, who haul the trucks on and off GM property, continue to support the strike, as do construction workers who are building a new body shop for a new GM truck model. In addition, strikers report that phone calls of support have been received from other locals in the United States and Canada.

Strikers demand: hire more workers
Since the strike began, there has been little progress in negotiations. The main union demand, to hire more workers to give some relief from heavy overtime schedules and to allow workers to take days off and vacations when they want them, has been rebuffed by GM.

GM is looking to slash 300 jobs at the plant. The union is demanding that the company hire 500 workers.

"The main issue in the strike is manpower," said Charles Reason, a 20-year veteran, who got his start at the Fort Wayne plant after being laid off from GM's Electro-Motive plant near Chicago in the mid-1980s. "Our people can't get vacation time, can't get days off, and have to fight to get off the line to get to the bathroom."

The work shortage is so severe that workers have been prevented from taking 4,600 scheduled vacation days, which is a violation of the contract and has led to hundreds of unresolved grievances.

"This situation has caused a lot of stress and hardship to our families," said Reason. "Most workers' families are out of state, only a few hundred live in the Fort Wayne area."

UAW member Bob Chapman, who transferred to Fort Wayne from the Janesville, Wisconsin, GM plant after being laid off, said, "We have workers here from Framingham, Massachusetts; Tarrytown, New York; Van Nuys, California; Flint, Michigan; and from other places."

"Most weekends I drive home to Flint," said Grundell, who came to Fort Wayne after job cuts in GM's operation in that city. "Many workers have families in Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis and go home most weekends."

Unlike other recent strikes by the UAW, this labor battle for the most part has received scant national media coverage. Some local coverage, including a March 23 front- page article by Julie McKinnon of Fort Wayne's Journal Gazette, has been favorable to the strike.

Several workers this reporter interviewed in the union hall and on the picket lines referred to this as a "blackout." Some strikers say they are getting ready for what may turn out to be a fairly long strike. They point to the large inventory of unsold trucks, which unlike the auto parts industry does not have the same effect on GM's overall operations.

"I think the strike will last a long time, but I hope I'm wrong," said striker Fred Hamman, "GM has drawn the line. They don't want to hire anybody. The most important thing to them is the $17 billion in profits they made last year." After being laid off at a GM foundry in Defiance, Ohio, Hamman transferred to the truck plant when it opened in 1986.

"I'm here on strike for the duration, whatever it takes," said Hamman. "Íd like to see some of GM's other truck plants go out with us, that would move things along." Hamman said he thought the local should have gone on strike in the fall when the Canadian Auto Workers struck GM in Canada.

For the past year the union has been preparing for a strike. Some of the strikers reported that last fall around 200 workers staged a walk-out protesting forced overtime. GM responded by selectively firing workers. According to Hamman, "many of the people fired were young new-hires who had been in the plant for a short period." The union was successful in getting these workers their jobs back.

As local talks were taking place, UAW members organized a "white shirt" day to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Flint sit-down strikes. Said UAW striker, Don DePew, who helped initiate the idea, "The majority of workers, about 60 percent, wore white shirts on February 11. This was a big success because it brought us together and gave us a sense of solidarity."

Meanwhile, other signs of resistance to GM's offensive against the union are surfacing. A strike by members of UAW Local 662 in Anderson, Indiana, against Delco Remy America (DRA) was narrowly averted March 22 when a tentative agreement was reached four hours after the strike deadline.

DRA, spun-off from GM in 1994, is the largest supplier of starter motors for GM cars and light trucks. The auto parts maker employs 1,400 workers at six plants in Anderson and 500 at two plants in Meridian, Mississippi. A strike at DRA, according to the Indianapolis Star, "Could have forced production shutdowns at GM."

The UAW was demanding that DRA pay workers the same wages and benefits earned by its members in the Big Three, and that 440 temporary workers be given permanent status and full benefits. The Herald Bulletin, an Anderson daily, reported that Local 662 president Patrick Smith said, "The company agreed to place the temporary workers on permanent status," and that the "agreement was pretty much in line with the GM contract."

As in the Fort Wayne strike, UAW members were prepared to strike. "Right at the deadline, some workers ... at DRA Plant 3 walked off their jobs, but were quickly returned to work by union officials," according to The Herald Bulletin. The ratification vote is set for March 27.

In another development, just outside Dayton, Ohio, in Kettering, members of the International Union of Electronic Workers Local 755 voted to authorize a strike against GM, according to the Cincinnati Post & Enquirer. The main issue is GM's outsourcing of jobs so that the auto giant can "meet its profit goals."

Earlier this year, 4,300 members of IUE Local 801 waged a three-day strike against GM in Moraine, Ohio.

Frank Forrestal is a member of United Auto Workers Local 551 at Ford in Chicago. Joel Britton, a member of Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Local 7-507, contributed to the article.  
 
 
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