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EDEN PRAIRIE, Minnesota - Some 320 workers at the Eaton Corp. here conducted a 40-hour work stoppage March 1-2 as part of a fight for a new contract. Union stewards at the plant later argued that it was not a strike, since a new contract offer was on the table. However, workers at the plant, members of the International Association of Machinists Local 1037, had just voted on February 27 by a 73 percent margin to go on strike and believed they were carrying out that decision.

Three days after the first strike vote, the company submitted another contract offer with a slight increase in wages and another vote to strike failed to garner the necessary two-thirds margin, with 57 percent voting in favor.

Workers at the Eaton factory in Eden Prairie make hydraulic motors and hydraulic steering units that are used in farm implements and earth moving equipment. The biggest customers of the company are John Deere, Caterpillar, and J. R. Case companies. IAM members here gave significant concessions on wages and medical co-payments in the mid- 1980s.

The main issues in the current dispute were pensions, medical insurance, and wages. The big majority of union members felt that after years of high profits the company could afford to give more than the current $24 per month per year of service in pension benefits. Members of the local also wanted more than the company's offer of hourly wage increases of 3 percent, 3.5 percent, and 4 percent at the start of each of the three years of the contract. Union members were very suspicious of the company's proposal to substitute the current medical insurance plan, which is basically the same for all the members, with a "flexible benefits package" that would allow some members to pay less for an inferior medical plan.

The company's first offer proposed to raise retirement pay to $34 per month per year of service by the start of the third year. Despite this, union members voted to strike. Just before the work stoppage began, however, the company offered per hour wage increases of 4 percent for each of the three years of the contract and specified a cap of 10 percent per year on increase on medical insurance co-payments.

An additional fact about the new contract that many workers objected to was that it codified an increased pay differential for certain job categories. A year ago the company voluntarily raised wage rates for mechanics by $2.30 an hour and for tool makers by $1.50 per hour. This was folded into the new contract, but the other job categories did not get an equivalent increase.

Machinists at the Eaton factory have differing opinions on what had been accomplished and whether they showed the company that they could put up resistance. A frequent sentiment of those who voted to strike was voiced by Dan Zimmerman, a grinder operator with 27 years of experience at the company. "We didn't accomplish anything. By this I mean that if we had continued to strike a week or two we could have got substantially more. Then we would have really sent a message to the company."

Florida sugar strike stops some concessions
CLEWISTON, Florida - Members of International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 57 voted February 25 to ratify a new three-year contract with U.S. Sugar Corp. and to return to work, ending a week-long strike.

Two-thirds of the 660 workers who voted accepted the union leadership's recommendation to end the work stoppage. The local organizes around 900 sugar workers. The strike occurred during the harvest season with 1.7 million tons of sugar remaining to be harvested and processed.

The sugar workers went out after rejecting the company's demands of continuing a two-tier wage scale first instituted in 1995, cutting pay for travel time for heavy equipment operators, and slashing overtime pay. (See article in March 9 Militant.) U.S. Sugar is the largest producer of raw cane sugar in the United States.

The strikers maintained round-the-clock picket lines at both the Clewiston and Bryant manufacturing facilities. Two days before the settlement the company started to bring scabs into the plants. When picketers verbally took issue with this, company security guards backed by Lee County sheriff's deputies began harassing the union members.

According to press reports, the union was able to keep the provision of 16 hours per week of guaranteed overtime for the 90 mechanics, as well as payment for travel time for heavy equipment operators who drive harvesting machinery from the plants to the cane fields. The union also won improvements in wages and health benefits.

The contract still includes the two-tier wage scale from 1995. Besides allowing the company to pay new-hires up to 27 percent less than full scale, future wage increases are tied to the price of sugar.

The March 9 Militant article on the U.S. Sugar strike stated that "the harvesting is done by nonunion agricultural workers, most of whom are immigrants."

Subsequent visits to the sugar cane region in Florida helped clarify this point. Since the 1995-1996 crop, all of Florida's sugarcane harvesting is done mechanically, with workers operating large combine harvesters and other heavy equipment. Previously, cane cutters from the Caribbean were hired to manually do the job. Agricultural workers are still hired for planting and other tasks.

At U.S. Sugar's Bryant mill in nearby Pahokee, agricultural workers are union, while those employed by the Clewiston mill are not.

California janitors march for right to organize
SAN JOSE, California - "We walked 150 miles from Sacramento to Cupertino to try and talk with Hewlett- Packard," said Ron Rodgers, but "they did not want to deal with it." Rodgers, a janitor in Oakland and steward in Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was part of 10-day "Pilgrimage for Justice" march from Sacramento to demand union recognition for SEIU janitors at Somers Building Maintenance. The marchers went to De Anza College in the San Jose suburb of Cupertino, where the Hewlett-Packard stockholders were holding their annual meeting.

At a February 24 rally celebrating the completion of the march, more than 100 unionists and their supporters, who filled the United Food and Commercial Workers union hall, heard SEIU janitor Hilda Avila explain what happened.

After introducing herself as a Somers janitor who'd marched 150 miles to talk with them, the chairperson "cut her off, saying they had to discuss company business."

She later talked with Lou Pratt, chief executive officer of the company, who told her that he was happy with Somers and that he couldn't do anything in a matter that only concerned Somers and the union.

The workers had gone to Hewlett-Packard, Rodgers told the Militant, because Somers cleans over half of Hewlett- Packard's facilities here and elsewhere in California. Janitors have won an SEIU contract with Somers in San Jose, Rodgers explained, but "they don't have the right to organize in Sacramento. It has been a three-year struggle with Somers."

Workers there have no medical insurance, and pay is as low as $6 per hour.

Among the 32 marchers were Somers workers and other union janitors from Oakland, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. The march scored a victory, Avila said, because Pratt was compelled to talk to the union. Rodgers said that more had been accomplished. The marchers "are all just like one" now, he said. "We're not giving up. We have to stop this thing at Somers."

Tom Fiske, member of IAM Local 1037 in Eden Prairie, Minnesota; Bill Kalman, member of United Transportation Union Local 1138 in Miami; and Jim Altenberg, member of Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Local 1-5 in San Francisco, contributed to this column.  
 
 
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