BY FLOYD FOWLER AND JILL FEIN
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina - "We're prepared to stay out
until Christmas," several strikers stated confidently as they
picketed Continental General Tire here. This is Continental's
main plant, which normally produces 33,000 tires for passenger
vehicles daily. The company also operates plants in Mayfield,
Kentucky, and Bryan, Ohio, both unionized, and Mt. Vernon,
Illinois where workers are trying to organize.
Some 1,500 members of USWA Local 850 have been on strike since September 20. Prior to the strike workers in the other plants gathered hundreds of signatures on petitions supporting the North Carolina workers. The main issues are wages and the company's demand for concessions in work rules and benefits. The 1995 contract included a wage freeze, and this time the company's final offer is 35 cents over three years. "I've seen the production rate in Final Finishing where I work go from 3,500 to 4,085 tires in an eight-hour shift, and we used to have five people, now we only have four," said Ralph Bryant. "And now they want to go from five shifts to four, which would cost us 120 more jobs."
"We've met every production goal they've given us," John Chapman added. "We don't get rewarded for our efforts. They told us they were broke, but they made 1.5 billion in sales alone this year. They admitted making a profit, then they gave bonuses to salaried people only."
Two of the more than 100 newly hired probationary workers are the only ones who have crossed the picket line. More than 85 percent of the hourly workforce belongs to the union, despite the so-called right-to-work laws in this state. Workers make on average $16 an hour.
Strikers have set up picket tents with lawn chairs and signs with slogans such as, "Who's the liar? - Continental General Tire." During the time Militant reporters were there, many strikers came to sign up for picket duty. There were 12-15 people there continuously.
"The company doesn't want us to have the right to bid" on jobs, said striker Ivan Gill. "They don't want us to have seniority rights. They don't want to pay overtime after eight hours. They're really trying to wipe out the union. But we're sticking together and staying out." The company and union met with a mediator October 11. "The only thing we're hoping for is that now we'll have a witness when we ask the company to open the books and they refuse us. But we don't think anything is going to be resolved today," he said.
The last strike at Continental General Tire in 1989 lasted four months. In 1995 they took a concession contract with a two- tier wage scale, and no double time on Sundays.
About 30 percent of the strikers are women. "When I first came to the plant 25 years ago you could count the numbers of women on one hand. Now there's no such thing as a man's job in the plant," Pierre Monroe commented.
Ives said, "They're good workers. They work harder than the men do."
Carl Doster, retired after 28 years in the plant, was helping out on the picket line. Asked how many strikes he had been involved in over the years, he told us, "24 strikes, and only four of them were legal. The rest of them were wildcat."
As the strike goes into its fourth week, the company is using management personnel in the plant for production, and claim they are producing between 2,500 and 5,000 tires a day. Strikers scoff at that. Strikers believe some production has been shifted to the Mayfield, Kentucky, plant where everyone has been recalled from a long layoff. Continental has also placed giant ads in the local newspaper for temporary workers at between $16-$18 an hour and has brought in a few scabs from Ohio. Vance Security men in their black jumpsuits videotape the strikers from the plant guard shack, and two police cars wait down the street.
A solidarity rally has been called for November 5. "We've had pilots out here, UPS drivers, CWA [Communications Workers of America], and here's some more," said Gill, as a car loaded with food from United Auto Workers members at the Freightliner truck plant in Mt. Holly, North Carolina, pulled up. "We're staying out until we get ours."