BY RICH STUART AND RONALD MARTIN
NASHVILLE, Tennessee - Peterbilt Motors has raised the
stakes in a hard fought battle being waged by 1,200 members of
United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 1832 against the big truck
maker. Workers struck the Peterbilt truck plant near here May
3.
According to UAW Local 1832 president Richard Burnett, four months into the strike on September 10, the union offered in a "letter of unconditional return" to go back to work without a contract and continue negotiations for a new contract. The company refused. The union then declared the strike a lockout.
The company responded by hiring some 700 strikebreakers through a scab-herding outfit called Strom Engineering. Burnett said, "I can't see spending hundreds of millions of dollars to save the $6 million it would take to resolve the strike. It's a union-busting tactic."
On the picket line workers' morale is high and they are eager to tell their story. Motorists passing by constantly honk and wave in support of the locked-out workers.
Since the beginning of the strike, only 15 of the 1,200 strikers have crossed the union's picket line. The pickets said they have noticed a big turnover among the strikebreakers. The company claims to be producing 30 trucks a day compared to 54 before the strike.
Pickets reported that many of the replacement workers are Black. Peterbilt "will use any technique they can use against us," said Dan MacDaniel, a picket captain who is Black.
"They never thought we'd stick together," MacDaniel explained. "Paul Piggott inherited all this and never had to work a day in his life." He was referring to a member of the Piggott family of Washington state, which owns PACCAR, Inc., the parent company of Peterbilt. PACCAR, the second-largest heavy truck manufacturer in the world, also owns Kenworth Trucks.
Picket captain Donald Todd, a 25-year veteran of Peterbilt, told the Militant, "It's real important to win this. This is the first time they've ever brought in replacement workers. They just intend to break the union and we're determined not to let that happen."
Aaron Aycock and MacDaniel, each with 28 years at Peterbilt, emphasized that the main issues in the strike were improvements in retirement benefits and pensions. Aycock said, "You're working 12- and 16-hour days, helping them out when they need you, then when it comes your turn they don't even recognize you. They want to treat you like a dog. That's exactly the way I feel about it." MacDaniel agreed, saying, "You've been here almost 30 years breathing diesel smoke and they don't want to give you anything for retirement."
Todd explained that the unity of the different generations of strikers has been a strong point in the battle against Peterbilt. "They hired a lot of young workers about three years ago. The whole intention was to divide young against old.... That's got the company puzzled how these young people have stuck together."
One of the younger workers, Scott Hartup, 28, hired on at Peterbilt three and a half years ago. "This is my first union job. My supervisor stopped at the picket line at the beginning of the strike and talked to me about crossing the line and coming in to work. I told him `kiss my - !' They counted on it being all of us young people not caring about issues like pensions. But I'm looking out for my future."
James Brackin, also with just three years at the plant added, "I'm pro-union all the way. There's no way I'm going back `til its all settled."
Strikers from the Nashville Peterbilt plant have leafleted Peterbilt's only other plant, a nonunion factory in Denton, Texas. Local president Burnett said the workers at the Denton plant gave the Nashville workers a warm reception. Todd added, "If they would organize a union in the Denton plant that would help us tremendously."
Burnett said a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision finding Peterbilt guilty of bad faith bargaining has cheered the locked-out workers. The NLRB has scheduled a hearing before an administrative law judge for Jan. 25, 1999, where the company could be held liable for back pay to locked- out workers from the first day of the lockout September 10.
Burnett told of "tremendous support from other unions around the country - the steelworkers, the machinists, the auto workers and others." Burnett said that Teamsters union members have handbilled truckers at truck stops. Peterbilt strikers have fanned out from Nashville to St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, going to truck shows and Peterbilt dealers handbilling truck drivers.
Shelley Reed, a worker at the big General Motors Saturn auto assembly plant in nearby Spring Hill, Tennessee, reported that a number of workplace collections have been taken there to raise funds for the Peterbilt UAW workers. UAW Local 1155 in Birmingham is among the other unions in the area that have sent aid to the strike.
Support to the Peterbilt workers' cause can be sent to UAW Local 1832; Community Service Committee, P.O. Box 243, Madison, TN 37116. Phone: (615) 868-6617.
Reflecting the attitude of many of the truck workers, Danny Tuttle said, "I'm a union man, will be one until I die. Unions are working people's only protection against greedy companies such as Peterbilt. It's such a good thing when union brothers and sisters join and help each other in their fights."
Rich Stuart is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 12014 in Birmingham, Alabama. Ronald Martin is a member of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 108 in Birmingham. George Williams contributed to this article.