BY FRANK FORRESTAL AND CAPPY KIDD
EAST PEORIA, Illinois - "Rejecting the contract sends a clear message to Cat and other companies that we are not defeated," said Tom Smith, a member of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 974. "Now the ball's in Cat's court."

A few hours after the voting, UAW Local 974 president Jim Clingan, who had urged his members to vote for the contract, announced that the agreement had been rejected by 61 percent of the union's membership. He was answered with thunderous cheers, applause, and chants of "We are Union!" from the 100 or so members who had gathered at the East Peoria union hall.

Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest maker of construction equipment, employs some 13,000 UAW workers in four states. Workers there have been without a contract since 1991. Failure to reach an agreement led to two strikes - a 163-day walkout in 1992 and a strike that began in June 1994. Union officials decided to end that strike after 17 months, even though the rank and file soundly rejected the company's offer at the time. Union members were told to go back to work. It has taken more than two years for formal negotiations to resume. The ratification contract vote was one of the most closely watched union votes in years.

Ten days prior to the February 21 - 22 vote, UAW officials voted at a downtown meeting in Chicago to accept the company's contract offer after months of negotiations. Wayne Zimmerman, vice president of Caterpillar, said "This agreement is in the best interest of all our employees."

Richard Shoemaker, vice president of the UAW, said the agreement was better than the one presented to the membership in 1995. "We are pleased with this agreement," said Shoemaker. "We are confident it will be ratified by our members."

But that is not what happened. The East Peoria local, with 7,000 members, rejected the contract by 63 percent. UAW Local 751 in Decatur, Illinois, defeated it by 92 percent, and Local 2096 in Pontiac, Illinois voted it down by 61 percent. The contract was approved by 82 percent in Aurora, Illinois, and by 84 percent in Memphis, Tennessee; with smaller margins at locals in Denver, Colorado; and York, Pennsylvania.

Workers campaign for `no' vote

In the period leading up to the vote, reporters for the big-business press wrote as if the UAW rank and file were defeated, and it was just a matter of taking a vote to end the dispute.

Once word got out about what was contained in the tentative contract, however, rank-and-file workers began to organize others to vote "No." In the Peoria area much of this work was organized by the "blue shirts," also known as the "Tactical Response Team." This group of workers includes several "illegally terminated" unionists.

"No" buttons and flyers against the tentative agreement were distributed at plant gates and inside the plants. These materials were also widely distributed at the Cat plants in Decatur and Pontiac. One of the flyers handed out was a letter by Terry Orndorff, Chairman of UAW Local 786 in York and the only local union president who voted against the agreement. Orndorff said he did "not recommend the proposal to anyone."

The return of only 110 out of the 160 union workers fired during the past six and a half years, the dropping of more than 400 unfair labor practice charges, and amnesty for all line crossers were the key issues that determined the outcome of the vote. These issues were dubbed by Caterpillar and UAW officials, and echoed in the press, as "emotional issues."

But most UAW Cat workers saw it differently. These were fundamental issues of principle involving human solidarity and dignity. They flowed from the head and the heart.

The contract calls for giving jobs back to at least 110 fired workers, with the company reserving the right to arbitrate the cases of up to 50 others. There are an additional 13 workers who filed their own unfair labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

"The main issue is the illegally terminated, not wages or pensions. This has been the issue from the very beginning," said David Schmidgall, a retired UAW member who worked for Caterpillar for 31 years. "We're not going to sell 50 workers down the river."

Schmidgall echoed the widespread sentiment that all of the fired workers should get their jobs back. "It's wrong that the line crossers get amnesty and the illegally terminated don't," he said. "We can't tolerate Cat pitting man against man." An estimated 4,000, crossed the picket lines during the 17-month strike in 1994 - 95.

Solidarity, rights are central issues
UAW Local 751 member Charlie Holt, who works at the Caterpillar plant in Decatur, said he was against the contract because voting for it meant dropping the NLRB cases, which "stem from Caterpillar's attempt to take away our rights inside the plants... Workers were fired or suspended for activities in support of the union. Caterpillar was telling us we couldn't wear buttons or union related T- shirts. They would refuse us union representation on the shop floor, which they are still doing today."

Refusal to grant union representation -after the company forced a worker to work 14 hours - led to a 30-hour walkout last November at Caterpillar's Mossville plant. The labor protest ended when the company backed off and allowed union representation when asked for.

In a phone interview after the vote, Holt confirmed press reports that UAW Local 751 was ready to strike after learning that the tentative contract included dropping all the unfair labor charges.

Other parts of the six-year contract drew fire as well. The contract contained a so-called job security provision that secured jobs by name only. This meant that the more than 4,000 UAW members who will be eligible for retirement over the next few years could be replaced by nonunion workers.

One of the workers who will soon retire is Isom Weems, a member of Local 2096 in Pontiac. "The contract is bad in every respect. The by-name job security would weaken the union to the point of breaking it," said Weems. "They tried to blackmail us with the pension proposal. But we need to look at a contract that the younger generation can live with." The contract would have increased monthly pension benefits, going from $1,800 to $2,300 by 2004. The contract also contained wage increases of 2 - 4 percent depending on the labor grade. The wage and pension provisions were improvements from the 1995 offer. The contract also contained a two-tier wage for new hires, starting at 70 percent, which is now common in most UAW contracts.

Local 974 member Roger Lynch, fired six months ago for alleged comments to a co-worker, said prior to the vote that he wouldn't support the contract, even if an agreement would mean getting his job back. Many other fired workers expressed the same view. Lynch said he would vote against the contract because he doesn't want to pay 30 percent of the cost of his medical bills if he chooses not to be treated at the company's preferred provider.

Caterpillar's attempt to impose new work rules - known as flex time - in the contract was another bone of contention. "Some people are already forced into flex-time schedules," said Kenny Whetstone, a member of UAW Local 974. "They work three twelve-hour shifts, one four-hour day, get two days off and then right back again. So at least one weekend a month, they're working a weekend without overtime pay."

At the beginning of UAW Local 974's ratification meeting union, officials invited the press in to take pictures. The army of photographers and TV camera crews ignited a chorus of boos, setting the stage for what turned out to be a loud and raucous meeting. As the union tops tried to convince union members to vote for the contract, UAW members inside reported that many booed and hissed. Others walked out early, wanting only to cast their vote. Union hats, shirts, and crumpled-up contract summaries were thrown on the stage. A few workers walked into the winter air bare-chested.

Later, on Peoria TV, Clingan said he "couldn't get the message across to his members and that many will regret how they voted."

Weems described the Pontiac ratification meeting in a similar way. "A lot of turmoil," he said.

Refusal to surrender
UAW member Bruce Iden said the fight for a fair contract was simply a war he wasn't ready to yield on just yet. "You can't go and have a war and have the generals surrender after they built up the steam," Iden said. "I'm still a soldier, but we lost our generals."

UAW members in Decatur overwhelmingly rejected the contract. Out of 1,200 eligible voters, 1,006 UAW members voted "No." Decatur, a city of 84,000, became a center of union resistance in 1994 when striking UAW members at Caterpillar were reinforced by a strike by rubber workers at Bridgestone-Firestone and the fight by locked-out workers at A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co. Many rallies and solidarity activities took place involving these unions and others.

UAW 974 members reported that officials from UAW Local 145 in Aurora tried to prevent them from handing out "Vote No" literature at Local 145's February 21 ratification meeting. After some tussle back and forth, they were allowed to stay. Paul Mantzke, president of Local 145 in Aurora, said the contract passed there because "we have always had a good, smart membership that puts its trust in their leaders... We did our job here."

At a press conference the day after the ratification vote rejecting the contract, Caterpillar's chief negotiator, Wayne Zimmerman, said the company is open to resuming negotiations, although he did not say when.

After being in the red in the early 1990s, Caterpillar has had five consecutive years of record profits. A factor in Caterpillar's attempt to get a contract is the six-year pact recently agreed to by its rival, John Deere, and the UAW. Deere was able to win concessions from the union, including a two-tier wage agreement. Some aspects of the rejected Caterpillar contract are patterned on that agreement.

Another major question is Caterpillar's need to replace thousands of retiring workers, many of whom were hired in the 1950s and '60s. Without a contract, Caterpillar cannot hire new workers on the terms the company wants.

The company also wants to get out from under the hundreds of unfair labor practice cases filed against it. "Many of the early rulings have been in favor of the union, signaling a potentially long and costly period of litigation for the company," reported the Wall Street Journal.

Many UAW workers assessed that they came out of this vote stronger. "We sent both Cat and the union leadership a strong message," said J.R. Chance, a 44-year-old welder. "When they offer that much money and people still stay behind the terminated workers, it makes a statement," said Chance, who was fired on Feb. 8, 1995, for hand-billing during the strike.

Upon returning to work the first day after the vote, John Backes, a member of UAW Local 974, said, "It's just another normal day... but everyone is smiling from ear to ear."

Cappy Kidd is a member of the UAW in Chicago. Danny Booher contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home