BY CLIVE TURNBULL
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina - More than 150 workers attended
a solidarity rally for United Steelworkers of America (USWA)
Local 850, on the picket line outside the Continental General
Tire plant, on March 13. The strikers also organized a blood
drive at the rally.
The 1,450 workers have been on strike for six months to protest a union-busting drive by the company. Only 14 union members have crossed the picket line. The company has brought 700 nonunion workers into the plant as strikebreakers.
Members of Union Cities and the Charlotte Labor Council, which represents about 25 local unions in the area, joined members of Local 850 at the rally. Members of United Auto Workers Local 5285 who work at the Freightliner truck plant in Mt. Holly, North Carolina, provided food.
One of the main speakers was USWA Local 850 president Earl Propst, who had just returned from the London Tire Expo, the largest tire show in Europe. Union members from several European countries had joined Propst in distributing handbills at the tire show denouncing Continental's union-busting tactics.
Propst also reported how 125 strikers had crashed a tire industry conference on March 4 at the Hyatt hotel in Hilton Head, South Carolina, as a Continental General boss Chris Dickson was speaking. The strikers spoke and handed out leaflets explaining the stakes in their fight.
Striker Rose Sanders explained later that before leaving, the strikers sang four verses of "Solidarity Forever" as loud as we could. "The police tried to arrest one of us for assault, saying that a glass of water had been spilt on someone. We said, `Arrest all of us or none of us.' So they let us go."
"They can't squash us and they can't shut us up. They want to bust the union. If they won that, their profits would go through the roof," Sanders added. "This Thursday [March 18] we're organizing a march and rally in downtown Charlotte."
The strike is the biggest in Charlotte's history. The Charlotte Observer noted March 5 that a victory for the company would be "an important symbol," following the move of the Continental General headquarters from Akron, Ohio, in 1994 to Charlotte, "minutes from the border of the two states with the nation's lowest rates of unionization."
"While 14.1 percent of private sector workers are union members," only 3.7 percent of S.C. [South Carolina] workers and 3.8 percent of N.C. [North Carolina] workers are unionized, according to 1997 figures compiled by the Bureau of National Affairs."
The March 13 rally included a blood drive, which Sanders said was initiated from picket line discussion among strikers trying to widen publicity and support for the strike.
Three members of the Catfish Workers of America from Belzoni, Mississippi, and one supporter, drove more than eight hours to join the rally. The catfish workers were fired from Freshwater Farms Catfish in November 1998 after protesting inhumane working conditions. They are planning an April 9 rally followed by the annual African-American Heritage Buffalo Fish Festival on April 10, both in Belzoni.
Olympia Newton and Jill Fein contributed to this article.