BY JIM ALTENBERG AND JOHN BENSON
LAS VEGAS, Nevada - Several hundred delegates to special
conventions of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union
(OCAW) and the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU),
held here January 4, voted overwhelmingly to merge the two
unions into a single organization. The new union, the Paper,
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International
Union (PACE), includes some 320,000 workers in the pulp and
paper, oil, chemical, nuclear, pharmaceutical, corn-processing,
auto parts, and appliance manufacturing industries.
The first convention of PACE took place at a joint meeting the following day. Boyd Young, the new union's president, stated that the merger was needed because, "Corporate America has merged and gone global over the last 20 years." Young, formerly the president of the UPIU, predicted that there would soon be only six or eight paper companies left. He attributed job losses in industry to the North American Free Trade Agreement and environmental regulations.
Young said merging like the bosses do would increase the union's size and "allow us to compete, to hold our own organization in the face of larger, more powerful unions" seeking to absorb the smaller ones. Top PACE officials promised that unlike in job slashing corporate mergers no former UPIU or OCAW staff person would lose his or her post. Young also expressed the hope that the merger would give the union more leverage within the Democratic Party.
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney also addressed the PACE gathering. The AFL-CIO has chartered 27 such mergers in the past five years, he said, and more will be put together. Sweeney urged the delegates to deepen their commitment to the Democrats, especially defending President William Clinton against the impeachment charges he faces, and proudly recounted his participation in the gala inaugural celebrations for Democratic California governor- elect, Gray Davis.
Mergers like that of the OCAW and UPIU are aimed at pooling declining dues dollars in hopes of maintaining union staffs and reversing the declining influence of union officials on capitalist politicians, particularly in the Democratic Party. This ties workers to the very capitalist system that is the driving force behind union busting, lockouts, and worsening safety conditions that are becoming more and more commonplace today. And it ties workers to the U.S. government's increasingly aggressive wars to defend big-business interests around the world.
There was little discussion at either convention about the real problems facing workers in the oil, chemical, and paper industries. At the PACE gathering, however, following the speeches by Young and Sweeney, two delegates spoke who described struggles to defend themselves against the kind of assault many workers confront today.
Fights facing oil and paper workers
Robert Weygandt, president of the former UPIU Local 7815,
told participants that workers at Seagrave Fire Apparatus, in
Clintonville, Wisconsin, had been on strike since Oct. 9, 1998.
They had rejected Seagrave's take-back contract proposals twice.
"We have lost a lot of jobs," Weygandt said, "but we did what
was right and just. Any of you could be next. We are going to
try and get back and preserve the union."
Alvin Freeman, a convention delegate from the former OCAW Local 4-227 who is locked out at Crown Central Petroleum in Pasadena, Texas, described how workers there refused to agree to a union-busting contract three years ago. The company called in the FBI in hopes of bolstering false charges of sabotage leveled against the Crown workers. "In these United States, we've been put on [Attorney General Janet] Reno's list just because we are trying to organize. They are trying to jail someone because we said `No. We won't take this.' "
Freeman urged PACE members to boycott Crown products, and to reach out to unions, churches, and neighborhoods to press for support. He called upon UPIU members to join the fight and announced upcoming support actions. Convention participants took up a collection for the two embattled locals.
Building industrial unions
The merger will do little to bring union power to bear on the
struggles at Crown Petroleum and at Seagrave Fire Apparatus. In
fact, the PACE merger is a step backward from the powerful
industrial unions workers built in battle in the 1930s. These
unions fought to organize workers in a given industry into one
union.
Striking auto workers or steelworkers organized in this way could shut down production industrywide, bringing enormous pressure to bear against their bosses to meet workers' demands. Through coordinated actions of industrial unions - organizing drives, strikes, and street protests that reinforce one another - a powerful social movement of the working class can be built that has the capacity to face the capitalist offensive against labor today.
The PACE merger amalgamates workers in widely different industries in one organization, effectively diluting the centralized striking power of industrial union components of PACE.
The challenge remains for oil workers and paper workers to organize everyone working in those industries. As oil workers, these correspondents know firsthand that a huge number of workers in the oil fields and refineries are not organized in unions. It is a common practice in unionized refineries for the bosses to contract out large portions of maintenance work to nonunion outfits at lower pay and benefits. These workers are in a weaker position to enforce safe work practices. At some refineries, some full-time workers belong to the former OCAW, while others are members of the building trades craft unions. These divisions undermine our strength and weaken workers' ability to shut down production.
Through their actions, workers at Seagrave and Crown point toward a different strategy for the trade unions. These workers are seeking to use union power, on the picket line and in the street, to defend themselves against company takebacks. Their struggles point away from the dead end of chasing after capitalist politicians and bosses. Their determination, like that demonstrated by farmers fighting racist discrimination by the U.S. government and the United Mine Workers in their recent 98-day strike against Freeman United Coal, shows that working people today are willing to stand and fight.
Another key element in strengthening the labor movement is the capacity of unions to unite workers by championing the interests of the most oppressed workers in society.
While little or no opposition to the merger was voiced at the union conventions, where delegates were mostly union officials, there was some concern expressed about the composition of the top bodies of the new union. There were a number of Blacks and a small number of women among the convention delegations, yet of the 19 International officers of PACE who sat upon the dais at the PACE convention, only one was Black. There were no women. And the sole Black official, former OCAW vice president Calvin Moore, is about to retire.
This was not lost on Alvin Freeman from former OCAW Local 4- 227. When Freeman, who is Black, spoke from the floor on the Crown struggle, he referred to earlier comments by PACE president Young on his own career as a UPIU official. Young had noted that it was an extraordinary thing that a "small boy from east Texas could grow up to be president of this great union."
Freeman responded, "If you think it's difficult for a small boy from east Texas to grow up to be president of this union," he said, "you should try to be a small Black boy from east Texas speaking to this crowd." Pointing to the officers on the platform, he went on, "We'll deal with that panel in years to come."
A serious effort by oil and paper workers to confront the bosses over the increasingly long hours, job combinations, speedup, and layoffs will take a battle out of which many new fighters will be recruited into the ranks of the union. This is how organizing drives will open up. What's more, such a fight can inspire other sections of the trade unions and layers of the working class.
The merger is now a fact. Despite the step away from industrial unionism it represents, oil workers, paperworkers, auto parts workers, and all others in the union should welcome the chance to learn from and fight together with their new brothers and sisters in PACE.
Jim Altenberg is a member of PACE Local 5 in Martinez, California. John Benson is a member of PACE Local 675 in El Segundo, California.