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RANDOLPH, Ohio - Nearly 400 members of Teamsters Local 24 have been on strike at East Manufacturing Corp. here since January 21. East makes truck trailers.
According to welder Doug Rush, who has worked at East for 21 years, the workers voted against the company's contract proposal 342-3 on January 22. One of the main issues is wages. The company's proposal was for a 40 cent annual wage increase over a five-year contract, with a $1,500 signing bonus. Rush said workers have proposed a four-year contract with a $2.50 raise the first year and a dollar a year for the following three years. Workers now start out at less than $9.00 per hour, rising to $12.75 per hour.
Rush and crane repairman Bill Hammond described the hazardous conditions in the plant, which have led to high turnover. According to officials of Local 24, the company has hired 700 people over the past three years in order to keep the employee base at about 400.
Mandatory overtime is another major complaint. Hammond said, "We've had to work every Saturday for years." Rush added, "We proposed working every other Saturday, plus a cap on overtime "
Rush and Hammond described plant manager Chuck Moore as a "dictator." One of the company's practices is to consider any tardiness to be an absence. If a worker is five minutes late on the day after a holiday, he or she will not be paid for the holiday. Lower seniority workers are regularly forced to stay over, usually two hours, when the bosses can't get enough people to volunteer to stay. Hammond told how Moore gave him a three-day suspension because he had to leave a half hour early three times one week to pick up his eight-year-old daughter from school.
"They said I was absent three times that week, even though I was working 10 hours every day! And they also said the next time I was absent Íd be terminated," Hammond said.
The strikers have received support from other members of Local 24, which is an amalgamated local. Workers from Preston Trucking staffed the picket line January 22 as the East workers were at their contract vote meeting.
While this reporter was at the picket line, a trucker from Consolidated Freightways and his wife drove up with a big tray of lunch meats and cheese. And a worker from Holland Freight stopped by with a friend in a pickup truck full of wood for the fire barrels.
This is the second strike at East since the union was established in 1981. So far the company has not tried to bring in strikebreakers. Given the level of support the workers have received, low unemployment in the area, and the fact that this is East Manufacturing's only plant, Rush and Hammond were optimistic that the union can win this fight.
Vancouver dock workers shut port to back union
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Some 1,000 Longshoremen and
other unionists gathered at Portside Park here February 2,
refusing to go to work and effectively shutting down the port
of Vancouver for eight hours. The action was called to support
the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union
(ILWU) and protest the growing use of nonunion labor at the
port.
T-shirts, placards, and stickers with the slogan "Defend ILWU jurisdiction" were present throughout the rally along with banners of the Vancouver Labour Council, Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), Carpenters, and several other unions.
As a gesture of solidarity with embattled farmers, longshoremen volunteered to load grain cars and perishables. A representative from the grain handlers union Local 133 addressed the rally. Members of the Public Service Alliance who inspect the grain before it is shipped had struck the previous week, tying up grain cars in the port of Vancouver.
Peter Lahay, of the International Transport Workers Federation, also spoke at the event.
"This action today is part of an ongoing fight to defend ILWU jurisdiction on the waterfront, which is coming under increasing attack," said Marion Chorney, secretary-treasurer of Local 518 of the ILWU. Chorney and hundreds of other Longshoremen gathered at the union hall after the rally. "For example, Sultran, set up by the oil companies to handle the transportation of sulfur, decided to hire nonunion labor last year to sample and inspect the sulfur before it is loaded onto ships. Longshoremen, including retirees, picketed the site throughout the summer," Chorney reported. "A number of us were arrested and charged for contempt of court for defying an injunction. Twenty of us pleaded no contest and were fined between $250 and $500 each. The president was fined $1,000 and the union $10,000. The retirees are pleading not guilty. The trial date is set for March 16."
Port authorities failed to have an arbitrator rule the February 2 action illegal. Bob Wilds, president of the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA), told the media he would be sending a bill to the union for losses incurred. The master agreement between the ILWU and the BCMEA expired in December 1998.
Continental Tire strikers solid after five months
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina -Strikers at Continental General
Tire, members of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local
850, are "99.9 percent solid after almost five months on
strike," beamed Larry Little, a striker with 27 years at the
tire plant. Only seven of more than 1,400 union members have
crossed the picket line. Workers here gave concessions in past
contracts and are in no mood to do so again.
The company broke off contract negotiations February 11. The next day a company spokesman told the Charlotte Observer "an agreement is not likely." The company's "last, best and final" offer in late January includes the demand that the 700 scabs currently working will keep their jobs, with strikers placed on a recall list at the end of the strike. Company president Bernd Frangenberg was quoted in the January 21 Charlotte Observer, "It will be a sticky point, but the (permanent replacements) are going to stay."
"The company's intent is to break the union, it has been all along," said striker Larry Gordon, "but the company's `to hell with yoú attitude unites us that much more."
Tire builder Bill Butler said, "The main thing now is the scabs. I think we are close on the economic package, but I'll vote against any four-shift language." The company wants to go from five shifts to four, which would mean fewer jobs, the introduction of rotating shifts, and the unionists working two weekends per month.
Butler added, "The union sent two strikers and their families to Germany to visit unions there to win support for the strike. They planned to spend 10 days there talking to tire workers." In 1988 General Tire was bought by Continental AG, a German tire company.
Many strikers are working other jobs since the strike began, and some are winning support. Charlie Sims, a tire builder for 26 years, is talking about the strike to co- workers at TJ Max, the 1,000-person warehouse organized by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) where he now works. He explained, "I told them about the article in the Charlotte Observer about the strike, and we put union flyers on the bulletin board." Sims added that UNITE members will negotiate for a second union contract later this year, and three weeks ago the immigration cops raided the warehouse taking away 75 co-workers. For more information, call USWA Local 850 at (803) 548-7272 or (704) 333-2060.
Tony Prince, a member of UNITE in Cleveland, Ohio; Paul Kouri in Vancouver; and Dan Fein, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers and Mike Italie, a member of the International Association of Machinists in Atlanta; contributed to this column.