BY CHRIS RAYSON
OLYMPIA, Washington - About 300 locked-out Steelworkers
and their supporters rallied on the steps of the state capitol
here February 11. More than 100 traveled in three buses from
Spokane to attend the rally. They were members of United
Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 329 at Mead Smelter and
Local 338 at the Trentwood Rolling Mill of Kaiser Aluminum.
They joined workers from Kaiser's Tacoma plant.
USWA officials called off a 15-week strike by 3,100 workers against Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. January 14 and offered to return to work under the terms and conditions of the expired contract. Kaiser rejected the offer and locked the unionists out.
Chanting "One day longer," rally participants signaled their determination to stand up to Kaiser's union busting and win a decent contract. Union banners from USWA Local 305 Longview Federated Aluminum Council, International Association of Machinists Lodge 751 from the huge Boeing plants in the Puget Sound, the Washington State AFL-CIO, Iron Workers Local 86, and the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers Local 153 were present.
Scores of students from Evergreen State College in Olympia also attended the rally. Some held a big banner at the front of the rally saying, "Hurwitz cuts jobs like he cuts trees," referring to Charles Hurwitz, who is the CEO of Maxxam, a corporation that controls both Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber. Environmental groups are protesting the cutting of old growth redwood forests in California by Pacific Lumber.
Eva Clark, 18, a student at Evergreen, told the Militant, "A union of labor and environmentalists makes us stronger. When labor starts protesting, change can happen."
Henry Hudon, 37, a furnace operator who works at the new carbon bake plant in the Mead smelter complex, said morale is "pretty high" among locked-out Steelworkers, especially since the workers now qualify to collect state unemployment compensation. Hudon said car caravan rallies are held every Sunday in Spokane, starting from the Mead smelter and finishing at Trentwood.
Following the rally, the Spokane workers stopped at the Tacoma Kaiser picket line, creating a mass picket. When Tacoma police handcuffed and threatened to arrest one USWA member from Spokane who had been nearly hit by a car driven by a scab, pickets began chanting "Let him go!" The cops released him after a half-hour standoff.
Chris Rayson is a member of the United Transportation Union.