Unionists are reaching out to the labor movement, building a March 25 noontime rally on the town square here. Steelworkers on strike at Titan Tire in Natchez, Mississippi, are already making plans to attend.

The bosses are going after the steelworkers through the courts and with probes by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents.

Many workers went to trial in Richland County on fabricated charges after workers responded to company attempts to bring in a large number of strikebreakers last September. The charges were dismissed in county court, but the workers face similar charges in Mansfield municipal court.

Also, the company and employees of the strike-breaking outfit Securcorp are suing members of Local 169 and their supporters in connection with a September 10 confrontation--as well as the mayor of Mansfield, the police chief, and a local judge--for failing to better protect the company and their hired thugs during that incident. The company has a suit against Local 169 for alleged "concerted action" for refusing to work the sixth day of the week one day last summer before the lockout. Several ladles of molten steel had to be poured on the ground that day because no workers were available to process it.

In the meantime, the ATF police are questioning union members and their families under the pretext of investigating "strike-related violence." Union activist Ray Delarwelle says two carloads of ATF agents came to his house when he was not home and questioned his 16-year-old son. "They pretty well ignore the First Amendment, and they're destroying the Second Amendment," he said. On February 9, ATF and FBI agents arrested a member of another USWA local on charges of calling AK Steel and threatening to bomb them.

Although many members of the union are now getting other jobs, as their unemployment benefits run out, and the pool of workers available to do outreach work is consequently smaller, the steelworkers continue to get the word out.

Several of them participated in a rally in Dayton, Ohio, February 10 in support of the Teamsters on strike against Overnite. In addition, Delarwelle said, "We've got two guys out today talking to a union in Toronto, Ohio, and tomorrow we're going to speak to a union in Dayton." That evening four of the steelworkers were heading up to Detroit for a fund-raising benefit for people arrested at the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle last December.

Bonnie Rooks, who at 73 is the oldest active member of the local, raised $1,300 for the embattled workers at the USWA women's conference held earlier in the week in Pittsburgh. Rooks started at the mill in 1983, when she was 56.

"I was a brick mason's helper on the brick gang for five years in the mill," she said. "We carried 100 pound bags of mortar. But I'm used to hard work. My dad was a farmer. He and I milked 21 cows every morning and every evening. I baled hay and did everything on the farm," Rooks, who is a small and slender woman, explained. "I was making less than $13 an hour in there," she said, referring to the steel plant. "The scabs are making $20 an hour with a free lunch and free pop. It's a war. If we don't stop it, we're going to lose our unions.

"Other workers in the union hall expressed a similar determination to fight. Ray Delarwelle commented, "I don't regret this. I wish this would have happened when I was young."

Tony Prince is a member of Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees  
 
 
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