12-14-04

Up close and personal

Just eleven days before Christmas, normally the season of joy and giving, the mood in the UAW local 751 hall in Decatur IL was unusually somber, and for good reason. Around the room sat about 50 or more retirees from Caterpillar Tractor Inc, Brothers and Sisters who had helped build Caterpillar and the UAW. Their reward for service this year would be the same as when the last six year contract was signed, a stab in the heart and the two hands on the dagger would be the same; one from Caterpillar and one from the “mighty” UAW. Now that is the true meaning of “teamwork”‚ “quality work circles”, “jointism”; when the union has as much control in betraying their members as the employer does.

The group assembled this morning are strategizing ways to put pressure on negotiators to deliver a fair contract, one that pays retirees health care costs; an issue that has haunted UAW retirees for a decade when the UAW sold out both retirees and future workers in the last contract. Word has come down from Cat’s Peoria headquarters that the UAW Central Bargaining Committee is meeting with the company today and tomorrow, the first in months. Sources say, much to the chagrin of the retirees, that Cal Rapson, chief negotiator [? ], is in the office with Cat officials while elected bargaining representatives on the central committee are confined to waiting in the hall.

That news clearly angers members and a show of hands quickly assembles a group to drive to Peoria in the morning to picket negotiations. The typical UAW bravado is clearly absent from this group of retired warriors who know only too well what UAW national leadership is capable of. Most of the retirees in the group expect the UAW to return quickly with a modified offer and force it to a vote as early as this Sunday hoping the members will accept rather than risk a strike at Christmas.

Sources say Cat returning to the table was the result of a US Senator with influence on military spending pressuring Cat who has just been awarded a military contract. Sources say Cat has tweaked their last best and final offer and they know the UAW wants to end this struggle. We all know what tweaked means; when your sphincter tightens up as you are about to be broadsided by an eighteen-wheeler. Sources say Cat’s version of improvement is to shift part of the cost of health-care from retirees to members still working by extracting concessions on personal days and other contract issues.

Either way it will be the UAW members who pick up the tab. While retirees need relief from increasing costs, they don’t want at the expense of working members. In a full-page ad in the Decatur Herald and Review, Cat admitted to enormous profits and that they could afford to pay for retirees health benefits, then arrogantly stated it was not “good business”.

Fodder For The Outhouse

The retirees are angry with the Herald and Review and rightly so. The Decatur paper has censored any letters about the Cat struggle but continues to run Cat’s full page adds with their spin on the struggle. The response from the UAW has been silence via a UAW gag order. The Herald continues to beat a path to Cat’s door for interviews and any chance to make Cat look good in the public eye. My letters to the editor have been censored on a regular basis whenever they expose corporate greed or corruption. The UAW retirees will picket the Herald and Review this coming Tuesday and I will join them.

The Road to Tragedy

It has been a crooked road to get to where UAW members at Cat are today. A road with many pitfalls and much deceit. In the early nineties, the UAW struck Cat at the same time AE Staley locked out its workers and during the struggles, Firestone locked out the Rubber workers. Decatur became a city under siege by scabs, security forces and of course, the corporate police. The UAW made a voluntary return to work and eventually Cat imposed their best and final offer.

During that struggle, Cat rung up an impressive 450 labor violations, many that involved the illegal termination of more than 150 UAW members. The arrogant CEO, Don Fites, made the claim that in the end Cat will be vindicated of all charges. How can that be when the NLRB had already ruled against them? Cat filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of the shop floor, company paid Representative system that is the heartbeat of the UAW’s “Cooperative Effort”, a system that mirrors company unionism. To lose that suit, the UAW would have been devastated, losing thousands of “stoolie” jobs, and control over their members to some degree.

It is possible the UAW would have been forced to repay hundreds of millions in wages paid by virtually every UAW organized employer. The UAW billion-dollar treasury could have been exhausted nearly overnight. Many insiders believe that dynamic was the biggest factor in the UAW walking, making that running, away from the fight at Caterpillar. It may well be that the “Partnership” with employers the UAW mis-leadership was so proud of, is rock around their neck.

Business Union Betrayal

During the course of struggle that began nearly a decade ago under the feeble leadership of Steve Yokich, the UAW would force the contract to a vote several times. UAW members refused the devastating offer that would leave out the 150+ discharged members in spite of an unprecedented pressure from top UAW officials. In 1995, at the AFL-CIO convention in New York, I was standing with local 751 leaders when Yokich told the Decatur delegation, “I am not going to hold up a contract for thousands of UAW members for a few hundred discharged members”.

When an unusual six-year agreement was finally reached, retirees took it on the chin and so did the next generation of Cat workers. Temporary employees would be hired without representation, few benefits, and little hope of ever becoming full-time. They would of course, be expected to pay dues. A limited fund was set up to help pay the costs of retirees’ health care, breaking Cat’s longstanding promise to cover retirees’ healthcare. The exhausting of that fund was inevitable but Cat was laying the groundwork for this contract.

Determined to shift the costs, Cat is willing to erode retirements to the point of absolute poverty for the men and women who built the company. That fund was depleted this past October and under Cat’s current offer, retirees health care costs soared to well over 300 dollars a month. The UAW knew this was coming and played a role in making it happen. Will Cat now come after the retirement and will the UAW cooperate? As the grinning Cat walks away from the obligations to retirees, it will spread to other industries. There are always “ME TOO” negotiations when concessions are made.

Smelling The Blood

The “Corporate Beast” began smelling the blood years ago, when labor bureaucratized, demobilized, and disenfranchised their memberships. It was the sit-down strikes, mass protests, and plant seizures that built the American Labor Movement. It was the blood of workers shed by company goons corporate police and phony courts. It was not cooperation, jointism, or other company union schemes.

The beast could smell the fear when labor leaders gave up the fight or rather took the right to fight away from the rank and file. Those who pretend to lead it have cleared the path to the destruction of the American labor movement. To fight back could risk their treasuries; the vessels for the enormous comfort corruption they lavish upon themselves. Huge multiple retirements, the best health care plans, expense accounts and other perks normally reserved for the Bastards of the Boardroom. Fight Back? Don’t be absurd! If you combined all the offices of the so-called leaders of the 59 members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, you couldn’t find enough balls to play a round of miniature golf!

Painfully Correct

The Caterpillar struggle is playing out just as we have predicted in previous articles. Either the UAW is following the script or we here at the War Zone Foundation, have grasped their pattern of failure and betrayal to the letter. For nearly a year since the contract expired a gag order by the UAW has kept the public in the dark other than the “selective presentation” by Cat.

There has been no in-plant strategy, in fact, no strategy at all that we know of. The UAW has done nothing to mobilize members or mount any type of counter-assault. Cat is at war with its workers, but the workers’ leaders have left the battlefield. As we predicted, there would be no fight from the UAW. If a strike is called at this point, it will likely used to intimidate the members into acceptance. I wonder how many local leaders will be in line for a job with the International after they sell out their members and retirees? After working with UAW members at Cat for a number of years, it is deeply saddening to see this grave injustice and know this is the tip of the iceberg and a nightmare of what is to follow.

Reflection

As I prepared to leave this meeting I offered the assistance of the War Zone Foundation and it was graciously accepted. Though I am not a UAW member, I was warmly welcomed to share their struggle, to provide strategy, and render assistance. Looking across the room many familiar faces brought remembrance of other struggles. Jerry Grandon, the meeting Chair, Larry Solomon, former local President and others had joined my local in the Staley struggle a decade ago.

In a courageous act of Solidarity, they sat down in front of the huge trucks driving through the gates and ultimately were arrested. They risked their freedom in selfless acts of defiance against corporate greed. How can I not care for these valiant warriors who served on the front lines of my struggle? Men and women who fought and sacrificed for “The Union”. There are many heroes in the UAW membership who came from decades of struggle: how can the UAW bureaucrats betray their finest warriors?

Christmas is rapidly approaching and my family will gather in our home to celebrate the many blessings we have received. It will be a time of joy and a little of madness when my six children, twelve grandchildren and assorted in-laws gather for this special day. A part of me though, will be remembering this day in this union hall, and the many faces of this extended family that are suffering this injustice.

Mike Griffin
WarZone Education Foundation
Decatur IL

2-17-04

It has been learned that Cat and the UAW has reached a tentative agreement that will be voted on Jan 9 05. The agreement was unanimously recommended by the Central Bargaining Committee just as it was in the last contract that was rejected three times. Preliminary reports suggest it is a concession ladened offer that has some members upset. The real question: how many from the Central Committee will be offered a job on the International staff?