Locked Out! Battling BASF

Three hundred and seventy members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) at the BASF chemical plant in Geismar, Louisiana, have been banished from their jobs for four years in what has become the longest union lockout in U.S. history.

A 53-minute documentary, entitled "Locked Out!," follows the union dispute from its inception in July 1983 to the present. It also probes the background of the German-based BASF and reveals a track record highlighted by ties to Nazi Germany, a string of chemical spills and union-busting. The film drives its point home with an ominous backdrop of smokestacks and mile upon mile of industrial landscape.

Relations had been shaky between BASF and OCAW members before the company shut the plant gates. In July, 1983, BASF had unilaterally broken its signed agreement to allow union officials to consult with workers on company time. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that BASF had illegally withheld lost-time pay, and, ultimately, the company was ordered to repay the workers.

In February 1984, BASF posted notices in the plant urging workers to disavow the union by signing a petition for its decertification. BASF also distributed "supervisory confidential" memos explaining how to decertify a union, but the company's intentions were no secret. No one signed the petition.

On the first day of negotiations on a contract to replace the one expiring in June 1984, BASF unveiled a 100-page proposal with provisions which would abolish the seniority system, slash benefits and cut wages by up to $3 per hour. The union rejected the proposal, and, two hours before the existing contract expired on June 15, 1984, BASF locked out the 370 union members.

"Since about the 1940s, 1950s, times have changed," says Leslie J. Story, general manager of the Geismar plant. "We need to be more competitive with the world, and in order to do that, both labor and management have to work together to solve this problem. It may involve some jobs lost, but in the long run it will keep Louisiana competitive, keep Ascension Parish competitive, and keep our company here in Louisiana."

While the company pleads competitive pressure as a rationale for its harsh labor policies, internal records indicate that the plant's $66 million in gross earnings between January and October 1985 was more than all of the company's other U.S. chemical facilities combined.

BASF officials have not received the documentary kindly. "This tape completely distorts the company's position and its sincere desire to reach a contract with the OCAW," says BASF official Bill Moran. He insists the Geismar plant has "an excellent employee relations program," notwithstanding the locked out OCAW members. "BASF is not a non-union company," he adds, noting that "during the last few years BASF has successfully negotiated many agreements with several unions."

The documentary traces BASF's repressive policies to its roots in Germany. The company, soon after it was founded at the turn of the century, pined in a loose coalition of chemical companies called I.G. Farben. Farben became prosperous when it began manufacturing poison gas as a weapon in World War I.

Meanwhile, Farben was receiving government subsidies to produce gasoline and coal. World War II, of course, heightened demand for these products, and Farben's executives built a new plant to meet the expanding opportunities. I.G. Auschwitz was born of the cheap labor that the Polish concentration camp next door would provide.

"Our new friendship with the S.S. is proving to be very profitable," wrote Otto Ambrose, founder of the Auschwitz plant. About 30,000 Auschwitz prisoners worked at the plant. It is believed that many of them died on the job. Workers who survived the industrial ordeal were later sent to the prison camp at Berkinau, where they were killed with a poison gas called zycon- B, another Farben product.

Ambrose and other executives were imprisoned for war crimes following the Nuremburg trials in 1946. Ambrose's son, Theodore, became president of BASF in 1971, being replaced by Edwin L. Stenzil in 1979. Both continued the union-busting tradition of BASF, waging a systematic campaign to undermine and destroy unions at BASF plants in the United States. Since then, anti- union campaigns have been launched at BASF plants in Michigan, South Carolina, West Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

Local sentiment in Ascension Parish toward the latest BASF union-busting moves is summed up by Sister Fara Impastato of the Loyola University Institute of Human Relations:

"Doesn't this company understand the quality of its regular workers? ...I feel a kind of horror, really, at the short- sighted destructiveness of this lockout. I don't know when I felt so clearly the presence of something very evil."

But the Louisiana BASF workers have not been isolated in their struggle. In March 1986, the German chemical workers union donated $10,000 to help fight the lockout. And BASF's practice of selling mainframe computers to South Africa drew the notice and condemnation of Rev. Jesse Jackson, anti-apartheid groups and labor leaders.

Of the 2,000 OCAW members working for BASF in 1979, only 210 remain. To replace the locked out workers, BASF has hired temporary workers who, OCAW charges, are insufficiently trained, jeopardizing their own health and safety as well as that of the surrounding community. Billboards calling BASF "Bhopal on the Bayou" can be spotted in Ascension Parish, and there may be some truth in the message; on a daily basis, tons of the chemicals phosgene, chlorine, ethylene oxide, ico-cyanates and hazardous wastes are processed in the Geismar plant. The same substances leaked from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India in December, 1984, killing more than 2,500 people.

"Sometimes the replacements call us and say, 'I'm working with such-and-such-what are my chances,'" says Les Anne Kirkland of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.

BASF's image during the lockout has been tarnished by a number of spills and leaks. Union officials say the plant suffered four minor fires and 12 spills in one month in 1985 and a phosgene leak in 1986 that spewed a chemical cloud over unpopulated parts of Ascension Parish. In June 1986, 16,000 pounds of toxic toluene leaked from a heat exchanger over a two-day period before officials realized the significance of the leak. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined the company $66,700 for this accident, in addition to citing the company for seven violations of federal on-the-job safety rules, three of which were considered serious.

In February 1986, the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice launched an investigation to determine whether BASF was misrepresenting its safety record or failing to disclose alleged safety problems. "[Union members] make a reasonably strong case that there have been a series of accidents at the Geismar plant that deserve a little bit of attention," said Julian Epstein, an aide to subcommittee chairman Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.

The union has also joined environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace in demonstrations against the company. In 1986, the Sierra Club released a report on air quality in the area of the Geismar plant, pinpointing BASF as a major polluter. In 1987, a study by OCAW and the Sierra Club on air quality in Ascension and Iberville Parishes sparked a controversy over miscarriages in neighboring St. Gabriel.

Moran counters that BASF "continues to have a strong safety and environmental record."

At present, 210 OCAW members have had their jobs reinstated, some at their original wage of $14.81 an hour and some at $3.51 an hour less.

For those workers who have returned, the fear of disqualification and replacement is ever-present. Over 100 temporary operators remain on the site, ready to take the place of any OCAW member at a moment's notice. Among the 160 union members still locked out are the union's president, financial secretary, group chairman and 7 of the 10 members of the negotiating committee.

Says negotiating committee member Leslie Vann, "We know we're right. We'll fight them all the way to the cemetery, if that's what it takes."