DECEMBER 1995 · VOLUME 16 · NUMBER 12
E D I T O R I A L
DECEMBER 1995 · VOLUME 16 · NUMBER 12
E D I T O R I A L
A decade and a half after Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers and signaled the business community to begin an unremitting offensive against workers, organized labor has suffered a comparable symbolic defeat.
In early December, striking employees at Caterpillar voted overwhelmingly to reject the company's latest contract offer. But the next day, the United Auto Workers (UAW) national union called off the year-and-a-half strike.
Both the U.S. labor movement and the global business community understood the significance of the Caterpillar strike. Unless unions quickly find a way to revitalize themselves, the UAW surrender will usher in a significantly harsher climate for U.S. labor in the coming century.
The conflict began with a 1991 lockout, which turned into a strike in early 1992. When Caterpillar threatened to permanently replace the strikers, the UAW ignobly suspended the strike and launched an in-plant opposition strategy, with some success. For two years, UAW members remained on the job without a contract, finally striking again in June 1994 to protest unfair labor practices. The National Labor Relations Board has issued more than 150 complaints against Caterpillar. Because the workers were striking against allegedly illegal labor practices, U.S. law barred Caterpillar from permanently replacing them.
Caterpillar was able to continue operating during the second strike with non-union managerial staff, temporary replacements and picket-line crossers. Indeed, the company, which promotes itself as a cutting-edge, future-oriented global corporation, was able to maintain production and earn record profits during the strike. "For this," the Wall Street Journal reports, "Caterpillar is probably respected by other employers about as much as it is reviled by unions."
With the strike officially in "recess," strikers will return to work without a contract and on terms imposed by Caterpillar and rejected by the UAW membership. Those terms include: no wage increase, a two-tiered wage structure and the right for the company to demand work periods longer than eight-hour days with no overtime pay. The contract offer did not include an amnesty offer for the approximately 150 strikers fired for strike-related activity.
The company is ruthlessly imposing a harsh shop floor regime to maintain firm control over its plants. New Caterpillar "standards of conduct" and "temporary special moratoria" sharply restrict what workers can say or wear, forbidding use of the word "scab" or shirts referring to the labor conflict. Caterpillar has 90 security personnel watching over the Decatur plant, where only approximately 900 union employees -- half the plant's total -- have so far been called back to work, according to Larry Solomon. Solomon is president of the UAW local in Decatur and an outspoken opponent of the national union's capitulation to Caterpillar.
There is little doubt that other employers will feel emboldened by Caterpillar's stunning victory -- and the abject failure of the UAW, which was widely regarded as the most powerful and militant of U.S. unions.
The most notable effect of the Caterpillar debacle on labor-management relations will be felt in the upcoming negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three U.S. auto makers. Although new UAW President Steven Yokich has postured as a militant, his rhetoric will fall flat after Caterpillar's steamrolling of the union. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will bargain with a diminished sense of respect for the union's strength, demanding greater concessions.
The UAW and organized labor as a whole did not need another display of weakness; there were alternatives to surrender. Although many UAW members did cross the picket lines and return to work as scabs, the vast majority did not. The strike was not broken in the traditional sense. Top UAW officials decline to comment on why they called off the strike or on whether they plan to resume in-plant resistance.
It was apparent that Caterpillar could weather a traditional walk-the-picket-line strike strategy. But a comprehensive and worldwide corporate campaign could have succeeded in forcing Caterpillar into serious negotiations.
More so than most companies, Caterpillar is a global corporation that is heavily dependent on exports. That export dependence makes the company vulnerable to concerted action around the world. A massive publicity effort and a focused and determined call for a boycott could have seriously affected the company's sales and reputation.
Solomon says he "would have liked to see the [national UAW] set aside its pride and enlist the support of the new AFL-CIO, form a task force to move in and really take Cat on, and go worldwide with it." Solomon is confident that, if the national union leadership had articulated a clearly defined plan, the membership would have stood behind it. The membership's refusal to accept Caterpillar's terms for surrender suggest Solomon is right.
Nothing less than the sort of upsurge in labor militancy, solidarity and creativity for which Solomon and other Caterpillar workers called will prevent the Caterpillar strike from being remembered as the PATCO of the 1990s.