THEY LED THE WAY BUT ARE NOW LOCKED OUT: WHAT WE OWE UAW LOCAL 9

Submitted by Dan Graff on October 30, 2016 – 11:21am

BY DAN GRAFF, DIRECTOR, HIGGINS LABOR PROGRAM

UPDATE: I wrote the post below in late October 2016. In late February 2017 Honeywell submitted a revised contract proposal to its locked-out union workers, who accepted the offer, ending the nearly ten-month-long lockout. As of March 16, 2017, I have been unable to locate the details of that contract.

When Americans see people with union signs picketing a storefront or rallying at a factory’s front gate, they automatically assume it’s a strike. But the odds are growing that they’re witnessing the exact opposite: a lockout by an employer aiming to pressure its unionized workers by denying them pay and benefits during contract negotiations. This is precisely what’s happening right now in South Bend, Indiana, where the Honeywell Corporation has locked out over 300 members of United Automobile Workers (UAW) Local 9 to force them to accept significant and costly concessions on health care, pension, and personal days. And it’s been happening for nearly six months. Meanwhile, the company continues production by bussing in temporary replacements secured by a Minnesota firm that specializes in staffing during labor conflicts. This lockout is just our latest lesson in, one, the inherent weakness of US labor laws and government agencies to offer basic protections to workers with mortgages to pay and families to feed; two, the growing willingness of corporations to abandon the spirit of sharing and compromise that produced decades of collective bargaining agreements and community well-being in cities across the country; and, three, our collective amnesia when it comes to the link between the labor movement and the widespread prosperity many Americans fear is now slipping away.

The Honeywell factory here makes aircraft brakes and wheels, highly specialized products requiring a skilled workforce, and the unionized workers make a decent living, especially by logging lots of overtime. With a five-year contract expiring in spring 2016, UAW Local 9 proposed to continue working under its terms while the two sides hammered out a new agreement. Rejecting the offer, Honeywell’s executives instead presented the union with a take-it-or-face-the-consequences contract that would quadruple employee health care costs and severely curtail employer contributions to the retirement plan. When the workers voted this down by a nine-to-one margin, the company deployed the nuclear option and locked the workers out on May 9.

Since the lockout began, Honeywell’s bosses have shown very little interest in negotiation. Despite record corporate profits, astronomical executive pay, and what amounts to a guaranteed market for their products, Honeywell has told the hardworking members of the South Bend community that they need to take a pay cut by shouldering significantly more of the costs of benefits. What happened to the social contract that once governed the American economy? There was a time when American corporate leaders took pride in paying their employees well, boasted of providing health care and pensions, and saw themselves as integrally important citizens of the communities where their facilities were located. There was a time when companies asked their workforces to commit to a career of the always hard, sometimes dirty work required to make our economy go, and in exchange promised job security and promotions and secure retirement. And there was a time when it was considered embarrassing for a firm to lock out its workers in the hopes of destroying their legally and democratically chosen union and making those workers beg to get their jobs back on any terms.

That time wasn’t that long ago — in fact, this era of good jobs, decent benefits, and secure livelihoods was the norm for industrial America for the thirty years following World War 2. Over the past several decades, however, corporations have looked to reward only stockholders and executives, not the stakeholders that include workers and communities. And some, like Honeywell, increasingly use the power to lock out workers and keep their plants running rather than negotiate in good faith and compromise on a contract that both sides can live with.  Honeywell may not be breaking the letter of the law (at least as judges have increasingly interpreted the National Labor Relations Act, permitting employers to lock out workers and operate with temporary, but not permanent replacements, as long as they continue to bargain with the union). But it certainly is breaking the law’s spirit, which since its passage in 1935 has been to encourage collective bargaining as a vehicle for industrial peace, worker voice and security, and economic stability and growth.

As the members of UAW Local 9 put their own livelihoods on the line by standing firm and united in defense of their rights, they also stand up for the preservation of good jobs everywhere. And for that they deserve our community’s gratitude and support. But what we owe these workers goes beyond this immediate crisis. As members of the UAW, these workers carry on a union tradition that has given much to this nation. Indeed, if there is one single entity that helped propel American workers into the middle class, even more, that helped make the post-World War II United States the first truly middle-class society in world history, it’s the UAW. In the 1940s and 1950s, this union pioneered in negotiating the contracts that came to define what a good job was — agreements that secured for workers employer-provided health care, pensions, supplemental unemployment benefits, paid vacation and holidays, sick days, and shift change premiums, to name just a few. In fact, before the UAW’s innovations, even most salaried and managerial staff didn’t have job benefits that today’s middle-class Americans like to take for granted. So all of us owe the UAW for that.

Moreover, throughout the twentieth century the UAW was often the most important institution fighting in the nation’s capital for workers’ interests more broadly, not just for UAW members. The UAW’s powerful political organizing and lobbying efforts were central to everything from raises in the minimum wage to the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Just as important, the UAW’s financial and political muscle anchoring what UAW president Walter Reuther called “the coalition of conscience” in the 1960s proved indispensable to the passage of the Civil Rights Act outlawing racial and gender discrimination, as well as anti-poverty programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start. In other words, if you’ve ever had a minimum wage job, used a government health service, benefited from affirmative action, or received safety equipment and training, you owe the UAW for that, too.

Since the UAW has been there for us as a community so many times over these many decades past, isn’t it time that we stood up for their members here in Local 9 fighting to hold onto their jobs, their union representation, and their very dignity? I encourage all people of good will to visit the locked-out workers on the picket line, donate to the workers’ relief fund, and/or contact Honeywell’s executives and encourage them to end this lockout now and negotiate a new contract with the union. What’s at stake here is more than the fate of 300 workers in South Bend. At this point we’re defending the ideal of “the good job” itself.

Note: This is a revised version of remarks originally delivered at a rally in support of the locked-out workers of UAW Local 9 in South Bend, Indiana, on Oct. 5, 2016. It represents the views of the author alone.