Lockout by Litton
Clark, Jack
housing stock, which makes eviction more unlikely, and also assures a more manageable waiting list.) In the same year, jobless Americans who did receive compensation got only an average of 63...
...Stevens, the giant textile firm which was a target of union efforts in the 1970s...
...Moreover, deinstitutionalization has been carried at a slower, more con- trolled pace...
...SomeCommonweal: 372...
...As for sentiment in the community, Davidson and other union leaders counter that sympathy for the workers runs high...
...In September, the escalation went further...
...Yet, Starrett, like anti-union employers in other parts of the country, is calculating in his anti-uni0nism...
...Even assuming that 150 of the locked-out workers have jobs by now, that comes to less than $23 per member per week...
...In addition, the union runs a job referral service helping members find either part-time and temporary jobs or perma- nent positions...
...The United States has the distinction of being the only industrialized country in the world without such allowances...
...We can decide that the homeless are redundant, non-productive casualties of today's society, and simply write them off or hope against hope that somehow the overburdened churches will fill the gap.We can, if we consider them to be nonproductive, provide supportive services and some sort of guaranteed annual income...
...Then in January 1983, more than four months before the contract expiration, management asked the union to forgo a scheduled wage increase...
...Workers responded by staying in the plant and organizing a march on the personnel office.They chanted in unison, "No cuts, no way...
...The 375 UTD (for Union Twist Drill) workers are repre- sented by Local 276 of the United Electrical, Radio and Ma- chine Workers (UE), a small international union not affiliated with the AFL-CIO...
...All of this, combined with working spouses, welfare for families with children, and tremendous determina- tion has added up to survival for more than eight months...
...Interviewing residents of Athol early this May, The GreenALL RIGH~,EHPL~EES,I K/4OV/ YOU'RE OOT THERE...
...A union leaflet charged that a UTD official had threatened that "we will starve them into submission," a dubious strategy toward a union which knows how to stretch dollars so far...
...The protagonists reflect larger, even international forces, and the labor dynamics have broad ramifications...
...Two weeks later, on September 22, the com- pany violated a long-standing labor relations practice by sus- pending six workers without prior warnings...
...What scares just about everyone in Athol is that Litton will close the plant and move South...
...Starrett Memorial United Methodist Church, where Higgins and Ogle addressed the clergy meeting, is named after his grandfather...
...The union's response was that such a request could be considered in the larger context of a multi-year agreement if the company would open negotiations early...
...now, the company has jumped to a $2-per-hour cut in pay...
...does require a deep counter-cultural commitment, the battle waged in Athol between a small union and a giant conglomer- ate has implications which reach far beyond this semi-rural community...
...Many of those interviewed thought that $7 an hour, the wage UTD employees would make with the cuts, was very good money for the area...
...F OR TEN YEARS prior to 1983, labor relations at UTD itself had been excellent, according to Local 276 President Jack Davidson, president since its founding in 1967...
...sixty-one others, including many that are poor, find this an effective way to help keep families together and off welfare rolls...
...Emergency shelters and breadlines are not the answer to homelessness in the richest and most powerful country in the world...
...Meanwhile, during the demonstration, the local leadership was meeting with company officials in a negotiating session...
...Since September 22, relations have deteriorated...
...The harassment consisted of den3'ing workers the right to leave the plant during the five minutes of wash-up time at the end of each shift...
...The twenty religious leaders gathered in the basement of the Methodist church in Athol, Massachusetts on May 16 were listening to Monsignor George Higgins, arguably America's leading labor priest for more than a generation...
...Or, if we still believe in liberty and justice for all, government, churches, and individuals can make concerted efforts to pre-vent homelessness...
...We do have three major choices...
...According to Reverend Jan Smith Rushton, present pastor at Starrett Memorial, Doug Starrett holds far- right views and denounces unions in the local paper as part of the international Communist conspiracy...
...When negotiations opened in April 1983, the company was asking a wage cut of $1.54...
...Lockout by Litton JACK CLARK BBI~ HE STAND THE CHURCH is called upon to take is I genuinely counter-cultural...
...Davidson has led the union well through this long trial...
...A union fund-raising event in early April received fifty donations from local businesses...
...DROP YOUR W~GES,~ENEFITSd~D LAi~OR CONTRACTS!COMEOUT WITH YOUR ~IANI)5 U P, }tud~ fieldRecorder found some resentment toward the union...
...No regular strike benefits are paid, but the lunches and free food are available with no questions asked...
...Those hor- rified at such threats can help by forwarding contributions, even modest ones, to UE Local 276, 599 Main Street, Athol, Mass...
...Angered and frightened, management issued a warning to union chief steward Breck Balmos that any more chanting would result in a plant shutdown...
...The union expresses its continued willingness to return to work at the conditions prevailing on September 22 while a new contract is negotiated...
...One woman union activist, who asked not to be identified, said that her husband's pay had dropped $1000 when reduced bonuses and contributions to health insurance were considered...
...Family allowances have never been adopted here...
...The company refused, stating it was not pleading inability to pay, but that cutting labor costs represented a strategy to guarantee future competitiveness...
...In the same year, jobless Americans who did receive compensation got only an average of 63 percent of previous earnings...
...Weeks later when bargaining did begin, the UTD management team was accompanied by a representative from Litton headquarters...
...The company engaged in both petty harassment and serious viola- tions of agreed practices...
...But since the lockout, pay at Starrett Tools has also dropped...
...Union leaders found they were being presented with new demands for worker give-backs in salary, paid holidays, and health insurance benefits...
...In July, the company escalated the conflict by unilaterally imposing a pay cut and reductions in paid holidays and contri- butions to health insurance premiums, The union protested but kept working...
...Rooted in the industrial history of the nineteenth century, Athol shares the character of other small towns to its west along the scenic Mohawk Trail rather than the newer, high- tech suburbs to its east...
...According to other union leaders, UTD's Litton parent holds the worst record of labor law violations since J.P...
...WHO STANDS IN SOLIDARITY...
...In April, Litton had announced that 200 of the 375 jobs were being transferred to Gaffney, South Carolina...
...Nestled in hills along Route 2 near the New Hampshire border, Athol by car is less than two hours from Boston...
...But Jack Davidson points out that labor concessions don't necessarily save plants or jobs...
...Yet just as surely as Higgins's challenge to church leaders JACK CLARK is former national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, and a New York-based writer...
...UTD-Litton officials insist that a new contract must be signed before the plant is reopened...
...The union decided to continue working while negotia- tions went on...
...This worries union members as well...
...Because all European countries have ~ some form of national health care, unemployed persons have not had to choose between food, shelter, and medical treat- ment, as thousands have had to do here...
...The company gave us no guarantees on any jobs being maintained for the duration of the contract, even if we took cuts," Davidson says...
...01331...
...in West European countries the average was 85 percent...
...Committees of members are involved in preparing food for a soup kitchen which serves lunch daily to members and their families...
...An organizer from the international union estimates that $160,000 has been spent on strike benefits during this lockout...
...Union officials sus- pect the influence of Starrett officials in a February letter from the local Chamber of Commerce trying to spark a back-to- work movement...
...Buying food and setting up distribution for the weekly food bank occupies a different group of members...
...The union offered to consider all these concessions on the basis of the 15 June 1984:371 company's need, but Litton and UTD must agree to open their books...
...Their terms for a new contract keep getting worse...
...UTD is a subsidiary of Litton Industries (the huge conglomerate based in Beverly Hills, California...
...As Balmos recalls it, Stanley England, the UTD director of industrial relations, looked at his watch and announced, "It is 9:55 a.m., and we consider the union on strike...
...He and Reverend George Ogle of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society had traveled from Washington to urge support for 375 men and women locked out of their jobs at Litton Industry's UTD subsidiary in Athol since September 22...
...The contract deadline of May 23, 1983 came and went without an agree- ment...
...Higgins concurred and emphasized that just as surely as it must speak out on disarma- ment, today the church must stand with working people in their struggles, a stand, he warned in light of the current political climate and anti-union mood, that would prove not only dif- ficult but genuinely counter-cultural...
...Ogle, who had spent twenty years ministering to workers in South Korea and had been expelled for his role in protests there, stressed the interna- tional importance of the Athol struggle...
...The company refused...
...by June, the request had been trimmed to $.49...
...It is no coincidence that in European countries, where real safety nets persist even in hard times, homelessness is a comparatively rare phenomenon...
...Ignoring protests from Davidson, Balmos, and other union leaders that only the union could call a strike and that it had not, management shut off the electricity, called the police to clear the premises, and locked the doors...
...An emergency aid committee considers requests for help from hard-pressed members...
...A number of other workers walked off their jobs to protest...
...Pay at Starrett lags behind pay at UTD, but not by much...
...T HE LARGEST employer in Athol is Starrett Tools, a non- union plant down the street from UTD, owned by Doug Starrett...
Vol. 111 • June 1984 • No. 12
