AN EXPERIMENT IN WORKER OWNERSHIP
Sklar, Susan
Across the railroad tracks, down a ways from Russ's Truck Wash and Kleen-Maid Enriched Bread, around the corner from several taverns, the barber shop, and the local massage parlor, stand over a...
...But not all the workers support the union whole-heartedly...
...we're no different...
...But the term "worker ownership" is meaningless when applied to some of these firms...
...First, it was saved before bankruptcy so that complex litigation was bypassed and the still functioning company's resources could be salvaged...
...At Sears Roebuck, the nation's largest retailer, 400,000 workers with voting rights own 20 percent of the firm...
...where workers have at least 51 percent controlling interest in the company...
...Once Lyle Taylor sees Rath on its feet, he wants to build a cooperative grocery chain and also a garage maintenance co-op...
...What is significant about Rath is that in this majorityowned plant workers can vote their shares, and the new corporation is experimenting with the most democratic way of voting those shares: one worker one vote, regardless of how many shares a person has purchased...
...There are examples in other plants of workers uncommitted to 65 economic democracy selling their shares once the company has become successful...
...They want to know if their deferrals are helping or if the company is in so much financial trouble that it's no use plodding on...
...have some form of direct worker stock ownership...
...Plants also might begin to found their own banks or joint banks that will help generate vital capital and aid them in internal growth and development...
...Paradoxically, worker participation in decisionmaking and "Quality of Work Life Improvement Programs" known as QWL, have up until now been located in larger corporations with the most concentrated ownership...
...Support for worker ownership has grown in recent years...
...But Waterloo seems strangely untouched by these educational facilities...
...Displaced farmers have been migrating for years to cities in order to find jobs at one of the state's numerous plants (135 of the nation's top 500 corporations have plants in Iowa...
...It is doubtful that Local 46 officials would ever call a strike that would be essentially against itself...
...Initial response to the plan was overwhelmingly positive...
...Taylor had connections...
...It wears on you," he says...
...Management provided training in such areas as statistical research, but the group mainly studied and discussed problems...
...And even though they deferred most of their pension-fund payments last fall, Taylor figures, they're ahead of where the pros said they would be...
...Chuck Mueller reports, "We've had people come over and say, 'when are you going to start that in our department...
...But regardless of whether or not Rath survives, it is already a model that other firms can refer to in the future...
...While Reagan has issued several letters and statements supporting employee ownership— he feels it would help to distribute wealth more evenly, thereby insuring the future of democracy—the idea has never been mentioned in his economic policies...
...Workers at Rath, confident for so many years, were beginning to wonder if management could handle the new market...
...we just gave some things up...
...He contacted Lyn Feekin of the University of Iowa's Labor Education Center, who contacted Randy Barber of the People's Business Commission in Washington...
...The workers at Rath are buying their company, which is not all that unusual...
...Chuck Mueller agrees that the union may have something to learn about managing a company, now that the tables are turned...
...and since Rath's reputation depends to a good extent on its bacon, it can only help...
...Although some managers have left voluntarily most of them remain, and the new board of directors-11 out of 17 of its members are union appointed—is finding that it's not an easy task to replace the managers...
...So far, the results of the ARTs have been * The Japanese added the idea of worker participation, in the 1950s, to American innovations in quality control management...
...67 limited but dramatic...
...On its West Side you have both neatly laid-out middle-class frame houses and the luxurious homes of wealthy Prospect Avenue...
...He only hopes his health will last...
...I've got ideas...
...They chose for their lawyer Jack Curtis, the man who initially had designed the ESOP legislation for Senator Russell Long...
...The amount of time an ART meets varies...
...A fresh pork process that will seal the meat in a new kind of package, improving its shelf life, was developed last April...
...Across the railroad tracks, down a ways from Russ's Truck Wash and Kleen-Maid Enriched Bread, around the corner from several taverns, the barber shop, and the local massage parlor, stand over a hundred multistoried, antiquated brick-factory buildings...
...I believe in the union—but I believe in responsible union...
...He is Herbert Epstein, a former chairman of the board of the Armada Corporation— a rendering and high-resistance metal conglomerate operating out of Detroit...
...As part of the ESOP, workers were able to choose the trustees of their stock trust, who would then vote their shares as a block according to the workers' directions...
...Taylor says: "The bankers ended up looking like the good guys when the workers are what really turned that thing around...
...Both Lobeck and Smith are anxious to know how their money's actually being spent and what good it's done so far...
...But two years have passed since the plan was started, and many workers are feeling that the returns have been too few and too slow in coming...
...Chris Meek had worked with the Jamestown Labor Management Committee, which had instituted a very active program of cooperative problem-solving through cornmunitywide programs and skills training...
...Chuck Mueller describes the attitude of some of the workers—at least in the beginning— when he says, "Of course we haven't helped matters any...
...In the past, unions have been suspicious of these programs because they have often been instituted under the guise of heightening job satisfaction when the real goal was to increase plant profitability...
...Senator John Culver and former Senator Dick Clark were his friends...
...In some cases, managers actually earn less than workers, though they have more responsibilities...
...Mueller too has ideas about the union's future role: My picture of the union in all of this is to watch out for the individual...
...It was a simple matter for smart lawyers and business people to use ESOP as a neat little scheme for a company to secure cheap capital by first using the workers and then denying them voting rights...
...These two cities constitute what is known as the "Metropolitan Area...
...The real future for these new approaches lies in resolving this contradiction and combining QWL and profitmaking in a way that does not manipulate the workers...
...One such city is Waterloo...
...And worker ownership may be one solution for those who are truly interested in Ronald Reagan's goals of creative entrepreneurship, increased voluntarism, and real "people" democracy...
...By the mid-'60s Rath had incurred heavy financial losses...
...The Administration has tried to destroy the National Consumer Cooperative Bank by cutting its funds and has moved to curtail loan-authority and business-development loans in the Farmers' Home Administration...
...He claims, "You will sell more "Beta Maxes and triple X movies . . . in this town than you will ever sell books...
...and the union is the only thing I see will do it...
...Many of them are beginning to wonder if they'll ever get their money back...
...It took 16 months to develop worker ownership at Rath...
...We were like old Sam Gompers: 'What do you want?' `More.— It is clear to everyone involved in this new experiment that it's time to end the historic antagonism between the two sides...
...But as one worker puts it, "there's still a wall that will have to be scaled because it's been there for so many years...
...interaction is not all that good, although hardly anybody now mentions the race riot of 1968...
...then when it doesn't come, you give up...
...I had always put in the back of my computer that this would never happen to us again...
...Although Lyle Taylor is grateful that part of Rath's strike history is almost forgotten, he believes he got his training from the union's leaders of that period...
...Laura Lobeck, a 48-year-old secretary who's worked at Rath since she was 18, says sometimes the suspense is too much...
...Taylor—a Rath employee for 28 years and the local's president for 12 years— knew the books, and had seen over the years what he judged to be gross mismanagement...
...Although Iowa has ranked highest in education among our states for 25 years, Gregg Cunningham, an environmental consultant who grew up in Waterloo, complains that the city's residents don't read much...
...it was a matter of just a few weeks...
...Although there is a local symphony orchestra and a community playhouse, most of the area's cultural activities spring from the University of Northern Iowa 63 in Cedar Falls...
...In return for the workers' equity capital the union was empowered to name the majority of the members of Rath's board of directors...
...Second, the effort to save Rath was initiated by union members, who provided natural leadership and served as a new kind of collective bargaining unit...
...When profits are up she feels elated...
...She describes it as a spirit of "onward and upward...
...68 In the future, it may be necessary for worker-owned firms to form federations that will share resources...
...Workers in white coats and hardhats slice, sort, and trim, producing daily thousands of pounds of ham, sausage, bacon, and luncheon meat...
...Says Smith: "If the next [union] contract came up and they said, 'we're doing better— we're at least going to give back your three weeks' vacation,' . . . you've got something back for what you've put in...
...They won't buck the corporation for one guy...
...Fourth, and perhaps most important, Cornell University's intervention introduced a means for workers and managers to reorient themselves, through the Joint Steering Committee and the Action Research Teams...
...Taylor made phone calls...
...New people are being hired, which will continue to lower the average age...
...Russ McPhail, a 52-year-old worker from the "kill," sees it that way...
...But both Taylor and Mueller emphasize that even with a new chief executive officer and board, there will still be a place for the union...
...Referring to his many critics, Taylor says: They would like to have their deferrals back, all their stock money back . . . and still have their jobs...
...Between 1969 and 1975, the Fortune-1,000 firms created fewer than 1 percent of all new jobs in the U.S...
...They have temporarily deferred half of their vacation and holiday pay and the first three days of their sick pay...
...Both bodies, like EDA, were becoming increasingly interested in worker ownership...
...Two out of three Iowans still make their living directly or indirectly from farming...
...Originally, ESOP had not been viewed as an option since it had been a way of manipulating workers...
...Opposite the Rath plant's front, on the other side of Sycamore Street, is the square, brick union hall, where Lyle Taylor and Chuck Mueller have their offices...
...As Mueller tells it, "After we got that done, Lyle called the man's home to tell him, 'O.K., you can come in now,' and his son said, 'He passed away two weeks ago.'" But perhaps the most obvious reason why changes have been so slow is that as of December 1981, the workers own only 35 percent of the stock...
...New machinery has been installed and more is on its way...
...66 Taylor doesn't have time to stop all the gossip and occassional downright lies that sometimes filter back to him...
...It originally had also handled beef and sheep slaughtering operations but was forced out of those markets in the '50s, when large conglomerates with better access to quick cash started leading the competition...
...This is the Rath Pork Packing Company of Waterloo, Iowa, the setting of one of the newest experiments in worker democracy...
...business is part of capitalism...
...At that time, a strike of two or three weeks would have sent the company into bankruptcy, and the union would have gotten the blame...
...At the age of 53 Epstein is a veteran of industry but also an enthusiast about the worker ownership experiment at Rath...
...If hog prices doubled, if interest rates suddenly soared, the company would be in big trouble...
...In the sliced bacon department, where one of the first ARTs was started, productivity went up from 65 to 110 percent...
...It is a varied board, consisting of a former president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, a university professor, a black high school principle, former Senator Clark, three workers from various departments at Rath, and several others...
...She adds, "Once they learn these tricks, they run the meetings themselves...
...Taylor and Mueller had this outlandish idea that the workers should take over the company, and they knew that, for a solid basis, they would have to do plenty of research by themselves, with the company bucking them all the way...
...What they can't seem to understand is .. . we were in bankruptcy...
...You feel like you're more a part of it...
...Whyte supplied encouragement and a packet of materials...
...So he's gotta have some protection...
...It also remains to be seen whether or not the union will be competent and flexible enough in its new role...
...It meets monthly to discuss company problems and to assess market trends...
...Interest rates were up, much of the plant's machinery was outdated, and fierce competitive bidding in the industry decreased the availability of hogs, forcing pork prices up and thereby reducing demand...
...We have better concerted action through the union...
...Yet the city is thriving mostly because of the three John Deere plants in the area, which are employing a work force of over 12,000...
...Everybody looks for ways that will save money and utilize time...
...Serious cutbacks in the Economic Development Administration have eliminated the possibility of government loans for large worker buyouts...
...Because, there's always one guy that's got a grievance that everybody else couldn't care less about...
...2) workers' contributions to the trust were not viewed as current taxable income since they were deferred...
...Employees, with the exception of managers (who may purchase stock voluntarily, 70 out of 300 have), are currently purchasing 10 shares of stock a week from their salaries at $2 a share...
...His overriding concern is "doing as much as I can for my people...
...And groups called Action Research Teams (ARTs) have been created to solve problems directly on the shop floor...
...They fear for their jobs and don't take much to the cockiness of those they view as their adversaries...
...The term is better used to describe the approximately 100 firms in the U.S...
...After almost two years of searching, the company has succeeded in locating a new chief executive officer to replace the outgoing one...
...Lyle Taylor says that if there were 20 or 30 more people around who knew all the facts, there would be fewer complaints and rumors...
...When it comes to negotiating," Lyle Taylor is fond of saying, "we're gonna set a mirror on the table...
...If Rath had gone under in 1978, it would have meant the loss of over 2,200 jobs with a local annual payroll of $35 million...
...But the union talked like they didn't realize that the company was going downhill...
...He smiles and says, "We never thought about that before . . . management's role...
...research in worker participation going back as far as the 1940s...
...Of these "majority-owned" firms, only 60 percent pass on voting rights to their workers...
...Taylor and Mueller also want to stay a part of the international union in order to receive its continuing support...
...ESOP was a vehicle created in the early '70s as part of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which defined employee ownership trusts as pension funds eligible to receive two tax breaks: (1) the company's contributions of stock or money to the trust could be deducted from its federal income taxes...
...But there haven't been any mass firings...
...You want to see it so badly...
...He had run twice for Congress, in 1970 and '72...
...It was not seen as something weird or radical...
...Blood streams 61 from throats, from snouts...
...He views Local 46 as an active union that will still play a major role in the new corporation...
...when they're down, she's depressed...
...62 Mueller had been at Rath since 1945, starting in the smoked meats department, then moving to the powerhouse...
...If the workers were going to be making the sacrifices, they ought to be reaping some of the rewards...
...Now seven Action Research Teams are running, but within them there may be as many as 10 mini-teams...
...Inside, in the main section of the plant, in the part referred to as "the kill," workers on the first shift move to the deafening sound of conveyor belts, pulleys, steaming and torching machines...
...Waterloo's sizable downtown area is dying, for there is the stronger draw of the area's two shopping malls...
...But the old family farm is disappearing...
...There has been a change in the basic layout of several departments...
...And you don't knock a thing like that down overnight...
...With today's advances in farming techniques and the use of huge equipment, it now takes an average of 300 acres to provide a living for a family...
...Like many other plants of its size and duration, Rath has had a long history of skirmishes between labor and management, peaking in 1948 when a union man was shot by a scab during a strike...
...Epstein entered his new office last May, and he has been making some of the long needed changes...
...Rath has yet to solve one critical problem with its ESOP that is crucial to the company's long-term survival as a worker-owned operation...
...he had assumed his current full-time union position two years ago...
...He had stood by and watched banks making money off Rath's misfortunes...
...So Taylor began to think: The only thing the union can do to protect its people is threaten to strike...
...Given the standard "ripple effect," that would have meant a possible loss of anywhere from 6,000 to 9,000 jobs in Black Hawk County...
...Norma Orum, an office worker whose husband Manley is a manager, believes that since the plan was instituted there has been a more positive attitude...
...Orum says she no longer hears the complaints she heard when the plan was first introduced...
...But worker ownership is not dependent on the state for its initial development...
...Although the company showed initial profits at the end of fiscal year 1980, it lost money in all four quarters of fiscal '81, which ended in October...
...The size of each group varies from five to ten members...
...With the support of such liberals as Kennedy, McGovern, and Long, and conservatives as Hatch, Hayakawa, and Goldwater, the "Small Business Employee Ownership Act" was signed into law by President Carter on July 3, 1980...
...Iowa State is in nearby Ames and the University of Iowa, the largest and most prestigious in the state, is in Iowa City, a two-hour drive away...
...But the union leaders managed to find a way to get ESOP to work for them...
...Her views are echoed by Mildred Boyenga, chief steward of Local 1278 of the Office Workers' Union (of which there are about 60 members who cooperate with Local 46), who adds: "You look for things that will make your job better—better ways of doing it...
...As Mueller puts it with his characteristic grin, "You don't find too many in top management who are sympathetic to the idea of the monkeys running the zoo...
...So even though people in the plant say . . . "we see no change," we are making progress...
...With the increased demands of the international market for mechanized farming equipment, Deere's business is booming, allowing the company to offer its employees the highest salaries in the area...
...There has been more advertising...
...A serious job creation policy would place a good amount of investment funds in the hands of new smaller businesses...
...A steering committee, consisting of five management and five union representatives, is alternately chaired by Chuck Mueller and John Lambert, vice-president in charge of sales and marketing...
...q The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Joseph Blasi in the preparation of background material for this article...
...In recent years one bank had loaned Rath money to get back on its feet and once it had, they'd sold their stock options for double what they'd paid...
...Although the financial picture isn't the rosiest, the company is in the midst of making important improvements that will better the odds of its survival...
...Then Hammer and Stern met with the union leaders and offered them assistance, including information on various legal options and on lawyers they might turn to for the project...
...By June 1980, when the stockholders and employees had approved the plan, the fund had accumulated $8 million These funds were used as matching money to secure a crucial $4.6 million HUD Urban Development Action Grant loan, which was desperately needed to modernize the Waterloo facilities...
...Whyte, Meek, and Woodworth were influenced by a Japanese structure called the Quality Control Circle,* in which groups of workers, often without supervision, worked together to solve quality and productivity problems...
...This noise blocks out most of the squealing and shrieking of hogs, stunned, one by one, by 1,200 volts of electricity...
...Chuck Mueller agrees with him...
...Future success at Rath will depend to a great extent upon whether workers and managers can learn to work together and take advantage of their combined skills...
...A forum of ideas is better in the union hall than it is at a stockholder's meeting...
...I came in '53, see, so I wasn't far behind...
...I want to get them out.'" IV Rath's success or failure will be largely determined by numbers...
...Rath must design a legal vehicle to put back the shares of the workers who leave the firm or it will die...
...A 1977 report by the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan estimated that more than 1,000 firms in the U.S...
...But] you can't strike a dead horse...
...If we told everything we've been doing in the board room—restructuring and things like that—our competititors would know...
...Sitting in the plant cafeteria over a plate of ham hocks and beans, he explains: From 1948 until 1964 we had financial troubles...
...Waterloo, whose original name was "Prairie Rapids Crossing," exudes a sense of the 1950s...
...First group members choose their priorities, then they pick the solutions they want, based on their needs and definitions...
...When Barber hooked them up with William Foote Whyte of Cornell University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations, sparks started to fly...
...A HUD grant to the city of Waterloo and loaned to the company at 3 percent interest is financing the construction of a new smoke house...
...A personnel director could do it, but I haven't seen many of 'em who will...
...It makes available all of the Small Business Administration's loans and loan-guarantee programs to workers desiring to start a new company or to save a firm that would otherwise close, relocate, or be sold to outside interests...
...By the end of the '70s the company had lost over $20 million...
...We got guys running around saying, to the supervisor, 'you knock it off or we're gonna fire you...
...They wish there would be more communication from the union leaders about the actual state of affairs...
...Results are fed back into the group...
...Both she and her coworker, 49-year-old billing clerk Bonnie Smith, admit that they may be too impatient...
...Beyond Iowa, the election of Ronald Reagan has had a deterring effect on developments in worker ownership...
...He says, "We're working the same way...
...Worker equity in these companies is often less than 20 percent...
...They will not gain the 60 percent necessary for full control until March or April 1982...
...Rath was founded in 1891 by cousins, with an original investment of $25,000 and only 22 employees...
...Most managers are still threatened by the idea of workers taking over...
...But, says Smith, "It's been so many years .. . since things were right...
...Elmer Johnson, a 55year-old worker, likes to think of it this way: Rath is a business...
...Consultants Chris Meek of Cornell and Warner Woodworth of Brigham Young University, working with William Foote Whyte, have introduced a series of innovative structures designed to teach workers and managers basic problem-solving techniques...
...By the 1940s it had grown to be the largest and most modern packinghouse in the world: with over 2 million square feet for plant space and a slaughtering capacity of 12,000 animals per day...
...The carcasses are scalded, dehaired, hung from the ceiling rails on steel hooks, then scraped for excess hair...
...This is most distressing since 60 percent of all new jobs are created in firms of less than 20 people...
...As Mueller puts it: "The resources of the union can still be used...
...But there is a bright spot on the horizon...
...The meetings are usually co-chaired by one member of management and one of the union, who may be appointed or elected, sometimes on a weekly basis...
...Most agencies were wary of worker participation and had internal policies preventing such loans...
...They wanted to get their full wage increases and full benefits...
...But if Earl Murray, one of the unionappointed "worker" board members is accurate in his assessment, things are looking up for Rath: I think we've made a lot of progress that can't be told to the public...
...They put Taylor and Mueller in touch with Joseph Blasi of the Harvard University Project for Kibbutz Studies and with Corey Rosen of the National Center for Employee Ownership, who both were developing worker ownership legislation...
...Iowa is still the hog center of the world...
...In 1978, when the company was about to be sold to a private investor, the workers made a counterproposal that was eventually accepted...
...Third, Rath's plan gave workers voting rights according to the principle that all voters are equal, regardless of their equity...
...In the beginning it may meet weekly but later, when its only function is to report back to the company, it may meet for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time...
...And this spring a number of unions will be sponsoring a conference on worker ownership in Washington...
...Poor people and members of the good-sized black population live on the East or North Side...
...In 1978 a turnaround study published by a consulting firm projected that Rath would lose money for five years in a row and would have to waive pension payments for five years...
...Rath has established a credit union for its employees and is now building a housing co-op for senior citizens and workers...
...she feels that people now are more used to the idea...
...The idea to go worker-owned came from Lyle Taylor, the lumbering five-foot nine, 270-pound president of Local 46 of the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union who represented the company's 1,700 union members...
...The UAW is now negotiating to acquire a GM plant in New Jersey in much the same way as Rath did...
...By far the most typical worker viewpoint of worker ownership at Rath is that it was simply a last resort to save jobs...
...One of the plan's conditions was that the workers receive the immediate power to appoint a majority of the members of the board...
...And although the Small Business Employee Ownership loan guarantee program issued its regulations in late September and is beginning to review applications, only individual loan guarantees for less than $500,000 will be granted...
...A lot of people believe there's two sets of books [and] "Lyle Taylor's getting rich off this deal...
...Now Taylor and Mueller were on their way...
...In 1979 the union leaders had two candidates picked out to come and serve as the company's chief executive officers...
...This will increase the firm's yield of smoked meat...
...Last year it not only led the other states in the production of pork, but of corn and soybeans as well...
...Both the Quality Control Circle and the Jamestown Committee had evolved out of a long history of U.S...
...Blacks and whites keep pretty much to their own sections...
...Waterloo is a city with 91 churches, and there's a good chance that the first person you meet when you move into town will ask you which congregation you belong to...
...The old plant, she feels, had nothing to offer new people...
...If the company wanted to change something and the union didn't want to, they would fight until the company would have to give in...
...With such encouraging statistics, many managers who originally resisted the idea are slowly warming up to it...
...If the consultants do an analysis, that information too is fed back into the group...
...In addition to its seat on the board of directors, the UAW is talking about organizing its 125,000 membershareholders as a voting block and experimenting with some forms of worker participation in management...
...In one instance plain bad luck was the reason for slow change at Rath...
...For the moment, though, things are relatively stable...
...Well, in 1980 Rath made a small profit and it was able to make one pension payment...
...They don't believe that...
...It is ironic that the Republicans may be leading the country toward state ownership by gutting private enterprise and rebuilding the corporate state...
...Pork packing had traditionally been a lowmargin business: hog prices were unregulated and determined hourly by competition...
...He's said that he's had to have a pretty thick skin to weather all the complaints...
...These shifts in the industry were upsetting an already delicate balance...
...According to Kate Squires, a 30-year-old intern from Cornell's Labor Studies Department, the goal of the researchers is "to teach the workers and managers the little tricks of how to deal with conflict...
...She explains that ARTs have a circular structure...
...Bowling is a popular sport...
...I had to find some mechanism . . . that would get me more power than a strike and be safer for the people...
...Though most would agree that without it they would now be jobless, some can't help feel that the union was in part responsible for the original company's demise...
...In the current economy where the incidence of plant closing is drastically increasing, larger firms may look to worker participation...
...But he is pleased with the new company's track record so far...
...This caused the workers to explore other options, and eventually led to their present plan: the Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP, which went into effect January 1, 1980...
...Whyte and his colleagues, Professors Tove Hammer and Bob Stern, had been following experiments in worker ownership for years...
...And Taylor had a sidekick just as devoted to the workers as he: Chief Union Steward Chuck Mueller, a goodnatured, 53-year-old native of Waterloo...
...The topics of discussion are determined by the department and the group's individual personality...
...The first man was killed in a plane accident, and the company didn't want the next man, so the union had to wait until they got a majority of the board members to vote him in...
...Today in Japan, one out of every eight workers is involved in these Quality Control Circles...
...In addition to industry pressures, Rath's huge operation costs had been exacerbated because the plant was only operating at partial capacity...
...Local 46 officials presented a plan for gaining the needed capital to buy shares of stock by workers taking temporary pay and benefit cuts, and then putting that money into an escrow fund...
...The majority of them, though constructed in the 1930s and '40s and meagerly decorated with the sort of Gothic ornaments often found on old school buildings, are still solid...
...This issue and others like it will need to be resolved in the next few years...
...The union sought legal assistance to create a trust, but because of a number of bureaucratic intricacies the plan was refused approval by the Department of Labor...
...Waterloo and neighboring Cedar Falls have a total population of 112,000...
...Although it has been scantily reported by the press, the "Chrysler Loan Guarantee Act," signed into law in 1980, created an ESOP for the Chrysler Corporation that will give 15-20 percent of the voting stock of that company to the members of the UAW...
...If you don't have a healthy company and they go broke, you don't have no union...
...otherwise, as a publicly traded company, it is leaving itself open to unsympathetic individuals who may try to gain controlling interest...
...Then the 200-pound gilts and barrows are "stuck," that is, their throats are slit, by a worker wearing protective earphones...
...And an average employee age of 53 had been forcing unmanageable pension and hospitalization payments to soar...
...From 1976 to 1980, many congressional committees conducted extensive hearings to determine whether the loans and loan-guarantee programs extended to business by government should also be made available to worker-owned firms...
...In return for any assistance the international can provide, Local 46 will maintain the national pattern, matching other industry salaries according to the Master Contract...
...Still, people are hoping it will all work out...
...Now at least new employees can hope for some kind of future...
...When these two learned that Rath was planning to sell the company to an investor who would cut workers' (not manager's) salaries, a sizable part of their benefits, and cancel a chunk of the union's Master Wage Agreement, wheels started spinning in their minds...
...When workers are asked if worker ownership is socialism, the answer is a unanimous and vehement "no...
...It's a little bit," he says, "like having your kid say he hates you and still letting him sit at the table with you...
...Chuck Mueller has visions of a worker-planned and -run day-care center at Rath, and perhaps a HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) instead of the more expensive private insurance...
...A group named the Black Hawk County Economic Development Committee—which consisted of the Black Hawk County board of supervisors, members of the Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, and the Farm Bureau, the Iowa State employment agency, and of the mayors of Waterloo, Cedar Falls, and Hudson—worked with the union leaders to develop a plan to help save Rath...
...As one union board member put it, "When 64 you fire one manager, there's no guarantee that you're gonna find a better one to replace him...
...More new people are hired every month and the average age of Rath employees has dropped to 48...
Vol. 29 • January 1982 • No. 1
