The Kohler Strike
Stern, James L.
The Kohler Strike Reviewed by James L. Stern AMERICAN labor relations history is replete with sordid affairs in which collective bargaining disagreements between employers and employes...
...The union expressed a willingness to compromise, but the company held to its position and in effect asked for "unconditional surrender...
...The book also provides excellent background for the scholar who wishes to probe more deeply into some of the questions raised...
...The U A W, in turn, condemned Kohler as an anti-labor firm which would not accept Twentieth Century collective bargaining practices...
...Experience under this one-year agreement confirmed what both sides already suspected-that their concepts of the proper role of the union in the shop differed substantially...
...Settlement efforts finally started to bear fruit six years after the strike, when in 1960 the National Labor Your help goes where hunger is --Give to CARE, New York 10016 Relations Board ruled that the com pany had been guilty of unfair labor practices...
...The leaders of the independent union (the Kohler Workers Association, KWA) led the affiliation movement with the UAW in 1952 when they were deadlocked with the company about the terms of a new agreement...
...Waiter Uphoff's book provides a detailed chronology of three decades of labor relations conflict at Kohler...
...In 1962, a new contract was negotiated, and in 1965, when it became clear to the company that it had lost its judicial battle to overturn the NLRB decision, the company and the ulllon reached a strike settlement agreement...
...Although Uphoff does not raise the issue, the reader may wonder if this last battle ended the war...
...Most of Kohler on Strike is devoted to a description of the events during the long evolution from a paternalistic open shop situation to comDecember, 1966 pany unionism to industrial unionism...
...Yet the backbone of our industrial strength in this country lies in its diversification...
...Despite the continued efforts of state and Federal labor mediators, clergymen, public officials, and others, no grounds for settlement of the strike could be found in the coming months and years...
...Kohler and the VAW negotiated a one-year agreement which was accepted by the workers on the recommendations of top U A W officials, who counseled accc!Jtancc despite acknowledgemcnt that the contract offered "far less than they were entitled to...
...Tension in the community continued at a high level...
...Uphoff points out that the underlying cause of the conflict was the unwillingness of the Kohler Company to accept the spirit of the National Labor Relations Act and the philosophy of labor relations that swept through many of the durable goods industries in the 1930s and subsequently...
...In the following years the dispute achieved national prominence as both sides argued the merits of their case in the press, courts, and in any other forum that would provide a hearing...
...The general reader will find Kohler on Strike to be an interesting account of the lengthy dispute, although he may prefer to be spared some of the details...
...Kohler identified itself as the bastion of free enterprise staving off the debilitating effects of compulsory unionism...
...The struggle of the Kohler Company of Wisconsin and the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers Union, UAW, is pne of the most widely publicized modern battles featuring both the more primitive and unfortunate aspects of labor relations as well as the lengthy, intricate legal battles in which wellfinanced and determined adversaries may engage under our present labor laws...
...The author clearly demonstrates his famil iarity with the lengthy strikes in 1934 and in 1954...
...A strike began in April, 1954 after negotiations for a second agreement broke down...
...Pitted against a strong-willed management, which controlled the town in which the plant was located and was quite influential in the surrounding community and the state, was the nationally powerful one million-member auto workers' union, the UAW...
...What's so wrong about having a different concept of labor relations...
...A Kohler Company official is quoted as saying, "We've been told time and time again that we should not only have a union contract as our competitors do, but we must have one exactly like theirs...
...It is clear from Uphoff's account that, even at the outset of the strike, the contestants saw this as an all-out war in which either Kohler would run the UAW out of the shop, or the union would extract from Kohler the contractual rights that it regarded as the due of any self-respecting union...
...The Kohler Strike Reviewed by James L. Stern AMERICAN labor relations history is replete with sordid affairs in which collective bargaining disagreements between employers and employes resulted in conflict, unlawful conduct, and violence including beatings, vandalism, and even death...
...The mass picket line was abandoned in accordance with an order of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, and the company reopened the plant...
...However, the personalities who directed the struggle are still active in their organizations, and although they state that bygones are bygones, they have not yet reached agreement about the crucial symbol of union acceptance, the union shop...
...Relations between the union and the company are depicted as much better, and the wounds of the battle in the plant and in the community are being healed with time...
...The union launched a boycott of Kohler products, and the company recruited a labor force including both new and former employes...
...A company spokesman stated before the strike that it intended to continue to operate the plant despite the strike, and the union in turn mounted a mass picket line for the first fifty-four days of the strike that prevented the company from doing so...
...Acts of vandalism were given wide publicity, and blame for them was attributed to the strikers, although, as Uphoff documents in detail, most of the vandals were not apprehended...
Vol. 30 • December 1966 • No. 12
