Solidarity works
Workers win outstanding contracts
and
a national neutrality agreement at Johnson Controls
For years, workers at Johnson Controls Inc. plants and other automotive suppliers have struggled against the trend of ferocious employer hostility to union representation. Despite setbacks and defeats—at a JCI plant here, an Eagle-Picher plant there—workers have courageously stood up again and again, exercising their right to organize. The spirit of UAW solidarity has never broken.
Without that, the dramatic, 180-degree shift in the anti-union approach of the top executives at JCI that emerged June 14 could never have happened. Building on the foundation set by JCI workers struggling to organize many plants around the United States and especially those JCI workers at four plants who were willing to strike for what they believed in and deserved, the UAW was mobilized and prepared to fully and completely support them.
From President Ron Gettelfinger and his team of newly elected officers, to the directors of Regions 5 and 2B where the striking plants were located, to all the regional directors with JCI campaigns in their areas, to the rank-and-file members of customer plants and nearby UAW locals, to the JCI executives who were farsighted enough to take a new look at the whole JCI relationship with the UAW came the ingredients for a shift that will reverberate throughout the automotive supplier industry in the months and years ahead.
The specifics are impressive. In the span of a few days, JCI plants in Oklahoma City, Okla., Earth City, Mo., and Shreveport, La., got contracts that improved wages, benefits and working conditions so much that each work force ratified them without a single no vote. A fourth plant in Northwood, Ohio, went on strike for and won recognition and a fast track to collective bargaining.
In another historic breakthrough, JCI agreed to a national neutrality and card-check agreement that will cover 25 more U.S. plants with more than 8,000 workers.
Dave Williams, a member of the UAW bargaining committee at the JCI seating plant in Oklahoma City, didn’t know what to expect when the decision to strike was made.
“All of us have never been on strike before,” said Williams. “Ninety-seven percent of us have never been in a union.”
Now they are.
The June 12 unfair labor practices strike, involving four of the parts supplier’s plants, also idled two General Motors and three DaimlerChrysler plants before ending June 14. The successful action was significant both as a strong statement from the newly elected UAW board and as a major inroad into the union-resistant parts industry.
And now Williams and his JCI co-workers know what to expect when they need help from fellow UAW members.
“The support from the community, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Williams. “GM employees who are UAW, they helped us. They brought food, money, everything we needed. I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of people than the UAW.”
Overwhelmed in Ohio
More than 1,000 miles away in Northwood—just outside
Toledo—Troy Redhawk was also impressed with what he
saw when he picked up a picket sign at 4 a.m. June 12.
“I was overwhelmed, I really was,” he said. “So many retirees were there, so many guys from other plants. People came from Napoleon, Ohio; Defiance, Ohio; people came down from Detroit. It was an outpouring of love and compassion and support from these guys.”
UAW members also rallied around JCI strikers in Shreveport and Earth City, joining in a job action to convince JCI to respect the basic rights of American workers to organize and to bargain collectively.
“It was,” said Gettelfinger, “a solidarity movement within our organization.”
With thousands of UAW members in four states mobilized in support of 700 strikers, this solidarity movement produced a landmark settlement just 48 hours after the strike started. At the three organized plants, it includes a $1,500 signing bonus, wage increases of $3 per hour and higher, company-paid health care and a substantial pension. There’s an agreement for union recognition and immediate bargaining at the Northwood plant.
In addition, the UAW and JCI negotiated a precedent-setting neutrality and card-check recognition agreement at 26 JCI plants that are presently nonunion.
A new day at JCI
There are approximately 8,000 workers at those 26 plants,
many of whom have tried for years to exercise their right
to organize. In the past, JCI blocked those workers from
organizing, but the company promises to take a new approach.
“We truly believe we have a lot more than a good contract as a result of this struggle,” Gettelfinger said during a news conference at Solidarity House on June 14 to announce the JCI settlement. “We have the basis for a new relationship.”
Gettelfinger noted that JCI CEO Jim Keyes and company President John Barth “were personally involved in getting this settlement.”
“Their involvement made a huge difference,” he said. “We very much look forward to working with them.”
UAW Vice President Bob King, who directs the union’s National Organizing Department and its Independents, Parts and Suppliers (IPS) Department, also stressed the importance of a new relationship between the UAW and JCI.
“Bargaining success is determined by whether the relationship is better at the end of bargaining than at the beginning,” he told reporters. “Under that definition, this was a tremendous success. I think we have laid the foundation for a very strong partnership with JCI.”
Solidarity—a strategy, not a slogan
The rapid settlement at JCI, Gettelfinger said, was a total
team effort by the UAW. UAW Vice Presidents Richard Shoemaker
and Nate Gooden helped mobilize support from UAW members
at General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, especially those who
work at the plants supplied by the struck JCI facilities.
Also critical to this victory, these UAW vice presidents
convinced GM and DaimlerChrysler to intervene in a most positive
way to convince top JCI management of the value of a positive
relationship with the UAW. UAW Region 5 Director Jim Wells
and Region 2B Director Lloyd Mahaffey were leading this struggle
“on the front lines” in their respective regions.
Newly elected Region 1A Director Jimmy Settles played a key role in providing support to workers in Ohio, Gettelfinger said.
The UAW strategy at JCI involved close communication with members at the customer plants, describing the problems JCI workers were having with JCI management. When the strike took place, UAW members at GM and DaimlerChrysler knew exactly what was at stake and were prepared to offer strong support.
Too much pressure
The coordinated strike was carefully designed to put maximum
economic pressure on JCI. Because auto plants operate on
a “just-in-time” basis, with little or no inventory
on hand, auto assembly plants supplied by JCI started running
out of seats and dashboard equipment just hours after the
strike started. By the end of the day, five major factories
were shut, idling thousands of workers and stopping production
of fast-selling GM trucks and DaimlerChrysler minivans and
SUVs.
By the end of the second day, a settlement was close at hand, and the strike was settled early the following morning.
In addition to the neutrality and card-check agreement at 26 nonunion plants, the company agreed to binding arbitration for first contract negotiations at any of those plants where workers decide to organize. As a result, workers will be able to sign contracts within six to eight months after gaining UAW membership—a welcome relief from the “bargain till hell freezes over” tactic of many companies.
“I couldn’t ask for a better package,”
said David Williams. “The best thing is the pay raise.
And the second thing is that signing bonus. I’ve never
seen anything like that.”
