BY JOHANNA RYAN
ST. LOUIS - "What you are seeing at McDonnell Douglas is not that unusual," Socialist Workers vice presidential candidate Laura Garza told a group of workers on strike against the aerospace giant here July 28. "From Caterpillar to the Detroit News, we're facing companies that are pushing to take back a whole chunk of the rights and benefits we've had for decades."

Garza's stop in St. Louis began with a visit to International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 837's union hall, a hub of strike activity where union volunteers staff a telephone hotline, run a strike kitchen, and dispatch pickets in yellow school buses to the struck plant's 60-plus gates. A group of strikers then invited Garza and her supporters on board one of the buses for a tour. As the bus passed various plant entrances, trading honks and cheers with squads of pickets on the line, striker Paul Wiley talked about the course of the struggle so far.

"Here's a `construction gate,'" he pointed out. "The company set up these special gates, and the courts made it illegal for us to picket them. There's union contractors going in those gates." Wiley was part of mass picketing on day one of the strike. "They were set up for us that first day," he recalled. "About a hundred cop cars, helicopters, paddywagons all set to take us away."

"There's the Asset Protection Team guards, what we call the Ninjas," said striker Joe Bales. The nickname has been given to the private security cops because of their black karate-style uniforms and general air of intimidation. "These Ninjas are a professional union-busting outfit. They're actually provoking us out on the line, trying to get us to do something illegal. I guess the reason this union is being targeted is simple," Bales reflected. "Slap the biggest kid in the group, and the other kids will fall into line."

"The bosses are watching this fight," Garza agreed. "We need to get a little better at that as workers, being aware of what's happening to our brothers and sisters."

A lively discussion took place on the conditions faced by immigrant workers, and the crackdown on their rights advocated by Republicans and Democrats. Among the replacement workers crossing their picket lines, strikers say, are Mexican workers recruited by the company's California division. "I can't blame any of those people coming over, who can't get enough to feed their family in their country," commented Bales.

Another striker wasn't so sure. "I'm not for amnesty for any of these scabs, whether they're union members, immigrants, or whatever."

"Yeah, but it's the company that's creating the problem," Bales pointed out.

Garza agreed, adding that "one thing we can do is to rally behind our brothers and sisters in Mexico when they stage a strike or any struggle." This approach to workers from other countries was met with considerable interest from the IAM strikers.

"Building a fence is not the answer!" Bales said. "What we need is for the Mexican worker to get the same type of pay and conditions we get."

Back at the union hall, steward Jim Page told Garza about a union conference he'd attended in Germany, where he had met fellow workers from Airbus, the European industry giant. "They told us the bosses are constantly after them to work faster and make do with less, because they've got to compete with those Americans. And I thought, that's exactly what they say to us about you."

The following day the St. Louis Post-Dispatch interviewed Garza about her support for the strike and for upcoming actions in defense of immigrant workers.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home