BY JOHN SARGE
PLYMOUTH, Michigan - A cheer went up from dozens of pickets in front of the Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) plant here January 28 as buses carrying scabs rolled out of the driveway. Just a few hours earlier, strikers and their supporters had gathered, expecting an attempt by the more than 100 cops present to force open picket lines and allow trucks out of this auto seat manufacturer.

More than 300 workers from the plant, members of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 174, joined by hundreds of other UAW members and striking Detroit newspaper workers, set up picket lines in the early hours of the morning. UAW Region 1A called for the expanded picket lines.

The union set a 6 a.m. strike deadline if negotiations did not produce a contract. But management moved first by ordering the unionists out of the plant around 2:30 a.m. and bringing in replacement workers, a private security force, cots, and trucks equipped with showers. JCI expected to run the plant and ship seats with the help of the cops.

Two hundred other JCI workers, also organized by the UAW, struck the same morning in Oberlin, Ohio. Strikers there report that they were joined on the picket lines by groups of auto workers from two nearby Ford assembly plants and by steelworkers. The Oberlin plant supplies Ford's Lorain Assembly and the Plymouth plant supplies seats to Ford's Michigan Truck Plant (MTP). Workers in both assembly plants are also members of the UAW.

About noon Ford officials moved to head off the confrontation by announcing that they would not accept seats built in the struck plants. The auto maker was trying to avoid problems in its own plants. A common remark heard in MTP was "Why did Ford think we would touch those seats?" Most seats used at MTP had been built at the assembly plant by members of Local 900 until last year when Ford outsourced the work. Outsourcing is a common practice used by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler - the Big Three - to shift work from relatively highly paid assembly workers to lower cost, usually nonunion manufacturers.

Rejecting the struck seats was no small decision for the auto giant. With the Big Three's use of the just-in-time inventory system, assembly plants do not stock pile parts. Within hours of the strike, the auto maker was forced to begin parking all its production of the fast selling Expedition without seats. These trucks are piling up at the rate of 800 a day.

The union announced that the work stoppage was an unfair labor practice strike because Johnson Controls had victimized the workers in the plants for joining a union and refused to negotiate. A Plymouth striker, Keith, reported that just before the company recognized the union last summer, it cut starting wages by 50 cents an hour, cut health care, and ended a 401k savings plan in the plant, and was not even offering to reinstate what had been taken away. In a further insult to the unionists, whose starting rate is $9 an hour, scabs brought into the plant over the weekend to learn jobs started at $10.50 an hour.

On the picket line in Oberlin, striker Roberta Hoops explained, "The company gave us an offer that was worse than current wages." Hoops added, "The jobs we do are hard - they're stressful. Many of us have developed tendonitis and carpal tunnel problems. Our arms go numb and the company nurse just tells us to wrap warm towels around our arms and hold them above our heads a few minutes." Other pickets described how many workers suffer from poor ventilation and burns while they weld.

Bob King, Region 1A director, told pickets that the union wanted JCI to meet wage and benefit levels of its major seat competitor, Lear. Many Lear locations are organized by the UAW and pay between $12 and $14 an hour, less than workers in the Big Three plants but toward the upper end of pay scales at auto parts suppliers.

Bosses try to keep auto parts industry nonunion
JCI is a major and growing auto parts supplier that builds seats and interior components for the industry. It had $10 billion in sales last year. The company supplied 34 percent of the North American seat market in 1995 and is expected to control 40 percent by 1998. JCI is also intent on staying union-free. Over the last two decades the company, like many other employers, has closed and moved unionized factories. Only six of the company's 34 North American plants are unionized, counting the two locations on strike.

Organizing and winning decent contracts for auto parts workers is an enormous challenge facing the UAW, and one the union has not been meeting. As the Big Three outsource ever more and GM, the world's largest auto maker, sells off parts plants, pressure increases on auto assembly workers to take greater concessions. Last year's national contract between auto giants and the UAW allowed the auto bosses to set up new parts factories with a permanent wage lower than in assembly plants.

UAW membership also has been shrinking. In 1987 there were about 1 million members of the union; in 1995 the UAW represented less than 800,000 workers.

The U.S. auto parts industry is growing and has near record high levels of employment, but the UAW represents barely 20 percent of the workers in these factories. Wages and conditions continue to erode. At the end of 1995 inflation adjusted hourly wages were still below the levels in the industry before the recession in the early 1990s and under levels that prevailed in 1970s.

Many employers actively oppose union organizing drives. In September Dana Corp., the largest independent parts supplier in the United States, defeated a UAW organizing drive at an axle-parts plant in Cape Girardau, Missouri. The auto bosses hired consultants to paint union organizers as outsiders. They sent a video to every worker's home during their antiunion drive. Dana pointed out that 24 of the 37 locations that it closed since 1980 were unionized. The parts giant now has dozens of nonunion plants across North America.

At American Axle Manufacturing, the UAW has set a February 14 strike deadline. The company formed when GM sold off its gear and axle manufacturing operation in March 1994, and still supplies the auto giant. Negotiations have been going on since mid-November under a contract that originally expired in September 1996.

John Sarge is a member of UAW Local 900 and works at Ford's MTP. Holly Harkness, member of UAW Local 235 in Detroit; Brad Downs and Kibwe Diarra, UAW members in the Cleveland area; and Janice Ortega, member of United Steelworkers of America Local 1104 in Loraine, Ohio, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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