BY RAY PARSONS AND TOM MAILER
DES MOINES, Iowa - In an escalation of the contract
fight between United Steelworkers of America Local 164 and
Titan Tire, the employer bused 30 replacement workers across
the picket line May 26. The company has had factory bosses,
office employees, and sales people working in the plant
trying to continue production for the past several weeks.
The 650 Steelworkers began their strike May 1 when contract
negotiations failed to resolve differences over mandatory
overtime, retiree benefits, elimination of a two-tier wage
scale, and job security.
Maurice Taylor, Jr., the owner of Titan, had threatened May 14 to use strikebreakers and to move work out of the Des Moines plant if the strikers did not return to work while negotiations continued. The unionists answered these threats with a solidarity rally of 400 workers and with daily informational leafleting by strikers at the job agency doing the hiring of strikebreakers for Titan. Members of Local 164 are discussing how to respond to the use of replacement workers.
Strikers have reached out to nonunion workers at the Quintak Distribution Center. This warehouse is attached to the Titan Tire plant and receives finished tires, mounting them on Titan wheels. When Taylor bought the tire plant in 1994 the warehouse was spun off as a separate business. All the warehouse workers were moved to production jobs and new workers were hired into Quintak without union protection.
Local 164 member Gary Stecklein explained that a team of strikers recently passed out leaflets at shift change, explaining what their strike was about and inviting the warehouse workers to come discuss joining the union. "We got a good response," he said. "Nine out of 10 took the flyers." Stecklein added that these workers had been asked by Titan to take jobs inside the struck plant but refused.
Strikers win support from other unionists
Financial support for the Titan strikers has started to
come in from other unionists. Shelton McCrainey, a member of
United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 7999 at Sloan
Valve in Chicago, attended the May 16 solidarity rally in
Des Moines. "After I gave a report on the rally at our May
20 local meeting we voted to donate $500 to the strike,
which was sent off a few days later," he said.
At the Bridgestone/Firestone tire plant in Des Moines, members of USWA Local 310 are organizing a plant-gate collection to support the Titan strikers.
A busload of strikers traveled to Detroit May 21 to attend a shareholders meeting of Titan International, the parent company of Titan Tire. A few Local 164 members own stock in the company, and others have money in a 401(k) investment scheme that includes Titan shares. Strikers wanted to get into the meeting to hold Taylor responsible for forcing their strike.
The strikers were joined by 40 Detroit area unionists for informational picketing outside the stockholders meeting. Officials from the USWA District 2 office, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Detroit Metro AFL-CIO were present. Many drivers on the busy highway nearby blew their horns in support.
Following the shareholders meeting, Taylor took questions from the strikers, but made it clear from the start that "at no time is anyone going to tell us how to run a business." He repeated his threats on the future of the Des Moines facility. At the same time, he took a defensive stance on the 60-hour workweeks that have been imposed on Titan workers for the last three years, claiming to favor shorter hours. The unionists have won broad support for their demand to end mandatory overtime.
Donald Umphress, with 31 years in the plant, wasn't surprised at Taylor's attitude. "He said the same thing he's always said: he's not going to give us anything. We let him know that we'll be everywhere he's at. We're not going to go away."
Dave Strock, a 20-year veteran, agreed. "We'll be on the front burner of his mind."
The Des Moines Register, the main big-business paper in Iowa, made no mention of the May 16 Steelworkers solidarity rally, but in a May 23 article repeated company statements that strikers have each lost nearly $3,000 in the walkout.
Titan Tire is the third-largest manufacturer of construction and agricultural tires in the United States. Taylor has reported that the Des Moines plant generated $7.8 million in profits last year, about 4.8 percent of sales. Its parent company, Titan International, recently reported that 1997 was its sixth consecutive year of record sales, increasing 9 percent over 1996 to $690 million. Titan International is the world's leading manufacturer of off- highway wheels, with manufacturing locations in the United States, as well as in Britain, Italy, France, and Germany.
Negotiations resumed May 26.
Ray Parsons is a member of USWA Local 310 and is the Socialist Workers candidate for Iowa secretary of agriculture.