BY ALYSON KENNEDY AND JOSHUA CARROLL
PEKIN, Illinois - Members of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local
2283 voted 57 to 4 on April 25 to ratify a contract with
Tazewell Machine Works here. The contract includes a dental
plan, slightly better health coverage, a 401K pension plan,
union-dues check off by the company, and a 15.5 percent wage
increase over six years.
The 82 members of UAW Local 2283 began their strike on Oct. 5, 1998. They had no retirement plan, paid as much as $70 per week for family medical insurance, and had neither dental nor optical coverage.
At a union meeting on April 11, the local was told by UAW international officials to return to work under the terms of the expired contract. They set a return date for April 19. The owner of Tazewell said he would begin negotiations within two weeks.
At the time, Terry Beebe, a Tazewell striker, explained, "I'm not totally comfortable going back without a contract, but this is right for the union." He went on, "If they don't sit down and negotiate with us, we'll go right back out again."
Tom Smith, a steadfast strike supporter and a member of UAW Local 974 at Caterpillar, commented, "This was the first strike for many of these guys. Six months is a long time. They stayed out 100 percent without a single guy crossing, and they showed [owner] Henry Cakora that they can stand up to him."
Caterpillar has moved large sections of production to largely nonunion plants where workers make substantially less money and have fewer benefits. Tazewell makes parts for Caterpillar. The strike received support from UAW locals at the Caterpillar and Mitsubishi plants, mine workers from central Illinois, and other working people in the region.
In mid-January, Local 2283 began organizing expanded picket lines. Between 50 and 100 unionists would turn out to "greet" the scabs at shift change. Workers on strike at the Lenc-Smith and Tool and Engineering plants in the Chicago area attended several of these actions.
Members and retirees from UAW Local 974 were among the strongest backers of the Tazewell strike. Dozens of them turned out at each of the expanded picket lines. The lessons they learned from their seven-year struggle with Caterpillar were well received by the Tazewell strikers.
UAW Local 974 and the Tactical Response Team (Blue Shirts) formed by some of the Cat workers during their fight raised tens of thousands of dollars through collections, a Christmas Party, a raffle, and a chili supper. Kenny Whetstone, a member of UAW Local 974 and the Tactical Response Team said, "As soon as we saw the picket lines we began organizing solidarity. We began collecting money at the turnstiles at the Cat gates until Caterpillar kicked us off. Then we stood in the street collecting money. Caterpillar started collecting for the United Way on their property and we would get donations from a lot of workers who wouldn't give to the company collection." Local 974 retirees staffed the Tazewell picket line on a number of occasions so that Tazewell strikers could attend various solidarity events.
Whetstone also described some of the history of the fight against Tazewell. "This was the first successful strike at Tazewell," he recounted. "In the 1970s they were organized by another union and couldn't get a contract. They tried to strike, but the union was broken. In 1989 the workers at Tazewell organized to get the UAW in, but had one of the worst UAW contracts in the region. For them to stay out this long, and remain 100 percent the whole time, shows that they were tired of being treated like second-class citizens."
One of the most successful solidarity events during the strike was a chili supper held at the UAW Local 974 union hall. Hundreds of workers in central Illinois turned out. A delegation of workers, most of them immigrants, from the International Union of Electronic Workers (IUE) on strike at Lenc-Smith in Cicero, Illinois, attended. They had been invited and were introduced to those in attendance by a striker from Tazewell who had visited their picket line in Chicago.
Strikers faced harassment from both the company and the city of Pekin. In November the Pekin Daily Times began to violence- bait the picket lines. Tazewell filed a lawsuit against the union on November 12, claiming strikers were harassing and intimidating workers going in and out of the plant. The city sought injunctions preventing burn barrels, portable toilets, and a picket shack on the picket line. On December 5 a circuit court judge granted a temporary injunction against the so- called threats made by strikers.
The injunction did not limit the number of pickets but restricted them within five feet of passing vehicles. Police, however, continued to try to provoke incidents at the expanded picket lines. On March 2 Pekin Police deputy chief Charles Bassett accused a local power plant worker - the one Black worker on the picket line - of shouting at him and threatened to take him to jail. The workers stood up to the provocation and the cop was forced to apologize. The cop defended his racist attack by saying that at the time he couldn't see black or white; only red. In response all pickets now wear red ribbons.
During the strike the owner of Tazewell, Henry Cakora, called the union "communist, un-American, and run by mobsters" and vowed the strikers would never work for him as long as they had the union.
Cakora hired 110 scabs to break the union. He got rid of most of them as part of the agreement with the union, and others quit. Some 15 scabs still remain in the plant, 10 of whom have asked to sign union cards, according to Local 2283 president Chad Hartley.
In the last few weeks of the strike, the expanded picket lines became almost weekly events. The last one was held on April 16, the Friday before the strikers returned to work. Strikers greeted the scabs at shift time for one last time. "We are a lot stronger now," said Terry Beebe. "Standing outside together has brought us closer to each other and strengthened the union."
After the union announced that the strikers would return to work April 19, many of the scabs simply walked off the job, reported Gene Preston, who has worked in the plant just under two years. At that point the company asked if it could begin to call back specific workers earlier to fill production needs. "We said no," explained Preston. "We all met at the union hall Monday morning [April 19], we drove down together, and walked into the plant together - proud, with our heads up, and 100 percent strong." Preston said, "It was about the coolest thing I ever saw."
Joshua Carroll is a member of the United Steelworkers of America.