The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.5           February 8, 1999 
 
 
Kaiser Strikers In Ohio: `One Day Longer'  

BY JAY RESSLER
NEWARK, OHIO-"We'll stay out one day longer" was Mike Yahn's response to Kaiser Aluminum's January 14 announcement of a lockout. Yahn, an oiler-mobile equipment operator with 22 years at Kaiser, was walking the picket line here January 24.

He explained maintenance workers are a special target of the company. After combining maintenance jobs over the years (for example, machine oilers are responsible for cutting the grass!), Kaiser now seeks to eliminate the oilers' and other maintenance jobs altogether and use outside contractors.

Officials of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) ended the 15-week strike against Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. January 14 and offered to return to work under the terms and conditions of the expired contract. Kaiser rejected the offer and informed the Steelworkers they were locked out.

Prior to the lockout announcement, Kaiser upped the ante by demanding 800 jobs be slashed, up from a previous demand of 400. They offered remaining workers $3.00 per hour in wage increases over five years as blood money.

Union officials said Kaiser's refusal to al low workers to return to work came as a surprise. "From day one of this strike, Kaiser has pleaded to our members to end the strike and return to work," said Bob Andrews, a staff representative of USWA District 1.

Many union officials and members believe the declaration of a lockout gives the union an edge in the battle with Kaiser that erupted into a strike on Sept. 30, 1998. David Foster, chairman of the union negotiating committee, told the Newark Advocate, "The company is now in position of having a labor dispute that has no end point. If we have to go two years or three years to win it we are prepared to do that."

Gary Sites, president of Local 341 here, headed a delegation of strikers to a victory celebration for the MSI workers in Marietta, Ohio (see article above). He was upbeat, saying that now union members will be eligible for unemployment benefits and the company is barred by law from hiring permanent replacement workers.

Judy Keller, vice president of the local, who was a utility operator and a ground crane operator prior to the strike, spoke to the Militant at the union hall just outside Newark. She said that in fact there has been a lockout from the beginning, recalling that on September 30 two busloads of scabs were brought into the plant at 5:20 p.m. The contract expired at 7:00 p.m., but workers didn't walk out until 11:20 p.m. "The four o'clock shift was `locked-down' that day," Keller remembered. Workers were not allowed on the job but were herded into a lunchroom by supervisors to watch safety films.

Of the 3,100 workers who struck against Kaiser nationwide, 242 are locked out at the Newark plant. In response to the company's demands for job cuts, pickets explained, "There are no spare people!" In fact, several chimed in at once, "There aren't enough people now."

Since the strike began, Kaiser keeps an off-duty cop stationed just inside the plant gate at $25 per hour. Three pickets have been arrested on trumped up charges. In at least two cases the charges have been dropped. The International Management Assistance Corp. (IMAC) thugs, who had initially herded scabs and acted to provoke strikers, have been replaced by a less blatant outfit, Doyle Security.

Pickets maintain a presence in a triangular island at the gate. Early in the strike they had built a wind break out of bales of straw, but were ordered to tear it down.

A homeowner next to the entrance allows the workers to maintain a small shed on her property and use electricity from her house. Kaiser has suddenly "discovered" the fence around her yard to keep in her dogs is two feet over the property boundary and is demanding she move it.

Around 100 scabs are working in the plant. Some are local people, others are being referred by the nearby Zanesville, Ohio, Job Service, while still others have license plates from West Virginia and Kentucky, according to locked-out workers.

At the Newark plant, the one bargaining unit employee who had resigned from the union and scabbed, was escorted out of the plant after the lockout was declared.

Pickets said last year they produced 10 to 12 million pounds of prime metal. That meant 10-12 full trucks left the plant every day. Now only three or four trucks leave most days, and many do not appear full.

Kenny Dowell, a crane operator with 20-years, said, "We've been raped by this company over the years; we've bent over backwards to help it become competitive, but this is like a smack in the face." During the 1980s workers gave concessions of $3.85 per hour in wages and additional concessions in benefits in return for a special issue of stock whose face value doesn't change.

Strikers are beginning to organize various committees like a food pantry committee to help the worst off members, as well as a "corporate campaign" committee. Keller said she has traveled to several cities in strike-related activity.

Jay Ressler is a member of USWA Local 1299 in Detroit. Gary Boyers and Henry Hillenbrand contributed to this article.

 
 
 
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