About 300 members of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 303L went on strike in September 1998, four months after steelworkers at Titan's Des Moines, Iowa, plant walked out. Both strikes were provoked by Titan Tire Corp.'s moves to force the rubber workers to labor under increasingly harsh conditions.

In the case of the Natchez facility, the company took over the plant in 1998. While the local was willing to give some concessions, CEO Maurice Taylor demanded more givebacks. When the union refused, he fired the union workforce, telling them they could only return to work on his terms. Local 303L members set up their picket line and it has remained up around the clock ever since.

"People should at least have some say so," said Jeffrey Free, who was staffing the picket line when Militant reporters visited recently. Free, 34, was hired in 1995, and worked in the mixing department. Before that, he worked construction on the oil rigs that line the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of nearby Louisiana. "Taylor came in and said he would take everything away from us. We had made an agreement and then he tried to take it away. He was trying to control us.

"My mother always said if I start something, then finish it," Free continued. "Taylor is wrong. And I am here to stand and fight as long as it takes. I need to find some work, but I will never move off or leave the fight."

While they continue to picket, some strikers have been able to get other jobs as truck drivers or at the Fruit of the Loom distribution center across the Mississippi River in Louisiana. But decent paying jobs are hard to find in this small city. One striker told the Militant that when he interviewed for a job at Wal-Mart and they found out he was on strike at Titan, they said he wouldn't be hired.

Local 303L members were encouraged to hear that their co-fighters in Des Moines had recently begun negotiations with the company for the first time in more than a year. "It's good that Des Moines is making progress," said James White, 57, a strike activist who worked as a tire builder in the plant for 31 years before the strike. "We've always said that we would support each other, that each local would stay out until both locals settled with Taylor."

Since April, the Natchez plant has been idled, with only a dozen or so employees inside for maintenance. Earlier this spring, Taylor began laying off the scab workforce and reduced operations to producing rubber for its nonunion plant in Brownsville, Texas.

On April 23, Taylor sent the city of Natchez a letter stating that Titan intends to exercise an option in its lease to purchase the plant and property for $100. The city has owned the plant since it was built in 1939 and leased it to Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company, which ran the plant for many years.

"By transferring the plant to Titan now, the city has cleared the way for Titan to abandon Natchez if that is Titan's whim," said Local 303L president Leo Bradley in the April 25 issue of Solidarity News, published by the USWA Titan International Council. "The city should explore every viable legal option to stop Titan from taking the plant." Local 303L members are circulating a petition urging the city to act to keep the plant from falling into Titan's hands. According to the lease, the city has 60 days to turn the plant over to Titan.

Strikers here were encouraged by the April 30 National Labor Relations Board decision to uphold a February 1999 ruling by an administrative law judge finding Titan Tire Corp., a subsidiary of Titan International Inc., guilty of numerous federal labor law violations involving the Des Moines USWA Local 164. The NLRB also cited Taylor for making unlawful threats to move jobs and equipment from the Des Moines plant to Brownsville.

"Morrie Taylor wants to have his way with the steelworkers and bust the union," said White. "He thought we would roll over. But we surprised him--and we surprised ourselves too!"

Susan LaMont is a garment worker and member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees in Centreville, Alabama.  
 
 
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