From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:Caterpillar Workers Face Deadline
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:42:54 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

`Caterpillar won't break our union!'

By M. Roozbeh

East Peoria, Ill.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited.)

It was deadline day--April 6. The union stood strong.

Strikers at Caterpillar Inc. face one of the most serious threats
to the labor movement since Reagan fired the PATCO strikers in
1981. But they held their ground. And they sent a message to the
world's biggest manufacturer of earth-moving equipment: You will
not break the mighty UAW.

Before dawn, thousands of strikers--along with supporters from
other unions--began gathering outside Caterpillar plants in
Mossville, Aurora, Mapleton, Pontiac, Joliet, Decatur and East
Peoria, Ill. They lined the streets outside the plant gates, waving
picket signs and shaking their fists.

Thus they delivered their response to Caterpillar's ultimatum. One
striker put it this way to Workers World: "Hell no, we won't go in.
This time we'll make our stand."

It marked the beginning of a new chapter in the five-month-old Auto
Workers strike at Caterpillar, which also has plants in
Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Colorado. On April 1 the company
ordered the almost 13,000 strikers to return to work by April 6
even though there is no contract settlement. If not, the bosses
threatened, the workers would be "permanently replaced."

Caterpillar obviously hoped for a break in union solidarity. In the
midst of an economic crisis with high unemployment, would workers
risk losing their jobs to defend their union rights? Could they go
on living on less than $100 a week in strike benefits?

Strikers and their families had to make a tough choice. Should they
cross the picket line or stick together and hold out against the
company's attack? How long could they fight to get a fair contract?
What if desperate, hungry people answered the call to take their
jobs?

By the end of the day the answer was clear. Except for a small
handful who buckled and went in, strikers held the line. And
according to the UAW, many of those who crossed picket lines on
April 6 changed their minds and returned to the strike the next
day.

That day, April 7, Caterpillar upped the stakes by running
help-wanted ads in local and Chicago newspapers. Still, the
strikers stayed out.

Rumors circulated that the UAW might call a national one-day
solidarity strike. Many unionists say that may be what it will take
to beat back Caterpillar and start turning around big business's
unionbusting drive of the last 12 years.

The word is solidarity

As soon as Caterpillar issued its ultimatum on April 1, unionists
from around the country began heading toward Peoria. Every day
until April 6 there were demonstrations in front of Cat
headquarters in downtown Peoria.

Then, on April 6, the mood on the beefed-up picket lines was
jubilant. Strikers and supporters marched through the streets
chanting union slogans, slowing traffic to a crawl.

More than 2,000 lined the streets in Decatur. Over a thousand came
out in Aurora. Support for the strike is so strong in Peoria that
the public schools delayed opening the morning of April 6 so
children could hit the picket lines with their parents.

When news spread that miners from Pittston Coal, who waged their
own very tough strike three years ago, were coming to Peoria,
excitement filled the picket lines.

An East Peoria striker named Charlie told Workers World, "I've put
over 20 years of my life into this company and I'm not ready to let
Caterpillar flush it down the drain." Another, retired for six
years, said he had to come out to show his support for the union.

"We've made them wealthy and now they're done with us," said Mike
Whittington, who has 19 years in the Decatur plant. "We're going to
be here as long as it takes."

Many workers expressed tremendous anger at the company. All termed
the day a success.

Caterpillar brought out squads of rent-a-thugs, mercenaries
recruited from soldier-of-fortune magazines. State and local police
were also lined up against the strikers, and the Peoria National
Guard unit was reportedly on alert.

Jerry Brust, the company's chief negotiator, actually showed up to
talk to the picketers. Strikers snubbed what Local 974 activist
Suzan Baker called his attempt "to negotiate on the sidewalk," and
walked away.

Fighting strategy needed

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Bill Casstevens was also on the picket line
in East Peoria. He told reporters Caterpillar is "attempting not to
bargain them back to work but attempting to bludgeon them back to
work. They're trying to break the backs of their workers, but it
won't happen."

Clearly, both sides recognize the significance of the Caterpillar
showdown. Scabs have been brought in to replace strikers repeatedly
over the last decade or so--at PATCO, Phelps Dodge, Hormel,
International Paper, Eastern, Greyhound and many others. But
Caterpillar is the first big manufacturing company to try to bust
a solid union work force of mostly high-seniority industrial
workers. And it's the first to challenge the UAW, considered by
many the most powerful and progressive industrial union.

So it's no wonder a top General Motors official told the April 2
Wall Street Journal, "We're quietly cheering for Caterpillar." The
bosses know it would be a stunning blow for their side if Cat broke
the UAW. Although the union has suffered many setbacks in the last
decade, especially at the hands of the Big Three automakers
including GM, no big company has openly challenged the UAW by
calling in scabs to break a strike.

Labor analysts are calling the showdown "the strike of the 90s" and
"a watershed strike."

As for the UAW, the leadership's initial strategy appears to be
geared toward appealing to Caterpillar's stockholders. The union
ran a full-page ad in the April 6 Wall Street Journal. Union
officials plan to attend an April 8 stockholders' meeting to
convince Cat's investors that unionbusting is bad business. The
company is the second-biggest industrial exporter in the U.S., and
inventory stocks are dangerously low, threatening profits in the
coming period.

Union militants, however, were urging another approach: building
labor-community solidarity. The Caterpillar work force, with 20 to
30 percent women, is primarily white. Over the years they won
decent pay and good benefits--until Cat's decision to gut the
contract, which provoked the strike. In contrast, the current
depression, with its accompanying layoffs and intensified racism,
has left many oppressed workers destitute.

Militants say the union must mobilize. Some suggested bringing in
UAW members from other plants around the country where the work
force is more multinational, to appeal directly to the unemployed
not to take Cat's job offer.

These workers say the union should not just ask for solidarity. It
must offer solidarity in the struggle against racism and for union
jobs, and build a united struggle against the common enemy of union
members, the unorganized, undocumented and unemployed--the bosses.
That way, they say, the essentially defensive strike at Caterpillar
could be transformed into a powerful multinational class-wide
offensive to stop the anti-worker assault.

The battle has begun. The Cat strikers look ready for what lies
ahead.

                               ###

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper.
A 10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World,
and send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212) 255-0352.
You may contact Workers World editors on New York Transfer or
PeaceNet at "workers."

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