Goodyear strikers ratify contract

After three months on the picket line, steelworker union members striking Goodyear Tire were set to return to work Jan. 2, after ratifying a master contract covering 12 struck plants in 11 states. The contract basically mirrors the BF Goodrich-Michelin national agreement, which Goodyear until now had refused to sign. Each of the locals approved the contract, which passed by a two-to-one margin.

A key issue in the strike was Goodyear’s threat to close two plants. Goodyear will still close the Tyler, Texas, plant, eliminating 1,100 jobs. The plant will remain open until the end of 2007, however, and buyout packages will be made available to terminated workers to ease their economic pain. Goodyear agreed not to outsource to low-wage countries the work done at the Tyler plant.

A second key issue was retiree health care, for which a fund has been established. Hourly wage rates remain in place for current employees, a third of whom had faced drastic pay cuts. However, a two-tier pay scale puts new hires at a lower rate of pay. When divisive two-tier wage scales are combined with buyouts—which provide short-term benefits but take thousands of jobs permanently out of the economy—the resulting cocktail of poison pills poses a menace to the strong solidarity built up over the past 12 weeks.

What helped the strike the most was working-class solidarity—on the picket line, in the communities and around the world. In Akron, where the rubber-workers union was born and where Goodyear still has its headquarters, few local scabs could be found. The company had to bring in salaried employees, including inventors and attorneys, to build tires. Impromptu donations of coffee and firewood to the picketers were a regular occurrence.

Anger seethed at a Chrysler auto plant near Cleveland, as management repeatedly refused to allow a gate collection to support the Goodyear strike. Many in the plant formerly worked for Goodyear; others had family members on strike.

On Dec. 16, a national day of solidarity with the strike, there were 150 separate pickets outside Goodyear shops. Unions around the world voiced their support from day one. Just before the settlement, the Canadian Auto Workers pledged to stop handling scab tires if the strike went on past January.

Dealers were running out of tires and losing customers, and Goodyear was losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Even so the union was facing a number of pressures, including economic pressures on the strikers in a time of job scarcity. When the U.S. Armed Forces began to run short on tires for Humvees, the Pentagon brass threatened to invoke the Taft-Hartley anti-strike law and force strikers back to work.

Thousands of workers did vote to reject the contract. “Most of the guys I talked to are against it,” Richard Scritchfield, a 28-year tiremaker in Akron, told the news media.

Still, the overall mood seems to be one of relief that the strike is over and that some of the company’s demands were pushed back. “People have been out of work, having a hard time, and they’re hurting,” said Dan Levin, 43, of Waupun, Wis., who has worked at the Sun Prairie plant for 12 years. He described the new contract as “the best we can do.” Terry Huddleston, a 14-year Goodyear worker in Akron, said, “It’s unfortunate. I love all these guys. God bless them. We’ve managed to stick it out for three months, but a lot of families are suffering.”

Meanwhile another strike is ending the same day as the Goodyear dispute. Also returning to work on Jan. 2 are 830 members of UAW Local 1050 who struck Alcoa in Cleveland Nov. 6. They won concessions in the area of pensions and health care, and the easing of a barbaric attendance/forced overtime policy that made every union member a moving target for firing. The local had won widespread support, in the form of cash, food and holiday toy donations, from all the UAW locals in the area.

Regardless of what the Goodyear workers settle for, they go back to work with a heightened level of class consciousness. With workers at Ford, GM and Chrysler facing a possible strike next September, both the Goodyear and Alcoa workers cheered a supportive auto worker with the comment that “We’ve got your back.”

Martha Grevatt is an elected trustee of UAW Local 122 at the Chrysler plant in Twinsburg, Ohio, between Cleveland and Akron.