Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

I stood on a picket line with members of the International Association of Machinists Local 933 yesterday. They got a great many signs of support from the cars driving by, even the from some of the salaried employees leaving the Raytheon plant.

The company itself has reported a 41% increase in earnings per share, but despite this they are asking workers to agree to an 87% increase in medical costs and block some workers’ eligibility for a pay increase. With the increase in medical costs, this would result in a net decrease in take home pay for some workers.

There is also a dispute over the pension, which is more than adequately funded. It is blatantly unfair to promise workers a pension then take that away from them when it becomes convienient, especially when they make those pension payments in lieu of take home pay.

Although there have been formerly striking workers who have crossed the line (140, according to the AP), but the union reports between 170-180 non-union employees who are supporting the strike, and believe there will be more as the strike continues and the workplace conditions become worse.

One of the things that has helped the union hold is that they have been running a job bank. Many local retailers have been hiring the striking workers as temporary holiday labor. The big irony for those of us that have been following the labor movement: one employer that has offered themselves up to hire strikers is Wal-Mart. I’ll leave the ironies to you, but one worker I talked to thought that part of their motivation may have been to burnish their labor image. She thought it was funny that they showed her the anti-labor video that they show all new hires.

The other ace that the union has is that these are highly skilled jobs. It has been difficult for Raytheon to maintain its production by moving management and salaried employees into jobs they aren’t adequately trained for. They are claiming that their production levels are at 103%, but this may be because of overtime production that occurred at the end of the summer, and the excess stock being rolled out now. There are reports that one production line has been shut down, and reports that two Tomohawk missles were dropped (and ruined, that’s a couple of million dollars right there) when replacement workers were operating a forklift. It is difficult to believe company reports that they are maintaining prodution levels with somewhere around 1,200 workers walking pickets.

As I stood with the strikers, there was a small tent about a quarter mile up the road staffed with the security firm that the company has hired during the strike. Occasionally, these guys would get in a car and drive by us. Funny how the company can hire these guys to basically do nothing, but can’t afford to give some of its long time employees raises.