Caterpillar bosses exploit bankrupt labor strategy
1992Nat Weinstein 1992-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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STAT STRIKE UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES The United Auto Workers union (UAW) ended its five-month-old strike against Caterpillar, Inc. on April 14. UAW negotiators accepted a federal mediator's recommendation that UAW members go back to work on the company's terms while "negotiations for a new contract would continue."
Without being consulted by top UAW officials, the 12,600 strikers were told to return to their jobs. This decision, catching the striking workers by complete surprise (and coming after a company-ordered back-to-work movement had failed to materialize), provoked widespread resentment in the union's ranks.
On the very day it reported the union's return-to-work announcement, The New York Times noted: "Interestingly, the parade of cars and trucks that drove by the Caterpillar plant today was larger than it had been in recent days. The striking union members, driving by with clenched fists raised, produced a chorus of car horns in the early morning daylight symbolizing their reinforced defiance of a company order that they abandon their strike or be permanently replaced."
After the UAW officialdom's unjustified surrender (they blamed it on the rank and file), the Caterpillar bosses lost no time before throwing salt in the union's wounds and further pursuing their advantage.
Immediately after the UAW announcement that workers could return to work on their first regular shift, the company's first follow-up punch was to bar the factory gates. They arrogantly told workers that they "would be notified by mail when to return." Soon afterward, the company announced that it would not rehire all strikers.
But Caterpillar shortly "retreated" from this position. They began issuing ambiguous and contradictory announcements. They said they did, after all, intend to rehire all strikers. But they also said, in almost the same breath, that about 10 percent of strikers would be "let go" through early retirement and attrition. (This contradicts the company's highly touted announcement during the strike that all workers who (continued page
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