AFL-CIO Claims Victory in Mott Strike in Williamson NY. But is it?

Mott workers on picket lines

The AFL-CIO reports today that the strike at the Mott’s apple juice plant in Williamson NY is over as the Union and management settled yesterday. The strike was a victory for the workers apparently.

I am always suspicious when the AFL-CIO propaganda machine talks of workers having a victory anywhere so I checked in to a it a bit more. The official AFL-CIO statement says, for example: “The new contract restores wage levels and continues the defined-benefit pension plan.” This is true, the contract does “restore” wages to the previous inadequate level. The New York Times puts it slightly differently, that the settlement, “…includes a wage freeze, but not the pay cuts the company had demanded.” So part of this victory is having wages frozen in period when taxes and other burdens on workers are increasing.

The New York Times also points out that the company dropped its “demand to freeze pensions for current workers, although newly hired workers will not have pensions, but 401(k) plans”. The AFL-CIO report left this out, after all, new hires, not being there yet, don’t get the opportunity to vote on contracts, or who leads them or who sells them out.

The NY Times adds: “Under the agreement, Dr Pepper Snapple, which also markets 7Up, Hawaiian Punch and Canada Dry, will save money on its retirement plans. While the company dropped its proposal to freeze pensions for current workers, the union in exchange agreed to lower the dollar-for-dollar match for current workers’ 401(k)’s to the first 2 percent of pay from the originally proposed first 4 percent. Before the strike, the match was for the first 5 percent of pay. For newly hired workers, the company will match the first 4 percent of their pay.”

So the strike was successful in the sense that the present workers have their wages frozen but keep their defined benefit plan, although the employer’s dollar for dollar match falls to 2% from 5% for their 401 k which is what it was before the strike; do the math on that if you want to think about what a victory this is for the company. Future workers will not only not have a defined benefit pension plan, the company has successfully reduced the dollar to dollar match from 5% to 4% of salary for the replacement, their 410 ks

“I think that it’s a victory, we secured the wages, we secured the pensions and we secured the workers’ jobs” says Stuart Applebaum, national president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 220, a part of the UFCW. The AFL-CIO hierarchy is only too willing to announce that a victory has been had, they can move on and concentrate all our resources on the next elections, Labor peace has been achieved.

But is this a victory for workers? I don’t think it is. It is the continuation of the same concessionary approach that is helping employers drive US workers back to conditions that existed prior to the great upsurge that built industrial Unionism and the CIO.
“But they maintained what they have pretty much. It could have been worse, look at what they were asking for?” some workers would argue. This is what the Union president in this case is arguing. It does give the present workers a perceived breathing space. But this is a game orchestrated by the employers and the Labor officials at the highest levels that has been played time and time again with the only losers being working people, Union members and non-Union.

The boss makes concessionary demands, the Union leaders whine and complain about it and have a Democrat or two say it’s unfair and mean and hopefully avoid a strike by offering slightly less concessions and confrontation is avoided. Sometimes, like in this case, workers go on strike at great sacrifice and cost to themselves and the same scenario plays out.

This damage control strategy has been a catastrophe for Union members and working people in general as concessions have not stopped the assault on workers; concessions lead to more concessions, ask any auto-worker. It has handed the living standards of future workers over to the boss in exchange for empty promises to the workers immediately affected by the struggle. I am retired and have had a decent living thanks to people whose names and faces I may not know; some I do, some I don't.  But this policy of selling out future workers has workers in one workplace earning different wages with different benefits and conditions, not the best recipe for solidarity building. When new hires find out about how they have been sacrificed by the Union for short-term gains, it does not allure them to the trade Union movement. In all of this mind you, the high paid officials and staffers in the Labor movement keep their wages and pensions intact.

Like all the defensive strikes workers have fought over the years, the Mott workers have sacrificed 121 days without pay in the hope that they can keep what they have and retire with it. Just recovering from this sacrifice will be a task if it is possible at all and there is no guarantee at all that the employers won’t be back later, in fact it is most likely they will. The only way we can keep what we have, and more importantly, improve on it and extend it to all workers, is through the unity and growth of organized Labor and a working class movement that is rooted in our communities and connected in struggle with workers internationally.The strategy of the present Union leadership will not do this.

To be successful, such a movement must break from the present damage control policy of the Labor leadership and demand what we need and not what the employers and the heads of organized Labor tell us is “realistic”. By workers relying on our own strength, building our own independent political party and using direct action methods like the occupations and struggles that were so successful in the strike and tenant movements of the 1930’s and the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s, we can begin to drive back this offensive of global capitalism.