Hinkel Workers Still Out After 10 Weeks. Mass Picketing Would Change the Game

The potent weapon the union leadership uses to win strikes: rat images.

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired *

More than 80 production workers at Henkel Aerospace Industrial in Bay Point Contra Costa County have been on strike since October 16, 2017.  The workers are members of local 1584 of the International Association of Machinists (IAM). The company manufactures industrial glue and adhesives for airplanes and other industrial uses according to the Contra Costa Herald.  Henkel is a subsidiary of a multinational company based in Germany.

I visited the picket lines Monday and workers told me that the situation regarding health and safety at the plant is a catastrophe but despite official grievances and complaints being filed, the company just doesn’t care. Workers have suffered serious burns, fatigue, dehydration and other workplace injuries. Henkel has been in trouble before. In 2013, 26-year-old temporary worker, David Eleidjian was pulled in to a mixing machine and crushed. He was rushed to hospital, his legs amputated in an effort to save his life but he died there. One worker told the East Bay Times that the mixer “…is a dangerous machine and getting caught in it happens so frequently, employees call it ‘taking a ride.’” The tragedy here is that this young worker was a veteran of US imperialism’s corporate ventures. He survived two tours of duty in Iraq but didn’t survive the workplace at home.

Over the past decades, the bosses’ have intensified their war on US workers and organized labor.  For simply demanding a safe workplace these 84 workers have been forced out on strike before Christmas. This is no accident, it is a conscious, vicious strategy to bring them to heel. We do not go on strike unless we are forced. Imagine what this means to these brothers and sisters; what pressure it puts on them and their families. This is legalized violence.

I was enthused by the commitment and solidarity these sisters and brothers showed under these conditions. But I see that not much has changed when it comes to the strategy of the trade union leadership when it comes to strikes. I remember being on the HERE Local 2 picket lines some years ago when the union officialdom, the police and the hotel bosses who were being struck, made an agreement that picketers wouldn’t impede the customers entering the struck hotel, in that sense it couldn’t be said they were crossing picket lines as there wasn’t one to cross.  To ensure this agreement was kept, tape was actually put down on the sidewalk and the striking workers kept within it by the picket captains. The mood was good for a while but picketing brick walls gets old quick.

When I went to this IAM picket yesterday I saw a similar situation. There was a strong mood of solidarity and workers were positive and upbeat in the sense that they were standing up to the boss. “We’re fighting for the next generation” one striker told me. But they were all standing around as trucks and equipment, as well as other workers entered freely. They told me they were picketing in front of the entrance for a while walking slowly across it as we used to do, but the bosses’ complained and the union officials told them to stop. If they continued to do it, the cops will come and the union will be in trouble.

This raised the question in my mind: Can we go on strike and win? I believe we can, but not with the present way they are organized.  I spoke to Steve Older, an IAM official, over the phone who is also the head of the Contra Costa Labor Council and when I asked him why the strike was called an “unfair labor practice” strike he said it couldn’t be an economic strike because then the bosses can hire the scabs inside permanently by law.

This is at the root of why we haven’t had a significant victory in decades; this obsession with obeying anti-union laws. Workers are even taken out on strike to pressure the employers to negotiate, no economic demands. In the Wisconsin events when we had 100,000 mostly fresh people on the streets and occupying the capital rotunda, the only two demands were to keep dues check off where the employer collects union dues through payroll and the right to bargain.  The concessions were no problem for the union leaders at the top. Today, strikes are in no way designed to stop production; they really amount to 24-hour protests as strikebreakers are brought in to defeat it. After two months on picket lines stopping nothing as strikebreakers work inside, it can get pretty demoralizing.People feel powerless, like they're having no impact.

The picketers had a rat design on the picket signs, “Show the boss that rat” I said to them, they’ll buckle and settle the contract then. It’s embarrassing that is. Part of the union leadership’s strategy for years has to bring big inflatable rats to picket lines. How can a strike be won this way?  The reality is, the entire union leadership of the AFL-CIO do not believe we can win, hence the rat. Outside of withdrawing one’s own labor there is no real attempt to stop production because it’s illegal.

The strike is in Contra Costa County, the Contra Costa Central Labor Council has about 86,000 members affiliated to it; this is where our power lies, them and workers throughout the community. When we think of that number and we include their families and their communities, we have immense potential power. Motorists were continuously honking in support. The IAM has about 5000 members in this area I think.  In the next county the Alameda Labor Council has over 100,000 workers affiliated to it.  An IAM official mentioned to the media that Boeing workers up in Washington State would be handling struck work if they handled Henkel’s products which they do, but when Boeing workers resisted a concessionary contract themselves a few years ago, the IAM’s national leadership intervened and with all sorts of chicanery pushed it through so it’s not likely they’ll organize that sort of support, it is after all, against the law.

This is why union membership and our wages and benefits have been eroded. And why we haven’t won strikes over the last period; it’s not that we can’t win them. The strategy necessary to win strikes would start with mass mobilization of the millions of workers in unions, with relying on our own strength. and by rejecting this partnership with the bosses under the term Team Concept. It would include being willing to mobilize mass action to violate and challenge anti-union laws.  But this is rejected by the heads of organized labor because it means a confrontation with the bosses, their friends in the Democratic Party and the courts. In the last analysis they see no alternative to capitalism and are forced to help the boss maintain profits and market share, and this is done by pushing  concessions on their own members and obeying the law at all costs.

We live in a society where bankers, hedge fund managers, politicians and everyone under the sun with power is breaking laws day in and day out and the heads of organized labor worship the anti-union laws introduced by big business politicians like they’re the ten Commandments. They do this as a serial sexual predator, racist, and misogynist with some hundreds of law-suits against him sits in the White House.

What message was sent when the building trades leaders met with the sexual predator Trump? The head of the Teamsters, the lawyer Hoffa also talked positively of Trump, a man who argues that US workers are paid too much. It doesn’t project power and strength praising people like Trump and ingratiating themselves before him has Trumka has.

It’s not that we haven’t had victories. The unions were built despite them being illegal. Half a million workers occupied factories and workplaces in the 1930’s when the UAW and the CIO were built. Workers occupied the Flint plant for 44 days.

Instead of leaving locals and a small group of workers isolated, fighting a global corporation alone, which is so often the case. A strike can be linked to organizing all workers and drawing our communities in to it by raising demands for jobs, and supporting community issues.  The amount of support from the community and passers by I saw at the picket line at Hinkel was considerable. This is a source that must be organized. The general mood among much of the rank and file of the union movement is that they only see the officialdom when there’s a union election or to vote for a Democrat or they want something. On most social issues they are silent.

If we want to stop the decline in our living standards we have no choice; we must transform our unions in to real fighting organizations and that means changing the present leadership and their concessionary, pro-management policies.  No one can say this is not difficult---it is going to be a struggle. The bosses will use the courts and the media and the police against us, they always have. And there is no doubt that some of the present leadership will cooperate with bosses in terminating genuine rank and file militant activists in the workplace if they can.  This has been done many times in our history. They will defend their present positions but in the face of a movement arising from below some of them will change.  But the more tightly organized we are, the more we do not allow racism, sexism and tactics the bosses use to divide us, the harder it will be to single us out. The present leadership of organized labor will not mobilize their 14 million members in to a real fightback against the attacks we are facing, they will not voluntarily take the measures necessary to win. The rank and file has to do it. A new leadership must be built.

In any war we have to strategize, discuss, learn the lessons of past victories and defeats and go forward in a way that protects us from harm. As George Schultz, Reagan’s former Secretary of State once wrote: “Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.”  The best way to avoid a strike is to be prepared to win one. We hurt the employer by shutting down their production.

We all want a peaceful life, but the bosses’, and capitalism itself, will not permit that. We cannot avoid this struggle to transform our unions. The alternative if we do nothing is to accept more defeats.  

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*I am struggling with the word Scabs to describe those workers bused in to work behind a stoppage. I will explain why in my next posting.