Factor in McDonnell Douglas Dispute : Unions Turn to ‘In-Plant’ Tactics to Avoid Walkouts

For several months, a small-scale war has been raging between employees and management at McDonnell Douglas’ Long Beach plant.

A work slowdown by members of United Auto Workers Local 148, which represents 9,500 workers, has forced the company to delay deliveries of passenger planes to several airlines and prompted warnings by the company that recalcitrant workers could be fired.

The dispute was ignited by contract changes McDonnell Douglas management had been seeking since October. McDonnell Douglas has now implemented those measures.

In response, the union has moved to intensify the war, Bob Berghoff, president of Local 148, said. Union leaders have recommended that employees do no more work than is required by their contract, including refusing overtime; that they sing union songs in the plant and engage in a variety of other conduct designed to put pressure on the company--everything, that is, except to strike.

The union, which waged a four-month strike in 1984, has drawn its most recent tactics from a new 80-page AFL-CIO manual on how to win labor disputes without striking.

Publication of the manual is a significant signpost of how labor relations are changing in the 1980s. Despite the fact that strike activity increased from 1985 to 1986, many labor leaders acknowledge that the strike may no longer be labor’s most effective weapon.

“There is a totally new kind of challenge many of us in the movement are facing--a challenge to the viability of our principal weapon, the strike,” said Howard Samuel, president of the Industrial Union Department, the AFL-CIO unit that produced the manual. Samuel said the labor movement has been forced to re-examine “our strategies so we can survive.”

The broad-brush term for the new tactics is “in-plant solidarity campaigns,” and the tactics can range from sing-alongs on the shop floor to mass grievance meetings over safety conditions.

In general, the tactics are designed to impede production and soften management while keeping workers on the job rather than on the picket line.

Practice on the Rise

There are no accurate statistics on how often such tactics are used, but labor scholars say they are on the rise. More and more unions--including cement makers in California, meatpackers in Iowa, nurses in Massachusetts, steelworkers and ship repairmen in Oregon and aerospace technicians in Texas-- have used in-plant tactics recently in an attempt to secure better contracts without striking. Some flight attendants of American Airlines said they are giving passengers more soda than normal in an attempt to raise company costs.

The spread of these in-plant campaigns “is a very important trend,” said Harley Shaiken, associate professor of work and technology at the University of California, San Diego. He said “work to rule” actions, in which employees stick strictly to the limits of their contracts, have been used by small groups of workers on a limited basis for years in this country and abroad--often to achieve a small gain such as getting management to provide a fan in a hot room in a factory.

“What’s new,” said Shaiken, is that such campaigns are being waged plant-wide to exert economic leverage on a company to win a contract. “It represents a major addition to labor’s strategy in collective bargaining,” he said.

Several unions, including the UAW, the United Steelworkers of America and the Service Employees International Union, have won victories using these strategies, while the cement workers have not made much headway and face a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in San Bernardino County superior court alleging that the union’s activities sabotaged the company.

Companies’ Defenses

Some companies--including IBP Inc., the nation’s largest meatpacker, and Lockheed Shipbuilding--have responded by imposing lockouts in an attempt to avoid in-plant militancy or to simply scare workers into not trying the tactics.

Exactly what types of union behavior are protected under the National Labor Relations Act, and what countermeasures may be permitted management, remain unclear and probably will be decided by the courts, labor lawyers say.

A deliberate slowdown is not protected and can give rise to discipline or even termination. But in some situations, proving a slowdown can be quite difficult, said Martin Payson of White Plains, N.Y., a leading labor lawyer who advises corporations.

On the other hand, management’s ability to use the lockout was expanded significantly by a recent National Labor Relations Board decision.

The advent of the new union tactics has been precipitated by “new rules of collective bargaining,” said Joe Uehlein, director of special projects for the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department and co-author of the new manual, “The Inside Game: Winning with Workplace Strategies.”

Older Rules Were Simple

“Until just a few years ago, the strike was the most effective weapon in the arsenal of any labor union,” Uehlein said. “The rules were simple: If an employer wouldn’t grant demands of workers, the workers walked out and deprived the employer of their brains and their bodies. If workers could stick together long enough and prevent ‘scabs’ from taking their places, they could hurt the employer financially and force a settlement,” Uehlein said.

The rules began to change, he asserted, with the rise in the early 1970s of labor relations consultants who gained reputations for “union-busting.” The pace of change accelerated after Ronald Reagan became President and swiftly crushed the strike of the professional air traffic controllers and began appointing NLRB members who were less sympathetic to organized labor than some of their predecessors.

Now, the strike is frequently turned against the workers it has historically served, according to Uehlein and many other labor leaders. In numerous instances, workers have gone on strike and have been permanently replaced by their employers and the union that represented them has been decertified as a bargaining agent.

In response to this development, unions have been seeking ways to put pressure on companies without striking and risking the loss of jobs.

Jerry Tucker, a former assistant regional director of the United Auto Workers in St. Louis who is considered the informal guru of the alternative strategies movement, cautioned that these tactics do not always mean instant success.

More Difficult Way

“It’s a lot more difficult than striking and takes a lot of education. You have to build solid membership support and a lot of discipline. . . . This is no fun,” he said.

Tucker and the members of UAW Local 282 unveiled what is considered the first successful in-plant strategy of the contemporary era at Moog Automotive Inc., a St. Louis manufacturer of auto suspension systems, late in 1981. Moog, a profitable company with annual sales of about $100 million, presented a “final contract offer” that would have sliced $2.50 an hour from the wages of its 500 employees.

Tucker said the union feared that if it struck, Moog might simply replace its well-paid veteran workers with recruits from the ranks of 100,000 unemployed people in the St. Louis area.

Instead, the union engineered a campaign that featured tactics management had never before encountered. In one instance, skilled trades employees left their work stations and went into the company’s engineering office en masse to complain about plant safety conditions. Employees began to refuse overtime assignments, and the union held regular rallies at lunch hour and break time.

On Jan. 15, 1982, most of the plant’s work force staged a one-day strike to protest Moog’s withholding of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday, according to Joe Smith, president of Local 282. Other employees “worked to the rule,” which cut production.

Some Workers Fired

But waging war against a company this way takes a toll, Tucker emphasized. In six months, seven workers were fired and 230 were disciplined. “You have to create a solidarity fund to take care of those people who inevitably will get fired in these situations,” he said. Tucker added that regaining these workers’ jobs also becomes a priority in any settlement negotiations.

After six months, Moog returned to the bargaining table. The employees got a 36% increase in wages and benefits over a 40-month period and a variety of other contract improvements, including King’s birthday as a paid holiday. The seven fired workers were reinstated with back pay.

Subsequently, Tucker worked with UAW locals at a small cooling fan plant in Rolla, Mo., and the large LTV-Vought aerospace plant in Grand Prairie, Tex., in successful battles against contract concessions.

In-plant strategies have also worked in the service sector, Uehlein said. For example, he cited the case of nearly 2,700 nurses and other health care workers at three city-owned Boston hospitals who used the tactics in 1984 and 1985.

In January, 1985, the union started a paid advertising campaign using radio spots and bus placards featuring the slogan “We’re Worth It” an attempt to draw attention to the fact that they were among the lowest-paid employees of any major city in the country. The local also put a lot of effort into informing newspaper editorial writers of the merits of their case, an approach not often used by unions.

Victory for Nurses

Nancy Mills, executive director of Service Employees International Union, Local 285, said that when bargaining stalemated, the nurses initiated a “work to rule” program that led to victory.

She acknowledged, however, that two years later, when the nurses launched another overtime ban, “it didn’t play as well.”

Not all in-plant campaigns succeed. Richard Belous, a labor economist with the Conference Board, a New York-based business research organization, said they are difficult to sustain. “It’s hard to keep whipping up the fervor,” he said. “Management might threaten to scale back production or move work overseas,” he added.

One union that has waged a long and as yet unfruitful in-plant campaign is the cement workers, affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers.

The union launched its campaign in 1984, after it was unable to reach agreement on a new contract with several major cement companies. The companies implemented their contract proposals and, despite a vigorous pressure campaign, several thousand cement workers around the country still are working without a contract.

Myron Bernstein, director of labor relations for Kaiser Cement in Oakland, said the company reduced wages, compelled employees to pay for part of their medical benefits, cut overtime pay, expanded its ability to contract out work and gained increased flexibility in operating its cement plant near Victorville.

Automation a Factor

He said he believes that the fact that the company’s plant was “highly automated” significantly reduced the effectiveness of the union’s campaign.

Several companies have responded to the advent of in-plant strategies by instituting lockouts. For example, Lockheed Shipbuilding Co. in Seattle has locked out its regular work force of 690 hourly employees, members of the Seattle Metal Trades Council (AFL-CIO), since Nov. 14.

“During the month of September, we estimate our productivity dropped 15%, essentially due to a slowdown. That’s what led us to the lockout,” said John Hays, the company’s vice president.

The company has hired 475 temporary replacement workers, continues to complete jobs and continues to bargain, Hays said.

The McDonnell Douglas dispute also shows few signs of quick resolution. The company faces opposition from the UAW and Local 720 of the International Assn. of Machinists, which represents 5,700 McDonnell Douglas employees in Torrance and Huntington Beach. The Machinists have similar objections to company terms and are working without a contract, business agent Mike Smith said.

McDonnell Proposal

McDonnell offered wage increases of 3% across the board in the first two years of the contract, plus lump-sum bonuses all three years, calling its proposal the best in the aerospace industry this year. The unions said the wage package is satisfactory but balked at several other terms.

In particular, they object to making employees pay part of their health insurance, a reduction of medical coverage and a diminution of retirement benefits. The UAW opposes a management proposal broadening its ability to work the union’s members outside their normal job classification, a move that would give the company greater operating flexibility but one that the union contends would diminish job security.

The unions say the company is not entitled to “concessions” because it had solid profits the last three years and has a huge backlog of orders. The UAW rejected the company’s proposals by overwhelming votes in October and November, and the machinists rejected the offer in November and December.

During the fall, the UAW distributed leaflets entitled “Alternatives to Going on Strike.” The flyers dealt with slowdowns, refusal to work voluntary overtime, intermittent partial strikes and other activities that workers might engage in and informed employees that management could institute a lockout once the contract had expired.

Changes Implemented

The company began implementing its proposals in December, saying that negotiations had reached an impasse. By March, virtually all the controversial proposals were in place.

Workers have gradually escalated their job actions. In addition to the work slowdown, employees three times have stayed off the job for half or full days. Safety inspectors have ordered equipment out of service by strict adherence to safety standards and company specifications.

Berghoff and union lawyer Jay Roth said in an interview that the union is not condoning any actions that would make a plane unsafe. “We recognize our obligations to the public,” Roth said.

Management has countered with two pay raises and a warning to employees that the company “would no longer stand by and permit” such unprotected union activities as “intermittent strikes, slowdowns, sabotage and other disruptive activity.”

Company’s Viewpoint

Asked to describe the unions’ activities, McDonnell Douglas spokesman Dave Eastman said: “There have been instances of less than diligent efforts on the part of the employees in the plants, not by all of them, but by some of them. We have not and will not quantify it.”

In an interview, Eastman said the production situation has improved in recent weeks. He said that no workers have been fired or disciplined specifically for participating in a slowdown, although he said it is possible that some workers have been disciplined for inadequate performance on the job.

Berghoff said the company’s production problems have not abated and will increase in the near future. He said the union will attempt to dramatically affect production by encouraging a “work to rule” campaign. He laid out some of the union’s strategy at a rally in Long Beach Sunday.

From the union’s point of view, one of the best aspects of the in-plant strategy is that its members stay on the job and collect their wages and benefits. “People can’t afford to be out of work very long these days,” said one UAW member. “We may have come on the answer to the 1980s strike.”