Car-Haulers’ Strike Blow to Teamsters Chief

The nationwide strike of 20,000 Teamsters who haul millions of new autos to dealers each year has not yet had a major effect on new-car sales, but it represents a significant blow to the union’s controversial international president, Jackie Presser.

Industry officials say it will be three weeks or more before domestic car dealers feel the pinch of the car-haulers’ walkout, although foreign car dealers say they are already having trouble getting vehicles.

The domestic car manufacturers say that, so far, they have been able to store cars and trucks that dealers have not picked up themselves directly from factories, truck terminals or rail yards.

A spokesman for the National Automobile Transporters Division, representing the 39 struck car-hauling firms, said that they are not trying to operate behind the Teamsters picket lines but that “the manufacturers will have to slow production down considerably if this isn’t settled soon.”

A spokesman for General Motors said only that production is continuing and that the company, like other manufacturers, has no immediate plans to curtail operations.

GM’s problem of storage in the Los Angeles area has been eased by the coincidental closing of its plant in Van Nuys for a model changeover on July 26, the day the strike started. The plant isn’t scheduled to resume production until Aug. 26.

Typical of most domestic dealers is Bell Chevrolet in Tujunga, where manager Don Metz said there is “about a 40-day supply of cars on hand.”

However, he said, “We may try to pick up some cars ourselves.”

While the industry struggles to function during the strike, another struggle is going on within the Teamsters Union.

Despite Presser’s own letters to car haulers urging acceptance of a tentative agreement, the proposed pact was rejected by 81% of them.

The dissident Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which called the agreement contract a sellout to management, claimed the overwhelming rejection as a major victory.

Aides to Presser said the contract contained all that the union negotiating committee felt was possible without a prolonged strike.

But Steve Kindred, a former car hauler who is a TDU representative serving in Detroit as a strike coordinator, said the vote “stemmed from a history of cuts imposed on some of our members by the international in collusion with management.”

For example, he said, during the now-expired contract, a joint union-management team “imposed a two-tier wage structure for new hires in the (car-hauling companies’) yards and offices, and, while drivers and mechanics were not affected, it was typical of the collusion going on between management and top union officers that has infuriated the members.”

Now, he said, “because of the distrust of the top international officers, members want to make sure every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ crossed before they agree to any new contract.”

The rejected contract proposal provided for a 60-cent hourly wage boost in each year of a three-year pact. However, Kindred notes that 31 cents of the first-year increase was “due to us under the old contract’s cost-of-living provision.”

The base rate for drivers is $13.20 an hour.

Pressure on the union officers, strikers and car-hauling companies to reach a settlement will increase as the cars and trucks pile up in storage yards. Kindred predicted that the strike could be prolonged because “they (top union leaders and management) will let the strikers hang out to dry for a couple of weeks more before offering some more token increases and expect the strikers to come crawling back to work. That tactic won’t work. They will have to offer something substantial before the strike will be over.”

The TDU, which has been fighting the international union leaders for nearly a decade, may be exaggerating its influence on members who voted against the proposed contract, but clearly the rejection marked a significant defeat for Presser.

Hollywood May Ease Rules

Hollywood has had a long history of rigid, and in many cases, ridiculous lines of jurisdiction between workers. But a tentative contract reached last week between producers and unions may signal “The End” of that reputation.

The tentative pact between the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers and unions representing more than 30,000 “back lot” workers will allow for much greater freedom of movement among jobs. Until now, the industry has been notorious for rules that, for example, prevented a worker who handled artificial flowers from handling live plants or required the production company to call in a painter to touch up a small scratch on a set rather than let another craft worker make the repair.

The lines were designed decades ago to help prevent companies from overworking some employees and thus avoid hiring more workers and to ensure that the jobs of highly paid skilled workers weren’t given to lower-paid workers. But too often the rules reached the point of absurdity.

Years ago, almost all films were produced in studios in or near Hollywood. Today, an estimated half of all motion pictures are produced outside the area, although most television work remains here. (Over the last two decades, union membership has basically remained stable because of the increase in TV production.)

The shift away from Hollywood was caused by a variety of factors, such as the demand for realistic locations and lower labor costs. However, the tightly drawn jurisdictional lines were clearly a major factor as well.

To be sure, there has been a gradual easing of jurisdictional lines, in part because of new technologies. Whereas years ago an entire crew was needed to move certain pieces of heavy equipment, now individual operators can move the smaller, more compact gear themselves. Meanwhile, many independent producers have begun using non-union crews.

Nick Counter, president of the employer association that represents theatrical film producers and TV companies, said the tentative contract marks a “recognition by the unions that they had to bend the (jurisdictional) lines to increase efficiency and encourage production to stay here in California.”

Under the new proposal, workers can freely interchange jobs once a producer has hired at least seven workers for a show that is being made in a studio or on location within 30 miles of it. At more distant locations, the producer must hire a minimum of 10 crew members before they can move freely between jobs.

When workers take jobs in a classification that pays more than their regular job, they get the higher pay rate. However, if workers are shifted to lower-paying categories, they maintain their initial base rate.

The plans affect such job categories as electricians, prop makers, carpenters and grips (equipment handlers). Not affected are workers in more highly specialized categories, such as film editors, sound technicians and costume makers.

The industry is known for unusual job classifications, such as “best boy,” an old English theater term for the assistant to the chief lighting technician.

Like the job titles, the wage rates vary substantially, but the industry average for “behind-the-scenes” workers is $16.25 an hour, plus about $3 in fringe benefits.

The proposed pact--which will be voted on by mail within the next 10 days--provides across-the-board wage increases of 90 cents an hour the first year, $1 the second and $1.10 the third. In addition, pension benefits will be increased by 25% for future retirees and 10% for those already retired.

The contract also includes a substantial increase in money for the workers’ health and welfare programs. Under the previous pact, the workers’ programs received 5.4% of the producers’ gross income from the sale of cassettes. That will increase to 6.75% of the gross on sales of cassettes garnering $1 million or less and 8.1% for those bringing in more than $1 million.

In addition, to resolve a dispute over union claims on cassette sales, the industry agreed to put $3.5 million into the health and welfare fund, $1.5 million of which will be used specifically for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.

The wage and benefit increases seem reasonably good compared to those provided in some other recently negotiated union contracts, but they are not nearly as dramatic as the section that drastically modifies formal jurisdictional lines. That could do more to improve the image of the industry’s workers than any other they’ve negotiated.

Victory Claimed Too Soon

The AFL-CIO would appear to have prematurely claimed a major victory last year when Congress voted to require companies filing for bankruptcy court protection to get approval from a bankruptcy judge before canceling their union contracts.

Although the new law has helped unions maintain their contracts in a few instances, the United Steelworkers lost the only major test of the law so far.

“We don’t have exact figures, but several judges have just rubber-stamped management claims that they had to cancel their union agreements when they use the Chapter 11 bankruptcy law,” said AFL-CIO spokesman Rex Hardesty in Washington. Under Chapter 11, companies in the process of reorganization can continue to operate without fear of creditors’ claims.

By far the largest of those cases involves Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, which a bankruptcy judge said recently could abrogate its contract. The AFL-CIO lobbied Congress intensely for more than six months last year for a law to offset the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Bildisco Co., a building supply company, had a legal right to unilaterally cancel its contract with the Teamsters Union in New Jersey.

The issue became a major labor cause after Continental Airlines filed under Chapter 11 in September, 1983, and then canceled its union contracts and cut employees’ wages by up to 50%.

The unions wanted Congress to pass a law against cancellation of contracts but claimed victory anyway when Congress agreed to a modest compromise that gave the courts authority to prevent abuse of the bankruptcy law.

However, an indication of the weakness of the compromise was the decision of the federal bankruptcy judge in the Wheeling-Pittsburgh case to accept the company’s exaggerated contention that, if the union refused to accept wage and fringe benefit cuts of nearly $7 an hour and went on strike, the firm would be forced to liquidate.

Although the union did strike, the company continues to operate. Furthermore, it offered the union a pact that the firm said would cut labor costs by only about $4 an hour, not the $7 an hour that it told the bankruptcy judge was needed for survival.

The company’s last proposal to the union would have meant an average pay cut of $3.37, bringing workers down to $8.07 an hour. That would mean a reduction of more than $7,000 a year to an annual wage of about $16,000.

The workers had already taken pay cuts in previous contracts, and, while their union said they would take another cut to help the firm, they balked at the size of the company’s proposal.

And the new law that was supposed to help protect the workers did them no good. Congress should strengthen the law to make union contracts more meaningful.