‘Corporate Campaign’ Pays Off for Unions
Union construction workers have fallen on hard times in recent years because of the rapid growth of both non-union construction companies and “double-breasted” firms, unionized outfits that create non-union subsidiaries to evade their labor contracts.
But the fortunes of the “aristocrats of labor,” as construction workers have been known for more than a century because of their relatively high pay and skills, are now taking a turn for the better.
They recently won significant victories over two giant, Tokyo-based construction companies that are building Japanese auto plants in the United States. And, with a Democratic majority in the Senate, there is a good chance that next year Congress will outlaw what anti-unionists call the “dual shop” by requiring double-breasted companies to apply the terms of their union contracts to their non-union subsidiaries.
Such a bill passed the House easily in April but the Senate adjourned without voting on it. If the new Congress approves the measure, as expected, it faces an almost certain veto by an unsympathetic President Reagan. Union strategists, however, say there may well be enough votes to override a Reagan veto.
Passage of the measure would not halt, but would certainly slow, the increase of non-union construction companies, which now do an estimated 70% of the construction in the United States, compared to less than 40% a few years ago. Even if the bill fails next year, congressional support for it is so strong that it should become law in the post-Reagan era.
Far more immediate benefits for union workers, though, will come from the two unqualified successes of the construction unions in their dealings with Japanese firms.
Construction unions in Indiana and Kentucky recently signed, without a battle, an agreement with Kajima International. The firm will build a $480-million auto plant in Lafayette, Ind., for a joint venture of Fuji Heavy Industries, which builds Subaru cars, and Isuzu Motors. The agreement provides that the company will hire its workers from union hiring halls.
It took a year-long struggle--and hundreds of thousands of dollars--for 16 AFL-CIO construction unions and the construction division of the Teamsters to get a similar agreement two weeks ago from Ohbayashi Corp., one of Japan’s biggest construction companies. Ohbayashi is building an $800-million assembly plant for Toyota Motor Corp. in Georgetown, Ky.
The unions mistakenly didn’t put up much of a fight when non-union workers were hired to build the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Not only was the construction done non-union, but non-union workers are now also assembling Nissan cars.
So when Ohbayashi a year ago declared its intention to use non-union workers to build the Toyota plant in Kentucky, Robert Georgine, president of the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, saw a dangerous trend developing for the already hard-pressed construction unions. Other major construction jobs done by huge Japanese firms in the United States might well follow the examples of Nissan and Ohbayashi.
Georgine and other union leaders decided to use the “corporate campaign” tactic, which first gained national recognition when Ray Rogers, then with Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers of America, used it in the late 1970s against J. P. Stevens Co. Stevens, which had been the symbol of anti-unionism in the South for nearly two decades, agreed in 1980 to negotiate union contracts.
Corporate campaigns have been used several times since, although with less resounding success. But now they are potentially formidable weapons in labor’s arsenal.
To put it to use, unions must learn the detailed financial workings of the target company to find the most effective places to exert their economic and political pressures instead of, or in addition to, going on strike. The campaign against Ohbayashi, like the one against Stevens, is a classic example of how the tactic works:
The unions hired the Victor Kamber Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, and they first went after Toyota, which had hired Ohbayashi to build the plant.
The first blow came when union lobbyists persuaded Congress last spring to deny Toyota special tax breaks that were expected to be worth as much as $100 million. That obviously hurt, but when Toyota still didn’t insist that Ohbayashi use workers from union hiring halls, the corporate campaign was intensified.
A Kamber Group specialist, Susan Kellock, helped organize a wide array of legal actions against the construction firm and Toyota in Kentucky, forcing the companies into lengthy court fights over serious issues ranging from zoning to the substantial tax incentives that Kentucky was giving to Toyota to locate in that state.
The unions mounted a massive “media blitz” in Kentucky against Toyota and Ohbayashi, charging among other things that the state was, in effect, giving a “locate here” incentive of more than $300 million to the company, not the advertised $125 million.
A public opinion poll taken by the University of Kentucky before the union campaign began showed that 70% of those polled approved of the Toyota plan to locate in Kentucky and of the incentives to attract the company, Kellock said. A similar poll after the union campaign showed that 71% disapproved.
Union protest rallies were organized in Washington and New York around the Japanese Embassy and consulate, where leaflets were distributed charging that the Japanese were undercutting the wages of American workers.
After some final, intensive negotiations, Ohbayashi agreed to hire workers through union hiring halls. William J. Curtis, Ohbayashi’s attorney, said the company “now has a broader view of American customs and what American labor contemplates.” Ohbayashi, he said, wanted to get on with building the Toyota plant and stop spending time and money responding to lawsuits, attacks in the media and battles in Congress.
Not everyone was pleased to hear of the settlement. Daniel Bennett, executive vice president of the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors, called it a “double-cross of the free-enterprise system, and we’re going to pursue every legal means we have available to either stop the project or reverse the agreement.”
But the company and unions are convinced that they have negotiated a legal agreement. If it holds up against challenges, as expected, it could slow the erosion of unions in the construction industry, help the United Auto Workers get a contract with Toyota when the plant is opened and, perhaps most significantly, burnish the concept of “corporate campaigns” as a valuable tool for unions in the battles against anti-union companies.
Justice Delayed . . .
Music, as William Congreve wrote about 300 years ago, does have charms to soothe a savage breast. But music can also enrage even non-savage breasts, a fact that cost Ralphs Grocery clerk Gary Boyd eight months’ wages.
Recordings of two punk rock pieces, “Meat Puppets” and “Suicidal Tendencies,” led to Boyd’s trouble one night last April, while he was working in Ralphs’ Hawthorne store. The person in charge of the store’s public address system aired the two recordings.
Boyd, who had worked for Ralphs for 11 years with an excellent work record, objected to what he called the “violent, inciting” music.
When it continued, he committed what he later conceded was a “spontaneous, irrational act,” tossing a watermelon onto the floor, near another worker, instead of into the bin where it should have gone. No one was hit, but the watermelon burst open.
Boyd was fired by Ralphs.
His union, United Food and Commercial Workers’ Local 1440, filed a grievance on his behalf. Arbitrator Wayne Estes, ordered Ralphs to reinstate Boyd, but without back pay, on grounds that the company’s loss of the watermelon was minimal.
The arbitration took so long, though, that Boyd wasn’t reinstated until last week, thus costing him his income for the past eight months.
The moral of the story involves not so much the effect that music has on people but the need to speed the arbitration system. The system does help provide on-the-job justice but, as in the courts, damage can be done when justice is so long delayed.
