UAW Elects Griffith New Union Chief at Douglas Aircraft Plant in Long Beach
United Auto Workers at Douglas Aircraft Co.’s Long Beach manufacturing plant have narrowly elected a new union president who favors more cooperation with the company, eliminating obstacles to the resumption of contract talks stalled since March.
Doug Griffith, who campaigned for an end to the union’s confrontational approach, received 51.3% of 8,794 votes cast Tuesday and Wednesday. Griffith defeated incumbent Bob Berghoff, who warned that his loss would lead to a “company-dominated union.”
Douglas Aircraft, a subsidiary of McDonnell Douglas Corp., is a major Orange County employer. About half of the 28,000 employees at the Long Beach division live in Orange County, spokesman David Eastman said. In addition, about half of the plant’s 15,000 active or retired UAW members are Orange County residents.
Berghoff, 43, leader of a failed 17-week strike in 1983 and 1984, was stripped of his authority by the UAW’s international union after running a local election in May in which both sides accused each other of stealing votes. Berghoff was fired by Douglas after leading a half-day walkout in June.
“The people were just fed up with the chaos,” said Griffith, 48, a friend and confidant of Berghoff until 1986, when Berghoff removed him as the local’s bargaining committee chairman.
Griffith, who received 34% of the vote to Berghoff’s 46% in a three-person primary on Aug. 11, denied Berghoff a third term as president of Lakewood-based Local 148. The local is the UAW’s second largest in the West, with 10,000 active members and 5,000 retirees.
Griffith’s 45-person slate also gained a majority of seats on the local’s executive committee and bargaining committee, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which ran the election under federal court order.
Berghoff said he had no confidence in the accuracy of the tabulations but had not decided whether to challenge the results in court.
After the election is certified, probably within a month, Griffith said he expects to quickly reach an agreement with the company. A spokesman for the company said Wednesday that it hopes to settle “in the near future.” The two sides are not far apart on key medical insurance fee and seniority issues, Griffith said.
Labor agreements at the massive Douglas plant in Long Beach and a smaller one in Torrance expired in October. Of the nine unions at Douglas Aircraft, only the UAW, which represents 10,000 of 28,900 workers, still has no contract.
A worker slowdown has been in effect at Douglas since last November, when the UAW, with cooperation from the 5,900-member local of International Assn. of Machinists, informally implemented the “build it by the book” strategy.
In late December, Douglas Aircraft notified its customers that labor unrest would delay aircraft deliveries in 1987. It was 10 aircrafts behind schedule in April and is presently five behind, a company spokeswoman said.
Effects Lingering
Griffith said the slowdown strategy has been “stone dead” since the machinists settled their contract in July.
But the harmful effects of the slowdown continue to be felt, according to aerospace industry analysts. They say it has delayed airliner deliveries and cut the company’s share of the aircraft market, in which Douglas trails Boeing Co. and Europe’s Airbus Industrie in the competition for new orders.
Douglas Aircraft’s persistent labor problem “certainly makes airlines wonder if they can depend on the deliveries,” said John Simon, an analyst with Seidler AMDEC Securities in Los Angeles.
In addition to the Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach, other McDonnell Douglas operations employ more than 7,000 Orange County residents. None belongs to the auto workers union, however.
About 6,000 people are employed at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. in Huntington Beach, and the company’s Information Systems Group employs more than 1,200 workers in Newport Beach, Cypress and Irvine, company officials said.
Times staff writer John Tighe contributed to this report.
