Caterpillar, UAW Agree to Talks but Cling to Demands : Labor: Federal mediator will preside. Company continues to solicit replacement workers in the six-month strike.
The corrosive standoff between Caterpillar Inc. and striking United Auto Workers took confusing turns Friday as both sides agreed to resume bargaining but then quickly vowed not to budge from earlier demands.
The talks, the first in the lengthy work stoppage to be held with a federal mediator, are scheduled to begin in a Chicago suburb on Monday morning. At about the same time, the company, the world’s top manufacturer of heavy construction equipment, said it plans to commence job interviews to replace some 13,000 union members who have walked off the job.
The strike is in its sixth month. The latest twist in what analysts see as a watershed power struggle between labor and management came only days after Caterpillar chairman Donald Fites declared that he “didn’t see a role” for a mediator in the talks. And union negotiators had repeatedly rejected the idea.
But the logjam apparently was broken Thursday after Bernard Delury, the director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, met secretly with Fites and UAW President Owen Bieber and won their commitment to resume talks.
James Power, a spokesman for the federal agency, said that Delury would personally serve as the mediator in the dispute “because of the importance of the company and the union.”
It was difficult to tell whether the resumption of talks meant that both sides had truly blinked, or whether they were merely posturing for advantage and sympathy as the stalemate has increasingly come under the national media and political spotlight.
Only Wednesday, for example, Democratic presidential contender Bill Clinton met with picketers and company officials at corporate headquarter in Peoria, Ill. He used the visit to criticize President Bush for opposing a ban on the kind of striker replacement action that Caterpillar is threatening.
At a press conference in the White House rose garden Friday, Bush said he felt both sides should be free to do whatever the law allows and that the government should take a hands-off approach toward such labor disputes.
“And I just feel that free collective bargaining under the law is the proper approach, not intervention by the federal government the minute a strike takes place,” Bush said of the months-old strike. “I don’t think it’s good for labor and I don’t think it’s good for business.”
In accepting Delury’s invitation, company and union leaders said they agreed to meet without preconditions. But they immediately began splitting hairs over what constituted a precondition.
Jerry Brust, Caterpillar’s chief labor negotiator, said the so-called final offer the company made nearly two months ago would still be the company’s bottom line. And even though the two sides would be sitting down together again, Brust said he still considered the talks at an impasse.
“The most likely way for the impasse to be broken is for the union to put a revised offer on the table,” Brust added.
As for the UAW, spokesman Reg McGhee said he couldn’t comment on what the union’s negotiating stance would be. But McGhee stressed that the union wasn’t agreeing to the concept of mediation itself just because it agreed to sit down with the company again while a mediator looked on.
“At this point, the only thing that we can confirm is that we intend to go back (to the bargaining table),” McGhee said.
Despite such cautionary talk, on the picket line the news of renewed talks was seen as a hopeful sign.
“I see some light at the end of the tunnel,” striker Richard Nelson told the Associated Press as he stood outside a Caterpillar plant in East Peoria, Ill. “I sincerely hope this is a back to work effort on their part.”
The strike began last November and has crippled production capacity at Caterpillar plants in East Peoria and elsewhere in Illinois. The company has offered modest pay hikes and job security guarantees, but also wants to tinker with health care and pension programs as well as impose lower wage scales on future employees.
Sensing such a pact could gradually erode its bargaining clout, union officials have insisted that the firm continue a long-standing industry practice and pattern its contract after wage and benefit packages already in place at other large farm and construction equipment makers.
The stalemate took its most ominous turn when Caterpillar said it would unilaterally impose its final offer last Monday and warned strikers that they risked being fired if they didn’t return to work. Since then at least a few hundred UAW members and possibly more have crossed picket lines, but the ranks of the strikers have largely held.
Meanwhile, though, the company claims it has been deluged with calls and letters from prospective job applicants. Analysts say any attempt by Caterpillar to actually make good on its dismissal threat would mark the most serious corporate assault ever on organized labor in this country and could spark violence.
Jon Rosenbloom, a Chicago lawyer and author now writing a study of a fiery 1983 Arizona dispute that ended with the replacement of some 2,000 striking copper miners, said he saw some parallels in the current dispute and expressed concern about violence if a settlement isn’t reached. “Within a matter of days of the time that first replacement crosses the line there is going to be a tremendous explosion,” he predicted.
Such assessments clearly underscore the clash of wills and viewpoints that have fueled this conflict from the first.
To company president Gerald Flaherty, for example, the stakes involve no less than the company’s ability to remain competitive and provide a source of good-paying jobs for years to come.
“The best job security we can offer employees is our long-term, future success as a company,” Flaherty said in Peoria earlier this week. “For this to happen, we must continue to be competitive in markets around the world.”
But to East Peoria machine shop driller Dennis Conroy, the issues turn on principle and credibility. “It boils down to whether you trust the company or you trust the union,” explained Conroy. “The way they’ve treated us, I think the answer is pretty clear. The top managers have just told us to go to hell.”
Conroy and others in the union clearly believe that the company can’t afford to do away with such a highly skilled work force without damaging its most prized corporate asset--a reputation for producing top quality goods that command premium prices. To bolster its position, the UAW is discussing a plan to organize a nationwide boycott of Caterpillar products.
The potential weakness of such a scheme lies simply in the fact that what Caterpillar specializes in is earthmoving equipment, not a consumer item like tuna or grapes. And nearly 60% of its $10 billion in annual revenues are earned from foreign purchasers who may care little about a domestic U.S. labor dispute.
From its standpoint, Caterpillar is betting that heavy response to its call for job applicants will gradually create a stampede of nervous UAW members back inside the plant gates. The company has run help-wanted advertisements in several Illinois newspapers this week and claims it is fielding tens of thousands of inquiries a day for jobs. Starting at $16 an hour, this is by far some of the best-paying work available in Central Illinois.
Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this story.
Key Events in Labor Dispute
Here is a chronology of events in the Caterpillar Inc.-United Auto Workers contract dispute:
1991: Contract Ends
Sept. 30--Three-year contract expires.
Oct. 31--Contract talks fail.
Nov. 4--Union begins limited strike by 2,400 workers in Decatur and East Peoria in Illinois.
Nov. 7--Caterpillar locks out 5,600 employees at plants in Aurora and East Peoria in Illinois.
Dec. 2--Caterpillar layoffs at plants in Joliet, Ill., and York, Pa., bring number of workers on strike, lockout or layoff to 9,800.
1992: Strike Expands
Feb. 16--Caterpillar begins calling back locked-out workers.
Feb. 17--UAW expands strike to plants in Aurora and East Peoria, adds formerly locked-out workers to strike ranks.
Feb. 19--Caterpillar makes final contract offer.
March 5--Caterpillar declares talks at an impasse.
March 25--Negotiations resume in Bridgeton, Mo.
March 26--Bridgeton, Mo., negotiations break down.
April 1--Caterpillar informs UAW that it will impose final offer and says strikers who don’t return to work April 6 risk being replaced.
April 1--UAW expands strike to Caterpillar plants in Mapleton, Mossville and Pontiac, all in Illinois. Number of striking workers grows to nearly 13,000.
April 6--UAW members gather by the thousands at Caterpillar plants to discourage union members from returning to work.
April 8--Caterpillar reports receiving thousands of telephone calls from people seeking replacement jobs.
April 9--UAW President Owen Bieber and Caterpillar Chairman Donald Fites meet privately with Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director Bernard DeLury.
April 10--Caterpillar and UAW agree to resume negotiations.
Source: Times Wire Services
