Ban on Striker Replacements Heads for Vote

One of the most heated and emotional political battles between labor and management in a generation will climax today when the U.S. Senate casts a critical vote on legislation that would prohibit corporations from replacing striking union workers.

Both corporate America and organized labor have poured their lobbying resources into the bitter congressional fight, one both sides see as critical to determining who will have the upper hand in the American workplace of the 21st Century.

Business groups fear that the striker-replacement bill would give unions unbridled power and sharply reduce management’s authority over its workers. Union leaders, joined by the Clinton Administration, believe that passage of the bill is vital to the survival of an American labor movement badly shaken by the growing willingness of employers to resolve labor disputes by firing striking workers.

“This bill would make strikes risk-free and tip the balance of power at the bargaining table to the unions,” warned Dan Yeager, a spokesman for the Labor Policy Assn., a management lobbying group.

William Klinefelter, chief lobbyist for the industrial-union department of the AFL-CIO, countered: “This goes right to the heart of what the trade union movement is all about--this issue is such an emotional one for our members because almost all of them have been on strike at one time or another in their lives.”

While the struggle intensifies, Rosemount, a Mississippi River town south of Minneapolis, finds itself on the front lines.

Indeed, while business groups argue that companies only rarely use replacements for strikers, union officials warn that the story at the CF Industries, Inc., fertilizer plant here is an example of an all-too-frequent scene today: one in which U.S. firms ranging from Caterpillar Inc., to Greyhound Lines Inc., are displaying an increasing willingness to replace striking workers and eliminate their unions--or at least threaten to do so--whenever contract negotiations bog down.

The rapid spread of such tactics during the last decade has had a “chilling effect on unions and contract negotiations,” said Bernard Brommer, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO. “Now most unions simply won’t go out on strike. They’ll keep their workers in no matter what.”

In Rosemount, far from the arcane debate in Washington over legislative language, the issues are being played out in real life for workers like Doug Greene and supervisors like Gary Cater. Management and labor are locked in an economic war with a rising toll in financial hardship and emotional stress on all sides.

Twenty-four union workers are fighting to regain the jobs that they lost two months ago when management fired them and brought in permanent non-union replacements immediately after their local union called a strike. Sixteen years after their last strike, the workers have found, to their horror, that it is no longer an effective weapon against management.

Even before the walkout began, CF Industries made it clear that it was ready to take a strike here in its only unionized facility. Weeks before the union decided to walk, the firm began advertising for replacement workers and building living quarters for out-of-state replacements in the plant’s parking lot.

“We had absolutely no choice, the union struck us at the height of our busy season,” said Dan Van Tassel, spokesman for CF Industries at its headquarters in Long Grove, Ill.

Now each day, picketing CF Industries workers like Ken McCloud--under the watchful eyes of a phalanx of security guards and cameras--angrily scream at their replacements driving in and out of the plant’s gates and berate supervisors for refusing to reopen contract negotiations.

“Hey, scab! Scab! How does it feel?” McCloud shouted one afternoon at a passing truck. The replacement worker in the driver’s seat stared stonily ahead, refusing to return McCloud’s glare from inches away.

As the strike drags on, the emotions on both sides are reaching a jagged edge, leading to increasingly dramatic confrontations.

“Why are you doing this to us?” Greene shouted in one exchange with Cater. “All we want to do is work. Let us do our jobs.”

Cater, clearly tense, stopped his truck outside the plant gate to shout back at McCloud for insulting his wife. “I’ll meet you any day if you talk about my wife!” he screamed. “Leave my family out of this!”

“Why should we? You haven’t left our families out! There are 24 families out here, not 24 guys!” was Greene’s retort. His wife, Gail, and their two young sons watched the confrontation from the roadside.

“As time passes, the guys are getting more and more frustrated; they don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Gail Greene, who now supports the family with her job as a nurse.

Life on the picket line is particularly hard for Greene and the other union members because their lost jobs at CF Industries were so good--and offered a ticket into the middle class. Workers here had been union members since the Rosemount plant opened in 1962 and they had enjoyed high wages--as much as $36,000 a year with overtime--for relatively unskilled work.

“It just blows my mind that we are out here,” said Scott Dohman, a striking equipment operator. “I was proud to tell people I worked at CF Industries.”

Rick Stoffel, a CF Industries crane operator for 11 years, added: “This is the best job I’ve ever had. I would have been here 30 years.”

But trouble hit last winter when the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, which represents the CF Industries workers, rejected a company demand for a new contract allowing the firm to hire non-union employees to work alongside union members.

“We were willing to compromise. . . . We don’t understand why they went on strike over that,” Van Tassel said.

But now, with their only steady income coming from $305 a week in unemployment benefits and $50 in strike pay, the CF Industries workers are beginning to feel the pinch. “I’m probably going to lose my house,” Stoffel sighed.

Increasingly, Stoffel and other workers here look to Washington and passage of the striker-replacement legislation for their salvation. While the legislation would not prevent firms like CF Industries from replacing workers temporarily during strikes, it would require management to hire them back after a settlement was reached.

“If we had that bill, we would be back at work right now,” said Paul Linder, a CF Industries striker and father of four.

But in Washington, the debate over the striker-replacement bill has worn down into an ideological war of words and competing studies, as both management groups and labor fight to win over a handful of key swing votes that will be needed today to break an expected Republican filibuster in the Senate.

“Organized labor is trying to achieve politically (with this legislation) what it can’t in the marketplace, which is to gain more members and more clout,” said Jeff Joseph, a top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Yet union lobbyists point to a new survey by the Bureau of National Affairs, a Washington research organization, showing that 82% of companies surveyed said they would either use replacement workers or threaten their use in upcoming contract talks with their unions if Congress does not pass the striker replacement ban.

In today’s showdown in the Senate--the striker-replacement ban already has passed the House--union lobbyists concede that they can count on just 56 or 57 votes, short of the 60 votes needed in a critical vote to break a filibuster and allow a full vote on the legislation.

If the bill does go down, the workers at CF Industries recognize it will have a direct impact on their futures.

“What is going to happen to the middle class if companies can just do this all the time?” Greene asked. “We will have two classes in this country, the high and the low. . . . All the companies will bust their unions.”