COLUMN ONE : Labor Wars Hit Home in Decatur : Caught in the cross-fire of three major disputes, the Illinois prairie city is an unwitting symbol, some say victim, of the global struggle between big business and big unions.

On this city’s northeast side, where strip shopping centers give way to smokestacks and cornfields, 22nd Street is the demarcation line for a global battle on three fronts.

It’s where 4,000 workers--7% of the local work force--have set up picket lines to protest their treatment by three multinational employers: one Japanese, one British and one American.

On this 100th anniversary of Labor Day, Decatur--a farming and manufacturing center that calls itself the “Pride of the Prairie”--stands as unwitting symbol, and some say victim, of the long and evolving struggle between big business and big labor.

Workers are on strike against Peoria-based Caterpillar Inc. and Japanese-owned Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., while their soul mates at A.E. Staley Manufacturing Co.--a home-grown concern bought several years ago by the British conglomerate Tate & Lyle--have been locked out for 14 months.

It’s a triple jolt this central Illinois town of 90,000 people--just now recovering from the ‘80s downsizing and the last recession--doesn’t need, and the international economic forces at work have triggered some predictable xenophobia: Picket signs bash both the British and the Japanese.

The angry pickets and mass demonstrations may seem a throwback in an era of reputedly weak unionism. And the actual disputes today are less about wages than about workplace changes that corporations argue must be made to make Decatur’s products competitive in today’s tough global markets.

But labor is making a stand in Decatur.

“It’s our solidarity against theirs,” said Larry Solomon, president of United Auto Workers Local 751, which struck Caterpillar in June. “If we fall here, you will feel the waves to California and beyond.”

And although Decatur has a long labor history and a memory of bitter strikes, the current struggle is creating greater community discord than most residents can remember.

“There is a growing polarization,” said Mayor Eric Brechnitz. “This is an epic struggle in which both sides are dug in and we are suffering as a result.”

The confluence of labor strife in Decatur is largely happenstance, local officials say. Two of the disputes are nationwide actions, and this happens to be the only U.S. city with both a Caterpillar and Bridgestone/Firestone plant.

But labor experts say that what is unfolding in Decatur represents a microcosm of the bigger drama being played out by labor and management on a global scale.

“It may be a coincidence you have three major strikes involving three multinational companies in the same town,” said Michael LeRoy, labor professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “But there are synergies developing between these disputes.”

The overlapping labor actions have driven union solidarity to unusual lengths. The confluence of interests was displayed at a recent coalition meeting of about 25 members of the auto, rubber and paper workers union, as well as transportation and teachers union officials.

Such meetings, rare in the past, are held weekly. There is talk about media coverage. There is talk about fund raising and helping families make ends meet. And there is talk about court injunctions, demonstrations and political action.

A UAW bargainer outlines a plan to change Decatur’s form of government. He proposes a petition drive to replace the City Council with aldermen, hoping it would be easier to elect officials from districts more sympathetic to labor.

It’s a collaboration instigated in part by Ray Rogers, a jeans-wearing, charismatic labor strategist from New York who is blamed by some local officials for the strident tone of the disputes. Hired by the Staley union local, he is a controversial figure in labor circles.

Some mainstream union leaders complain that Rogers uses labor disputes to push a social-reform agenda. But he has helped to galvanize workers here.

“We want the workers to understand that they have more tools in their arsenal,” Rogers said.

Staley

When Tate & Lyle acquired Staley in 1988 for $1.5 billion, the international sugar conglomerate was buying a Decatur institution. Augustus Eugene Staley, an evangelist and merchant, founded the company in 1906 to turn the corn produced by nearby farms into starch and syrup.

The company’s plant just northeast of downtown grew into a huge industrial complex, a maze of 100 buildings spread over 450 acres and connected by pipes and tanks that cook and process tons of corn a day.

The paternalistic Staley was proud of the work he provided Decatur and in 1929 built a monument to his success--a 14-story headquarters made of Indiana limestone topped with a gold-crowned dome. It was dubbed the “castle in the cornfields.”

Today, the castle is under siege. Members of the United Paperworkers International Union, Local 7837, have been picketing since June, 1993, when Staley’s new owners locked them out.

The labor dispute was touched off the previous year when Staley proposed a radical new contract with major work-rule changes. The company wanted to implement rotating 12-hour shifts, cut health care benefits and ultimately eliminate two-thirds of the 760-member work force.

While the Decatur facility is profitable, Staley officials said the changes were needed to make the plant as efficient as its other U.S. factories.

“We aren’t asking for anything that is not standard in the industry,” said J. Patrick Mahon, Staley’s executive vice president. “This isn’t about wages but about having a plant that is competitive.”

When the union balked, Staley unilaterally imposed its contract. The union retaliated with a “work-to-rule” strategy inside the plant, scrapping labor-management teamwork efforts and slowing production.

In June, 1993, the union held a one-day strike over alleged plant safety violations. A week later, the company locked the workers out, citing vandalism of equipment and products.

Staley quickly hired about 300 temporary replacement workers. The plant has been operating with non-union workers and supervisors. The company says production, safety and quality are at all-time highs.

The lockout has hit the union members hard. The local provides them just $60 a week; if they take another job or collect unemployment they get nothing. About 100 workers have left town or taken permanent jobs elsewhere.

“You can see the strain in people’s faces,” said Local 7837 President David Watts. “There are lots of divorces. People are losing homes and cars.”

George Austin, 47, was divorced and began drinking heavily in the wake of the strike. He occasionally mows lawns to make a few dollars and collects food stamps.

“This has been the worst year of my life,” Austin said, sitting on the picket line outside Staley’s main entrance. “I thought my job was rock solid. It’s disheartening.”

Despite 60 meetings between the union and company since 1992, there has been no progress in the talks.

Caterpillar

At the Caterpillar plant, about 1,800 workers walked out in June when the United Auto Workers called the second nationwide strike in three years against the world’s largest maker of earthmoving equipment.

The new strike is a vestige of the previous one, an especially bitter five-month walkout in which the outcome was widely perceived as a big setback for the UAW and organized labor. Caterpillar insisted on a cheaper labor agreement than the industry-standard pact signed at Deere & Co.

The strike ended when Caterpillar threatened to permanently replace the union members with other workers. Since then, the UAW has filed about 100 charges of unfair labor practices against the company. Those charges became the basis for the new strike against 12 plants in three states.

Caterpillar has continued to operate its plants with supervisors, some new hires and union members who have crossed the picket lines. But the Decatur plant has had fewer workers cross the line than any other Caterpillar plant.

Congress failed to pass a bill this summer that would ban the use of permanent replacements, and the threat of being permanently replaced still hangs over the Caterpillar workers, most of whom are in their 40s and 50s.

Caterpillar continues to advertise for new workers and is waging a major public relations campaign. One local television spot features a replacement worker who talks glowingly about the need for labor-management teamwork and global competitiveness.

Caterpillar says its main competitor isn’t Deere--which has a much narrower product line and is not a major exporter--but Komatsu Ltd. Therefore, it must bring its costs in line with foreign competitors like Komatsu, said Cat spokesman Terry Thorntenson.

But the UAW’s Solomon said: “They are trying to make union a dirty word.”

Bridgestone/Firestone

On the picket line outside the Bridgestone/Firestone plant, members of United Rubber Workers Local 713 wave to passing drivers who honk their horns in support.

On July 12, the URW struck five Bridgestone/Firestone facilities when the union refused to accept a contract that proposed significant changes in work rules and cutbacks in benefits.

The URW has also struck facilities operated by Sumitomo Corp., Yokohama Rubber Co. and Pirelli in the United States. But the strike against Bridgestone/Firestone, the world’s leading tire producer, is the biggest and potentially most damaging.

It comes against a company that has boasted of good labor-management relations. After it purchased Firestone in 1989 for $2.6 billion, relations were so good that the company didn’t resist the URW’s organization of two new plants.

“There is an irony here that a Japanese company world-renowned for model labor-management relations is involved in a hardball confrontational dispute with an American union,” said Harley Shaiken, a visiting labor professor at UC Berkeley.

The company’s sudden aggressiveness is not lost on the striking workers. A sign posted outside the aging, red-brick factory reads: “1941, Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor; July 12, 1994, Bridgestone/Firestone Attacks American Workers.”

As in the Caterpillar strike, a major issue is pattern bargaining, the establishment of similar labor agreements across whole industries. The URW wanted Bridgestone/Firestone to sign a contract similar to one negotiated with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. But Bridgestone/Firestone claims that its U.S. plants are less efficient than its competitors’ and wants a contract to help it narrow the gap.

“A Goodyear-type settlement would severely damage our competitive position,” said Charles Ramsey, Bridgestone/Firestone vice president.

But the union said the offer--asking for 12-hour rotating shifts, health care co-payments, and reduced vacation time and overtime--is unacceptable.

“There is no end to what they are trying to take away,” said URW Local 713 President Roger Gates, who represents 1,270 striking workers.

For Decatur, the labor strife has been about as welcome as a prairie tornado.

The area is just recovering from the devastation of the ‘80s, when recession and foreign competition racked the Rust Belt and Decatur lost a third of its factory jobs and nearly 10% of its population.

The trend has reversed itself in recent years as the city has attracted new light-manufacturing and high-tech industry. Still, the area’s jobless rate stands at about 7.5%, compared with less than 6% for all of Illinois. And city officials fear that the labor strife will curb business expansion and dissuade other companies from moving here.

“It’s a negative which could impact our ability to attract new business to the community,” said Richard Lutovsky, president of the Decatur Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Merchants say the disputes--carving a weekly payroll of up to $3 million out of the economy--have also begun to hurt businesses. “Purchases of big-ticket items are being put on hold,” said Ed Markgraf, manager of the local Sears store. “I’m cutting back inventory for the fall.”

Even the opening of the Decatur Celebration, an annual summer festival, was disrupted when striking workers repeatedly interrupted a speech by the mayor, a stockbroker whom union members regard as anti-union. Brechnitz also complains that the city’s police department has been stretched thin by the labor actions.

While many residents are sympathetic to the workers, others are perplexed that they would risk jobs that pay $17 an hour, among the area’s highest wages. “Some wives don’t understand why their husbands are out there,” Markgraf said.

The tensions are visible in the billboards and picket signs--some planted in residential lawns--placed throughout town. In mid-July, about 120 union workers, carrying U.S. flags and wearing red T-shirts, demonstrated in a staid, upper-middle-class neighborhood where many Staley executives live.

A demonstration at Staley in early June resulted in the arrest of 47 union supporters, including a local minister. At another rally, police sprayed the crowd with pepper gas to maintain control.

And there are more demonstrations to come. At last week’s joint meeting of leaders from the three unions, they huddled with Rogers and George Lakey, an expert in civil disobedience tactics. The union members talked of their concerns about being arrested in peaceful demonstrations.

Local officials worry about what the unions may have up their sleeve for Labor Day. The unions have said only that they plan to march en masse in red shirts down Main Street to the statue of Abraham Lincoln outside the county courthouse. But given the militancy of recent demonstrations, uneasiness is understandable.

“There is a chemistry for disorder to get out of hand here,” said LeRoy.