Feeling Steamrollered : Striking Union Confronts the Erosion of Its Leverage

The union construction workers in Southern California who run rock crushers, bulldozers and other heavy equipment are learning what it’s like to get steamrollered.

Hundreds of these workers, members of Operating Engineers Local 12, have been replaced over the last few months after going on strike at gravel pits, asphalt plants and public works projects. Still other operating engineers have crossed the union’s picket lines rather than risk losing their jobs.

For Local 12, which extends from Central California to the Mexican border and into southern Nevada, the recent events have been a bitter turnabout. The operating engineers over the years have extracted among the highest union wages in the construction industry, generally earning about $20 or more an hour, plus benefits.

Moreover, few employers have risked antagonizing the Pasadena-based local in a contract dispute. One of the rare companies that did, an Arcadia-based gravel and asphalt company named Owl Rock, went out of business after being crippled in the early 1990s by labor strife with Local 12.

In a sign of the times, however, that era is passing for the union. Local 12 is plagued by the region’s slumping construction business, growing non-union competition and the type of hardball bargaining that organized labor is increasingly facing nationwide.

Employers “are intimidating not only our members but the members of other unions as well,” grumbled William C. Waggoner, the strong-willed, 67-year-old labor leader who has headed Local 12 since 1976. “That’s the mood of today’s world.”

Local 12 is also being undercut by rival craft unions--whose members have crossed operating engineers’ picket lines and, in some cases, taken the strikers’ jobs. Contractors, for example, say they have hired carpenters and Teamsters to run equipment once handled by operating engineers.

“Our people can’t refuse work,” said Butch Copeland, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 166 in San Bernardino County.

Copeland and other labor and industry leaders put much of the blame for the punishing strikes on Waggoner, saying he hasn’t recognized how circumstances have turned against unions and union employers in recent years.

These critics say that while other construction unions have granted wage freezes and other concessions to help keep union contractors in business, Waggoner continued to hold out for pay increases. The operating engineers’ actions “are doing as much or more to destroy the industry as anything in quite a while,” Copeland said. “It’s harassing our good union employers, and it’s ridiculous.”

Mel Joseph, director of industrial relations for the group of big construction firms known as Associated General Contractors, said the other construction unions “have tried to bend over backwards to help the construction industry and the public.”

But the operating engineers, he charged, “really have their own, selfish economic self-interest at heart.”

Waggoner fires back that many employers are getting tougher with unions not out of economic necessity, but because they want to take advantage of the nation’s anti-labor mood and weak labor laws. He argues that his members, largely because of their skill in handling ever-improving equipment costing millions of dollars, are bargaining from a position of greater strength than many other unions.

Besides, he said, “I just feel these guys are entitled to an increase.”

Meanwhile, no one has reliable figures, but a knowledgeable industry source estimates that 500 to 1,000 striker replacements have been hired and “several hundred” operating engineers have crossed picket lines. Local 12 puts the number of workers who abandoned the union to cross picket lines at about 100.

(The diversified local has 16,000 active members in all, but most work for employers not directly affected by the strike.)

The nastiest battle among the three construction industry strikes Local 12 is waging involves unionized rock, sand and gravel companies, the firms that produce the materials used in paving Southern California’s roads and freeways.

In March, the handful of companies that dominate that business locally imposed a pay cut that, depending on which side you listen to, was either a 14% or 25% reduction. Local 12 tried to lash back in July by going on strike--idling its 500 to 600 members at the rock, sand and gravel firms--but the effort proved disastrous.

The biggest company and key strike target, CalMat Co. of Los Angeles, crowed in a news release last month that it was keeping its gravel pits and asphalt plants running with replacement workers. What’s more, the company said, it discovered that it could run permanently with 10% fewer equipment operators, saving $750,000 a year.

“CalMat has been absolutely firm in its resolve to weather this strike,” said the company’s chief executive, A. Frederick Gerstell.

“We would have preferred to continue operating our plants with our [Local 12] employees and we have continued to encourage them to return to work, but we are operating, and we will continue to operate, without them.”

Waggoner complains that CalMat is taking these actions despite earning $18.8 million in profit last year on revenue of $376.8 million, along with paying bonuses totaling $1.5 million to executives, including $200,000 to Gerstell.

But Mason Dickerson, a company spokesman, said those arguments miss the point. The entry of non-union companies into the local industry has brought down the going pay rate for operating engineers and other workers, he said, and CalMat is determined to keep its wages in line.

Dickerson added that Local 12’s bargaining position no longer is as strong as it was as recently as the late 1980s, when “they had virtually all of the rock and sand companies in the Los Angeles Basin under the same contract.”

“The economics are different today,” Dickerson said.

Local 12 has sought relief from the National Labor Relations Board by filing an unfair-labor-practices complaint. But if that complaint is rejected, Waggoner concedes, the union could be driven out of the business permanently.

For now, no new contract talks are scheduled with the rock, sand and gravel companies.

The big construction firms represented by Associated General Contractors, one of the top two contractor groups in Southern California, aren’t taking as hard a stance. But the AGC has asked for either a wage freeze or contract changes that will enable them to hire fewer operating engineers.

While talks continue, Local 12 is striking selected contractors and being locked out by others. In still other situations, the union has signed agreements with contractors exempting them from the labor dispute and allowing work to continue.

All told, work generally has been slowed but not stopped on key freeway, road and other public works jobs. One notable exception has been the shutdown of the $148-million landfill project at the Port of Los Angeles known as Pier 400.

As the strikes drag on, many strikers are taking a financial and emotional beating. “After three months, we’re tired,” said one picket posted outside a dusty gravel plant.

The picket--who asked not to be identified because, he said, Waggoner told members not to speak with reporters--echoed the sentiments of the union leader. “If we deserve these cuts, why are the top executives getting raises?” he said.

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Key Developments in Operating Engineers Strike:

* Heavy-equipment operators with Operating Engineers Local 12 are seeking pay increases, even though other construction unions have accepted wage freezes and granted employers other concessions.

* Since the strike began, hundreds of operating engineers have been replaced, particularly at rock, sand and gravel companies, and many may never get their jobs back.

* Among the replacement workers at gravel pits, asphalt plants and public works construction projects are members of rival construction unions.

* Construction projects have been stalled throughout Southern California because of the strike, but few have been shut down.