(The Following is a Speech by Brother Billy Robinson, President of UAW Local 2036 to The Workers Democracy Network Oakland, CA - Nov. 11, 2000)
Accuride is the foremost maker of steel truck wheels in the world. We supply 80 percent of the market for steel truck wheels, one ton or larger. We have two plants; one in Henderson, Kentucky and one in London, Ontario.
On February 20, 1998 our Local went on strike, voting 371 to 9 to reject the contract proposed by Accuride. The contract had language stating; no person or classification has a right to any certain job. It also gave the company the unilateral and unrestricted right to subcontract any work. They said they were going to subcontract ALL the skilled trades work.
Accuride wouldn’t even agree to anti-discrimination language. We even went down to language that simply said, “We’ll comply with the law.” But it wasn’t good enough for them.
The strike was authorized by the UAW International Executive Board and our Regional Director, who at the time was Ron Gettlefinger. The UAW controls 95% of the plants we supply. We thought the UAW would use its clout. Just 120 miles from our plant, in Louisville, there’s a Ford truck plant with 13,000 UAW members. If the UAW leadership had spread the word in that plant, “Those are scab wheels,” our strike would have been over in less than four weeks. If they told workers at Navistar, Mack, Peterbilt, and GM Truck & Bus, “Those are scab wheels you’re putting on that truck,” our strike wouldve been over in no time.
Locked Out
In March of 1998 we voted to go back to work unconditionally. Accuride paid people from my Local $4,000 each to cross the picket line. 29 out of 439 members crossed the picket line by the latter part of March. The strike wasn’t working. On March 30, 1998 I told the members, “We’ve got to end the strike; go back to work; we’ll work to rule; we’ll do what we have to do.”
Before we could even take that vote, Accuride locked us out. The membership voted overwhelmingly to return to work, and 354 to 9 to reject the contract. That was two contracts that the membership, by the end of March, had rejected because of union busting language.
In September of 1998, they put another proposal on the table. They said the Bargaining Committee of the Local Union was misleading the members, not telling them what the contract really said. They claimed we were pressuring people, and not getting an accurate vote.
So I went down to the Catholic church — they have a big auditorium — and convinced them to let us use it. We set it up with loudspeakers. The vote was by secret ballot. The International Rep was there from day one. There wasn’t a period, a comma, or anything that went into those proposals, or into those meetings, that the International Rep didn’t approve.
At that meeting in September 1998, we presented a proposal to the membership from the company. This contract contained the same language; unilateral right to subcontract any work, and no person or classification has the right to any certain job, but this time they put another little kicker in there. They had the unilateral and unrestricted right to alter, amend, modify, change, or delete the pension program, at will. And the unilateral and unrestricted right to alter, amend, modify, change, or delete any out-of-pocket premiums or coverage in the insurance.
We presented it to the membership. The membership rejected it overwhelmingly. We had 17 people guarding the ballot boxes. Everyone was double-checked and triple-checked to ensure they only had one ballot. The International Rep was there to oversee it. When it was over the International Rep said, “You will not vote on another proposal until there has been a significant change.” Our members said, “OK, by God, we’re going to stand by that.”
From day one, the company was ready to recognize the UAW as the exclusive bargaining agent of all employees, but we had absolutely no rights on the shop floor. There was no mention of a president, a union steward, or anything else in the language. If you wanted to file a grievance, you would have to do it after work on your own time. If a supervisor started hitting on a sister working in the plant, and if she said she wanted a steward, the supervisor could say, “it’s not a matter of importance” and she wouldn’t get a steward.
This is the type of language they kept throwing at us. Every time we voted, it got progressively worse. For the next year, we refused to vote on anything. We told the company publicly, “Shove it up your ass until youve changed it.”
Benefits Cut Off
On August 14, 1999 I was called at home. It was a Saturday afternoon. I was told to get my Executive Board together and to meet the International Rep at the union hall. I said, “Look, this is Saturday afternoon. This just can’t happen.” He said, “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.” I said, “OK, if you put it that way.” So I started calling my officers.
Let me tell you, people, I’ve been with the UAW 23 years. I’ve been union ever since I was 17 years old. My grandaddy sat on the front porch sipping moonshine with John L. Lewis up in Eastern Kentucky in the coal mines. All my family is union. He called my officers in that day and told me that as of the last day of August, the UAW would no longer provide economic support for this Local.
I said, “What does that mean? What are you saying?”
He said, “As of the last day of August, you won’t have any strike insurance, you won’t have any strike pay. The International is not going to pull your charter. You’ll still remain on the picket line. They’re not ending the strike/lock-out.”
I looked at him and I said, “You’re joking.”
He said, “No, I’ve been instructed to come here and tell you that.” He said, “I’ve never seen it happen, but it’s exactly what I’ve come to tell you now.”
My officers looked at me and said, “What do you think?” I got the Regional Director, Terry Thurman, on the phone. He said, “Tell them to go back to work.” How the hell can I tell them to go back to work when we’ve been locked out for 18 months? He wanted us to go tell the company, ‘We’ve lost our benefits now, so you’ve got to take us back.’
The Executive Board agreed we needed to call a special membership meeting. We held it in the parking lot of the union hall. I told my members;
“This is the saddest day of my life. I feel like the guts have been pulled out of me. I can tell you today that what Accuride couldn’t accomplish, the UAW International has done in one fell swoop. They’ve deserted you. As of today, you will no longer have any economic support from the International.”
Then we took another secret ballot vote about whether we were going to vote on the contract or not. The members said, “The hell with the UAW. We came out here for a reason. Were going to stick together. We’re not going back until we get what we came out for. They can take their strike benefits and shove ‘em. We’ll stay on this picket line till hell freezes over.” Well, I haven’t seen Satan up there yet, but it feels cold enough to freeze hell quite often.
What is the Union?
I had been an organizer for the UAW for 15 or 16 months when the strike started. I’ve been all over that part of the country down there. I was involved in salting Toyota in Princeton, Indiana, a new plant. [salting: to help get pro-union workers hired at a non-union plant to aid the organizing effort.]
I had helped get about 600 people hired into that plant. Everybody in that part of the country had heard me tell how great the UAW was, how democratic the process was in the UAW. The people turned around and looked at me and said, “What happened?” But there was one thing that I knew from my experience in being a president, and being an organizer, and being a union member. I firmly believe the tenet that when anybody reaches out for help, the unions need to be there. That’s what unions are for. During the organizing drives, I would tell people, “What is the union? You are. Read the Constitution of the United States. It says We the People, in order to form a more perfect union . . . ”
Well, that day in the parking lot, August 28, 1999, I found out exactly what a union is.
What Part of “No” Dont You Understand?
In October 1999, Accuride came out with yet another proposal. It was even worse, if you can imagine that. The membership voted it down by secret ballot. That was the fifth time. People were getting tired. They’d been out there over a year and a half, but they voted it down again. I was catching flack from everywhere. People would say, “We thought we gave you a mandate that unless there’s a tentative agreement approved by the Bargaining Committee, not to bring it back for a vote.” I understood, but all this time had gone by, and the publicity was eating us alive. So I had them vote again on it. And sure enough, they voted it down again.
Were Going to Stick Together
After the International cut off our strike benefits, I told the members, “There’s one thing you have to do. You have to communicate. You’ve got to go out and tell other union members what’s going on. So I want every one of you to leave here today, and to get on that Internet. I want everybody to know what the International leadership has done.”
I got one member who sent out 3,000 e-mails in the next week. You wouldnt believe how many e-mails we got in answer. We got them from Puerto Rico, from Ireland, England, Australia, and all over the United States. People just couldn’t believe what we were telling them. We put out tremendous amounts of literature.
I took about 40 members and went to Louisville. At midnight we handbilled the plant when they were changing shifts. I talked with people who actually put the wheels on the vehicles. I told them, “Don’t listen to anything someone else tells you. I’m here to tell you now, I’m the guy who sat at the table. I’m the guy who told your president and your bargaining chair in this plant over a year ago what was going on.” The workers didn’t have any idea that they were putting on scab wheels. Nobody on the shop floor did.
We went out in the community, too. You can ask an old farmer out in the fields whos never been union in his life, did they vote on a contract? And hed be able to tell you, ‘youre damn right they did, five times, and they rejected it five times.’
They Tried To Shut Us Up
UAW International leaders were fit to be tied about what we did, and are still doing. Now, they are going to say that I’ve been talking to an “anti-union group” here. That’s the b.s. they’re spreading all over the place. Any time you talk to a group that does not endorse the opinions of the International officers, you’re anti-union. Well, I’ve got news for you. On August 28, those members told me what a union was. They said, “It’s us. We’re here. We came out for a reason. We’re going to stick together.”
President Yokich didn’t like that too much. We did not go away. UAW International leaders have said that I’m a renegade, that I belong to some communist group, and all we are down here in Local 2036 is a big bunch of Ku Klux Klan people. Let me tell you something. One of my Bargaining Committee people is black. A homosexual is head of our Womens Committee. Three of our Trustees are black. They all say to me, “We’re coming in wearing sheets next week.” [laughter] We looked at it as a joke.
But this is how the International tries to shut you up. If the brother over there says something critical of the leadership, they’re going to say something personally detrimental about him. But you can’t let that affect you. You’ve got to laugh it off and go on. You’ve got to communicate.
Staying Strong and Fighting Back
I’ll go anywhere that anybody wants me to, and I’ll tell them what’s happening. I’ve got every copy of every proposal. I’ve got every letter that was written. In March of 1998, I wrote the International to ask them for a corporate campaign against Accuride. I sent them a list of the customers, and a bunch of handbills that I wanted to put out. I wanted to hit every truck stop in the country. You see what happened to Firestone. We were going to go to the truck stops and tell them about the scab wheels that were on the trucks. They refused to let us do it.
In March of ‘98 I still thought, well, they’re going to do something, they’re going to help us out some way or another. But in August of ‘99 I found out they weren’t going to do a damn thing. So we did it ourselves. They didn’t have to put out any handbills for us. I know how to write them. I know how to get my point across. We’re still doing it.
Well, by May of 2000, a lot of people across the country had been getting a hold of me. The first people who came to our picket line, after they took our benefits away, were the “Blue Shirts” out of the Caterpillar plant in Peoria, Ill. I’ve got some of their shirts and I wear them proudly. You’ve got to earn these shirts. You don’t just buy them.
Let me tell you about these people. They took on Vance Security at Caterpillar. They still haven’t given up. These guys, right to this day, are still in there fighting because Shoemaker sold them out. The International gave the scabs $100,000 a piece to settle a bogus harassment lawsuit, and let them work next to UAW members who walked the line. Then Yokich and Shoemaker called it a victory.
Bill Wheats and the Blue Shirts were the first people on our picket line after the International cut off our benefits. They came in with money just before Christmas 1999. They asked, what do you need? They told us the tactics they had used in their strike because we had Vance Security at Accuride, too. Vance came in a month before the contract expired. They were ready for us. They intended to put us out on the street.
You’ve got to use whatever means are available to you, because it’s a war. We started getting e-mails, letters, and visits from a lot of people, and I started finding out, we aren’t the only ones. There’s a whole lot of people across this country just like us.
Larry Solomon from Caterpillar came to see us. Mike Griffin from the War Zone Foundation out of Decatur. Hawk Wright and Gene Austin, out of Local 594, Pontiac, Michigan. Socialist Workers out of Chicago. The Workers Democracy Network. All these people started visiting our union hall, asking, “What do you need?” Running articles in their papers. Spreading our story all over the country. I started getting e-mails from everywhere. As soon as they cut off our benefits, we sent people to Detroit to picket Solidarity House. We thought people needed to know. ABC News picked it up and ran it all over the country. We went back to Detroit in May 2000. We brought a lot of diverse groups together and we picketed Solidarity House again.
Yokich In A Bad Light?
UAW President Steve Yokich didnt like that we rejected his instructions and proceeded to do what we had to do. In April of 2000, I received a notice from the International to attend a hearing in Detroit. The letter claimed that the locals existence was “threatened” because we had not bargained in a “prudent and realistic way,” hadnt held “secret ballot votes,” and for other “unspecified reasons.”
Region 3 Director, Terry Thurman, said we needed an administrator to “restore the democratic process” in our local. They sent word throughout the UAW that it was an “unauthorized strike.” Yet Gettlefinger told me three times, on February 20, “Take em out.”
At the hearing that I attended in April 2000, I had all the information. I put before the International leaders all the dates, times, and figures of every secret ballot vote that we had on the contract. They sent us in and out of the room four or five times.
Finally, Reuben Burks looked at me and said, “Billy, we have a problem. Maybe you can help us with it.” I said, OK, what is it? He said, “All these handbills, all these e-mails, and web sites, and all these things criticizing Mr. Yokich are putting him in a bad light. Maybe you can help us make these go away.” I presumed these were the “unspecified reasons.” I said, let me answer your question with a statement.
I told him how long I’d been union, and how I had professed that the UAW was the greatest union that ever was all over that part of the country. I said if we did something wrong, we know how to take our punishment. But we want to know why you took our benefits away from us.
Yokich looked at me and said, “I don’t give a damn how many e-mails you put out, how many web sites you put up, we’re the most powerful union around, and you aren’t going to bother me, and you’re not the first ones we’ve cut off.” I’ve got that remark in a transcript.
People couldn’t believe it. He never gave me an answer. He said, “We’re going to place you under an administrator — a friendly administrator.” I looked up and said, just exactly what is a “friendly administrator”? “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “Just go on back down there, and hold your meetings and do what you always do. Just don’t worry about it.” He said, “We’ll make our decision on May 8.”
I thought to myself, May 8, huh? He’s got the damn handbill about the rally on May 8 right in front of him. He knows I’m going to be in front of Solidarity House when he makes that decision. He was right. I stood in front of his car when he came out of the gate.
Promote Solidarity
They placed us under an administrator. They came in and took all our books, our financial records, and our checking account. Wanted to choke us to death. Or so they thought. We got them back now [laughter]. We had already opened up another account; the Henderson Workers Solidarity Fund. Our thanks to Local 594 out of Pontiac, Michigan. They did a bucket shake at the gates and collected $7,100. We put that in our account. That’s how I’m here today.
Fellow workers, we have got to promote solidarity all across this country. All of us. It’s our responsibility. If there’s somebody that doesn’t know what a union is, you need to organize them, you need to explain to them why they need a union. You’re probably going to have to go back into your own local and organize your own local, because they don’t know what a union is.
Benefits Returned, Strike Pay Doubled
By October, 2000 I’d been all over the place, talking with everybody that I could talk to. I was scheduled into Kokomo, Indiana, UAW Local 685, for a meeting with some UAW members up there. They asked me to come up and give a talk. I said, no problem, I’ll be up there. They asked me to come up October 4. Okay. It’s about a five and a half hour drive. They put it into the newspapers that I was going to speak there.
Terry Thurman, the Director of Region 3, where I’m from, was sitting in the union hall 10 minutes away, hiding. He wouldn’t come around when I was speaking. But he called my officers, told them they had to meet him in Indianapolis, but I wasn’t invited. I said, that’s all right, I got to be in Kokomo anyway, it’s not a problem. I told them to call me the minute they got out of the meeting and tell me what it was all about. He told my officers they were reinstating our benefits on October 5, with all the insurance, and double strike pay, $350 a week.
So I went into that meeting at Local 685 in Kokomo, and I told them, yeah, they gave us our benefits back. But I haven’t seen the strings on it yet. I haven’t heard the reason yet. There are 14 months unanswered for, when we didn’t have any strike pay, when we didn’t have any insurance.
I’ve got a member who’s 62 years old now. When we came out, he had $40,000 in the bank; he had already paid his home off; he owned everything he had. He was looking forward to putting two more years in so he could retire. Two months after they canceled our benefits, he had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass surgery. He had to refinance his house to pay the bills. He’s $87,000 in debt right now. And now they come and want to give us our benefits back.
I’ve got another lady that I’m trying to help get social security. For 14 months she didn’t have the money to buy her medicine, so she didn’t take any medicine. She’s on the verge of dying right now. We’ve had two suicides, and I don’t know how many broken marriages. It’s unbelievable what so many people went through. But we’ve still got over 300 people on the picket line right now. Most of them don’t figure they’ll go back to work.
The majority say, “By God, we aren’t going back, but we aren’t giving up. We’re going to stay out here.” They gave us our benefits back October 5th. It’s been six weeks now. Anyone who was forced into retirement like myself, won’t get anything.
Deputy Dog Director
Before, if you had some reason you couldn’t pick up your strike pay, it’d be no problem. I’d just have it written out, and I’d be around the union hall working, and you’d just come by when you could, and I’d give it to you. Or your wife would come in, or your husband, there’d be no problem.
Since the International took over, you’ve got to be there in person to pick that check up. It started out 9am to 4pm that you could pick it up. Then they changed it to 9am to 2pm. So the people who get off at 3:30 couldn’t get there. Now it’s even worse than that. It’s only 9am to 1pm. And I’m going to have to tell the members next week that the International’s going to audit us again.
You’ve got to come down to the office and bring any records of earnings you’ve got into the hall. They’re going to do everything they can to try to find us dirty. So they gave us our benefits back. But that’s because we took them on. When they told us to go away, we said “no”.
In negotiations, September 18 and 19, the Deputy Director of Region 3 was sent in to be the spokesman and direct negotiations. He came in real proud. He said “I got a contract.” Now, this was just two minutes before the company people came in.
The first thing I looked for in that contract was the article that stated salary people had the right to bump hourly people off the floor. I have people with 25 years seniority that would have to stay out on the street and let a 5 year salary person take their job. Soon as I looked, there it was. He was going to present this to the company as a union proposal. I told him, Gary, if that’s in the contract, don’t come on union property with it; the members will kill you! Even people who told me they wanted to vote for the contract said, “As long as it has that language were not going to vote on it. Period.”
So he sends one of the Bargaining Committee members over to the store to buy some black markers so he can mark it out. It was obvious as soon as he started presenting it to the company that he’d never read it. He didn’t have a damn clue what was in it. His secretary went and got a grievance procedure out of another contract from another plant, and just copied it verbatim and put it in there.
Nothing in the language fit our Local. It talked about the plant Chairperson. Well, we don’t have a Chairperson. I’m the President, and by my office I sit on the Bargaining Committee. I head all committees. None of that language fit. Before they took our strike benefits away from us, we had 24 articles signed off. We don’t have anything now. Zero.
This is the type of leadership that the UAW had sent to help us negotiate a fair contract. The company people just laughed at him.
When we went on strike Accuride was owned by Phelps Dodge. The attorney who’s been responsible for breaking 80 percent of the unions at Phelps Dodge is the one we’re negotiating with. We still are. This guy is an idiot, but he’s good at his job. He’ll sit there, and he’ll talk on a subject until you’re almost asleep. He gets $1,400 an hour. He doesn’t give a damn how long he stays at the table.
UAW Solidarity Coalition
The UAW is still there. We got our benefits back. That was just a small battle. The war’s still out there. And it’s up to every one of us to continue the fight, continue to build solidarity, so we can come together, and get rid of all this petty stuff — like the IBEW Local 1701 crossing our picket line every day. They have for over a year.
We’ve also got pipe fitters and millwrights crossing our picket line. We’ve got so many people who don’t care, because they have forgotten or don’t know what solidarity is or what a union is.
Two weeks ago I attended a meeting in Flint, Michigan and we founded the “UAW Solidarity Coalition”. We’re going to go out and try to bring in as many UAW people as we can into this Coalition.
In Lansing, Michigan, the retirees from UAW Concern got a hold of people in the plant. They were doing a food drive for our Local. They have a big union hall and it was full of food. But the Local officers told them, “Get it out of here now, or we’ll call the Salvation Army and have them come and get it. We’re not supporting those people in Local 2036.” Last Christmas at Peterbilt in Madison, Tennessee the people adopted a bunch of our members and donated truck loads of food. Really did a good deed. But then the International told them, you’d better not do this. Now I can’t even get them to answer my letters.
At Local 594, the leadership did everything they could to stop that fund-raising drive up there. But the members got so mad that they donated $7,100 to us. Everywhere I go, the UAW leadership is against us. But you know what bothers me? The UAW Constitution says that wherever there is a union member in need it is your duty and your responsibility to reach out to those people. They’re violating their own Constitution.
“Come on Down to the Picket Line”
When Walter Reuther died we had one and a half million members in the UAW. We’re down to about half that now. There’s something wrong somewhere. They’ve got all this money up there. The strike fund today in the UAW stands at $900 million. We could have continued to receive our benefits for the next 57 years, and the UAW would not have to put in another dime from any local, and they would still have over $500 million in the strike fund. When they cut our benefits off, there were only three other locals on strike across the United States.
All I want is an answer. I think we deserve that.
President Yokich thinks he can shut me up, he thinks that our membership is going to go away. He obviously doesn’t know what a union is. He needs to come down to Kentucky. One of my members wrote to him, he said, “You need to come on down to the picket line.”
For 33 months, to this date, there was never a person from the International on our picket line. You know, that makes you stand up and think. I know that there are horror stories from all the different unions, because I’ve talked to other people from other unions too. Fellow workers, I’ve been educated in the past 14 months. I found out that what I thought was the greatest movement in the world has something deadly wrong at the top. Not wrong with the unions, but wrong with the people who are leading them.
I think it’s time we all get involved, and take our unions back, and make them do what they’re supposed to do; represent the workers. Solidarity Forever, Billy Robinson, Caroline Lund, UAW Local 2244, did the original transcription of the speech from a tape — an enormous task
HIGHLIGHTS OF COMPANY PROPOSAL Nov 2001
e. Only 80-110 people will return.
f. Higher seniority employees may wait up to 8 weeks before returning.
g. 60 days of training, if you do not meet company acceptable performance levels, employees can be laid off regardless of seniority.
h. Skill tech. Jobs will be filled by seniority of skill tech employees, then lab tech jobs will be filled by seniority of lab tech employees, then if there are more skill tech and lab tech employees than there are of those jobs, they will pick operation tech jobs by seniority of skill and lab tech regardless of operation tech seniority. Operation tech will pick what’s left according to their seniority.
i. Scabs will train and work beside bargaining unit personnel.Once again the vipers have reared their ugly heads… the Porkchoppers of Soldout House through their lackey Terry Thurman called the Officers of Local 2036 to his bunker in Indianapolis and told them repeatedly in a 30 minute meeting that on Jan 15, 2002 that they will with draw the benefits from the Local Union… stated that ” we have decided this situation is unwinable, we’ve lost… this isn’t the first one we’ve lost and won’t be the last,, ” after every question he would reiterate ” January 15 the benefits will cease”… said that the IEB has authorized the International Vice-presidents to act if we do not ratify the agreement , then they will petition the NLRB for a disinterest petition and pull the Local charter… isn’t this a way to make us not longer UAW members,, sure helps the Company, My feelings are, old “diddle finger” is going to get his way and let Jokich take the heat… or does this put the Local into such a situation that they can not have Delegates at the convention… may be not delegates,, but they can not stop pickets!!! After 46 months on the picket line , they stated” Ford and the other truck manufacturers could not make an impression on accuride ,, so they will just have to continue letting UAW Members handle scab produced wheels and let the 400 or so Members just go away… said” we’re tired of putting out money”… more like a corporation ridding itself of a not so profitable section or product line…. Priest the Local President has schedule a meeting for this Saturday to inform the Membership of these new set of circumstances and that he will schedule another vote on that same proposal that the Membership has repeatedly voted down… said Thurman told him that if the Membership did not take it, then the IEB would pull the Charter… sounds like a threat to me. I have lots of questions from Ellis and will address those in a separate mailing… stay solid people as this is another try at busting our Solidarity.