|
The strikers still sit huddled inside the faded trailer to escape the icy
gusts whipping off the East River, just as they did last year. But now their
voices, and their words, are laced with bitterness.
These workers, on strike for nearly a year and a half against the Domino
Sugar refinery on the Brooklyn waterfront, show obvious pride about sticking
it out, but the bitterness is always there. Bitterness toward the company.
Bitterness toward fellow workers who have crossed the picket line.
Bitterness toward the labor movement for not doing more to back them.
Yet the strikers soldier on.
"Just sitting here, you have over 100 years of seniority," said
Charlie Milan, a gruff-voiced mechanic, pointing to himself and three other
workers seated on battered folding chairs in the trailer. "We made
Domino No. 1. Why treat us this way, demanding to get rid of job security?
That's wrong."
The strikers pass their days bundled in parkas, sipping coffee from
plastic foam cups and picketing in the shadow of Domino's 142-year-old,
fortress-like refinery, a monument to New York's one-time industrial might.
They complain about not being able to afford Christmas presents, about
falling behind in the rent, about being forced to sell the second car.
The strike began on June 15, 1999, when 284 members of the International
Longshoremen's Association walked out after Domino's management made demands
that the workers saw as an effort to strip away protections and privileges
won over a half-century. The company, union negotiators said, insisted on
getting rid of most seniority rights, cutting 100 jobs, eliminating sick
days and having the right to contract out as many jobs as it wanted.
This has become the longest major strike in New York in years. Domino's
British parent, Tate & Lyle, one of the world's largest sweetener
companies, is known for taking an especially hard line toward unions. (It
busted one union at an Illinois plant after locking out 750 workers for
three years.) Tate & Lyle has taken a tough line on cutting costs in
Brooklyn, company officials say, because sugar prices are down and profit
margins are slim.
Joe Crimi, the union's chief negotiator, said: "After almost 18
months, these maniacs of mine are still willing to stay out. They're
battling with toothpicks instead of guns against a multinational like
this."
The two sides have not held negotiations in months. Management officials
say there is just one reason: union intransigence.
"I would say the real problem is inflexibility on the part of the
union to realize that in order to stay competitive in a very difficult
market, we need to be flexible and to adopt modern working practices,"
said Margaret Blamberg, a spokeswoman for Tate & Lyle North America, who
denies that the company is trying to bust the union.
For the first nine months of the strike, the workers showed extraordinary
solidarity, without a single union member crossing the picket line. But
beginning in April, strikers, urged on by the company, started crossing the
line in 5's and 10's, with 98 having returned to work so far. Some of the
ones who returned said they needed the money. Some said they saw little
reason to stay out on strike when the rest of labor was hardly helping.
Nonetheless, a handful of unions have gone the extra mile to help the
strikers, members of Longshoremen's Local 1814. Teamsters Local 282 has
repeatedly sent more than 100 members to picket at the refinery. Honoring
the picket line, the 16 members of the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers have refused to report to their Domino jobs ever since
the strike began.
Laborers' Local 78 has often sent a giant inflatable rat to the strikers'
rallies. And Brian McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor
Council, organized a $130,000 fund-raising effort to pay the strikers'
emergency medical bills and pitch in toward rent.
But these efforts, the strikers say, are just a drop in the bucket.
"The labor movement hasn't done much of anything for the
strikers," said Mr. Crimi, the negotiator.
Stanley Aronowitz, a City University labor expert, said labor unions had
not flocked behind the strikers partly because of the parent union's corrupt
past. He also faulted the national leadership of the Longshoremen's union
for doing little to rally support from other unions and for not coming up
with imaginative plans to advance the strikers' cause.
Many strikers had hoped for a mass rally with thousands of union members,
but the biggest rally so far had perhaps 300 people. And they had wanted the
national A.F.L.-C.I.O. to back their call for a nationwide boycott against
Domino, but that never happened.
"We probably needed to take the battle to the street, much like the
grape boycott," said Mr. McLaughlin, head of the city's labor council.
"But we were not able to get boycott sanctions."
In August, the dozens of unions in the New York State A.F.L.-C.I.O. voted
to back a boycott of Domino. But when the national A.F.L.-C.I.O. was asked
to begin an official nationwide boycott, the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union in effect vetoed the idea. That union feared that a boycott
would hurt the workers it represents at Domino refineries in Maryland and
Louisiana.
"You have to ask if the boycott is going to end the strike on
conditions favorable to the workers," said Greg Denier, spokesman for
the food and commercial workers, "or is it just a gesture that could
damage other union members."
Mr. Crimi said it was short-sighted not to back the boycott.
"When you have a union-busting company like this on a rampage across
the country," he said, "you shouldn't let one union stop an effort
to put pressure on that company, or else everyone's going to get taken down
sooner or later."
Back in the trailer, the workers expressed optimism that if they held out
long enough, Domino would make concessions on seniority and subcontracting.
"We're still hoping to get a settlement," said Bob Horn, a
packaging mechanic for 25 years. "We're holding our heads high." |