Word: kohler
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After the one-year Kohler contract ran out, the union demanded a broadened agreement, including a seniority rule in layoffs, dues checkoff, binding arbitration of differences. U.A.W. also called for a wage increase, but that was not a basic issue: pay scales at Kohler were about in line with the rest of the plumbing-fixture industry...
Faced with Herbert Kohler's granitic resistance, U.A.W. trimmed its demands. But he kept on balking at even a seniority rule, and U.A.W. called a strike. Kohler laid in an arsenal of submachine guns, shotguns, clubs and tear-gas bombs, settled down for a long siege. Apparently, tough-fibered Herbert Kohler welcomed the strike as an opportunity to shake off Reuther & Co. A high Kohler official predicted that the strike would bring the company 20 years of peace, as had the broken 1934 strike...
Some 2,800 of Kohler Co.'s 3,300 workers joined the strike, and for 54 days locked-arm mass picketing kept the plant shut down. Kohler placed ads in papers all over Wisconsin, offering new workers permanent jobs. Today, despite all the striker efforts to discourage workers with threats, name-calling, beatings and paint bombs, Kohler has some 2,500 employees at work...
With his union's prestige, and his own, committed to the Kohler strike, Walter Reuther saw to it that for two years U.A.W. supported some 2,000 strikers, providing them with rent, food and medical care, plus $25 a week "jingling money." But in 1956 U.A.W. had to give that up as too costly (to date, U.A.W. has poured in a fantastic $10 million), urged strikers to take new jobs. To find work, many of them had to move to other cities. Only 200 strikers are still drawing U.A.W. benefits...
...late 1955, having failed to defeat Herbert Kohler through picketing his plant and harassing his workers, Reuther & Co., with Kohler-like Germanic stubbornness, undertook a nationwide boycott of Kohler products. Today U.A.W. has more than a dozen full-time employees scattered around the U.S. who do nothing but urge plumbers, contractors, municipal officials, to boycott Kohler fixtures. Under union pressure, governing bodies in Boston, Los Angeles County and a scattering of small towns have passed resolutions against installing Kohler products in municipal building projects. U.A.WT. insists that all this is hurting Kohler badly. The family-owned Kohler Co. claims...