Word: wildcats
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...cent higher than the national average); pesticide control; child labor (which the UFW contract bars); working conditions (e.g., the right to have toilets in the fields); enforcement of contract provisions (which are repeatedly violated under Teamsters contracts, a fact which has led to a number of recent wildcat strikes by workers covered by the Teamsters); the labor contractor system (which the UFW contract abolishes); and, above all, union democracy. The Teamsters' attitude towards democracy was best expressed by Einar Mohn, President of the West Coast Conference of Teamsters, who told the LA Times (4/28/73), "It will be a couple...
...death by a machine in the Eldon Avenue plant, a machine that had been kept in bad repair. Accidents were so common at the plant that there was one serious injury per employee every year. The day after Gary Thompson was crushed, the Eldon workers walked out--their third wildcat strike in two months. The UAW local didn't support the walkout, though dissident groups inside the plant--like the all-black Eldon Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement--did. Johnson saw all this, and joined it to his own experience: the injuries, the conditions, the bullying foremen who called him "nigger...
...enough. His foreman ordered him to go back and work the ovens for a while. He refused and called for his steward. Since all the union stewards had been fired during the wildcat, except those who signed a pledge promising no more walkouts, Johnson had no one to help him. By the time a substitute steward got there the foreman in charge had already started writing out the order to fire him, without the required informal UAW conference. They scolded him and told him he was fired. Later that day Johnson came back with an M-1 carbine and shot...
...that presently burn oil will have to switch to coal, and coal gasification plants will begin to replace diminishing natural gas reserves in the late 1970's. Despite the impending boom, the coal industry can still be considered a "sick industry" whose symptoms are a very high incidence of wildcat strikes and absenteeism, obsolete capital stock, and a long-standing reliance on government paternalism in the form of subsidies and import quotas...
...Miller's words, "you couldn't tell labor from management" now has a more progressive, responsive union leadership. If the coal industry is to fill the energy gap it must extend the long overdue benefits to the miners and eliminate the unhealthy working conditions that cause absenteeism and wildcat strikes...