Military Tank Makers Strike in Mich

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STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP) - More than 800 employees went on strike Monday at General Dynamics Land Systems, which makes tanks and other equipment for the military, a company spokesman said.

Contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (news - web sites) continued past a midnight deadline without reaching an agreement, spokesman Peter Keating said.

The company designs, manufactures and supports land and amphibious combat systems for the Army, the Marine Corps and allied nations.

UAW officials were not immediately available for comment.

The strike affects employees at the company's battle tank production facility in Lima, Ohio, its tank parts facility in Eynon, Pa., and its headquarters in Sterling Heights, Keating said.

Nonunion employees will continue operations, and the company will continue production, Keating said. He said he could not discuss key contract issues.

Earlier this year, General Dynamics Land Systems, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, landed a $4 billion deal to design futuristic armored combat vehicles.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

Answers

I don't like the sound of that. Would have to know the details, but off the top of my head, I'd say, this is NOT the time. It's like when the New Orleans cops went on strike one Mardi Gras and spoiled the fun. BIG mistake. I don't know if they've been forgiven yet.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001

screw the details! now is NOT the time!

we continue to work without a current contract, we continue to work even though the postal management refuses to show up at the negotiating table.

They can at least do the same at this critical time!

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001


I think you know by now that you can often depend on me to offer up an alternative viewpoint. I have had a lot experience in dealing with union problems from the labor side of the table, so here goes.

Barefoot, you have a different problem going on. First off, you are employed by the government which is traditionally bad at negotiating with its labor force. Secondly, the postal system, for whatever reasons, is constantly running out of money. The labor force in your system is a big part of the budget and when the entire budget remains in question there is little or no incentive to increase wages and benefits.

That situation does not apply to General Dynamics however. Corporations the size of GD usually have an adversarial relationship with their unions. Any strike by the UAW right now is the end result of many months, perhaps even more than a year, of attempting to negotiate "in good faith" with management, to no avail.

While the UAW will be blamed in the media for this strike, the management actually *plotted* this strike right now, I'm sure. Managements choose the timing of strikes as much as the unions do, or at least they choose to "take a strike" at a time when they feel it will be most advantagious to their position to beat down the union. They time a strike by refusing to negotiate further and/or even put *final* offers on the table that are less than the present benefits.

Here is a case where GD has just signed up for a multi-billion dollar contract. There will be lots of money flowing into their business, plus the normally expected cost overruns that are part and parcel of large government/military contracts. But no additional pay/benefits for the workers, right? No, they aren't using the new government contracts to catch up on years of old labor issues, are they?

What they are doing is to create the appearance of a *demanding* union situation that doesn't care about national security or patriotism. The management has orchestrated this strike to happen right now. Look into the details of the management/labor problems to find the truth. I'm sure you will find as harsh and uncaring a management attitude as Barefoot has to deal with in the postal system.

If I am right about this, then your anger should be directed at the management of GD, not at the UAW. At any rate, it's not a good idea to indulge in a knee-jerk reaction against a strike by focusing purely on some "greedy or unpatriotic" union. It takes two to tango.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001


Gordon, I'm inclined to believe your theory on this one. Surely the union members would prefer to take a more patriotic stance just now, to save face in the community, if nothing else.

I haven't really been following it, but I believe the Minnesota state worker strike may be working itself out. I believe it erupted just after 9/11, which also seemed oddly timed.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001


Gordon, I agree with your post very much, but I still say that the union did not and does not have to strike at this critical time.

Whether they were coerced to this by management or not, and I would bet that you are right with that point!, they should not have decided to strike. It makes the union management look like complete idiots to do that. Which they may well be, who knows at this point.

Postal management has consistently avoided the negotiating table for the last three contracts as far as I know, preferring instead to have the negotiations handled by the arbitrators. This consistent avoidance of the negotiating table shows they are not interested in negotiating in good faith with the union. This is why the union has now added the right to strike to the list of demands. Currently we have a clause that prohibits striking. We want that removed, and we have the grounds to get it.

management has always had the demand of removing the job security issue from our contract because they want to go more towards automation which would eliminate a lot of jobs. The facility I work at has just recently added two 'robots' which have replaced [at a guess] about five workers each. Maybe more. We also have a mail mover system over our heads, an elevated rail system of sorts, which eliminated several towmotor positions for the mailhandlers. I am not aware of any details as to the efficiency of this system.

Recently we were also blessed with another F100 to replace a FSM. FSM is Flat Sorter Machine. Flats are the large envelopes and magazine type mail pieces. The F100 has a tendency to break down a lot, and the repair time is longer than the FSMs. They also require less employees to run.

Handling mail by hand is slowly being eliminated. But, if things get bad in this country, and power becomes sporatically available for instance, the number of machines in the plant will be moot as we have the techies climb up on the train to retrieve the mail containers up there to get them processed by hand. The rest of the machinery will end up being in the way as we work overtime to sort everything by hand, with less people knowing the schemes than we used to have.

Currently we have a new scheme in place for mail heading to New York. Normally this scheme is done at New York facilities, but we along with other PDC's are sorting the New York mail down to a more detailed level, to help those brothers and sisters in New York who have to deal with the crisis there. And we do get a lot of New York mail here in Miami since we are the receiving city for all of south/central america, and the islands. California tends to get the Asian mail, and very little actually comes over the border from mexico to those states nearest. It is flown to Miami directly from those nations.

If our union request to halt foreign mail is accepted, and I doubt it would be, we would have a huge loss of work, most of which is done by hand. for some reason foreign mail is very fragile in nature of the paper used, and our automation systems tend to shred it too easily.

I myself do a lot of the foreign letters by hand. I believe that several of the clerks in my current operation do not like handling it at all and avoid it as much as possible.

So, whether management at the tank factory caused the strike to happen at this time or not, the decision to strike was made by the union, and I really feel that they made a very bad decision here. As you pointed out, the general public is going to be very upset at the union and not at the management, at least until it is explained in detail. And yet, even if they prove that management is at fault, it won't sway mych of the public, as the public only reads the headline 'Union strike' and that is the end of comprehension.

I think we can trust the membership here to read and understand the details, as we have all so ably proved thus far. The main fact is this is NOT the time for a strike at that facility. I think they could have done a slowdown first...or explored some other options.



-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001



Barefoot, thanks for all your comments and the short course on your own situation. As far as the GD strike, I think it will be settled very quickly now. I believe the management made a real blunder here. In their rush to take advantage of the present "war climate" and their desire to give that union a black eye, they put themselves in a bad position. Sure, the public will likely continue to blame the union, but there is that *huge* contract that needs to be put in motion and there will be calls now from government and military offices who *do* know the score. These calls will order the GD management to get their contract settled immediately, or else! And that will be the end of it.

So don't worry that the equipment contract will be held up. That isn't going to happen. Too much money at stake for GD here and little or no incentive to have any real public scrutiny into the sordid details of just how such an impasse came to be. Like some of the "management" within your own postal system, there are always a few hard headed guys who are forever itching to teach the union a lesson in just who is boss. Too bad for that. Labor unions are by and large composed of people just like you and me and only want to share in the success of the company they work for. They don't sit around planning to go on strike. That's the last thing they want, for sure.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001


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