(Fwd) [73] LORDSTOWN, OHIO, HAS HISTORY OF WILDCAT STRIKES

["Curtis Price" <cansv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A history of actions at the Lordstown plant, written after a wildcat
strike this past weekend again shut the plant down.

- Curtis Price

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Tue, 16 Apr 1996 04:05:17 -0400
From:          NewsHound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (NewsHound)
To:            cansv@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:       [73] LORDSTOWN, OHIO, HAS HISTORY OF WILDCAT STRIKES

Selected by your NewsHound profile entitled "STRIKES". The selectivity score was
 73 out of 100.

Lordstown, Ohio, Has History of Wildcat Strikes
By Mary Ethridge, Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 16--Maybe General Motors' Lordstown plant has wildcat strikes in its bones.

When the complex was being built in the spring of 1965, construction workers
walked off the job in a wildcat strike over safety complaints. The next
February, another group of construction workers walked out twice in 10 days over
 work rules.

And that was before the first car rolled off the assembly line. Afterward,
things just got worse.

In fact, the wildcat walkout that hit yesterday morning reminded many of
Lordstown's gritty and particularly uneasy heritage.

Lordstown opened in 1966 as the Saturn plant of its era -- a modern production
line that made GM's latest and most sporty vehicle, the Chevrolet Impala.

GM received about 30,000 applications for the plant's first 5,000 openings
despite competition from Youngstown's steel mills.

The automaker wanted younger workers who, management thought, would be easily
trained and would be amenable to GM's policies.

Then came the unions.

Late in 1966, the United Auto Workers beat out the Teamsters and the Machinists
to represent Lordstown's hourly employees.

Labor unrest and wildcat strikes over safety issues soon followed, dissolving
GM's dream of a pliable, fresh-faced work force.

A wildcat strike, in which workers walk off the job without notice and sometimes
 without approval of their own unions, are considered one of the most extreme
forms of worker activism.

GM's workers of the late '60s were young and educated. Many were Vietnam vets
who weren't about to be pushed around the factory floor.

In November 1967, the plant was shut down four times by wildcat strikes. In
1969, an unauthorized strike by the Laborers Union led to tension with their UAW
 brethren.

It began when members walked out to protest a firing of one of their own. About
300 members of trade unions at Lordstown banded together to cross the picket
line.

Fighting began. Shots were fired. A member of the Laborers Union, defended later
 in court by F. Lee Bailey, had killed an ironworker.

Such a history defined Lordstown as a trouble spot for General Motors and earned
 it a segment on CBS TV's ``60 Minutes.''

Nevertheless by 1970, GM had settled on the plant, with its easy access to
interstates and rail lines, for what it then considered a high honor: the
production home of its newest so-called minicar, the Vega 3200.

With a price tag of only $2,000, Vegas had to be produced in high volume for the
 company to make a profit. But at the same time, GM division managers cut
production jobs and cracked down on discipline, firing employees with ease.

GM, unhappy with productivity at Lordstown, realigned the plant in 1971 with its
 General Motors Assembly Division to boost productivity. Workers called the new
managers hatchet men.

``They were trying to push 100 cars down the line an hour,'' said John Russo, a
labor expert at Youngstown State University. That compares with the current rate
 of 60 to 65 an hour for the J-cars -- the Chevrolet Cavalier and the Pontiac
Sunfire, he said.

In 1973, five men in masks, reportedly unknown to workers, union leaders or
management, stopped all production at the Lordstown assembly plant for two
shifts by picketing over an unspecified issue.

Union devotion to the sanctity of the picket line was so strong that 2,500
members of UAW Local 1714 stayed off the job at the adjacent GM fabricating
plant, despite the urging of management and union leaders and even though they
had no idea what the walkout was about.

By the mid-1970s, the UAW had its problems of increased work solved for it:
Consumers stopped buying Vegas. Lordstown workers were laid off for months at a
time.

But by the late 1970s, attitudes had changed.

Under new management that won cooperation from former union militants, the
assembly plant secured its future by winning a bid to produce GM's then-new
J-car.

-----

ON THE INTERNET:

Visit Akron Beacon Journal Online, the World Wide Web site of the Akron (Ohio)
Beacon Journal. Point your browser to http://www.beaconjournal.com

-----

GM

END!A10?AK-LORDSTOWN

AP-NY-04-15-96 2348EDT


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