To thousands of autoworkers like Greg Sams, it was plain the company had won this battle.
Sams was among those turned away at the gates of the sprawling Caterpillar plant in East Peoria just after dawn Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the United Auto Workers agreed to end their five-month strike against Illinois` largest industrial employer.
”The whole world is watching and we puke all over our shirt,” he muttered after being told Caterpillar, not the union, would decide what day he should report to work.
To Jerry Tucker, a former UAW official plotting to challenge the union`s president in a coming election, the autoworkers lost because their leadership didn`t do its homework.
To Bill Casstevens, the UAW leader who had to tell his 12,600 striking members that they will soon be going back work on the company`s terms, the matter isn`t over.
”It is a mean-spirited proposal that will cause problems with their workers,” Casstevens said of the company-imposed terms, which will remain in effect while the two sides negotiate a three-year contract.
All three may be right.
Experts familiar with the UAW`s inner workings said several factors influenced the leadership`s decision to swallow some pride and return to work: increasing concern about union members bolting the picket lines to go back to work; eroding community support in Peoria, site of company headquarters and the UAW`s biggest Caterpillar local; and the union election in June in which Tucker, a St. Louis-area union leader, plans to challenge incumbent Owen Bieber for national president.
”The union staged an orderly retreat and avoided a debacle,” said Harley Shaiken, professor of labor studies at the University of California in San Diego and former UAW official. ”I suspect it was the case of reading the membership. With the threat of losing everything, it was better to retreat in an orderly way.”
There was a slightly different slant on the same theme on the streets of Peoria. According to autoworker Mike Bridgeman, a 20-year Caterpillar veteran: ”It is all amazingly quick. I think Bieber and Fites worked it all out last Thursday.”
He was referring to a secret meeting held April 9 near O`Hare International Airport between Bieber; Donald Fites, chairman and chief executive officer of Caterpillar; and Bernard E. DeLury, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Afterwards they announced that negotiating teams from both sides would meet in Hinsdale this week. On the second day of negotiations, an interim back-to-work agreement was reached.
DeLury, who denied a deal was cut in the Bieber-Fites meeting, said Monday that he had repeatedly offered his services to help end the strike. The union, which until last week had adamantly refused offers of mediation, unexpectedly accepted DeLury`s invitation a few days after Caterpillar announced it would hire replacement workers for strikers who didn`t return to work by April 6.
Casstevens, when asked at Tuesday`s press conference why the union suddenly changed its position, curtly referred the reporters to Bieber, who was not present.
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UAW officials in Detroit did not respond to telephone requests for interviews Wednesday, but Barry Koicuba, vice president of the 1,700-member UAW local at the Caterpillar facility in York, Pa., said the agreement took him totally by surprise.
Some UAW officials, who refused to talk for the record, said privately that the union election in June may have been a factor in the decision to settle. Although Tucker wasn`t given much of a chance of unseating Bieber, at least before the settlement, his is the first outsider`s challenge for the UAW presidency in more than 40 years.
Tucker claimed the UAW was beaten even before the first picket lines went up last Nov. 5.
”The corporation was well prepared,” he said. ”I think there`s no way to avoid the fact that the (union`s) national leadership did not develop a strategy. The rank and file carried out their responsibility and went on strike when the national union told them.”
Although Bieber did not respond to a request for comment, UAW Local 974 President Jerry Brown in Peoria showed no signs of being unhappy with the way UAW headquarters handled the strike.
”I am really quite proud of Owen (Bieber) for making this thing happen, for meeting with Fites and getting the mediation service involved,” Brown said at a press conference. That local has 9,000 of the 17,000 members working at Caterpillar.
One of the biggest mistakes UAW leaders made, Tucker said, was failing to clamp down on overtime so Caterpillar could not build a large inventory to carry it through the walkout.
”The company also won the battle of public relations,” Tucker said.
While Caterpillar`s publicity staff hammered out its theme that the company was faced with increased competition from Japan and needed a labor agreement that would help it meet that threat, the UAW, according to Tucker, did little except to rehash the usual labor slogans.
Karl Mantyla, public relations representative for the union in Detroit, confirmed that only on Monday-barely 48 hours before the settlement-did the UAW assign a staff publicist, Roger Kerson, to its sub-regional office in Peoria.
By then, rumors that after Easter there would be a massive return to work by UAW members willing to cross picket lines were rampant in Peoria.
”The union was fearful of losing jobs not only to replacement workers but also to members of its own ranks (returnees),” said Shaiken.
As terms of the agreement were announced in the Peoria area, the anxiety among the rank and file increased. The biggest question is whether Caterpillar will take everyone back.
The agreement Tuesday calls for union members to return to work under terms of Caterpillar`s last offer, which included raising the average hourly pay over the next three years to $19.28 from $17.85, and a six-year job-security guarantee for those called back.
But the company hasn`t indicated how many returning workers it will need, and Wednesday it reiterated an earlier statement that it is assessing its manpower needs and will notify workers individually when to report to work. It gave no timetable.
The concern in Peoria was that the company will use the strike as an excuse to reduce its payroll by 10 to 15 percent because automation has made some jobs unnecessary.
Company managers turned away thousands of UAW members who tried to report to work on the first shift at 6:50 a.m. Wednesday. The mood among workers was subdued but anxious.
”We`re worse off than we were two days ago,” said Ray Schneider, a 19-year Caterpillar veteran who said he was afraid he might be one of the 15 percent that the company does not recall. ”If we had walked in yesterday, we would all have jobs,” he added.
Shaiken said the most serious task now facing Caterpillar, besides negotiating a new contract, ”is how to rebuild a sense of trust. It has $2 billion worth of new equipment. To operate that with a disgruntled work force is not a recipe for success.”