Workers Plan How To Get By Without Pay

Three Budweisers into breakfast, Fred Vandolah said he can survive without a Kaiser paycheck for as long as it takes.

“I’ll be all right,” said Vandolah, drinking at the Bigfoot Tavern on Tuesday morning after clocking off the night shift at Kaiser’s Mead smelter.

He doesn’t have savings, but said, “I’ve got elk tags in Montana.”

As today’s 4 p.m. strike deadline loomed, some among Kaiser’s 2,100 Spokane employees said they were prepared to weather an extended conflict.

Plans to live without a paycheck ranged from drawing unemployment or picketing pay to nibbling on carefully saved nest eggs.

Wayne Becklund, a Mead potman sharing beers with Vandolah, plans to find work to make his $400 monthly child support payment.

He ponders shoveling snow. “I hope it snows soon,” he said, cradling a sweating amber pint.

“Most of us have saved up enough to last a couple of months,” said Vandolah.

And strikers can take solace in a United Steelworkers of America boast that no member has lost a home or car during a strike, said Nick Abariotes, spokesman for local 338.

It’s unclear how much the international union will do for Kaiser workers, but Abariotes said the organization has a $200 million strike fund.

Steve Updike, a 27-year Kaiser veteran, said he began saving in preparation for this strike as soon as the last one ended in 1995.

No new cars or boats were purchased. He sweated each cent.

The belt-tightening galls him. He feels he gave Kaiser $25,000 when a previous contract, negotiated during bleak economic times, stipulated a $4.80 hourly pay cut in exchange for company stock.

Now, during an economic boom, Updike feels entitled to repayment and a richer pension.

“I hung tough in the tough times,” said Updike, a senior chemist in the Trentwood analysis lab. “These are the good times, and they’re not sharing.”