No Loyalty Writ On The Bottom Line

`Back when Henry Kaiser had the place, he treated us like family and we made him a multi-millionaire.”

A half-dozen burly men in the Steelworkers’ union hall murmur their assent. “Now, we’re just a bunch of cattle as far as they’re concerned,” growls another voice.

Spokane’s largest industrial employer is not Henry Kaiser’s aluminum company any more. Its owner is Charles E. Hurwitz of Houston, a junk-bond artist who bought his aluminum and logging companies by saddling company assets with debt. His managers are pushing hard for more productivity, fewer jobs.

The Steelworkers have pushed back, with a strike that began Oct. 1 and shows no sign of ending. Kaiser has since locked out the union. The company claims delight with its replacement workers and could continue the lockout indefinitely.

Out on East Francis at the union hall, the anger of loyalty betrayed smolders like the chili Pete Hofer tends on a hotplate in the back of the room. Typical of the 2,100 striking Steelworkers from Kaiser’s Mead and Trentwood plants, this graying bear of a man has worked at Mead for 21 years.

But now, Pete Hofer is a parable for the strike’s affect on our community. He manages the union’s food bank. Under gloomy February skies, Steelworkers crunch across the gravel parking lot to Hofer’s unheated metal trailer. The men pick up a weekly check from the union strike fund, plus meat, canned food, sacks of dried peas. With fierce pride, Hofer talks about the families he helps, the tons of food he passes out, the supportive Spokane merchants who sell him supplies at cost.

A Russian emigrant shows up with one of his four children in tow - a bright-eyed boy, about 7. The gruff Steelworkers melt, smile, offer him candy. Shyly, pleading for anonymity, the boy’s mother tells their story. They came to America several years ago and her husband found a job at the smelter. They bought animals, settled on a farm. It seemed safer for the children than the city streets. Now, with her husband out of work, they have lost everything. Sold the animals. Moved twice. They don’t know how much longer they can hang on here. They get into a battered car and drive away.

In the union hall, the Steelworkers call Kaiser’s salaried managers overpaid, abusive, inept.“We know this plant. We tell ‘em how to improve it and it never gets done until they come up with the idea. The company could just remove a few salaried people and the plant would run better without ‘em.”

The union’s suspicion, as the strike simmers on, boils down to this: Kaiser might try to dump its obligations to its many older workers. In dangerous, brutally physical jobs, these men gave Kaiser the strength of their younger years. Now they offer the horse sense of experience, but in retirement they could cost the company a bundle in medical benefits. Kaiser aims to betray them, the union charges, either by breaking the union or by cutting older workers through a variety of contract changes.

Kaiser denies this accusation. Officials say they need skilled, experienced laborers. If downsizing does occur, company officials say they’ve offered “soft landings” with full medical benefits to ousted veteran workers. Seniority rights, the company adds, mean that most who lose jobs would be younger employees.

The issue isn’t the people, the company says, it’s the system: Over the decades the union contract has grown almost as complicated as the federal tax code. Numerous, narrow job classifications and overtime restrictions prevent managers from assigning the work force more productively. Operators of Kaiser’s machinery, for example, ought to be available to help clean and repair the equipment during down time.

Bull, says the union: Managers already have the power to reassign workers, they’re just too dull-witted to use it. Besides, an operator who can push the buttons on Kaiser’s old, complex machinery doesn’t necessarily have the aptitude to repair it.

Kaiser replies that recent experience with temporary workers proves the desired flexibility works. The union fires back with rumors of terrible accidents.

Company managers say they’d love to get veteran workers back on the job, under terms of a more efficient contract. If so, why is bargaining stalled?

The only thing this bickering proves is that strikes hurt everyone, creating bitterness that makes a settlement harder to achieve with every passing day.

One thing is beyond dispute: Kaiser has to change. Most of its aluminum goes into beverage cans, a competitive market with marginal profits. Most of its profits have come from aluminum sold to aerospace firms like Boeing. But Boeing is tightening screws, too. Its new, 10-year contract with Kaiser prescribes a fixed aluminum price that will force Kaiser to slice costs closer to the bone, every year. Then, there’s the debt Hurwitz racked up to buy the company.

In a wiser world, industries would invest in the loyalty and expertise of workers rather than mortgaging their futures to junk-bond acquisition games. In the real world, the competition and cost cutting never end; unions and companies have to make the best of it, or die.

A few weeks ago, I listened to Ray Milchovich, Kaiser’s chief operating officer, talk about the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. Suppose, I said, you lived in Spokane, and had a son. Would you recommend he take a union job at Kaiser? Milchovich responded with another lecture about the ferocity of business competition.

In this environment, there is precious little comfort for the blue collar laborers who gave Henry Kaiser the vigor of their youth, contributed millions to our economy and now, with growing frustration, trudge to Pete Hofer’s trailer for another can of soup.