Replacement Workers Keep Kaiser Going But Temporary Staff Lacks Training, Education Of Striking Steelworkers
Piles of steel-toed boots waited and rows of trailers lined the fields when the buses first lumbered through Kaiser Aluminum’s gates last September.
Steelworkers watching through the lunchroom windows at the Trentwood rolling mill knew that behind the shaded bus windows were replacement workers. A small and invisible army, willing to work.
Six months later, they still are.
Despite high rates of turnover, injuries and absenteeism, temporary workers have proved a critical element in one of Spokane’s longest and largest labor disputes. With the help of hundreds of salaried workers, they’ve kept the aluminum rolling.
Since the strike began Sept. 30, thousands of workers from Western Washington to North Idaho and from Nevada to Saskatchewan have crossed the picket lines at Mead, Trentwood and three other Kaiser plants.
Negotiations between Kaiser and the United Steelworkers union ended on Jan. 14. A day later, the company rejected the union’s offer to end the strike and locked out nearly 3,000 workers at its five plants.
Training replacement workers in the weeks before the strike and closeting them in hotels were necessary preparations to ensure the continuous operations kept going, company representatives said.
The Steelworkers say having so many people willing to cross a picket line for a Kaiser job undermines the very union that worked 50 years to achieve the quality of those jobs.
Social scientists say just seeing the replacement workers was the first blow in a long and very personal fight.
“By hiring replacement workers, the company is going to the heart and soul of the Steelworkers collectively, and any manager who seems surprised by anger on the picket line is lying to you,” said Rick Fantasia, a labor specialist and chairman of the sociology department at Smith College in Massachusetts.
“Imagine somebody taking your job because you’re trying to improve your standard of living.”
Temporary workers say if it wasn’t them lining up to work, it would be someone else.
For most of the first month, the almost invisible work force lived in trailers at the Spokane plants, leaving only for illness after exhausting 12-hour days.
Today, they quietly arrive at the plant twice a day at shift change. They mostly drive with the windows closed and the car radio turned up, eyes straight ahead, as instructed. The pickets they pass shout “Scabs!” As of April 1, the temporary workers will have medical benefits, paid holidays and vacation.
“I’d like to stay there forever,” said Erik Henderson, 28, a former cable lineman from North Idaho who has been at Trentwood since October. “They’ve done nothing but treat me well and I’ve never worked for a better place.
“Everybody says that if the union guys lose, there’ll be a whole lot of jobs lost. But if they go back in, there will be 1,200 other people out of work. Either way, it’s a lose-lose proposition.”
Sources inside the plants say that up to 80 percent of the temporary workers lacked the three to five years of industrial experience or college degree that Kaiser required before the dispute.
They include people from Western Washington and northern Montana who answered newspaper ads and “professionals” who follow labor disputes. A significant number are economic refugees from the region’s closed lumber mills and mines, and minimum wage jobs.
“I don’t think recruitment has been an issue,” Kaiser spokesman Susan Ashe said. “Generally, we’ve been able to find the kind of people we need.”
Workers from Longview, Wash., to Sandpoint came for hourly wages that pay twice what they made in restaurants, construction and nursing aide jobs.
Others came desperate.
In November, Kaiser recruiters traveled to Plummer, Idaho, after Rayonier Wood Products announced it would not rebuild a mill after a fire there last July. More than 125 people were thrown out of work, part of the 620 timber jobs lost in Idaho’s five northern counties since 1994, according to state officials.
Plummer residents estimate a third of the unemployed millworkers now cross the Kaiser picket line. One North Idaho woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said her husband resisted going to Kaiser until they fell behind on their mortgage.
“If we had something to fall back on we wouldn’t even consider getting involved in a strike. We were getting desperate. There aren’t any jobs,” Karie said.
Fantasia said such dilemmas have wider economic consequences.
“If workers are expendable and each worker is pitted against everyone else, then whoever will work for less under the least favorable conditions is going to get the jobs,” he said. “If that’s the race, it’s a race to the bottom.”
After months of collecting unemployment after the mill burned, Don Neglia, 55, had no qualms about crossing the picket line in December.
The ex-Marine drove three hours a day to and from Spokane to earn $13.25 an hour. But last week, frustrated by a manager that he said forced him to change jobs and cut his hours, he went looking for the telephone number of Kaiser’s corporate headquarters - and called the Steelworkers union hall.
The Steelworker who answered talked to him about his job. Coincidentally, it had been her job before the dispute.
“My heart was in my throat,” Carol Ford-Duncan said.
She told him she wouldn’t listen until he heard her story. Within a day, Neglia was at the hall talking to the Local 338 union attorney. He said Neglia’s temporary employment agreement offered little recourse. But by the end of the conversation, Neglia had decided to quit. He also agreed to set up a meeting with Steelworkers and other former Idaho timber workers who have crossed picket lines.
Steelworkers have complained to state officials about out-of-state workers and charge that some replacement workers are on work release from prison.
“It’s absolutely not true, it never has been true,” said Mike Pannek, administrator of Spokane County’s Geiger Corrections Center.
Pannek and officials from Airway Heights Corrections Center and both state work release programs in Spokane said it is illegal for work-release inmates to be involved in a labor dispute. The work crews who leave the prison facilities for day labor on public roadways or nonprofit agencies also are prohibited.
However, Department of Corrections field officers did confirm that one or two ex-offenders who live in the community on supervision reported they were hired at Kaiser.
Temporary workers, meanwhile, have reacted to the siege - and shift work - like their union counterparts. They speak of a “brotherhood,” feel pride in their work and have become close.
“There are a lot of good people out there, a lot of people who value the amount they are earning because they’re not going to make it anywhere else,” Henderson said.
“At Christmas, I did feel sorry for the (Steelworker) families, but man, all of us would have had a terrible Christmas.”
Temporary workers say they’re contributing to the Spokane area by spending heavily and keeping Kaiser afloat.
Jack Connelly couldn’t see it.
When the locked-out Steelworker heard an old friend from church was hired at Kaiser, he was aghast. His friend was 22, a doctor’s son about to be married. Connelly had taught the man to play the guitar. He couldn’t speak to him.
His friend, who asked to be identified by his middle name, Donovan, knew Connelly was upset but felt like his role wasn’t that important to the outcome of the strike.
“If Kaiser wants to split from the union, they are going to do that and there’s nothing that union can do and nothing we can do. I’m going go take the opportunity. It’s America,” Donovan said.
After a sermon on friendship in February, Connelly approached Donovan, knelt and asked him to forgive him for hating him all these months.
“I saw that we were Christian brothers first.”
Donovan said he was glad to have the air cleared, but in a telephone interview he said he does not regret the job.
“A lot of people think we’ve hurt the economy. Everybody I know there is my age. The plant is now run by younger people and you know younger people, they spend a lot. Everyone I talk to is out spending like crazy. I spend tons of money. Right back into the economy and it helps me get out of debt, too.”
Meanwhile, Connelly, the father of four, has enrolled in community college classes. He greets his friend at church and even jokes with him. But mostly, he prays. For his family, for his friend and for Spokane. He needs to believe.
“God is bigger than the strike.”