Time For Unified Campaign At Kaiser

Fewer in number, Steelworkers are headed back to work at Kaiser Aluminum. The workers, the company and our community all bear deep bruises. But it’s over. And that’s a great relief.

Out on the factory floors, workers and managers will try to rebuild a relationship. Each side can seek dignity from its toughness in the battle now ended, and from the gains now written into the new contract. Left in the past, all of us can hope, will be the piercing words and deeds of the last two years.

But wounds take time to heal. After its campaign to discredit the company, the union might need some time to become, again, an ally in the company’s effort to keep factories open on U.S. soil. Yet Kaiser has no time. An even more serious battle is under way.

Aluminum smelters require a vast supply of low-cost power. The Bonneville Power Administration has proposed to slash the aluminum industry’s power supply and raise the cost of power. This threatens Kaiser’s future in the Northwest - as shown by the fact that power rates already have forced the company to cut production at its smelters in Mead and Tacoma.

BPA is now reassessing its proposed rates and power distribution plans for the aluminum industry. The affected Northwest communities and the state’s business leaders will be urging BPA to recognize the strategic value of good, basic industrial jobs. Those jobs are simply crucial to cities bypassed by the boom in high technology. One way for the Steelworkers to put the labor dispute in the past, where it belongs, would be for the union to join the chorus of voices contending that BPA should preserve the aluminum industry, treating rates as an investment in economic diversification and stability. Such a change in direction, while consistent with the union’s fundamental concern for U.S. working people, still would require great character and courage after such a painful fight.

If there is hope for healing, it is to be found in the new contract, which does contain gains for both sides.

The Steelworkers held on and Kaiser remains a union shop. The union’s many older workers can look forward to a 30 percent increase in pension benefits and an elimination of a cap on company contributions for retirees’ health care. Wages will rise.

The company can move forward with a more competitive cost structure. Its work force will be leaner and its manufacturing methods, more efficient. In negotiations it achieved a primary goal - flexibility in the work rules that had limited its ability to redeploy workers for greater productivity and innovation. It secured more latitude to use “outsourced” labor, another tool for efficiency.

These gains, while won at a terrible cost, should enhance Kaiser’s ability to keep its U.S. factories open and its skilled union labor on the job, long term. That’s a good thing for everyone. Now, on to the fight for a fairer deal with BPA.