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Dan Kegley/A coffin and a sign warn union members not to cross the picket line at the main entrance of General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products in Marion where Dave Sears, Charles Shelton and Dean Atwell sat watching plant 1 on Brunswick Lane Thursday.

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Workers see no end in sight to strike

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

The United Auto Workers/United Defense Workers strike against General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products in Marion entered its fourth week Friday evening with no end in sight, according to strikers on the picket line Thursday afternoon.
Four weeks of talks with GDATP administrators broke off late Friday, April 11, followed that evening by union officials’ decision to have the Marion local go on strike.
Strikers are protesting an employment contract they say weakens seniority provisions, cuts pensions, and raises insurance premiums and employees’ costs for prescriptions drugs. The unions had been in talks with local GDATP officials for a month “on a continuing basis,” said Ron Blevins on the first Monday of the strike. Blevins represented the unions in the month of talks with GDATP administrators.
“We want our seniority,” said Blevins. “They’re messing with our seniority. They’re cutting pensions for new employees. They’re putting new hires on a progressive pay scale, starting them out lower. It takes them three years to get up to the pay grade where everyone else is. They drop insurance on people as soon as they’re laid off. Insurance had been continuing for a year. They want to transfer people from department to department. They could lay off somebody for five days and bring in somcbody who’s not been there long at that pay level. The price of benefits is up. The price of the prescription plan is up. They’re just wanting to go backward.”
The company has had no more to say to the media than to striking employees. On April 12 the company released a prepared statement from Jim Losse, GDADP’s vice president and general manager of advanced materials: “The United Auto Workers - United Defense Workers of America Local 2850 late [sic] are on strike at our Marion facility. Our site has over 350 employees who are currently on strike and over 175 who are not. The site remains open for business and will continue operations to meet customer needs.”
That statement drew a challenge from the strikers who interpreted it as suggesting 175 who could have walked out stayed on the job.  After the statement appeared in local news outlets over the strike’s first weekend, striker Mike Husketh objected. “The 175 working are all salaried, not production workers,” he said.
In a requested clarification, spokeswoman Gail Warner said ‘there are over 175 non-union employees who, of course, not being union, are not on strike.
On Thursday, Warner deflected a request for an interview with Losse.
“As I’m sure you can appreciate, we’re focusing our energy and attention on resolution.  Therefore I can’t make Mr. Losse available for comment,” Warner said. 
No response was provided to a list of questions emailed to Warner, who is the company senior director of communications, about the company’s position and whether a timetable has been considered for resuming talks with the unions.
“Do note, we remain committed to resolving the strike situation in a timely manner and our site remains open for business and will continue operations to meet customer needs,” Warner said.
Striker Dean Atwell is not optimistic. “I guess the company has nothing to say to us.”
“We heard there was a mediator in town,” said Atwell, who suggested it was only a rumor. He said there have been no developments in the standoff between company officials and the UAW/UDW who went on strike April 11.
He said Losse was rumored to have spoken with a few of the strikers, but that could not be confirmed with union members on the line Thursday.
According to Atwell, the union is in it for the long haul.  “We’re being stubborn,” he said.
Strikers’ cut pay while on the line may have motivated a few to return to work – three, according to Atwell and David Sears. A coffin and a sign near the GDATP main entrance warn scabs not to cross the line.
“I’m broke, too, but I don’t want people hating my guts,” Atwell said.
Just after noon on Thursday, the strike stations along Brunswick Lane and Johnston Road were mostly quiet. Atwell said the number of picketers picks up “when shifts start and end.”
“Mornings and evenings is when most come,” said striker Charles Shelton.
The strike could gain mass and volume if a rumored appearance by union miners from the coalfields materializes. Atwell said he’d heard the miners would come on weekends to lend support to their auto and defense industry brethren.
The company had moved to a seven-day work week in the wake of the strike “with all vacations denied,” according to Sears, then changed to a four-day, 10-hour shift schedule “maybe so they wouldn’t be here when miners come.”
Such a demonstration of support would not be without precedent. United Auto Workers from the Dublin Volvo truck plant walked the picket line at GDATP last weekend, said Atwell.
“Local 2069 was here Sunday,” said Dave Sears.
Atwell watched as a security guard and sometimes two stood on GDATP property at the entrance. “I wonder what the company’s paying them,” he said. “That’s our increase right there. How much does it cost to pay them and run the diesel engines that keep those lights on at night?” he asked, pointing to a portable light tower near the guards’ post.
Atwell said in his opinion, “another 25 cents an hour and people would have been happy.” He said that industries give an average 4.2 percent cost-of-living increase, but GDATP allowed only 2 percent “and took 25 cents of that for insurance.”
“Three and a half percent would sound real good to me,” Shelton said.
Farther around Brunswick Lane near the entrance of plant two, union members at another strike station watched through binoculars the plant activities inside the chain-link fence beside the railroad.
Striker Gayle Rowland said he had not “heard anything from the company. Evidently they don’t want to talk to us. They knew the first night [of the strike] we want to talk.”
But the strikers seem resolute in holding their cards in what amounts to a poker game where each player is waiting for the other to fold.
Atwell recalled the words of one of the unions’ negotiators. “A fellow said the other day you don’t want to give up in that contract what people fought for a lifetime to get.”