Labor Troubles at Douglas : Disputes Over New Contract Highlight Industry Woes

After working seven months without a new contract, the United Auto Workers union at the McDonnell Douglas plant in Long Beach is locked in an ugly internal struggle inflamed by the unrelenting pressures on California’s shrinking aerospace industry.

UAW Local 148, whose 19,000 members have twice before rejected proposed contract terms, on Wednesday announced that it had once again reached a tentative agreement with McDonnell Douglas.

That word came just a week after UAW President Owen Bieber had excoriated the local’s president, Richard Rios, for wielding a “wet noodle instead of a club” by failing to invoke a strike threat against the aerospace firm.

At the time, Rios called Bieber’s letter a blatant effort to push the union local into a strike--a risky gambit in the current labor environment. “What he thinks is a club is a strike,” Rios said.

The new pact--achieved without a strike--involves some compromise on the non-wage issues that have kept the nation’s No. 1 defense contractor and the UAW’s largest local divided. But after months of raucous union meetings and endless internal quarreling, it is in no way certain that the latest agreement will end the infighting. A rank-and-file vote is scheduled for next week.

The conflict mirrors not only the tough times facing the aerospace industry in California, but also the tough choices facing unions at a time when their influence is eroding.

Tens of thousands of aerospace jobs are fast disappearing. That fact, coupled with the implied threat that firms will simply move jobs out of state if their demands are not met, leaves unions squeezed by conflicting pressures.

Dissident union members, such as those leading Local 148, are challenging the UAW’s national leadership, asserting that too much ground has been ceded to management for the sake of cooperation.

Each side has alleged that the other’s political posturing for a union election next year has stalled a new contract. Bruce Lee, the UAW’s director for its nine-state Western region, is up for reelection and expects to face a challenge from Rios or a candidate backed by Rios.

The union conflicts have also sparked charges that union meetings have been increasingly marred by violence, intimidation and abusive behavior. A brawl at one meeting last spring injured a female shop steward. In another incident, an international union representative’s truck was vandalized.

Meanwhile, the conflicts are spreading beyond the union’s leadership. State Sen. Cecil Green (D-Norwalk) canceled his sponsorship with Local 148 of a women’s conference last week after the infighting was publicized.

“When the conflict broke out, we did not want to get caught in the middle,” said George Burden, Green’s chief of staff.

The dispute is part of a larger national challenge to UAW leadership by a group known as New Directions, which has gained support by criticizing union-company cooperation programs modeled after Japanese management methods.

McDonnell Douglas undertook a cultural upheaval at its Douglas Aircraft plant in 1989, seeking to improve cooperation and “empower” workers. But critics say the plan was implemented in such a heavy-handed fashion that many workers were left disaffected; cooperation has long suffered.

That became apparent in August, 1990, for example, when the chief of MD-80 aircraft production issued a memo complaining about workers littering the rest rooms with cigarette butts, rivets and graffiti.

“If you do some of these things, you are sick and need help. . . . If you don’t want help, then get the hell out of here,” wrote Bill Skibbe. He also asked workers: “Several years back, the toilet stall doors were removed. Do you want that again?”

The tough talk echoes the plant’s turbulent labor history over the past two decades. Workers have struck twice in the last 13 years and engaged in a damaging work slowdown in the mid-1980s. In this environment, Rios was elected by opposing the cooperation program.

The New Directions movement claims significant support in about 200 UAW locals nationwide, according to its primary organizer, Jerry Tucker, ousted as regional director in St. Louis during a fractious union convention in 1989.

“I think this boils down to the fact that the international leadership has forgotten who they work for,” Tucker said. “That (Local 148) membership has twice rejected what they consider a concessionary contract.”

Rios’ critics say that, among other problems, his weak leadership has permitted an “atmosphere of violence” to develop, though there is no evidence that Rios is involved in or condones the behavior.

“We’re on the edge of someone getting seriously hurt, perhaps even killed,” said Jesse Salazar, chairman of the union’s bargaining committee and a Rios critic.

A confrontation at a stewards’ meeting last spring pitted Edward R. Lopez, who is six feet tall and weighs 280 pounds, against John Ortiz, said to be even bigger than Lopez. Fellow steward Linda Gray suffered a separated shoulder when she was caught in a shoving match between the two sumo-sized combatants.

“She flew by real quick,” Lopez said. “If she had been thrown any harder, she probably would have gone out the window.”

Some Rios critics assert that Rios is at fault in not stopping the violence or working to clean up the union hall parking lot where some members linger, they say, drinking and making trouble.

Rios rejects such criticism, asserting that the union hall is more safe today than it was five years ago when the police had to be called in several times to break up fights.

Rios said he has attempted to open up meetings to worker input and intends to hire a security guard to patrol the parking lot. He blames his opponents for at least some of the rowdy behavior, saying they want “to make me look bad.”

Indeed, Rios said Lee threw a chair at him last April during a heated discussion of a Douglas contract offer. The incident occurred in a meeting room at a Best Western motel in Artesia.

“Everybody was looking at me, thinking Richard is going to go crazy,” Rios recalled. But he said he did not respond, since the chair missed him.

Lee denies that account of the incident. “Hell, he is walking around, isn’t he?” Lee joked. Rather, Lee said he walked over to Rios, picked up a chair and slammed it on the table next to Rios “to get his attention.”

An earlier allegation by Rios ally Floyd Sparks, another Local 148 official, that Lee had helped arrange financing for McDonnell to move jobs from Long Beach to Utah has been widely disputed.

Sparks said he heard Lee boast about arranging the financing at a Lake Tahoe casino. But Lee denied ever being at the casino with Sparks or making such a statement. And Ed Mayne, president of the Utah AFL-CIO, said he does not believe that Lee had any involvement in arranging state assistance for McDonnell.

Rios also has withdrawn his allegation that a UAW training organization had helped ready non-union workers for the Douglas plant in Utah. “There is no proof of that,” Rios acknowledged.

Nonetheless, Rios said that Lee and Bieber have a campaign to discredit him and members of his union slate. He also said he believes that Lee is trying to obstruct settlement of the contract so that he can blame Rios in the elections next year--the very same allegation that Lee makes about Rios.