[Vision2020] More Lockouts as Companies Battle Unions

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
 Reprints<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/business/lockouts-once-rare-put-workers-on-the-defensive.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=print#>


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January 22, 2012
More Lockouts as Companies Battle Unions By STEVEN
GREENHOUSE<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/steven_greenhouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

America’s unionized workers, buffeted by layoffs and stagnating wages, face
another phenomenon that is increasingly throwing them on the defensive:
lockouts.

>From the Cooper Tire factory in Findlay, Ohio, to a country club in
Southern California and sugar beet processing plants in North Dakota,
employers are turning to lockouts to press their unionized workers to grant
concessions after contract negotiations deadlock. Even the New York City
Opera locked out its orchestra and singers for more than a week before
settling the dispute last Wednesday.

Many Americans know about the highly publicized lockouts in professional
sports — like last year’s 130-day lockout by the National Football League
and the 161-day lockout by the National Basketball Association — but
lockouts, once a rarity, have been used in less visible industries as well.

“This is a sign of increased employer militancy,” said Gary Chaison, a
professor of industrial relations at Clark University. “Lockouts were once
so rare they were almost unheard of. Now, not only are employers
increasingly on the offensive and trying to call the shots in bargaining,
but they’re backing that up with action — in the form of lockouts.”

The number of strikes has declined to just one-sixth the annual level of
two decades ago. That is largely because labor unions’ ranks have declined
and because many workers worry that if they strike they will lose pay and
might also lose their jobs to permanent replacement workers.

Lockouts, on the other hand, have grown to represent a record percentage of
the nation’s work stoppages, according to Bloomberg BNA, a Bloomberg
subsidiary that provides information to lawyers and labor relations
experts. Last year, at least 17 employers imposed lockouts, telling their
workers not to show up until they were willing to accept management’s
contract offer.

Perhaps nowhere is the battle more pitched than at American Crystal Sugar,
the nation’s largest sugar beet processor.

Last summer, contract negotiations bogged down, with the company insisting
that its workers agree to higher payments for health coverage, more
outsourcing and many other concessions. Shortly after the 1,300 unionized
workers — spread among five plants in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa —
voted overwhelmingly to reject those demands, the company locked them out
and hired replacement workers.

That was on Aug. 1, more than five months ago, and since then the workers
and their families have been scrounging to make ends meet. Some face
foreclosure and utility disconnection notices.

American Crystal has hired more than 900 replacement workers to keep its
plants running. Federal law allows employers to hire such workers during a
lockout, although they cannot permanently replace regular employees.
Employers can pay the replacements lower wages, although as is the case
with American Crystal, the companies sometimes need to offer higher wages
and help pay for housing to attract replacements.

With many private-sector labor unions growing smaller and weaker, and with
public-sector unions under attack in numerous states, some employers think
the time is ideal to use lockouts, a forceful approach they were once
reluctant to use.

Many employers, though, say they have little choice.

Robert Batterman, a labor lawyer who represents employers, said whether it
was the N.F.L. or Sotheby’s, which locked out 43 art handlers in Manhattan
last July, “the pendulum has swung too far toward the employees, and the
employers are looking in these tight economic times to get givebacks.”

“Employers,” he continued, “are using lockouts because unions are reluctant
to do what the employers consider reasonable in terms of compromising.
Employers are looking to reset their collective bargaining relations.”

After being out of work since Aug. 1, Paul Woinarowicz, a warehouse foreman
employed at American Crystal Sugar for 34 years, sees another rationale for
lockouts.

“It’s just another way of trying to break the union,” said Mr. Woinarowicz,
a member of the bakery and confectionery workers union. “People here in the
Red River Valley are really mad at American Crystal. It was just like a
knife stuck in your heart.”

With American Crystal earning record profits before the lockout, the
workers strongly opposed its push for concessions. Mr. Woinarowicz noted
that the company’s most recent quarterly report showed a sharp decline in
production and profits — a development the workers said showed the lockout
was taking a toll. American Crystal said the drop was due to a smaller
sugar beet crop and higher operating costs.

American Crystal accuses union negotiators of being inflexible and denies
that it is seeking to break the union. For many employers, lockouts have
proved highly successful. Last July 17, Armstrong World Industries locked
out 260 workers at its ceiling tile plant in Marietta, Pa., after they
rejected the company’s offer as stingy on pensions and health coverage.

After being locked out for five months, the workers accepted a contract
only slightly different from the one they had originally voted down. Union
officials said the workers knew Armstrong had the upper hand.

There have been several recent lockouts at hospitals, often after nurses
engaged in a one-day walkout. To hire replacement nurses from a staffing
company, hospitals often have to commit to hiring them for at least a week,
so a one-day nurses’ strike is often followed by a four-day lockout. But at
some health care facilities, like West River nursing home in Milford,
Conn., where management locked out 100 workers on Dec. 13, companies see
lockouts as a way to wrest concessions and set an example for workers at
their other facilities.

DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the National Football League Players
Association, said the football, hockey and basketball leagues ordered
lockouts in recent years for a clear reason: to gain leverage in
negotiations.

“The lockout is designed to put you at a distinct disadvantage,” he said,
saying it places huge pressures on players who typically have short
professional careers. The National Hockey League’s lockout of 2004-5
canceled an entire season.

Mr. Smith said, “A lot of players have careers of two or three years, and
you might get a player who asks, ‘At what point is this fight worth
one-third of my career?’ ”

For Jeannie Madsen, a lab technician at American Crystal, the lockout has
meant strains for her and her fiancé, also a worker there. With her former
husband also locked out and suspending child support payments, she said she
could not afford new school clothes and shoes for her children and had to
stop paying her daughter’s orthodontist bills. She said Wells Fargo would
soon foreclose on her home.

“What’s most upsetting is that it’s affecting the lives of many innocent
children,” she said.

The sides are holding occasional negotiations but remain deadlocked.

Ms. Madsen said the company was continually putting up barriers to a
settlement, essentially pressing the workers to surrender. Company
officials did not return phone messages, but Brian Ingulsrud, the company’s
vice president for administration, wrote in an editorial for a Fargo
newspaper that “American Crystal Sugar remains committed to good-faith
negotiations.”

  [image: DCSIMG]


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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