A Three-Generation Contract

by Jeff Crosby, Jul 13, 2007

Contract negotiations with the General Electric Co. (GE) are so brutal that the main thing local union leaders are thinking about at the end is just “thank God it’s over.” Although the company’s take-it-or-leave-it tactics (known as Boulwarism*) were long ago ruled illegal, management has adjusted its tactics just enough to stay this side of the legal line. National union negotiators from the 13 unions that make up the Coordinated Bargaining Committee sit in New York for five weeks—and nothing really moves until the last three or four days.

We have a lot to be proud of the contract we just ratified. Best of all, we achieved a raise for current pensioners, based on their years of service and when they retired. So the retirees who are really hurting, who retired before 1984 and are living on $500–$600 a month (half for surviving spouses) will get the biggest raise. We also defended benefits for future hires, people who aren’t working at GE or paying dues to the union yet. Some 30,000 management employees lost various pension, retiree health care and early retirement benefits back in 2005, so we knew they were coming for us this year. But we saved 80 percent of benefits for future hires—even though they, too, don’t work for GE (yet) and don’t pay dues.

Of course, the heart of the deal included improved wages and pension benefits for current union members in the IUE-CWA, UE, Electrical Workers, Machinists, UAW and other unions at GE. Without that, there was no way we could have reached an agreement.

But where else in this dog-eat-dog country do regular folks fight for those who came before them and those who are yet to come? For us here at the GE aircraft engine plant in Lynn, Mass., this is not an abstraction. One young woman who just applied here will be the fifth generation of her family to work at this plant if she gets hired.  

People found things to do other than make parts the last weekend before the contract deadline. IUE-CWA brothers and sisters at the aircraft engine overhaul facility in Arkansas City, Kan., made a fabulous button—“Don’t Screw the New Guy!”—and for some reason all forgot their badges on the day shift. Local issues heated up and caused a short strike at the UE Railroad Locomotive plant in Erie, Pa. It was bottom-up creativity at its best. Everyone sent the same message:

We not giving up the new folks, we want a three-generation contract!

You can’t help but be pissed off over the increased health care costs we had to eat—nearly doubling over the next four years. More than 30 percent in my plant voted “No,” mostly over health care. As we pointed out again and again, GE made $3.1 billion last year off of its high-tech Medical Systems division. GE positions itself as just another victim of the health care crisis—but actually it’s a chief profiteer off the system. And the company fights any real reform (such as single-payer) that will address health care costs.  (Well duh, our costs are their profits!)

Still, I am proud. Proud to be union. This is what unions are supposed to be about.  Fighting for our parents, fighting for ourselves, fighting for our children.

   *  The Boulwarite system was coined after Lemuel Boulware, a GE vice president for employee and community relations, who saw the 1950’s United States as “well down the road to a collectivist revolution” and sought to achieve successful employee relations by eliminating unions.

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