Anyone who believes in fairness must have been disgusted last week. That's when Caterpillar, Inc., the world's largest maker of construction machinery, told its 12,600 striking workers that, unless they cross their union picket lines, they will be permanently replaced. Caterpillar said it was necessary to do this in order to remain competitive in a world market, but that's garbage. Caterpillar isn't in trouble. It has a larger share of the U.S. market than any of its Japanese rivals, and nearly one-third of its 1991 sales were exports. Indeed, some of Caterpillar's machines are selling better in Japan than Japanese-made models. The issue is not competitiveness; it's old-fashioned greed.
The human cost of this corporate greed will be very high. Thousands of workers, who are engaged in a legal strike, could find themselves out of a job. And since about half of them are within a few years of being eligible for pensions, we are talking about people who would have a hard time finding a job, even in a good job market, and who will be losing retirement income they were counting on.
But there's more to the story than that. If Caterpillar is successful in playing the permanent replacement card, the right to strike will become meaningless in many situations. Instead of a tool that gives workers some kind of equality in disputes with their employers, it will be an empty threat. Who will strike if it amounts to throwing your job away?
Caterpillar can get away with this partly because of a loophole in our labor law and partly because of the current economic climate. It's against the law to fire workers who are engaged in a legal strike -- like the one at Caterpillar. However, a 1938 Supreme Court decision ruled that, while striking workers can't be fired, it's OK to "permanently replace" them. What's the difference between firing workers and permanently replacing them? Perhaps there's a legal distinction, but it's a distinction without a difference -- just ask a Caterpillar worker.
There's been a big increase in permanent replacements since Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Management at Eastern and Continental Airlines, Greyhound and the New York Daily News all hired permanent replacements for strikers, in some cases with the express purpose of getting rid of the union. It's an effective technique for doing that, too. Permanent replacements are unlikely to be union members -- and with a powerful object lesson before them, they're unlikely to try to organize.
A bill that would bar the hiring of permanent replacements has already passed in the House and could come before the Senate this spring. It would allow employers to hire temporary workers during a strike -- they have a right to do business just as the workers have a right to strike. But it would get rid of the quibble that threatens the jobs of striking workers. The Bush administration has campaigned vigorously against the bill, and George Bush promises he will veto it.
What do they have against the bill? Critics claim it would lead to a rash of strikes and harm our competitiveness in world markets. But a look at labor laws in other industrialized nations suggests there's not much to the competitiveness argument. Germany and Japan both have laws that forbid permanently replacing striking employees, and so do France, Belgium, Holland and Sweden, to name just a few.
And there's no evidence that we'd have lots more -- or any more -- strikes if permanent replacements were illegal. This notion is based on the assumption that workers get a kick out of striking and would enjoy doing it more often. The truth is, strikes are very painful, especially for strikers. They happen only when workers feel so strongly about an issue that they will do without their paychecks, sometimes for months -- the way the Caterpillar workers have.
Most labor disputes are settled in a reasonable and peaceable way through collective bargaining. The possibility of a strike makes both sides willing to negotiate, and the strike itself is a powerful tool for getting stalled negotiations back on track precisely because it is so very painful. Strikes are not the cause of labor disputes; they are a way of making sure that labor disputes are not settled in a one-sided way because the workers have no leverage and management has it all -- and nothing to lose.
If the Congress had pushed through the bill barring permanent striker replacements last year, 12,600 workers at Caterpillar would not be faced with a bitter choice between crossing their picket line and losing their jobs. Indeed, the strike might not have happened in the first place because, without the unfair advantage permanent replacements give them, Caterpillar management would have had to bargain honestly and from the beginning.
We don't know how the Caterpillar strike will end. Management could win, but so could the union. Solidarity among workers, public support for the strike, a lousy job done by replacement workers - any or all of these things could force management back to the bargaining table, perhaps after the company has suffered great damage. But whatever happens, we have to make sure that American workers have a level playing field when they negotiate with management. Congress must pass the bill outlawing permanent striker replacements as quickly as possible -- and with a margin that will override George Bush's veto.