just transition

By Darryl Cherney - Industrial Worker, March 1989.

"Activists have always touted that sustained yield equals sustained jobs. Therefore, by keeping the mills open forever, we would logically have to ensure forests forever to keep them going."

IWW and EF! member Darryl Cherney and other Northwest Wobs and radical ecodefenders have joined forces to take on the anti-labor, anti-environmentalist Louisiana Pacific lumber corporation and to prevent the corporation's planned closure of a Potter Valley mill in April. Cherney has made an important 12-point proposal to Gladys Simmons, a Public Affairs Officer of the Louisiana Pacific Corporation Cherney, who is a prominent environmental activist and songwriter, says that he is tired of the mainstream press trashing environmentalists as being anti-labor and of mill owners who blame environmentalists for mill layoffs and shut downs. He points to one industry spokesman at a gathering of the Eureka Chamber of Commerce in mid-December who was quoted as saying that environmentalists are making life difficult for the timber companies as they spend time and money fighting lawsuits instead of spending time and money in the forest cutting down trees.

With the second highest nationwide timber cut being reported (12.6 billion board feet) and Mendocino County reporting nearly triple the timber revenues from last year's cut on National Forest land, Cherney finds it "repulsive that industry is blaming environmentalists for shortages that over logging is creating." Cherney comments: "While MAXXAM/Pacific Lumber bemoans four lawsuits filed against them as anti-labor, they have in fact increased their workforce by 33% and nearly tripled their cut over 1985 levels. Another case is L-P's closing of the Potter Valley mill which doubled its shift only five years ago."

Cherney asks: "When will northcoast citizens learn that artificially increased production leads to massive busts shortly thereafter? With production and profits at an all time high, industry's criticism of environmentalists can only mean one thing: the bust is well on its way."

Cherney likens the industry's complaints about environmentalists to "a baby crying about a booboo on its little finger. L-P has million dollar publicity budgets, dozens of attorneys on retainer, high paid lobbyists in Sacramento and Washington, Representative Bosco and Assemblyman Hauser in their pockets, a stranglehold on the workforce, and ownership of millions of acres of timberland. Should a lawsuit tie up 1/10th of one percent of their timber base, you can hear them howl for miles."

"I'm asking environmentalists to fight to keep L-P's Potter Valley mill open." said Cherney. His proposal which has already challenged the industry's traditional public relations defense, has also challenged environmental circles, and has been greeted with enthusiasm from members of the Sierra Club, the Northcoast Greens, the Mendocino Environmental Center, the Wilderness Coalition, Save the North fork and the International Woodworkers of America.

Cherney also believes that workers are coming to see the importance of environmental concerns. At a recent Earth First! demonstration, MAXXAM/PL actually imported counter demonstrators from other companies because their own employees, who are currently attempting to buy back the company, would not defend the policies of corporate raider Charles Hurwitz.

Cherney mailed his pitch to L-P spokesperson. Glennys Simmons and has some words of concern about her job: "Glennys will be one of the first to go when L-P closes their Ukiah mill. They already have a PR person, Shep Tucker, in Humboldt County. Besides, PR is one of L-P's lowest priorities. Look how they announced layoffs just before Christmas, after many people had begun their shopping," said Cherney. "L-P's treatment of their employees is reflective of their forest management. They can't tell us whether they can keep their people employed four months from now, and they expect us to trust them with long range forest management."

By Anne Lawrence and Paul Chown - Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California (Berkeley), Date Uncertain, likely early 1980s

American industry today is under going a massive transformation which gravely threatens the job security, wages, and benefits of union workers. Economic recession, the flight of capital overseas, and to low wage areas, the declining competitiveness of domestic industry, and the introduction of labor saving technologies are producing an epidemic of plant closings and layoffs.

The problem of plant closures is stunning. The federal government does not count shutdowns directly, but estimates based on private research data show that over four million jobs a year were lost in the early 1970s as a result of plant closings and migrations. For every ten large manufacturing plants open in 1969, three had closed by 1976. No single area of the country was spared. Since then, hundreds of thousands more workers -- from steelworkers in Lackawanna, New York, to insurance company data processors in San Francisco; from autoworkers in South Gate, California, to tire builders in Akron -- have joined the victims of plant closings.

Technological change also poses a major threat to workers' job security. The development of the microprocessor, or "computer on a chip," has made possible an unprecedented transformation of the workplace. Electronic scanning devices at the supermarket, word processors in the office, electronic transfer of mail at the post office, robots on the assembly line, and numerically controlled machine tools in the shop threaten the jobs of the checkout clerk, secretary, postal clerk, autoworker, and machinist. Business Week has estimated that within the next decade, new technology may transform as many as 45 million jobs, half of them now unionized. As many as 25 million of these jobs may be completely eliminated.

Faced with the major job losses caused by plant closings and technological change, many unions have sought through collective bargaining to check further layoffs and lessen the hardship for those who are already out of work. Job security has always been a major concern of union negotiators. But today, with the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, it has moved to the top of the bargaining agendas of many unions. Provisions such as advance notice of shutdowns and layoffs and restrictions on management's rights to close plants, transfer work, and displace or downgrade workers are increasingly being used by unions to prevent or postpone layoffs. For workers who lose their jobs, unions are seeking improved severance pay, extension of health care benefits, transfer rights, and retraining assistance.

This manual is designed as a practical guide for union negotiators responsible for bargaining contract language on issues related to plant closings, transfer of operations, and technological change. The manual is organized by contract clause, such as advance notice or severance pay. Each section contains an introduction to the major bargaining issues and a checklist of items negotiators may wish to cover. The manual then provides samples of actual contract clauses recently negotiated by unions in a variety of different industries. Model clauses, included for each topic, may be used by negotiators in framing their own proposals for contract bargaining.

Read the report (PDF).

By Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee - 1976

This Corporate Plan was prepared by the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee for that section of Joseph Lucas Industries which is known as Lucas Aerospace.

If a brief description of Lucas Industries is provided this gives an economic, technical and company background against which the performance and potential of its wholly owned subsidiary, Lucas Aerospace, can be viewed. It was also felt desirable to do so as some of the alternative products proposed elsewhere in this report, although emanating from aerospace technology, could more appropriately be handled, at the manufacturing stage, by production techniques and facilities available elsewhere ln the Lucas organisations.

• Download a PDF Version of the Lucas Plan.