
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 18, 1990                   TAG: 9004180483
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FAMILIAR TACTICS: GREYHOUND TRIES TO BREAK UNION

UNION-BUSTING is always part of a conscious strategy of big businesses to maximize profits by stripping workers of their rights to collectively secure decent wages, basic health-care and retirement benefits, and the security of long-term employment.

Companies get rid of union "annoyances" through violent intimidation tactics. They move production to areas that are hostile to unions or subcontract to non-union companies - leaving thousands unemployed and hiring others for substandard wages and no benefits or job security. They gut unionized sectors within giant conglomerates - the infamous takeover strategies that typify neoconservative corporate greed are especially adept at this management skill.

When all else fails to rid the corporate landscape of unions, contract expiration is ripe time to attack organized workers. Time and again we see companies putting forth entirely unacceptable contracts, followed by refusals to negotiate.

Since 1980, Greyhound employees' wages have been cut, while the cost of living has increased 26 percent. Others have lost their jobs to subcontractors who pay as little as minimum wage with no benefits. Some Greyhound employees are eligible for federal assistance programs - the company's contract refuses any raise through 1996.

Greyhound's chairman, Fred Currey, doesn't care about employees' standards of living, and he was eager to replace union workers with unqualified scabs. He doesn't care about Greyhound passengers either. Recently, a non-union replacement driver attempted to knife a striking driver on the picket line in New York. Police reported that there was a warrant out for his arrest.

Hiring criminals and inexperienced drivers with unpaid traffic violations who get lost and bump into poles, signs and people demonstrates neither "corporate responsibility" nor personal conscience. But what better way to get rid of the "union problem" than to force a strike and hire permanent scabs?

Why is it that the public applauds "networking" and "cooperative strategizing" among big busineses, while allowing these same strategies to shatter the basic rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively for decent wages and working conditions? This seems to me another case of Orwellian "doublethink," which is becoming dangerously common.

MARY BUFFINGTON\ CHRISTIANSBURG

by CNB