Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 26, 1994 TAG: 9408260062
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That might explain why United Rubber Workers union members - handing out boxes of food to workers entering their second month of a strike against the tire maker - weren't overly busy on Thursday. By late afternoon, only one in four strikers had bothered to come by and pick up the eggs, bacon, corn meal, peanut butter and other staples that had been donated by Roanoke Valley labor unions.
Strikers, members of Local 1023 of the Rubber Workers, said they saw as early as last winter that a strike was a possibility after the union's contract with Yokohama expired at midnight on July 23.
"This is the best prepared strike we've had," said Larry Day of Roanoke, who has worked at the plant for 24 years and was handing out food at the union hall on Brandon Avenue in Roanoke. "The people have really stuck together," he said Thursday afternoon.
James Ryan of Fincastle, who was loading a box of food into his pickup truck, agreed that the unity of the strikers has been good. The only workers who may be suffering are those who have only been at the plant for a few months, he said.
Ryan has worked at the Salem tire plant for less than three years and is one of 150 workers at the plant who were required under the old contract to work on weekends.
One of the major issues keeping the union and company from signing a new labor contract is the company's demands that the pool of weekend workers be expanded by another 150 people to those who were hired as far back as 1984.
A company proposal that union workers pick up more of the cost of their health care expenses has also been one of the major issues in the contract negotiations. Union and management negotiators met Tuesday and Wednesday this week and reported some progress in resolving their differences. They are scheduled to meet again Monday.
The smart ones saved some money to carry them through the strike, said Kip Lancaster, who was walking a picket line Thursday afternoon at the No. 1 gate at the east end of the Yokohama plant. John Reed, who was standing with Lancaster, said he had paid his household bills three months in advance and didn't have any payments due until October.
The workers' credit union, Mohawk Federal, was working with the strikers, including making loans that don't have to be repaid until after the strike ends, Lancaster said. Lancaster, like Reed, lives in Roanoke County.
The union members are drawing $100 a week from the union's strike fund during the job action. Before the strike, workers earned an average of nearly $27 an hour in wages and benefits.
Yokohama workers, who contend they are the lowest paid among the major U.S. tire manufacturers, said wages are not an issue in the strike.
Lancaster, Reed and Shane Hale of Roanoke, the third striker at the gate, all agreed that being on strike wasn't so bad this summer. "It's nice not having to go to work every day," Reed said.
Hale, who works in a section of the plant where tires come off the presses and the heat can go well over 100 degrees, said he didn't mind the hot sunny weather Thursday afternoon. He liked it hot, he said.
Soon, a small bus came to deliver another shift of picketers to the gate and pick up Lancaster, Reed and Hale and take them back to their cars.
The strikers pull four-hour shifts on the picket line once every nine days.
by CNB