“Skeleton Staff” Puts Strikers’ Case

Strikers outside the Goodyear plant at Akron have been joined by a new ally; members of United Steel Workers of America (USWA) have put up a skeleton with a sign accusing Goodyear of “picking us to the bone.” The pickets have also erected tombstones with names of cities—Akron, Buffalo, Gadsden, Lincoln, Union City—that the strikers say are dying as rubber industry plants are closed.

Altogether about 15,000 USWA members are striking at 16 plants in the U.S. and Canada. Key issues, says the union, include Goodyear’s plans to close two entire plants and eliminate 5,000 jobs, threats to the pensions of current and future retirees, and a five-tier pay scale that would employ new workers for 40 per cent less than that paid current employees, who may also face a pay cut.

There is support too for the strikers from outside the USA. Fred Higgs, secretary general of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers Unions (based in Brussels) is reported as calling on “trade unions in the rubber industry—and particularly Goodyear plants in Central and South America—to monitor inventories and production to ensure that they are not undermining the USWA’s strike action.”