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UE's
Long
Struggle
for
Worker
Unity
in
Vermont's
Machine
Tool
Industry |
| |
ORGANIZING
FELLOWS |
The summer of 1943: The Black
River winds its way through Springfield, Vt. on its way to meet the
Connecticut River, as it had for millennia. Workers report daily to the
machine tool plants along its banks — Fellows Gear Shaper, the Parks
& Woolson Machine Co., the Jones & Lamson Co. and the Bryant
Chucking Grinder Co. — as they had for generations.
This is "Precision Valley," where some 10 percent of all
the machine tools produced in the United States are made.
The summer of 1943 brings something new. Machine tool
workers take a step towards realizing a dream — the strength that comes
with unity. And for these machine tool workers, that means the unity and
strength that comes through UE.
UE had assigned young and resourceful organizer Hugh
Harley to work with Precision Valley’s machine workers. When orders
slowed in 1943 and the companies cut back hours, UE launched organizing
drives at these major machine tool companies.
LOCAL
218 CHARTERED
"Approximately 500 workers in Springfield, Vermont plants
(Jones and Lamson, Bryant Chucking Grinder, Fellows Gear Shaper, Vermont
Foundries) have joined our union," wrote Harley to General
Secretary-Treasurer Julius Emspak on Oct. 16, 1943. "Field
Organizer George Dear and I feel that this is the proper time to
charter a local in Springfield."
The National office agreed with the staff’s assessment,
issuing a charter for amalgamated Local 218, for the organization of
Springfield’s machine tool plants.
Beginning with an election in January 1944, UE won
bargaining rights first at Vermont Foundries, then at the Jones and
Lamson machine plant, and at Bryant Chucking Grinder. (Recognition was
lost at Bryant two years later.) No election took place at Fellows Gear
Shaper, but not because of lack of effort.
"As you probably know, we have been for some time trying
to organize the Fellows Gear Shaper Company, with some 2,000 employees,"
Emspak was reminded in a Jan. 31, 1945 letter from Local 218 Bus. Agent
George F. Tully Jr. "I sincerely believe that within three months
the plant will be organized." It wasn’t.
Twenty-one months later, another Local 218 business agent,
Albert C. Burton, advised Dir. of Org. James J. Matles
that after the Bryant mess was sorted out, "we are going after Fellows
Gear Shaper." Burton recognized that Harley and Dear and Local 218 had
already worked hard on organizing Fellows, but each campaign stopped
without "a good majority" signed up. "We know this will be hard as we
will have to start from scratch, and take many months, but it is the
only other big machine shop here in Springfield."
It would take not many months, but many years.
ONGOING EFFORT
In 1959, Harley assisted the workers of the Parks and
Woolson Machine Co. in a successful organizing campaign and made another
try at the "Gear Shaper." The campaign continued into 1961. Once again,
concerted efforts by Local 218 members, UE staff and Fellows workers
themselves failed to achieve a solid majority of union card-signers.
Fellows workers received regular leaflets on major shop
issues throughout 1964, including a letter from Local 218 Bus. Agent
James Kane, urging them to sign a UE card. Finally, the campaign
advanced in 1966 — when the United Steelworkers also launched a drive,
culminating in an election later in that year. UE withdrew from the
proceedings.
Staying on the ballot might have interfered with the
possibility of Fellows workers finally getting a union, UE said.
However, UE disagreed with the Steelworkers’ strategy of going through
an election without sufficient strength on the chance of a victory.
Further, "UE believes in building a union to get results, not to win an
election. If we have the organization to get results, the odds are we
will win the election."
The Steelworkers lost. Fellows remained the only major
non-union machine shop in Precision Valley.
Fellows Gear Shaper avoided unionization in a variety of
ways — profit-sharing schemes, Christmas bonuses, complicated but
impressive-sounding pension and insurance plans, "merit" wage systems,
annual wage reviews, production bonuses, mutual benefit associations,
recreational committees and more.
THE
IMPORTANCE OF UNITY
Although UE Local 218 made major strides in improving the
wages and conditions of workers at Jones and Lamson, Parks & Woolson
and Vermont Foundries, the goal of unity in the industry had yet to be
met. And that lack of unity hurt all Precision Valley workers.
Employers routinely consulted each other, exchanged
information on wages and working conditions and bolstered each other’s
resistance to employees’ demands for improvements. Workers at the
UE-organized machine tool plants always faced strong resistance to
benefits not in place at the still unorganized plants. When Local 218
sought a union-shop clause at Vermont Foundries, the boss pleaded for a
delay on the grounds that the bigger companies in town, which hadn’t
agreed to a union shop, would be upset. (Vermont Foundries was owned by
Fellows Gear Shaper.)
Unity became a more pressing issue as conglomerates bought
up the industry. J & L was purchased by the giant Textron Corp.,
Bryant became the property of multi-plant Ex-Cell-O Corp., based in
Detroit. Cone Automatic in nearby Windsor was taken over by the
Cleveland-based Pneumo-Dynamic Co.
The United Steelworkers failed narrowly to win an election
at Bryant Grinder in 1956. Six years later, Bryant workers voted
decisively for UE representation. But the company was not going to let
democracy get in its way, and tied up the results in the courts.
CHANGES AT FELLOWS
| |
Yankee
Inventor
Launched
Firm
104 Years
Ago
By taking on odd jobs in his spare time, a drygoods store
clerk in Torrington, Conn. named Edwin R. Fellows had his
first introduction to the machine tool industry. The young man
painted a sign for the Hendley Machine Co.
Not too many years would go by, however, before the
industrious young man would make his name well known in the
machine tool industry — and not because of
sign-painting.
Around this time Fellows became friendly with James
Hartness, an inventor and master toolmaker who boarded with
the young clerk’s widowed mother while working for Union
Manufacturing. In early 1889 Hartness moved to Springfield, Vt.,
and encouraged the enterprising young Fellows to take advantage of
the job opportunities in town.
Taking that advice, Fellows made the trip north. He
operated a screw machine for Jones and Lamson for two weeks before
joining Hartness in the company’s design department.
Fellows became obsessed with gear-cutting. Sometime in the
early 1890s he devised a revolutionary new method of manufacturing
gears. He launched his company in 1896; the following year, the
Fellows Gear Shaper Co. built its first working
machine.
The inventor and his new company did not have an easy
start. "The revolutionary nature of his concept caused many to shy
away from his product; early troubles in product development had
multiplied the difficulty of achieving acceptance," wrote Wayne G.
Broehl in his study of Springfield’s machine tool industry
Precision Valley.
Losses in the first two years were followed by small
profits in 1900 and the succeeding years. Improvements in steel
quality and the rise of the automobile industry came as a boost to
both Fellows and neighbor Jones and
Lamson. |
Meanwhile, significant events were unfolding at Fellows
Gear Shaper, the largest of Vermont’s major machine tool companies.
Fellows was still independent, but the active management had passed into
the hands of someone workers looked upon as an "outsider" who had
radically changed the atmosphere in the plant.
In March 1963, John E. Barbier succeeded Edwin
R. Fellows II as general manager; in March 1967, he replaced
Edward W. Miller as president. Fellows was the son of the
company’s founder; "Ted" Miller had started at Fellows in 1898 as a
machine apprentice and worked his way up through the ranks. A Michigan
resident, Barbier came to Fellows from Ford with a stint at J & L in
between.
"The new management fouled it up so that you couldn’t
produce," complained old-timer Lloyd Reasoner. Workers who had
formerly been satisfied to depend on the company’s good will began to
rethink their outlook on unionism. "I changed my mind in the last two
years because conditions had changed in the shop," said Ray
Jeffrey, an all-round machinist with 28 years in the plant. "You
can’t go to the company officials. If you have grievances, they’re not
settled. They just put you off. I believe it is time to have a union,
especially for the younger men."
Workers at the Gear Shaper could see their wages and
working conditions fall behind those of their neighbors, friends and
family members doing similar work for other companies. By 1968, average
hourly earnings at Jones & Lamson were $3.68; the average at the
Gear Shaper was $2.89. Fellows workers were upset about a medical plan
that cost them plenty but failed to pay all the bills, and bitter about
the disgraceful pension plan. A worker who had earned $3.20 an hour and
retired in February 1968 after 25 years’ service was receiving just $61
a month.
UE
TRIES AGAIN
UE issued its first leaflet since the December 1966
Steelworkers’ debacle in August 1967. A series of regular leaflets
followed, with another open letter from Bus. Agent Kane, with card
attached, on Aug. 21. By year’s end, the hard-hitting comments on shop
conditions brought public responses from Fellows President Barbier.
Intl. Rep. Hugh Harley could report, in December, that Field Org.
Pete Palmer "has a good committee and cards coming in again."
The union effort seemed to falter in early 1968, but the
changed conditions in the shop encouraged UE supporters and staff alike
that this could be the year Fellows workers were finally joined with
other machine workers in Local 218. "A fresh, new UE-FGS campaign was
initiated at the July 14 membership meeting," a leaflet reported soon
afterward. "The campaign will begin by resigning the entire plant,"
wrote Intl. Rep. Don Tormey, who led the campaign.
The campaign moved on with urgency. At occasional mass
meetings, Fellows workers heard from Intl. Rep. Harley, Genl.
Sec.-Treas. Matles and Dir. of Org. Robert Kirkwood. At
plant-gate meetings at least once a week, they heard management’s lies
skewered by Intl. Rep. Tormey. Radio broadcasts from stations in
Springfield and Claremont, N.H. as well as frequent, fact-filled,
hard-hitting leaflets proclaimed the union message.
The UE organizing campaign at Fellows received a boost in
May 1968 when Cone Automatic workers voted to join the union and soon
after ratified an agreement giving them a union shop, a 37-cent increase
in starting rates, a 24-cent hour increase in the minimum job rate,
automatic wage progressions to the top rate, doubling of pensions and
substantial gains in other areas, including insurance.
Bryant workers, meanwhile, had taken a strike vote. In a
leaflet to the Gear Shaper workers, the Local 218 committee said Bryant
was trying to hold on to the low-wage pattern the Machine Tool Builders’
Association imposes on Bryant and Fellows workers. By voting yes, the
Bryant workers said, Fellows workers will "be on the path to wages and
benefits equal to the skills we give these companies. And that’s how you
can help us at Bryant’s. By helping yourselves!"
On the eve of the Labor Board election, the more than 110
members of the UE-Fellows organizing committee signed a confident
statement: "We are proud of our jobs. We are proud of Fellows Gear
Shaper. We are proud of the machines and tools our skills produce. We
are not proud of our wages, our insurance or our retirement
benefits. But we intend to be."
VICTORY!
|
 |
|
National Labor Relations
Board officials count the ballots following the Oct. 24, 1968
representation election that brought Fellows Gear Shaper in UE
Local 218 after more than two decades of effort. Fellows workers,
representing their union, keep a watchful eye on the
proceedings. |
The long goal of unity in the industry became a reality
when Fellows workers gave UE an unmistakable 472 to 355 majority in the
Oct. 24, 1968 election.
The first Sunday evening after the election almost 500
Gear Shaper workers piled into the Springfield Armory to elect their
first union officers, their first negotiating committee and to adopt
proposals for their first UE collective bargaining agreement.
They were greeted by important (and not so) new friends:
Local 218 Bus. Agent Jim Kane (later a National UE president), who had
helped bring about their victory; Francis Columbia, president of
Local 258 at Cone Automatic Machine; Emmett Gavin, shop chairman
at Bryant Grinder; and Robert Farnsworth, a J & L worker and
president of their new local union, amalgamated Local 218.
Ten days after the Fellows Gear Shaper workers voted for
the union, the workers at Bryant Grinder went on strike. After a
six-year court fight to win the right to their union, they felt they had
no choice but to strike for a first contract. They stayed on strike for
21 weeks during one of the worst Vermont winters anyone could
remember.
And for the entire 21 weeks the Fellows Gear Shaper
management resisted negotiating a decent contract, waiting to see if the
Bryant management could smash the strike and the union.
Bryant workers won their strike — with the invaluable
support of union members at Jones & Lamson, Cone Automatic and
Fellows — paving the way for a settlement for Local 218 at the Gear
Shaper.
On April 21, 1969, Fellows, the largest of the Vermont
machine tool plants, finally signed a contract with UE Local 218. The
first contract provided for 10-cent general wage increase retroactive to
December 1968, 5 cents in on May 4 and two more 5 percent increases
during the life of the three-year agreement.
The charter issued back in 1943 had been fulfilled.
Critical to the victory were the union struggles at Jones & Lamson
and Vermont Foundries, and the basic change in the industry from local,
paternalistic owners to absentee conglomerate control.
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