Counting the Cost

I remember the last day I worked for Blue Circle Cement Incorporated at Calera.  As I left the electrical department, Truman Hughes stopped me.  He asked, “How long do you think we will be out?”  He was referring to a strike planned for the next morning, August 3, 1994.

I responded with, “Truman I have worked my last day.” 

With eyes of disbelief, he said, “No, really how long do you think we will be out?”

Once again, I said, “Truman, if we go on strike the company is going to replace us.  I have worked my last day.”

Still not believing me, he said, “Do you really mean it?”

With my electrical tool pouch on my shoulder, I said, “Truman, if we are not back to work in two weeks it is over.  I, like some others, will never be back.  I have been in negotiations since February and the company is ready to replace us.  They have told me that if we strike, I will not have a job.  Look, I have all my personal tools with me.  I have a few in my locker, but I have most of my hand tools in this pouch.”

Negotiations had been tough.  Chicago lawyers have disdain for Alabama rednecks.  Sitting across from an educated know-it-all who twists every article of a contract is deplorable.  Sometimes times we had to remind the lawyers that just because we talked slow does not mean that we were stupid.

Negotiations were long and frustrating with trips to Atlanta, Birmingham, and Anniston.  Every time the negotiating committee returned to the plant, the men had hundreds of questions.  We tried to give them as much information as we could without doing any damage to the negotiations.  Hearsay among employees ran rampant throughout the plant.

The men wanted to strike immediately when the contract expired in May.  The negotiating committee tried to hold them together as long as we could without hitting the highway.  Many of the men thought that we were not trying hard enough in negotiations.  They would remind us what they would do if they were on the negotiation committee.  I offered to let them have my position.  I never had any takers.

The anxiety was building with each meeting.  Co-workers would heckle members of the negotiating committee.  I remember an incident one morning while buying a coke in the canteen.  Some of my friends, I use the term friend loosely, sounded like laying hens in the hen house.  They were clucking as a hen does when laying an egg.  I will let your imagination take you were they were going with that one.

Another time a co-worker cussed me from the time I got out of my truck, punched my time card, and entered the plant.  He told me that I was not a man, had no guts, and that I was probably on the take by the company.  As a footnote, when we went on strike, that same man was the first to cross the picket line.

The president of the union and good friend on the negotiating committee was worried sick about the situation.  I remember riding back from Atlanta with him.  I told him that the situation was bigger than we were.  We knew that men wanted to strike and that the company was prepared this time.  There had been two successful strikes previously.  One was a twenty-four-hour wildcat strike over a dismissed employee.  The other was a two-day strike resulting from three years of implementation, which involved pay cuts, holiday and vacation losses, and benefit reductions.  The employees of the plant were confident, but the company had the workers and the money to outlast them.

On another occasion, he and I were standing outside the bathhouse.  He said, “Hopper, what are we going to do.”  I reminded him that we would make it.   As we talked, Eddie, another employee, walked by us.  I said, “I worry for Eddie.  He cannot get another job making $40,000-$50,000.  He has no education and his age is a factor.”

Billy, an older machinist, walked past us.  I said, “Billy is too old to get another job.”  Then, there was Jerry.  I said, “Jerry is in the same boat as Eddie, but you and I are young enough and have enough education to start over.”

The men voted to strike.  True to their word, the company bussed in enough strike busters to run the plant.  The men were strong until they missed their first payday.  After a month of negotiations, the negotiating committee convinced the employees to return to work.  Of 157 employees on strike, only fifty returned.  Some of us, especially the negotiating committee, never did.  I learned that although the majority rules, it is not necessarily right.

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13-14 KJV).