(Note: This is a two part article. Part One below is the narrative of the strike including some neccesary background information. Part 2 is an analysis and commentary as to why the strike was successful, and will include what lessons I learned through the strike, and how what I learned is relevant to the recent Amazon organizing drive and the current PRO Act legislation,)
The first union staff job I had was with OPEIU (Office and Professional Employees International Union), Local 459, headquartered in Lansing, Michigan. For a number of years, I had been serving as the shop steward at the Lansing Red Cross in “Distribution Department;, that is the Lansing Red Cross’s blood shipping operation. In 1987, I received a call from Local 459’s one staff representative, asking if I wanted to come on board as a second staff representative? I agreed to join Local 459’s staff.
Fast forward to 1992 through 1994. Local 459 had just won an NLRB election certifying that Local 459 was the bargaining union for about 60 phlebotomists, nurses and drivers at the Flint, Michigan Red Cross’s blood operation. The key issue was wages. Yeah, it was 1992 through 1994, wages were a lot lower overall and everywhere (politically, us on the Left were pushing for $10 minimum wage). But the Flint Red Cross’s wages were particularly bad. We had workers in the bargaining unit working for wages in the area of $5.80 to $6.30 an hour, and these were drivers and phlebotomists who ran the Red Cross’s mobile blood drives on a daily basis.
Once the organizing drive was completed, I took over as the bargaining representative from the union as we moved on to negotiating the first contract.
The first contract was hard bargaining. There was certainly a struggle over wages, but the real difficulty was that wages were all over the map. Workers were hired by the Red Cross at all sorts of different rates, often regardless of classification and experience. The result was we had people working radically different wage rates, within the same classifications, with an often 50% differential between workers.
What the first contract achieved was a series of classification wage scales with a progressive wage structure, some pretty good boilerplate language (“boilerplate” language is a short-hand expression for the union rights, workers’ rights, and non-economic portions of the contract). Some workers (especially low-paid) received some pretty good wage increases (on paper). The raises were in the area of 5% to 8% for the low paid workers. But, like we often joked, 10% of nothing is still nothing. And of course, the middle and upper waged workers got comparatively much smaller raises. So, lots had not been solved with the first contract, and thus, the first contract had a short duration of one year.
The second contract came around pretty soon (one year contract). From the start, before the first proposal was written, before the bargaining team had been elected, the atmosphere around the second contract had escalated. At the first union meeting around the upcoming contract, I could literally feel and smell a strike in the offing; it was palpable,I knew a strike was going to happen, it was, as the expression goes, “in the air”.
Most unions will go to great lengths to avoid a strike. For lots of unions, especially after the de-industrialization of the 1980s, including capitals’ use of permanent replacements (scabs) to bust strikes, a strike was seen as a very risky affair. Everything, the bargaining unit, the contract, the workers themselves, could be lost in a strike. Lots of unions looked on strikes as an existential threat to themselves, and management attorneys and companies knew it! This is still, even in 2021, the feeling of many unions when it comes to strikes.
Local 459, me, the workers at the Flint Red Cross knew better (and Lansing Red Cross, we’d struck the Lansing Red Cross on a number of occasions with very good results). The Flint Red Cross, in the event of a strike, was very vulnerable. If the Red Cross tried using replacements (permanent and temporary), they’d never be invited to run a mobile blood draw again in any union shop, and the UAW was still a big player in Michigan. Likewise, we knew that the Flint Red Cross was contracted to many hospitals in Michigan’s lower east region. We knew that if we could stop Flint’s mobile blood drives, they’d be forced to import the blood and blood products from the Lansing Red Cross and Detroit Red Cross in order to fulfill their contractual obligations to regional hospitals; a real economic blow to the Flint Red Cross!
While everybody agreed that the first contract was insufficient, nobody was mad at the union, the bargaining team, or me. The bargaining team for the first contract was re-elected. I was welcomed back with open arms. I embraced the strike threat that was simmering among the workers and bargaining team, because the bargaining team and I agreed that we could indeed beat the Flint Red Cross!
Our bargaining proposals were a bit revolutionary as well. Instead of raises based on percentages, we decided we’d bargain wages based on flat rate dollar amounts. Thus, our initial wage proposal was for a flat rate of $1 per hour. We proposed flat rates because a flat rate structure is most effective in raising wages quickly for low paid workers and because percentage based wage increases lead to greater and greater wage differences between higher paid and low paid workers over time; something we didn’t want to do. We also proposed a series of wage differentials on top of the flat rate, as many of the drivers and phlebotomists were at work at 4 in the morning, or returning back from a drive in the evening.
The other thing we did which was a bit unusual was that we took a strike vote as bargaining was beginning. We asked members to authorize the bargaining team to call a strike if a strike was necessary. In a well attended meeting, members voted by over 90% to allow the bargaining team to call a strike.
Bargaining was indeed slow and tedious. Our proposal for $1 per hour was met with a counter proposal for a 1% wage increase. As we got near the end of bargaining, the Flint Red Cross threw in an extra percent to 2%, and then, as things were meeting their climax, they threw in another whopping ½% wage increase.
The Flint Red Cross’s management kept talking about how they didn’t have the money to fund our raises; that we’d break their bank. In truth, they were in pretty bad economic shape after years and years of mis-management. On the other hand, we kept telling management that their economic problems were their problems and not ours. Our problem we told them was extremely low wages, and our position is that we were not going to continue to subsidize their economic mis-management on our backs. Management wasn’t budging, and we weren’t either. A war was in the offing!
The Strike Begins:
The Red Cross proposed mediation, and we agreed. We got a real good Federal Mediator, a woman who had spent decades as a negotiator for the Teamsters before becoming a mediat
But meditation didn’t work. The Red Cross’s lead negotiator was a hired management attorney named Gary (last name not used to protect Gary’s identi Seems that Gary held the opinion that workers and their union would never strike, period. Gary’s approach was that it was the 1990s, and unions didn’t strike anymore. Gary looked at a trend and mistook this trend for an absolute rule.
Even as we fine tuned strike plans in the presence of the mediator, I believe her name was Beth (we wanted Beth to be able to tell management that indeed a strike was imminent, which Beth dutifully did). All the same, Beth struck out too, in great frustration also calling Gary and managements’ team a bunch of idiots.
Truth be told, loose strike planning began almost immediately after the ratification of the first contract. My contribution to the strike strategy was a suggestion that we develop “flying pickets”.
Very simply, the Flint Red Cross collected most of their blood donations through mobile donation drives held throughout the Flint Red Cross’s region. The Flint Red Cross also had a substation for blood collection in Alpena, Michigan, about 200 miles away in the northern region of Michaigan’s lower peninsula. Alpena based workers were also part of the union and were active as well.
The Red Cross never used temporary or permanent replacement workers. But the Red Cross tried to run mobile blood drives during the strike using management staff. Our “flying pickets” would show up at the mobile blood drive, set up pickets, and basically reduced mobile blood drives to collection levels that could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Workers loved the “flying picket” concept!. The mechanics of the flying pickets were run by one of the drivers, Barney, who was also on the bargaining team. Barney made contact with sympathizers in the Lab (outside the bargaining unit) and thus we had a little spy network who would tell us day by day where the mobile blood drive was going. From there, Barney would line up the picketers and drivers, and we never missed a mobile blood drive.
The International Union came through big time. With a strike vote of over 90%, the International approved the strike, which in turn opened up the International strike fund, which meant the Union covered healthcare premiums, and paid workers who picketed $200 per week in strike pay for the duration of the strike. If readers remember, we had workers making as little as $5.80 to $6.00 per hour. If you do the math, $6.00 per hour, at 40 hours is a working wage of $240 per week. With a $200 strike benefit, lots of workers weren’t losing that much money.
Secondly, the bargaining team and Union set up picketing requirements in order to receive strike pay, and strike pay was paid in cash on the picket line. You had to be an active striker to get the strike benefits. In practice, just about everyone did their picket duty happily….. Solidarity Forever was an active force in this strike.
And then there was the weather. As I remember, the strike began on June 1, in the spring going into summer. The weather was beautiful (Michigan is a hard place if you have to strike in winter). With workers receiving decent strike benefits there was no atmosphere of the wolf being at the door for any of the strikers. Thus, the picket line stretched out in front of the Red Cross increasingly took on the feel of a daily picnic and barbeque. A grill was out on the picket line every day. Sympathetic visitors were always offered a hamburger or hot dog. The umbrellas and sun shades were always set up. Workers were pretty impressed with what they were doing.
Last to mention is the contract campaign itself. Early in the strike planning stage, a woman named Maria was put in charge of the contract campaign. Maria didn’t make a big deal of the contract campaign. On the first day of the strike, Maria simply grabbed a few of the lower paid strikers and they just disappeared.
Maria and her delegation showed up again at the end of the day. Seems that Maria and her delegation made the rounds. First they visited the UAW CAP council. Not a big, planned meeting; Maria and her delegation just showed up with picket signs and asked the UAW to cancel all the blood drives scheduled by UAW and GM in the auto factories, for the duration of the strike. The UAW responded by canceling all of its blood drives.
From there, Maria and workers went to the Urban League and got the Urban League to endorse the strike as an anti-poverty action. Finally, the delegation stopped at the United Way. The United Way offered all sorts of help in keeping strikers solvent, which we really didn’t need. The Flint Red Cross was however a major recipient of United Way donations for its non-blood related services and the United Way didn’t want to be known as a social service organization that was funding an agency being struck for low wages.
For me, the whole experience of the Flint Red Cross strike was surprising in that it was such an easy strike for me, as the staff rep. From the start, the strike was run by the strikers. Once Maria and her delegation had done their diplomatic mission, and Barney had the flying pickets organized, the strike ran itself. Anyone on the bargaining team, or for that matter, anyone on the picket line was perfectly capable of speaking to the press, OPEIU Local 459 itself was an amalgamated Local with 44 bargaining units spread across Michigan’s lower peninsula. Thus, with only two staff reps, it just wasn’t possible for a staff rep to be on the picket line every day; which really didn’t matter because the workers were running the strike just fine.
The strike itself was a war of attrition. We knew we were impacting the Red Cross’s economics severely. Management and Gary were starting to figure out that workers were miles from being beaten. For instance, we had some bargaining sessions during the strike. Thus, I would occasionally need to talk to Gary to schedule the bargaining sessions. As time went on, Gary would make some sly comments looking for information; like, “Your folks must be getting desperate”. I’d respond to Gary, “Oh no, not desperate at all. We’re doing just fine, you should stop by our picket line sometime, and if you’re really nice, I bet the strikers would be happy to get you a hamburger or hotdog”. This was not what Gary wanted to hear!
Six weeks into the strike, Beth the Mediator, scheduled a bargaining session. This session was different. Management began agreeing to some of our economic issues like shift differentials, and another half percent on wages. We held firm on wages. Management then caucused for a long time. Late afternoon turned into evening. Finally, the Director of the Flint Red Cross, a guy named Fred Wilson, came in alone to meet with our bargaining team. Fred said simply this: “You win. I don’t know where the money is going to come from to pay for the wages, but this strike is killing us and it needs to end”.
So this is how 60 odd strikers beat the Flint Red Cross.
