"They'll sell us a Penn Central, but never a winner." -- William Winpisinger
William Winpisinger has been president of the 825,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers since 1977.
They don't complain about the speculators who are driving up land costs. They don't complain about usurious bankers who drive up capital costs. Instead, they just blame it on the worker. He's the most vulnerable component in the production equation, so take it out on him. Even when they offer us worker participation, ESOPs, and all those other schemes, hey always only want to sell us the losers. They'll sell us a Penn Central, but never a winner.
In the America I was born in, there was an appreciation that we're not going to get better off alone, so we might as well get a little better off together. You get a choice. You can go get the brass ring, try to be the one in a million who becomes a millionaire, or you can contribute what you've got to the group so that we can all get better off together. There are 15 million Americans out there looking for jobs, or so damn discouraged they aren't even looking. There are 50% of the black kids unemployed. This is a boiling pot, and I don't know how Americans can expect to keep foisting all the discomfort on a relative few and expect them to put up with it.
Maybe not immediately, but in the future, I think you're going to see some pretty aggressive conduct and behavior on the part of the workers. This new breed of entrepreneur, particularly in high-tech industries, knows that it's coming; that's why they are so blatantly anti-union. But I suggest to America that if you want to crowd us hard enough, like any other rat, we get cornered, we'll fight.
"I said, 'Would you be willing to sell this company to the employees?' They took it as a joke, like I was some kind of clod." -- William Mazanec
William Mazanec was president of the union at the Monroe Bridge (Mass.) paper mill, a division of Deerfield Specialty Papers Inc. Since the plant was closed last December, he has been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to engineer a worker buyout.
They said the mill was too old and they weren't making the profit they expected. I understand if you are only making a few hundred thousand, the chairman of the board is going to pull the plug on you. But I think that for them to just walk away and close the place down is wrong. Give us a chance. If we can come up with our own management and finances, let us go out and take on the world.
We had a negotiation before the shutdown, and that was one of the things I asked them. I said, "Would you be willing to sell this company to the employees?" They took it as a joke, like I was some kind of clod.
The thing is, the shutdown should never have happened. They had the product. They had the market. And then they wanted to make more profit. So they started cheapening the quality of the paper. They didn't put money back into that mill to keep up with the times, to keep it rejuvenated.
The problem was, the company only wanted us to work efficient from the neck down. The rest didn't count. But everybody has something to give -- not just hours, but ideas. If you can get them giving 100%, you can really do something.
So when the time came to shut down the mill, I asked my people. I said, "Would you be interested in trying to buy this, because without you, nothing happens." They all agreed to take a 10% pay cut. And there are lots of other ways we could save money. It isn't that big a mill -- you don't need three or four vice-presidents earning beaucoup dollars. And there are different ways of running paper machines so you can save money, too; anybody who works there in the mill could see them.
If we can buy the mill, people's attitudes will change. It will be their mill, and their money, and their future on the line. I asked them all to put up $500 each so we'd have something to show the bank up front when we go to borrow money.Five hundred dollars is a lot of money for a guy that has been laid off, but we've already got almost $30,000 over in the bank in North Adams.
Maybe we won't get all the people back to work if we buy the mill. But if we can preserve 70 or 80 jobs, that's something. You're talking about people.This is the only place they've ever worked, 30 or 35 years in a paper mill. What else are they supposed to do?
"They walk through the factory and say, 'Isn't this nice. Oops, Jesus, don't get any oil on my suit." -- John West
John West put himself through Carroll College by working in a heavy manufacturing plant along with his mother and aunt. Starting as a floor sweeper, he progressed to delivering steel and operating the machinery. In 1981, he founded Cadlinc Inc. in suburban Chicago to engineer and maket computer-aided manufacturing systems.
Most of the engineers have come into the factories from the Route 128s or Silicon Valleys. They're coming from the top down, from the design side, the clean side of the factory. And company presidents come out of finance or marketing. They'd take their once-a-month walk through the center aisle of the plant and say, "Isn't this nice. Oops, Jesus, don't get any oil on my suit."
