J.P. Stevens Caves In!

One era of the 17-year struggle between J.P. Stevens Inc. and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) has ended with 83 pages of double-spaced legal jargon. An agreement has been reached. But before the roar of the ratification vote in Roanoke Rapids could die down, owner Whitney Stevens opened the next era with more lies and misrepresentations.

The morning after the ratification vote, Stevens appeared on videotape before captive audiences of Stevens employees meeting in their as yet non-unionized plants. He told them two lies. The first was that the unionized workers got nothing in the contract that non-unionized workers were not already getting. He then told them that the ACTWU had agreed not to run campaigns at any Stevens plants for 18 months.

Whitney Stevens' lies were a bold attempt to shape the attitude of his employees and the public about the settlement and to leave a bad taste about the union in their mouths. His ability to succeed depends upon the pervasive ignorance of the public with respect to union contracts. His only victory in the settlement's aftermath might be in turning public sympathy against the union by convincing them that the union's victory was really a loss.

Over the years, public attention has almost always focused on the wage and benefit packages included in union contracts, because pocketbook issues are close to everyone. But the important part of union contracts has never been the wage and benefit elements. Important as they are, they are the icing on the cake. The real substance of the settlement is the contract itself, a document which, in effect, creates law between a company and a union that is binding on both and can be litigated in the courts when a dispute arises.

Most people do not realize what the basic law is that covers employee-employer relations. If they did, there would be far more people clamoring to join unions. The basic law is this: In the absence of a contract or a specific federal prohibition, an employer may hire, fire, promote, demote, punish, or harass an employee for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. The vast majority of American working people, whatever color their collar, work without a contract and are therefore employed "at will," terminable at the will of either party. An employee can quit any time he or she wishes, and an employer can fire his or her employee at will.

Most working people think that as long as they give their employer adequate notice, they are free to quit their jobs when they please. That same majority believes, however, that once having been designated a "permanent employee," the employer is somehow required to employ them as long as they are doing their job. They believe that the employer must have cause to fire them and that length of service automatically provides them with a claim to their job.

The truth is that either side can terminate the relationship at will unless there is a contract which binds them.On its face, the relationship seems equal. Unfortunately there is an inherent difference in power that makes the employer's right to terminate oppressive.

When an employee quits a job he or she has nothing further to do with the well-being of the employer, who simply hires someone else as a replacement. But the employer retains influence over the employee after the working relationship has been terminated. The employer is free to put whatever he or she pleases into the former employee's personnel file, which is then transmitted in full or in part to the working person's next employer. What the employer chooses to say about an employee directly affects the future well-being of the individual worker, who has no commensurate power over a former employer.

The imbalance of power inherent in the relationship between workers and powerful employers was the fundamental justification for writing the National Labor Relations Act. The framers of that law allowed employees to act "in concert" in order to bring balance and equity to the employer-employee relationship. Balancing power in the workplace is what unions and contracts are about.

For 17 years, J.P. Stevens has refused to share power with its employees or to recognize its obligation under our system of law to allow employees to work together to offset Stevens' influence over their lives. Stevens has crowed that it would never sign a contract, knowing all along that the issue was not wages and benefits, but whether or not employees would be treated as equals to management in the effort to produce textile goods.

Even if the recent agreement struck between J.P. Stevens and the ACTWU was the worst contract in the world, it would be a victory for the textile workers. They have forced Stevens to eat crow and do that which it said it would never do--sign a contract and recognize the union of employees.

But it is not the worst contract in the world. For a first-time contract, and given the intransigence of the company, the agreement ratified by the workers at Roanoke Rapids, Allendale, and High Point is a remarkably good contract. A review of some of its major features may help to demonstrate the importance of the elements of a contract other than wages and benefits.

• Duration: Stevens signed a two-and-one-half year contract. Most management consultants (union busters) try to negotiate one-year contracts because delaying and frustrating contract negotiations is a major weapon in their arsenal for defeating unions. A contract of this length allows a union to emphasize leadership development, service to the local, and institution building rather than having to focus the majority of the workers' attention on an annual negotiating process.

• Seniority and job bidding: Stevens agreed to plantwide seniority and a system of job bidding. Again, conventional anti-union wisdom rejects plant-wide seniority in favor of departmental seniority, which forces the employee to surrender seniority if he or she transfers to a job in another department. The contract thus protects workers who bid for better jobs regardless of where they are in the plant.

• Arbitration: Stevens agreed to submit irresolvable grievances to outside, binding arbitration and further agreed to extensive grievance procedures for the resolution of differences between management and members. Stevens fought against this element of the contract long and hard because it dislikes involvement by any "outside" parties in its business. Again, it lost to the workers' desires.

• Safety and health: Most unions in the South have to fight so hard to stay where they are in contract negotiations that few are able to mount an effort for safety and health provisions. Yet ACTWU and the workers held out for safety and health committees in all the plants. The recent contract permits workers to have access to information and documents related to exposure to toxic substances and subsequent medical records.

• Portability: During the first 18 months of the contract, the Roanoke Rapids plant contract can be ratified at any other plant in the Stevens chain where the ACTWU is certified as the bargaining agent. This is the kind of provision that you only find in contracts where the union has organized the majority of a company's plants, not where the union represents only a few (as is the case with J.P. Stevens).

The five elements above are only the best of the elements of the contract, which also included provisions on workloads, checkoff, informing the union about companywide wage and benefit changes, and other routine contract guarantees.

The union also gave some things up, but what it gave up was in no way comparable to what the workers gained. ACTWU agreed to end the boycott and the corporate campaign, both of which had succeeded in their goal of pressuring the company into signing a contract.

ACTWU also agreed not to continue to focus on Stevens as their number one organizing target. It is this provision that angers many of the people who had been supporting ACTWU in its fight against Stevens because they read it as an abandonment of workers in the rest of Stevens plants. Such criticism is unjustified for two reasons. First, ACTWU now has a tremendous incentive to pursue Stevens because of portability clause discussed above and the continued remedies offered by the courts for Stevens' past practices.

Second, ACTWU has had to pass up many opportunities to organize workers in other textile company chains because of its focus on Stevens. The settlement allows the union to take its track record to other workers in the textile industry who also want the benefits of a contract.

While the Stevens' contract is an important victory, its potential impact is diminished by the lack of understanding among the general public of the real issues in the U.S. labor movement. It is true that wages and benefits for unionized Stevens workers are about the same as for Stevens non-unionized workers. But let's not kid ourselves, the only reason Stevens has improved companywide wages and benefits is because the union has been organizing at Stevens plants for 17 years.

The real issue is whether or not working people will be able to establish contracts that specify the acceptable behavior of the employer and legally bind the employer to respect that contract. Short of the acceptable year of the Lord, contracts are the only way of insuring that dignity and fair treatment are the rule of the workplace rather than the whim of the employer.

Michael Russell directed the Workers' Rights Project, a program of Southerners for Economic Justice, in Greenville, South Carolina when this article appeared. His article on the church's role in unionizing Southern mills appeared in the April, 1979 issue of Sojourners.