In April 2026, Luke Masa, a graduate student in history at West Virginia University, approached UE about doing a research project over the summer. As Masa’s area of study is deindustrialization in the Pittsburgh area, we asked him to research and write up the history of UE’s struggle against plant closings and concessions in the 1980s and 1990s.

While UE was fighting plant closings as early as the 1940s, the 1980s saw a veritable pandemic of deindustrialization as corporate mergers and leveraged buyouts gobbled up small- to medium-sized manufacturing companies throughout the country. Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the air traffic controllers’ strike and the concessionary contract signed by the United Auto Workers in 1979 with Chrysler further emboldened companies to demand concessions, often backing up their demands with threats of plant closures.

Although most of these stories are ultimately tragic, they are an important part of our history, a period that was if anything more trying for UE than the “dirty decade” of red-baiting and raids after World War II. Yet UE locals never lost their commitment to aggressive struggle, and to fighting for what’s right — and for what their members deserved. Their stories hold important lessons, about both the devastation that unbridled capitalism can unleash on communities and the willingness of those communities, especially when led by a fighting, rank-and-file union, to challenge the so-called “logic” of the economic system.

—UE NEWS Editor Jonathan Kissam

By Luke Masa

In November 1975, UE members at the GE turbine plant in Ladson, South Carolina, just outside of Charleston, successfully won their union campaign after four years of organizing and two elections. Their new union, UE Local 1202, faced more than another year of fighting before finally securing coverage under the national UE-GE contract in early 1977. A mere decade later, in 1985, the plant was shuttered.

The Ladson GE plant was far from the only shop to close during the final two decades of the twentieth century. The early eighties recession, and the refusal of some in the labor movement to stand up to corporate power, both contributed to this downturn. But it was the pro-corporate policies of the Reagan administration that caused the greatest devastation: deregulation, tax cuts for big business, and breaking the air traffic controllers’ strike, which private industry took as permission for doing the same. Despite this, economic recovery hummed along in enough places for enough people that politicians and pundits could speak approvingly of “growth,” helping catapult Reagan to a second term, despite large swathes of the country continuing to experience unemployment the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Depression.

While the Northern and Midwestern U.S., the so-called “Rust Belt,” became the center of class conflict over this period, these parts of the country were by no means the only places adversely affected, as Sunbelt stories like Ladson attest. No matter where, UE was one of the few unions at that moment that stood strong in the face of management’s demands for concessions at the bargaining table. Givebacks, the bosses pronounced, were the only thing that could stop layoffs, even as profits soared. In reality though, not only did concessions not prevent layoffs and closures, the money they “saved” often helped the company pay for the very abandonment they were supposed to prevent. In shops and communities where workers and their allies decided to challenge big business’s dogmas, things went differently. The creative, extensive, and heroic ways that UE members fought against shutdowns in Ladson, Pittsburgh, and New England demonstrate how the UE retained the spirit of its founding, questioning the fundamental assumptions of capitalism much more strongly than many of its peers, and in so doing exemplified one of the labor movement’s most well-known calls to action: “Don’t mourn, organize!”

“Economic Warfare” in Southwest Pennsylvania

At the end of October 1981, 3,500 members of UE Local 610 at the WABCO plant in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania and Union Switch & Signal in nearby Swissvale went on strike against the company’s proposed wage freeze and other concession demands. Although once in the Westinghouse family, as alluded to by the the “W” in WABCO, at that time American Standard owned both shops. At the end of their previous contract, in 1978, members of Local 610 struck for just two weeks and got a wage increase, dental benefits added to their insurance, and an uncapped quarterly cost-of-living adjustment. This time, however, the strike would drag on for seven months. At 12 weeks in, a court injunction permitted scabs through the gates. The federal government assigned a mediator, and about a dozen workers got fired for alleged property damage. UE General President James Kane told the Pittsburgh Press that “We recognize that industry has problems, but they must recognize ours… companies aren’t the only ones hurting.” In the end, the local successfully prevented the company from extracting any concessions and indeed negotiated wage increases. Even most of the workers fired due to the “damage” got rehired. The struggle was unfortunately only just beginning.

Less than three months after the settlement, in August 1982, American Standard announced that it would be shifting the work of the Switch’s wiring department to Macon, Georgia, a move that would result in the loss of 150 or more jobs in Swissvale. By the following January a coalition of concerned union members, Swissvale residents, and political organizations formed “Save Our Switch” (SOS) in order to stop these and any further job losses at the plant. The group brought 250 people to a borough council meeting to advocate for the passage of a resolution to that end, encouraged by Swissvale’s mayor Charles Martoni. Pittsburgh’s mayor Richard Caliguiri also pledged his support, even though the plant was not within the city limits. He had once worked at the Switch, and he understood its importance for the entire region. Around this time SOS members said to the Press that they were “...engaged in economic warfare which they [were] determined to win.”

Fear briefly gave way to hope in May 1983 when the Port Authority of Allegheny County awarded the Switch a $19.7 million contract to manufacture a light rail system for Pittsburgh’s South Hills. That hope in turn shifted towards dismay by the end of June, as workers at the plant realized that much of that work would not actually happen in Western Pennsylvania. Instead, American Standard continued to shift production to Georgia and South Carolina, prompting the Press to describe the contract as a “mixed blessing.” Martoni told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “I have a sense of being deceived...the entire economic base of Swissvale and communities east of Pittsburgh are threatened.” Local 610 continued to pressure the Port Authority well into 1984, calling for a meeting between them and management at the Switch, hoping that management could be persuaded to keep the contract work local, despite the Port Authority being unable to legally require it. 

As 1985 dawned, layoffs continued. In four years, the number of employees at the Switch had dwindled from 1,100 to just 400, all the while American Standard continued to post income gains quarter after quarter. In April, the hard-won contract of three years prior expired, and by the end of May the local and the Switch’s management agreed on a new one, again with wage increases instead of concessions. American Standard followed up this agreement almost immediately by announcing that it was considering moving its Wilmerding operations, the Switch’s sister plant, to Canada. Then in August it declared that the Switch could close by 1987, sending shockwaves through the local and the community. Promising to “discuss alternatives” for the Switch with the union before mid-October, American Standard said it would make its decision surrounding the WABCO plant by some time in September. Local 610 held a rally for both shops at a nearby high school, and gathered 300 members outside of the Switch plant gates. Leaders in the local appealed to Carnegie Mellon University President Richard Cyert, a member of American Standard’s board, who sarcastically offered to “help” by getting an accountant at the university to calculate a wage concession the union could offer the company. Apparently lost on him was the irony of American Standard refusing to engage with the local on any conditions under which it would remain.

In early October members travelled to New York City by bus to picket in front of the company’s headquarters. Less than a week later, American Standard announced that it had sold the Swissvale plant to a real estate developer. Soon after that, it declared that the Wilmerding plant would shed 1,300 jobs, leaving only 600. In the midst of this one-two punch, a long-planned alliance of municipalities, the Steel Valley Authority (SVA), finally came to fruition. As a distinct legal entity, it was capable of, among other things, seeking court injunctions against runaway plants. Swissvale, home of the Switch, was among the SVA’s charter members, but Wilmerding, where the WABCO plant was located, chose not to join. In light of the SVA’s emergence, in late November Local 610 joined with state and local elected officials and community members to form a successor to SOS called the “Coalition to Save the ‘Brake’ & ‘Switch’.”

A flurry of activity soon followed, including Capuchin monks throwing their support behind the coalition, a visit from Local 277 President Ron Poineau of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who had been involved in a campaign which successfully kept Morse Cutting Tool from closing there in 1984 (more on that below), and the coalition commissioning a two-month study of markets and products at a cost of $25,000, 90 percent of the cost of which was picked up by the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. By early March 1986 the study concluded that both plants were poised to remain competitive in the near-term as market conditions continued to improve. The SVA thus decided to use its powers to formally request an injunction that would prevent American Standard from removing equipment from the two plants. Soon after that, both of Pennsylvania’s Senators, Republicans John Heinz and Arlen Specter, alongside Allegheny County Commissioner Tom Foerster, requested a 120-day delay in equipment removal. Heinz went so far as to threaten legislation that would place extra taxes on American Standard’s luxury plumbing fixtures. He and Specter both filed briefings in the injunction case supporting the SVA.

Yet in June, the court officially dismissed the SVA’s injunction suit. While the appeal worked its way through ever higher courts throughout 1987, the developer that American Standard had initially sold the Switch site to, Radice, sold it to another developer, Oxford. Thus Union Switch and Signal closed its doors for the final time on December 31, 1987. As disappointing as this outcome was and is, the SVA recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. It is an organization that has fought for working people for four decades and it exists in large part due to the struggles in Swissvale and Wilmerding. Local 610 continues to represent workers at the Wabtec (successor to WABCO) plant in nearby Greensburg, and remained at the Wilmerding plant until its closure in 2024.

“We did not agree to give up our dignity and self-respect”

New England was also a hot spot of anti-shutdown actions. In Athol, Massachusetts the fight centered around Union Twist Drill, which had been purchased by Beverly Hills-based Litton Industries in 1968, a year after workers at the plant had voted to join the UE. Their union, Local 276, successfully won wage adjustments in 1980, in the middle of their contract’s term, extending it to May 22, 1983. Following that date, after four months of stonewalling, on September 22, 1983, Litton locked out 380 members once they walked off the job in protest of the suspension of a half dozen of their coworkers. This came just two hours before a federal mediator was set to reopen negotiations. 

Ever since the local’s contract had expired that spring, the company demanded concessions, including rolling back wages to below where they were at the beginning of the previous contract. Despite this, workers had not gone on strike, though they were nevertheless actively resisting Litton during negotiations, even in the face of the company canceling a contract extension. Unilaterally imposing its desired wage and benefit cuts, and simply declaring that it considered the local on strike anyway, Litton further pressed for adding a provision to the contract allowing them to close the plant without prior warning or negotiation. Disregarding the local’s offer to return to work without conditions, and on top of continuing the lockout, in November Litton announced its intent to move a significant number of jobs out of Athol — unless members accepted its proposals.

Members at Union Twist Drill countered the company’s refusal to budge and its repeated threats with massive community outreach, garnering the aid not just of friends and family but state and Congressional representatives and labor leaders, who pledged their support at a luncheon. Daily pickets and weekly door-to-door canvassing informed Athol residents of company policies and attracted media coverage, often culminating in rallies and a march on the shop with signs and slogans. United Methodist Reverend George Ogle stressed to workers the importance of their struggle, saying that free and democratic societies require a strong labor movement. One organizer told Springfield’s Morning Union newspaper that “[Litton] can do what they damn well please, but they won’t leave here while we just stand by and watch. We’ll try every legal recourse to stop it.” Litton had no such commitment, however. The company was the number one violator of federal labor laws in the U.S. during the two decades prior to the fight in Athol. 

Litton announced the plant’s closure less than a year after the initial lockout, in July of 1984. In the week prior to the announcement, John Davidson, then president of the local, stated that “We [did] not agree to give up our dignity and self-respect…” which Litton wanted to “strip.” Davidson called the closure “a criminal act, just like robbery.” In that spirit of refusal, Local 276 and its supporters continued to fight, working with elected officials to attract a new owner, hoping that Litton might sell the plant to a firm willing to keep it open. While the plant ultimately closed in early 1985, the Athol community remained steadfast in its commitment to the unemployed and their families, assisting with job searches, training programs, and shuttling workers to Framingham for seasonal work.

Fighting for the “Heart and Soul” of Greenfield, Massachusetts

The Ingersoll-Rand corporation bought Greenfield, Massachusetts’ Millers Falls Tool (MFT) in 1962. By the late seventies, they signaled that they were ready to sell or close it. “Unless we get a guarantee the jobs will stay, we can’t help the company,” one member of Local 274 told Greenfield’s newspaper the Recorder. Following weeks of negotiations with the local in 1977, the company relocated instead of closing, moving from Greenfield just a few miles away to South Deerfield the following year. Moreover, a successful five-week strike in late 1981 brought wage increases at the new plant. The specter of shutdown reared its ugly head once more in 1982, when Ingersoll-Rand announced that it was selling off the MFT portion of its operations in South Deerfield. The year after that MFT totally phased out electric tool production, laying off over 100 employees.

After being laid off in May 1982, Ed Holewa, a Local 274 member at Bendix, back in Greenfield, began organizing alongside his union brothers and sisters. Together they started what became the Franklin County Council of the Unemployed, creating their own newsletters, card files, and flyers. They used the local’s offices and equipment, holding meetings at the union hall with support from the national union, welcoming all unemployed people in the area, not just members of the local or of UE. By October of that same year they organized over 100 laid-off workers to attend a Greenfield city council meeting where Holewa and Local 274 President Judy Atkins spoke in front of elected officials, including state senators and representatives. For the needy, churches in the area rotated hosting a “Jobs and Peace” soup kitchen, its name a reference to an old UE slogan. Despite these efforts and others, by early 1984, only 75 employees remained at the MFT plant. Ingersoll-Rand finally sold off the remainder of its South Deerfield manufacturing to Rule Industries in August of that year, and Rule promptly laid off the remaining employees, rehiring about half of them shortly thereafter. The union lost a vote at the shop and was decertified there in November 1984.

Millers Falls Tool workers were not the only Local 274 members to face a corporate buy-out in the 1980s. In 1986, St. Louis business mogul Sam Fox’s Harbour Group bought Greenfield Tap & Die (GTD), another shop represented by Local 274. (In 1996 GTD’s parent company, Greenfield Industries, bought the South Deerfield location that was once home to MFT.) Town Manager Norman Thidemann explained, quoting town planner R. John Ryan Jr., “If there is a heart and soul to Greenfield, it is GTD,” the loss of which would “...have an adverse effect on the economics and from the spiritual and emotional point of view.” 

Although GTD workers sustained losses during Harbour’s initial buyout, by the time the 1989 negotiations came around the local successfully recuperated many elements of its prior contract. Praising the “comeback,” the UE NEWS declared that GTD’s “sweatshop” days were over, attributing the victory in part due to the company’s inability to keep skilled workers at the rates it paid. Maintaining the pressure in the years between Harbour’s acquisition of GTD and the new contract, Local 274 members stayed engaged with the community. In December 1988 they helped produce a Christmas play which lampooned the Reagan Administration through a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In one scene, the Reagan-as-Scrooge character is shown the worried workers of Greenfield Tap & Die by the Ghost of Christmas Future, a rebuke of the Administration’s “Star Wars” program. This late Cold War-era defense spending boosted heavily automated, low-paying “high-tech” industries in the Sunbelt at the expense of longstanding manufacturing firms in the Northeast and Midwest. 

As if that was not enough to get their message across, union and community members alike constantly expressed their opinions through letters to their local papers, often directly challenging the publishers’ editorial lines. For instance, in the October 8, 1986 issue of Greenfield’s Recorder, in a piece titled “Workers Not the Problem,” Local 274 member Al Targhetta asked “Just who are Alexander Hutchison, publisher, and Don Pride, editor, to call the 270 union workers at Greenfield Tap and Die ‘belligerent’?” Another writer accused the paper of blaming the victims, noting Harbour’s refusal to negotiate in good faith and their apparent lack of interest in producing a quality product. That the Recorder allowed dissent within its pages speaks to the high amount of support for Local 274 among its readership. Even while chastising workers for alleged belligerence and striving for a “sensible middle ground,” the higher-ups at the paper were careful to acknowledge that a union shop meant better outcomes for everyone involved. Despite the paper's accusations, Local 274's resistance to concessions at GTD did not result in closure. In 1997, Kennametal bought Greenfield Industries, and the Greenfield plant stayed open for another 28 years, closing only just last year.

“They all seemed to know someone affected by job loss”

In a similar manner, at Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Westinghouse-owned Bryant Electric, for two years members of Local 209 kept up a constant struggle against their plant closing, from early 1986 through August 1988. Over that relatively short period they poured an enormous amount of energy into keeping the plant open, collaborating with the city government on a whole host of measures. One such example was an essay contest for local middle school students, held by the “Coalition to Save Bridgeport Jobs,” on the topic of “Why Bryant Electric Should Stay in Bridgeport.” Hundreds of children submitted their replies, many all too familiar with the consequences of unemployment despite their young age. As Bridgeport’s Connecticut (Sunday) Post reported, they all seemed to know someone affected by job loss, whether one or more of their parents and grandparents, or those of their friends.

Another ambitious idea echoed Local 610’s efforts, except in reverse: sending a bus caravan from Connecticut to Westinghouse’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, which Bridgeport’s Common Council decided to sponsor, with one alderman saying it was “the least they could do.” Bridgeport’s Mayor Thomas Bucci was the first to sign a petition requesting that Westinghouse continue operations there, and said of meeting with company officials “If it’s one chance in a million [to convince Westinghouse to stay], it’s a chance worth taking.” Critical of the Reagan Administration’s Caribbean Basin program, which provided tax incentives that encouraged firms like Westinghouse move jobs offshore, union members and city elected officials got Connecticut’s then-Senator, Chris Dodd, who earlier had made some cursory efforts towards asking Westinghouse to stay, to admit that the program was “extremely important” and that he “...wouldn’t want you to leave [this meeting about the plant’s future] under any illusions [that it would actually remain open].” It was through this dogged insistence on holding federal officials accountable that the Coalition managed to get an extra $400,000 in assistance for laid-off Bryant workers, even though they ultimately could not save the plant.

Threat of “Eminent Domain” Staves Off Plant Closing for Years

Back in 1984, Morse Cutting Tool was on the brink of abandoning New Bedford, Massachusetts, when Mayor Brian Lawler proposed a unique solution: invoking eminent domain, the legal authority used by municipalities to acquire property for the public good, the city would seize Morse until they could find a buyer willing to work with the union, thereby preserving jobs and the local economy. It was an idea that several UE locals, as well as the SVA, would try during the waning years of the twentieth century, and it had come on the heels of a multi-year struggle between Gulf+Western Industries, which owned Morse, and Local 277. In 1982 the Local won a 15-week strike, securing a new contract despite management’s threat to move jobs south if their proposal wasn’t accepted. About a year later the company announced that it was looking for a buyer, eventually settling on one that demanded wage concessions from the union before it was willing to purchase Morse. Recognizing this, the local hired a consultant to analyze Gulf+Western’s policies. The findings proved what the union had known all along: Gulf+Western had been continually divesting from Morse since it first purchased the New Bedford shop in 1968. With this data behind them, the local rallied the public in agitating for a buyer that would actually have a stake in the community. 

Lawler did not need to follow through on his threat, however, in what would have been a first-of-its-kind endeavor. An entrepreneur named James Lambert offered to buy the plant on terms acceptable to the union, and, given that the alternative was seizure, to Gulf+Western as well. Initially labor relations under Lambert proved relatively congenial, although layoffs continued through the next several years. In 1986, Morse received a $1.5 million loan from the state of Massachusetts in order to remain open after declaring bankruptcy. The following year, in March, Morse announced its closure, only for Harbour, the same company that had purchased Greenfield Tap & Die, to try to purchase Morse in May. The state of Massachusetts, echoing Local 277, which had seen the consequences of GTD’s sale to Harbour, opposed the Morse sale, preferring instead another bidder, Scotland’s International Twist Drill (ITD), which promised to keep Morse open. A U.S. bankruptcy court judge rejected both bids at first before finally accepting ITD’s in June 1987. Morse Cutting Tool remained open until 1990. Several years later, in the midst of another anti-shutdown fight, Massachusetts State Senator Mark Montigny reflected that the union had won “...years of gainful employment and wages” through its struggle.

“Some fights are worth making, even if you don’t always win”

That other anti-shutdown fight came in 1996 at J.C. Rhodes, also in New Bedford, a shop which originally manufactured eyelets for shoes. While its ownership changed hands several times between the 1910s and 1970s, through the eighties the plant still mostly produced parts for shoes. In late January 1996, a month before Local 284’s contract expired, J.C. Rhodes became the property of Scovill Fasteners out of Clarkesville, Georgia, which in turn was owned by a holding company in New York: Kohlberg & Co. Scovill agreed to extend the contract until the end of April, pushing back negotiations as well. But Scovill then used the initial bargaining session on March 25 to tell the union that the company intended to close J.C. Rhodes, and would only be discussing severance.

Using the memory of the Morse fight as a rallying cry, Local 284 immediately sprang into action. Making their own intentions perfectly clear, members vowed to fight the closure. As in so many fights before, the union crunched the numbers and found that J.C. Rhodes was still profitable and that the closure had more to do with disciplining labor and extracting ever-higher profits than a truly threatened bottom line. For instance, wages at Scovill’s hometown plant were only 60 percent of those at JC Rhodes. This fact gave the union a significant upper hand in winning over politicians, starting with the New Bedford city council, which voted unanimously on a proposal to work with the union to keep Scovill in town. Thousands of New Bedford residents signed a petition to the same effect. The mayor, both chambers of the state legislature, and the governor all urged the plant to stay. Massachusetts’s then-Senators, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, personally intervened on workers’ behalf, with Kerry talking directly to Scovill’s parent company’s President Kohlberg. Both Senators reached out to President Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich as well. 

Congressman Barney Frank, then representing Massachusetts’s Fourth District, which at the time included New Bedford, wrote a letter to Scovill. Working closely with the union, Frank joined Local 284 in its meeting with Scovill higher-ups in New York City that April. This led to a further extension of the contract while Scovill claimed it would consider selling rather than shuttering the plant. Soon after, at a rally of over 250 people, UE President John Hovis summed up the rationale behind every anti-shutdown fight: “If we quit we automatically lose.” New Bedford’s City Council President proposed the city return to the Morse plan from 12 years prior and utilize eminent domain to take over the plant, this time for real.

Scovill played along for about a week before deciding on a June 25 closure date. They refused to go any lower than their $16 million price tag, the amount for which they had initially purchased J.C. Rhodes. The local once again countered with its own research, proving the company to be worth only half that at most. Frank wrote another letter, this time to the Kohlbergs directly, which got reprinted in New Bedford’s Standard-Times. The paper sided with the union, excoriating Scovill/Kohlberg for their amoral profit-seeking and abandonment of the  community, and lamenting the lack of legal recourse to prevent such a scenario. After several more weeks of rallies, petitions, and public outcry, on May 9 the city council voted 10-1 to seize the plant via eminent domain. This proved too much for the Standard-Times, however, and they changed their tune, loudly opposing the move as they had during the Morse campaign. Additionally, despite previously claiming at a rally that the company had a “moral obligation” to consider offers to buy the plant, which it had failed to do, New Bedford’s mayor shocked the community when she vetoed the proposal.

The union responded to this by proposing its own amended ordinance. This one passed by a veto-proof margin of 8-3, forcing the city to begin the process of appraising the company. The mayor nevertheless once more refused to cooperate, and the administrative hurdles that that presented further delayed the proceedings. Vetoing the new ordinance anyway, the mayor called the council’s bluff, and they blinked. One councilmember changed his vote to “no” and thereby prevented the veto from being overturned. J.C. Rhodes would not be seized. 

Parallel to the eminent domain campaign, union members had begun pressuring the company for a severance package — a move which turned out to be a smart one given the outcome at city hall. As Barney Frank wrote in his foreword to Refuse to Lose: Eminent Domain J.C. Rhodes Campaign, a UE-published pamphlet detailing Local 284’s efforts in New Bedford, some fights are worth making, even if you don’t always win. Local 284 and the residents of New Bedford went above and beyond in their fight against Scovill/Kohlberg, making it as difficult as possible for the company to leave, and very nearly preventing the plant from closing. They came closer than they ever could have had they not pressed the eminent domain issue, and won a better severance deal in the process.

“They’re restructuring a community. They’re restructuring everyone’s lives.”

Two years later, in Dalton, Massachusetts, near Pittsfield, the Beloit Jones (formerly E.D. Jones) paper machinery company was next on the chopping block. Acquired by Harnischfeger in 1986, for 12 years a slow but steady trickle of layoffs decreased the number of employees there from around 500 to under 300. So when in August 1998 Harnischfeger announced the plant’s impending closure, Local 212 responded immediately. Members got their state representatives to co-sign a letter to Beloit expressing their concern and proposing a meeting. Following in New Bedford’s footsteps, the local decided to explore eminent domain as well. 

In the meantime, the local held a huge rally, marching the several miles from the plant to the center of Pittsfield, completely stopping traffic along the way, joined as they went by a line of people as much as a quarter mile long. One worker there, quoted in Tom Juravich’s book At the Altar of the Bottom Line, said “Restructuring the company? They’re restructuring a community. They’re restructuring everyone’s lives.” Politicians continued to meet with union members, but it turned out that these elected officials had even less of an appetite for seizing the plant than the city council in New Bedford. Therefore members decided that a buyout might be worth a shot.

The company seemed open enough to discussion that a local plant manager flew out with union representatives to meet with a vice president at Beloit. Yet when the Dalton delegation arrived, they were told in no uncertain terms that none of the union or city proposals were under consideration. Even worse, the severance package the union ended up negotiating following this turn of events was scuttled thanks to Harnischfeger declaring bankruptcy. Any opportunity that might have existed for Dalton workers and local management to lease or buy the building and start their own company in its place was dashed as well. Mismanagement at the highest levels, having nothing to do with workers in Dalton, sealed their fate. Even so, it is important to remember that the programs for which they qualified — unemployment insurance, temporary healthcare coverage, retraining — only existed because of workers who came before them who had also refused to give up, despite everything.

A Collective Willingness to Say “No” to the Prevailing Economic “Common Sense” of the Day

To return once more to Ladson, in lead-up to the plant’s closure, the shop sought and very often received support and assistance from all comers. Senator Strom Thurmond, by then a Republican for over 20 years, met with officials from the local. This led to a promise from him to “do all I can” to save the plant. Following that, Jesse Jackson, fresh off of his “Rainbow Coalition” Presidential Primary campaign, marched with workers to the plant gates, where he said that “‘Save’ the worker must be the fundamental thrust in the South today.” Further backing came from the Catholic community, including Charleston’s Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler, who once brought the Pope to South Carolina, in an era when anti-Catholic and anti-union Klan activity remained fresh on the minds of many. 

As the announced closing date drew nearer, the union proposed converting the plant into an “Alternative Energy and Environmental Systems Center.” Based on a plan developed by a committee within the local, the center, they showed, could employ hundreds to produce equipment used for both environmental clean-up as well as energy generation. (In another type of conversion, according to a South Carolina newspaper, the fight turned at least one ex-cop — Local 1202’s Vice President — into a “labor crusader.”) The effort to convert the factory to an alternative energy center did not ultimately succeed, but following this fight South Carolina’s state legislature increased unemployment benefits for workers laid-off after plant closures.

As Local 1202’s story, the stories of all the locals profiled here, and many others all attest, even in instances where workers believed that fighting plant closures merely served to delay the inevitable, they were determined not to let management get off easily. Every letter written, every politician lobbied, every community fundraiser, feasibility study, picket line, slowdown, walkoff, or buyout proposal proved a collective willingness to say “no” to the prevailing economic “common sense” of the day, an ideology that left and continues to leave so many people without satisfying work, if not out of work altogether.

The union’s fights, meanwhile, have not ended. UE, now in its 90th year, organizes far and wide. The union’s commitment to aggressive struggle, even when it goes against dominant ideas of capitalist efficiency, has proved attractive to workers in a variety of economic sectors with public-sector, retail grocery, rail crew, federal contractor, and higher-education workers now joining manufacturing workers in UE’s membership. The legacy of UE’s struggles against plant closings and concessions is not one of defeat, but of dogged refusal to give in to the boss’s demands, values that continue to animate the union today.