Plant Auction Blocked by Mass Picket Threat

In a move to save factory jobs that evokes shades of the ’30s, the United Electrical Workers planned mass picketing this month to blockade the doors of a shuttered factory to stop the auction of its machines.

Apparently in response, Esterline Technologies postponed the December 14 auction for five weeks, in a temporary victory for the union and the city of Taunton, Massachusetts, which is moving to take the plant equipment by eminent domain.

UE Local 204 President Scott Marques said, “There was supposed to be hundreds of people there from all over the state and Connecticut, and as far away as Illinois”—the latter being the Republic Windows workers, also UE members, who made national news by occupying their Chicago factory in December 2008.

Workers have proposed to run the 80-year-old plant, which makes crucial door seals and silicone gaskets for aircraft, if the company doesn’t want to. “They told us a year ago they did not want the presses or equipment,” said Marques. “They would rather junk them than sell them to us.”

Until the postponement, Esterline, based in Bellevue, Washington, had played hardball, refusing to hold off on selling the equipment till another buyer can be found. Along with its local subsidiary Haskon Aerospace, the company has set the standard for bad actors in a plant closing. The union only found out about the auction through its regular internet searches.

Esterline executives were shocked to learn that Massachusetts law required the company to keep paying its regular share of workers’ health insurance for three months after the October 26 closing. It took the intervention of the state’s congressional delegation and attorney general to convince them to pay up.

Then the company reneged on severance pay. Its proposal “gets worse every time we meet,” Marques said. “They put our severance on the basis of what they can get at auction of the machines.” Esterline is consolidating in its non-union operations in Southern California and Mexico.

MASTERS OF THEIR DOMAIN

The UE enlisted the Taunton city council to use eminent domain to take over the assets and then sell them to a new owner, either one found by the workers or the workers themselves. Keeping the machinery together—rather than sold off piece by piece or for scrap—is crucial to that plan.

An auditor hired by the UE put the maximum value of the machines at $147,000, Marques said. But an auction typically brings little more than the cost of scrap. “It’s collectively they have value,” said UE Northeast President Peter Knowlton, “when you put a workforce in front of them.”

Potential investors need to be sure there will be something there to buy. “We need to secure the presses,” said Doreen Arguin, the local’s secretary-treasurer. “Once we do that, more people will come out of the woodwork.”

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The union is keeping tabs on the closed plant but is not concerned that the company might try to sneak the presses out; they are all hooked up to a central steam system that would take weeks to dismantle.

December 7 the city council voted unanimously to request a Home Rule Petition from the legislature, in order to take Haskon’s presses and equipment for a “public purpose”—saving jobs. The request goes to the legislature in January.

The city council would immediately sell the equipment back to the employees, assuming they have secured the money to buy it. The union has hired the former president of Haskon as a consultant, and a feasibility study by the ICA Group, experts in employee-owned cooperatives, concluded that a new company could succeed in the aircraft sealant market.

Arguin explained that a small business would be eligible for certain government contracts through a program for “historically underutilized business zones.” Federal agencies are required to give a percentage of their contracts to such businesses.

LONGEVITY

Marques noted that generations of Taunton residents have worked at the plant. Employees are known for their longevity, through multiple owners. Marques said about 30 of the 85 union members have worked there at least 30 years. Two retired after 51 years.

Arguin says she’s not ready to retire at the age of 60, with 41½ years in the factory. She says it takes skill to create seals from silicone, fabric, and rubber—take a look at your window the next time you’re on an airplane, and be grateful for union labor.

“We’re going to keep fighting, we’re not going to let it go,” Marques said. “We think we should be treated fair.”

See Keep Haskon Jobs in Taunton! for updated information, including any future auction blockades that become necessary in January.