March 2000

Fireball ignites Jeep wildcat strike

Toledo, Ohio-On Jan. 12, an electric arc hit a car in the paint department at the Daimler-Chrysler Jeep assembly plant in Toledo, igniting a fireball for a dozen minutes in the highly combustible environment. No safety and fire extinguishing systems came on, according to the 24 workers in the paint department, because the company feared water and fire protection chemicals would fall on the cars and destroy the electrical systems. The company doesn't use safety protection because it can't start up production easily.

Outraged, paint department workers took unauthorized strike action (wildcat) when it became clear that management was more concerned with production than with worker safety, since the electrical arc could have ignited a fire that might have destroyed the plant. Workers don't trust that management will set the safety system to actually protect them. Workers had complained for some time that the infrared sensors to detect such emergencies were defective. A plant fire had occurred in July.

Due to the company's lack of response to the paint workers' safety concerns, 24 workers walked off the job. With the paint department down, body, trim, and final assembly departments comprising some 2,500 workers were sent home. Management intimidation of paint department workers, in the end, came down to docking them for three hours' wages.

Not only were the numerous safety emergencies of their own plant on the minds of the striking workers but many recalled the Ford Rouge accident last year in which eight men were killed.

There have been numerous unreported walkouts at Jeep. One special category of these involve the large, predominantly Black temporary part-time workforce who struck against the plant strategy of laying them off before they could get in their 120 days and become part of the permanent workforce.

This is one of the issues on which Jeep workers and the Black community are trying to establish solidarity. Another issue is the ecological damage that the Jeep plant, especially what's spewing from such departments as paint, is wreaking on Black working class communities. In the aftermath of the Seattle anti-WTO protests, new challenges to unite Black and working class interests are being worked out in communities like Toledo.

-Supporter