By Roanne Withers - Anderson Valley Advertiser, July 26, 1989
Dear Editor,
I am concerned about the deplorable wages, benefits, and working conditions of workers in Mendocino County. I offer my support and encouragement to the I.W. of A. union members who work at Georgia-Pacific in their pursuit of economic justice.
I offer my support and encouragement to the U.F.C.W. union members who work at Mendocino Coast District Hospital in their pursuit of economic justice. I urge the rest of the community to do the same.
Without a doubt, management of the mill and hospital will subtly and not so subtly employ the usual, manipulative scare technique that an increase in wages will close the mill, bankrupt the hospital to intimidate, threaten, and frighten workers and community alike.
Throughout Labor’s history workers seeking economic justice have never been the cause of the financial ruin of their employers. Bad management and greed for ever higher profits satiated by impoverishing workers, the real causes, are covered up with the help of corporate presses and the public erroneously believes the workers are to blame.
Locally, management at the hospital proudly touts the hospital’s positive financial position. But the workers know of the unofficial policy of hiring two part time workers instead of one full-time so benefits are not paid; of finding invalid “reasons” to keep a newly hired full-time employee on extended probation, again so benefits are not paid; of overworking full-time employees so they are forced to quit from burnout. Workers know that as a result of these management practices there is a lack of local R.N. and technician workforce, and that management now has to hire nonunion per diem nurses from outside the area who are paid higher wages than local union workers. Hospital employees are aware that management never cuts its own wages or benefits, but in fact increases them; aware of poor judgment and questionable expenditures based on management’s delusion that the “newer, more expensive the car, the better the driver.” Yet, management insults the community by implying that an increase in wages will adversely affect the quality of care the hospital gives to the community. The evidence in the medical care industry is overwhelming that a well-staffed hospital with a stable workforce provides better quality care for patients than the best equipped hospital with an overworked, underpaid staff.
The multi-billion dollar Georgia-Pacific Corporation has, for years, periodically terrorized its workers and our community with the all purpose, always effective “the mill is going to close” rumor. GP’s corporate profits since the 1985 wage and benefit cuts have increased far above the percentage of the cuts. We are witnessing G-P squeezing every penny of profit it can get by impoverishing its workers … squeezing every dollar by a speeded-up over-harvesting of the forest.
G-P, assisted by weak union leadership, are extracting the ever-increasing corporate profits by: the bonus incentive which forced the union woods crew to cut more trees faster, work longer hours with dangerous unmaintained equipment to make up for cut wages, only to be laid off when the equipment was beyond repair; the elimination of union jobs by subcontracting to non-union gyppo logging companies; the recent company and union leadership positions and actions of the PCB spill; the blaming of workers for management incompetence; the lack of fair compensation for permanent workers due to job injuries, to name just a few atrocities.
The courage of the workers demonstrated by their rejection of G-P’s and the union negotiator’s proposed contract is a proud beginning for workers taking control of their union and their lives. A logical step forward to end G-P’s theft of local human and timber resources is a worker/community buy-out of the mill and timber lands.
All workers in this area, if for no other reason than their own best interest, should support and encourage the workers of the mill and hospital. Whatever the workers of the two largest employers demand and accept will directly affect employer policy in all occupations in Mendocino County. We had proof of this when in 1985 G-P cut wages and benefits, so did Harvest Market, and minimum wage with no benefits was standard throughout the tourist industry.
It is a stable, fairly-paid workforce that makes a healthy community, not increasing profits by sacrificing the economic well being of the workers.