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Winds of Solidarity at Iowa Wind Tower Manufacturer

June 28, 2011

Last August, after voting 69 to 62 in favor of IBEW representation, workers at Trinity Structural Towers, Iowa’s leading manufacturer of wind towers, looked forward to making gains negotiating a first contract between their employer and Des Moines Local 347. 

Their struggle to organize had received national attention, raising the question whether percolating renewable energy manufacturing would take the high or low road on workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions.

It could have gone either way. In June, 10 months after their vote, negotiations on a first contract had bogged down and frustration was building. Trinity’s law firm had limited bargaining meetings with Des Moines Local 347 to monthly two-day sessions.

Travis Healey, a leader of the organizing campaign and a negotiating committee member says, “Trinity kept dragging its feet on wages and benefits and gave us the same proposals over and over again.”  Management arrogantly reminded Healey and other union activists that their election was only won by seven votes, raising the question in monthly union strategy meetings whether Trinity was planning to foment a decertification election following the August 20 anniversary of their organizing win.
Healy, a crane and tractor operator, said:

We asked ourselves what we could do to show Trinity that we weren’t going away.

Healey knew support for the union had grown as some of the original complaints that led to the campaign remained unresolved, particularly Trinity’s practice of knocking off production during the week and scheduling workers to work weekends without overtime compensation.

Bargaining unit members decided to hold an informational picket during lunch outside the plant, located in the shadows of the once iconic Maytag appliance factory that employed thousands and shut down in 2007.

Then, their organizing efforts were fortuitously aided by a cocky new plant manager—the sixth in the plant’s three-year history—who was serving workers at a lunch celebrating good safety performance. As workers sporting union stickers passed through the chow line, the manager asked them, “What has the union done for you?” Says Healey, “He’d say stuff like, ‘No potato salad for you-you’re a union member.’”  The disrespect lit a fuse.
Local 347 filed NLRB charges charging Trinity with coercion and failure to bargain in good faith. Says Assistant Business Manager Jerry Kurimski:

Management said that our charges were creating a sideshow. We didn’t want to file charges, but we were left with no choice. They created the sideshow.

The June 13 picket line brought out 80 percent of the workers in the plant, all wearing union T-shirts. While they drew local press attention, the activists’ impact inside the plant was dynamic. Forty-five workers marched to the plant manager’s office, each carrying a flier. Below a photo of spinning windmills, bold letters shouted:

WE DESERVE-A fair wage increase!  Affordable Health Care! Time off to spend with our families or overtime pay when working weekends.

Says Healey, who had worked at Maytag for 10 years and was active in the UAW local there:

The plant manager was on the other side of the door, but he wouldn’t acknowledge us. So we slid our fliers under his door. That’s 45 members, a majority of the shift.

In subsequent discussions with Trinity management, Local 347 agreed to drop the NLRB charges in return for a public apology by the company for disrespecting bargaining unit members and a commitment to schedule five negotiating sessions before mid-August. The company complied. Says Kurimski:

Trinity workers displayed great solidarity and courage.

Kurimski praises more senior bargaining unit members for enlisting support from new hires for the picket and action on the job.

With three years of orders on the books supplying towers for General Electric, Trinity is solidifying its position in the marketplace.

Healey, Kurimski and other activists are determined to be partners in the company’s success and stem the high turnover in a plant that has hired over 600 workers over the past three years to fill 150 jobs, with most of the attrition due to firings and quits. Says Kurimski:

We tell them over and over that—with a union—they will have a high-quality work force.