Light Metals’ workers locked out since Nov. 1
Driving by Light Metals Corp., 2740 Prairie St. SW in Wyoming, passersby may assume that the workforce picketing out front is on strike. They are not. These 70 men and women, UAW Local 19 members who average 20 years employment with Light Metals, were locked out more than a month ago (Nov. 1) when the contract negotiated in 2004 expired. They desperately want to get back to work.
“The company refuses to let the workers in,” explained Chuck Dietrich, chief union steward and Light Metals employee for nearly 40 years. “They gave us specifications (for a new contract) and we met or exceeded their demands. We took the pay cuts, the decrease in insurance coverage and holidays. Any place there could be savings, we negotiated. They just told us that we ‘didn’t understand.'”
Meanwhile, “scabs,” inexperienced, non-union workers no doubt earning far less than a fair wage, are crossing picket lines and keeping the manufacturer’s machines humming. Some of the locked-out workers noted that prior to Nov. 1, they were required to work ten hours a day, six days a week, raising speculation about whether Light Metals’ management was stockpiling product in anticipation of the lock-out. 
While previous cuts in pay and benefits were already making for a slim holiday season, the lock-out, if it continues, will most likely result in many of the workers losing their homes. “We just want to get our jobs back,” Dietrich says. “We can do it better than any scab — or the management. We hope they don’t run the company into the ground.”
In Nov. of 2004, Light Metals locked out their UAW workers until a court decision brought union workers back to work. This year’s lockout is patrolled by approximately 20 DK security guards in white vans, who make sure that the workers on the picket line don’t stray past the “No Trespassing” signs stuck in the well groomed lawn out front.
When a guard was asked to comment on his role, he gruffly replied that he was not allowed to talk about it. One worker shared that a security van driver who was a bit too eager to block a driveway accidentally clipped him with the vehicle’s side mirror. “If they have an economic crisis here, the way to solve it is with the union, not with thugs,” Dietrich says.
When asked about anti-union sentiments commonly spouted in corporate media, Dietrich correctly asserted that without unions, average Americans would not have 40-hour work weeks, overtime pay and other workplace rights that are taken for granted. Unions taking direct action also fought for and won the workplace safety regulations, child labor laws and decent wages most US workers earn today. “Unions have provided things people in this country would never have gotten any other way,” Dietrich says. “These are what happens in a union economy.”
Calls to Light Metals made two days in a row asking for their comments on the lock-out were met with the response that “Jim,” no last name known, “would not be in until tomorrow.”
The group of picketers gathered on Tuesday morning agreed that NAFTA was the cause of high unemployment and a poorly performing US economy, but question whether current economic conditions are at the root of the Light Metals lockout. “The management are greedy assholes taking advantage of a poor economy,” said a picketer who wished to remain anonymous. “We can’t keep working for less and less and less. We’ve been giving up more and more up for the last 12 years, before the economy went bad.”
Light Metal’s union workers can’t seem to get an answer, either. So, for now, they spend the workday on the picket line, locked out in the cold, hoping to get their jobs back. While Dietrich takes a glove off to shake my hand, he says, “We have every intent to negotiate, but not capitulate.”
If you would like to stand in solidarity with the locked-out workers at Light Metals Corp., drive by and honk your horn or make a donation to the West Michigan Food Bank People in Need fund account 02999. They ask that you do not drop off cash to them at the picket site.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
A few things have changed since yesterday. Our “city code” burning pit was ordered removed by the Wyoming police. We had a labor rally yesterday were told by Wyoming’s finest that we have to keep moving and stay on the sidewalk. We can’t be near the curb. Today one of our picketers was struck (no serious injuries ) by one of Pennisular Trucks. This is the same trucking company that ran over the foot of one of DK Security’s finest. Wyoming’s finest showed up and said that the picketer “jumped in front of the truck” and we were interferring with traffic. Thank God that these people have nothing better to do than “protect and serve Light Metals”. If you live in Wyoming; remember that vehicles have the right-a-way over pedistrians. If you get struck while on foot in Wyoming it will be your fault especially if it happens in front of LMC. I am glad I don’t live in Wyoming and have to watch my taxes being used on behalf of LMC. I am sure that the next offence that we will be charged with is having our members freeze to death on city property. LMC is not a good corporate citizen and does not care about their longtime loyal employees. We will let you know if our picketer is charged with any heinous offences – like bleeding on city sidewalks.
I for one am greatly appreciative to the union at LMC !!!!!! I have been required to have a major surgery during this lockout time. LMC is blocking our COBRA insurance. I’m so thankful to the UAW for picking up our insurance and has covered my appointments and surgery!!!! What would we do if not for these benefits so rightly fought for by the employees at LMC? As a christain I’m praying for God to oversee this situation! God bless LMC and all it’s employees!
Peg
As an ex-employee of Steelcase (with 18 years of service to the company) I am struck by the anti-union bias that permeates this country. My husband has worked long and hard for LMC for 23 years. I guess that the companies hostility toward its longtime employees shouldn’t suprise me but it does.
After all, even when the company was operating under normal conditions the working conditions were spartan at best.
These people have worked 10 hrs a day six days a week (with little or no option) for months on end. That is fine, that’s just doing good business. The part that wasn’t fine was the companies lack of consideration for the welfare of the workers that were working so long and hard. Regardless how many hours these folks worked they were allowed 5 minute breaks, and a 20 minute lunch. An attendance policy so punative that my husband didn’t even want to ask for a day off to get married or to be at the hospital when our grandson was born. I thought he was exaggerating until he received a half a point on his record for leaving early on the day his father died.
Now the company wants to continue with the rhetoric that paints these workers as greedy selfish people that have no care for the company and only for themselves.
Please remember one thing before you fall so easily for this dishonest portrayal of these workers…THEY DID NOT ASK FOR ANYTHING!! The company asked for many concessions and the workers agreed to all of them!!! They even came up with more concessions that the company didn’t ask for! If that was an actual negotiation LMC should have been satisfied that they had received everything that they had asked for and more. Instead LMC decided that getting everything they asked for wasn’t going to be enough. Obviously, nothing is going to be enough.
In sub-freezing weather, the workers fire had to be removed even though it would have been legal across the street.
Even neanderthals had fire for heavens sake. What is the message that LMC is trying to get across? That their former workers don’t even deserve simple WARMTH in a blizzard? That they aren’t even human beings?
As upset as I am over the barbaric treatment of my husband and his union brothers and sisters, I’m going to end this letter here.
I’m going to pray for the powers that be at LMC. I’m going to pray that during this Christmas Season (and while they sit in church) God will touch their hearts with compassion for their fellow man. They may need to be reminded there are some things that are more important than money and business. There is the Golden Rule and that doesn’t change with negotiation.
Jamie, thank you for bringing even more details to light about the plight of the good union workers locked out at Light Metals Corp. It would be wonderful if the owners of corporations here in my hometown, Wyoming, and around the world would be touched with compassion. But history has shown that is rarely, if ever, the case.
Even here in the US, working class folks have only gotten a fair shake by standing together and demanding fair wages, safe conditions and decent hours. Like Chuck said in the story, “Unions have provided things people in this country would never have gotten any other way.”
Please keep us updated with how things are going at the lock-out.
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Hey, Charles Dietrick
You may or may not remember me After 32 years
My name is Mohammed Vaid you call me MOE
work with you in LMC
If you remember e-mail me
movaid@yahoo.com
561-339-0603