Victory to the Sikorsky Strike!

FEBRUARY 25—Some 3,590 members of Teamsters Local 1150 went on strike on February 20 against Sikorsky Aircraft, and picket lines have been up around the clock in Stratford, Bridgeport, Shelton and West Haven, Connecticut, as well as in West Palm Beach, Florida. The walkout at Sikorsky comes on the heels of a three-month strike by 1,500 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in California, Alabama and Florida, who make and launch Boeing’s Delta rockets. These strikes are particularly significant as they hit two of the U.S. military’s most important suppliers in the midst of the imperialist rulers’ bloody occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The core issue in the Sikorsky strike is the company’s demand to nearly triple the workers’ health care payments over the three-year life of the contract—from $25 to $72 per week—in addition to increases in prescription costs and doctor visit copayments. With an average age of 48 years and job seniority of 24 years, workers suffer widespread injuries and chronic medical conditions from labor on the assembly lines. Hourly wages for this highly skilled workforce range from only $18.59 to $32.50. After workers rejected the company’s takeback “offer” by an overwhelming vote of 2,145 to 1,052, a 100-member strike committee began organizing picketing and financial assistance for strikers. As Everald Davis, a 28-year Sikorksy veteran, put it, “Sometimes you have to fight for what you want. You just can’t let people push you around.”

Attacks on union health benefits, which were won through labor struggle, have been a key issue in virtually every recent strike in the U.S. The massive United Technologies conglomerate that includes Sikorsky, along with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, Otis Elevator and other subsidiaries, wants to increase workers’ medical payments at all of its operations. Throwing out the sucker bait of a $2,000 contract signing bonus, Sikorsky is trying to gouge its workers’ health benefits even after raking in $250 million in profits last year (up 25 percent from 2004), not to speak of a backlog in government contracts.

Sikorsky’s main products are helicopters for civilian and military use. The company supplies all five branches of the U.S. armed forces, most notably Army Black Hawks and Navy Seahawks, and boasts that it has built nearly half of all helicopters serving military forces throughout the world. Picketers in Stratford told Workers Vanguard that the union warned them that Sikorsky would wave the flag and that the strikers would be called “terrorist.” The Connecticut Post (21 February) began the drumbeat at the very beginning of the strike: “The nation is at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and workers said they have heard charges the strike might delay some vital parts needed for military orders.” But the strikers, many of whom are military veterans, are undaunted. One picketer remarked to WV that there is a distinction between having pride in the workers’ skills and the product they make and the way their product is used.

The theme of “national unity” that the government has hammered on since the September 11 attacks is intended to obliterate the class line between the workers and their U.S. capitalist exploiters, aiming to block the working class from fighting in its own interests. The top Teamsters leadership plays right along, for example, by staging chauvinist, flag-waving rallies with various capitalist politicians across the country on February 24 to protest the projected takeover of port facilities by an Arab-owned company (see accompanying article). The Sikorsky strike is objectively a strike against the lie of “national unity” patriotism.

Strikers should beware of those Democrats, and also some Republicans, who have proclaimed their “sympathy.” The Democrats are taking the opportunity to swipe at the Bush administration over the state of health care in this country. But their agenda is to get the workers back on the job, to keep profits flowing and the imperialist war machine running. Workers need their own party, to lead all the exploited and oppressed in the struggle for a workers government.

Spirits are high on the picket lines in Connecticut, where the white, black and immigrant strikers have been supported by many people dropping by with coffee and donuts, and where passing cars, trucks and fire engines honk their horns in support. At the same time, thousands of engineers and other salaried employees have been driving right past the picket lines through plant gates, and the company says that it’s continuing to build some helicopters. Whatever the truth of this claim, the way to win this strike, and win it fast, is with mass picket lines, drawing on other area unions, to stop all scabbing and shut Sikorsky down. It is particularly important to mobilize workers from other United Technologies companies who are also facing attacks on union benefits. Victory to the Sikorsky strike!