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5 1/2-YEAR LABOR LOCKOUT ENDS

Author Name, ProPublica

1989-12-16 00:00:00

BASF Corp. yesterday reached tentative agreement on a new three-year contract with the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union in Geismar, La., ending one of the longest management lockouts in U.S. labor history. The agreement, which is expected to be ratified Monday by union members, comes 5 1/2 years after the West German chemical company escorted OCAW members out of the sprawling chemical complex just hours before their contract was to expire in June 1984. Officials of OCAW and AFL-CIO said yesterday they could not recall a longer lockout in the United States. A lockout is the management counterpart to a strike in contract negotiations. Although lockouts have not become widespread, companies have used them with more frequency since the mid-1980s as they pushed for contract concessions from unions. The BASF dispute triggered an international "corporate campaign" against the company that at one point united the OCAW with West Germany's Green Party in an effort to discredit the company's environmental record in both countries. In addition to drawing attention to pollution by BASF plants on the Rhine and Mississippi rivers, labor's campaign against the company over the last five years has included disclosure of BASF computer shipments to South Africa that led to curtailment of the shipments, grants to support environmental and tax-equity projects in Louisiana and involvement in efforts to force BASF to pay for cleaning up hazardous wastes in four states. The union also has taken credit for blocking construction of a chemical waste incinerator proposed by BASF in Indiana and halting construction of a $50 million petrochemical plant in Geismar. OCAW Vice President Robert Wages, in a statement, said the settlement shows "we have the will and the capacity to defend ourselves even under the most adverse of circumstances." Leslie Vann, an official with Local 4-620, which represents the locked out workers, said, "We took on a hostile company, a hostile government, and we won. We're back in the plant." BASF would not comment on the contract settlement. A spokesman at the company's U.S. headquarters in New Jersey acknowledged that the company was in "discussions" with the OCAW but said both sides had agreed to a news blackout about the negotiations. The union issued a five-page news release detailing the tentative agreement and the timetable for ratification. Under the new agreement, OCAW members will receive an immediate 2 percent wage increase and increases of 3 1/2 percent a year in 1990 and 1991. All health insurance cost increases during the first two years of the agreement will be paid by the company, which will pay 80 percent in the final year. Richard Leonard, a union official active in the corporate campaign against BASF, said the settlement directly affects 110 workers. At the time of the lockout in 1984, OCAW represented 370 operators and maintenance workers at the plant, which has 1,200 employees. In 1987, the company recalled all the locked-out operators but fired the 110 maintenance workers, which included almost all the leaders of the local union.
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[1] URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/12/16/5-12-year-labor-lockout-ends/b112a44c-c5bc-4555-bf65-2ac4ac4c261c/
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