Solidarity day for Moncure workers

As WW goes to press, the Moncure strike ended on March 31. Details and reactions to the new contract will be reported in upcoming issues.

WW photo: Dante Strobino

Workers at the Moncure Plywood LLC factory have been on strike since last July 20 for their basic right to a decent job with safe work conditions. In the past eight months, the striking union members have been confronted with the racist hanging of a noose, replacement by permanent strikebreakers, and a virtual media whiteout of their heroic actions.

Last summer, the Moncure Plywood bosses announced that these skilled workers would now have to work 60 hours per week, while saddling the workers with increases in health insurance premiums by a staggering 300 to 400 percent. The bosses also imposed new changes to seniority policies, allowing for managers to practice favoritism, racism and outright discrimination against the predominantly Black work force. This only adds to the notoriously unsafe working conditions at Moncure, where last year alone the plant was fined over $37,000 for safety violations.

On March 16, almost 100 community activists joined striking workers on the picket line for a solidarity action in front of the factory in rural Chatham County, N.C. These supporters gathered behind members of Machinists Local W369, chanting through bullhorns, “Eight months on the line; justice, justice, now is the time!” After about an hour of chanting, the crowd moved the picket line to block the road entrance to the plant.

“We’ve been here long enough. In fact, this is the longest strike in North Carolina history... and we will stay here until it is won,” Machinists Local W369 Vice President Allen Moore told the demonstrators.

Shortly thereafter, the picketers were joined by members of the union of locomotive engineers, who pulled up a train to block the entrance. After bosses scrambled to pressure the locomotive to move, the engineers pulled it up to block the second entrance, while the picketers continued to block the main entrance.

Unfortunately, due to the weak labor laws in North Carolina and the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, the Machinists union’s national staff had to direct the workers to move out of the way of the hauling and service trucks as they entered and left the plant. However, community supporters were not bound by such agreements and did manage to block some trucks temporarily as they crossed the picket line.

“I had never been out [to a Moncure picket line] before. ...The whole scene was really powerful. ...I really felt class solidarity in that moment. ... This is the tangible effect of what is happening because of the mistakes of capitalism,” Laura Bickford, a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and member of the Raleigh-Durham chapter of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together, told Workers World.

Later that evening, workers and community supporters gathered outside the Chatham County Board of Commissioners meeting to support a resolution from the board that would encourage Moncure bosses to listen to the workers at the negotiating table. Talks have been stalled while the bosses hope that the permanent scabs will gradually acquire the talents for producing the high-quality wood without training from the brothers and sisters who are now on the picket line.

Workers and community supporters packed the courthouse. The board unanimously voted to pass a resolution urging the Atlas Holdings company to return to the bargaining table and negotiate a just contract.

Miriam Thompson, longtime labor and community organizer and a member of the NAACP and HKonJ movement, told WW: “It has taken incredible courage of these workers to stand up for all of us for eight months. Moncure is no longer a small story. It is a story of every worker fighting for justice.”

Given the use of racist policies to break Black and Brown unity, the union busting, and the offshoring of manufacturing, the Moncure strikers’ fight for a decent job is connected to the broader fight against the forces of capitalist boom-and-bust production and exploitation.

After mass pressure on La-Z-Boy Furniture Company—through letter writing and a demonstration at their corporate headquarters in Monroe, Mich., by members of the US-Cuba Labor Exchange last November—La-Z-Boy has stopped using wood products that come out of the Moncure plant. However, more pressure is needed at Moncure’s other customer outlet stores including Ethan Allen, Rowe Fine Furniture Inc., Franklin Corporation and Drexel Heritage.

On March 28, the news media reported that North Carolina has reached an official unemployment rate of 10.7 percent. This is the highest in the state’s recorded history. The political solidarity for the Moncure strikers organized on March 16 is linked to the overall struggle for a massive jobs program and the right to unionize in the state and throughout the country.

Organize the South! A Job is a Right!

Strobino and Williams are members of Raleigh-Durham chapter of Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) youth group that has helped organize community support behind the Moncure workers’ strike.