Alcatel Lucent -Trade Pacts, Union-Busting Cost Jobs

By summer's end the last 300 CWA-represented jobs at Alcatel Lucent's Merrimack Valley plant will be gone. The result of race-to-the-bottom offshoring, thousands of jobs have disappeared from the Andover, Mass., manufacturing plant — once the flagship of AT&T Western Electric, spun off in 1996 as Lucent Technologies, then in 2006 acquired by French-owned Alcatel.

Offshoring has cost thousands of jobs at Alcatel Lucent's Merrimack Valley plant in Andover, Mass. Soon the last 300 CWA-represented jobs will be gone. Photo by Laura Unger

Local 1365 President Gary Nillsson, who represents the Merrimack Valley workers and who visited Colombia two years ago as part of a union fact-finding delegation on trade and worker rights issues, has seen a pattern with so-called fast-track trade agreements that establish the global economic climate that encourages companies like Alcatel Lucent to operate this way. "It started with NAFTA and has gotten worse during the Bush administration," Nillsson said.

"Our jobs have gone everywhere in the world where labor is cheaper, China, Mexico, even Italy — you could pick a country and we've probably lost jobs there. Our problem is that trade agreements don't have protections for workers, and so what happens is wages, like in Mexico, never catch up. If you can pay somebody $1 an hour compared with our wages here, we certainly can't compete."

He also pointed to the high-cost of providing health benefits in the United States as a reason companies look to move jobs elsewhere. "In most other countries, health care is subsidized by government. Like in Italy — even if we're comparable on wages, we're not on health care, because we don't have national health care like they do in Italy."

He said laid-off workers can get training for new jobs through trade adjustment assistance but, "finding them jobs when they complete it? Things are tough up here — the economy is not working with us."

"Security" Shell Game

Offshoring isn't the only threat to Alcatel Lucent workers. CWA is battling domestic outsourcing and brazen union busting tactics. The company last year created a wholly-owned subsidiary, Lucent Government Services, to handle federal installation work, claiming this was necessary since Alcatel Lucent is French-owned. It transferred managers to the new company, but refused to transfer 65 CWA-represented installers, claiming they don't have necessary security clearances.

"Security" is only a sham excuse for keeping these jobs non-union, said CWA Communications and Technologies Vice President Ralph Maly, noting that Lucent employees have done highly sensitive government work for decades.

For example Chuck Karr of Local 7790, Lakewood, Colo., a veteran of the U.S. Army's 69th Signal Corps, had a Secret Crypto clearance prior to working for Lucent. "I've been fingerprinted several times in applying for clearances allowing me to work on equipment" at several Air Force bases, an Army depot, FBI and Customs locations in three states, the IRS and the U.S. Marshal's Office, he points out.

Karr and numerous others were told their clearances weren't good enough for the new subsidiary and have been shifted to other, non-government installation jobs.

While the installers are protected by a no-layoff clause, as they leave the company by attrition they are being replaced by contractors, according to Maly. The installation unit has been downsized to approximately 1,500, down from 11,000 eight years ago.

CWA is mobilizing political and public support of the Alcatel Lucent workers' job fight in a Strategic Industries campaign aimed at the company's customers and potential customers. Maly and President Larry Cohen also have sent messages of solidarity to Alcatel's French unions, who are also fighting to preserve jobs, wages and benefits.