Corning wants to go into labor its way.

• Author: Murray, Arthur O.
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler - Brief Article

Carl Millinor has a dilemma. If he caves in to the demands of management at Corning Inc.s' fiber-optic plant in Wilmington, he could emasculate Local 1025 of the American Flint and Glass Workers Union. But if he insists that Corning honor its contract, Millinor, the local president, could be left without any workers to represent.

Complaining of a soft fiber-optics market, Corning execs laid off many of the plant's estimated 1,700 workers in October, saying they would be recalled after the first of the year. In January, Corning wanted to bring back 250. That's when Millinor's troubles began.

Corning's contract with AFGW says workers with seniority get preference in a recall. But Bob Hoover, Wilmington plant manager and a division vice president, asked the union to amend the contract to allow workers to be recalled by specialty, then by seniority within that specialty. Millinor says the union makes exceptions in skilled trades -- electricians and machinists, for example -- but favors seniority. "A man who's worked here 30 years shouldn't be punished just because he's still working on obsolete equipment."

The union offered to settle by allowing the callback on the company's terms, then filing a grievance that would go to binding arbitration, Millinor says. Coming refused, saying it would recall workers only if the contract were amended.

Millinor agreed to put the change to a vote of the local membership, with no recommendation from its leaders. And he let Hoover make a pitch for it at a union meeting. "The main reason our people turned it down -- other than it was the wrong thing to do -- was that Mr. Hoover was so insulting and threatening."

More than two-thirds of the 789 members participated. They rejected the proposal by a 3-1 margin, Millinor says. Corning responded by saying that the jobs would be moved to a nonunion plant in Concord and to factories in Germany and Australia. New recalls in Wilmington, if they happen at all, could take up to five months.

That time frame shows something else at work, Millinor says, who has worked at the plant seven years as a draw operator, turning glass "blanks" into thin fibers. "In the past, I've refrained from using these words. But this is nothing short of union-busting tactics." Corning's contract with the AFGW ends in April, he says, and this could be its opening move in negotiations.

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