One era of the 17-year struggle between J.P. Stevens Inc. and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) has ended with 83 pages of double-spaced legal jargon. An agreement has been reached. But before the roar of the ratification vote in Roanoke Rapids could die down, owner Whitney Stevens opened the next era with more lies and misrepresentations.
The morning after the ratification vote, Stevens appeared on videotape before captive audiences of Stevens employees meeting in their as yet non-unionized plants. He told them two lies. The first was that the unionized workers got nothing in the contract that non-unionized workers were not already getting. He then told them that the ACTWU had agreed not to run campaigns at any Stevens plants for 18 months.
Whitney Stevens' lies were a bold attempt to shape the attitude of his employees and the public about the settlement and to leave a bad taste about the union in their mouths. His ability to succeed depends upon the pervasive ignorance of the public with respect to union contracts. His only victory in the settlement's aftermath might be in turning public sympathy against the union by convincing them that the union's victory was really a loss.
Over the years, public attention has almost always focused on the wage and benefit packages included in union contracts, because pocketbook issues are close to everyone. But the important part of union contracts has never been the wage and benefit elements. Important as they are, they are the icing on the cake. The real substance of the settlement is the contract itself, a document which, in effect, creates law between a company and a union that is binding on both and can be litigated in the courts when a dispute arises.
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