A nine-month strike by members of Teamsters Local 120 at Rum River Lumber came to a bitter end when votes by replacement workers prevailed in a decertification election, ousting the union.

"The vote was 23-19 to decertify" on Jan. 10, reported Dave Schrunk, business agent for Teamsters Local 120. He said the 23 votes to decertify came from 21 replacement workers hired to break the strike plus two union members who crossed the picket line and went back to work.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rules allow so-called "permanent replacement workers" to vote in a decertification election. "That's how labor law works," Schrunk said. "Even though they've never been a union member they still have the right to vote."

"There's a certain absurdity to the 'permanent replacement' doctrine," observed Brendan Cummins, a labor law attorney with the Miller O'Brien law firm. Without the protection of a union contract, he noted, all workers are at-will employees and can be fired anytime. So there's really nothing permanent about permanent replacement workers, except in the strange logic of the NLRB.

What's to stop any employer from breaking a strike with permanent replacements? "Not prolonging a strike so that employers don't have a justification for hiring permanent replacements," Cummins said. The NLRB determines on a case-by-case basis when an employer has the right to declare replacements as permanent.

"The strike is an increasingly weak tool," Cummins said. "Labor laws are not going to help you at all."

Long-time union shop
Rum River Lumber had been a union shop for about 30 years. Last spring, management unexpectedly proposed to drop the company-funded pension plan and move to a new 401(k) plan. The consequences for the workers ? many close to retirement ? were unacceptable. Workers voted April 11 by a 20 to 1 margin to strike. Picketing continued from spring into summer into winter, although the picket line thinned as many of the workers moved on to other jobs.

Visited on the picket line in December, the few remaining picketers voiced their resolve to continue the strike. Two of the strikers had worked at Rum River for nearly 18 years and were close to retirement. Without four more years, Dave Reed said in May, his projected pension would drop from $2,000 monthly to only $590.

The decertification vote brought the strike and the picket line to an end.

Seven or eight former Rum River employees have found jobs at other area lumber yards where they continue to be members of Teamsters Local 120, reported Jay Hartje, one of the former Local 120 stewards at Rum River.

That group includes Hartje, a 13-year employee at Rum River, who began working July 11 at a new position with Youngblood Lumber in Minneapolis.

"I'm happy where I'm at now," he said. "It's a lot nicer atmosphere. I like the way the company is run."

Since Hartje landed a new job where he continues to be a member of the same Teamsters local, his pension remains intact, he said.

"I just hope the rest of the guys can get a job and get back into the local if that's what they want," he added. Hartje, for his part, does not question the decision to go on strike at Rum River.

"We thought we were doing the right thing," he said. "We went on strike and we tried to preserve our pension."

The owner never came back to the table with another offer, he said, and the strikers weren't going to accept a contract that lost ground.

Teamsters Local 120 has contracts with 10 other metro area lumber yards. The Teamsters shop nearest to Rum River, Schrunk said, is the Scherer Bros. Lumber Company in Arden Hills.

Hartje noted that, unlike Rum River, "all the other union yards in the area came to the table and settled good contracts."

"It tells me [Rum River] wanted to break the union," he said.

Steve Share edits the Minneapolis Labor Review, the official publication of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council. E-mail him at laborreview@mplscluc.com or visit the CLUC website, www.minneapolisunions.org