Dispatch from the Employer Offensive: Mauser Teamsters Strike Back

On August 5, two months into the strike, hundreds of people, from elected officials to striking workers and their families to community organizations and labor federations like the AFL-CIO — with the ​“It’s Better in a Union” bus tour—rallied at Mauser headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook. 

Workers will vote on the company’s last, best, and final offer on August 12. Nicolas Coronado, chief negotiator for Teamsters Local 705, said the union isn’t recommending a yes vote, citing major unresolved issues such as sympathy strike language, watered down language on Immigration and Customs Enforcement having access to company property without a judicial warrant, no health insurance caps, and disciplinary policies that allow the employer to terminate workers for any reason. The company is offering a 9.5% raise over a three year contract. 

The company, formed in 2018, employs 11,000 people at 170 locations across the world. The Teamsters say they represent hundreds of its workers in California, Minnesota and Illinois. Workers in Chicago are demanding higher wages, safer working conditions and improved health insurance.

A representative of the union’s bargaining team says the high cost of the company’s health insurance is a major sticking point. The premium for a family is $400 a month, but deductibles are $6,600 for a family and $3,300 for a single person. Of Mauser’s 140 employees at the Chicago plant, only 30 are on the insurance plan, according to Coronado.

Coronado, the chief negotiator for Teamsters Local 705, says the company has offered paltry raises of 70 cents an hour annually for a three-year contract. The average wage is about $20 an hour, and workers want it to go up to $23 or $25 by the end of the contract. The workforce is about 90% Latino and 10% Black.

Workers say furnaces and ovens churn around the clock, with a constant flow of bright-red barrels burning and, hot air rising, pushing temperatures to a sweltering 120 degrees, even as much as 150 degrees in some areas. Workers want temperature control in the facility. 

Dante Woodson, 22, will make one year at the company this month. He works in the painting and assembling department, handling barrel lids and disassembling drums after they come off the blaster, where they are heated in a fiery furnace. Before working at Mauser, he was a tank washer, cleaning chemicals out of oil tankers, also grueling work.

At Mauser, ​“they don’t do anything to alter the temperatures,” Woodson says. ​“So if it’s hot outside, it’ll be super-hot in there, because obviously there’s ovens and heaters… and when it’s really cold outside, they don’t do anything to warm it up. When it’s 10 degrees, you know, negative in the negatives, it’s still super-cold within the building.”

Jeffrey Bell, 61, has cleaned metal drums after they come off trucks at the company for the past two years, dealing with ammonia, hydroperoxides, solvents and oils. It’s the first stop in the reconditioning process. The lack of ventilation makes the work difficult. ​“In the summer, where I am at, particularly, it can get up to 150 degrees at 5:30 in the morning,” says Bell. He also wants sufficient protective equipment, adequate ventilation and weather gear for working in the rain. Workers also say the company doesn’t consistently supply them with regular uniforms, forcing them to use their own clothes when handling heavy metals and toxic chemicals. That can mean bringing hazards home when they wash those clothes.

A major sticking point is time off. Workers say the company routinely denies their requests for time off, even when there is a death in the family. ​“How can I predict a death in my family where they say, ​‘okay, my uncle’s gonna die Thursday, I need a day off?’ You don’t know,” Bell says.

​“That’s basically it, the disrespectfulness of that,” says Bell about fighting for a day off to mourn the loss of a family member. What’s more, workers don’t have sick days, which were bargained away in previous contract cycles when a different union held the collective bargaining agreement, meaning the company meets compliance with Illinois state law. The company uses an attendance point system, with seven points leading to a termination.

Teamsters Local 705 business agent Eddie Vallejo says the company is concealing injuries that happen on the job by sending workers home. The union, he says, wants the company to issue a report whenever a worker is sent home for an injury and have a copy of it given to the worker. 

The Teamsters say Mauser remains intransigent on these and other bargaining issues. It’s not the only employer playing hardball with the union. On July 1, 450 Teamster drivers, members of Local 25 in Massachusetts, began a series of on-again, off-again strikes against the private sanitation company Republic Services. They were followed by other members in Georgia, Washington and California. Teamsters Local 25 members recently voted to continue the strike in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, UPS, where the Teamsters hold the largest private-sector collective bargaining agreement, is closing buildings and replacing workers with a buyout scheme in order to can Teamsters with higher earnings and seniority. The union responded by gearing up to strike.

​“Teamsters were prepared to strike UPS at its largest air hub, Worldport, in Louisville, Ky., and across the Chicago area, and to extend picket lines to California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Ohio if UPS did not retreat,” the Teamsters said in statement released midnight on August 12, alleging it was ready to strike the company in seven states. In Chicago, the IBT said the credible strike threat won a first contract for administrative workers represented by Teamsters Local 705, while the union resolved longstanding grievances in Louisville.

Overall, a reinvigorated employer offensive appears to be regaining momentum under President Donald Trump, as employers take the gloves off to clobber unions and workers. Trump’s U.S. Department of Labor is slated to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft, as part of a deregulation bonanza for CEOs. Trump also fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August, the agency responsible for economic statistics, which was already weakened after years of tight budgets and staff shortages. That’s on top of a budget that ​“will gut Medicaid, slash food aid for families, and shutter rural hospitals,” says Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz — all in the name of handouts in the form of tax cuts for the superrich, increasing the national debt by trillions over the next decade while eliminating nearly 6 million jobs by trying to enact the mass deportation of one million people.

The tax-law windfall will amount to $148 billion in cash tax savings for companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta in the S&P 500, according to the Wall Street Journal. Federal appeals court judges sided with Trump on ending union bargaining for federal workers, just as the courts have largely rubber-stamped other presidential decisions, from canceling $7 billion in federal grants distributed by the Environmental Protection Agency to allowing mass deportation raids and arrests of citizens and non-citizens alike. 

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced plans on August 6 to terminate unions’ collective bargaining agreements. ​“Too often, unions that represent VA employees fight against the best interests of Veterans while protecting and rewarding bad workers,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. The decision will end the union contracts of at least 350,000 members from American Federation of Government Employees, the National Nurses United, the Service Employees International Union, and others. The EPA also ended union contracts for 8,000 workers. And more union purges at federal agencies are in the offing, per Trump’s March executive order barring collective bargaining on bogus national security grounds.

​“Employers are feeling emboldened by the Trump administration,” said Kate Bronfrenbrenner, author and professor at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. ​“Trump is doing their bidding on deregulation, on tax cuts, tax incentives, but also on just dismantling labor and employment law.” Take the National Labor Relations Board, says Bronfenbrenner: ​“Employers are starting to say, well, because there’s no quorum in the NLRB, the NLRB can’t function in any way. There can’t be elections, there can’t be unfair labor practices. Can’t move forward. And they’re acting as if there’s no regulatory enforcement at all.”

Teamsters Local 705’s Nicolas Coronado points to the lack of quorum on the NLRB, after the firing of board member Gwynne Wilcox. ​“I think it’s really given the company this idea that they could do whatever they want,” he says. ​“In terms of unfair labor practices, we have, at least, off the top of my head, about eight unfair labor practice [allegations] that we’ve already filed before and during the strike against this company. So when they see that we have such an impotent Labor Board, I think they just get even more of an idea that they can do whatever they want to their workers.”

The impunity has only worsened under Trump, even while employers are more powerful than ever and faced weaker unions than they have in almost 100 years.

​“The private equity firm controlling Mauser, Stone Canyon Industries Holdings, is heavily backed by Michael Milken, a ​‘junk bond king’ worth $7 billion who President Trump pardoned for illegal insider trading,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a letter to Mauser CEO Mark S. Burgess on July 14. ​“I am also disappointed that you can apparently find money to donate to Dickinson College to help establish an institute named after yourself, Burgess Institute for the Global Economy, but cannot adequately meet the needs of your workers.” 

Arturo Landa, a shop steward on the Mauser bargaining committee, came to the United States 18 years ago from Veracruz, Mexico, settling in Chicago. He’s worked at Mauser, including its predecessor Meyer Steel Drum, for 12 years; he was a member of another union until Teamsters Local 705 took over the contract in 2019 in a unanimous membership vote. Even though he can work legally in the United States, Landa worries he may be targeted. Stroll through Little Village, one of Chicago’s Mexican enclaves, he says, and the fear of deportation is everywhere. The scenes light phones and televisions: Masked agents, draped in camo and bulletproof vests, armed with assault rifles and walkie-talkies, smash car windows and raid workplaces and neighborhoods.

The strike began against a backdrop of these scenes nationally but also closer to home, from mass firings and kidnapping at factories in Chicago’s suburbs like Bensenville and Elgin. ​“To this day, no one knows where they are,” Kevin Morrison, a Cook County Board commissioner, told the Chicago Tribune about 20 people taken into custody from a warehouse operated by Accelerated Global Operations and SpeedX in Elk Grove Village. ​“Their families have not been able to communicate with them.” They all had valid work permits. 

At Mauser, Landa and his coworkers are fighting for protection against these kinds of raids, and he says no one has crossed the picket line. The bargaining committee starts the day at the strike line at 5 a.m. before heading into negotiations after a prayer, says Vallejo. They come back to the line late to share updates from negotiations and take questions, in English and Spanish. That has made workers feel a strong sense of support and has steeled them against company propaganda. The workers interviewed for the story, even those who were striking for the first time in their lives, spoke about the camaraderie they’ve built on the picket line.

Those workers want the company to agree not to allow ICE officials onto workplace property unless they have a signed judicial warrant. ​“Since you know that with this new administration, there has been a lot of racism, and they are detaining many people who, even though they have their documents in order and everything, they are detaining them simply for being Latino or for their skin color,” Landa said in Spanish.

Asked about Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s embrace of Trump and the contradictions that presents for the union’s diverse union membership made up of immigrants, Landa said he was focused on the strike, declining to comment. ​“It’s always, regardless of your political affiliation, about the workers,” said Vallejo in response. ​“We all have one goal to get workers a fair contract here.”

Workers presented the company’s negotiating team a straightforward demand about immigration language to protect its workers: ​“In case ICE arrives, don’t let them pass if they don’t bring an order signed by a judge,” he said. ​“And they told us ​‘no, they are not going to break the laws.’ And we told them that we don’t want them to break the laws — simply put something in the language that protects us, because we are your workers.”

Workers on strike at Mauser say it boils down to better treatment and respect. Landa says workers use their bicycles to come into work, and the company sometimes abruptly changes schedules, especially for the morning shift, throwing off childcare arrangements. On most days, workers put in 12-hour shifts and rely on a food truck that comes at 9 a.m. to get their lunch. Workers say the company cancels the 15-minute break when they usually get their food from the truck.

Kimberly Braam, communications director at Mauser, said the strike is ​“impacting essential services and the livelihoods of our employees and their families,” and that the company ​“remains committed to reaching a fair agreement and safeguarding the long-term viability of our operations.”

Bramm didn’t respond to multiple phone calls or emails requesting comment. 

Vallejo said Local 705’s goal wasn’t to strike after the contract expired in April, but after ​“our last bargaining session in late July, the company literally just dropped off of the map,” ignoring the union for a whole month. ​“When we do finally meet with them, they pretty much give us the same offer that we went on strike for, and try to force it down our throat. Now they’re even scaring the members, the workers, sending them text messages.”

Copies of messages and letters sent to Teamster members shared with In These Times say ​“Teamsters Celebrate Loss of 20 Jobs in Seattle,” a distortion of a statement released by Teamsters Local 117 lauding Mauser union members for their fight at the closed plant in Seattle. Other messages to rank-and-file workers in Spanish say that the Teamsters have their own agenda, highlighting the lockout and shuttering of the plant in Seattle, and telling workers to tell the union they want to accept the contract offer.

​“Mauser has offered the union a contract including health care benefits with no increase in premium. Protect your family against medical emergencies,” one company text message said. ​“Tell the union you want to VOTE on this fair offer.”

“Mauser has offered the union an increase of 3.5% in the first year of the contract,” the text message continued. ​“This represents approximately 10 trips to the grocery store for a family of four.”

Many of the workers like Landa are the heads of their households. ​“Don’t leave two months of food for your family on the table,” the text reads. 

Teamsters Local 743 also represents Mauser workers, in a separate plant that manufactures plastic containers. In one instance, the company sent a text to members in Spanish saying that a bilingual union representative named Eduardo Soto from Teamsters Local 743 would talk to them about the final contract offer, and again repeated the possibility of the Chicago plant closing just like the one in Seattle. ​“We strongly believe the supervisor from the 743 location spoke to one of the supervisors from our location and they lied about Eduardo’s intentions for coming to our line as a coercive tactic,” Coronado told In These Times via text message. These messages are examples of direct dealing and violate workers rights under the National Labor Relations Act. 

“Employers are most aggressive when they see union power gaining. They want to nip it in the bud,” said Bronfenbrenner. ​“Employers saw the strike wave that happened in 2023, and they felt like workers are striking more. They’re organizing more. They have a friendly board and a friendly administration. We got to put a stop to them.” 

There are moments when it’s easier to pony up more money at the negotiation table to avoid a long strike, and there are moments when corporations are on an all-out war footing, such as with recession looming or when competition is tough, especially in a cyclical business downturn.

​“We regret the Union’s choice to strike during a time of economic uncertainty but are dedicated to protecting our employees’ health and safety, supporting our customers, and maintaining operational continuity,” said Mauser spokesperson Braam.

​“Teamsters and unions before us, they took it to the streets. Employers across the country were not listening to employees, so they took it to rallies,” says Vallejo. ​“They took it to strike lines. They took it to the public, as we’re doing now, because if they don’t hear our voices at the workplace, they will hear our voices out on the streets.”