UE Local 277's Strike at Morse Cutting Tool

Abstract

[Excerpt] In the Spring of 1982, a small local union took on a conglomerate giant and won. What initially appeared as a battle over concessions at Morse Cutting Tool, a subsidiary of Gulf+Western in New Bedford, Massachusetts, became a broad-based community/labor fight against the rights of capital. Careful research by the Industrial Cooperative Association (ICA) documented G+W's disinvestment and kept the company on the defensive for the strike's thirteen-week duration. The victory of United Electrical Workers Union Local 277 showed that imaginative leadership and militant unionists can overcome corporate power even in the midst of a new depression. This strike deserves close study by all those interested in the labor movement.