Lorenzo D’Ettore
Industrial gas workers launched a multi-state strike against Airgas on June 25, with workers picketing at eight locations across five states after the company refused to negotiate fair contracts despite reporting record profits. The strike, involving drivers, fillers, and plant workers represented by various Teamsters locals, has its primary pickets in New Brunswick, New Jersey and Cleveland, Ohio, and has extended with picket lines at facilities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. These workers are responsible for delivering essential gases to hospitals, food manufacturers, laboratories, and universities throughout the Northeast, with uses in medical equipment, food packaging, and beverage carbonation.
Airgas, owned by French multinational Air Liquide, reported $3.8 billion in net profits last year while generating nearly $30 billion in total revenue. Yet, the Teamsters union representing Airgas drivers says the company “continues to break the law and refuses to bargain agreements that meet industry standards.”
The current action represents the culmination of months of labor tensions. Workers in New Jersey had already been on the picket line since mid-June, with Teamsters Local 701 members leading the initial walkout. In Michigan, more than 30 workers in Ferndale voted unanimously to authorize a strike in May, demanding “an agreement that matches the standards won by fellow Airgas workers across the country.”
Ohio workers followed suit, with Local 507 members in Cleveland voting overwhelmingly to authorize strike action. Workers and union officials document a systematic campaign of labor law violations, though the Teamsters have not specified publicly the nature of the violations or the figures of the substandard contract proposals from the monopoly they are facing down. The company has been accused by the union of “dragging out negotiations on purpose” and “violating federal labor laws.”
“Management has forced us to strike,” said Adam Hayes, an Airgas worker and steward with Local 507 in Cleveland. Workers report that management “won’t even sit across the table and negotiate a real contract” despite the company’s public claims about worker safety and respect.
The Teamsters have indicated that the company is attempting to maintain uneven wages for workers in the same union but in different locations, despite substantial recent profits. According to union representatives, this wage disparity persists even as the company has achieved its dominant market position. Monopolies do not confer automatic benefits to the workers—in fact, Airgas being a monopoly allows them to crush workers more than the smaller companies, forcing workers to become more creative in organizing resistance to the company.
Union Airgas drivers have gone on strike in the last few years at multiple locations for higher wages and against the monopoly’s anti-union intimidation and, at one location in 2016, against a threat to install cameras in workers’ locker rooms.
Image: Airgas workers rally at the onset of the June strike in Cleveland, Teamsters media
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