Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here.
Workers at Libbey Glass in Toledo, Ohio are continuing their strike against the company, which has now entered its second month. 84 workers represented by The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local 1297 began the strike overnight on August 22. They were soon joined on the picket lines by workers from United Steel Workers (USW) locals representing workers at the plant and also other USW locals manning the picket lines in solidarity. The four union locals together represent 700 workers at Libbey, where the workers make glass dinnerware.
The workers are fighting against inadequate pay raises which amount to real wage cuts in the face of already low wages, mandatory overtime provisions, stripping of union and members rights and protections including the right to strike and the right to file grievances, and rising health insurance costs that has been ongoing since 2020. .
On 08/09, IAM Local 1297 members at the plant rejected the company’s last contract offer and voted to authorize the strike, with USW workers following suit in rejecting the company’s offer in an overwhelming No vote. Negotiations with the company have been ongoing since October of last year. Since the beginning of the strike, Libbey has refused to meet the workers at the bargaining table after presenting their “Last, best, and final offer”. The union chiefs led the workers out on an Unfair Labor Practices strike, one of the few types of strikes allowed under federal law, which was called because of the company’s refusal to bargain in good faith.
“Libbey’s rotten. They’re rotten to the core. They haven’t bargained in good faith since day one,” stated one worker to a local monopoly press outlet.
In 2020 Libbey Glassworks filed for bankruptcy and went through liquidation proceedings. Workers were forced to make concessions in their contract and take pay cuts to keep the company afloat, giving up millions of dollars in wages. Since recovering, Libbey is once again profitable but wishes to keep workers chained to the concessions they were forced to accept in 2020.
In 2024 Libbey was awarded $43 million in federal grants from the Inflation Reduction Act to help “modernize” its facilities. However, Trump’s cuts to the Department of Energy in May of this year gutted $3 billion from these programs. Now Libbey is passing the brunt of these losses in promised funds on to its workers. The government austerity measures and the bosses’ attacks on working conditions form part of the imperialists’ efforts to recover from their economic crisis by passing its burden onto the backs of the working class.
Workers have committed to taking six hour shifts picketing at the plant, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week until they win their demands. Organizers have organized a food drive to support the striking workers since 09/22. The strike has surpassed the longest strike at Libbey’s that occurred in 1974 when workers walked out for two and a half weeks. Libbey Workers also went on strike in 2016 for two weeks over similar attacks on their working conditions.
The plant continues to operate on a skeleton crew of non-union scabs. In video from the picket line striking workers can be seen shouting at trucks entering the plant: “Rats! Non-union rats!” In addition to scabs, various Democratic mafia politicians have appeared at the Libbey picket lines or donated to the food drive in a shoe for the electoral farce. Democrat mafia Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who three years ago voted to ban a strike from railroad workers, postured at the picket line last week.
Image: Workers rally at Libbey picket line, still from USW video.
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