Strike At Iowa Army Ammunition Plant Could Have Big Consequences For Ukrainian Army

Far from the Ukrainian front lines, labor trouble is brewing at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. After a set of union contracts expire Friday, up to 500 workers represented by ten unions could walk off the job. Any failure to negotiate a new contract weakens America’s munitions supply chain. An extended work stoppage may even endanger the flow of critical ammunition to the Ukraine military.

While the current production runs at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant are not detailed publicly, the Army-owned facility, which is managed by American Ordinance LLC, produces several important types of ground warfare munitions, including 40mm grenades, components for 60mm, 81mm and 120mm mortar cartridges, 120mm tank ammunition, shells of various sorts for 155mm cannons, clearing charges, demolition blocks and a range of missile components—including FGM-148 Javelin and FIM-92 Stinger warheads. Army sources and contract award documents suggest the facility can produce M982 Excalibur warheads, mines, long-range precision artillery ammunition and other tailored explosive products.

Employees at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant perform dangerous work where, according to Zach Peterson, a business agent for Teamsters 238, “one wrong move on their part can result in their death, and the deaths of the workers around them.” Without the union workers, the World War II-era facility will have trouble churning out the modern shells, grenades and charges America needs, likely crimping the flow of U.S. ammunition to the Ukrainian front line.

Contract negotiations at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant are fractious at the best of times, but, given the potential grave national security consequences—and the priority Russia’s government places upon constraining Ukraine’s access to modern weaponry—the U.S. government must start tracking the contractual standoff now, and be ready to broker a viable labor agreement if the workers and management hit an extended impasse—or are pushed into one by outside influencers.

Union Workers Are Preparing For A Work Stoppage

Tensions are high at the 19,000-acre ammunition plant, where the unions contend that wages, insurance, holidays and COVID polices are significantly stingier than that of other area employers. “American Ordnance provides less compensation than the cookie factory down the road, which both pays better and has lower employee health premiums,” says Peterson.

At a local level, the unions and company seem far apart. Unlike other industries, the company forces workers to use sick leave and vacation when they are directed to stay home due to infection or exposure to COVID, leading employees to report to work sick, spreading COVID through the facility, “due to fear they would be without a paycheck for two or more weeks.” But, during negotiations, “the lead negotiator for the company has literally laughed at employees’ concerns regarding COVID leave pay,” by “saying the company wasn’t interested in paying employees that had ‘the sniffles.’”

Distaste for labor concessions may extend out of Iowa and into some well-appointed East Coast executive suites. American Ordinance, operating out of Middletown, Iowa, is a branch of the sprawling, privately held Day & Zimmermann conglomerate, a Philadelphia-based enterprise whose website says it’s a 51,000 strong, “century-old, family-owned company” with $2,7 billion in annual revenue. Union negotiators say that “the company’s bargaining team has given every indication that they have been given virtually no authority by Day & Zimmermann to make any significant movement.”

Multiple emails to Day & Zimmermann’s office of corporate communications and to Matt Rivera, Day & Zimmermann’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications, went unacknowledged.

Strike May Snarl U.S. Efforts To Support Ukraine

The Teamsters’ Peterson painted a dire picture of the state of contract talks, saying the union was “still bargaining over insurance and paid leave accrual, and haven’t started bargaining wages,” and that negotiators have seen very little movement on the part of the company and bargaining this cycle seems to be worse than three years ago.

While not reflective of the other nine unions, the Teamsters Local 238 has already authorized their negotiators to call a strike if required.

Given the challenge of negotiating with 10 different unions and American Ordinance’s preference to keep benefits uniform, contract negotiations at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant can be difficult and hard to conclude. Strikes have happened before. In 2016, the Machinist and Aerospace Workers Local 1010 and Teamsters Local 238 walked off the job after rejecting their proposed contract and stayed out for almost a month.

A brief work stoppage seems inevitable. But a long strike may have wide-ranging consequences for the U.S. military, Ukraine and other U.S. allies that depend upon U.S.-supplied munitions for ground combat. In the current environment, contract negotiations are tough and necessary things to thrash out, but, given the potential impact to national security, prudence demands the U.S. government be alert for any external effort to influence key negotiators, executives and workers.

Labor disputes happen. They are a normal part of America’s labor history. But an extended fight would be a real problem. Nobody but Russia will win if this key western ammunition facility gets sidelined for months. Given Russia’s prior efforts to destroy or degrade Ukraine’s European sources of critical ammunition, interfering in a simmering U.S. labor dispute may well pose an irresistible target for Russia’s vast cadre of clandestine influencers.