NMB Makes Ruling on IAM/IBT Mechanics

[700UW]

Ah, wishing people dead? How uncooth.

Sorry to inform you Catepillar is UAW, not IAM and they never were IAM.

Don't let the facts get in your way.

 

[smorzando]

Ah, wishing people dead? How uncooth.

Sorry to inform you Catepillar is UAW, not IAM and they never were IAM.

Don't let the facts get in your way.

http://www.goiam.org/content.cfm?cID=4320


You are a real moron....you and the IAM deserve each other.


May you end up go to where you came from, the dark side....

 

[700UW]

The incident you refer to was UAW, not IAM.

Gee for someone who says they wont respond you sure did not lose your taste for insulting people once again.

Learn to read, INFORMATIONAL PICKETING, not a strike, the strike that lasted forever at CAT was UAW.

May 29, 1995


Caterpillar Strike Enters 12Th Month As Uaw Members Continue To Fight

BY FRANK FORRESTAL
AURORA, Illinois - As United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 145 members enter their 12th month on strike here, they continue to hang tough in their battle against Caterpillar, the world's largest earth-moving equipment company.

Some 13,300 UAW members in eight plants covering three states walked out last June to halt the company's attempts to bust their union. Prior to the strike, about 2,000 UAW members worked at the Aurora plant. Touted as one of the most modern in their system, the facility manufactures excavators and wheel loaders - two hot-selling products used in the construction industry.

The union organizes around-the-clock picket duty and every Monday a rally is held in front of the main gate at the crack of dawn. At the beginning of the strike, these rallies were larger, numbering more than 100 strikers and their supporters. In the recent period, the rallies have tailed off to a few dozen strikers. Support from other unionists has also dropped off.

Despite this, many passersby honk and give the thumbs up to the pickets.

Strikers estimate that some 500 members have crossed the picket line and returned to work. The line-crossers are overwhelmingly young and a large proportion are female. In addition, a fair number of UAW retirees have crossed the line. One striker reported that a trickle of members had recently crossed after a long period where few had. He said he is the only person left in his car pool that hasn't returned to work. On the other hand, a few workers have quit their jobs and joined the strike.

The April issue of Contract Action Times, published by the UAW in Peoria, reported on a new hire at the Aurora plant who decided in March to come out and join the strike. This reporter met a young woman, also a new hire, on picket duty who had just decided to join the walkout.

One of the key operations in the plant is welding. Many of the scabs were brought in to do this job by Worldwide Labor Support Inc., a company based in Mississippi. These temporary workers "are a major part of the makeshift workforce now running the facility," reported the Contract Action Times.

According to some reports, such as Stark's Off-Highway Ledger, Caterpillar is manufacturing only 20 machines a day here, down from 28.5 when the workforce was UAW.

Spirits were picked up by reports that Caterpillar workers went on strike in Gosselies, Belgium. This has special significance here since the Gosselies plant is considered a sister plant, making the same construction equipment.

One of the picket signs leading into the plant says, "Don Fites: Robber Baron of the Year Award 1994." This was in response to Caterpillar cheif Fites being chosen by Financial World magazine as the winner of the CEO of the Year Gold Award. A copy of the magazine was mailed to all strikers.

The Fox Valley Labor News, a local union paper that covers the strike weekly, printed several responses from Local 145 members.

"I am disappointed to see that Cat management still would rather employ destructive attempts to control employees' minds than to engage in constructive negotiations that could put an end to this disastrous labor dispute," said one.

"Am I supposed to be impressed because a bunch of sharks decide Fites is the best shark of the pack? I don't think so," said another.

The Financial World article painted a glowing account of Fites and Caterpillar. "If anyone, including the United Auto Workers, couldn't get on board, they had better get out of the way," said reporter Jennifer Reingold.

"He's a leader of a three-year war against his own employees. He's caused unnecessary tension and dissension in our communities," said Jerry Brown, president of UAW Local 974 in East Peoria, Illinois. "I don't think that's the kind of record that deserves a reward."

Frank Forrestal is a member of UAW Local 551 in Chicago.

Cat Workers Say: 'The War's Not Over'

BY ANGEL LARISCY

PEORIA, Illinois - It's been a month since United Auto Workers (UAW) officials called off a strike against Caterpillar, Inc., by more than 9,000 union members in three states. Since then, discussion and debate continue every day on the lessons of the fight and its impact on organized labor and the entire working class.

The December 2 announcement by union officials that they were calling off the nearly 18-month-old strike came as workers were gathering to vote on the company's latest contract proposal. Many union members felt their vote on that offer would not carry much weight since UAW tops said the walkout was over no matter what the outcome of the ballot.

Caterpillar proposed a six-year agreement with no wage increases except cost-of-living adjustments, allowing 15 percent of the labor force to be made up of part-time and temporary workers, flexible schedules that would destroy the eight-hour day, weekend work without overtime pay, and elimination of some union representation rights.

Workers voted down the offer by 81 percent nationally. In Peoria, where the overwhelming majority of the strikers are, the vote was 97 percent against.

The back-to-work announcement was first heralded by the big-business press as a major blow against the UAW. "Union capitulation shows strike is now dull sword" read a headline in the December 5 New York Times. "The Caterpillar episode illustrates why strikes are becoming weak weapons," chimed in conservative columnist George Will in a nationally syndicated piece.

In the days and weeks since the strike ended, however, articles and editorials in the local press and other media have begun to assess the battle as an event with "no winners."

`I consider myself a fighter'
Unionists and their supporters, who kept the picket lines going for a year and a half and stood up to the company for more than five years, have their own opinions on the outcome of the struggle so far.

"We didn't lose; the war's not over," remarked Tom Smith, a member of UAW Local 974 who worked at Caterpillar's Mossville engine plant north of Peoria. "I don't consider myself a loser," he continued. "I consider myself a fighter. I'm going back with my head up."

Many others now see going back to work as a chance to "regroup and rebuild" as Bill Hiatt, a 22-year employee with the construction equipment manufacturing giant, put it.

The most recent and longest walkout in the history of the UAW at Caterpillar came after three years of union members working without a contract. "The UAW bent over backwards to get along with Caterpillar between 1982 and 1992," Hiatt said. "But every contract since 1982 had concessions."

By the time the last contract expired in 1991, the company decided to push forward with attempts to more deeply gut workers' wages and benefits to make the company more competitive and increase profit rates.

Caterpillar presented the UAW with its "final offer," a proposal that called for the beginning of two tiers, no wage increases, concessions on health care, and rising job insecurity. Union members turned down the offer and walked off the job.

After striking for more than five months, UAW members were ordered back to work by union tops when Caterpillar announced it would implement its "final offer" and begin hiring replacements.

1992-94: fight continued on the job
Union members went back into the plants but did not give up the fight. Workers began to organize activities such as union T-shirt and button days, marches from the time clocks, and parking lot rallies.

In the fall of 1993, the union began a series of walkouts and one-day strikes to protest company firings and disciplinary actions against UAW members because of their union activity. By June 1994, the union had filed some 100 complaints against the company with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On June 21 of that year, the UAW called an unfair labor practices strike, which presents legal barriers to the employers permanently replacing workers.

In the first few weeks of the walkout, more than 25 percent of the UAW membership crossed the picket lines. The company began production with these line crossers, management, and office personnel, as well as temporary and permanent new hires Caterpillar claimed it would have hired anyway. After those initial weeks of the strike, almost no other union members crossed despite repeated back-to-work campaigns by the company.

For over 17 months, unionists stood on picket lines and carried out activities such as weekly rallies at Caterpillar's General Offices (G.O.) in downtown Peoria, a series of mass pickets, and a solidarity rally on the one- year anniversary of the strike.

When union officials abruptly called the strike off, many workers were opposed to the decision. They felt, however, that even though they were going back to work under less than optimum conditions, they had accomplished something just by making clear their determination to stay out and fight.

Learned discipline on picket lines
Ron Heller, a UAW member who picketed weekly at the Mossville plant, said that during the recent strike union members learned that "at the picket lines we have to have discipline." The company had hired a security outfit called Vance that is known for its intimidating and provocative actions. Vance thugs used still and video cameras, listening devices, and other tactics, so unionists had to be organized and visible but pay attention to how they conducted themselves.

Carol Cordle's husband Steve had over 25 years' seniority with Caterpillar when he was unjustly fired during the strike in 1995. Cordle said activities like those at the G.O. and the weekly rallies to greet management as they arrived at work had an impact. "Why else would they have built a skywalk to connect their two buildings and the parking garage?" she asked.

The strike supporter also commented that big rallies and pickets, like the one of over 350 people at the Mapleton plant on the one-year anniversary, showed that "we can have control."

Most strikers back on the job
The former strikers are now almost entirely back to work. They are returning under the conditions of the 1992 contract, since the company legally cannot impose its newest proposal with unfair labor practice complaints still pending.

Caterpillar has implemented a "code of conduct" that sharply limits the speech and conduct of returning workers. The new work rules prohibit clothing with any reference to the strike and include a ban on the word "scab."

Upon their return, workers are required to attend a four-hour orientation session. A worker who was in one of the first groups to be called back at the Mossville plant said the company is bringing back a few workers at a time to attempt to control the situation. His group was made up of eight workers and 15 management and supervisory personnel. "It had the immediate impact of intimidation," he said.

Fay Vogelsang has 21 years at Caterpillar and works at the Mapleton foundry. She says during all these years she thought there was a decent relationship between Mapleton management and the workers.

When she returned to work the week before Christmas, Vogelsang said, "emotions were high on both sides - the strikers and line crossers and temporary workers." Everyone was apprehensive, she stated. "That first day back I was trained by a temporary" who was let go at the end of the week, she said. A week before Christmas, all of the 600 workers at the Mapleton foundry were back on the job. At some other facilities it has taken longer.

So far there are reports of more than two dozen firings and suspensions of unionists since their return to work. The company has also fired some line crossers.

Hiatt, who will be returning to work at the HH plant in East Peoria, thinks that the company is unlikely to fire large numbers of union militants for fear the sackings might ignite another explosion. "I don't think there's a master strategy," he said. "The company is wondering as much as anyone how this will turn out."

Claims in the big-business press that the strike tool is no longer an effective weapon are "probably as far from the truth as they can get," said worker Tom Smith. He noted the union does face a challenge with Caterpillar opening new plants in North Carolina and Tennessee that are nonunion.


The debate goes on in the pages of the bourgeois press.
"The best option is the one that labor is often reluctant to take seriously for fear it will be abused: cooperation," said a December 17 editorial in the Peoria Journal Star. "Unions and managers who disagree on everything else can generally agree on one thing: it's important for the employer to be strong and profitable."

In a letter to the editor published in the December 23 Journal Star, Carrol Williams of Canton, Illinois, took issue with this view. "A lot of people do not realize that this is not just a dispute between Caterpillar and the UAW," Williams wrote. "This is a struggle between two different ideologies and is about class distinction.

"But, the thing is, while the lowly worker is improving his lot, the corporations are still making piles of money," the letter continued. "And the amount of money some of the drones on Caterpillar's dole make is obscene. They produce nothing. The only thing Caterpillar has to sell is produced by union members."

Many workers are also discussing the question of leadership of their union. Most workers interviewed were angry at the UAW tops' decision to end the strike without any consultation or discussion.

"The union leadership should keep people advised, not out there in the dark," said Smith.

"My frustration lies not with my immediate co- workers - union line crossers or temporary - nor with my local union. My frustration lies with the powers that be on the 7th floor of the G.O. and the international union in Detroit," said Vogelsang.

`We are the union'
More rank-and-file members taking responsibility for the union, however, is what Vogelsang pointed to as the way forward.

"I was not active in the union before," she said. "As most weren't. This needs to be changed." As the former strikers return on the job, Vogelsang said, "We need to find ways to talk to the new hires and temps. My dispute is not with the line crossers. When you start picking each other off you're going to have less people in your own army."

Others point to how the union has won some gains for workers over the years. "Steve always said, `The only thing Caterpillar ever gave me was a calendar - the rest I had to earn,' " said Carol Cordle, referring to her husband. "But now," Steve Cordle piped in, "they've given me an attitude. I'm never going to forget what this company has done."

What's going on now is another stage in the fight against Caterpillar, noted UAW member Heller. "When people fight for their rights, they're going to meet all kinds of walls in their battles. Sometimes you have to get together, regroup, and find another way to get over the wall. That's where we are at today."

Heller's determination to find a way to continue the struggle is marked by his confidence in the union membership.

He recounts a story of driving to a picket line rally last summer when he was pulled over by a state trooper for allegedly having a boat in the back of his truck that was two inches past the legal limit.

In the course of their interaction, the trooper told Heller he should just go stay at the union hall and let the elected union officials deal with the strike instead of him and others taking to the streets.

"I told him at the time, `I am the union,' " Heller said, "and I still feel that way today."

Angel Lariscy is a member of UAW Local 1494 in Peoria.

 

[delldude]

what of this?

IAM members deserve a fair contract with NO concessions in wages, benefits and working conditions. The members of IAM Local Lodge 851 have lived with concessions for the last twenty years in order to help make Caterpillar competitive. We have achieved that goal. Now it is time to reward our membership with a fair contract.

and this?

Owens replied that he couldn’t discuss the issue because the IAM and CAT are currently in negotiations.

i'm confused..........

http://www.iamll851.com/

lower left corner says it all......

 

[BrutallyHonest]

Not for M&R, but probably for Stock Clerks when the time comes.

I can't believe the IAM would bring back a terminated employee to help with stock clerk negotiations! Come on everyone, lets be brutally honest for once.

 

[700UW]

Better check your source.

 

[700UW]

Sorry I dont smoke.

 

[BrutallyHonest]

Sorry I dont smoke.

Me niether, but there is a smoke screen up.

 

[smorzando]

The incident you refer to was UAW, not IAM.

Gee for someone who says they wont respond you sure did not lose your taste for insulting people once again.

Learn to read, INFORMATIONAL PICKETING, not a strike, the strike that lasted forever at CAT was UAW.

The guy I work with, worked for the big C in San Diego, CA. This is where I am speaking of. The IAM there caved, as usual, and let the company hand pick who they would let come back after the strike was over. This is history and was in CA, and it absolutely happened to my friend, who is a furloughed U mechanic. I work with this guy and know him and his family for 16 years. I am not making up stories.

The IAM and most other unions are just about powerless with the laws such as there are.

My mother who is old has a very good male friend who was a big time union official when unions had balls, when they had power, when people went to jail, people were even killed. I love listening to this old timer, and then I read the crap posted mostly by you on these boards and I want to vomit. You should meet a real union man someday, maybe you would actually learn something because as it stands your FACTS are not making it happen. Ask the thousands on the streets, and the thousands left making way less and paying way more for healthcare and working in strange cities just to have a job. If this is the best a union can do, well that is why Tim is dead on, unions are FINISHED in these country, finished 700. You are no union man of days gone by but just a shadow of them. The IAM and your cohorts are being eaten alive and spit out like spoiled food by corporate America and all you are armed with is facts to fight back, it’s a joke.

 

[700UW]

QUOTE(smorzando @ Aug 12 2006, 08:42 PM)

Don't worry 700, I will not respond to your nonsense nor ever read these boards any longer, it’s over for me, just a damn shame the IAM is still there. I just wanted to point out some very real facts to balance your insanity called posts.

 

[brown]

The guy I work with, worked for the big C in San Diego, CA. This is where I am speaking of. The IAM there caved, as usual, and let the company hand pick who they would let come back after the strike was over. This is history and was in CA, and it absolutely happened to my friend, who is a furloughed U mechanic. I work with this guy and know him and his family for 16 years. I am not making up stories.

The IAM and most other unions are just about powerless with the laws such as there are.

My mother who is old has a very good male friend who was a big time union official when unions had balls, when they had power, when people went to jail, people were even killed. I love listening to this old timer, and then I read the crap posted mostly by you on these boards and I want to vomit. You should meet a real union man someday, maybe you would actually learn something because as it stands your FACTS are not making it happen. Ask the thousands on the streets, and the thousands left making way less and paying way more for healthcare and working in strange cities just to have a job. If this is the best a union can do, well that is why Tim is dead on, unions are FINISHED in these country, finished 700. You are no union man of days gone by but just a shadow of them. The IAM and your cohorts are being eaten alive and spit out like spoiled food by corporate America and all you are armed with is facts to fight back, it’s a joke.

In reading your posts it seems you have a great deal of common sense. Your posts are on the money. A word of advice let it go, 700 will go back and forth for years, trust me. If you tell him it is raining out he would argue that the sky is blue above the rain. I personally don't think he has much else going on.

 

[tug_slug]

The guy I work with, worked for the big C in San Diego, CA. This is where I am speaking of. The IAM there caved, as usual, and let the company hand pick who they would let come back after the strike was over. This is history and was in CA, and it absolutely happened to my friend, who is a furloughed U mechanic. I work with this guy and know him and his family for 16 years. I am not making up stories.

He was working for Caterpillar or a company that sells Caterpillar parts and equipment? Big difference.

Let me get this straight, the IAM went on strike against Cat (or a Cat dealer) in SD and the company than started hiring back certain employees? Sounds to me like the membership caved not the union. I saw this same thing happen at a Bud distributor in San Diego of all places... it was the IBT who took the fall back than.

Weren't some IAM members in PHL just arrested for being real "union members" and were ridiculed on this board for being thugs?

 

[diogenes]

Weren't some IAM members in PHL just arrested for being real "union members" and were ridiculed on this board for being thugs?

The real union members I read about beat up Pinkerton's, cops,the National Guard and other agents of investor class.

Not union brothers.

Were the Philly guys looking out for the membership, or their own narrow interests?

"An injury to one is an injury to all."

 

[PITbull]

MMW, it truly was my pleasure working with the folks at AWA and the East folks for the short period of time I've known them. It is by far the best job I've ever left. Some of you may have figured it out, but for those who are curious I was a tech-writer for the aircraft maintenance manuals and wrote the SRs and TRs for the maintenance techs. I've met many of you and haven't met a better group of techs (I use to be one myself). Good luck to you all. I'm turning over my responsiblities to good hands (although they...all two of them... may feel overwhelmed).

Hey Eric,

If you are still lurking, no hard feelings. Wishing you the best and congrats on finally making it to shore.

 

[EricLv2Fish]

Hey Eric,

If you are still lurking, no hard feelings. Wishing you the best and congrats on finally making it to shore.

Thanks Pit. I'll still lurk around from time to time. I have alot of friends at US. It was really hard to put in my two week notice.