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From Times Staff and Wire Reports
UAW Rejects Caterpillar Offer: The United Auto Workers rejected Caterpillar Inc.’s final contract offer, leaving little hope for an end soon to a 108-day-old strike by 10,000 workers in Bridgeton, Mo. No new talks are scheduled and the stage is set for an escalation of the strike to include all 16,000 UAW workers at Caterpillar plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Colorado. Caterpillar’s chief negotiators, Wayne Zimmerman and Jerry Brust, told an evening news conference that the company had offered a nine-point plan to end the contract stalemate.
