Caterpillar Tells Strikers: Return to Work or Risk Being Replaced

Caterpillar Inc. upped the ante Wednesday in one of the most bitter U.S. labor disputes in a decade by ordering nearly 11,000 striking members of the United Auto Workers union to get back to work by Monday or risk being replaced.

The union immediately retaliated by filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board and ordered another 1,800 Caterpillar workers who had not previously been part of the strike to join it.

As the walkout neared the six-month point, Caterpillar President Gerald S. Flaherty sent letters to strikers telling them that the firm would unilaterally impose the same contract offer that UAW negotiators had rejected last week.

In essence, Flaherty warned that Caterpillar intended to scale back the size of its work force by 10% to 15% and that anyone who refused to cross the picket line could lose his job to either a new hire or by attrition. Starting next week, he said, the company would begin calling back laid-off workers to replace strikers and would also seek new applications.

Caterpillar, based in Peoria, Ill., is the world’s largest maker of heavy construction equipment. Most of its domestic manufacturing facilities are located in Illinois, where the walkout is centered. Until the latest developments, the job action had involved about two-thirds of the company’s blue-collar work force in the state. That was enough to seriously cripple operations, but not totally shut them down.

In a statement, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Bill Casstevens predicted that the management threat would backfire. “The latest strike-breaking efforts by top management simply confirmed our suspicions that their intent all along has been to try to break the workers’ union at Caterpillar and to bypass the UAW workers’ elected negotiating team,” Casstevens said.

Since the walkout began last Nov. 3, only a few bargaining sessions have been held and negotiators have refused to budge much from their original well-entrenched positions. Caterpillar has proposed modest pay hikes, job security guarantees and a six-year, no-plant closing pledge. But UAW officials insist the fine print of the company plan is riddled with loopholes and the net result would amount to an erosion of the benefits workers now enjoy and a decline in bargaining clout.