10,000 Strike Caterpillar in 3 States : Labor: Company moves to replace UAW members in Colorado, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
More than 10,000 members of the United Auto Workers union stayed off the job at Caterpillar Inc. on Wednesday in the first full day of a nationwide strike against the heavy-equipment maker.
The company began accepting applications for new workers as union members walked out of Caterpillar plants in three states.
“They are fed up with the way the company is treating them,” said Walt Koprowski, chairman of the bargaining committee for UAW Local 2096 in Pontiac, Ill.
The union said nearly all its 14,000 members are out on strike at Caterpillar plants in Illinois, Colorado and Pennsylvania.
The labor dispute has been bitter and longstanding, and unionized workers have been working without a contract at the company for the past two years. They went back to work without a contract after a five-month strike in 1992.
Caterpillar and union officials reported no trouble at the struck plants, where company security guards filmed the striking workers.
“The company has their guards out there along with their own security guards. They film us, but our members are handling themselves very well,” Koprowski said.
UAW spokesman Roger Kerson disputed management claims that 26% of the Peoria, Ill.-area workers crossed picket lines Tuesday. “Take whatever the company tells you, divide by 10 and you might be close,” he said.
Kerson said no new talks are scheduled.
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Peoria-based Caterpillar, which is the world’s largest maker of earth-moving equipment, also said it received more than 100 applications in the mail from prospective employees.
“We are taking applications today (Wednesday),” spokesman Keith Butterfield said, adding that the company has received a good response to advertisements it placed for permanent workers.
Butterfield said a growing number of UAW workers are crossing picket lines systemwide. He said the number is “significantly” higher than the 1,100 who reported to work during the first shift at Peoria-area plants Tuesday.
Butterfield would not say how significantly production has been hurt, but he said the company is confident it can meet customer needs. The walkout is the first nationwide strike at Caterpillar since UAW members returned to work in April, 1992, following a 163-day work stoppage.
The strike was supposed to begin at 11 p.m. EDT Tuesday. But several thousand UAW members at the Illinois plants left their jobs Monday evening after the breakdown of federally mediated talks between the union and the company earlier that day.
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The walkout caps months of rising tensions between Caterpillar and its UAW members, who compose about 28% of the company’s worldwide work force.
Since last fall, union members have staged nine short unfair-labor-practice strikes at Caterpillar plants from Pennsylvania to Illinois. The most recent one started June 7 at the Aurora, Ill., plant when, the UAW claims, four union members were illegally suspended for displaying signs that read, “Cat treats workers like dogs.”
The National Labor Relations Board has filed 92 labor-practice complaints against Caterpillar.
