Factory Workers Labor Relations

On the picket line outside Caterpillar's sprawling tractor plant, John McCoy uses his head to display his disdain for his employer of 29 years: He wears a John Deere cap. Just up the street, a union billboard painted in Caterpillar's bold yellow colors announces: "You are entering a war zone. Caterpillar vs. its UAW employees." Such are the symbols of the nation's longest ongoing labor confrontation.

Thousands of machinists at jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney on Sunday rejected a contract offer of a 10% pay raise over three years and voted to go on strike. The walkout, set to begin early this morning, would be the first at Pratt since 1985. "We're prepared to continue this process, whatever it takes to come up with a satisfactory contract," said James M. Parent, a spokesman for the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 91, which represents 5,100 employees.

For a generation now, humble pie has been a dietary staple of the American labor movement, but few servings have been harder to swallow than the failed strike of the United Auto Workers against Caterpillar Inc. Seventeen months into the UAW's latest walkout--its second long strike during a four-year dispute--the union finally surrendered Sunday, sending 9,000 workers back into factories that were doing just fine without them.

After 19 days on strike against Volkswagen, unionized workers have won a victory that goes beyond the paycheck. The Volkswagen workers--the largest automotive union in Mexico--got a 14.7% increase in wages and benefits, more than double the rate of inflation. The settlement reflected labor's increasing muscle, which could grow with reforms that President Vicente Fox hopes to present to Congress in the next several months.

Thousands of striking workers massed outside Caterpillar Inc. factories across Illinois on Monday in defiance of a back-to-work demand by the giant earthmoving-equipment company. Clogging the streets outside plant gates with both bodies and cars, rank-and-file members of the United Auto Workers union hooted at and jeered the handful of their colleagues who reported for work after an unprecedented company warning to do so by Monday morning or risk being replaced.

Workers and managers at Zacky Farms have met with a federal mediator in an attempt to keep the poultry packing plant open, but the facility's fate remains uncertain. The company suspended operations May 13 and informed the union that because of financial difficulties, the plant would close July 15, a move that union officials said could be a ploy to force the workers to back down on their demand for wage parity.

Unionized Anheuser-Busch workers in contract talks with their employer say they are prepared to strike as early as next week if the negotiations collapse. Eyeing a Sunday evening deadline for the talks, scores of employees at the brewer's sprawling Van Nuys plant walked a makeshift picket line Thursday, with many carrying signs saying they were "just practicing." But a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 896 said the workers were ready for a real work stoppage.

What does it take to get someone to leave Southern California? For several hundred laid-off employees of General Motors' closed Van Nuys assembly plant, even offers of new GM jobs in other states--along with $25,000 signing bonuses--aren't enough. Naturally, there's a catch: The laid-off auto workers are receiving full pay plus health insurance and other benefits from GM for doing nothing but biding their time.

In one of the most closely watched labor actions against repetitive work, a bitter strike against the nation's largest catfish processor escalated Friday when workers began a boycott drive against a huge grocery chain that is selling the fish. About a dozen of the 900 workers who in September went on strike against Delta Pride Catfish of Indianola, Miss., held a rally here at a Winn-Dixie store to demand that the chain stop selling Delta Pride's products.

Union leaders at the Mexican unit of Volkswagen said Tuesday that the German auto maker improved its pay offer in a bid to end a 10-day-old strike, but many workers reacted negatively as they began voting on the package. Union leaders presented VW's new offer of an 8.5% salary increase plus improved benefits worth an additional 1.7% of their wages to an assembly of workers at the VW plant in Puebla, about 60 miles east of Mexico City.

Deals to hire employees without all the treasured perks given German workers normally would cause an outcry from unions, but a plan by Volkswagen to do just that is getting uniform support--as a means to encourage flexibility and fight unemployment. VW, Europe's largest auto maker, agreed Tuesday to hire 3,500 workers to produce a new minivan in its home base of Wolfsburg.

Union leaders at the Mexican unit of Volkswagen said Tuesday that the German auto maker improved its pay offer in a bid to end a 10-day-old strike, but many workers reacted negatively as they began voting on the package. Union leaders presented VW's new offer of an 8.5% salary increase plus improved benefits worth an additional 1.7% of their wages to an assembly of workers at the VW plant in Puebla, about 60 miles east of Mexico City.

Teamster members working at a ConAgra vegetable dehydration plant in King City, Calif., are expected to approve a contract Thursday, officially ending a two-year strike that divided the Central California town. The first group of returning strikers is set to march back to the plant on Labor Day, Sept. 3. The strike was noteworthy for the determination of the employees. About 750 held the strike, out of a work force of 800.

Mexico's President Vicente Fox met recently in Detroit with United Auto Workers President Stephen P. Yokich and International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James P. Hoffa to discuss how to raise wage levels for Mexican workers. The talks were serious, not a mere public relations gesture. Fox and the U.S. unions share a common need to see Mexican wages and living standards rise. Mexico can't afford to rely on low-cost labor as a competitive advantage, and the U.S. unions, as well as the U.S.

Boeing Co. and a union representing 3,200 machinists at its military aircraft division in St. Louis reached a tentative three-year agreement Thursday on wages and benefits. Union members will vote Sunday on the contract, which includes a $1,200 signing bonus and a wage increase of 3% in the first year and 4% in the final two years, said Bruce Darrough, a spokesman for District 837 of the International Assn. of Machinists.

In a sign of shifting priorities for a maturing immigrant work force, about 400 production workers at a Vernon bedding manufacturer have held a strike line for three weeks over their demands for a retirement savings plan. The strikers at Hollander Home Fashions are primarily Spanish-speaking immigrants, and many have more than a decade's experience cutting sheets, stuffing comforters and sewing pillows. They earn about $7 to $12 per hour and have a fully paid individual health plan.

In a surprise breakthrough after more than five months of bitter deadlock, a federal mediator announced late Tuesday that the approximately 13,000 striking United Auto Workers at Caterpillar Inc. had agreed to go back to work. At the same time, Bernard DeLury, head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said that the earthmoving equipment giant had also agreed to drop its efforts to hire replacement workers for the strikers.

Boeing Co. and a union representing 3,200 machinists at its military aircraft division in St. Louis reached a tentative three-year agreement Thursday on wages and benefits. Union members will vote Sunday on the contract, which includes a $1,200 signing bonus and a wage increase of 3% in the first year and 4% in the final two years, said Bruce Darrough, a spokesman for District 837 of the International Assn. of Machinists.

A union campaign for recognition at a factory in northern Mexico was overwhelmingly defeated Friday after the government allowed the vote to be conducted through an open shop-floor count, despite a pledge to the United States last year to promote the use of secret ballots in labor disputes. Just four out of 501 workers voting at Duro de Rio Bravo, a subsidiary of Kentucky-based Duro Bag Manufacturing Corp.

Boeing Co.'s biggest union vowed Thursday to stop the aerospace giant from shifting the production of wings for its proposed 747X superjumbo jet to Japan, saying contract provisions forbid such a move. The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers local said Boeing's plans to have Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. build 747X wings would cost thousands of union jobs.