As Strikes Wane, Caterpillar Workers Hold The Line

Whenever a car or barter turns off active Channahon Road assimilate the continued drive to the Caterpillar bulb in Joliet, Ill., a scattering of abutment workers on a blockade band scream, “Scab! Scab!!”

As strikers try awkward the few workers and managers who cantankerous the line, even a acutely apparent sandwich supply car gets shouted down.

Approximately 800 workers at this plant, which makes hydraulic systems for Caterpillar’s abundant architecture and mining equipment, are about to access their third ages on strike.

These artisan abutment associates alone Caterpillar’s action beforehand this year: a six-year arrangement that would benumb accomplishment for a lot of workers while acutely accretion bloom affliction costs and acid alimony benefits.

Joe Ahern, on the negotiating board for the Joliet Local 851 of the International Association of Machinists, says Caterpillar’s action “really kinda was a accoutrement bite to me.”

Ahern says the aggregation never absolutely adjourned with the workers. Through the agreement process, he says, Caterpillar administration rarely approved to acquisition accepted ground.

“It was always, ‘This is our last, best and final,’ ” Ahern says. “And it was sad that way.”

What Ahern finds decidedly insulting, he says, is that Caterpillar becoming almanac profits endure year — and is on clip to do so again.

“This aggregation is a all-around leader,” Ahern says. “And I don’t accept why they wouldn’t wish to see their advisers paid that way … or why they accept to be beneath the bar on their accomplishment and benefits.”

In an emailed statement, a Caterpillar agent says “the aggregation has offered what it believes is a fair, reasonable and absolute proposal,” and that it has “exhausted the agreement process.”

Caterpillar is now aggravating to appoint acting backup workers to accumulate the bulb running.

Robert Bruno, a activity application relations assistant at the University of Illinois, says this bang is anomaly.

“We don’t see a lot of strikes” in accepted these days, Bruno says, abundant beneath ones by ample acceding units. And “we don’t see a lot of strikes by ample acceding units that go on for added than 24 hours, a brace of shifts, a week,” he says.

“This is a throwback,” Bruno says.

During the 1970s and aboriginal 1980s, there were hundreds of strikes of added than 1,000 workers anniversary year in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Activity Statistics.

But in 2009 — at the acme of the recession — there were alone five.

That amount has ticked up to 19 strikes in 2011, but even so, unions accept abundantly absent their punch, Bruno says.

“Clearly, activity has its aback up adjoin the bank in the clandestine area as able-bodied as the accessible sector,” he says. “And the fights in the accessible area — decidedly those in the Midwest — accept had an appulse on the accompaniment of apperception of lots of abutment workers.”

Caterpillar has a history of application hardball approach adjoin its unions. The aggregation wore down its better union, the United Auto Workers, during a continued and absinthian bang in the 1990s. The workers eventually were affected to yield abysmal concessions.

And beforehand this year, Caterpillar bankrupt a bulb in London, Ontario, if the abutment there aghast at pay cuts.

But the collision in Joliet appears to be a attenuate case, Bruno says. Abutment workers, who accept already fabricated cogent concessions, feel they accept little added to lose by cartoon a band in the sand.

But the plan abeyance comes at a cost, and the workers are hurting. A lot of are earning alone $150 a anniversary in bang pay.

No new negotiations are currently appointed in Joliet, although the abutment says it’s accessible to accommodate at any time. For now, the workers assert that this bang is allotment of a beyond attempt for workers: angry for the appropriate to acquire accomplishment that will accumulate them in the average class.