Pennsylvania

Auto parts workers strike Pennsylvania plant after third contract rejection

Published

2 years ago

December 7, 2022

Auto parts workers strike Pennsylvania plant after third contract rejection

About 270 employees are on strike towards the Autoneum AG auto elements plant in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, after overwhelmingly voting down a 3rd and “ultimate” contract, which might have imposed a significant well being care enhance on a workforce already struggling below the results of inflation.

The putting employees are members of Native 1700 Employees United, which is affiliated with the Service Staff Worldwide Union (SEIU). They’ve been with out a contract since April.

Autoneum, a Switzerland-based elements supplier, manufactures inner and exterior sound and warmth insulation programs for Basic Motors, Ford, Toyota and Stellantis, amongst different producers. The corporate has 10 places within the US and a world workforce of practically 12,000 at 53 amenities on 5 continents.

Pickets at Autoneum (Employees United Mid Atlantic Fb)

The ultimate provide from Autoneum is a provocation.

On prime of normal well being care will increase, the corporate is demanding that employees settle for a 5 % enhance in annual contributions. Employees already contribute 25 % of well being care premium prices. The provide from Autoneum additionally features a miserly $1 increase for the primary 12 months, adopted by raises of 60 cents the next two years, and 75 cents within the third 12 months. And it excludes retroactive pay for wages misplaced below the previous contract, whose phrases proceed till a brand new contract is in place.

Between inflation, at the moment at 8 % and elevated well being care contributions, Autoneum is demanding, successfully, that employees settle for a big pay minimize.

“The place we’re at is the rise in well being care prices and the raises, and we’re asking for again pay for when the contract initially expired in April,” Brian Heverly, president of Native 1700, advised native media. “They’re not prepared to actually hear us out on any of these topics.

“The corporate doesn’t actually appear to be taking us critically or wish to negotiate with us critically,” he stated. “They type of backed us right into a nook.”

For 100 years the carpet plant has been in Bloomsburg, a city of some 13,000 folks situated in jap Pennsylvania alongside the Interstate 80 hall linking New York Metropolis and Chicago. Autoneum has owned it for greater than a decade.

Dave Schaffer, a employee with 44 years within the plant, stated that there had not been a strike on the plant since 1968, on the top of the Vietnam Conflict.

“I’m fourth era,” he advised native media. “Constructed this city, this place constructed this city. The folks and the neighborhood admire what we’ve got right here, and we didn’t wish to go this manner. We’re sticking collectively and it’s not an incredible factor however a lot delight in everybody that works right here.”

Behind Autoneum’s transfer towards its employees are international developments, particularly the US proxy warfare towards Russia in Ukraine.

Autoneum experiences losses of $13.6 million throughout the first half of 2022, a web reversal of over $40 million from its place one 12 months in the past. Based on Automotive Information, the “firm’s struggles have mirrored these of many different international auto suppliers this 12 months—notably these with enterprise publicity in Europe.”

In an announcement, Autoneum defined its losses:

Present geopolitical developments considerably affected enterprise efficiency within the first half of 2022. They’re accompanied by accelerating inflation and important worth will increase within the commodities markets, which the warfare in Ukraine has additional exacerbated. These developments are additionally delaying market restoration within the automotive trade.

The corporate, which secured a mortgage package deal of $377 million from banks to finance operations on October 31, is intent on shifting its losses onto its workforce. It’s singling out employees at this small plant in Pennsylvania, owing to their allegedly larger well being care prices.

However whereas Autoneum has a world technique, the father or mother unions of Native 1700 aren’t even presenting the fiction of supporting the strike.

The web site of Employees United (WU), a small union spun off from Unite Right here after petty bureaucratic infighting, has no report on the battle. The WU web site has in actual fact not been up to date since early June. There’s additionally no information in regards to the strike on the SEIU web site or on that of the UAW, the main union within the automotive trade.

Reached for touch upon the strike at Autoneum, Will Lehman, rebel rank-and-file candidate for UAW president, condemned the company’s “ultimate” contract provide and referred to as for the broadest attainable mobilization behind the Bloomsburg employees. Lehman, whose personal Mack Vans meeting plant is about 90 miles away, referred to as on employees to type a rank-and-file committee to broaden the battle and to protect towards betrayal by the UT and SEIU union bureaucracies. He stated,

I congratulate the elements employees in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, for rejecting Autoneum’s contract. This rotten deal would lock you into year-over-year pay cuts. In preventing towards elevated well being care prices, you’re taking a stand for all employees.
However why is Employees United not telling different employees in regards to the strike? Why are they not calling employees out on the different crops Autoneum owns within the US, or the handfuls of crops it owns planet-wide? Why is my union, the UAW, saying nothing about this necessary combat within the auto trade?
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The very fact is, these unions don’t unite. They divide. To win, employees at Auotoneum have to take issues into their very own palms and type a rank-and-file committee to hyperlink up with employees all through the auto trade. This motion is already being constructed. I pledge my help and to do all the pieces in my energy to assist.

The specter of betrayal by Employees United isn’t idle. This was the destiny final 12 months of a small plant, situated in Terre Haute, Indiana. Employees at AMCOR, a packaging manufacturing plant, twice voted down a rotten contract, solely to have Employees United impose it on them unilaterally. The previous union president, Mike Hoaglund, went as far as to vow the corporate, in a secret e-mail, that he would discover alternative employees for strikers.

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Pennsylvania

Biden makes campaign stop at Northwest Philly church

Published

6 hours ago

July 7, 2024

Press Room

Biden makes campaign stop at Northwest Philly church

‘We thank God’

Morris founded Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ in 1966. It has since grown in size and influence, becoming an important and iconic place of worship for the region. Fenton, who watched Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous “Mountaintop” speech when he was 11 years old, now runs the congregation and often invokes King in his sermons, including Sunday’s.

Parishioner Handsome Newton called the event “an amazing experience.”

“It’s something that’s surreal and something that some people have never gotten to experience in their lifetime,” he told WHYY News. “This is something I’m going to tell my grandkids and great-grandkids about one day.”

Newton downplayed Biden’s age, adding, “I don’t care what people said about the debate. He actually spoke extremely well today and I was blessed to be here.”

Zetta Butler, another parishioner, called Biden’s visit “God’s given gift to the church.”

“We’re seeing so much evil that goes on in the world,” she said. “This is a man of integrity and we are so proud to have him here with us today of all days, any day. I know the election is coming up and we’re going to vote for him. He’s going to be a second-term president, and so we thank God for him and everyone.”

Down in Pennsylvania

While Biden has made Pennsylvania a regular stop in his drive for a second term, this was his first visit since the debate for which his performance has given many Democrats — including prominent elected officials — cause for concern about his ability to win the election.

Earlier in the day, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democrat, told MSNBC that Biden’s TV appearance did not assuage those concerns.

The first major post-debate poll, by Bloomberg, shows Biden moved up in every swing state except Pennsylvania, where he is now down seven points — well outside the margin of polling error. With 19 electoral votes, the Keystone State may be essential to any hope for victory.

In particular, polling suggests Biden is down among Black voters in Pennsylvania and around the country. Whereas he received 92% of the Black vote in 2020, only 50% of Black voters in Pennsylvania say they would vote for him today.

Therefore, the trip to the Church of God in Christ appears to be a strategy to try to win some of those votes back.

“Black history is American history,” the president said at the church.

Fenton noted that Biden’s visit would be reported as such an attempt, saying, “I know the media says President Biden is visiting a Black church. There’s nothing on our program that says a Black church.”

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Pennsylvania

Biden to campaign in battleground Pennsylvania as Democrats mull his candidacy

Published

13 hours ago

July 7, 2024

Press Room

Biden to campaign in battleground Pennsylvania as Democrats mull his candidacy

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – An increasingly embattled U.S. President Joe Biden will hit the campaign trail in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Sunday, as House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries meets with senior House Democrats to discuss the president’s candidacy.

Biden, 81, facing growing calls from fellow Democrats to end his re-election campaign after a halting performance in a June 27 debate with Republican Donald Trump, 78, has vowed to stay in the race and win the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The president is struggling to put down a slow-boil uprising among some congressional Democrats and some influential donors who fear he lacks the capacity to defeat Trump in light of the debate. A much-anticipated interview with ABC News did little to put those concerns to rest.

Biden kept a low profile on Saturday, attending a church service in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, accompanied only by his sister and key adviser, Valerie Biden Owens.

In Friday’s interview, Biden said only the “Lord Almighty” could persuade him to drop out, dismissing the prospect that Democratic leaders could join forces to try to talk him into standing down. He spoke with the national co-chairs of his campaign on Saturday, the White House said, without providing any details.

On Sunday, Biden will address a Black church service in northwest Philadelphia before traveling to the state capital, Harrisburg, for a community organizing event with union members and local Democrats, his campaign said.

Pennsylvania is one of the half-dozen or so states that can swing Democratic or Republican, which are expected to determine the outcome of what has been a tight race.

He will be joined during the day by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, U.S. Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and other elected and community leaders, it said.

The trip is part of a July voter outreach blitz by the Democratic Party that includes a $50 million paid media campaign aimed at events such as Olympic Games and travel by Biden, his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband to every battleground state.

The campaign said it aims to have volunteers and staff knock on more than 3 million voters’ doors in July and August.

It will be Biden’s 10th visit to Pennsylvania during the 2024 election cycle.

Pressure from Congress seems likely to ramp up in the coming days as lawmakers return to Washington from a holiday recess, and donors mull their willingness to keep funding his campaign.

The political crisis is unfolding as Biden prepares to host dozens of world leaders at a high-stakes NATO summit in Washington and hold a rare solo news conference.

Five U.S. lawmakers have called for Biden to end his re-election bid, including Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, the first Democratic member of the House of Representatives from a battleground district, with others said poised to join in.

“Given what I saw and heard from the President during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from the President himself following that debate, I do not believe that the President can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump,” Craig, a top 2024 target of House Republican efforts, posted on X.

Two letters are circulating among House Democrats calling for Biden to step aside, House Democratic sources have said. Many of those lawmakers had been waiting to see the ABC News interview before moving forward.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia was contacting some fellow Democratic senators to invite them to a possible meeting on Monday to discuss Biden’s campaign. Biden told reporters he had spoken with 20 congressional Democrats, who urged him to stay on, and said knew of no senators ready to join Warner.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Wilmington; Editing by William Mallard)

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