Pennsylvania
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.
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?
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.