Erie Locomotive Plant Workers Strike against Two-Tier

[Omaha Steve]

At the former GE locomotive manufacturing complex Erie, Pennsylvania, 1,700 workers walked off the job to fend off their new employer Wabtec’s efforts to impose a raft of concessions, including two-tier wages. Photo: United Electrical Workers

March 01, 2019 / Saurav Sarkar, Dan DiMaggio

At a sprawling locomotive manufacturing complex a mile long and a mile wide in Erie, Pennsylvania, 1,700 workers walked off the job early Tuesday morning to fend off their new employer’s efforts to impose a raft of concessions, including two-tier wages.

Temperatures are below freezing, so at the dozen picket lines ringing the plant, burn barrels are fired up. Pickup trucks periodically drop off wood. Hundreds of members of the Electrical Workers (UE) are on the line, making life difficult for any non-union employees who try to drive through the gates.

Many of the picketers are dressed in camo. Some are wearing stickers that say “102 days,” a reference to 1969, the last time workers at this plant walked out.

On Monday, the former GE Transportation plant formally became a part of Wabtec (Westinghouse Airbrake Technologies), which bought the $4 billion-a-year division from the industrial conglomerate last year.

FULL story: https://labornotes.org/2019/03/erie-locomotive-plant-workers-strike-against-two-tier

[jaysunb]

1. Trumpsters all. n/t