Striking workers voice demands in the cold as rain and snow threatened

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/striking_workers_voice_demands/news/2250/

Stephanie Porter-Nichols
Smyth County News: News >
Wed Apr 16, 2008 - 07:20 PM

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

A barrel of smoldering firewood was the main source of heat on the picket line Monday as United Auto Workers/United Defense Workers began their third full day of a strike against General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products’ Marion facilities. There was no fiery rhetoric against the company, just labor union members picketing at five stations along Brunswick Lane and Johnston Road. No anger. Just a few demands.

At the main entrance off Brunswick, more than a dozen strikers marched with “UAW on strike” signs in the cold as rain and snow threatened. Among them was Ron Blevins, chosen as the workers’ spokesman because he was their negotiator in four weeks of talks with GDATP administrators that broke off late Friday, followed that evening by UAW officials’ decision to have the Marion local go on strike.


Dan Kegley/ “Don’t cross, don’t cross!” several strikers called out to a trucker urging him not to go through the United Auto Workers/United Defense Workers’ picket line to make a delivery to General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products in Marion Monday morning.


“We want our seniority,” Blevins said, laying out much of the union’s position all at once. “They’re messing with our seniority. They’re cutting pensions for new employees. They’re putting new hires on a progressive pay scale, starting them out lower. It takes them three years to get up to the pay grade where everyone else is. They drop insurance on people as soon as they’re laid off. Insurance had been continuing for a year. They want to transfer people from department to department. They could lay off somebody for five days and bring in somebody who’s not been there long at that pay level. The price of benefits is up. The price of the prescription plan is up. They’re just wanting to go backward.”

The union had been in talks with local GDATP officials for a month “on a continuing basis,” Blevins said, after the union could not agree with changes in GDATP’s compensation and benefits package.
“They act like they’re listening, but they’re not really listening,” Blevins said. Nor have they been talking since Friday. “They’ve not told us anything than what they put in the contract. The company’s not getting back to us. We voted the contract down Friday.”

The company has had little to say to the media, releasing in response to questions a prepared statement from Jim Losse, GDADP’s vice president of general manager advanced materials: “The United Auto Workers - United Defense Workers of America Local 2850 late are on strike at our Marion facility. Our site has over 350 employees who are currently on strike and over 175 who are not. The site remains open for business and will continue operations to meet customer needs.”
That statement drew a challenge from the strikers who interpreted it as suggesting 175 who could have walked out stayed on the job. On Monday after the statement appeared in local news outlets over the weekend, striker Mike Husketh said, “The 175 working are all salaried, not production workers.”

FULL story at link.