Posted on 08/08/2012 1:06:41 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
.......One day after U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin visited the picket line, members of the SEIU Health Care Illinois and Indiana presented Local Lodge 851 Machinists Union officials with a check for $25,000 Tuesday. The donation by SEIU, which represents 91,000 health care and child care providers, boosts the strike fund to more than $90,000, machinists union president Timothy O’Brien said.
“Our core membership is still holding strong,” O’Brien said. “And things like this (donation) really help.”
Flora Johnson, chairwoman of the SEIU executive board, addressed machinists on the picket line.
“Solidarity is the golden rule of the labor movement,” she said as cars and trucks whooshed by her on U.S. 6.
“It means that a threat to workers anywhere is a threat to workers everywhere,” she said. “Let’s make no mistake these Caterpillar workers are fighting not just for their own future, they’re fighting for the well being of working families who have been shortchanged by corporate greed.”
....About 800 machinists went on strike after their seven-year contract expired on April 30. Since then, union membershave overwhelmingly rejected two contract offers that included no guaranteed raises and increases health care contributions as well as the elimination of a defined benefit pension program going forward.
.....Union officials said they don’t want raises for the highest paid group, but instead would like to see health care contributions stay the same so compensation doesn’t decrease.
...O’Brien said Caterpillar’s actions would hurt the middle class.
“But if you eliminate the middle class, who is going to buy the goods and services?” O’Brien said. “Who is going to buy the homes? Who is going to buy the cars? And that’s what they’re eliminating if they succeed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
“But if you eliminate the middle class, who is going to buy the goods and services?”
What a civic minded lot - they’re fighting for the “middle class”, how noble of them!
What stupid, shortsighted hypocrites!
Those machinists should ask where the other millions of dollars the SEUI has kept from them.
“Corporate greed” will be Obama’s campaign by-line.
Nancy Pelosi is calling Republicans “the E-Coli crowd” — that safe food and water for children is threatened.
This lie will become a pillar in Obama’s reelection campaign -— helped along by Obama’s sequester cuts and MSM biased reporting.
August 7, 2012 AP 7PM, NPR: “....the sequester could mean 100,000 children lose their place in Head Start while food safety and workplace safety inspections are reduced. The National Institutes of Health would have to curtail research,”....
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=158378374
Lock ‘em out and hire replacements.
>> “Solidarity is the golden rule of the labor movement,” she said
Commie bullshit. Go pound sand, she.
That said, I completely support collective bargaining in the private sector. On the other hand, any intimidation and thuggery deserves a severe, legal beatdown.
And only months (year or two?) Obama was touting Catepillar as a model of American Business that would be hiring people - if only his bailout scam were executed.....
We have a Caterpillar plant down here in right to work South Carolina that, if their management has a lick of sense, should be due for expansion;)
Caterpillar is in right to work Texas too.
Obama's lips were moving so he was lying.
But we ain’t got no drought out here—hard to flush them company toilets with Texas dust you know...
...I think I hear thunder again;)
Caterpillar has more than 150,000 employees, and the corrupt union's strike fund is only equal to the annual pay for just one senior machinist? Union leadership must be living in luxury on the massive dues they collect.
Must be the bear in the woods thing. I didn’t even know they were on strike. ;-)
They WANT to push Cat into china... there is a reason corporations do not want to stay in America... here is reason number 2.
LLS
The plant manager stood on a soap box and placed his hand above his eyes as he looked southward...... “I think I can see Alabama from here” he was heard to say
Good news! Every penny they spend on these union thugs is one less Democrats can lie about Republicans with.
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