Harley Strike Shuts down production
February 3, 2007
budlight
In York, Pennsylvania. a strike has shut down Harley-Davidson Inc.’s largest manufacturing plant, and is said to have directly shut down the Softtail and touring lines for the time being. The strike has caused over 2800 workers to be directly affected with many more expected in a cascade up Harley’s supply chain. This is the first strike for Harley in over 16 years. Friday night Harley put up concrete barriers at the all entrances to the factory in response to over 50 workers all members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 175 picketing outside. The union plans to have 50 workers picketing at all time.
The reason for the strike seems to be most vocally about a two tear wage system which Harley had hoped to put in place, paying new workers less. Nevin Bechtel said “We’ll still keep building first-rate bikes, but when the second-rate people take over, what are we going to build then? Second-rate bikes,”. It seems the new contract that HD proposed wanted to pay new workers $18.25/hr, where current new workers were making $20.78. Now, I don’t know if there are any kinds of proficiency tests, or what HD’s hiring requirements are, but that seems like a decent pay rate for the kind of work I would expect it to be. I mean sure I can totally sympathize with them not wanting to pay brand new employees that much, in my opinion they should pay it on merit, but what do I know? I would think it would be better for the union to fight for a higher increase after the first year, and that way the company could decide who was worth keeping. Other provisions of the new contract call for the union to contribute toward health insurance coverage, where they currently pay no premium, and the doubling of HDs 401(k) contributions. Hopefully this all gets resolved very quickly, and doesn’t end up hurting the company and in effect its employees in the long run.
sources:
Harley reaches tentative agreement » CycleChaos said,
February 21, 2007 at 9:13 pm
[...] So it appears that Harley Davidson’s strike may not last much longer. According to the AMA, they have met a tentative agreement which has yet to be revealed. Tomorrow morning the union members are expected to hear the details, and then vote on the contract. [...]