Caterpillar+Progress Rail = Middle Class Screwed Again

[SMMDigital]

Seems theres a bit of a storm brewing over at EMD. The company is threatening, according to news reports, to lock out workers at the London, Ontario plant if they don't accept pay and benefit cuts that equal roughly half of what they are currently making. So why should we care about the Canadian plant that was the Bane of LaGrange? Well, it seems that Progress has renovated an old Westinghouse plant in Indiana so it can get lucrative "Made in America" locomotive supply contracts while paying the skilled American laborers there about $12 an hour. Thats five more than an entry level Manager at McDonalds.

This bears watching. Caterpillar, which owns Progress Rail, which owns EMD, is a notorious bastard when it comes to labor relations, so this could turn ugly real quick. Right now theres a lot of rhetoric on both sides, but things may get a bit clearer come Jan 1.

[thecanadianrail]

Wow pr is not being cool...well how much you want to bet the workers are going to all strike and then ....well you can gurss what else will happen

[shicoe30]

Oh boy, fits gonna hit the shan huh? Big business is all that seems to matter these days. First the Wisconsin Southern gets sold to WATCO and now this. What's the world comin' to?

[imnew]

oh man, this is terrible The rich get richer and the middle class is slowly dissapearing..

[SMMDigital]

This is bothersome on several levels, but my number one question is this:

If the workers there agree to the wage decrease, is the Company going to pass the savings on to it's customers by cutting the prices of their locomotives to match the savings realized by giving their employees the Rear Admiral?

I already know the answer to that one. More than likely, some fat-cat CEO at the top of the company is going to get a big fat bonus for "breaking the will of those darned employees who were strangling the company with their high wages".

[johnmckenzie]

Meanwhile the disenfranchised workforce stop caring about their product and it becomes shoddy. Business starts to filter towards more enlightened companies. Seen it over in the UK all too often in the past.

[buzz456]

oh man, this is terrible The rich get richer and the middle class is slowly dissapearing..

Please don't take this wrong, but the "rich get richer'? The last time I looked Cat was a publicly owned company the majority shareholders being pension funds. Don't fall for the silly rhetoric of the left. The company may be screwing the workers over but it isn't for the purpose of getting the rich richer. It is what the officers of the company are paid to do and that is make the most money for the shareholders.

[Hawk]

Let's not let this thread get too political folks.

[glenn68]

Ok, well look at a few things here. Where did all the bailouts go to? Wagner (General Motors) walked away with 26 million dollars for driving the company into the ground. Who got screwed, investors and work force ultimately the tax payers. This is going to constantly happen when big corporations have their hands in the government pockets stroking away to get what they want. Labor laws have been eased so the companies can do what they want and blame it on a bad economy.
WHo pays the ultimate price, the work force.
Catapillar only thinks of one thing and one thing only, BIG MONEY and that is it, every company only thinks about making money, that is why they are in buiness.
I like the new Chevy commercials, "Chevy runs deep", yea into the government pockets!

[buzz456]

And thus our pockets.

[buzz456]

Let's not let this thread get too political folks.

I promise to be good daddy.

[SMMDigital]

Theres nothing wrong with a company making lots of money. Thats what companies do. The problem is when the Management and CEOs start believing in their own godhood and think those goods are just going to fly out of their golden arses if they screw over the highly skilled workforce.

The point about quality at EMD suffering is a very real possibility. The company I work for was sold a couple of years ago to another company that makes the same product. In the old Company, our facility was number two in production and number one in cost savings. Under the new Company, we were number one in production by a factor of three and number one in cost savings. But because our wages were higher than the rest of the company, our new masters whipped out the wage cut card. That fell through, so the Company capped all new hires at half what we make. Now I don't mean to sound elitest, but the old saying "you get what you pay for" applies even to people. If you go from hiring people who are highly trained and already experienced at a job to getting your employees from a temp agency, there are going to be problems. We are all required to run and maintain our own machinery, and some of our new hires have never turned a wrench and think a screw-driver is something you puke at the New Years party. Consequently, management is now wondering why our customer complaints and maintenance costs have gone up.

The workers at EMD aren't making salad forks and fruit bowls. If this goes through, and it then spreads to the LaGrange plant, I think it will guarantee EMD will never be number one in the locomotive manufacturing market.

[buzz456]

As a employer (manufacturing) all I have to say is it's scary what we have to choose from today when it comes to hiring.......and within reason wages are not the issue.

[arizonachris]

Before this Thread gets shut down, all I want to say is I could really use a job, even at minimum, and I have a lot of aircraft skills, still can't find anything out here. Let alone a RR job. Pacific Harbor Lines decided I was too old at 53. I could fight it but why bother.

[buzz456]

There's a bunch of orders being written for fighters for the UAE and Saudi Arabia as we speak. They got to have people to build the things.