Striking Steel Car workers reject offer
National Steel Car employees have voted to stay on strike to fight for better severance assurances, pension contributions and seniority rights.
About 650 workers, who have been on strike since April, voted 67 per cent against the company’s final offer yesterday despite the economic downturn.
“We are waiting for the company to come back and bargain. We are willing to do that anytime,” said Steve Weller, president of United Steelworkers Local 7135.
“We are disappointed with the result,” said National Steel Car spokesman Peter Earle last night.
“We are considering our options going forward.
“No decisions have been taken about anything.”
The union said the company did not agree to acceptable “closing out” provisions for worker severances and benefits in the event National Steel Car shuts the doors on the Hamilton plant.
“The company is building a plant in Alabama and we are not sure how much security we have in the next few years,” Weller said.
The rail car workers also rejected National Steel Car’s three-year freeze on pension contributions.
“We would get our pension credits but no increases,” he said.
The union walked off the job 12 weeks ago after the company demanded a 25 per cent rollback in hourly wages and benefits. Workers had already absorbed a wage cut by going to a four-day work week, Weller said.
That has since dropped off the table with the company’s latest offer calling for no wage or benefit reductions.
But Weller said workers are also unhappy that the rail car-maker wants new hires to work at $14 an hour for a year before being bumped up to the union’s $25 hourly wage that includes piecework.
“It used to be 1,030 hours before you got bumped up, now they want it to be 2,080 hours,” he said.
