Greg Clarkson says he believes in the fight, but is just months away from losing his house.

Clarkson is one of 84 workers currently on strike at Engineered Coating Products.

He has worked for the local fabrics coating company located on Elgin Street for 15 years. He has been on strike for two.

He has three kids and can’t afford to have them all in organized sports.

“I’m very angry and upset,” Clarkson said on the two-year anniversary of the ECP strike. “It’s hard and the kids suffer because they don’t understand the full scale of what’s going on.

“You work for a company for that many years, it gets bought by an American firm not wanting a union and they’ve threatened us from day one with cuts.”

The U.S.-owned firm Intertape Polymer Group that bought ECP in 2005 wants to start negotiating cuts to workers’ wages and benefits at 25 per cent.

In 2009, the union representing Clarkson and his co-workers counter-offered with a package that offered rollbacks, that included a 12.5 per cent wage reduction.

Clarkson said it would be possible for him to just get another job, but he said it is unlikely he would make more than minimum wage.

Clarkson and other workers on the ECP picket line, told Brant News on Monday they are making $225 a week, while the two-year-old strike drags on.

“I believe in the fight because it’s not just about me,” Clarkson said. “This is happening everywhere and Brantford has lost a lot of good companies.”

Clarkson said he’s very concerned with the number of good-paying jobs Brantford has lost.

“I think someone in government should be putting a stop to this,” Clarkson said. “The temp workers working at our jobs in there are all from Hamilton and Ancaster, so the wages are not staying in Brantford.”

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614 days.

On a makeshift wooden sign affixed to a post, striking workers at Engineered Coated Products keep a tally of the number of days they’ve been off the job.

For 20 months, the workers, initially about 80 and now an estimated 60, have been camped outside the Elgin Street company as busloads of replacement workers are brought in daily to keep the packaging plant operational.

There has been no negotiation between the workers, represented by the United Steelworkers union, and the company since last July when the two sides met with a government conciliator.

And it seems unlikely they will be talking any time soon.

“It takes a toll,” admitted Rick Willson, a 33-year employee at ECP. “There’s nobody here to help.”

The strike began on Aug. 23, 2008 when Saul Marques, secretary- treasurer for United Steelworkers, Local 1-500, said the company demanded workers take a 25% wage cut, along with a cut in benefits and changes to their pension plan. The company, said Marques, also wanted to implement “continental” 12-hour shifts that would have resulted in job losses.

The workers, who earn between $17 and $23 an hour, had offered to take a 12% pay cut and other concessions in a three-year deal.

“The company wants us to agree to a 25% wage decrease or they won’t even talk,” said Marques. “It’s blackmail. Collective bargaining is supposed to be an exchange of facts. They’ve never provided us with any information.

“It’s been long enough. It’s time for the company to tell us their intent.”

ECP is part of the Intertape Polymer Group, which operates 10 plants in North America. The company bought the Brantford plant several years ago.

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