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The minimum wage is always $0 an hour.
It doesn't matter if your contract says you get $70 an hour plus benefits if you get zero hours because the plant is closed.
Title reference: Back when Caterpillar was almost the entire construction equipment market, the UAW demanded a big raise. The company said they could offer a raise, but only about a third of what was demanded.
So the union went on strike.
Caterpillar said to them, we can't afford what you're demanding, we'd go out of business.
So they started shutting down plants and letting orders go.
Pretty soon customers started buying imported construction equipment and once those companies got a toehold, Caterpillar's market share contracted dramatically.
The workers decided they'd starved long enough and accepted the 1/3 as big raise.
Caterpillar pointed out that market share contraction and offered them jobs at all at much lower rates than before the strike. With fewer hours and some plants would remain closed.
Bravo, UAW. Bravo!
Bonus: Try finding any information about this strike on the internet! I remember it happening because my step mother's brother was a union worker at Caterpillar.
Oh it happened all right. One of my apartment mates was employed at Cat. The union basically killed a leading construction equipment company and they and others (Clark Equipment for example) never recovered.. In my town a huge grey iron foundry that supplied all of the auto/heavy equipment industries also went on strike in 78/79 (thank you UAW) and shut down completely. Some 3000 people were out of work on that one seeing they ran 3 shifts at peak, our town has never fully recovered as both Clark and AUSCO were the major employers in the area. All I can say is the rank and file supported the union bosses into their own oblivion, not very smart of 'em.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my dad was an engineer at Cat so we got to watch the strikes like clockwork growing up. It was every 4th or 5th year. They'd hit one of the "Big 3" automakers and once they made it through them, it was Cat or John Deere's turn... Usually Cat as they were bigger. Then the plants in the North started closing as things shifted to the South and the younger union guys who were making REALLY good money in the late 80's ($20-25/hour to start, 1.5 time for other than first shift, 2x for OT and there were always OT hours to be had) decided they were not winning out on this strike cadence and were "less enthusiastic" about it...
ReplyDeleteOur friend Angela (you remember her; blonde, big blue eyes, manic grin) was pretty bitter about a strike that happened in Ft. Dodge when she was growing up. Her dad's company went on strike, and strike pay wasn't nearly as much as her father had been bringing home. After a while, most of the workers wanted to go back to work, but the strike leaders stayed out as long as they could because their strike pay was better than what they got in their boring ol' jobs.
ReplyDeleteThose brainiacs at Boeing have a problem with learning from history....
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