Samuel Messidor
On August 31 the striking workers of the Erie, PA Wabtec locomotive manufacturing plant voted to approve the tentative agreement reached by the United Electrical (UE) bargaining committee and Wabtec Corporation.
The contract lasts 4 years and includes wage increases and Cost of Living Adjustments for current employees and for new hires. The UE local 506 president said the deal is an improvement over Wabtec’s June offer, on both “economic” (wage-specific) and “non-economic” (all other) issues. The workers were given only 24 hours to study the new contract before the vote deadline.
The deal nevertheless preserves two-tiers, where new hires start at a lower wage and on a separate, lower pay scale than current employees. Eliminating two-tier systems were a core worker demand at UPS, and are currently an important factor in the UAW negotiations and the National Association of Letter Carriers negotiations with the postal service.
Erie Locomotive Manufacturing Workers organized under UE had been on strike since June of this year, their second strike against Wabtec since the company acquired the locomotive manufacturing company from GE in 2019. Throughout the strike, the workers picketed plant entrances, hosted solidarity rallies, and picketed scabs at their hotels.
Erie County Executive Brenton Davis said he had credible evidence that Wabtec was considering closing up shop entirely in Erie in response to the strike and the workers wage demands, a threat that now seems passed for the time being.
The approved contract preserves the right to strike under a series of predetermined breaches of contract by the company, including over the hiring of temporary workers to displace union workers, one of the threats from the company that led the workers to authorize the strike vote in June.
Wabtec earlier released a statement saying the union’s demands in particular around increased pay for new hires and allowance for strike action would make the company inoperable—in short, workers would have too much freedom to shut down production at will instead of only under severe contract restrictions. Union contracts in the US usually include no-strike clauses for the duration of said contract, hence the threat of union-organized strikes generally only crop up as contracts near their predetermined ends.
On August 21, Senator John Fetterman attended a UE rally in Erie outside the Wabtec facility, saying he’ll help the union and Wabtec come to an agreement and saying “It’s the rich men at Wabtec who aren’t willing to pay you what you’re worth for what you’ve done,” along with other populist sloganeering like praising union members for working harder than lawmakers.
Of course, the rich men cannot pay you what you’re worth for what you’ve done or else they wouldn’t make profits—exploitation of the workers is the very heart of capitalism.
