BY ERIC WILS
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Workers at the Caterpillar assembly plant in Gosselies near Charleroi, Belgium, are locked in a tough contract fight with the U.S.-based multinational company. The unions are demanding six extra days off every year for second- and third-shift workers, and a $1.4 million investment to improve working conditions.

Workers point to the hefty profits announced by Caterpillar-Belgium for 1994 in putting forward their demands.

After several warning strikes, Caterpillar agreed to negotiate, but then refused to make any concessions and broke off talks April 6. Second-shift workers immediately walked out and a strike was declared for the rest of the week.

Caterpillar obtained an injunction imposing a $1,700 fine on the pickets for every person prevented from entering the plant. The day after talks broke off, workers set up picket lines, but did not interfere with management and those few employees who chose to go in.

After a picket line of 30 workers turned back several trucks, the company called in the National Guard and the strikers were brutally beaten. The National Guard is the police force in Belgium.

"Management has called in the National Guard to attack Caterpillar workers. So much for the `Caterpillar mentality' they always talk about," said one indignant worker in a television news interview.

Another picket said, "I never believed they would beat up unarmed workers who simply defend their jobs." After going back to work April 10 as scheduled, workers decided to hold another one-day strike the following day to protest the company and cop brutality.

The strike was successful, with 90 percent of the workers staying out, according to the unions. This time, pickets strictly abided by the terms of the court injunction. Delegations of unionists from glass and steel mills in Charleroi and from the Volkswagen car assembly plant in Brussels joined the picket line in solidarity.

The unions urged some 150 young temporary workers to work normally "in order not to risk their jobs."

As part of a scare campaign, unionists report some managers are circulating rumors that production may be shifted to the Grenoble, France, Caterpillar plant. Some 1,700 jobs have already been axed in Gosselies over the last three years.

An all-night negotiating session April 12 yielded no results.  
 
 
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