BY MONICA JONES
STE-THERESE, Quebec - Workers at the Kenworth truck
assembly factory here voted overwhelmingly to reject new
concession demands by the company October 2 and continue
their strike, now into its eighth week.
Most of the 750 factory workers on strike attended the meeting and 90 percent voted to refuse the company demands. Earlier the same day, 100 office workers voted against similar proposals by the same margin. Both groups are members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 728.
Kenworth has raised the stakes in the strike by announcing that it wants to place its company rules into a new contract. Many workers at the meetings likened the regulations to prison conditions.
The list of rules is 22 pages long. Making a phone call during working hours would be forbidden. Foremen would be allowed to contact the company nurse to determine if a worker absent for a medical or dental appointment made an effort to schedule it outside of work hours.
Two late arrivals or early departures from work would be recorded as one day absent. If a worker is absent three times in 120 days without adequate justification in the eyes of the company, he or she could be fired.
Quebec receives heavy snowfall five months of the year and workers drive long distances to the factory.
"This latest move is an attempt to strip away the strength of the union and its ability to protect its members. It's totally unacceptable," said one office worker on the picket line after their meeting.
The strike began on August 8. The workers are seeking pension improvements and want to raise the monthly retirement pay over three years from $28 per month per year of service to $43. Kenworth is offering an increase of $2 per year.
"I've never seen anything like this and I've worked here for 31 years," said Raymond Masson while waiting for the result of the factory workers' vote. "We were on strike for eight months in 1978 but this is different. Anyone can get sick. They are trying to tighten the screws like never before.
"We need a decent benefit plan," he explained further, "but they want to cut, cut, cut." The company wants to limit prescription drug coverage to $1,200 per year per person.
"The stronger the vote tonight the better position we will be in," Masson said.
Kenworth is stepping up pressure against the strikers. It has announced a "layoff" of 575 workers, which strikers first learned about through an article in a local weekly newspaper. A company spokesman said work on "class 8" trucks, the main vehicle assembled here, was being transferred to Renton, Washington. Workers began receiving layoff notices by registered mail on the day of the union meetings.
But strikers are standing up to the company's hard line. Daily picketing across the entrance to the factory began on September 20. Most vehicles trying to enter the plant on that morning were delayed. Police intervened to move back strikers and they have been patrolling the entrance ever since.
A small number of model T300 trucks are being built and bosses regularly drive them across the picket line on test drives.
Yvan Bourgeois and Jean-Pierre Guay, presidents of the plant and office locals respectively, made a surprise visit to the factory with a representative of the provincial government Department of Labor on September 22.
Following the visit, the union applied for a court injunction against Kenworth alleging 20 violations of Quebec's anti-scab law. That law, in place since 1977, prohibits companies which operate under Quebec government labor jurisdiction from hiring replacement workers during a strike.
"They want us to return to the 1950s," one worker said as he left the union meeting, "but we are going to win because we're not giving up."
Monica Jones is a member of CAW Local 728 on strike at Kenworth in Ste-Therese.