Vol. 79/No. 44      December 7, 2015

 
(front page)

Wis. UAW members: ‘Two-tier pay has to go!’

1,500 Kohler strikers, supporters march & rally

 
 
KOHLER, Wis. — More than 1,500 striking members of United Auto Workers Local 833 and their supporters turned out for a spirited mass picket and march in front of the Kohler manufacturing plant here Nov. 21. Six days earlier the 2,100-member local voted overwhelmingly to strike, rejecting the company’s contract proposal to maintain two-tier wages and raise health care costs.

Many unionists — members of the Teamsters, Machinists, United Food and Commercial Workers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Teachers unions — relatives and others turned out in the snow to support the strikers.

“I need you to stand tough with us on this. We need to take care of each other,” Local 833 President Tim Tayloe told the crowd from the back of a pickup truck after they had marched past the plant. “Just make it equal and fair for everybody, and we’ll go back in there and put their product out again,” he said, challenging the company. Then everyone marched back to the union hall.

The central issue is Kohler’s refusal to eliminate a two-tier wage and benefit structure in a contract adopted in 2010 when bosses claimed they needed help because of the economic downturn.

“We are not backing down,” Lori DeSmith, a Tier B worker in the plating department for three years who makes $12.50 an hour, told the Militant. “This is so unfair. We are all in this together.”

DeSmith brought her two sons — Devin DeSmith, a high school student, and Alex Turner, 18, an auto mechanic — to the march. “It was pretty cool seeing everyone getting together for a common cause,” Turner said.

“The two-tier setup has to go,” said Charles Kestell, a castings grinder who has worked at Kohler more than 41 years. “We can’t have people making much less. The union will be gone if we don’t get rid of two-tier. Kohler used to be the preferred workplace. Now they can’t get people to stay.”

Kohler, founded in the Wisconsin company town in 1873, employs 30,000 people in operations on six continents, making plumbing fixtures, engines and power generation systems, with annual revenues of $6 billion. In Sheboygan County 5,000 people work for the company.

“This is my first strike,” said Adam Stange, 21, who has worked in the foundry casting toilet bowls for five months. As a Tier B worker he makes $13.30 an hour. Tier A workers doing the same job make $24. Stange also has Tier B medical insurance. “We pay more for premiums and have higher deductibles,” he said.

Curt Brauer, business agent for IBEW Local 494, which represents more than 2,000 electrical workers in six counties in southeast Wisconsin, came to the march to show solidarity with the strikers. “Kohler only hires non-union contractors,” he said.

Mike Zimmermann, president of the Sheboygan County Labor Council, told the Militant area unions “will be organizing food drives and help with picketing to back the strikers.”

Following a Nov. 16 march of more than 1,000 strikers and supporters that blocked traffic for miles, a Sheboygan County circuit court judge granted Kohler’s request for an injunction prohibiting strikers from interfering with traffic near its property.

The union is fighting the family-owned company’s demands for further restrictions to prohibit mass protests. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 25.

Send letter of support and donations to The Kohler UAW Local 833 Workers Relief Fund, Emil Mazey Hall, 5425 Superior Ave., Sheboygan, WI 53083.
 
 
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