Log In
Forgot Log In
Register
Flickr
Twitter
YouTube
RSS FeedsUSW Members Ratify Cooper Tire Pact - Tuesday, February 28, 2012
USW Members Ratify Cooper Tire Pact,
Journey for Justice Wraps Up
By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer
United Steelworkers (USW) Local 207L members ratified by a 2-to-1 margin a new five-year contract with Cooper Tire and Rubber Company The vote ends a three-month lockout at the company’s Findlay, Ohio tire plant.
USW Local 207L President Rodney Nelson says:
We are proud to have remained united and delivered a fair contract, despite Cooper’s best attempts to divide us.
The workers were locked out by Cooper on Nov. 28, despite the union’s good-faith offer to continue working under the terms of the previous agreement while negotiations toward a new one proceeded, says USW District 1 Director Dave McCall.
Cooper needs to acknowledge that its loyal, productive and efficient USW workforce is the company’s most valuable asset in Findlay and treat them with the respect and dignity they have earned. For many years, Cooper was a good example of how workers and management could work together toward common goals and the greater good of the community.
Click here to read more from the USW.
Several Cooper Tire workers and Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers (BCTGM) locked out by American Crystal Sugar just ended a 1,000 mile Journey for Justice. The group traveled from American Crystal offices near Fargo, N.D., to Cooper Tire’s headquarters in Findlay.
The journey highlighted the corporate greed that marks their lockouts, and the growing drive by corporate CEOs to drive down wages and benefits to pad their own pockets. Says Teresa Brown, a 12-year Cooper employee:
We set out to spread the message that we must stand together to make a difference, and we sent that message loud and clear. Our fight and the fight for justice for thousands of other workers continues every day.
Adds Becki Jacobson, a 30-year American Crystal worker from Moorhead, Minn.:
The support we’ve received over the last five days has strengthened my resolve to keep up our fight for a fair contract.
Read more at the Journey for Justice blog here.
***
This has been reposted from AFL-CIO.
Printer friendly version