According to workers on the picket line the company is demanding an increase of up to 20 percent in worker’s health insurance copayments. Retirees would have to pay $6,000 out of pocket for medical expenses each year. Shortly after the strike began the company informed retirees that their medical benefits would be terminated. Some retirees receive as little as $400 a month in pension benefits from the company.

Another proposal from management would eliminate retiree medical insurance for anyone hired after May 1. The employers also want to lay off workers up to six weeks without regard for plant seniority. This would enable them to recall long-term employees at lower pay scales, driving down the overall wage level at the facility. The bosses also offered a 2 percent wage increase. But as one of the picketers explained, “we would lose all of this paying for insurance.”

When the contract expired May 1, the workers voted 426-9 against the bosses’ offer. They also voted 414-10 to strike.

“We are looking out for the future generations who will work here, and for retirees,” said Dave Meyer, a striker on the picket line who has 35 years with the company. “You have to draw the line some place. They have pushed us over the edge.”

Several workers noted that bosses prepared for the strike well in advance by running ads in the local newspaper for scabs, emphasizing the necessity to cross the picket line. Two weeks before the contract expired the company brought in temp workers to train on jobs. “They would look over our shoulders as we did our jobs,” said Meyer.

Leading up to the walkout they wore union T-shirts in the plant two days per week. One week before the walkout, retirees organized informational picketing at the main plant and the power-systems facility.

The local union organized a rally May 7 of 300 strikers, retirees, and their families at the main plant, where IAM president Thomas Buffenburger spoke. The strikers have received support from other unionists in the area; and they have given support to striking meat packers at the nearby Tyson Foods plant in Jefferson, about a 30-minute drive from Waukesha. One IAM member at Waukesha Engine has two brothers on strike at the Tyson meatpacking plant.

During a visit to a picket tent by Militant reporters a member of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 2485 dropped by to inform the strikers that his local voted to donate to their strike fund. “Our contract expires in January and we’re facing the same issue on health benefits as you are,” he said.  
 
Company disregard for workers
A number of unionists explained that the company is trying to boost its profit margins at their expense. According to strikers interviewed on the picket line, company profits and gross income have dropped slightly over the past year. In 2001 the company claimed sales of $277 million and $44 million in profits . The following year sales dropped to $217 million and profits to $32 million.

“Despite making a profit the company wants $5 million in concessions from us,” said John Blomiley, union committeeman and picket captain. “But they think nothing of spending money on products we tell them will not work.”

He described a newly designed oil ring that one of the assemblers told the bosses was impractical. Instead of listening to the worker, managers went ahead with the product. As a result, the oil pan leaked like a sieve.

The strikers said the bosses justified the concession demands with the claim that the company was “losing market share.” They noted that management points to stiffening competition from a rival company based in Japan that produces an engine cylinder head similar to one they make at the plant here.

Waukesha Engine is one of four divisions of Dresser Inc., manufacturer of gas-fueled engines used in off shore oil drilling, field gas compression, power generation, and other mechanical drive applications. The workers at the struck plant are among the 40 percent in the company’s facilities who are unionized, including some in Europe.

The last time the workers went on strike was in 1979. In 1980 there were 1,500 workers in the plant. During the 1982 recession the bosses laid off hundreds of workers who were never recalled.

Dresser, Inc., was bought out in 1998 by Halliburton. The four divisions were spun off by the firm after Halliburton bosses decided they no longer needed them. U.S. vice president Richard Cheney, a Halliburton executive at the time, pocketed $20 million from the sale of the divisions, strikers stated.

Several strikers pointed to the employers’ claims of trying to save the company money by cutbacks from production workers, while dishing out huge bonuses and salaries for the corporate executives. According to Blomiley, at one company-employee meeting company president Steve Lamb “told us he deserved it”—that is, getting a salary of $1.6 million a year and unlimited health insurance, which all corporate executives get. His pay includes a “performance bonus that’s based on how much he can screw people,” said Blomiley.

Strikers explained that Lamb, a notorious union-buster, was recently brought in to prepare the company for the strike and to drive through concessions. When the strike began the company hired a security outfit that uses goons in vans taking snapshots of workers on picket duty, and filming office people who stop by the picket line to say hello.  
 
 
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