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Sunday, March 17, 2013

Union Asks MATC to Stop Worker Training

Seems to me at Caterpillar has a responsibility to its shareholders to try to mitigate the damage of any future union strike.

United Steelworkers Local 1343 sent a letter to MATC officials asking the school to stop training local Caterpillar Inc. employees to weld, which the union views as training scabs for a potential strike this spring.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) has been taking steps to keep producing at its South Milwaukee plant if there’s a labor dispute. Caterpillar has its mining equipment headquarters in Oak Creek and operates plants in South Milwaukee and Milwaukee.

A labor contract expires April 30 at the South Milwaukee plant, where the United Steelworkers union represents about 800 employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The key here will be to watch what MATC does. Will they abandon their mission and revenue to cave to union demands? We’ll see.

(3) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1242 hrs
Economy + Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. This union seems to be against young people.

    Why is that?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 17, 2013 at 1425 hrs


  2. This would be a fascinating conundrum for MATC. The welding courses run a month at a time and I believe all the classes through August are already filled. They would have to kick students out of a course that is already scheduled to comply with the union demand.

    What’s really fascinating is a lot of these courses are being paid for by vets with GI Bill benefits. If you kick a vet out of a trade school without cause your entire program can be investigated for loss of Federal Student Loan eligibility. It almost happened at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee 20 years ago.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 18, 2013 at 0612 hrs


  3. I stand corrected. This is outside of the publicly offered classes. This is a contracted class between MATC and Cat.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 19, 2013 at 0603 hrs


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