Wabtec recently took over General Electric Transportation Division in Erie, Pennsylvania, where we build world-class locomotives. We attempted to meet with the company last year to start contract negotiations and they refused. They waited until the end of January to meet with its largest and most complex unionized workforce. Instead, they were too busy running around forcing concessionary contracts down the throats of workers at smaller Wabtec facilities around the country.

After a mere seven sessions of negotiations had produced little progress, we proposed a thirty-day interim agreement, based on our current terms and conditions. This would have given both sides more time to negotiate a brand-new contract and ensure labor peace. We were looking for peace; they were looking for a fight. Our current terms and conditions were negotiated over the last eighty-two years and they made GE Transportation one of the most successful companies anywhere. The company told us they were not interested. Today 1,700 families are standing on a freezing cold picket line in Erie, Pennsylvania, saying we’ve had enough.

They insisted that all our 450 workers on layoffs would be treated as new hires if and when they got called back to work. They would be paid $20,000 to $30,000 less per year for the same job. Those are wages we were making in the nineties. They would force mandatory overtime and make up to 20 percent of our workforce temporary — almost 400 workers — with no union, low rates of pay, and no benefits. Again, we said we’d had enough. Those terms were unacceptable to us, and we will not go to work for Wabtec under those terms and conditions.