Some 4,300 members of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local Lodge S6 are on strike against Bath Iron Works (BIW) in Bath, Maine. Workers voted with an overwhelming majority of 87 percent to strike when their current contract expired at midnight, June 22.

“Almost 90 percent of our members voted, and almost 90 percent of them not only rejected the contract, but they authorized the strike,” says Tim Suitter, union spokesman and twenty-two-year veteran shipyard sandblaster. “The strike was driven by the younger workers.”

Management is demanding concessionary contract language that would give them the freedom to hire in more temporary, non-union labor, keeping more and more workers stuck at the entry-level rate of $15.97 an hour — driving down wages in the shipyard on average, especially for new hires with previous training and experience. BIW president Dirk Lesko touted recent hires and argued the shipyard needs more flexibility to complete Navy contracts, despite hiring some two thousand entry-level employees over the last couple years. These are standard management arguments, in the twenty-first or any other century — one that union members, unsurprisingly, aren’t buying.