UAW Local 833
Members will return to work December 17.
UAW Members Ratify Tentative Agreement with 91 Percent Vote
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Author Archives: wibailoutpeople
Milwaukee, December 16: Coalition For Justice Mass Meeting
The Coalition for Justice will be hosting our next Mass Meeting on WEDNESDAY, December 16th at All Peoples Church, 5975 N. 40th Street at 6 p.m.
We will continue conversations and movements around awakening, strategizing, and mobilizing those around us.
We would love to get as many community members, organizations, unions, and churches in this space as possible so please invite your friends, family, and colleagues. Students and children are also welcomed.
The meeting will last approximately two hours (6:00p-8:00p). Please join us, and let your voice be heard.
We will continue the fight for justice! Change is coming!
Spread the word!
WEAC members reach out to Kohler families
“Onalaska kindergarten teacher and WEAC Region 4 President Allison Pratt has a special place in her heart for the employees at the Kohler Co. in Sheboygan, on strike for fair wages to support their families. Pratt, along with members of WEAC Region 4, are standing in solidarity by donating to the families impacted by the situation.
WEAC Region 4, comprising southwestern communities including La Crosse, is also spreading the word to other WEAC affiliates and partnering with other labor groups to encourage standing together for living wages. “We’re asking WEAC’s other regions to match our contributions, exceed them or to give anything they can give,” Pratt said.
Educators point toward students when explaining why they’re lending their support to Kohler employees. Family-supporting jobs are a key factor in providing stability for children, which is a key factor in school success….” http://tinyurl.com/ogunzwm
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For more information and how to support Local 833:
https://www.facebook.com/wisaflcio/facebook.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Local833local/
https://www.facebook.com/defeatrighttowork/
#KohlerStrike
Supporters can send or drop off monetary contributions, fire wood (for burn barrels), solidarity resolutions, holiday toys for kids and non-perishable goods to:
UAW Local 833
Emil Mazey Hall
5425 Superior Ave.
Sheboygan, WI 53083
Picket lines are 24-7. Stop by Emil Mazey hall to join a shuttle to a picket line
UAW Local 833: Why we’re on strike
By Tim Tayloe, President of United Auto Workers Local 833, UAW Local 833
The 2,100 members of UAW Local 833 are in a struggle to preserve our community’s middle class. With spouses, children and retirees, our numbers are at least three times that or more. We are your friends, neighbors, customers, fellow citizens and taxpayers. Our kids go to school with your kids. Our families need the same things as yours.
Since 1934, the working folks of UAW 833 have fought for and won wages, benefits and working conditions that have elevated the entire community. We took our hits in tough times, just like you, and, like all fair-minded people, we expect to share in times of corporate prosperity. But that’s not happening. Not for us. And not for you.
In 2010, Kohler laid off 600 of our members and threatened to outsource or offshore more jobs. We reluctantly accepted a five-year contract that simultaneously froze our wages and increased out-of-pocket health care costs.
Worse, we got a two-tier wage system that undercuts new hires. At 65% of regular pay, they earn as little as $11.50 an hour with few or no benefits. Many of them are temporary and don’t know from one day to the next what they’ll be doing or if they’ll be working.
They are stuck forever behind the rest of us, no matter the skills they bring or how long they work. With a 94% strike vote and 99% of our members still out, we are holding strong for incremental raises that will get our newer folks closer to wage parity in five years.
This is the defining issue of our strike.
We are taking a moral and necessary stand for equal pay for equal work. Our nation has fought battles like this before and continues to. Discrimination against women and minorities, for example, is illegal, yet their wages still lag. Now, under wage schemes such as Kohler’s that are becoming epidemic in the United States, we find a new group of unequal citizens: our youngest workers.
What does the future hold in store for them? What does it mean for us all? If past is prologue, it doesn’t look good.
Wisconsin has the fastest shrinking middle class in the nation. Low-wage jobs spiked sharply in the last 15 years, especially since 2010. Median household income fell in a stunning two-thirds of Wisconsin counties, including Sheboygan (-9.1%) and neighboring Manitowoc (-10.1%). Nationally, it’s not much better.
Meanwhile, the ever-expanding income and wealth gap between the very rich and the rest of us is the worst it’s been since The Great Depression. The Kohlers are among those fortunate few. Their wealth nearly doubled in just 12 months, 2012-2013, and, as of Dec. 2, they have $7.7 billion in their pockets.
What kind of employer threatens the livelihood of working families while making money hand over fist? What kind of company demands a permanent underclass? What kind of corporate citizen would decimate the community whose labor made its billions because, it says, it wants to “compete” with the slave wages of the Third World?
The sad fact is that, for much of America’s wealthiest and the toadies who serve them, dividing the middle class and driving down our standard of living has become routine. They pay big bucks to outsider consultants who care not a whit for the communities they hurt while pushing talking points out of their playbook to scare the hell out of us. We’re not falling for that again.
We’re feeling the squeeze, and we know the risks, and we know you do, too. We are inextricably linked, you and us. Please support our cause. Call Kohler. Spread the word. Drop off donations at our Emil Mazey Hall. Help us restore fundamental fairness and shared prosperity to the community.
If not now, when? If not us, who?
Inside a Bolivarian Commune – Short Film
Solidarity Sessions with Fighting Members of UAW Local 833
On December 13 and 14, 2015 a delegation of WI BOPM, Rockford FIST and Workers World Party members visited the courageous members of UAW Local 833 striking against the greedy Kohler company. Delegation members spent time at the Local 833 Emil Mazey union hall making placards and banners and engaging in conversations with members and community supporters. The delegation also participated in numerous picket line activities on multiple shifts distributing literature to strikers and learning about their struggles. Future delegations are planned. For more information on how to support: UAW Local 833
Photos from December 13 Solidarity Sessions: http://tinyurl.com/jfwc5nr
Photos from December 14 Solidarity Sessions: http://tinyurl.com/h53dn44
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For more information and how to support Local 833:
https://www.facebook.com/wisaflcio/facebook.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Local833local/
https://www.facebook.com/defeatrighttowork/
#KohlerStrike
Supporters can send or drop off monetary contributions, fire wood (for burn barrels), solidarity resolutions, holiday toys for kids and non-perishable goods to:
UAW Local 833
Emil Mazey Hall
5425 Superior Ave.
Sheboygan, WI 53083
Picket lines are 24-7. Stop by Emil Mazey hall to join a shuttle to a picket line
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal in Court on Dec. 18 Demand that Mumia and 10,000 other PA Prisoners Receive Lifesaving HCV Treatment
http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/mumia/maj121215/
In the wake of thousands of signed petitions, phone calls, emails plus meetings, street actions and pressure from sympathetic state officials, Federal Court Judge Robert Mariani has ordereda full evidentiary hearing on Friday, Dec. 18 to determine if the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) must provide, as Abu-Jamal’s legal team requests, the new, direct-acting, anti-viral medication with a 95 percent cure rate for HCV ...
If you cannot be there, we are asking you to call the following officials on Dec. 18 to demand immediate anti-viral HCV medication for Mumia and the other prisoners:
~ Gov. Tom Wolf, 717-787-2500
~ John Wetzel, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, 717-728-4109
~ John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy, 570-773-2158 ext. 8102
