Griffin Wheel workers rev up strike action

About 180 workers at Griffin Wheel, a Winnipeg unit of Chicago-based Amsted Industries, are on the picket line.

After a 24-hour walk-out Wednesday to protest the company’s bargaining position of reducing pension and seniority rights, impacted employees were locked out of the workplace Thursday morning, Unifor Local 144 said.

The unionized workers are striking to preserve their defined benefit pension and to negotiate more scheduling flexibility, it added.

Frank Wright, national representative for Unifor, said workers at Griffin Wheel, which makes train wheels from molten steel, are forced to work overtime, with management only required to give them five minutes notice.

Wright said the working conditions are very tough. “Our members need work/life balance the company is not willing to give it to them.”

Not so many years ago, workers at the east Winnipeg plant on Day Street had to work seven days per week, union leadership said.

The strike action was prompted after the company announced it wanted to move from a defined benefit pension plan to a lesser defined contribution plan or eliminate it completely and take away seniority rights, Unifor said.

“A lot of our members have been working hard, six days a week, for the last two years to help the company out. The way the company is negotiating now is a slap in the face and huge disrespect to their loyal workforce,” Unifor Local 144 president Liz Sousa said.

Wright said replacement workers would be unable to operate the foundry; the union is planning to maintain only a skeleton picket line over the Easter weekend, so workers will be able to have rare time off.

“It’s going to be the first weekend off for some workers in 35 years,” Wright said.

Amsted has one other plant in Canada, in London, Ont. It operates about 75 facilities in 13 countries, employing more than 13,000 people.

A company official was unavailable for comment Thursday.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca