CONNECT
Mega Manufacturer Caterpillar Locks Out Workers to Force Pay Cuts While Making Record Profits
Think Progress / News Report
Published: Friday 27 January 2012
“While certainly not in the same league with Apple’s abuses, Caterpillar is just the latest company attempting to force workers to accept wage cuts at the same time its hauling in huge profits and paying its CEO millions.”
Yesterday, ThinkProgress’ Tanya Somanader noted that Apple Inc. is breaking its profit record and sitting on nearly $100 billion in cash, while its Chinese laborers toil in unsafe and even deadly conditions. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, another huge company has decided to lock out its Canadian workers in an attempt to force them to accept pay cuts, even as it pulls in its own record profits:
Caterpillar reported a 36 per cent increase in after-tax profit for both the fourth quarter of 2011 and the full year 2011. Revenues for the year increased four per cent to $2.65 billion.
Despite the record profits, the company is pressuring its employees at the London [Ontario] locomotive plant to accept a pay cut from $32 per hour to $16.50. Caterpillar locked out the workers on Jan. 1 after union members rejected the pay cut.
While certainly not in the same league with Apple’s abuses, Caterpillar is just the latest company attempting to force workers to accept wage cuts at the same time its hauling in huge profits and paying its CEO millions. AT&T, Navistar, John Deere, and Wellpoint have all pulled the same trick in the last few years, laying off hundreds of workers. Caterpillar’s CEO, John Oberhelman, made $10.5 million in 2010.
“This is all about greed,” says Bob Scott, union chairman at the plant. “How are workers supposed to go back to earning wages last paid nearly 25 years ago, while the company is richer than ever?” CEOs today make about 343 times the amount earned by the typical worker.
Get Email Alerts from NationofChange
ABOUT Pat Garofalo
Pat Garofalo is Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Pat’s work has also appeared in The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, The Guardian, the Washington Examiner, and In These Times. He has been a guest on MSNBC and Al-Jazeera television, as well as many radio shows. Pat graduated from Brandeis University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Brandeis Hoot, Brandeis’ community newspaper, and worked for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life.
FEATURE A
Connect with your friends
Find new content you might like and see what your friends are sharing!
10 comments on "Mega Manufacturer Caterpillar Locks Out Workers to Force Pay Cuts While Making Record Profits"
February 01, 2012 9:07am
Maybe the Shakers had it right. If you farm without big equipment and pesticides, you stay small.I want to know the person raising my food again.
I am old and remember how it used to be.
We raised much of our own food, chickens and cows -- drank our own milk, ate our own meat and veggies, shared with our neighbors and the orphanage.
Food tasted better, we were healthier and happier.
So yesterday, I engaged in guerilla gardening with Occupy Portland (Oregon). We planted 6 beds of veggies and flowers at a public park next to a junior high.The security guard tried to stop us but we refused to stop work so he called the cops. The cops came and tried to talk us into leaving but we just kept pretending we had a permit but the permit holder couldn't talk to them cuz she has PTSD from a run-in with militarized police at prior protests. I think the police didn't buy it, but decicded the property owner wasn't maintaining their property very well and was a bigger asshole than we Occupiers and did what police often do -- whatever they want -- and told the guy the permit dept was closed and they couldn't check on our permit. They actually dealt with him for us and left us alone. The gardens stand with plans for future improvement.
As the security guard drove away, he shouted at us "Get a Job!"
But we were too busy with our Occupation to do more than laugh.
Fox News came by, but since we weren't being brutalized or busted, blew us off.
We didn't fit their active smear campaign coverage.
They couldn't have been less interested in Occupy at its best.
February 01, 2012 9:02am
Maybe the Shakers had it right. If you farm without big equipment and pesticides, you stay small.I want to know the person raising my food again.I am old and remember how it used to be.We grew much of our own food, chickens and cows.We drank our own milk, ate our own meat and veggies, shared with our neighbors and the orphanage.Food tasted better, we were healthier and happier.So yesterday, I engaged in guerilla gardening with Occupy Portland (Oregon). We planted 6 beds of veggies and flowers at a public park next to a junior high.The security guard tried to stop us but we refused to stop work so he called the cops. The cops came and tried to talk us into leaving but we just kept pretending we had a permit but the permit holder couldn't talk to them cuz she has PTSD from a run-in with militarized police at prior protests. The police didn't buy it, but decicded the property owner wasn't maintaining their property very well and was a bigger asshole than we Occupiers and did what police always do -- whatever they want -- and told the guy the permit dept was closed and they couldn't check on our permit. They actually dealt with him for us and left us alone. The gardens stand with plans for future improvement.
January 29, 2012 5:45pm
Do you think that the CEO is a $10.5 million dollar job?At $32 per hour for workers, the CEO STILL made 10.5 million? I don't see any reason to cut the workers wages.
January 29, 2012 11:51am
Has anyone considered that these positions that are paying $32 an hour are really positions that require the skill and experience of a $16 employee? Just sayin.Look at GM. They had a janitor that was getting paid $50 an hour just because of Union contracts and his tenure with the company. Do you think his position was a $50 an hour job? Look where that got GM.
January 29, 2012 9:29am
wonder why they do not move everything overseas where taxes are much less?
January 27, 2012 4:16pm
"Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
January 27, 2012 1:42pm
The greed of these corporations can only be sustained for so long. They are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
We need a maximum wage in both Canada and the United States.
January 27, 2012 1:38pm
maybe Obama will come stand with labor...ah, prob'ly not
January 27, 2012 1:34pm
Stated in the true spirit of Stephen Colbert. Kudos for your tongue in cheek rhetoric.
January 27, 2012 1:12pm
Companies like Cat do it because they can. It is simple math for Oberhelman. The less he pays a worker, the more he can give himself. He does it because he can. Wall street controls the propoganda and has convinced even those who work for a living that the folks who work for a living are the problem with the economy not the excesses and greed of ceos and corporations and wall street. I.E.,Why should ceos like Oberhelman suffer on only 10 million a year when they deserve at least 20, or 30 or 40? And why should workers protest a 50% pay cut which would prevent Oberhelman from getting the millions more in compensation that he is entitled to? It's pure selfishness on behalf of the workers. If they were good people who knew their place, they would be pleading to work for $8 or less per hour just to make sure their ceo needn't suffer the humiliation of only getting $10 million a year. What is wrong with those people?! It's not like they have bills to pay or food to put on the table. The blessings of Oberhelman being their ceo should be sustenance enough.