Strike
On 1 April 2006, workers at the Bach plant in Elkhart began a strike that lasted three years. Production was interrupted until the company hired replacement workers, and roughly a third of the strikers returned to work. The strike ended when workers voted to dissolve the relationship between the company and the United Auto Workers union. As a result, retired employees lost their pensions.
The 70 strikers who returned to work constituted 30% of the pre-strike workforce, but they constituted 57% of the workforce after the strike, which shrank by 46% to 124. In the post-strike period amidst severe economic crisis, sales were down from pre-strike levels by 31%, but gross profit rose from 20% to 22% of sales revenues. Re-work and quality complaints dropped sharply in the post-strike period. Reductions in employee compensation were credited with returning production of student-line horns (the TR-300) from Asia to Elkhart.
Read more about this topic: Vincent Bach Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word strike:
“It is possible to lead astray an entire generation, to strike it blind, to drive it insane, to direct it towards a false goal. Napoleon proved this.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“... no one knows anything about a strike until he has seen it break down into its component parts of human beings.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)