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:
“The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.”
—Sun Tzu (6–5th century B.C.)
“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–84)
“So, instead of spending my strength quarreling with the hand, I would strike for the heart of that great tyranny.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)