I have followed this local story. Based on comments by local residents on local stories the majority of people seem to think the strikers were acting in bad form. Basically, they were asked by Motts parent company to take a small pay cut and some other things. They balked, freaked and just recently wrapped up a four month strike after the parent company dr pepper said no more offers. Motts locally was making do (arguably to what degree, motts said fine, strikers said no way you're doing fine) with temps working for much less.
I saw that the motts strikers had put themselves between a rock and a hard place. Their parent company was making no more deals and with each day its temp workers, making far less, were clearly going to get better at the job. I think these folk ultimately realized that in a 10% unemployment recession making $21/hour (widely used as what they were making, on average) plus benefits to pull a lever on an apple machine (let's get real, they are no more skilled than most manufacturing jobs) was a pretty good gig.
Some pointed out that the parent company made huge profits last year so why do they want pay cuts? Company says to bring workers in line with local costs. But these critics failed to note, generally, that the year prior they'd taken big losses--and believe me, the union didn't say "Oh, you're not doing so well you can cut our pay". In any case, this particular plant apparently does not perform all that well anyway.
For better or worse to me it looks like Motts called the union's bluff and the union realized it had no hand, so it had to tuck tail and agree to the deal. If I was a worker I'd be very scared what will happen three years from now after the contract is up.
BTW, these voluntary strike workers were not only making money from the union but also apparently were allowed to go on unemployment, so essentially got a summer off.
It was within the last couple of days, maybe Tuesday, that the strikers cancelled the strike.
To me there remains a key, ongoing piece of false logic from groups like this union. They keep thinking that they are somehow deserving of their employers' profits. Public-shared companies by definition are there to maximize shareholder value. If they can get somebody to do you job at half the price they almost have to do it. Just because they made absurd, crazy profits last year doesn't mean those are yours. They are not your mom, you don't get a bigger allowance because Mom won the lotto. That is not how it works. There is "fair" and there is reality. When you have nothing to negotiate with and your bluff is called you lose and that's what happened here. The strikers had nothing to bargain with; temps were doing their jobs for half (?) the price.
