National Steel Car Workers Walk Off the Job in Ontario

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/10857

Workers in Hamilton, Ontario have walked off the job at a National Steel Car assembly plant. Six hundred workers are on strike after the company’s “final contract offer” was refused. The workers are represented by the United Steelworkers and they are refusing to accept the company’s position that they should waive sonority rights and take a pay cut of nearly 25 percent per hour. Lives at the plant has been touch and go even before the workers walked off the job. Since 2006 the plant has let go of more than 1,700 workers and the current staff of 660 only work four days of the week. National Steel Car is currently in the process of building a $350-million dollar factory in Alabama and workers are worried the company will transfer the remaining jobs out of Canada.