
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994                   TAG: 9406100011
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MONTGOMERY, ILL.                                LENGTH: Medium

CATERPILLAR WALKOUT CONTINUES

About 1,650 United Auto Workers members remained off the job Wednesday at a Caterpillar Inc. factory in the union's ninth walkout since September. The company threatened to lock them out when they decide to return.

The strike that began Tuesday at the plant 38 miles outside Chicago forced salaried and management employees into the factory to assemble excavators and wheel loaders, some of Caterpillar's best-selling construction products.

Caterpillar spokesman Keith Butterfield said Wednesday that about 17 percent, or roughly 335, of the UAW's nearly 2,000 members at the plant had crossed picket lines during three shifts Tuesday and the first shift Wednesday.

``We are encouraging all our hourly employees to return to work,'' Butterfield said.

The company, parent of Carter Machinery Co. of Salem, announced earlier that once union picket lines come down, the strikers will be locked out until the company decides to let them come back. That hasn't happened in the previous eight walkouts.

The company also suspended strikers' health benefits, meaning they must pay their own premiums to ensure coverage.

Short, isolated strikes aimed at disrupting production are the UAW's latest tactic in its 21/2-year contract dispute with the world's leading maker of earth-moving equipment.

Caterpillar and the UAW have not met for contract negotiations in more than two years. The UAW has been trying to force the company to withdraw its final contract offer, imposed in April 1992 when it crushed a 163-day walkout by threatening to permanently replace the strikers.

The latest strike was in response to the suspension of four UAW members who refused to remove union slogans such as ``Unhappy Cats Don't Purr'' and ``Cat Treats Workers Like Dogs'' from their toolboxes or lunch pails, said Pete Moore, a bargaining committeeman at UAW Local 145 in Aurora.

Caterpillar spokesman Keith Butterfield said the slogans were not the issue.

``It's the inappropriate display of the slogans,'' Butterfield said. ``They are being displayed on placards with sticks, in picket-sign fashion.''

UAW executive board member Mike Whitlow said he had no idea when the strike would end.

by CNB