ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 13, 1997 TAG: 9703130041
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON THE ROANOKE TIMES
Get ready for tough talks; GE's braced for a strike, the IUEW president said.
"Fabulously wealthy" General Electric Co. can afford to pay its union employees better this year. That includes production workers at GE Motors and Industrial Systems in Salem, according to a top union official who was in town Wednesday.
Ed Fire, president of the 125,000-member International Union of Electronic Workers, visited the union's Salem branch. His visit to Local 161 had two purposes.
He installed Michael Shepherd as the local's new president.
Fire also gave GE workers a preview of upcoming contract talks, which, judging from shouts audible through a meeting's closed doors, will be hard-fought and a test of worker unity.
GE and its 14 unions will begin in late May to negotiate a contract expected to cover work rules for the next several years. The current agreement, covering the 15 percent of GE's work force that is union-represented, expires June 30.
Fire, who heads the 14-union bargaining team for 46,000 GE employees, said he received a preview of the company's bargaining stance from a videotape in which GE's chairman, Jack Welch, proudly tells his managers that GE can weather a strike.
GE spokesman Bruce Bunch confirmed Wednesday that on the tape, made in January and widely distributed within the company, Welch said: "A strike is a lose-lose proposition. We don't want one, but we will be the best-prepared company in the world to take one."
GE reported profits last year of $7.28 billion on sales of $79.18 billion.
"GE is just fabulously wealthy, and they can provide ...a very good contract," Fire said.
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Ed Fireby CNB