More than 300 union truck drivers continued their strike Wednesday against a group of highway, bridge and construction companies after not agreeing to a recent labor contract proposal.
The group of workers from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 142 in Gary began a strike against 28 contractors at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
A report earlier in the week only indicated the strike was against 16 contractors, which decided to form a new highway work agreement separate of the NWI Contractors Association of Northwest Indiana. Twelve of the 28 contractors haven't assigned their bargaining rights to any organization. Teamsters drivers began a picket of Walsh Construction Co. last week.
Nearly 90 percent of members rejected the companies' proposals for an agreement. The previous contract expired May 31 and was extended one week until Monday.
No new negotiations have been scheduled as of Wednesday afternoon.
Teamsters Local 142 President Mitch Sawochka and Secretary-Treasurer Richard Knipp said in a statement they supported the members' decision and were disappointed at the companies' proposals.
"These members have had a cut to their pension benefits and only wanted companies to share the 'pain' by increasing their contributions to the pension and welfare funds," said the statement, which was sent to The Times by a union spokesman.
Keith Rose, president of Rieth-Riley Construction Co. Inc. and chairman of negotiations for the highway contractors group, said he thought the two-year agreement recently offered was fair.
In the offer presented Monday, Rose said the health and welfare contribution would have gone up 52 cents an hour in the first year and 44 cents an hour in the second year. Base wages, which are about $32 to $34 an hour, would have remained flat. The recently expired contract called for Teamsters to receive $45.57 per hour to cover wages and benefits.
Wages and benefits paid to workers have risen faster than if raises were pegged to the rate of inflation, Rose said. He said highway contractors paid $20.47 in total compensation to workers in 1991. A Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator puts the value of the 1991 wages at $32.24 in 2009.
"The bigger issue is they don't want to see a separate highway contract," Rose said.
Rose raised concerns about how competitive contractors using union workers can be with the increasing costs of the workers' benefit packages coupled with the gaining influence of nonunion contractors gaining a foothold on local projects.
The work stoppage grounds a host of construction projects in Lake and Porter counties, which are the areas covered by the contract.
The labor stoppage hasn't grounded all work Teamsters are doing. The NWI Contractors Association, representing about 60 companies, and the union formed a collective bargaining agreement that went into effect June 1. In a statement, the Teamsters said the contract includes the increases which the union is seeking from the companies they are leading a strike against.
Although the union is leading a strike against a group of contractors, a spokesman said a Teamster volunteered to drive a truck to a jobsite Wednesday on Interstate 80/94 to make sure a union member was doing the work for a contractor and that to make sure other site work could continue.
Teamsters Local 142 has about 4,000 members and represents employees in warehousing, trucking, manufacturing, construction, waste processing, scrap metal processing and at municipal agencies.
