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IndustriALL Caterpillar Network Meeting

16 March, 2015On 10 and 11 June in Brussels, more than 30 Caterpillar trade union delegates from four continents met and agreed on future steps to be taken by the network.

The Caterpillar Trade Union Network covers almost every continent where Caterpillar upholds operations today. Trade unions from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia are actively involved, while those from India and Latin America also invited to join. All delegates reported about bad labour practices within the Caterpillar group throughout the world. Not only that Caterpillar management is anti-union, on top they are harassing employees willing to organize in many countries.

Caterpillar is a market leading US multinational manufacturer of construction and mining machinery, engines and other mechanical engineering.

Mass redundancies and replacement of regular work with various forms of precarious work are seen almost everywhere throughout the world at Caterpillar. In some countries people are so scared that they do not even dare to visit with trade unions and union organizers during the weekend and in secret locations. This behaviour is unacceptable to Caterpillar’s trade union counterparts, and the network will take action.

Representatives especially from the UK, USA and Australia committed their support to organizing efforts together with IndustriALL Global Union in the future, when and where needed.

Delegates also agreed to improve the cooperation between the existing European Works Council (EWC) and the global level. There will be regular exchange of information. The participants also agreed to continue and deepen a mapping exercise together with the Australian IndustriALL affiliate AMWU in order to build a more comprehensive view of where the company is active and where solidarity activities are necessary.

Tim Bressler from UAW who chaired the meeting on behalf of Vice President Norwood Jewell was impressed by the willingness of network participants to contribute and to take up workload on top of their day-to-day duties.

Tony Murphy from British union Unite also stated that the network has made a lot of progress over the last years. He emphasized as real progress the fact that the network this year adopted a clear working plan with goals and duties with participants committing to deliver outputs on specific dates.

Matthias Hartwich, IndustriALL Director of Mechanical Engineering, states:

Now that we have a work plan connected with specific tasks, goals and a clear idea where we want to be at specific dates, we send a clear signal also to the management of anti-union companies that we will not leave you alone. There is no place to hide for you. We will be there. But at the same time we offer our hand to install a fair social dialogue with the management in order to solve open within Caterpillar.