Steelworkers Will Urge Top ThyssenKrupp Management to Resume Negotiations, Resolve Rotek Dispute

Contact: Tony Montana (412) 562-2592 or tmontana@usw.org

PITTSBURGH –The United Steelworkers (USW) today said that about 50 members of Local 8565 on strike over unfair labor practices at ThyssenKrupp’s Rotek subsidiary in Aurora, Ohio will travel to the company’s headquarters in Troy, Michigan for a rally on Monday, July 22, 2013, where they also will hand deliver a letter from the union’s negotiating committee to ThyssenKrupp’s top labor relations executive, Vice President John Taylor.

In the letter, negotiators for Local 8565 point out that after workers decisively rejected a contract proposal from the company on May 29, Rotek management took almost two months before contacting the union with a proposal that included radical, unnecessary changes to its union security provisions.

“The members of USW Local 8565 are ready to come back to work and are willing to do so with a fair and equitable contract,” the letter to Taylor states. “We believe you are in a position to break the current deadlock, and we respectfully ask that you intervene to help bring this labor dispute to a mutually agreeable resolution.”

At Rotek, 184 members of USW Local 8565 produce slewing bearings for use in wind turbines, along with seamless steel and metal rings. Earlier this year, a group of union volunteers from Aurora attended the American Wind Energy Association conference in Chicago, where they talked about their struggle for a fair contract with ThyssenKrupp’s top management as well as Rotek customers who were curious about the labor dispute.

The USW represents 850,000 men and women employed in metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number of workers in public sector and service occupations.

Click Here to read the letter.

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