yoter83

I think we all know this will never happen w/ Jeff, but its nice to imagine:

http://www.upworthy.com/video-ceos-w...ing?g=2&c=ufb1

socalflyboy

He DOES take notes.....13 million notes he took to the bank a few weeks ago for being the "LEADER" of the worlds largest airline.

APC225

JOLIET, Ill. — When it comes to dealing with labor unions, Caterpillar has long taken a stance as tough as the bulldozers and backhoes that have burnished its global reputation. Be it two-tier wage scales or higher worker contributions for health insurance, the company has been a leader in devising new ways to cut labor costs, with other manufacturers often imitating its strategies.

Now, in what has become a test case in American labor relations, Caterpillar is trying to pioneer new territory, seeking steep concessions from its workers even when business is booming.

Despite earning a record $4.9 billion profit last year and projecting even better results for 2012, the company is insisting on a six-year wage freeze and a pension freeze for most of the 780 production workers at its factory here. Caterpillar says it needs to keep its labor costs down to ensure its future competitiveness.

The company’s stance has angered the workers, who went on strike 12 weeks ago. “Considering the offer they gave us, it’s a strike we had to have,” said Albert Williams, a 19-year Caterpillar employee, as he picketed in 99-degree heat outside the plant, which makes hydraulic parts and systems essential for much of the company’s earth-moving machinery.

Caterpillar, which has significantly raised its executives’ compensation because of its strong profits, defended its demands, saying many unionized workers were paid well above market rates. To run the factory during the strike, the company is using replacement workers, managers and a few union members who have crossed the picket line.

The showdown, which has no end in sight, is being closely watched by corporations and unions across the country because it involves two often uncompromising antagonists — Caterpillar and the International Association of Machinists — that have figured in many high-stakes labor battles.

“Caterpillar has been a leader in the past 20 years in taking a hard line,” said Richard Hurd, a professor of industrial relations at Cornell. Last winter, Caterpillar locked out about 450 workers at its locomotive plant in London, Ontario, and then closed the factory after the union rejected its demand to cut wages by 55 percent. In the mid-1990s, the company vanquished the United Automobile Workers after a 17-month strike by 9,000 workers at eight factories; the union surrendered and accepted the company’s concession-filled offer.
The machinists have carried out largely successful strikes at Boeing and Lockheed Martin, ultimately winning better raises and benefits for thousands of members.

Robert Bruno, a labor relations professor at the University of Illinois, said Caterpillar was trying to drive compensation down to a new floor. “Caterpillar sees this as ‘the new normal,’ while this union local feels you have to draw a line in the sand to hold on,” he said. “Some people are saying the union should be more deferential, more compliant, that it’s a bad time to strike. How can you counter a powerful multinational in this economy?”

The current showdown is playing out on a flat stretch along Channahon Road here, 40 miles southwest of Chicago, where 15 strikers stand at the plant entrance during each four-hour picketing shift, with signs saying, “Fighting for Our Children’s Future” and “I Am Solidarity.” The strikers often shout “scab” as replacement workers drive into the factory.

Ever since negotiations began in March, Caterpillar has insisted on a wage freeze for its top-tier workers, those employed seven years or more; they average $26 an hour, or $55,000 a year before overtime. For the junior third of the workers who typically earn $12 to $19 an hour, Caterpillar has made no promises but has suggested it might raise their wages based on local market conditions.

Caterpillar has offered workers several modest, one-time payments, but is also demanding far higher health care contributions from its workers, up to $1,900 a year more, according to the union. The company had profit of $39,000 per employee last year.

Carlos Revilla, the plant’s operations manager, defended the push for a pay freeze, saying the top-tier workers were paid 34 percent above market level.

“A competitive and fair wage package is a must,” he said in a statement. “Paying wages well above market levels makes Joliet uncompetitive.”

But the union says Caterpillar, the world’s largest producer of earth-moving equipment, is in no way uncompetitive and should be sharing its prosperity with its workers.

“A company that earned a record $4.9 billion in 2011 and $1.586 billion in the first quarter of this year should be willing to help the workers who made those profits for them,” said Timothy O’Brien, president of Machinists Local Lodge 851, which represents the strikers. “Caterpillar believes in helping the very rich, but what they’re doing would help eliminate the middle class.”

He said the company wants a pay and pension freeze for longtime workers to push them into retirement and replace them with $13-an-hour workers.

Michael LeRoy, another labor relations professor at the University of Illinois, said Caterpillar has served as a model in legitimizing tough labor strategies, like take-it-or-leave-it contract offers.

Detroit’s automakers, for example, followed Caterpillar’s lead in adopting a two-tier wage system, lengthy contracts and a special health care trust fund for retirees, although “it took a bankruptcy to do it,” said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research.

Rusty Dunn, a Caterpillar spokesman, said the philosophy of paying market-based wages would help Caterpillar “keep competitive when times are bad.”

“We think the overall approach will preserve job growth in Illinois and the U.S.,” he said. Caterpillar has added about 6,500 jobs in the United States over the past year.

The strikers here exude an unusual defiance and pride, boasting that the hydraulic parts they produce require some of the most exacting specifications in heavy manufacturing.

“We make an excellent product here, a product that Caterpillar uses in all its vehicles,” said Mr. Williams, a machinery repairman. “That gives us a leverage that the other plants don’t have.”

Yet he admits to feeling financial pain. He receives $150 a week in strike benefits, and he said he did not have the $40 needed for his 11-year-old son to play Little League.

The Joliet strikers hope Caterpillar will soon sweeten its offer after concluding that it needs the strikers back to produce vital components.

Caterpillar says that is unlikely.

“We believe we have exhausted the negotiating process,” Mr. Dunn said. “The primary strategy, going forward, is to run the plant with the contingent work force as long as the work stoppage continues.”

He added that Caterpillar’s offer was “competitive, reasonable and fair.”

Rose Bain, a striker, grows impatient with such arguments. Earning $15 an hour after two years, she said she could not afford a six-year freeze and did not trust Caterpillar to follow through with the hinted raise for lower-paid workers.

“We’re the people who busted our butts to help them make record profits,” she said. “We shouldn’t be treated like this.”

Beaver Hunter

Caterpillar is a disgusting operation. Mgm greed is killing the middle class.

Zonker

Unearned, stolen notes.

Ottolillienthal

Jeff has people to take notes for him.

Instead, Jeff can kiss my butt.

APC225

Workers who had been striking at a Caterpillar hydraulic parts factory in Joliet, Ill., voted on Friday to ratify a proposed six-year contract that contained almost all of the concessions the company had demanded.
In ratifying the deal, the strikers acted against recommendations made by leaders of their union local, who had objected strongly to the pact. The agreement was negotiated by union leaders from the district level to end a showdown that had gone on for months without significant progress toward a resolution.
The fight between Caterpillar and the International Association of Machinists was considered a test case in American labor relations, in part because Caterpillar was driving such a hard bargain when its business was thriving.
The strike by 780 members of the machinists began on May 1 as workers rejected Caterpillar’s demand for a six-year wage freeze for two-thirds of the factory’s workers — those hired before May 2005 — at a time when the company was reporting record profits. Caterpillar argued that wages for the higher-paid workers exceeded market levels.
The deal the workers ratified contained far-reaching concessions, including the wage freeze, a pension freeze for the more senior two-thirds of the workers and a steep increase in what the workers pay toward their health care insurance. It also called for a $3,100 ratification bonus, which union officials said Caterpillar agreed on Thursday to increase from $1,000.
“It’s a win for Caterpillar — they achieved their bargaining objectives,” said Michael LeRoy, a labor relations professor at the University of Illinois. “There’s very little good news in this for the union — they have managed to maintain the bargaining relationship. I wouldn’t say it’s a disaster, but it sure is a step back.”
The striking workers had faced a tough choice in the ratification vote: accept a deal that many found unsatisfactory or continue a painful 15-week walkout with no guarantee that they could get Caterpillar to sweeten its offer. About 105 workers had already crossed the picket line and returned to work.
The union’s leaders declined to disclose the results of the vote, which they said was close.
Al Williams, a 19-year employee at the plant, said he voted for ratification even though he disliked the six-year wage freeze.
“I’m glad we’re going back to work,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the best deal, but it’s doable. I voted for it simply because they weren’t able to tell us definitively what we could hope to get other than what was in this offer.”
For the workers, the deal was a slight improvement over what Caterpillar was offering when the walkout began. While the deal kept a six-year pay freeze for the more senior workers, it provided for a single raise during the six years for workers hired after May 2005 — a 3 percent raise at the end of this year. Caterpillar’s previous offer did not promise any raise for that group.
During the negotiations, Caterpillar also stepped back from its insistence that management be able to assign workers new jobs or new shifts indefinitely, outside of seniority. Under the deal approved Friday, workers could still be assigned to new jobs or shifts irrespective of seniority, but for a maximum of 90 days.
Mr. LeRoy said that the deal “does signal continued wage stagnation in the manufacturing sector, not only for unionized, but also nonunion workers.”
Tim O’Brien, president of the striking local, Machinists Lodge Local Lodge 851, called for rejecting the contract, saying the Joliet workers did not walk the picket lines for nearly four months and endure such sacrifice to settle for a stingy deal.
But Steve Jones, the top official in Machinists District 8 in Burr Ridge, Ill., and the union leader who negotiated the settlement with Caterpillar, said the deal was the best the union could get.
“If there was a better agreement out there to be had, we would have taken it,” Mr. Jones said on Wednesday after reaching the deal.
The factory’s top tier, representing two-thirds of the workers, earns an average of $26 an hour, while the lower-tier workers generally earn $12 to $19 an hour. Caterpillar said it had insisted on a pay freeze because it wanted to maintain the factory’s competitiveness and because the top-tier workers earned substantially above the market average.
The contract does not include a cost of living adjustment for the workers, although Caterpillar has said it might adjust the pay of the lower-tier workers upward based on local labor market conditions during the six-year contract.
During the strike, the workers often expressed anger that Caterpillar was insisting on a wage freeze when the company, the world’s leading producer of earth-moving machinery, had a record profit of $4.9 billion last year, with forecasts of stronger earnings this year. The compensation of its chief executive, Douglas R. Oberhelman, increased by 60 percent in 2011, to $16.9 million.

APC225

On the Job
By Anita Bruzzese, USA Today

Managers are supposed to focus on the bottom line, but new research suggests that kind of focus that may end up costing companies in the long run.

Managers can get a heightened sense of their own power when they're pushed to zero in on bottom-line issues such as headcount, budget control and worker bonuses, according to a recent experiment from New York University's Stern School of Business and Cornell University's Johnson School of Management.

"As resources become more finite, then there is a pecking order of who gets more. That gets everyone more focused on power," says Steven Blader, associate professor of management and organizations at NYU.

Managers who feel more powerful are more likely to treat workers unfairly and have less concern about fairness when making decisions, the research finds.

Still, researchers found another kind of manager does focus more on fairness: managers more focused on status — how others perceive them.

And a manager seen as being more fair is more likely to have an engaged workforce that delivers better bottom-line results, Blader says.

"The takeaway from this is that companies need to get their managers more focused on what their colleagues and subordinates think about them," he says.

While no managers want to believe they have become power-hungry ogres, how can they know if they've crossed the line? If a formal 360-degree feedback process isn't in place, Blader says a manager should try to solicit feedback from employees.

"Pay attention to even subtle signs from workers," he says. "Look at their reactions when you ask them how you're doing. Recognize that they're probably apprehensive of giving you feedback, so just try to be a little more attentive to how people are reacting to you."

SoCalGuy

No amount of note taking fixes "inept".
He's a lost cause as a leader.