By Paris Goodnight
Salisbury Post
Three of the five fired members of a bargaining committee for the union at Cleveland’s Freightliner truck manufacturing plant were out Thursday picketing in an effort to get their jobs back, exactly one year after they were let go.
Their activities came before word arrived Thursday that Freightliner planned to lay off 1,500 more workers in June and eliminate its second shift.
The Freightliner 5, as they call themselves, were members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) local 3520 and led a walkout when management broke off negotiations without extending a contract.
They have created a Web site called www.justice4five.com to support their claims.
The five are Robert Whiteside, Allen Bradley, Franklin Torrence, Glenna Swinford and David Crisco.
Whiteside, Bradley and Swinford were out in the drizzle Thursday picketing. Whiteside said plenty of people in cars and trucks were honking to show support.
The Freightliner 5 members have been appealing for support since an arbitrator was supposed to hear their case within six to eight weeks of the firings last year. “That passed by quickly,” Whiteside noted. “We’re all still unemployed.”
The Freightliner 5 went on a speaking tour over the past year that included stops in Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., where Freightliner has its corporate headquarters.
A Freightliner spokeswoman contacted in Portland offered no comment on the situation.
According to information on www. justice4five.com, the local strike committee voted to strike on April 2, 2007. But it noted the international union was of the opinion “we should accept a weak contract offer that had 22 open articles and 86 open health and safety issues.”
Last April 3, five of the bargaining committee members were fired along with five other officers and another union member for supporting an unauthorized work stoppage.
On the Web site, the group claims that the UAW is “actually a passive company-run union that has no desire to help their members.”
Whiteside said the firing issue is with Freightliner, while lack of support from the union is another matter that will be handled separately.
He said the fired workers won’t give up their efforts and want to go back to the jobs they held with the same benefits and seniority as they had.
“We have a right to seek resolution to this. We’re going to keep the pressure on to be re-instated,” he said.
Contact Paris Goodnight at 704-797-4255 or pgoodnight@ salisburypost.com.