About 310 United Auto Workers union members at Madison's Peterbilt truck factory remain locked out by management as a nearly seven-month labor stalemate continues into this week.
The company shut the workers out of the plant in late June after their contract expired.
The previous contract ran out June 26, and the union has yet to vote on the company's offer for a new five-year pact.
UAW Local 1832 President Mike Pardue said Monday that the union would like to resume talks with the company but that Peterbilt "refuses to answer our calls or e-mails" requesting a meeting. The two groups last held negotiations in August.
"We're going to send them another letter this week asking to get together, but it doesn't seem like they're interested in opening the plant again right now," Pardue said.
Plant manager Larry Vessels said Monday that Peterbilt has answered the union's questions and would like to have its contract offer presented to the members for a vote.
"We have an offer on the table, and we think it is very competitive for this area," Vessels said.
Whether the plant would resume production immediately after a contract was approved isn't certain, but that is not related to the contract situation, Vessels said.
"We don't have a crystal ball on the economy, and the truck market is down," he said. "We monitor market conditions and make adjustments as necessary."
The Madison plant, which opened in 1969, is one of two Peterbilt facilities that assemble the company's over-the-road trucks.
The other plant is in Denton, Texas, where the company has its headquarters. The Texas plant, which is not unionized, continues to manufacture trucks while the Tennessee plant is shut down.
Health care is concernUnder the company's latest offer for the Madison workers, they would get a raise of 35 cents an hour in the first year of the new contract, and 50 cents an hour in each successive year, Vessels said.
The average hourly pay at the plant is $24.70, but that is not the main issue with the new contract, Pardue said.
Among sticking points as far as the union is concerned, Pardue said, are provisions that would increase employee health-care premiums by more than 300 percent and would force laid-off workers to accept $5-an-hour pay cuts if they were called back to work.
Besides the employees locked out of the plant, about 300 people were already on layoffs.
It's to Peterbilt's advantage to use nonunion labor to make its trucks in the current economy, and that might explain the company's reluctance to negotiate with the union, said George Peterson, an auto industry analyst and president of AutoPacific Inc.
He said the big-truck market was down in 2008 because of new U.S. diesel-engine smog standards that took effect after 2007.
"For the truck makers, 2007 was a good year because a lot of people moved up their purchases" to avoid price increases after the engine changes that manufacturers were forced to make on 2008 models, Peterson said.
Peterbilt is a subsidiary of PACCAR, which also makes Kenworth trucks. The company has "never had a losing quarter since about 1931," Peterson said. The company's stock closed at $27.88 per share at the end of trading last week. Markets were closed on Monday.
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