401004_v3-jpg

(NDAgConnection.com) – As the strike by roughly 1,200 CNH Industrial workers in Wisconsin and Iowa concludes its second week, there is growing frustration among workers over the information blackout by the United Auto Workers union on its talks with the company. The strike began on May 2, 36 hours after the expiration of the previous six-year contract between the UAW and CNH, a global agricultural and construction equipment maker which produces Case IH, New Holland and other brands.

Workers, inspired by the 2021 John Deere strike, are determined to win back previous concessions in wages, benefits and working conditions. A central concern is wages, given the skyrocketing inflation in food, gas and other basic necessities, and the bumper profits CNH has reaped over the past year.

At the same time it is keeping CNH workers in the dark, the UAW is effectively blacking out any news of the strike from its hundreds of thousands of members in the auto industry and at Deere, Caterpillar, and other heavy equipment manufacturers. The information embargo is being carried out in de facto coordination with the company and the national media, which has remained entirely silent on one of the largest strikes of industrial workers currently taking place in the US.

The ever-present fear in both corporate boardrooms and UAW offices is that any given struggle could ignite pent-up anger among millions of workers over decades of deteriorating living standards and working conditions.

While CNH workers have been told virtually nothing about the contract talks, management has been given a free hand to escalate its strikebreaking efforts.