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Other work stoppages around the U.S. this year also illustrate the role of expertise, albeit in varying ways:
In Houston, Adrianna Vasquez makes $8.60 an hour doing what she knows people think is the world's most replaceable job: She's a janitor. When the 37-year-old returned in August to resume cleaning the 100 toilets on 10 floors in a downtown Chase Bank tower after a citywide janitor strike that won a 12 percent raise, Vasquez said the bathrooms cleaned by replacement crews looked like stalls in a seedy bar. "I just wanted to cry when I saw it," she said.
In New York, Consolidated Edison locked out 8,000 workers in July and brought in replacements from other states to work power lines and operate the grid. It ended just as severe storms hit and threatened power outages. "Not enough people that knew what they were doing," said John Melia, a spokesman for the Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America.
In Illinois, where the Chicago teachers' strike kept 350,000 students out of class for a week this month, a lesser-known strike began in May at a Caterpillar Inc. plant. The heavy machinery manufacturer hired replacement workers and the strike ended in August in what was widely seen as a victory for the company. John Hunt, 51, said he saw what appeared to be empty and lightly loaded shipping trucks leaving the plant under the replacement workers, but he never saw it as a turning point. "The company's line was, `Doing great and we're not hurting production.'"
The NFL referees' union wants improved salaries, better retirement benefits and resolution of some other logistical issues. The NFL is proposing a pension freeze and a higher 401(k) match; the union is balking because of the greater risk to the nest egg that comes with the loss of a defined benefit.
For American Crystal Sugar, which locked out employees in five factories in three states, vice president Brian Ingulsrud acknowledged that the union workers are "very skilled" and said it was a "big challenge" to bring in replacements. He said the company worked hard at training the new workers in the months when the plants were not processing beets.
"It was a learning curve, there was no doubt," Ingulsrud said. "Last year we did have some bumps in terms of working through that. We feel we're on the right side of the curve right now."
The sugar executive, by the way, thought the right call was made at the end of the Monday night football game.
"When I saw the replay," Ingulsurd said, "it was really the case where the tie goes to the offensive guy."
[Associated
Press;
Associated Press reporters Deepti Hajela in New York, David Mercer in Champaign, Ill., Dave Kolpack in Fargo, N.D., and Juan Carlos Llorca in El Paso, Texas, contributed to this report.
Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pauljweber.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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