Michael Blake, one of more than 3,000 striking Sikorsky Aircraft employees, sat in the cold on a noisy picket line last week worried about his latest tumor.
"Two days before the contract, I had another one pop out on my arm," said Blake, 57, who has cancer. "I have to stay on this medication the rest of my life."
Using a makeshift bench supported by tree stumps, he rested his arthritic legs, a side effect, he said, of his cancer medication. A fire burned in a trash can as workers screamed over a megaphone for better medical benefits.
For Blake and other workers around the country, contract proposals that would force them to pay more for medical coverage have become a fight worth taking to the streets.
"Workers don't want to give up what they've earned in terms of health-care coverage," said Robert Bruno, an associate professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois. "It's sort of the deepest wound you can cut."
Sikorsky, the helicopter-making unit of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., has proposed doubling health-care co-payments in the first year of a three-year deal and increasing them an additional 15 percent over the next two years, union officials said. It's the same plan given to Sikorsky's 6,000 salaried employees, the company said. Rest of story here........http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1137834395191#pagetop
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