Harley-Davidson Plant Picketed After Vote to Strike

Nearly 1,000 workers picketed the Harley-Davidson motorcycle assembly plant outside York on Monday over pay and work rules.

The two sides were “oceans apart” on issues that led employees to vote Sunday night to go on strike, said Clark Ruppert, district representative of the International Assn. of Machinists & Aerospace Workers. Company officials declined to discuss the bargaining.

Employees voted 1,242 to 65 to go on strike after talks broke off Saturday afternoon. Company and union representatives had been negotiating since November on a three-year contract to replace a four-year agreement that expired over the weekend.

No new talks were scheduled Monday with mediator Dan LeClair of Harrisburg.

There is disagreement on several issues, including wages, restoration of a cost-of-living increase and workers’ right to turn down overtime.

Company spokesman Ken Schmidt said Harley-Davidson’s first priority is to resume negotiations.

“We don’t know how long this will last,” he said. “We’re working to get back to the table and iron out whatever the differences are.”

He couldn’t predict when negotiations would resume.

“It may take two or three days for the dust to settle and have both sides get their collective heads together,” he said.

Harley-Davidson is the only motorcycle maker in the country. The Milwaukee-based company manufactures its engines and fiberglass parts in Wisconsin, but its assembly work is done at York. The union represents more than 1,450 Harley workers.

Now, production has stopped because of the strike, the first at the York County factory since 1969. Harley-Davidson also does light contract assembly work and some defense work--500-pound bomb casings--at the plant, Schmidt said, but he described it as less than 2% of the plant’s production.

Ruppert said workers had made concessions over the years.