I agree. If you are building less bikes due to weak economy and weaker sales, then you need less people. You should be able to bring back the ones you need, not just ones because of senority.
Yup, and in most cases that's exactly what you do. If you need to run the Sportster line, you call back the people who man
and support that line. That might include folks with classifications such as forklift driver or line feeder, since someone has to move the parts from the warehouse or trucks to the assembly line,and remove the empty containers. You don't just bring in 20 assemblers and tell them to go to it, every such operation requires support. And don't forget the maintenance folks, the QC folks (assuming H-D actually has any), the folks who clean the bathrooms and the floors, etc. It's supposed to be an organized process, not a free-for-all using the lowest possible number of people.
I've not read any of the actual contracts that H-D had, but if they followed normal conventions then employee recalls were most likely made by department and by classification using seniority. But that doesn't mean, at least in any contract I've ever dealt with, that you bring in a senior material handling or maintenance person to fill a job screwing fenders on. You bring in people with the appropriate classification in seniority order, and in this example that would be the senior assembler. But you also have to bring in the
agreed upon levels of support people, and as long as those agreed upon levels are reasonable and justifiable, I don't see the big deal. Unless, of course, some of you expect the assembler to walk over to the warehouse or truck and dig out the parts he will need on his own, and on the way stop to fix a leaking water pipe and clean the bathroom. Might slow things down just a tad, and create more than a few safety problems, but what the hey. And btw, never forget that a contract has to be agreed to by both the union
and management. If the existing contracts were so odious, why did the overpaid and underqualified management agree to them?
Jerry