Still on strike in Elkhart

Sour notes still echo on an Elkhart picket line

Excerpt:

In a town with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, being on strike is not going to get you much sympathy. And staying on strike for three years is going to earn you even less.

“People don’t respect us. They look at us like, ‘You are stupid because you’re on strike when you could have a good job,’” said David Kish, 62, who spent 40 years making trumpets, trombones and other musical instruments at Elkhart’s Vincent Bach plant before he and 230 fellow union members walked off their jobs April 1, 2006. About 130 workers remain on strike.

The strike has never officially ended, although production at the plant was disrupted only briefly before the company hired replacement workers. It later lured a number of strikers to cross the picket lines.

...

... union members meet up once a week at Elkhart’s Disabled American Veterans hall to collect their strike pay and share coffee and doughnuts. There they chat bitterly about Conn-Selmer, the Bach instrument line’s parent company, and the 70 or so replacement workers and strike-breakers they say are now working for far less than the average $20 an hour that was paid in the plant’s heyday.

Comment: NYTimes interactive graphic

Humor: Reminds me of a Seinfeld episode: The Strike