All-Clad workers walk out

BY MICHAEL BRADWELL, Staff writer

MEADOW LANDS - Hourly workers at All-Clad Metal Crafters walked off their jobs Thursday night after rejecting the company's latest contract offer earlier in the day.

The workers, who are members of United Steelworkers of America Local 3403, voted at 3 p.m. at Holiday Inn, Meadow Lands.

Jack Coates, assistant director of USWA District 10, who administered the vote, declined to give a tally but said workers rejected the company's four-year offer, the second one it had made within the past two weeks.

"The members felt it was insufficient," Coates said Thursday.

"We're prepared for a strike," he said.

Workers were picketing outside the plant Thursday night.

All-Clad makes high-end cookware used by professional chefs and also sells the pots and pans in upscale department stores across the country.

The company employs about 300 people who work in three shifts at its Morganza Road factory in Cecil Township.

According to a summary of contract changes obtained by the Observer-Reporter, the company's latest offer included minimum hourly wage increases of 25 cents on March 1 of each year from 2004 through 2007, as well as an additional 35-cent-per-hour increase on Sept. 1, 2007. Employees also were offered a lump-sum $595 ratification bonus.

Workers rejected the company's first offer in a vote on March 16 and had been working without a contract since then.

The company did not return a call seeking a response to Thursday's vote and subsequent walkout.