[Imc-newsroom] Trailmobile out of business

[Peter Miller]

If anybody cares to look into this story, it's a fairly important 
one.  Trailmobile makes (made) semi trailers at a factory in Charleston, IL 
as well as a couple other places around the country.  They were locked out 
in ~1996, shortly after the Decatur struggles at A.E. Staley, Caterpillar, 
and Bridgestone-Firestone ended.  The workers at Trailmobile are members of 
the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers' union (PACE), 
the same union that represented/represents the workers at Staley in 
Decatur.  During their lockout, the union focused members' attention on the 
owner, Ed Wiranto, a friend/family member of Indonesia's dictator at the 
time, Suharto.  Because of this, some of the union members became active in 
ETAN, the East Timor Action Network.  The union struggle was also important 
because many Staley workers felt they were sold out by their union and the 
AFL-CIO (after 31 months locked out and tremendous efforts to save their 
union and their jobs).  Because of the experience at Staley, PACE members 
at Trailmobile began their struggle with a heightened understanding of 
their international union's limitations, possibly leading to a better 
outcome from their lockout.  (Their lockout did end much more favorably 
than did the Staley workers'.)

People to contact would include Larry Agan, Kevin Grant, Mike Griffin 
(decatur), and ... the current president, whose name I can't recall.  You 
can probably find phone numbers at people.yahoo.com

-Peter


>Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 00:08:42 -0600
>From: "Daniel S. Lewart" <d-lewart at uiuc.edu>
>To: Peter Miller <peterm at shout.net>
>Subject: Trailmobile
>User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
>
>Peter,
>
>You probably know this, but if not, I heard Trailmobile went out of business.
>
>Solidarity,
>Dan