Senators urge CNH Industrial to offer striking workers more

A group of U.S. senators led by Vermont independent Bernie Sanders is lending its support to workers at two CNH Industrial plants who have been on strike for better pay and benefits for more than a month. The senators said the lowest-paid workers at the plants in Racine, Wisconsin, and Burlington, Iowa, would receive raises of $1.33 an hour, which they say wouldn’t cover the $6,400 health insurance deductible CNH Industrial has proposed. “If CNH can afford to provide you with a $9.2 million signing bonus and nearly $22 million in total compensation for one year of work — nearly 8,000 times the raise you are offering some workers — it can afford to pay all of your workers better wages and better benefits,” the senators wrote to Wine. “If CNH can afford to spend over $100 million on stock buybacks over a six-month period to enrich its wealthy shareholders, it can afford to treat all of its workers with the dignity and the respect that they deserve.” Officials with the company, which is based in the United Kingdom, didn’t respond Wednesday to questions about the strike, but previously they have said they were committed to resolving the contract dispute through the bargaining process.