This story has been updated for additional clarification on ownership from Trachte Building Systems, which tells WORT that it is not related in ownership to Trachte in Oregon Wisconsin, adding that “Trachte Building Systems has been 100% employee owned since 2007. Palladium Equity Partners has no ownership in Trachte Building Systems of Sun Prairie, and never has.”
Last week, Labor Radio reported that the Oregon, Wisconsin-based Trachte was failing to negotiate with its unionized workforce of its Sun Prairie production facilities. By this week, it was official, and on Monday workers of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or SMART, Local 565, were walking the picket line on strike in Sun Prairie. Jesse Buell, Business Manager for Local 565, says that Trachte management showed no interest in negotiating with his union.
Around 30 to 40 workers were walking the line on Monday afternoon. Labor Radio asked Buell how Trachte seemed to be continuing production.
Skyler Lukas, a third-shift door assistant lead and a member of the 565 negotiating team, described the frustrating management stance.
Lukas described the key sticking point, a management attempt to impose language that would require mandatory overtime at Trachte’s will.
The Trachte management stance has been so dismissive that Buell says he is afraid that its goal is not, ultimately, a contract with the union.
Founded as a family company in 1901, with its distinctive manufactured all-metal outbuildings that flourished after World War II still dotting the Madison-area landscape, Trachte is owned by its workers through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).
But how much power this gives workers is less than clear. According to Buell, the worker-owners now get one trustee representative on the company’s board of directors, and Buell is unaware of any contact between the trustee and the workforce. But whatever the ultimate financial plans of Trachte corporate management, SMART union workers will continue to walk the picket line, with labor and community support welcome.
Buell tells Labor Radio that there has been no attempt by management to negotiate since Monday, and the strike continues. The picket line is located at Trachte’s production facility on Wilburn Road in Sun Prairie. A strike-breaking security firm that refused to identify itself to this reporter patrols the company parking lot, but there is street parking on Corporate Center Road just past the facility’s entrance.
Reporting and image by Greg Geboski