For the first time in more than two decades, union employees at Tuftco Inc. in Chattanooga are striking the carpet equipment maker.
About two dozen of the 55 hourly employees at Tuftco’s main factory on Holtzclaw Avenue walked off their jobs this week after their previous three-year labor agreement expired and the company and union were unable to negotiate a new contract.
“We made a lot of contract concessions during the downturn, and we have some real concerns about the company refusing to recognize the seniority of the workers here,” said John Sisson, a 64-year-old water jet operator at Tuftco who is a committee member for Local 56 of the International Association of Machinists union. “If we lose that right, then we will have people moved up just on preference rather than ability.”
Tuftco is continuing production at its Chattanooga plant, and company executives said they could shift more production to the company’s other nonunion plants in Dalton, Ga., and Palmer, Tenn., to meet customer demands, if needed.
Tuftco, a 55-year-old maker of tufting and carpet-making equipment, is the only unionized tufting plant in Chattanooga. In a prepared statement, Tuftco CEO Steve Frost, whose father Jack bought the company is 1985, said the company “offered a wage and benefit package that far exceeds the average manufacturing compensation plan in the Chattanooga region.”