New York Times, January 8, 2003

The largest union at General Electric announced yesterday that it would conduct a two-day strike next week to protest the company's decision to increase its employees' out-of-pocket health expenses.

Union leaders said the walkout, scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday, would involve at least 14,000 workers and would affect many divisions, including appliances, jet engines, lighting and power systems. It would be the first national strike at G.E. since a 104-day walkout in 1969.

Last Wednesday, G.E. increased health care expenses by what it said was $200 a year per employee. Union officials estimated that the increase would total $400 a year.

Edward L. Fire, president of the main union, the International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America, said that his union was "taking on the fight for affordable health care for all G.E. workers, including unrepresented workers."

"G.E. has provoked a strike through its greed," Mr. Fire said.

The union is attacking one of the most profitable companies, saying it does not share enough of its earnings with its work force. Union officials said G.E., with profits of $14.1 billion in 2001, could easily afford to maintain health benefits without forcing its workers and retirees to pay more.

But executives at the General Electric Company, based in Fairfield, Conn., said it had absorbed most of the increasing health care costs and continued to pay more than four-fifths of overall health costs. A spokesman, Gary Sheffer, said the average health-care cost per employee was expected to be $2,350 higher this year than in 1999.

"G.E.'s health benefits," Mr. Sheffer said, "remain among the best in the industries in which G.E. competes and in the marketplace."

In an unusual provision, the union contract gives it the right to strike if G.E. raises health expenses before the three-year pact expires on June 15. Workers' salaries average $840 a week.

"If we accept what G.E. is trying to do now on health expenses," Mr. Fire said, "they will view that as weakness, and they will view that as their opportunity to really come after us in negotiations for more substantial shifting of costs upon the workers."

One- or two-day walkouts usually warn of possibly longer strikes.

The International Union of Electronic Workers, which merged with the communications workers two years ago, represents less than 5 percent of G.E.'s global work force of 310,000.