Third shift General Electric workers showed up at the DeKalb GE plant at 11:30 p.m. Monday, but they did not show up to manufacture motors for clothes dryers.

Instead, they picketed against the company’s increases in co-payments on their health care plans that took effect Jan. 1.

Ninety-one members of the International Union of Electronic Workers/Communications Workers of America will continue the strike at the plant today and Wednesday. Nearly 18,000 workers represented by two unions are expected to strike at 48 GE plants in 23 states. Union representatives said workers will return to work early Thursday morning.

IUE-CWA Post 1081 President Debbi Hart, who has worked for the plant for 30 years, said the people most hurt by the increase are retirees, though current employees also feel the crunch. Post 1081 represents the DeKalb manufacturing plant located at 1900 Pleasant St.

“A company that reported $16 billion in profits last year wasn’t even willing to come to the table and talk about the raises in May,” she said. “Instead, they pushed the increases through for Jan. 1.”

Kevin Holderness, an employee at GE for 25 years, said all they wanted was to be a part of the decision-making process.

“It might not help now,” he said. “We just want them to get the idea.”

GE spokesman Gary Scheffer said health care costs for the company have increased 45 percent since 1999, and the company covered 100 percent of the increases in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

“We are asking employees to absorb some of the increase in health care costs for 2003,” he said. “We don’t want to raise the costs for our workers, but the increase reflects changes in the marketplace.”

The increase is expected to cost an average worker $300 to $400 each year, a 62 percent increase in out-of-pocket costs, said IUE-CWA spokeswoman Lauren Asplen. Scheffer claims the increase only would cost workers about $200 each year.

The average employee at the DeKalb plant earns $15 an hour, Hart said.

Scheffer said GE officials can’t understand where numbers such as a 62 percent increase in out-of-pocket costs come from, and they indicated the company could not confirm the union’s estimates.

“We never struck for 30 years,” said Diane Croom, an employee at GE for 32 years. “We’re willing to stand up and fight and we’ll continue fighting ‘til the end.”

Despite increases in co-pays, Scheffer said GE employees continue to have good benefits at reasonable costs and said GE employees openly admit that.

“Employees at our company pay 16 percent of health care costs, even with the additional costs that took effect Jan. 1, which is far below the national average at 22 percent,” Scheffer said.

Croom, however, disagreed.

“They just keep on taking benefits away from us,” she said. “Pretty soon things like vacation will be taken away.”

“The immediate cause of the strike is GE’s unilateral increase of health care co-pays for working families and pre-65 retirees in its managed care plan, but workers also intend the strike to serve as a deterrent to GE’s stated plan to seek ‘substantial’ increases when national union negotiations start in May 2003,” GE Workers United stated in a press release.

Asplen said the union’s contract with GE allows for increases in co-pays but indicated the company never had increased the costs of health care for workers without input from the workers’ unions. The last time co-pays were raised was in 1994.

If no results come from the two-day strike, more action can be taken later, GE employees said.

“We want to show GE we care about our rights as workers and, if necessary, we will do it again in June,” Hart said.