Workers at a Caterpillar plant in Illinois voted to ratify a six-year contract agreement on Friday. The agreement comes after a three month strike. The agreement, which local leadership opposed, includes a wage freeze for most workers, a pension freeze and an increase in health care costs, all things that the workers had resisted at the beginning. The union has pointed out that Caterpillar made record profits last year and is on track to do the same this year. Workers say that they do not like the agreement, but that they wanted to get back to work.
See "Caterpillar Workers Ratify Deal They Dislike", Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, August 19, 2012