"GE is making so much money--a projected 16 billion this year. It doesn't need to do this," Carmen Di Paolo recently told Albany's WGY news.
Di Paolo and over 19,000 other workers across the country began a two-day strike at midnight today to protest GE's abrupt increase in employees' health care costs.
The walkout, affecting 48 locations in 23 states, is the first major strike involving GE since 1969.
The strike was marred by tragedy this morning as a picketer was struck and killed by a local police car while on the line in Hollow Creek, KY, a small town in the Louisville metro area. Michelle Rodgers, the deceased, had worked on a GE dishwasher assembly line sine 1994.
"It's very devastating," said IUE/CWA Local 761 President Randy Payton. "She was killed doing what she was believed in."
Jefferson County police said the death was "an accident."
The woman was killed at about 5 a.m, but the story was not released on the AP newswire until well after noon the following day.
"GE owns NBC. Do you really think NBC will cover GE?" writes a reader to mediachannel.org, a watchdog site.
