Caterpillar Mapleton News Today

Workers have responded with derision to the increase in strike pay, rightly viewing it as an ploy by the UAW to retain credibility in the face of growing rank-and-file militancy.

Steven Dierkes, 39, was only on the fifth day of his new job at Caterpillar Mapleton Foundry in Peoria County when he tripped and fell, a factory worker said.

A 39-year-old Caterpillar worker fell into a molten iron crucible of over 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and died immediately last Thursday at the company’s Mapleton, Illinois foundry, the second worker death at the facility in six months.