United Steelworkers members on strike against Goodyear are wondering, and their leaders say the company appears to be bringing in more people than the union expected to fill in for more than 500 people out on strike.

“Rumor has it they’re from Norfolk,” 28-year Goodyear employee Jerry Trouba said as he propped up a rain shelter for pickets by a wood fire in a drum Wednesday morning.

Goodyear has a non-union hydraulic hose plant in Norfolk.

The company’s spokesman, Ed Markey, made a statement open to some interpretation late Wednesday afternoon.

“As part of our contingency plans, the Lincoln plant is operating with trained, salaried associates from Lincoln and various other Goodyear locations,” Markey said.  

No elaboration was available, he said.

The union wasn’t certain any Goodyear production employees from Norfolk or anywhere else were coming in to keep work going in Lincoln, said Gary Schaefer, vice president of Local 286.

“We have not verified that. We were told when this started, the only people coming in from outside normal activity were 29 people, sales and service personnel from outside Lincoln, within the Goodyear chain.”

A Goodyear manager told Schaefer as late as Sunday those 29 people were coming Monday, and the only other people coming would be outside electrical contractors, he said.   

Then, three vans, which Schaefer estimated could carry 15 people apiece, started rolling into the plant at about 7 a.m. and leaving at about 7 p.m., although one stayed later Tuesday night.

“The people slump over. They’re tinted windows, so you can’t see inside,” he said.

A TV news crew followed them to Staybridge Suites on North 27th, Schaefer said. Staybridge staff would not comment.

The local union leadership says Goodyear seems to have misled the union about how many people would be working at the Lincoln plant during the strike, who they are and what they’re doing.

“They have so far been not receptive about talking to us about that,” said Schaefer.

But he isn’t sure the people in the vans aren’t the very same people management had said they would bring in.

“We’ve got some feelers out,” he said.

In any case, he said the union intends no defensive moves, not even following the vans to see where they go or who is in them.

“Harassing is in the eyes of beholder,” he said. “We are under explicit instructions from the international not to engage in any of those activities.

“We are supposed to keep our people focused on the issue at hand, a fair agreement and major labor issues.”

It would appear, from the scores of vehicles in the plant parking lot and the likely number of people in the vans, that there are more people working in the plant than the 29 management told the union would be there, said Schaefer and Trouba.

“We don’t like it,” Schaefer said. “If there are people other than sales and service in there, I do not like that one bit.”

No new negotiations are being discussed in the strike against Goodyear, which the union hopes will stop the company from closing tire plants in Texas and Alabama, and force a better deal than Goodyear last proposed on benefits and wages.

Trouba wondered aloud how people unfamiliar with the skills required to run things inside the plant might be doing it.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said, and pointed out pickets with more than 30 years of experience apiece in the factory.

“They bring in people with no experience at all?” he said. It’s just an unsafe atmosphere.”

Schaefer expects a reckoning with Goodyear.

“At some point in time they’re going to have to deal with us on it,” he said. “We’re going to conduct ourselves in a professional manner on the picket line.”