Bargaining Digest Weekly: by Gordon Pavy, Feb 17, 2007

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/02/17/bargaining-digest-weekly-machinists-reach-tentative-agreement-in-harley-davidson-strike/

Bargaining Digest Weekly: Machinists Reach Tentative Agreement in Harley-Davidson Strike

by Gordon Pavy, Feb 17, 2007

The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 800 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

The Machinists (IAM) union and Harley-Davidson Inc. have reached a tentative agreement in a contract dispute that shut down production at the motorcycle maker’s plant in York, Pa., the union announced yesterday.

Members of IAM Local 175 in York will vote next week on the tentative settlement, the union said. Nearly 2,800 IAM members have been on strike since Feb. 2 at Harley’s largest U.S. facility, which produces its most popular touring bikes.

Terms of the tentative agreement were not available. “They didn’t get everything. We didn’t get everything,” according to union representative Tom Boger.

Earlier, union members overwhelmingly rejected the company’s three-year contract offer for a 2 percent guaranteed raise plus a 2 percent raise contingent on a health insurance agreement. The proposal would have reduced pay rates for new hires and required employees to begin paying part of their health insurance premiums.

Additional information will be provided on the Local 175 website at http://www.iamlocal-175.org/ as it becomes available.

After the strike started, Harley-Davidson laid off 440 employees at supplier plants in Tomahawk and Menominee Falls, Wis. The United Steelworkers (USW) represent the workers in Tomahawk. The strike also forced layoffs of USW members at a Harley supplier, HB Performance Systems.

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Auto Industry: Chrysler’s restructuring plan entails 13,000 job cuts, as well as the closing of a Cleveland-area parts plant, the closing of a Newark, Del., assembly plant and elimination of a shift at a St. Louis plant. The restructuring also will affect eight other plants in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

The United Autoworkers (UAW) blasted the plan as devastating news for workers and their communities and blamed U.S. trade policies. The union promised to fight to protect workers’ jobs and benefits.

The UAW says if buyouts similar to those negotiated at Ford and General Motors were put in place, it would save Chrysler $340 million a year and up to $3 billion in health care liabilities.

DaimlerChrysler left open the possibility that the restructuring would include a spinoff of Chrysler operations and indicated that changes would reduce model offerings and affect dealerships.

The restructuring announcement caused the company’s stock to soar on speculation of a spinoff.

Robert Miller, CEO of Delphi Corp., says he wants to preserve the company’s commitments to workers, especially pension benefits, in negotiating a new deal with the UAW and other unions.

However, in Buffalo, talks are focusing on compensation cuts that would amount to up to 65 percent lower pay and benefits if the company’s proposals are agreed upon.

Meanwhile, the judge in the Delphi bankruptcy case has approved the payout of $145 million in fees for the company’s lawyers.

A report says General Motors and Ford stock prices got a boost from a Deutsch Bank analyst optimism and speculative hope that the UAW will be interested in a Goodyear-style Voluntary Employee’s Beneficiary Association trust arrangement for retiree medical.

The UAW and USW are trying to hold up Dana’s sale of its engine-parts business because the German buyer MAHLE won’t honor retiree medical obligations.

BorgWarner Inc. will close its Muncie, Ind., plant by 2009 and throw 800 UAW members out of work. Indiana is hurting with three auto plant closings this year, at a cost of 4,000 factory jobs.

The Canadian Auto Workers have reached a buyout and retirement agreement with Chrysler. The buyouts could affect as many as 1,600 workers at the Windsor Assembly Plant, Brampton Assembly Plant and Etobicoke Casting Plant.

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Transportation: Conductors of the United Transportation Union (UTU) are on strike at the Canadian National Railway (CN). Toronto and Montreal commuters are not affected. The railway is going before the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to try to get the strike ruled illegal and obtain a back-to-work order.

CN kept the trains rolling using 800 management employees as conductors. The railroad is talking tough, saying they are proving their mettle against wage demands that are out of line with the private sector. The UTU is asking for 4 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.5 percent annual increases over three years.

Meanwhile, the UTU is opposing a $2.3 billion loan subsidy to the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad. The UTU says the rail line is destined to fail and the loan just sets up a takeover by Union Pacific.

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Airlines: Some 1,500 Air Line Pilots members and Comair reached a tentative deal just prior to Tuesday’s deadline for unilateral imposition of cuts. Pilots have until March 4 to ratify the agreement.

Members of the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) at Northwest are left out of bankruptcy claim payments made to pilots and members of IAM because they do not have a concessionary contract in place. Northwest rejected an AFA-CWA proposal for $156 million in cuts last week.

The flight attendants told the bankruptcy court that they want out of $195 million in pay cuts by the company. The union cited improved performance of the company as evidence.

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Mining: The Mine Workers (UMWA) and Peabody Coal reached agreement on a five-year contract that mirrors the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association (BCOA) agreement reached late last year. The contract covers some 1,800 miners at a dozen operations in West Virginia.

Magnum Coal became the next company to agree to a five-year contract with the UMWA patterned after the BCOA agreement. Magnum, which was spun off St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc., operates 17 mines in Boone, Logan and Kanawha counties in West Virginia.

Like the BCOA agreement, the Peabody and Magnum miners will receive an immediate $1.50 an hour raise and a total increase of $4 an hour over the length of the contract.

The parent company for ASARCO, Grupo Mexico, is trying to block a ratified labor agreement with USW and its ASARCO subsidiary in the United States. ASARCO is in bankruptcy, and the court must approve the contract.

The cynical move by the parent could have the effect of keeping its U.S. mines closed, reduce supply and raise copper prices for the parent companies’ mines operating in Mexico and elsewhere.

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Manufacturing: More than 500 Steelworkers in Pennsylvania continue working without a contract at Victaulic pipe manufacturing plants. Mediated talks will start soon as the union seeks to stave off health care cost increase proposals that eat up wage increases on the table.

The Steelworkers and MeadWestvaco have been on a negotiations hiatus for two months to replace a contract that expired Dec. 1. Now they have set talks for March.

In Ohio, IAM and AK Steel are going back to the table next week to try to end the lockout of 1,900 workers that is getting close to the one-year mark.

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Public Sector: Forty-five percent of federal workers responded to a survey question indicating that pay is unrelated to performance.

AFGE President John Gage said the survey results say less about the current pay system and more about why a performance-based system would not work in federal agencies.

City workers in Bethlehem, Pa., agreed on a new three-year pact that raises pay by 13 percent over the life of the contract.

In New York state, Smithtown city workers agreed that the 10 percent insurance premiums assessed to new employees for their first 10 years will now stay in place for the duration of their tenure.

Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo continues his hard line approach to his municipal unions. Firefighters rejected a proposal for their first wage increase since 2001, and now the mayor says the firefighters will have to go to the back of line and that raises for other municipal unions will come first.

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Organizing and Bargaining Rights: A federal appeals court ruled that tribal casinos are subject to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) labor laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected national sovereignty arguments put forward by a Southern California tribe.

The Federal Communications Commission says it will examine CBS newsroom consolidation plans that would eliminate Writers Guild of America jobs.

The OPEIU is protesting a proposed Washington Gas rate hike because the company is planning to outsource 200 of its members’ jobs.

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Executive Compensation: A new study shows that executive cash compensation rose 29 percent in 2006. Base pay rose only 1.69 percent, but with average pay at 1.3 million, 1.69 percent amounts to $22,048, nearly twice the annual pay for a minimum wage worker. Executive bonuses in 2006 increased by 42.1 percent.

AFLAC, famous for their duck commercials pushing insurance plans, plans to allow a non-binding shareholder vote on top executive pay. The resolution, if approved, will permit shareholders the right to approve the pay packages for the top five executives.

John Rowe, CEO of Exelon, will receive $16.5 million in compensation, which is a big comedown from the year before. He also will donate stock options worth $1.8 million to the Illinois Institute of Technology. This follows public criticism by Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn–relying on AFL-CIO pay data and technical advice–over Rowe’s 2005 compensation package of $27.5 million in a public utility hearing where Exelon asked for a 24 percent customer rate increase.