Category Archives: USW

Latest Lake Erie U.S. Steel Offer Not Endorsed By Steelworkers Union Committee

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Lake Erie Works of US Steel Canada in Nanticoke.

By Steve Arnold  http://www.thespec.com  AUGUST 29, 2013

PORT DOVER – U. S. Steel’s latest offer to end a bitter four-month lockout of Lake Erie Works employees got a cool reception from workers who got their first look at the package Wednesday.

The tentative deal, which the union negotiating committee is not backing with a recommendation, was negotiated in Pittsburgh recently under pressure from the international headquarters of the United Steelworkers.

Union president Bill Ferguson, of Local 8782 of the United Steelworkers, said even though the local leadership doesn’t support the proposal he felt it was necessary to bring it back to the membership.

“There have been some moves by the company,” he said. “We don’t recommend this, but we’re taking it to the members because we are not going to make unilateral decisions that affect the lives of 1,000 people.”

“This is still a concessionary package,” he added. “We’re bringing it to the members because we feel it’s time for them to tell what they feel.”

Union members, who have been locked out since late April, have twice rejected company offers by votes of 70 per cent.

Ferguson said the company has made some improvements to previous packages, but changes have not been extensive.

The chief improvements to this offer over previous company packages include adding strong language protecting workers from having their jobs contracted out, restoring a signing bonus to $2,500 after an earlier cut to $2,000, dropping demands for increased co-payments for prescription drugs and adding lump sum payment of $500 for each year of a five-year term.

There is also a profit-sharing plan that would pay workers a maximum of $3,500 if Lake Erie plant profits top $25 million.

On the negative side, the package does not include a base wage hike, it continues to demand changes to the cost of living allowance that trigger payments only when inflation hits 3 per cent and caps vacation entitlements for current and future employees at five weeks. (Workers who already have more than five weeks vacation keep that entitlement.)

Ferguson said getting the job security language members wanted was an important step, but the economic side of the agreement remains a disappointment.

“We still have all the economic issues so it’s still a concessionary contract,” he said.

Outside the meeting, workers were not excited by the package and predicted a close vote when it is presented for ratification Friday.

“It’s better than the last one, but I’m going to have to think about it some more,” said veteran worker Alan Laufs. “I think it will be a close vote.”

“Maybe we can do better, but just don’t know right now.”

Many predict a vote divided by age with veterans like Laufs, who is mortgage free and three years from retirement, tempted to hold out for a better deal while the cadre of younger workers with mortgages and growing families voting for a paycheque after four months of $200 a week in strike pay.

“There’s more at stake here than just having a job, but a lockout like this is hard to take,” said one worker who refused to give his name. “It takes a long time to recover from something like this.”

James Nelles is one of the younger cohort and is strongly opposed to the deal.

“It’s nowhere near good enough,” he said. “There are a couple of carrots here for the desperate, but I’m not ready to concede yet.

“This is an improvement from the past offers, but it’s too small an improvement for me.”

Rob Weatherston, also from the younger group, wanted to know why workers are being pressed for concessions when U. S. Steel’s executive class continues to enjoy multi-million pay raises and bonuses.

Despite that, he said he’d likely vote for the deal for himself.

“I’d take it for myself because I think we could come back in five years and do better,” he said.

Even without a wage increase, there are still the annual lump-sum payments and the chance of overtime to make up the difference. And if things don’t change, he’s still young enough to look for something else.

“I’ve got a five-year plan to get myself in a position to leave if I want to,” he said, adding part of that effort is taking night school courses at McMaster University.

The Lake Erie plant workers were locked out for eight months in 2009-2010 as the company backed demands for radical changes in its pension plans. U. S. Steel has said repeatedly it needs further changes in the labour agreement to make the plant “competitive.”

The Friday ratification vote will be held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the union hall in Nanticoke.

Ottawa Turns Its Back on Steelworkers-Op-Ed

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Aug 23, 2013    http://www.thespec.com   https://i0.wp.com/www.thespec.com/Portals/9/Images/logo.png

U.S. Steel’s destructive agenda is tacitly condoned by Harper government

By Marty Warren, Ontario Director of the United Steelworkers

For the second time in three years, 1,000 families in Nanticoke and surrounding communities face an uncertain future, targeted again by a deliberate attack on working-class living standards achieved over generations of struggle in Canada.

U.S. Steel’s lockout of employees at the Lake Erie Works steel mill — now in its 17th week — reflects the impunity foreign multinationals enjoy to slash Canadian jobs and drive down wages, benefits and working conditions.

U.S. Steel, in particular, has ample reason to believe it has the tacit consent of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to run roughshod over Canadian working families.

In 2007, the Harper Conservatives approved U.S. Steel’s takeover of Canadian steelmaker Stelco. The deal included legally binding commitments from U.S. Steel to maintain production levels and a 3,100-strong workforce at former Stelco operations.

Time after time, the Harper Conservatives have demonstrated they stand with giant multinationals that abuse their dominant economic power.

U.S. Steel broke those legally binding commitments, with devastating results for working families and pensioners whose combined losses ran into tens of millions of dollars.

“(Their) working lives, retirement and income security have been seriously and adversely affected,” a Federal Court judge stated in 2011 after legal proceedings were launched against U.S. Steel.

The legal action was brought against U.S. Steel under terms of the Investment Canada Act, which dictates foreign takeovers must provide a “net benefit” to Canadians.

The government’s case against U.S. Steel included expert analysis that concluded the company knew full well the implications of its legal commitments. Even in the midst of the recession, fulfilling those promises “would not have threatened the financial viability” of the company, the analysis concluded.

However, rather than enforce the law and hold U.S. Steel accountable, the Harper government struck a secret deal that abruptly ended the court case. Promises of jobs and healthy production levels were abandoned. Workers, pensioners and communities devastated by U.S. Steel’s behaviour were denied their day in court.

With a nudge and a wink from our federal government, U.S. Steel was free to continue its onslaught against Canadian employees and pensioners.

U.S. Steel has now followed the same transparent, destructive pattern in three successive rounds of contract negotiations with former Stelco employees — twice at Lake Erie Works and once at Hamilton’s Hilton Works.

In each case, U.S. Steel has betrayed even the pretense of attempting to negotiate a fair deal for Canadian employees. The agenda has been to abuse the full force of its corporate power and resources to impose its will — under threat of arbitrary, lengthy shutdowns.

In each instance the workers refused to be provoked into a strike. To their credit, they proposed to keep operating their plants while pursuing a settlement through good-faith negotiations aided by government mediation.

U.S. Steel’s agenda dictated otherwise. It locked out Lake Erie Works employees for eight months in 2009-2010, then imposed an 11-month lockout in Hamilton in 2010-2011.

In April of this year, with carte blanche from the federal and Ontario governments to do as it pleases, U.S. Steel locked out Lake Erie Works employees for a second time. Four months later, the community’s largest employer remains shut down.

The locked-out employees, members of United Steelworkers Local 8782, remain committed to negotiating a fair collective agreement and are eager to get back to work.

They have received tremendous support within and outside their community, from like-minded Canadians who understand the need to resist a relentless and orchestrated assault on our middle class.

The workers, their families and supporters will continue to fight the good fight. However, it is beyond shameful that they don’t have their government on their side.

Time after time, the Harper Conservatives have demonstrated they stand with giant multinationals that abuse their dominant economic power to drive down our working and living standards and eliminate good jobs. It is part and parcel of the Conservatives’ low-wage economic strategy for our country.

Earlier this year, without meaningful public debate or consultation, the Harper government decided to arbitrarily amend the Investment Canada Act, folding the changes into its latest omnibus budget bill.

The Conservatives’ changes weaken the Act. They allow for more foreign takeovers to be rubber-stamped. Secret deals will remain the norm. Neither the government nor multinational corporations will be required to consult with, or be accountable to, the Canadian families and communities directly affected by foreign takeovers.

It has never been clearer that only a change in government can reverse this disgraceful trend.

Cheap labour and the lessons of the Plaza Hotel strike

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Robyn Benson By Robyn Benson on August 23, 2013   http://www.aec-cea.ca

 

plaza hotel strike.JPG

Who are those people pounding the pavement outside Toronto’s Plaza Hotel, whom the owner called “animals?” They are workers with little or no hope for the long-term, decently-paid jobs that many of us take for granted, living a precarious existence. If you want to know how many of them there are these days, take one Plaza Hotel and multiply by a very big number.

The low-wage workers at the Plaza are at least unionized. Largely due to their Steelworkers Union and to the Ontario Federation of Labour, the public is becoming more aware of the appalling working conditions there.

But this is just the tip of the cheap-labour iceberg.

I’ve posted before about the Temporary Foreign Workers program, a part of this new race to the bottom, in which the Harper government has been complicit. A victory or two have been won in that area, but there is much more to the problem than offshore workers entering Canada on a government program. In some ways, that was just a matter of domestic Canadian cheap labour being edged out of jobs by foreign cheaper labour.

Take the North American fast-food service industry, for example. It used to be that this was a good sector for young people to find a job for a while, and then move on. Now more adults than teens are asking if you want fries with that, and they’re in it for the long haul.

The new employees of this largely non-union sector are more experienced and better educated than formerly, but their wages and benefits don’t reflect that. Small wonder, as we have seen recently in Halifax with coffee-shop baristas, and in the US with employees of McDonald’s and other franchises, that these workers are beginning to look to unionization—and a substantial increase in the minimum wage—as a way of making their circumstances comparatively less precarious.

Would this make hamburgers, coffee and fried chicken too expensive? That’s always the scare-story put about by the anti-union types. But it’s not founded upon fact:

Several studies show that raising the minimum wage would have minimal effects on the industry as a whole. One letter signed by more than 100 economists and published by the University of Massachusetts said that raising the minimum wage to $10.50 would increase the price of a Big Mac by a nickel. Another study shows that doubling the salaries and benefits of all of McDonald’s employees would add 68 cents to each Big Mac.

Perhaps one of the more comical aspects of the corporate fightback was the spectacle of McDonald’s solemnly informing its low-wage employees how to budget. The bosses’ scheme works perfectly—if the minimum wage is doubled, and you can do without water, clothing, gas, heat and child care.

Are low wages the natural cost of working for a living wage in the service sector these days? Well, no:

Consider Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, which compete fiercely on low-price merchandise. Among warehouse retailers, Costco…is number one, accounting for about 50% of the market. Sam’s Club…is number two, with about 40% of the market.

…A 2005 New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse reported that at $17 an hour, Costco’s average pay is 72% higher than Sam’s Club’s ($9.86 an hour).

On the benefits side, 82% of Costco employees have health-insurance coverage, compared with less than half at Wal-Mart.

…In return for its generous wages and benefits, Costco gets one of the most loyal and productive workforces in all of retailing, and, probably not coincidentally, the lowest shrinkage (employee theft) figures in the industry….Costco’s stable, productive workforce more than offsets its higher costs.

A cheap labour strategy doesn’t work. It costs just about everybody. Costco knows this from experience, and has resisted calls to lower its wages and benefits.

So the push-back against impoverishing workers is not only a union concern, although we can certainly play a lead role in it. But we in the labour movement can’t do that by focusing too narrowly. We need to be part of a wider movement to defend the right to a living, dignified wage and secure employment for everyone. After all, it’s our whole society that is at stake here—and surely that makes it everybody’s fight.

Supersize Those Wages, McDonald’s

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Leo W. Gerard   Leo W. Gerard International President, United Steelworkers   http://www.huffingtonpost.com

August 12, 2013

Last month, McDonald’s gave its workers a little gift — a budget purporting to show how to survive on the starvation wages the burger behemoth pays. The bizarre financial plan made millionaire McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson look like a real clown.

Wearing oversized Ronald McDonald shoes, the CEO stepped in it big time when his budget suggested workers subsist with no money set aside for food, clothing or even soap to scrub off deep-fryer stench. To secure the laughable amount of $20 a month for health insurance, the McDonald’s budget requires the worker to take a second job. The McDonald’s plan: work 80 hours a week; but don’t eat. No happy meals. Not one.

More money would work so much better for McDonald’s employees than Thompson’s recommendation that they forego food or rely on food stamps. And welfare. And public housing. And Medicaid. That’s the real McDonald’s budget. Like other employers paying minimum wage or slightly more, McDonald’s leans on taxpayers to subsidize the payroll. Taxpayers cover the cost of McDonald’s workers’ health care and a big portion of their housing and food costs. The vastly profitable McDonald’s corporation is an unabashed welfare recipient. Coronate Ronald McDonald Welfare King. Sound the trumpets!

The payroll subsidy that low-wage paying corporations collect through welfare programs is way more valuable than the million dollar prize in McDonald’s Monopoly game. The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce calculated what it costs taxpayers to prop up low-wage workers at a Walmart Supercenter. It’s as much as $1.7 million a year. For one store. That’s $5,815 a year for each Walmart worker that taxpayers fork over. No wonder the Walton family is the richest in the world. They win McWelfare Monopoly every day.

In fairytale McDonaldland, low-wage workers are teenagers flipping burgers to buy the newest video game system or expensive prom dress. In reality, low-wage workers are adults. Nearly 70 percent are 20 or older. And they’re not getting younger. The average age of low-wage workers increased 2.6 years since 1979. More than a quarter of them have children. The name of McDonald’s purple blob character describes life for them — “Grimace.”

There’s trouble in real-life McDonaldland now. Since late last year, in cities across the country, low-pay workers have banded together with community organizations, churches and unions to demand a wage increase. They’ve demonstrated, rallied and conducted one-hour and one-day walk outs.

The value of the minimum wage has declined since 1968 when it was worth $10.56 an hour in today’s terms. Now, it’s $7.25. It has not increased in four years. President Obama and Democrats in Congress are calling for it to rise to $9 or $10 an hour. Many low-wage demonstrators, however, are demanding something closer to a living wage – $15 an hour.

One of them, Christopher Drumgold, 32, a father of two earning $7.40 an hour at a McDonald’s in Detroit, told Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times, “Fifteen dollars an hour would be great — we’d be able to pay our living costs. . . On what I’m earning right now you have to choose between paying your rent and eating the next day.”

In other words, $15 an hour from McDonalds would liberate him from reliance on government assistance because he’d be paid enough to cover his expenses. It would mean taxpayers could stop subsidizing McDonald’s payroll.

McDonald’s, Walmart and other low-wage-paying, highly profitable corporations are shelling out a lot of money — not to their struggling workers — but to lobbyists to fight state and federal efforts to increase the minimum wage. They’re demanding that taxpayers continue to bankroll their businesses.

These corporations could pay workers more. But they are happy on the dole. There’s plenty of evidence that it’s possible to increase wages. For one thing, they already pay more in some places, like San Francisco, where the minimum wage is $10.55 and in Washington State, where it’s $9.19. In France, McDonald’s pays the equivalent of $12 at 1,200 thriving franchises.

In June, more than 100 economists signed a petition to raise the minimum wage to $10.50. In an attached report, they note that McDonald’s could cover half of the cost of that wage increase by raising the price of a Big Mac by one nickel. Mickey D patrons would still be “lovin’ it” at $4.05.

Here’s another telling example: McDonald’s spent $6 billion to repurchase shares and dividends in 2011 — the equivalent of $3,500 for each of its 1.7 million restaurant workers worldwide. The Hamburglar gave all of the money to stockholders and none of it to the people whose labor produced the profits.

And there’s this: Last year, McDonald’s more than tripled the compensation packages for its new CEO Thompson and for the man he replaced. Tripled. Thompson’s pay went from $4.1 million to $13.8 million.

The “Fight for Fifteen” workers are asking for just slightly more than double, from their current $15,000 a year before taxes to $31,200. They’d gracefully forego the free company car and free vacation rides in the McDonald’s jet that Thompson gets. They’d be OK with Thompson pulling down 442 times their pay as long as they could cover their own bills.

McDonald’s workers don’t need budgeting help from millionaire CEOs. What they need is for McDonald’s to supersize their wages. McDonald’s $1.3 billion in first quarter profits didn’t magically rain down from Golden Arches. The labor of McDonald’s workers produced it. McDonald’s led the nation in creating fast food. It’s time for it to lead again by stepping up and paying its workers a living wage. The nation’s 3.6 million minimum wage workers deserve a bigger piece of that McApple pie.

Leo W. Gerard, is the International President of the United Steelworkers (USW) union.
He also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee.
President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute. He helped create the Washington-based public interest group, Alliance for American Manufacturing.
He is a member of the IndustriALL Global Labor federation and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union, with leaders of the UK-based manufacturing union Unite.
The USW (United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union). is the largest manufacturing union in North America, representing 1.2 million active and retired industrial and service sector workers in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

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