How would I describe my feelings about our new contract?
One word…Disappointment.
This contract (to me anyway) does very little for the worker. In fact, I believe it does more harm than good.
Before, mandatory overtime was limited to 10 hours, now it’s 15. (I hope you all enjoy working Saturdays)
5 cents per hour towards pension and 0 cents the 1st year is a slap in the face.
If your 62 and retire after May 31st, well I hope you have your own health insurance.
We did get a whopping 9% wage increase though. Over 3 years that is.
MVP insurance? Forget about it.
We did add arbitration to the grievance process and sped up the process as a whole.
We now must work at least 4 hours before and 4 hours after a holiday to get paid for that holiday. (No big deal really)
Overtime is now distributed by work center/cell needs instead of classification. Good? Who knows? I guess it depends where you work and if you like overtime.
We still get only one (1) sick/personal day. Unbelievable. The national average is 3 sick days and 2 personal days in a NON-union work place.
Being 1 of the lowest paid members with no real number of years on this job behind me, the additional 16 dollars per week wage increase means very little to me. (Considering that there is no hope for more without changing class)
Being the age that I am, with no plans to retire, the pension plan means even less to me.
82 out of our 90 members voted. That means that 8 members didn’t even bother to show up. (Or if they did, they didn’t vote)
78 members voted down this contract, but only 28 voted to strike.
The statement was made, let’s send a message and reject this contract.
Brothers and sisters do not be fooled, no statement for our interests was sent.
Perhaps if this were a 1 year contract a statement could be made, but 3 years is a long time. The only message we sent was this, we don’t like this contract, but we’ll settle with it.
Well guess what. The corporation doesn’t care if you like it or not as long as you settle with it.
In my own opinion, this is a 1 step forward, 2 steps back contract.
To reject a contract but not back that rejection up is not making a statement.
Gil Backenroth
