USW Local 2-232

formerly PACE 7-232

Representing  employees at Briggs & Stratton Corp. and Strattec Security Corp. in Milwaukee, WI

PRESIDENT’S REPORT

-Meetings to remain at Monreal's

-Strattec sends degrading letter

    The Executive Board has decided because of the easy access and the accommodations at Monreal’s, we will continue to hold our meetings there on Sunday mornings at 9:30 a.m. for the foreseeable future. Please take note of the change of dates for next month’s meeting, due to Easter Sunday falling on the third Sunday of the month.

    On March 22 & 23 the Joint Boards will be attending the PACE Spring Conference here in Milwaukee. We generally get a chance to interact with other PACE locals from around the area and the state. We will bring reports back to the membership next month as to what was discussed at the conference. In April, about 20 members of our Local and their family and friends will once again be out serving the community by volunteering their time at the Hunger Task Force packing food boxes for needy people in our community. If you would like to join us in this rewarding task on April 23rd from 5 to 8 pm., please call the Union office at 463-7425 or let your Grievance Rep. know and they can call us to add your name to our list of volunteers.

STRATTEC

    On March 5, 2003 the Company put out a very degrading letter to our members. The Bargaining Committee felt there was no reason for the Company to insinuate the things they did in that letter. Our members are the reason this company has evolved as far as they have. The Union did respond the next day with a letter that was distributed around the plant. The feedback we got from the Company was minimal, but the response from our members was a good response, they were in agreement that the Company’s letter was uncalled for.

    On March 7th an election for Grievance Representative was held. The results were Karl Schneider-144, Debbie Figueroa-109. Congratulations to Karl, I know he will continue to do a fine job, as he has done for the last  4 years. The Company did approach the Union about our members voting on company time. The reason the election committee is there during shift changes is so that our members can vote before or after their shift. The company does have an option to not allow voting on the premises. So far they have been accommodating, so if you want to continue this practice, I would encourage our members to vote on their own time when we have in plant voting. The one thing I was a little disappointed with, was, there are roughly 60 plus people on lay off or sick leave, and none of them stopped down at the office to vote. Voting was specifically made available for those 60 plus people.

    We are still waiting for the results from an arbitration case that was heard in October of 2002. The briefs have been submitted almost 3 months ago. My hope is that if Arbitrator Vernon is taking this long maybe it’s a good sign for the Union. The Bargaining Committee did agree to a mid-contract change with the Company regarding a one day shut down on January 2, 2004. After an overwhelming response to go along with the Company’s request, the Committee signed the agreement. The Company has also indicated that they will be shutting down from July 7-11th.

BRIGGS

    Rumors about the Die Cast Division continue to swirl. Nothing has been made official as of the printing of this article. The one thing the Company did tell the Union was, that the “joint venture” appears to be dead. We try to keep in constant contact with the Company regarding rumors, but to our knowledge nothing has been determined yet regarding the future of Die Cast. If and when we get that official announcement we will try to relay it to all our stewards and they can get the word out to the people they represent. We did meet with the Company on some insurance issues. We raised some issues with Aurora and they also shared some data with us. We explained that we had some issues with the billing procedures and some problems with not having a contact person in Aurora that can cut through some of the red tape. Aurora said they will try to accommodate us and we would get together next month to see if some of these complaints are being addressed. We also told the Company that we were encountering some road blocks with access to their own people in retirement. We implied that they didn’t have enough help in the retirement area. They took that opportunity to tell us that they were in the process of adding staff to help out in the retirement area, they are even looking at having an outside agency assist with parts of the retirement process. They also asked us to get the word out to our to our members about putting your notice in to retirement as soon as you make your decision that you are going to retire. They are experiencing an extremely high volume of people that are interested in retirement in the next four months. We have been notified of at least 137 people that have applied for retirement during that period. Since the Company has a right to require a four month notice for $21,000 bonus we would encourage anybody planning to retire by the end of June to get in and sign your application. We also would like to remind you that if you give at least 60 days notice, you will be entitled to an additional $1,000 bonus with your first retirement check. Early planning could help prevent delays in getting your first check in a timely manner. Usually retirees get their first two checks about 5 weeks after the end of the month they retire.

    The Briggs & Stratton health clinic has been open for about 3 months now. The Company indicated that they are seeing about 240-250 patients a month. Those numbers might be inflated by the fact that most people that wanted to use the fitness center were required to have a physical or doctor’s release before they were given access to the fitness center. Many of them took advantage of the Briggs clinic at that time.