President’s Report

Slowing auto industry leads to Strattec layoffs;

Briggs agrees to year round voluntary layoff

by Greg Gorecki, President

Strattec

The volatile auto market has started to take its toll at Strattec. The first week of January approximately 130 workers were laid off. After returning for one week, Strattec again announced that it would lay off the third week of January. The result of the second layoff would be almost 100 people.

Our members were told this would last at least three weeks and could last longer. Some people, after being off for only one week, were being called back.

Karl Schneider, the Grievance Rep, tried to caution the Company about reducing the workforce too far, but it was to no avail. The Bargaining Committee met with the Company to try and explain how disruptive it is to our members’ lives when division managers keep changing their staffing needs. The Company claimed there were some communication barriers and hoped to correct them in the near future.

Job Consolidation

Strattec still wants to press ahead with the job consolidation portion of the Contract. The Committee has not met on a regular basis and this makes it difficult to press forward. In addition, our Committee has problems with some of the issues being brought up by the Company.

We recently arbitrated a case that had been slated for arbitration for quite some time. It had to do with non-union people doing our members work in the crib areas. That case was heard on January 16th.

Briggs & Stratton

At Briggs & Stratton the Union and the Company were able to agree on a year round voluntary layoff. Along with that, it would include another recall date of April 1st. The way it would work would be that if you took the voluntary after Labor Day and before March 15th, the following year, you would be able to sign up during the period between March 16th and March 31st. If you sign up during the March period, on April 1st, your status would change to involuntary and the Company would have six weeks to call you back to your department, seniority permitting. If not, you would be bumped in wherever your seniority would allow in your classification, piecework or daywork.

Arbitrations

The Union has ten cases slated for arbitration that the Company wanted to discuss. We have postponed picking arbitrators with the hopes that we could reach some fair agreements. The Company has offered to settle some and compromise on one. The remaining grievances will have to proceed to arbitration.

Micro Line

The Micro Line is still slated for an August 2001 production date. The Company has stated that they will be moving a few people in there on a limited basis, and that could be as soon as March. The Company has also stated that they are seriously leaning toward using the newly established department language, which gives people departmental super-seniority for 18 months. The 18 months would start counting from the date that the first employees are assigned. We have had some conversations with the Company on other issues regarding the new line, but there are still more that need to be addressed.

Die Cast Petition

We received a petition from the Labor Grade 18 machine tenders in the Die Cast Division. The petition stems from a grievance that was written and was being pursued to arbitration. The basis of the grievance was that people were being transferred from one classification to another, before the start of the shift, and they were being denied their job preference.

For example: If a dayworker was put in the piecework float pool before the start of the shift, they were not being allowed to pick a job by seniority. Instead, they were being bypassed until everybody in that classification had picked. This is true if people are shipped in from another department, but not people from their own department.

The Joint Board has an informational meeting set with the people from these departments to try and clear up some misunderstandings.

Daywork System

While the Company and Union both realize that something needs to be done with our daywork system, it appears it won’t be addressed until Contract negotiations. We have tried numerous times in the past six months to revisit our daywork discussions that broke off over 13 months ago.

The Bargaining Committee did have a meeting with John Shiely on January 22nd. It was just a basic state of the business meeting.

We raised several issues with him, including any new work that might be earmarked for the Milwaukee facility and our concern of losing so many skilled trade people. He basically told us that there was no new work planned for Milwaukee as of right now, with the exception of the Micro Line, and demand would dictate how long it would stay here. If anything comes up that makes economical sense, they would consider it for Milwaukee.

As far as the skilled trades, he talked about discussions that have been in progress for awhile, but no specific plan has been mapped out.