USW Local 2-232

formerly PACE 7-232

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

Membership Meeting 

Sunday December 7, 2008

Frank Monreal's El Matador

9155 W. Bluemound Rd. Milwaukee 

9:30a.m.

   Members are urged to Attend this Meeting.

      I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. I would like to thank everyone that supported and donated to the United Way campaign. Southeastern Wisconsin is a better place to live because of your generosity.

    The voluntary layoff to retirement package the Union was able to negotiate with the Company was a huge success. Eighteen members took this option.

    One of the biggest challenges facing us as a Union is for your Committee to get upper management to understand the importance of the subcontracting language of the contract. The Company continues to by-pass this language by not meeting with the appropriate committees (Article XIII Sec. 3 & 4) before deciding where to do the work. This will be one of the issues we will be raising with the Company at the 3rd stage of the grievance procedure. Other issues are a policy grievance about the vacation transition, 3 individual grievances, and an insurance issue.

    The other major challenge is for us to convince the Company to bring new work into the Milwaukee facility.

    Jobs continue to erode in Milwaukee. Back on September 15, 2002 the Company assured the Union the last jobs they would be moving to Mexico were P-Truck Handle, Knaack Cell, and the majority of the Shutter Machines. I regret to inform you that on January 23, 2003 the manager of Assembly told me that the majority of CC5 would be going to Strattec De Mexico and it would take effect beginning February 3, 2003. I asked why the work was leaving and what the impact would be on the people in the department. The explanation that I received was a secondary broach operation was needed to run this cell. The cell at Strattec De Mexico has the capability to broach and the Milwaukee cell does not and it would be an additional cost to add it to the Milwaukee cell. I pointed out the Milwaukee cell had put the additional cost in the budget. The response I got was Strattec De Mexico can handle the additional volume and we are not going to spend the money to upgrade the Milwaukee cell.

    Management went on to say no one would get bumped out because there has been an increase in volume in CC4 and this is expected to last for approximately 18 months.

    At Strattec, we have 10 members on voluntary layoff and 30 on involuntary layoff and some of those 30 have restrictions. The recall dates are 10-01 for piecework and 9-95 for day work.