USW Local 2-232

formerly PACE 7-232

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

Membership Meeting 

Sunday July 25th, 2010

USW Local 2-232 Office

8500 W. Capital Dr.  LL 101  Milwaukee 

9:30a.m.

Election for Trustee at Large 

will take place during this meeting.

  Members are urged to Attend this Meeting.

The new year will bring some changes to the way our Union has been operating. We will no longer be mailing the Local 7-232 Reporter. It will now be available on our website at www.pace7232.org. There will also be copies available at the plant’s Union Offices, at our main office at 8500 W. Capitol Dr. and at the monthly membership meetings. For those members that want to use the public library, they have computers available to access our website and make copies of the paper.

MEMBERSHIP MEETING

The Union will also hold its membership meetings on the third Sunday of the month with some exceptions, for example, in April and June where the third Sunday falls on Easter and Father’s Day respectively. For the first three months we will be holding the meetings at Monreal’s El Matador, 9155 W. Bluemound Rd. The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. and is held in the lower level. We have moved away from the split meetings on Thursdays to combine the meetings on a weekend when all shifts are available to attend.

The January meeting brought the nominations for all grievance reps. and the Trustee at Large. Four of the five candidates were unopposed and re-elected by acclamation at the meeting. The only contested office will be for the grievance rep job at Strattec. That election will be held on March 7, 2003.

COMMUNITY SERVICES

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people on the Community Services Committee. They put in a lot of hours trying to raise money and buy food and gifts for our less fortunate members during the holidays. Their effort and countless hours they put in often go unnoticed by the members that are fortunate enough not to require help during the holidays. Those Committee people are: Dolores Higgins, Leo Duehning, Janette Achtziger, Marcy Gocel, Bettie Burmester, Ed Kocinski, Mike Ehlman,  Evelyn Dawson and Kathy Brad.

BRIGGS

December 20th marked the end of the assembly lines as we’ve known them in the past. The engine that was brought here from Auburn has returned there, just after 2+ years. The Company has stated that they intend to launch the new EX engine here but that is at least 2 years away and we’ve seen how the Company changes their plans, like the Model 9 that was supposed to stay here until 2006 or 2007.

The Company said the Micro engine’s line is ready to go, they are just waiting for orders, as of right now they haven’t given a definite start up date. The Outboard line seems to be doing well. Orders are good, but not good enough to require a second shift as yet.

WARN NOTICE

We did receive a WARN notice stating that about March 1, 2003 the Company will reduce 20 jobs. Dept. M8, Dept. M7S, M7P and Dept. 472 all reduced some jobs in the last month. There was supposed to be a significant cut back in maintenance Dept. 700, but our latest understanding is that it will be minimal, if at all.

DIE CAST

The die cast rumors continue to flow, but at as of the writing of this article, nothing has been confirmed by the Company. I realize that at least one Die Cast manager has been telling people that the partner that Briggs is working with has been identified and it is a “done deal”. The Company’s upper management has given their word to us that we will be notified as soon as anything is confirmed. To this date, that has NOT happened. If something is confirmed, we will post it on our website.

STRATTEC

At Strattec 18 people have opted to take the early retirement. This has reduced the number of people on lay off to 35. The Company has indicated there could possible be a few more people laid off in the next couple months.

The Union has also told the Company that we feel the Insource-Outsource Committee is not being used properly, in fact we feel it is being completely ignored. We will be discussing this issue with the Company after our next third stage, which is scheduled in early February. We will also be discussing several other issues that have come up like separate funding for active and retiree insurance, cancellation of vacation pay and job elimination language, as it pertains to bumping.

JOB CONSOLIDATION

The Company has also indicated that they wanted to start addressing the job consolidation. After an aggressive start, the job consolidation committee has not been meeting regularly. In fact only three areas have been identified for the job consolidation. Everything seems to be put on the back burner after the Company announced the job movement in Dept. 90 to its Mexico facilities.