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.

President’s Report

Union pushes effort for U.C. extension

Many issues face members in both units

      by Greg Gorecki, President

 With many of our members on layoff, the Union has decided to make a grass roots push for extended Unemployment Compensation Benefits. After receiving numbers of calls each week at the office and seeing very little movement by the politicians regarding extensions, it was decided at a joint board meeting to take the plea to our politicians through their constituents.

We received a very positive feedback from our members and it made an impression on our Governor’s office and our U.S. Congressmen who all commented on the number of calls they received. They all said they understood our position and would try to do whatever they could.

We are having trouble on the Federal level because the Republicans hold the majority in the House. The Economic Stimulus Bill that narrowly passed the House of Representatives is exactly what we feared. It was loaded with tax breaks for corporations and left out the working people in this country that are affected by this poor economy.

We then turned our attention to focusing on the Senate. We joined in a conference call with Senator Kohl in Washington, trying to plead our case. Other participants in that call were union leaders from Machinists, Tower Automotive, Restaurant and Hotel Workers, along with John Goldstein, President of the Milwaukee County Labor Council and David Newby, President of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.

Training Help Sought

In other dealings with the government, the Union has applied for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) funding for our laid off people. That was back in July. We do expect to hear something one way or another in the next few weeks. If that were granted, it would allow money for schooling and prolonged U.C. benefits. Senator Feingold and Congressmen Barrett and Kleczka all offered to send a letter on our behalf to help expedite and encourage the approval of the TAA funding. It’s things like this that we need to remember come election time.

               If the funding is approved or our members become eligible, we will report that in our next union paper and also on our web site for those of you that have home computers. Our web site is www.pace7232.org.

Meetings Combined

               Our union meeting will be moved next month to the week after Thanksgiving on November 29th. That will serve as a November/December meeting. Due to the holidays, the Executive Board decided to combine them to allow our members to take care of their business and preparations for the holidays.

Nominations in January

               At the January meeting there will be nominations for the whole Executive Board, with the exception of the Trustee at Large. The Strattec Bargaining Committee will also be up for election.

Holiday Help

               People that are in need of help for the holidays due to personal hardships should contact the Union Office in regard to the Community Services Committee. Each year they do what they can to help our members with a food basket at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

               Many members face a difficult holiday season. Please give generously to the collections for the Community Services Committee in December.

Briggs

               At Briggs, Production in L5 on the Blue Line, will return to 750 a day on November 26th. This will add 31 assemblers. The machine operators needed to support that production level will be brought back earlier. Exact number of people to be added are not yet known.

               Members who are called back to work during the second half of November will receive holiday pay for Thanksgiving, so they should report those earnings for Unemployment for the holiday week.

               The new Micro Line should be up and running as soon as they get parts. They will probably add pieceworkers as they get parts.

Retirements

               Many of the laid off people have asked about retirements and how many people have retired or are going to retire. The numbers we have at the office are as follows:

(This is the breakdown for November and December retirees: Assembly – 18, Dayworkers – 25, Machine Operators – 6)

               Even though we have had almost 90 people retire since June 30th, we still have about 400 on layoff.

Bumping Dayworkers

               Many questions have been asked about bumping out daywork members that are working with less seniority. The Company is citing the language on Page 30 of the current Contract.

(c) There shall be no upgrading in the daywork group either at the time of layoff or at the time of recall, except at the request of the Company.

(d) Employees on a L.G. 23 job or better, at the time of layoff, will not be recalled on L.G. 27 work unless the list of all L.G. 27 employees on layoff has been exhausted. Employees on layoff will not be considered for trucker, janitor or other heavy-duty jobs unless they have proven to the satisfaction of the Company that they are physically capable of handling such jobs.

(e) After transfer requests of senior employees have been honored, the following groups of employees who are on involuntary layoff may fill open jobs in labor grades up to and including L.G. 18.

1. Dayworkers in L.G.’s 27 through 19.

2. Assemblers choosing to change their classification to daywork.

3. Machine operators choosing to change their classification to daywork.

               To be considered for these job openings, the EMPLOYEE MUST NOTIFY PERSONNEL OF HIS DESIRE TO BE CONSIDERED. The Union does plan to try and address this particular section with the Company. We have tried in the past, but with little or no success.

               The Union has requested a meeting with some of the head manufacturing decision makers to try and get a feel as to the future plans of the Company, like the future of the North end of the Burleigh Plant, Service Division and any possible new work they might be considering. The Company indicated that could possibly happen during the week of November 12th.

Strattec

               At Strattec, Compcare really proved to be a major disappointment. After vying for the business to become the sole provider in May, two months later, they turn around and exercise a loop hole in the Contract and exploit a State Statute that allows them to increase rates by “up to 25%” upon a 30 day notice. Their message was basically that they were no longer interested in insuring our members at Strattec.

               The message conveyed was that even if Strattec paid the higher rates, they could expect another increase shortly after that. In a meeting with Compcare’s new president, he stated that they were looking to rid any customers that were costing them money. There were a number of other employers in the Milwaukee area that Compcare targeted and there were very few options to turn to, since there are only 3 HMO’s in the Milwaukee area, and Compcare is one of them. The others are Humana, whose rate was higher than Compcare’s quotes and United Health, which eventually came to an agreement with Strattec.

3rd Stage

               We had a 3rd stage grievance meeting with the Company where we discussed about 4 or 5 grievances. Grievance Representative Karl Schneider was successful in getting quite a few grievances settled prior to 3rd stage and prior to arbitration. We were successful in getting one discharge back and settled a couple of overtime grievances.

Job Consolidation

               Job consolidation has started, but has hit a few snags. There are two departments right now that are being looked at – Gage Setting and Receiving. There were some things the Union objected to in regards to testing. We are trying to work through those issues now.

United Way