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15 May, 2011
Branch leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669 in Metropolis, Illinois, took their 11-month lockout at a US uranium processing plant of Honeywell to Europe and won the support from major trade union federations. They also won support from Honeywell’s European Works Council (EWC) Chairman, who put Honeywell’s risky American lockout in front of the American company’s 30,000 European staff.
The European Mine, Chemical, Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF), European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF), and European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) all endorsed the struggle and called on global technology giant Honeywell to end the lockout. The plant employs 228 steelworkers, who convert yellow-cake uranium into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) for enrichment use in nuclear reactors.
See a previous ICEM news article on this critical US labour dispute.
USW Local 7-669 leaders John Paul Smith and Steven Lech, together with USW District Director Dan Flippo, were hosted by UK’s Unite the Union in Europe and met with national works council members in Germany and the European trade union federations in Belgium, as well as with members of Honeywell's EWC in Brussels. While in Germany, the USW delegation also met with leaders of ICEM affiliate IGBCE in Hannover.
The European trade union federations demand an end to the lockout, “with all workers welcomed back to their plant without reprisals, and with full agreement of the union the United Steelworkers.”
The EWC member called out Honeywell’s careless contingency plan to operate the facility during the lockout, as did a Unite officer from the UK, Ian Tonks. “We believe the safety of the plant has been compromised on several occasions by the present temporary workforce,” Tonks and EWC Chairman Michael Petersen said jointly.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave Honeywell approval to re-start the conversion plant on 3 September 2010. Two days later, a hydrogen blast happened when accumulated hydrogen reacted with another gas during a venting process. The plant in southern Illinois also has seen uranium hexafluoride and hydrofluoric acid releases since replacement workers took up the jobs of skilled steelworkers in July 2010. The lockout started on 28 June.
In Metropolis, the USW and Honeywell continue bargaining and talk more frequently than the once monthly set of negotiations in the first half of the lockout. But progress has been slow and Honeywell has been elusive and reprehensible at the bargaining table over the main issues in this long dispute – seniority, work rules, contracting out, a two-tier pension scheme, and health care costs.
Following the last round of bargaining on 4 May, a Steelworkers spokesman told of the frustration: “Every time we address the company’s concerns, they say it’s not good enough and demand more. (They) change their position with respect to their own proposals, and we cannot bargain with a moving target.”