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27 June, 2011
A year ago tomorrow, 28 June, Honeywell Inc. ruthlessly locked 228 American steelworkers off their jobs at a uranium conversion plant in Metropolis, Illinois. Two days ago, on 25 June, those union members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, together with 800 supporters, held a one-year anniversary rally in the Metropolis town square.
The mood was somber but angry due to Honeywell’s economic stranglehold on workers’ lives, yet defiant mainly because the company has dared to risk the safety and well-being of 6,400 residents of this Ohio River city by operating the plant during the lockout.
In Metropolis, Honeywell mills yellow-cake uranium into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) that is frozen and then sold to companies for nuclear power applications. For the past nine months, Honeywell has been using scabs provided by a contractor to do this dangerous work.
USW District 7 Director Jim Robinson
At Saturday’s rally, workers and community members took notice once again to the dangers an outside workforce brings to their city: on 22 June, the US Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) levied 17 serious workplace safety violations against the company and its scab workers.
The violations stem from a 22 December 2010 release of hydrogen fluoride (HF) vapors. OHSA citations include failure to address human factors in operating valves on HF tanks, failure to establish written procedures to maintain the integrity of process equipment, failure to establish and implement written procedures to manage changes to process chemicals, equipment and procedures, and a deficient incident report that did not include factors contributing to the vapor release. The 17 violations mean US$119,000 in fines if Honeywell is unable to negotiate that amount downward.
The 22 December HF vapor release was not the only time Honeywell has put the community at risk. On 5 September 2010, two days after the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission unbelievably gave approval for Honeywell to re-start the final two steps of a four-step uranium hexafluoride converting process, Metropolis was shook by a loud boom.
Inside the plant, accumulated hydrogen reacted with fluorine gas during a venting process, causing the boom. Fortunately, the accident occurred in a non-regulated area of operation, meaning away from the handling of yellow cake uranium.
For workers and community supporters who gathered Saturday, these incidents have become a daily reminder of the threats posed by a hugely profitable company as it unnecessarily tries to spiral downward work terms and conditions on a skilled and unionised workforce.
Metropolis, Illinois, is Concerned with Safety
To be sure, USW Local 7-669 and Honeywell would already have a new labour contract and experienced workers would have been back on the job if it had not been for the company reneging on a deal. In bargaining on 6 June, the two sides reached a compromise and a tentative agreement was imminent. Honeywell’s negotiators said it would draft the agreed-upon language and formally present it the next day in talks.
But on 7 June, the company withdrew bargaining table agreement from the day before to maintain overtime pay after eight and 12 hours worked, and returned to its original and regressive proposal of time-and-a-half pay only after 40 hours had been worked. Local 7-669’s bargaining team already had made compromises to end the lockout. But Honeywell’s bad-faith reversal meant the company was not ready for the lockout to end.
The effect was another insult aimed at the community and at steelworkers of Local 7-669, who most assuredly will return – perhaps soon – to their jobs but with a bitter taste in their mouths about all things Honeywell.
In the three weeks since the failed settlement, Honeywell has publicly chastised Local 7-669 for failing to provide the company with further bargaining dates. Local union President Darrell Lillie made it clear at the 25 June anniversary rally that Honeywell can now end the lockout with a telephone call or fax over the final conclusive issues.
The overtime issue is foremost. Other issues to be resolved, but not considered deal threatening, are company insistence that workers who take Family and Medical Leave under the US federal statute, must concurrently take vacation leave; a different pension pan for future new hires; and company-paid meal allowance for staff who work overtime hours.
At the Saturday, 25 June rally, headlined by USW District 7 Director Jim Robinson, who travelled seven hours together with steelworkers from Chicago and northern Indiana on buses to southern Illinois to support Local 7-669, Illinois state legislators Brandon Phelps and Gary Forby told the community that they will now commence hearings in the state capital of Springfield on Honeywell’s reckless disregard for community safety.
ICEM coverage of the US company’s callous social conduct in its home country can be found at these four links: 15 May 2011, 29 November 2010, 18 October 2010, 6 September 2010.