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24 October, 2011
Members of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) began strike action Honeywell on 10 October at a nuclear parts manufacturing facility in Kansas City, Missouri. The 940 members of IAM Lodge 778 begin their third week today on picket lines at a US government-owned site following a 79% contract rejection on 9 October.
Union members followed that ballot with an 85% strike vote the same day. US federal mediation a week ago failed to resolve differences, but did produce a hand-shake agreement on 18 October in which both sides agreed to refrain from airing the dispute in the local press. Two days later, a manager for Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies LLC. told a television broadcast that IAM members are overpaid and should be satisfied with the company’s “last and final” offer.
That offer is a six-year proposal that does contain minimal pay gains in each year, but it also creates a two-tier wage scheme. That pay grid would see all employees hired in 2012 receive less hourly pay and come under a slower pay progression. Such a pay schedule would take new hires five years to reach only 90% of what current workers earn.
Honeywell’s proposal also attacks workers’ health care coverage, making it more costly for union members to have adequate health insurance. IAM Lodge 778 has proposed a four-year contract without the concessions.
The union awaits a decision from the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declaring the work stoppage an unfair labour practice strike. In the days prior to the 9 October rejection vote, Honeywell management circumvented the union’s bargaining committee by express mailing a letter to all workers, misrepresenting the company’s proposal and urging them to accept the offer.
Such bad-faith bargaining runs counter to US labour statute and if the NLRB does issue a complaint, the strike takes on new meaning. Honeywell operates the US government facility called Bannister Federal Complex and produces non-nuclear components for America’s nuclear weapons industry.
The IAM strike comes a short two months after Honeywell ended a 13-month lockout against members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at a uranium conversion site in Metropolis, Illinois. ICEM reports on that can be found here and here.