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3 February, 2012
A 40-day strike in the US state of Massachusetts has ended. Ninety brave members of the ICEM-affiliated Teamsters Union (IBT) backed Saint-Gobain’s CertainTeed subsidiary away from severe cuts to their health care plan, and ratified a five-year labour agreement by a 69-0 vote on 29 January.
The workers, who make asphalt roofing shingles, gypsum wallboard and fiberglass products at a plant outside Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts, returned to their jobs on 31 January with their heads held high, their pride intact, and most importantly their premium benefits package unsevered.
CertainTeed management came at the members of IBT Local 25 late last year with a proposal to abandon the union’s Health and Welfare Fund and replace it with an inferior company-managed plan. Such a plan would have left the workers with far fewer health care benefits, leaving them largely unprotected from illness or injury.
Workers took strike action on 19 December and when the company refused to move from its regressive proposals in US federal mediation on 13 January, Norwood Teamsters expanded their strike. Besides working with the ICEM and French union CFDT to take the dispute directly to executives of Saint-Gobain in Paris, they began handbilling other non-Teamster and non-represented CertainTeed and Saint-Gobain plants in the US.
“Our members would not accept the company plan and made that loud and clear to us,” said Local 25 Business Representative George Slicis. “We were on the picket line for 40 days, 24/7, through the holidays and in bad weather, and we were not going back unless the Teamster health care plan went back with us.”
The 69-0 vote last Sunday made that an affirmative. In bargaining again supervised by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) on 26 January, CertainTeed backed off the takeaways. Although there will be a very slight increase in workers’ out-of-pocket costs for continuation of the premium health coverage of US$6-per-week, that will be more than offset with the union negotiating a US$500 bonus each in years one through four of the labour agreement.
In addition, starting in year two, or late in 2012, and continuing in 2013, 2014 and 2015, workers will receive a 2% wage increase. Local 25 also won company-paid increases to the New England Teamsters Pension Fund of 10% in years one and two, and 6% each in the remaining years.
The ICEM congratulates Local 25 members at CertainTeed for their resolve in maintaining their earned benefits package and also commends Jean-Francois Renucci of CFDT, who took the case to preserve the US workers’ health and welfare insurance to top Saint-Gobain leaders.