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30 December, 2006
The 86-day strike by members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at 12 Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plants in the US ended 29 December, after rubber workers voted to approve a new accord at America’s biggest tyre producer by a two-to-one margin. USW announced yesterday that 10,000 of 14,000 striking union members voted in balloting, and that approval of the new three-year labour agreement was gained by a majority of members at all 12 branch locals.
Some 500 Canadian USW members at four rubber accessory plants in the province of Ontario are voting on a separate contract proposal. Both the US and Canadian Goodyear workers have been on strike since 5 October 2006.
"It took a strike, but we achieved a fair and equitable contract that protects quality health care for active and retired members,” said USW Executive Vice President Ron Hoover. "And by winning major capital investment expenditures, it secures our jobs for the future."
The strike in the US centered on heath care coverage and job security. USW won a guarantee from Goodyear that it would commit US$550 million in capitalisation investments at the 12 plants over the next three years.
The union also pushed Goodyear in week-long talks beginning on 19 December to increase a health care trust fund for active workers and retirees. The US-based company agreed to place US$1 billion in a Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, from which medical and prescription drug benefits for current and future retirees will come. Future contributions into this fund will include diverted cost-of-living payments and profit-sharing plants.
During the strike, Goodyear announced that it would close a tyre plant in Tyler, Texas, in 2007, thus making 1,100 workers redundant. USW and Goodyear agreed in the December talks that closure would occur no sooner than 2008, and the union won sizeable retirement buy-outs, enhanced severance packages, and medical coverage for Texas workers for a full two years beyond closure of the private-label tyre operation. It also won a guarantee that future manufacture of such tyres will be done in a plant that had been on strike.
The 12-week strike was marked by the company circumventing the union and appealing directly to USW members to abandon the walk-out and return to work. But there were few defections among the nearly 15,000 strikers, and that fact no doubt forced Goodyear to compromise its original demands.
“The credit really belongs to our members and their families, whose solidarity prevented the company from short-changing them, despite all of its attempts,” stated USW President Leo Gerard.
This week’s contract ratification means workers will return to work on 2 January at both tyre and engineered rubber product plants in Akron, Ohio; St. Marys, Ohio; Marysville, Ohio; Gadsden, Alabama; Buffalo, New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; Topeka, Kansas; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Danville, Virginia; Tyler, Texas; Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; and, Union City, Tennessee.