A Report from the Union Bargaining Committee
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Since the last issue of Reaching Higher we have met three times with the Company. The grievance subcommittee has met once. On
March 25th we began the bargaining session by confronting the Company over their breach of employee privacy. We made it clear
to the Company that we object to their publicizing employee grievances on the bulletin boards. We asked the Company
to apologize to the workforce which they refused, although they did acknowledge that they may have gotten started
on the wrong foot.
Regarding Successhare, we agreed to let the Company implement its proposal for 2002, and further agreed to continue to
bargain over problems in the plan. (See our statement to the Company regarding the problems with the Vitrified plan below)
Payouts for January and February will be made in about two weeks.
The Company informed us that 69 employees signed up to be considered for the voluntary separation plan. They are still
evaluating how many volunteers will be accepted.
We are continuing to bargain over the amount of money to be distributed as merit increases this April. Hopefully we will
conclude this issue Monday April 1st and move onto negotiating over contract language.
Finally, we again asked the Company to put employee bulletin boards in Superabrasives so employees there can be easily
informed about the Union. The Company refused, maintaining that they think the board in the cafeteria in the Research and
Development building is sufficient.We disagreed.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
STATEMENT to the COMPANY
3/25/02
Bill Ernst
We have serious problems with Vitrified Successhare. We offered to solve the productivity problems through a joint
subcommittee. You rejected that. Most companies would have thanked a Union for offering to help in that way.
Some of the problems we have with Vitrified Successhare are:
1. We have no control over the productivity and on time factors: management has total control.
2. We don't have the tools to do the job.
3. We haven't made production in the last 3 years and now you are making it harder to make.
4. You move people from line to line, and don't take the hours out, even if they stay on another line for a month
or more.
It is outrageous that you threatened to hold employees in Superabrasives and Organic hostage while we try to fix the
problems in Vitrified. They work in different plants and are on different Successhare plans. They should not have to pay for
poor management decisions in Vitrified. Neither should we.
Go ahead and implement all 3 plans. But understand that for all of the above reasons, we are not giving up on this issue.
There are serious problems in Vitrified that need to be addressed. We are going to continue to bring them to the bargaining
table for resolution. We are going to keep at it until we negotiate a fair agreement. Do you understand that?