Contract 1

Companies have been famous for their two-tier employment systems composed of ‘core’ groups of permanent employees and larger groups of ‘contingent’ workers with little or no job security. In some cases, the contingent workers had little or no job security. 

In our contract, there are section 1.13 - Farming out of work and section 1.28 - Miscellaneous provisions subsection D. Part-Time Operators - those two sections are causing harm to the membership thus they must be stricken and removed from the future contract. We expect Mr. Steve Downs, Chair, T/O division, our skilled, seasoned, negotiator and haggler - Mr. Downs is a proven commodity even though he has a diminutive stature he is tall in solidarity.

In other contracts the contingent workers are directly affiliated with the parent company while in others the contingent workers are employed by subcontractors. In either case, the result is something of a dual labor market structure where one group of employees have good jobs providing good wages, extensive fringe benefits, considerable opportunities for promotion, and the guise of job security. In the 2002 under the tutelage of Samuelsen - Toussaint protege and loyalist the contract eliminated the no-layoff clause causing a group of employees to have less desirable jobs paying low wages with few fringe benefits and providing little if any job security.

A blue collar or white collar job with companies meant for lifelong economic security should at least consider job security once the employee has established some seniority in the company. Driven by the need to reduce costs and increase flexibility however many companies have replaced thousands of employees with temporary workers and part-timers. That was clearly done to us by our employer with the acquiesce of Samuelsen and TBOU - who have bid out the work to contractors and subcontractors.

This brings two advantages one is that the contingent worker costs less, partly because their hourly pay is often only half that of regular employees and partly because they receive far fewer fringe benefits such as paid vacations and health insurance. A second benefit of contingent employees is that they can easily be let go when the company no longer needs them which clearly was done by our current boss. With comply silence from Samuelsen and TBOU there is a turning the quasi-fixed cost of regular employees into a variable cost. 

According to some estimates, the ranks of contingent employees have doubled since 1980 to include nearly 49 percent of the work force. One of the most rapidly growing  segments of the contingent work force is temporary help workers. Here section 1.28 subsection D clearly harms the Local 100 membership - Apple Computer laid off 20 percent of its work force due to a slow down in sales in 1985. When business picked up again rather than hire more workers the company hired temporaries. The company’s manager of staffing said of the decision, ‘If we bring someone on board full time, there is an implied obligation that the job won’t disappear, but that can’t happen in an industry as volatile as ours.’  

Another source of rapid growth in the contingent work force is the decision of companies to farm out of work - clearly here section 1.13 is harming the membership of Local 100 .The USX Corporation, for example lowered the number of in-house of labor needed to produce a ton of steel from 10 in 1982 to 4 and currently lower. In part by farming out maintenance work rather than paying a union pipe fitter $13 an hour plus ample benefits, the company got the same work done by a smaller nonunion company that paid its workers $5 an hour and provided no benefits. 

Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corporation chopped its public affairs department from 31 people to 4, and farmed out it’s work, through corporate restructuring such as this, the company cut operating costs in half.

This two tier work force created two classes of workers for the same work done, and does not create equality among ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ and a sense that one group of workers was destined to live with the revolving door of contingent work while another gets to enjoy the guise of job security and of good pay. Clearly farming out of work is thrust upon us members of the Local 100, and member regular jobs fall victim to employer cost cutting. 

Why did you join the union? To be a super power! Why did you join the union? To fight for our rights! Why did you join the union? To poke our fingers into the management’s eyes for change! Why did you join the union? To eradicate management’s exploitation! Why did you join the union? To move to the middle class! However you have to remember Samuelsen and TBOU are exploiting us - do not despair the future is ours use your power of vote to send the fat cat Samuelsen and TBOU back to work.