Allan Appel Photo
“The medical is awesome,” declared worker Theresa Williams.
In an era of union givebacks and losses, Sargent/Assa Abloy workers Monday voted 187 to 5 to approve a three-year contract that avoids a strike and keeps health benefits intact.
“Awesome.” “A slam dunk.” “Historic.”
Those were the terms that members of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Local 243 (UE) used at a 6 a.m. meeting at the Annex Club on Woodward Avenue called to ratify the contract.
New and previous union chiefs Morrison and Pompano confer.
The current contract expires next month. New UE local president Wayne Morrison informed members present for the vote that medical “costs did not go up one brown penny,” Morrison reported.
The local’s membership numbers 265; only those present at Monday’s meeting could vote.
Sargent/Assa Abloy officials did not respond to a request for comment. The Sargent Drive-based company makes keys, locks, tools, and scales for people around the world.
The new contract offers workers, who currently average “over” $20 an hour, a $1,500 lump sum payment the first year, a 3 percent raise in year two, then a 2.5 percent raise in year three, union officials said.
Workers held onto their current full medical, dental and prescription benefits, and received a modest pension boost.
Keeping the current medical benefits without increasing costs to workers was by far the most important feature in the new contract, according to Sharon Riendeau and her friend Gina King who have been with the company for 35 and 27 years respectively.
“We’re ecstatic our medical is unchanged,” said King, who works in the bored locks department.
“And we’re not bored,” added a third longtime employee, Donna Allevi.
By terms of the old — and new — contract, co-pays have run about $5 for an office visit. The price of most prescriptions is also very modest, about $20, King estimated.
Two dollars was added to the pension multiplier, bringing it to $40.That means if you work at the company for ten years and retire, the monthly pension benefit is $400. There is also no cap on years worked.
Resnick, UE national Director of Organizing Gene Elk, and Pompano.
However, these defined pension benefits are available only to workers at the company since 2006, explained former UE Local 243 President Ray Pompano. By terms of previous contracts, which remain in effect in the newly ratified one, workers joining the company in 2007 are on a 401K company matching program.
Pompano, who passed the leadership on to Morrison in December after a national record-setting 31 years in the post, remained on the negotiating team this year, making this his 19th contract negotiation.
He said it was one of the most remarkably efficient negotiations because “the company knew when they read an article in the New Haven Independent how much we wanted to keep our medical. There was no way this company was going to move us. All in all, it was because of the reputation of UE Local 243 that we would not back down.”
“We have a good relationship with the company,” said Riendeau, left, with friend King.
Morrison said that the modestly-priced medical costs to employees in the medical package were a “sacred cow.”
As the votes were being cast and counted, speaker after speaker commented on both the ease of this year’s negotiations and their historic character. Lawyer Barbara Resnick, a UE international union representative, said that she is engaged in negotiations of 14 contracts at present for the union; in all of them medical benefit alterations are on the table.
She termed UE Local 243’s achievement unique in the Northeast and perhaps the country.
She had set aside Monday morning to begin what she and others expected to be drawn-out negotiations. Instead she ended up being in town to oversee the ratification of the contract.
Resnick, UE national Director of Organizing Gene Elk, and Pompano.
“I was floored. We wondered why it happened so quickly. I think they [the management] have a lot of work and they didn’t want interruptions. They heard you. The offer without increases really floored us. The medical is a slam dunk,” Morrison concluded.
As they waited to queue up and then vote, by department,one member asked when the $1,500 first-year cash payment per employee will be delivered.
The answer: on ratification of the new contract, which would kick in, on the completion of the old in mid-March. Morrison said he’d look in to speaking with management about the possibility of beginning sooner.
Another questioner wanted to know if union dues are going up.
“Good job,” Terry Bacote congratulated the prez; he was relieved there was no strike.
“Yes,” Morrison answered. “Fifty cents. That’s not 50 cents a day. 50 cents a week.”
“Can you lower it to 25?” the questioner called out.
Morrison paused, and smiled without answering, amid applause and some laughter.
“Any more questions?”
Great to hear that both employer and employees are holding the line on costs and creating deal that helps both sides - too bad the union had to jack up their and take more $$$ from the workers.