Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Striking members of Local 1023 of the United Rubber Workers union voted 418 to 297 Wednesday to ratify the company's latest contract offer. Some workers returned to the plant at midnight Wednesday.
Yokohama management said the plant should be back to full operation, turning out 25,000 tires a day, within three days.
The new contract will allow Yokohama to operate the plant on a continuous seven-day-a-week basis by making all workers hired since Jan. 1, 1984, eligible for weekend work.
The weekend staffing plan approved by the union in Wednesday's voting had been rejected by the union membership on three previous occasions, most recently last Friday.
Wayne Friend, the local union president, walked through the side doors of the Salem Civic Center into the glare of television lights and a crowd of union members about 7:30 p.m. to announce the results of the ratification vote.
"I don't like it, but the people have spoken by this vote," Friend said when asked how he felt about the new contract. "We fought a hard battle; the people fought a hard battle."
As Friend spoke to the cameras, opponents of the new contract - mostly younger workers - yelled that Friend and the union negotiators had sold them out. "How many weekends a year are you going to work," one hollered, referring to Friend's seniority, which will keep him off weekend shifts.
"You're outta here, buddy," another yelled, referring to next fall's union elections.
How to staff the plant on weekends has been the major issue keeping the company and union apart throughout the strike. The staffing proposal contained in the new contract is the same one proposed by the company before the start of the strike, and that left some union members feeling that the strike had been for nothing.
"How ludicrous it is to have been on strike for 11 weeks to accomplish what we could have in the first week," said union member Scott Shaver.
Shaver is among the 150 workers hired since 1991 who have been working weekends already. The weekend shifts involve working 12 hours on Saturdays and Sundays and eight hours on either Mondays and Tuesdays or Thursdays and Fridays to fill out a 40-hour week. The 12-hour shifts are not compensated as overtime.
Trina Alachnowicz, who left her computer in the plant's maintenance office six years ago to make tires on the factory floor, is one of the 175 workers hired since 1984 who will be added to the weekend shift under the new contract and had opposed it. Her husband has been a plant employee for around 20 years.
By trying to operate the plant seven days a week with the same 800 production workers, Yokohama will have to require more workers to work overtime, she predicted. The contract allows the company to force workers to work eight-hour shifts on 24 Wednesdays of the year.
"It's not fair to force this amount of hours on anyone," she said, noting that 12-hour shifts in the 110-degree summer temperatures and 30-degree winter temperatures inside the plant are hard on workers, particularly older ones.
Alachnowicz, one of about 50 women in the plant's work force, didn't join in the criticism of Friend. "I don't understand why they're doing this; the majority rules," she said of the criticism yelled at Friend. The five-member union negotiating team has been the strongest the union has had, she said.
Others felt the union negotiating team had not tried hard enough to get the company to accept an alternative weekend staffing plan narrowly approved by the union membership last week. All union workers would have been required to work weekends under that plan, while the contract that was approved will not require those with more seniority to work on the weekends, including those on the union bargaining committee.
"I didn't sell the union out," Friend responded later to the criticism of his leadership. "We live with what the majority wants; that's what a union is all about."
The contract does contain some provisions that make it easier for union members to swallow, including increases in wages and pensions and an option for a dental plan.
by CNB