After being on strike for 105 days, Momentive workers in Waterford, New York on February 14 voted to accept a new collective bargaining agreement.
Members of IUE-CWA Local 81539, which represents production workers at the chemical plant that makes silicon products, voted 317 to 211 to ratify the new agreement; members of its sister local 81380, which represents lab workers, voted 61 to 0 to ratify.
Dennis Trainor, vice president of District 1 of the Communication Workers of America who helped negotiate the agreement, said that the new contract was a “substantial improvement” over the company’s take-it-or-leave-it original offer that caused the strike.
Nevertheless, workers at the union office for the contract vote were in a somber mood.
The new contract provides two raises–a 2 percent raise effective in June and another 2 percent raise effective a year later–, a $2000 signing bonus, reduced health care benefits, fewer vacation days, and it eliminates retiree health care insurance for workers who retire this year and onward.
The agreement that ended the strike leaves intact the firings of 27 union members for strike-related activities.
Members of locals 81359 and 81380 went on strike when Momentive, owned by one of the world’s largest private equity companies Apollo Global Management, offered the workers a new collective bargaining agreement with a laundry list of concessions, givebacks, and takeaways.
Since Apollo bought Momentive in 2006, workers have endured a series of pay cuts and benefit reductions.
When Apollo made its latest concession laden contract offer, it left workers with no choice but to vote to authorize and carry out a strike.
During the strike, Apollo brought in replacement workers to maintain some semblance of productive activity.
During the strike, Momentive was cited by New York’s environmental protection agency for health and safety violations that endangered the surrounding communities. The union attributed the health and safety problems to errors caused by the replacement workers.
The sight of these replacement workers undermining the workers’ fight to maintain their benefits and decent standard of living and the threats to the health safety of their neighbors, families, and friends caused by the inexperienced replacement workers did not sit well with strikers.
Some workers were justifiably enraged by the replacement workers’ actions.
When they expressed their anger at the company and at the replacement workers themselves, the company fired them.
When the workers return to work on Friday, those fired during the strike will still be out of a job.
The new agreement establishes an arbitration process that allows for a review of the terminations and possible reinstatement of those who were fired.
Fifteen of those fired, were accused of vandalism. They will have their firings reviewed by an independent arbitrator appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who mediated the end of the strike.
Returning workers were also miffed by the fact that some replacement workers will remain on the job during a transition period and by the company’s requirement that striking workers attend a two-day training workshop on the company’s code of conduct and safety.
Many of the strikers are long-time Momentive employees with years of experience handling the plant’s dangerous chemicals and operating the plant’s equipment They are more than capable of leading the safety classes that they will be attending.
During the strike, some workers who voted for President Trump hoped that he would intervene to help end the strike.
But those hopes faded when they learned that one of Trump’s new economic advisers would be Steve Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, another one of the world’s largest private equity companies that until last summer owned a stake in Momentive. Schwarzman is the new chairman of the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum.
Left Labor Reporter 