Locals 608 & 712                            IBEW Local 73

 TABLE TALK

SPECIAL EDITION                                                         JAN. 17, 2011

By now you may have received the letter to your home from the Company concerning the ongoing contract negotiations. These letters to our homes from the Company are an age-old tactic that one would expect from a Company that lacks respect for it’s workers and their union. They reached the errant conclusion that they can soften your resolve and weaken your union by whining in print about bargaining frequency and pleading directly with you that, despite the 10’s of millions of dollars they pay to their top brass, their record Lewiston generated profits, and their expanding empire of investments, they need you to bite the bullet and pay more for health care…why you ask?  To be “competitive”, they answer.

 We warned the Company that this type of communications could be disruptive to the negotiating process. They sent the letter anyway. They chose to ignore your Union and speak directly to you – behind the façade of “we just want our employees to be informed”. The real reason for their letter is to manipulate you, to convince you to apply pressure to your bargaining committee to take what the Company decides to offer in February. The Company believes that they can weaken your resolve if they can slip slivers of doubt into your mind about your Union, and about collective bargaining. Their behavior is not consistent with respecting your wishes to exercise your American, legal right, to act and speak collectively by forming a Union and engaging in collective bargaining.

Well, we have a message for Clearwater Paper’s pampered, 24K, multimillionaire leadership:

Treating your employees with disdain and disrespect by circumventing their legally chosen vehicle for conducting the communications and negotiations necessary to achieve a mutually beneficial contract was wrong, and wrong-headed.  Our collective resolve is only strengthened by your amateurish efforts to do otherwise.

As for the slow pace of bargaining, let’s set the record straight. The Company claimed they wanted to conclude bargaining by September 1, and your committee accommodated their schedule of meeting for three (3) weeks of costly bargaining in August. Little did we know they were bringing contract proposals to gut our labor agreement and strip us of our hard-fought history. They sought so many changes that they didn’t even have their entire proposal to us by the conclusion of that three (3) week period, and elements remain missing to this day.

As for Clearwater Paper claiming they have a bargaining team working for you – that’s simply false, they work for the Corporation, PERIOD. They cannot work for you, legally, or otherwise. They have to represent the Corporation –  stockholders’ concerns must be their concerns – not your concerns, not your community’s concerns, not your children’s interests, and not your country’s concerns – only the stockholders’ concerns – which are easily described in less than a word - $$. The minute Clearwater’s Board of Directors finds themselves with a company bargaining team that looks out for the workers before the stockholders ($$), they will get themselves a new bargaining team. It’s their fiduciary responsibility under the law.

             Ask any CEO, how many millions are enough before you give the rest of your profits to the workers that produced it?  The answer is always the same…there is never “enough”.  If Clearwater Paper wants a deal, they’ve got our proposals, proposals that would get them a contract at the next meeting – all they have to do is sign. 

Yours in Solidarity

Your ONLY Bargaining Team