608                  TABLE TALK                    712

    2010   Issue #10                                                                 January

The purpose behind the articles in this Table Talk is to provide background for certain questions that will be on the second survey.

 VACATIONS (SEC 21, pages 41-46)

     Prior to 2002 we had seven weeks of vacation after 25 years of service. In 2002 our Locals gave up the seventh week, even those who already had the seventh week, as part of our effort to help our company survive the serious recession brought on by the dot-com bubble burst and prolonged by 9-11.

One way for a company to take back from their employees is to increase the years of service before receiving another vacation. Consider how Arkansas’s vacation schedule is different than ours. In addition, new hires at Arkansas will now top out at 5 weeks. (See the October Table Talk archived at www.usw-608.com).

ww.usw-608.com

ARKANSAS                                                          LEWISTON

 YEARS                   WEEKS                                  YEARS                   WEEKS

1                              1                                           1                            1

3                              2                                           2                            2

8                              3                                           5                            3

12                            4                                           10                           4

18                            5                                           15                           5

25                            6                                           20                           6

     In 2002 we also gave back hours of vacation pay. Shift workers dropped from 56 hours to 52 while day workers dropped from 48 hours to 40. The scheduled hours of work per week and an average amount of overtime per work week were considerations when the original vacation hours of pay were set. Overtime was considered so an employee would be compensated somewhat for the loss of overtime opportunity. Since 2002, it is now common to hear employees say they lose money taking a vacation.

HISTORY OF FLOATING HOLIDAYS

     Way back in the day, our mill used to schedule maintenance outages over three major holidays: 4th of July, Labor Day and Christmas. Those outages, as they are today, were a good source of extra income for the crafts and shift workers who served as their helpers.

   The company eventually decided to drop the Labor Day and Christmas outages. To compensate for the lost income, the union was able to negotiate two days of holiday pay for both Labor Day and Christmas.

   The company continued the July outage until the 1990’s when it, too, was dropped. To compensate for that lost income, the union was able to negotiate three personal days per year for each employee. For maintenance, two days were fixed to the 4th of July weekend and another to the Labor Day weekend. Shift workers were allowed to use their three additional floaters as needed.

   Added to the two personal days each employee already had, each employee then had five 8-hour days (40 hours) of personal or floating holidays.

    When shift workers adopted the current 12-hour shift schedule in 1997, our 40 hours of floaters were converted to three 12-hour days plus four residual hours.

   In 2002, maintenance lost the floater attached to the Labor Day weekend. Today, they have 32 hours (four 8-hour days) of floating holidays:

 As a side note, is everyone aware we can bank floating holidays and use them later as an extra vacation (see SEC 7, pp 9-12 in our contract book)?

SALARY RELIEF

SENIORITY (SEC 19 (e) (3)), p. 33:

    The company and Locals 712-608 negotiated the opportunity for hourly employees to work as salary relief. The position pays $0.50 over the top job in a line of progression. When an employee accepts work as salary relief, the other employees in the line of progression, as a result, are not required to work overtime, other than for a normal change of shifts due to seniority, or change scheduled vacations.

PERCENTAGE VS. ACROSS-THE-BOARD RAISES

 1.  Percentage raises build or compile on itself, so over time, wages are higher than wages built    on similar across-the-board raises over the same time period.

2. A percentage raise will gradually widen the gap between the top and bottom wage, while an across-the-board raise will help keep the gap from widening.

3. The opportunity cost for an across-the-board raise is the loss of future income due to the   “compiling effect” of percentage raises.

4. Employees working the bottom wage rates must decide if it’s better for them to keep the gap between their wages and the top wages from widening or to let wages “compile” so there will be higher-paying top jobs for them to step into, as they gain seniority.

Based on $20/hr for this example – 2.5% was applied to $20, which is $.50, then that amount was used as the flat rate raise.

2.5%/hr Raise                                                 Flat rate Raise $.50/hr

Year             $/hr                                            Year             $/hr

  1                20.50                                            1                20.50

  2                21.012                                          2                21

  3                21.535                                          3                21.50

  4                22.068                                          4                22

  5                22.611                                         5                22.50

  6                23.176                                          6                23

  7                23.755                                          7                23.50

  8                24.348                                          8                24

  9                24.956                                          9                24.50

  10              25.579                                          10              25

  A job at Clearwater is not one a person will only hold for just a couple of years, it is one a person will hold for many many years. As seniority builds up & you make advances in a line of progression the higher hourly rate is what holds a person in their position & at Clearwater.

If the rates were kept low there would no incentive to stay in the upper jobs that require much more responsibility & thus we would start to lose valuable knowledge as people jump from job to job.

What is the ‘Maintenance Adjustment?

   A Maintenance adjustment is a small rate applied to the mechanical trades since the Job Analysis Plan is not available to Maintenance. Job analysis is available to all other jobs to establish wage increases by appraising increasing skill levels, working conditions & responsibility.  The Mill is constantly under-going equipment upgrades with newer & technologically more complex installations that Maintenance is required to install as well as to maintain. The Maintenance Adjustment is an effort to compensate for this constant increase in responsibilities.