JUNE 2016
To Our Membership, It’s been a very busy couple weeks, as the bargaining team that were elected have torn through the surveys, the CBA and the emails we have received, to put together this year’s bargaining plan. It was incredible to see almost half of the membership putting a survey in, with hundreds of sticker ideas, issues, and solutions. As expected, there were certain items in the survey that 99% of the membership all agreed were the top issues, and we have put them to the top of our agenda. This weekend, we are hosting our very first “Day of Steel”. This is a celebration of what we represent; families, friends, community, and overall solidarity. We have many events, games, and food planned, and expect to see anyone who can come, to show up and support our local Union. Bring your whole family! The bargaining team will be there all day, and we have just received a whole new shipment of Union Swag, so bring your pocket book. As always, everything you purchase is only 50% of the cost!! The Logan Lake WHY is also doing a 50/50 to support the local programs they offer. The event is on Saturday June 11th, in Logan Lake at the Rec Center, from 11 AM to 4PM, followed by “Batman Versus Superman” the movie at 4:30PM. Popcorn, candy, ice cream, hotdogs, hamburgers, chips and pop/water is provided, so bring your kids and get them amped up on sugar. Getting back to the surveys, the outpouring of support, and frustration, was apparent. The membership has given us a very strong mandate to protect three very important pieces of language. It was a dead heat between contracting out, wages and benefits. These items are so closely tied together, each one as important as the next, that it was almost impossible to separate them. Contracting out, as we all know, is the single biggest reason why most of us are employed at HVC today. If it was not for the sacrifice that our Brothers and Sisters took on in 89’, we would not have the strong workforce that we have today and be seen as the strongest Union in the Teck Chain. Wages, is easy. We have one of the best wages in the industry, especially for Kamloops, yet the Company still recorded a $449 million profit at HVC in 2015. As much as the “Power Hour” has taught us, the Company is not broke, but continues to ask us to do more with less, only to put more money in their pockets. $449 Million is not something to snivel at, and helped them purchase another 3.4 Billion dollar investment. Our cost of living continues to increase, and we have to keep up with those changes. Our communities and our families depend on those wages. We sat with Sunlife who explained how our medical and dental benefit package works. They talked a lot about what we have now, and how it all works. They explained that over time, they see a massive shift in the medical industry for the cost of medications, as designer drugs become more prevalent. The maximum lifetime won’t always be able to cover us as those costs go up, but they did give us some details on how to protect your lifetime max, mainly asking your doctor for generic drugs, which are 18% of the name brand drugs, but identical in every way. Of course, the top item on the surveys was our pension. It really is something else. Currently worth over 370 Million, it single handily gives every Unionized employee a future past HVC. We were at the retirement luncheon last week, and one thing is very common. Our retirees are happy, traveling, and more grateful than anyone else that we fought for and protected the pension. People understand how important it is to protect our pension, and to expand on, for it will be our future when we get to retire. In the next newsletter we are going to attach a chart, which shows the growth of the plan since the Copper Bonus was negotiated in 2003. Since then, we have gained almost 30$ on the Copper Bonus alone! As of right now, the pension plan is paying 104$ a month per year of service. This plan is one of the few remaining in Canada that are this strong. But I think the best piece of information is that it doesn’t cost the Company as much money to fund it as we first thought. Currently, it’s less than a million a month, when the Company makes around 1.3 Million a day in PROFIT. Over the next couple updates, we hope to bring out the history on how the Copper Bonus came about, talk about the 1999 hostages, the 1989 strike, the contracting out language, and the history of our local. It’s important to understand how those things came about, since many of the same follies the Company is making today is the reason why we bargained the language in the past. It is still regarded as one of the best CBA’s in industry, and is something to be proud of. Last words. There has been a lot of chatter about what is happening on the floor. Really simply, the Company is treating everyone like children. Actually, children are treated better. Could you imagine your school asking your children to piss test? How about telling them they are not allowed to bring up safety issues? What about religious beliefs, or medical accommodations? No one is allowed to think on their own, bring up safety issues, complain about bad roads, speak out of turn, or breathe without authority to do so. The worst part, they are doing it on purpose. It’s a slow undermining of employee’s wills, slowly chipping away at stewards, health and safety reps and chairs. This has to stop. Enough is enough. Every single employee has to stand up and fight back. Speak out against safety issues and don’t back down until they are resolved. Protect your reps, and back them when they take on your fights. Ask questions and don’t believe the rhetoric. Each one of us has as much responsibility to protect the Collective Language as myself, or any one of the executive. We are the Union, and we must act like one. In Solidarity, Kyle Wolff, President Local 7619 Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2021
Categories |