Whirlpool Corp. has offered workers a raise of 80 cents an hour, or 5.25 percent, over the next five years, plus payments equaling $1,200 during that time, as the company and the union this week continued to negotiate a labor contract.
Negotiators for Local 808 of the International Union of Electrical Workers have countered with a proposed raise of $2.55 an hour, or 16.8 percent, over the next five years, plus a $500 signing bonus.
Meanwhile, negotiators for both sides continue to bargain over such issues as health insurance, vacation time eligibility and mandatory training for employees in certain tasks.
One particularly troublesome issue in the negotiations is a company proposal to conduct random drug testing of workers, which the union charges is a type of harassment and is subject to error.
The union and company will meet again today in an effort to move closer on these and other issues in their 15th bargaining session since December. The company’s current contract, which covers about 1,800 workers, is scheduled to expire Feb. 19.
Neither company nor union representatives have spoken to the media about negotiations. However, both sides have distributed newsletters detailing the proposals.
Assembly workers, the most common job category at the Evansville plant, now earn $15.19 an hour. Under the company’s proposal, workers would get a raise of 25 cents per hour in the first year of a new contract; 25 cents in the third year; and 30 cents in the fifth year, for a total of 80 cents per hour over five years. In the second and fourth years, workers would receive lump sums of $600 instead of an hourly raise.
The company’s proposal amounts to a raise of about 1 percent per year, plus $1,200.
Under the union’s proposal, workers would receive wage increases of 75 cents per hour in the first year and 45 cents per hour in each of the second, third, fourth and fifth years of the contract. They would also receive a $500 bonus for signing the contract.
The union’s proposal amounts to raises of about 3 percent per year, plus $500.
The company has also proposed three health insurance plans which it says are designed to give employees more choices.
In addition to the existing plan, the company would offer “consumer-driven” plans in which the company pays the first expenses up to a specified amount, the employees pay the next expenses up to another amount, and, after that amount is reached, the company pays 90 percent of the in-network, 70 percent of the out-of-network expenses.
The union has charged that the health plans increase worker costs by as much as 44 percent.
Two company proposals that the union has highlighted in its newsletters as issues that could lead to a strike are a change in vacation pay eligibility and random drug testing.
A proposal that would require workers to work longer before they are eligible for vacation would have cost 129 employees vacations if enacted last year, the union has said.
The union also has charged random drug testing would invade workers’ privacy by requiring workers to reveal medical information such as the prescribed medications they take, would lead to false accusations since tests can be mistaken and is bad policy.
“Random drug testing is a method of controlling people, not drugs,” the union charged in a newsletter. The union said the company should be required to perform an impairment test to see if the worker can do the job, rather than a drug test.
From Courier Press
