Unions vote down contract

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Picketing United Auto Workers and United Defense Workers voted down a proposed contract offered by General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products Saturday, sending the strike into its fifth week.
“We turned it down by the same percentage as before, 87 percent,” UDW President Gary Blevins said Monday in the union office on Chestnut Street.
The unions turned down a contract after four weeks of talks with GDATP administrators broke off late Friday, April 11, when union officials authorized the Marion strike. The strikers said that contract weakened seniority provisions, cuts pensions and raised insurance premiums and employees’ costs for prescriptions drugs.
The new proposal is “a different package, with some changes,” Blevins said, “Basically it’s the same language as before. But it’s two steps forward and three steps back.”
In a prepared statement Monday evening Jim Losse, GDATP’s vice president and general manager of advanced materials, said officials believed the second contract proposal “responded to the concerns raised during negotiations.”
Blevins said the main drawback to the new contract is its term. “It’s a 42-month contract instead of 36 months. Nov. 11 [2011] is when it runs out. The membership would be facing cold weather, Christmas, and taxes. That would put the membership in a bad position to negotiate. They could bring a really trashy contract and we would be under pressure.”
Losse issued his statement in lieu of directly responding to a list of specific questions from the News & Messenger about how the new contract term was decided, company plans to make any concessions to meet the unions’ demands, responses of the company’s participants to the meetings with strikers, how the company is continuing to fill work orders, and whether workers from other facilities might be brought to the Marion plant.
Blevins said office workers have been pulled onto the production floor, and Losse’s statement said only that “the plant continues to operate to meet the needs of our customers.”
On May 2, a GDATP release said Boeing selected the company “as the preferred provider to supply the next generation of wideband radomes for the F-15 Radar Modernization Program. … Production and program management will be performed at General Dynamics’ Advanced Materials facility in Marion, Va.”
Blevins said he did not know how the plant was continuing to operate. “I don’t know what is going on. They are pulling people out of offices and putting them on the [production] floor.”
Losse said in an April 12 statement that 350 employees were on strike, and 175 were not. Striker Mike Husketh objected to what he saw as a suggestion that not all union members were on strike. “The 175 working are all salaried, not production workers,” Husketh said.
In a requested clarification, spokeswoman Gail Warner said “there are over 175 non-union employees who, of course, not being union, are not on strike.”
Two weeks ago strikers said three union members had crossed the picket line and returned to work, a number Blevins confirmed Monday. “We have three hourly scabs,” he said.
Unconfirmed rumors on the picket line two weeks ago said Losse had spoken with a few of the strikers. Warner deflected a request for an interview with Losse. “As I’m sure you can appreciate, we’re focusing our energy and attention on resolution.  Therefore I can’t make Mr. Losse available for comment,” Warner said.
The new contract proposal followed two meetings last week between the unions’ negotiating team and company officials, Blevins said. “It wasn’t hostile. It was cordial.”
On Saturday morning, the unions’ negotiators brought the new contract to the members “to decide if it was enough movement for our ratification,” Blevins said.  “We knew by 11 [a.m.] we were still on strike.”
Strikers have repeatedly said the unions are willing to talk with the company, and Blevins reiterated that Monday. “Anytime the company wants to meet, we’ll meet with them and go back to the table.”
In his statement, Losse said officials “continue to hope that an agreement can be reached with the UAW in the near future, although no additional discussions have been planned at this time.”
As other strikers had done previously, Blevins said they were “especially appreciative of the community’s support. We also thank the local unions in the area that donated time and money and folks.”
Blevins said a group of union mine workers had joined the picket line last Tuesday in a show of solidarity. United Auto Workers from the Dublin Volvo truck plant walked the picket line at GDATP earlier this month.
“We’re not trying to be greedy, just hold our footing and not go backward,” Blevins said. “We’re just fighting for our families and our livelihoods.”