LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / August 30, 1999

GRAMERCY – Three days of negotiations this week between Kaiser Aluminum and the United Steelworkers of America toward settling the strike, now nearly 11 months old, ended without progress.

Wayne Stafford, president of union local 5702, said it is “very disappointing.””We didn’t form our union to give the jobs away,” Stafford said. “Weformed it to protect them and to support our families.”Kaiser’s chief negotiator, Jeremy Sherman, reported from the San Francisco talks: “No progress was made because the union attempted to advance a proposal that adds significant new restrictions on Kaiser’s ability to contract out certain jobs. Rather than meeting Kaiser’sproductivity objectives, the union’s proposal goes in the opposite direction.”Sherman continued: “Specifically, the union’s proposal would not only make outsourcing more difficult in the future, it could also force the company to hire up to 50 additional full-time employees, at significant cost, to perform work that in the past had been assigned to contractors.”Kaiser is looking to outsource 239 jobs to contractors which, Sherman said, is a “significant modification” to its Aug. 12 proposal.Stafford said as he read Sherman’s remarks he was “sitting here, getting red-assed. That don’t give us no damned security.”David Foster, chairman of the union’s negotiation team, responded: “Throughout the 1990s and to this very day we have supported the company with a multi-million dollar, interest-free loan. The idea that,after all these sacrifices, we should turn over the jobs we saved to outsiders is unacceptable.”The job outsourcing would cover carpenters, painters, machinists, welders, janitors, truck drivers, security guards, laborers, crain maintenance crews and lab technicians, for a total of 8 percent of Kaiser’s workforce.

No new talks are scheduled.

Return To News Stories