Oct. 28, 2024 – Negotiating Committee has completed their Bargaining training and have looked at all the membership surveys and proposals.
Negotiating Committee will summarize and go through all the completed member survey’s. Committee will also attending Contract negotiating training the week of Oct.21,2024.
September 26, 2024 – 2025 Bargaining Survey’s have been distributed to all Local 11 members. Deadline to submit all the surveys back to Negotiating Committee is October 8.
Negotiating Committee
Barry Bateson
Melvin Dass
Kent Webster
David Lau
Roneel Sharma
Jeff Smith
Walter Gerlach
HOW THE NEGOTIATIONS PROCESS WORKS
The negotiations process starts when the members elect the Negotiating Committee members and this new committee is seated. Its members first start by reviewing what took place over the last few years, carefully looking at what has worked and what hasn’t, and what has had a positive or negative effect on the hourly workforce.
The committee structures and develops a set of operating rules known as Terms of Reference that guide the committee on how it will function throughout the process.
Any Negotiating Committee member will tell you that there is a lot of discussion between the members as to what can be done to improve the next contract’s outcome. They will also tell you that they rely on what they hear from you, the member.
The elements that help the Committee focus on specific areas for negotiation include:
● Feedback from surveys aimed at understanding what is most important to the membership. These surveys provide important information that might otherwise remain unknown.
● Discussions with members at the work site and during scheduled meetings. These town hall meetings bring to light issues that the membership feels strongly about and that no survey or second-hand reporting could possibly communicate to the Committee.
● A thorough review of sample bargaining agreements in our industry.
● Feedback from Union representatives who will be on the front line with the Company on a daily basis during bargaining. This is why it is so important for you to elect good representatives and keep them informed about what is going on. Your representatives can’t be everywhere, so he or she must rely on you to know what is happening in your workplace.
● To craft the best proposals, industry standards are carefully reviewed by the Committee, as well as regional trends in our field.
These are just some of the resources the Committee relies on to begin putting together a contract proposal.
How does the Committee actually do its work? Its members meet on a regular basis, working occasionally into the late evening hours. As the date of the contract talks approaches, the members start meeting more frequently, in some cases every day, to finalize their proposals before the face-to-face negotiations with the Company begin.
The Union and the Company Negotiating Committee meet off site for fulltime sessions at mutually agreed upon times, frequency and locations. The objective of both Committees is to complete an agreement as soon as possible without leaving any subject of concern unaddressed.
This completes our brief summary of the negotiations process, which we hope sheds some light into all the steps that go into creating a work contract. More importantly, we hope you never forget that the wages and benefits you receive are the result of a collective bargaining process and are not a gift from the Company. Without the legal protections of a collective bargaining agreement, the Company can alter the health insurance benefits, holidays, shifts, pensions, and many other benefits we currently enjoy or have succeeded in obtaining.