by Tom Price
In their recent contract negotiations, warehouse Local 6 members at Bayer faced down a serious threat to their jurisdiction—the contracting-out of union janitors’ jobs.
The trouble began last June when Bayer Healthcare Products told Local 6 BA Donal Mahon and other members that it would hire a janitorial contractor and remove the janitors from the bargaining unit. If the company had its way, the 54 janitors at the Berkeley, Calif. facility would see their jobs outsourced to a company that paid most of its people $10.35 an hour, almost a 50 percent less than Local 6 workers. From the beginning, the 550 union members knew they were in for a battle, all for one and one for all.
"The employer looked at the janitors as if they were supporting one person instead of a complete family," bargaining team member Trina Lewis-Moore said. "We said: ‘550 for 54.’ That was our saying—550 of us were willing to walk out for 54."
The bargaining team had spent some six months preparing for the negotiations, which began July 19 with an exchange of proposals. In addition to Mahon and Lewis-Moore, the team consisted of Chief Steward Alex Magsano, Asst. Chief Steward Christian Sledge, Ron Hershman, Rebecca Allen, Rodney Ball, James McMahan, Lorena Ruance, Regina Allen and Mike Tryon. They come from all areas of the plant and met regularly throughout the year as an informal stewards council.
Local 6 workers at the Bayer plant make blood-clotting agents for hemophiliacs, people who lack the gene that triggers the production of blood-clotting proteins. Clotting prevents blood loss in the event of cuts. The gene that makes the protein, human ‘Factor 8,’ is spliced onto the genes of baby hamster kidney cells. Local 6 workers grow the cells in fermentors, siphon off the liquid, purify it by filtration, freeze dry and ship it.
For the bargaining team, preparation was key.
"Before negotiations we met at the hall for five or six Saturdays and had weeknight meetings that we invited all the members to," Mahon said. "We sent out surveys and wrote proposals, and then the committee sat down two more Saturdays and a couple weeknights and put together our final proposals."
The Local 6 team met with the employer every weekday in August and two Saturdays for a minimum of eight hours. They stuck to the principle that the janitors would remain in the unit. The company abandoned its contracting-out demand, but it insisted on paying janitors a whole lot less, offering them $13 and later $14.50 an hour.
The Aug. 22 bargaining session began at 9:00 a.m. The company boosted its janitors’ pay offer to $18 an hour and agreed they would stay in the unit. But that was still a $2 an hour pay cut. Talks continued until 11:15 that night when the company made its "last, best and final offer." Bayer added a sweetener to the deal—if the members agreed to screw the janitors, Bayer would kick in a $1,500 signing bonus.
"After we finished bargaining that night, we discussed the offer with the committee," Mahon said. "Then at midnight we went to the plant and spent maybe two hours in the maintenance offices copying the offers for all our members. Then we went back at 6:00 a.m. for our first meeting of the day with the members."
On Aug. 24, the members rejected the deal by a two-thirds majority.
"It was a pretty impressive act of solidarity," Local 6 Secretary-Treasurer Fred Pecker said, referring to the refusal to take the bonus blood money. After that Pecker joined the team at the table.
Bargaining continued until Sept. 8. The team presented a proposed agreement to the membership Sept. 12 and two days later the members voted to accept it with a two-thirds majority.
In the end, the janitors got a wage freeze for those who do not work in the special production rooms where medicines are prepared. They would still be classified General Workers. They will keep their salaries of $20 an hour and all union health and pension benefits.
Janitors working in the production areas will now be called Production Area Cleaners. They will get about a two percent raise in the second and third years of the contract. The rest of the nearly 40 classifications in the unit will get raises of 3.5 percent the first year and second year, and 3.8 percent the third year. Other benefits will remain as before and some people will move into the same medical plan as the supervisors.
"It was my first time bargaining. I learned a lot," Lewis-Moore said. "I’d do it again, even with all that work, because we did it for a lot of people, and that’s a plus in the end."
