News From USW: Members of the United Steelworkers at 14 mills owned by International Paper, the largest producer in the industry, voted overwhelmingly yesterday to approve a four-year master agreement that improves wages and benefits and secures jobs with a successorship clause.
"The overwhelming support for this agreement shows how united our members are in pursuing master agreements in the paper industry," USW International President Leo W. Gerard said after learning the results.
"Now our focus will turn to getting a master agreement for the IP converters," he added, referring to the IP plants where paper is converted into other products, such as cardboard.
Under the agreement, steelworkers' wages and health and retirement benefits will improve, but they also receive job protection from a successorship clause, which is particularly significant in the volatile paper industry.
The successorship provision says that if IP sells a mill, it will as part of that sales agreement require the new owner to retain current workers, recognize the union, and honor the collective bargaining agreement until expiration. It allows a new owner room for work force reduction, but that must occur under the seniority terms within the contract.
"Successorship clauses protect workers from the unconscionable behavior of corporations that sell a mill, then disregard both the union and the collective bargaining agreement and summarily fire hundreds of people who have dedicated their lives to work there," Gerard said.
The master agreement provides current IP workers with virtually the highest monthly pension multiplier in the industry at $50 for all years of service. In addition, this contract provides all workers with a high quality PPO health care plan that IP cannot arbitrarily alter, as it could previously. IP will pay increasingly larger shares of the premium costs over the life of the four-year agreement, with the goal of 80 percent at the end.
In addition, IP will for the first time ever make lump sum payments into a fund for any worker who was at least age 50 at the time of the ratification to help them pay for early retirement health insurance premiums. In addition, workers who pay $80 into that fund a month themselves will see the company double those dollars.
Under this agreement, IP workers will receive two percent pay increase on the expiration date of their local contract and on the second anniversary. They will also get $1,000 lump sum payments on the first and third anniversaries.
The USW represents 150,000 workers in the North American paper industry. Overall, it has more than 850,000 members in a wide array of industries throughout the U.S. and Canada.
