Christmas is fast approaching and I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday. It seems like just yesterday that we were in bargaining a year ago this December.
Armada has hired 28 full time employees since negotiations including 2 maintenance employees and a midnight tool room. Early Nov I asked about hiring more and the answer I recieved from management was yes most likely, probably before Chrismas we will be hiring more. Although this is good for our union there still seems to be a total disregard for the exploitation of precarious workers from the temp agency. At the time of writing this article we still have approximately 105 temp agency workers vs 166 full time unionized members for a total of 271 employees excluding salaried workers.
The problem we have is the ratio in the collective agreement article 11.02.4. for those of you who do not know how this ratio works it’s a 3 month average which forces management to hire every 3 months depending on how many agency employees are utilized each month. For simplicity sake lets say the 3 month average is 100. you would then subtract 20 and multiply by .10 which would mean they would only owe us 8 full time employees for those 3 months. We must continue to put pressure on management to have article 11.02.4 of our collective agreement changed in the next set of negotiations. Again let me make it clear that we are not against the people who work for the temp agency. We only wish that they could enjoy the same wages and benefits the membership receives.
As of Nov 14 we are still awaiting a step 3 meeting regarding the production assistants jobs (PA's). Although i think management is on the right track in creating these jobs i think the way they are going about it is completely wrong. Seniority employees are being discriminated against while the company favours lower seniority employees for the positions without posting the job as per article 12.01 of our collective agreement. The company says they need to do this in order to get the best of the best.. the collective agreement says in article 12.07 that all jobs postings are subject to a probationary period of 20 days. This means all seniority employees should have the opportunity for the job based on their seniority and if it is deemed they cannot perform the job management may move on to the next candidate within the 20 day probationary period based on seniority.
Another major issue we have with the creation of these positions is that they were created by management to support people in higher classifications of pay. For example instead of hiring more full time material handlers the production assistants are to pick up the slack. This is fine but material handlers get paid over $1 an hr more than a PA will get and a material handler set up in assembly almost $2 an our more than a PA. If the PA's are to to the same work then they should be paid for it.
Last but not least i would like to thank all those who took part in the November training sessions held at local 222 in Oshawa. These sessions are free to all members of local 222 and are a great way to increase your knowledge on union activism along with workplace health and safety and human rights.
In solidarity
Tom Worsley
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