I thought while B was out on strike (hopefully not for long) I would talk about what is going on and how we have been affected by it in the past week.
Week 11
Usually, no news is good news. In this case that is the exact opposite. If we don’t hear anything it’s because there is no negotiating going on. If we don’t hear anything and they are negotiating it means they are not making any positive grounds. Of course, they are not going to tell you when things are not going in their favor, but the minute the union gets anything they want they are hollering it from the highest mountain.
We got another letter from the company this week. The letter basically told us that the representative from the national union bargaining team is the reason that there is a stalemate in the negotiations. We found this out last week by word of mouth from many people that this person was causing most of the issues with settling the contract. The letter said because of this person the whole reason they have stalled negotiating is this person is being unreasonable. It also said that it looks like it is going to be quite a while before this strike is going to be over.
Great that is the one thing you do not want to hear. We just keep hoping that this is going to be over now. Knowing that it is going to be about a 4 week transition before B can even get back to work once the contract is approved and 6 weeks before we even see a paycheck. If they signed tomorrow that would put us at not being back to work until the beginning of June. What!!! B has been off since the beginning of February. How crazy is that? Thankfully he has been finding side jobs to help make ends meet.
The kicker of the whole letter was the last sentence. It basically said that the company has an open gate policy and anyone can return to work at any time. That is really the first time they openly said anyone can return to work despite the union strike. I told B if enough people end up going back to work, honestly we are going to have to look at going back, too.
Because of this national representative the local union has basically lost all ground with the company and is going to have to take what the company offers. No matter how bad it is. While we can’t know what is going on behind the scenes at the refinery, from all appearances everything seems to be running normal. They are running at full capacity, and there doesn’t seem to be any problems. Great so now it proves they don’t need the union to have the refinery run. What does that mean exactly? Well from my stand point, why does the company have to give in to anything because they are doing just fine, making money, and running normal? For us that means, we have no ground to stand on and have to agree to what they offer if we want to keep our jobs.