More than 150 Eugene Water and Electric Board employees may walk off the job as early as May 22 if their union votes to strike Friday.
The EWEB workers in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers voted 100-42 to authorize a strike Thursday night.
May 19 represents the end of the “cooling-off” stage of the nine-month negotiations. That date is EWEB’s last opportunity to implement its final offer and is the first date IBEW can declare a strike.
The 156 IBEW workers at EWEB, who are primarily construction workers, linemen, field workers and workers who hold other electricity- and water-related positions, make up about 31 percent of EWEB’s total workforce.If the union does decide to strike, EWEB will be ready, said Marty Douglass, EWEB’s public affairs manager.
“We have been doing a lot of planning for how we would continue to conduct business,” he said.
EWEB’s contingency plans involve shifting existing, non-union workers to fill the vacant jobs. Douglass also said EWEB will bring in some outside labor to help keep operations running smoothly and said customers would not be affected by the strike.
“We will be bringing in a few outside replacement workers who are non-union,” he said. “Our intent is not to bring in a whole throng of replacement workers.”
Ron Johnson, assistant business manager for local union 659 IBEW, said three issues are at the heart of the debate: health care, holidays and contract length.
Johnson said IBEW understands that health care is a national crisis, but when EWEB conducted a regional survey of 10 separate utility companies and found that IBEW employees were second to last in health, welfare and pensions, something needed to be done.
“The cost is pretty high,” Johnson said, “but we could live with that if the deductible wasn’t so high.”
The average deductible for his EWEB workers was $6,000, he said.
Rick Turtura, an IBEW member and EWEB lineman for 27 years, also cited the study as an example of IBEW’s concern.
“We pay twice as much for health care than everybody else,” he said. “If there’s one thing us linemen are tired of, it’s the customers’ rates are spiraling up while the benefits are going down.”
Douglass said the problem is that the union is looking for health care enhancement in the form of lower out-of-the-pocket expenses.
“We’re not willing to go there,” he said. “Non-union workers would not receive the same level of benefits.”
This discrepancy in benefits is stopping EWEB from meeting the union’s proposal, Douglass said.
“We don’t want to create a two-tier health system,” he said.
IBEW workers also want Veteran’s Day off. Douglass said the reason the day is not currently a holiday dates back two decades.
EWEB workers voted in the 1980s to switch the holiday status of Veteran’s Day with the day after Thanksgiving to give them more time with their families, Douglass said.
“If you look at the number of holidays we offer, we’re right on par with everybody else,” Douglass said.
But Johnson said history belongs in the text books, not on the negotiating table.
“That’s past history,” he said. “We’re negotiating in 2006 and what’s going on now. They’ve never even made an offer to change that.”
In addition, Turtura said EWEB does not honor veterans by treating Veteran’s Day as a non-holiday.
“The bottom line is that it doesn’t cost too much,” he said. “They don’t honor the vet.”
But Douglass said that is untrue and the issue has nothing to do with actual veterans.
“For us, it’s been more of a matter of an additional holiday than a specific holiday,” he said.
The length of contract and retroactive pay is another issue for the union. Johnson said the union’s contract expired on Dec. 31, 2005, and would not be renewed until April 2006.
This was fine, Johnson said, as both the union and EWEB agreed on price increases over the next several years.
The disagreement stemmed from when these price increases would be implemented. IBEW wanted them to begin on Jan. 1, 2006, and EWEB wanted them to begin in April with the renewal of the contract.
Despite the detailed list of demands for each, both sides appear eager to resolve the conflict and avoid a strike.
“I have great hope that we can get a resolution,” Johnson said. “We do not want a strike; we do not want a work stoppage.”
“We are still hopeful,” Douglass said. “We’re certainly going to be willing to continue talking, and we are especially interested in listening to what they want.”
However, each side seems to be waiting for the other to make the first move toward a resolution.
“From our point of view they haven’t made any proposals,” Douglass said. “We really don’t know what it would take to reach an agreement.”
“We’d have to have some movement on some of those issues,” Johnson said. “Until there’s something put out by them, we can’t do anything. The ball’s in their court.”
This is the first proposed strike in EWEB’s history.