After nine months of negotiations, the Eugene Water and Electric Board may face an employee strike next week.
Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union were scheduled to meet Thursday night to vote on whether to accept EWEB’s most recent proposal or to initiate the formal process of voting to strike.
The 158 IBEW members who are also EWEB employees might strike as early as June 6 if Thursday’s vote shows a majority interest in striking.
Both sides met for four hours Wednesday night in the last scheduled bargaining session, but the meeting produced no resolution.
“There was no earth-shattering movement on either side,” said Ron Johnson, assistant business manager for local union 659 IBEW. “At this given moment, they don’t appear to want to compromise and neither do we, but we’re still willing to negotiate.”
Marty Douglass, EWEB’s public affairs manager, said EWEB will
continue to prepare contingency plans to keep operations running smoothly should the union strike.
“The next step is what we’ve been doing for the last few weeks:
planning how to continue effectively operating in the event that a strike takes place,” he said.
EWEB’s contingency plans involve shifting existing, nonunion workers to fill the vacant jobs as well as bringing in outside labor. Douglass also said customers would not be affected by a strike.
“We will be bringing in a few outside replacement workers who are nonunion,” he said. “Our intent is not to bring in a whole throng of replacement workers.”
He also said EWEB had reached the point where they have planned all they can.
“We really don’t feel there’s a great deal more we can do in terms of preparation,” Douglass said.
Healthcare is at the heart of negotiations as it has been for the last nine months. The union is asking for lower healthcare costs and deductibles, higher co-pay percentages and lower “stop-loss” costs.
Stop-loss costs, which currently can cost up to $3,000 for an individual and $6,000 for a family, are mostly paid by employers after those set amounts in the event of disastrous illness.
“Six grand is going to hit you right square between the eyes,” Johnson said. That amount is “debilitating” for working families, he said.
Douglass said EWEB’s Wednesday proposal included lowering stop-loss costs, and EWEB has never offered a proposal that diminishes current employee benefits.
“Throughout all of these discussions, we have never made a proposal that takes anything away or reduces benefits,” he said. “What we are arguing over is the degree of enhancements to the contract.”
In offering lower stop-loss costs, Douglass said EWEB was departing from its traditional bargaining positions.
“I would characterize our proposal as representing a significant change from our previous position from maximum out-of-the-pocket expense,” he said.
In previous interviews with the Emerald, Douglass said meeting
the union’s healthcare demands would create a “two-tier” system of benefits between union and nonunion employees.
Holidays and retroactive pay are other unresolved issues for the union. They want Veteran’s Day as a paid holiday as well as retroactive payment from the end of their previous contract, Dec. 31, 2005, to mid-April, the beginning of their new contract.
Douglass said EWEB has already implemented some of its “last and best” offers in the form of pay raises.
On May 18, EWEB offered many union workers a 12 percent pay raise. Douglass said this was done to show good will toward
employees and to continue paying its employees in the 55th percentile of average utility workers.
“They’re good employees and they deserve it,” he said. “It (also) keeps us consistent with paying at that level.”
The IBEW employees, who are primarily construction workers,
linemen, field workers and workers who hold other electricity- and water-related positions, make up about a third of EWEB’s total workforce.
Although his union may be voting on a strike in a matter of days, Johnson said he and the IBEW workers will be willing to negotiate until 7 a.m. June 6, when the proposed strike would begin.
“We are not going to quit the process until 6:59 a.m.,” he said. “We would move heaven and Earth not to strike, but we have to meet them halfway.”
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