Pulp and paper pact - Georgia-Pacific Corp.-United Paperworkers International Union contract - Developments in industrial relations

Monthly Labor Review, Sept, 1990 by Michael H. Cimini

and paper pact

Reflecting the paper industry's trend to negotiate longer term labor agreements, Georgia-Pacific Corp. and five United Paperworkers locals, representing 880 employees at plants in Millinocket and East Millinocket, ME, reached a 5-year contract. (See Monthly Labor Review. August 1990, pp. 46-47.) The mills formerly were part of the Great Northern Nekossa Corp., which Georgia-Pacific took over earlier this year.

The contract calls for an immediate $1,000 signing bonus and 2-percent wage increases in August of 1993 and 1994. The monthly pension rate will increase to $22.75 (previously, $21.25) per year of credited service effective in January 1991. A 401(k) plan was established, with company-matching equal to 50 percent of an employee's investment, up to $800 a year. In addition, the company agreed to a "buyout provision" under which most employees would receive the equivalent of 780 hours of pay in six lump-sum payments over the next 3 years.

Other terms include going from department seniority to plantwide seniority in layoffs; eliminating double time for work on Sunday; continuing the current health care scheme (which includes a maximum company contribution, with employees absorbing the remaining costs); decreasing the number of steps in the grievance procedure from three to two; eliminating pay to union representatives for time spent on grievance matters; and easing of mandatory work on holidays (particularly Labor Day, Independence Day, and the Christmas season).

Elsewhere, 2,400 members of the United Paperworkers International Union ratified a 4-year contract with Consolidated Paper, Inc. based in Wisconsin. Paperworkers in the company's mill and folding carton (paperboard) division at five locations in Wisconsin will receive across-the-board 33-cent-per-hour increases (previous average hourly rate in both divisions was $13.02) in the first and second years of the contract, with the first increase retroactive to May 1, 1990. The third and fourth years provide 41 cents and 42 cents per hour.

The contract, which will expire May 1, 1994, also provides for a $1 per year of credited service increase in the monthly pension rate in 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993 (previously, $23); a $65 increase over the term of the contract in weekly sickness and accident payments; an increase in the employees' contribution toward health care insurance premiums in the first and third years of the contract, and, one additional floating holiday, bringing the number of paid holidays to 12 per year. Newspaper negotiations Four days before the existing contract was to expire, members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild ratified a new 3-year collective bargaining agreement covering some 800 editorial, circulation, advertising, clerical, service, and maintenance workers at The Baltimore Sun Co. (which publishes The Baltimore Sun, The Evening Sun, and The Sunday Sun). The new accord generally provides for weekly wage increases of $20 to $36, compression of the wage differential between downtown and suburban employees, and the redress of certain "wage inequities."

Terms of the accord call for weekly wage increases of $20 over the term of the contract for employees earning less than $350 a week and $36 for all other employees, except for certain workers at the top of the wage progression, whose weekly wage increases ranged from $60 to $108. The $108 increase went to news artists, photographers, and reporters, bringing them up to $826, $862, and $898 a week. The wage gap between outside sales employees and reporters, one of the "wage inequities" the union wanted to address, was cut from $45 to $24 over the term of the contract. Moreover, workers in 27 classifications, mostly lower paying jobs, were "upgraded" and received wage increases over the minimums negotiated for those job classifications. Although the union was unable to equalize the pay for suburban and downtown workers, it negotiated additional weekly raises of up to $75 for employees working on suburban editions.

Other terms include the option to extend the contract for a fourth year (an earlier company proposal that included an agreement with a mandatory 4-year duration was rejected by the rank-and-file); a single seniority list for all employees to be used in case of "dismissals for economy"; extension of health care coverage to part-timers working at least 30 hours a week; conversion of an employee's birthday and hiring anniversary to floating holidays; bringing under the contract audiotech employees working in the Sundial" operations (the newspapers' telephone service that provides the readership with prerecorded information such as sports scores and ski reports); 10 percent (previously, 50 percent) tuition reimbursement for work-related courses; an expedited arbitration procedure for "serious disciplinary" cases; and a buildup of the jointly administered pension fund by diversion each year of the first week's wage increases to the fund.