Kaiser Rejects Offer, Locks Out Union Workers Steelworkers Wanted To Return To Jobs During Negotiations

Kaiser Aluminum locked out Steelworkers on Thursday after rejecting a union offer to end its 106-day strike and resume work while bargaining continues.

The five union local presidents made an unconditional offer to return more than 3,000 workers to their posts at the five Kaiser plants.

But the company said no and escorted out all union and former union workers who had crossed the picket lines.

“We regret having to take this step,” said Ray Milchovich, Kaiser president and chief operating officer. “However, we believe the union leadership has given us no choice.”

Milchovich said the lack of progress in this week’s negotiating session shows the company and union aren’t close to a contract agreement.

The latest company offer was a 1,000-page proposal on Dec. 17.

“We believe that the lockout is necessary to persuade the union to embrace the legitimate proposals Kaiser has made during bargaining,” Milchovich said.

The move stunned union officials.

“Kaiser’s lockout has torn the mask off the company’s repeated assertions that it is worried about the welfare of its work force,” said Steelworkers’ chief negotiator David Foster.

The union’s offer to end the strike came in a letter from Foster to the company’s chief negotiator, Chicago attorney Jeremy Sherman, after three days of bargaining ended Wednesday.

The union wanted its members to return to work under terms of the four-year contract that expired Sept. 30, and then continue to bargain a new contract.

“It’s pretty simple,” said Dan Russell, president of local 329 at Kaiser Mead. “We’ve been out of there for 100 and some days. We owed it to our membership to get them back to work.

“My expectation, with the way they kept saying that they still value us as a work force, that they need to get us back in there and that they need to move forward, was that they would accept it,” he said. “We expected them to be honorable folks and say, `OK.”’

Kaiser’s rejection came by fax to Foster.

Sherman wrote to the union that “based on our meetings over the last three days, there exists substantial differences between the parties on many issues. We urge you to reevaluate your position and decide whether to accept the offer that we have made available.”

After company officials declared the lockout, Kaiser management sent all union and former union hourly workers who have crossed the picket lines back to the gates.

“The law requires that all members of the bargaining unit be locked out,” said Susan Ashe, spokeswoman for Kaiser. “Whether or not they resigned from the union, we are required by the law to lock out members of the bargaining unit.”

She said the number that left was “not significant,” and would not hurt the company’s production. “We’ll continue to operate the plants as usual.”

Ashe said the company had no choice but to reject the union offer. If it let union workers back under the old contract, they would have no incentive to bargain a new one.

“The bottom line is we want an agreement and the best way to get an agreement is by taking this action,” she said.

The lockout idles 2,100 hourly workers at Kaiser’s Mead and Trentwood plants, plus workers at plants in Tacoma, Gramercy, La., and Newark, Ohio.