Kaiser Talks Coming Here Company, Union To Bargain In Spokane On Nov. 10-11
Kaiser Aluminum Corp.’s labor talks are coming to Spokane in two weeks.
Negotiators for the United Steelworkers of America and Kaiser have scheduled to meet on four days next month, including two days - Nov. 10-11 - in Spokane, where full bargaining teams will focus on the Mead plant. No site has been announced.
It’s the first time in the 12-month labor dispute involving 2,100 Spokane Steelworkers that negotiators have decided to meet here.
“It’s a mutually agreed to location,” said Kaiser spokeswoman Susan Ashe. The sides are getting together to work through some of the more problematic issues, she said.
The first big issue is contracting out Mead jobs that now are slated for Steelworkers.
“It just made sense for the group to be in the plant community,” Ashe said. “That way the expertise is accessible.”
Before the Spokane meetings, the parties will meet Nov. 1-2 in Denver.
“Contracting out has been such a tough issue,” said Dan Russell, president of the Mead union local. “It’s one that really caused a breakdown of talks.”
Mead is the first to be discussed because, “it wasn’t the easiest and it wasn’t the hardest,” Russell said. “Other than that, there’s no reason. It’s just a starting point. If we could get through one plant, the feeling is that then we can go on to the next.”
The dispute between Kaiser and the Steelworkers started in September 1998 when 2,900 Kaiser hourly workers at five plants went on strike over an unresolved labor contract. The strike became a lockout Jan. 14, when Kaiser rejected the union’s offer to come back to work under terms of the old contract until a new one could be negotiated.
About 2,100 Steelworkers are locked out of the Mead smelter and the Trentwood rolling mill. The others are in Tacoma, Gramercy, La. and Newark, Ohio.
Chief negotiators for the two sides last met Oct. 15 in Chicago.
“It’s good the two parties are trying to sit down and work through the more thorny issues,” Ashe said.
Russell doesn’t expect the Spokane Steelworkers to picket the negotiation site. Usually Kaiser and the Steelworkers meet in hotels. “And there’s no labor dispute with the hotel.”