Kaiser Workers Must Adapt - Again It’S Back To Work For Some, But All Face Unanswered Questions

Kaiser Steelworker Joyce Marshall made the mistake of opening her husband’s return-to-work notice at the dinner table last week.

After two years off her job at Kaiser Aluminum’s Trentwood mill, she was curious. Now that Kaiser and the United Steelworkers union have a labor agreement, she wondered if her husband would return to his job at the Mead plant.

Marshall already knew she wouldn’t go back. She had carved a new life for herself behind a state-of-Washington desk.

But Ken Marshall is a 22-year veteran at Mead, just eight years from retirement and without another job.

They knew they wouldn’t be thrilled with the deal the two sides had reached, but when Joyce Marshall opened the letter from the company, the couple lost their appetites.

There was no guarantee he’ll get his job back, and, adding further insult, the company said Ken had to shave his facial hair for safety reasons before the required physical.

“He’s had a beard for 25 years,” Joyce Marshall said. “He’s devastated.”

Nearly two years have passed since that night when hundreds of Steelworkers gathered at their union halls waiting for word of a strike. Throughout the months of the strike and then more than a year of being locked out, 2,100 Spokane workers have struggled with their finances and personal lives without Kaiser. Some have left town. Others have found new jobs. A few have moved into politics and activism.

Whatever they’ve done during this protracted labor battle, they’ve been forever changed. And for many, the question remains: How will they come out as this labor dispute ends?

No one knows how many of the 2,900 Kaiser workers at five plants in three states will choose not to return. The company hopes to have a complete count by Oct. 2 and already plans to lay off a number at Spokane’s two plants.

After being out of Kaiser for so long, the Marshalls look back at their dual lives at the company with amazement.

“It seems like it was crazy when we both worked at Kaiser,” Marshall said of their time of rarely being home together and struggling to raise two children.

But then the labor dispute came and changed their lives.

“We had a boy in college and we had to tell him we couldn’t support him anymore,” Marshall said. “Our family has really, really suffered.”

At the same time, they had more time together and with their grandson and daughter. Though they decimated their savings, they only had to go to the union five times to get help on their monthly house payments.

Both of the Marshalls looked hard for jobs.

Once in an interview at a downtown hotel Joyce Marshall gave her resume to a manager only to be rebuffed.

“She said, `Oh my God, not Kaiser,’ and that was the end of the interview right there,” Marshall said.

But her luck changed last year when an application turned into an interview, then a second interview and a job.

“They asked me every time, `If Kaiser calls you back, what are you going to do?,”’ she said. “I promised them I wouldn’t go back. I’m keeping my word.”

The day she started at the state welfare office last January, she and Ken had only $13 in the bank.

She’s making less money than at Kaiser, “but I work a straight shift. I have paid holidays. I have weekends. I don’t have to wear steel-toed shoes,” she said. “And the benefits are unbelievable. I was just amazed that they gave me the chance.”

If the Mead job is still there, Ken Marshall will take it.

“I wish he didn’t have to,” said his wife. “I wish he had other options.”

The way out

In another part of town, a temporary worker and his family are bracing for life without Kaiser.

“I was ready to leave a few months ago,” said Duane, who has been setting carbon at the Mead plant for more than a year. He asked that his last name not be used in this story because he is worried about retribution for being a replacement worker.

After a stint in the military, he and his wife Brenda decided to move to Spokane to be near family, find jobs and go back to school.

At Kaiser, Duane found that even with no training he could earn about $15 an hour. That money helped them establish themselves and two small children in Spokane as well as pay for school. Duane is studying criminal justice and Brenda is working toward an accounting degree.

“We are trying hard for the American dream,” said Brenda.

They saw the job as a temporary opportunity.

“We knew we were going to be out eventually,” said Brenda. “We were ready for it.”

Expecting to be removed from the plant by mid-October, Duane has already been notified by the company that he’ll have to turn in his work boots.

“That’s OK. They can have them,” he said. “I really need a new pair now, but I only have a couple of weeks left and I can’t afford it.”

The contract

The Steelworkers did get some raises and benefit improvements in their new contract. With a $1.85 an hour increase, Kaiser now offers a beginning pay rate of $12.85 an hour. Over five years, that starting rate will grow to $14.73.

But the improvements were less than the Steelworkers expected.

Jerry Vensel had to laugh at the wages. For the past two years he’s had a job in Troutdale, Ore., at a Reynolds Aluminum plant where he was earning $18.30 an hour. Back at Mead, he won’t earn that much for another five years.

He was anticipating a tough choice between the two jobs, but when power prices went up this spring, the Troutdale plant was closed and he was laid off. It came just in time for him to return to a job at Mead.

Others with more than a decade of seniority also expect to get back into the plants. But those with less experience believe their chances are slim.

In addition to the 148 Trentwood jobs lost from the closed can stock line, the company will contract out 27 positions and blend another 40 with other jobs. Those include the grounds maintenance positions that Kaiser had said early on it wanted to contract out.

The union did manage to keep about 75 jobs the company had wanted to cut by agreeing to increase the efficiency of duties such as driving trucks between the plants and tool fabrication.

Since the contract was completed on Sept. 18, the phones at the union halls haven’t stopped ringing.

“We’re getting lots of calls from people who have jobs and are trying to figure out what they’re going to do about giving notice to their employer,” said Tim Charbonneau at the Mead union local.

“They wonder, are they going to give up their (new) job just to find out they’re going to be laid off from Kaiser?” he said. “That’s something we just can’t answer right now.”

That makes this period especially difficult for people like Randy and Michelle Walker.

“Do we sit and wait for the phone call or do we sit and wait for the pink slip,” said Michelle Walker. The couple had to declare bankruptcy about a year into the labor dispute. Randy had worked at Trentwood for five years and couldn’t find another job to pay their bills. Since then the family has managed with the help of the union as well as Randy Walker’s part-time work as a welder.

The union’s weekly $140 support checks should continue through this week. And while the food bank at the Mead local is slated to shut down at the end of the week, the Trentwood union members are trying to keep theirs open a little longer.

“I think right now is the hardest part,” Michelle Walker said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

The activists

Some people are desperate to go back. Others can’t wait to retire and take Kaiser’s $1,000 signing bonus before leaving.

And a handful - like Erv Schleufer at Trentwood - aren’t all that worried about what happens to their Kaiser jobs.

“After we’ve given so much to that company, if they fired me, I really wouldn’t care,” he said.

Schleufer spent 12 years as a welder at Kaiser. For the past two years he has traveled to Portland, northern California and around Washington giving speeches and attending labor protests including at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

Don Kegley wants to continue as a union and environmental activist. He may go back to Trentwood, but in the long term he wants to work for the labor movement. He just started a four-year union leadership program and is co-chair of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment.

Before Kegley and others can go back, a local workforce of more than 1,000 temporary workers will have to leave.

Kaiser officials have said they expect to move the replacement workers out of the plants no later than Oct. 23.

Some already have left, said Susan Ashe, spokeswoman for Kaiser. “But not to the extent that it has impacted operations,” she said.

Things now are moving quickly. Steelworkers could be called in for their required physicals and drug screening as early as this week.

“We see the end right now,” Charbonneau said. “The real key to this whole thing is how many people are going to return. It would be nice to have some answers.”