Plant workers seeking security

By Andy Brown

Published: June 27, 2008

For longtime MeadWestvaco employee Larry Strickland, last week’s protest in front of the company’s main gate was about more than money or better healthcare benefits.
It was about his life and his future.
“This is all I know,” he said. “… This is where I want to be. This is where my life is at. This is where my family’s life is at. I’m going to fight to keep what I’ve got here.”
For five days last week, at least 100 MeadWestvaco employees were on hand to protest as the company’s three local unions – one maintenance workers union and two production worker unions – and MeadWestvaco continue to try and reach a contract agreement. The current contract, which was signed in 2001, expired Oct. 31. MeadWestvaco is hoping to shorten the current contract to three years, while the union is looking for a four-year contract.
A sticking point in the current negotiations is a piece of language in the proposed contract that would give MeadWestvaco the opportunity to use contract workers for special work and beyond in-house workers’ hours.
Strickland, a machine operator who has worked at the Mahrt Mill Operation for 19 years, is concerned that could leave him without a job.
“The pending negotiations at MeadWestvaco are representative of a battle that is raging all across the country, one that is putting my job and the very definition of who I am at risk,” he wrote in a letter to the Eufaula Tribune.
Local 1971 President Dennis Redding shares Strickland’s concern.
“We want the language in the contract to support job security for our workers,” Redding, a Georgetown native, said. “That’s our major concern. We want to make sure that contractors are not given the right to an entire job.”
According to Redding, MeadWestvaco wants the language in the contract to provide them “the flexibility” to use outside contractors in certain situations.
Redding, a machine operator who has been employed with the company for 17 years, said that in the past if there was a job his crew could not handle, they still get to do preparation and clean-up work.
“That has always been a source of work for my people,” he said. “I’m all about keeping the work in the area. … If they could fashion the language to make sure my people have the work that they have always had, that’s all I need. I understand from the business aspect that they’re trying to save as much money as they can. I just don’t want work taken out of the hands of my people.”
Along with trying to ensure job security for their members, the local unions are also seeking improved healthcare. With the cost of healthcare skyrocketing across the nation, the workers would like to see MeadWestvaco help offset more of the premium’s costs.
“The company has given us a packet of information on different plans, but nowhere in the information does it talk about the cost of the premiums,” Redding said. “To me, it seems like the company wants to bargain over the language in these plans, but they don’t want to attach a cost to them. That’s kind of like going to look at a used car and the salesman refusing to tell you the price until you have agreed to buy it. That’s slowed the negotiations down quite a bit.”
Redding believes that is due in part to the fact that the company is based in Glen Allen, Va.
“They’re not a part of this community,” he said. “They don’t understand their workforce and they don’t have to look in the faces of the workers. … They’re taking a hard-line approach to the negotiations and that’s different than the way things were in the past when we were negotiating with people who lived and worked in this community.”
While negotiations are slow, both parties have signed an agreement to continue to operate the mill under the previous contract until a new agreement can be reached.
“The company will continue to meet with union representatives to bargain in good faith to reach a mutual agreement on a labor contract,” MeadWestvaco Communications Manager Roz Durden said.
She declined to comment on how the negotiations were progressing or if the issues cited by the protestors were being addressed.
“It’s not the company’s policy to comment on ongoing negotiations,” she said.
MeadWestvaco’s Mahrt Operation is located in Cottonton, which is approximately 20 miles north of Eufaula. The Mahrt Operation, includes the Mahrt paper mill, the Cottonton sawmill, the Phenix City office and the forestry/fiber supply district offices, accounts for approximately 1,000 jobs in the area. The plant in Cottonton produces items such as beverage containers, cereal boxes and frozen food containers.
MeadWestvaco is a Glen Allen, Va.-based packaging solutions firm with clients in the industries such as cosmetics and personal care, health care and pharmaceuticals, food and beverage.
It is located in more than 25 states, operates in more than 30 countries and has more than 24,000 employees worldwide.