The USW’s 2021 contract with ATI created a joint benefits committee charged with delivering health care more efficiently and avoiding cost overruns that would have triggered the first-ever premium contributions for our members there.
The Collective Bargaining, Research and Benefits Department grasped the high stakes, assigned staff members to coordinate with the committee, and began looking for smart innovations.
We ultimately worked with union representatives and management to implement a new specialty drug program and other changes that reduced plan costs by 10 percent over two years.
As a result of these efforts, our members at ATI maintained their high-quality benefits without having to pay a nickel more for care.
The Collective Bargaining, Research and Benefits Department conducts the analysis essential for better bargaining, arbitration wins and trade law enforcement. This work delivers better wages, benefits and security for our members, as our success at ATI showed.
Cumulative wage growth since 2021 surged about 15 percent.
Leveraging High Demand for Workers
The United States experienced a remarkably strong post-COVID recovery, thanks to pandemic-induced deferred demand for goods of all kinds and Biden administration policies that stimulated spending and infrastructure investment.
Unemployment soared to 14.8 percent in April 2020, the worst rate since the Great Depression. But it dropped to less than 4 percent for much of the 26-month period leading into March 2024.
Employers reported difficulty attracting new hires and retaining existing workers during this rebound, boosting our bargaining power. Cumulative wage growth since 2021 surged about 15 percent.
The department empowered local unions to navigate this evolving landscape. We produced wage studies to help negotiating committees maximize their gains. We also taught wage/compensation research and costing techniques at various district education conferences.
Putting Money in Workers’ Pockets
The strong economy and favorable labor market powered the USW’s progress on long-important issues, such as the elimination of oppressive two-tier wage systems in numerous workplaces.
Two-tier wage structures, which pay newer hires less than veteran peers for doing the same work, are not only blatantly unfair but undermine the solidarity that’s central to union power. We help the union dismantle these systems by providing research and bargaining support.
Over a number of contract cycles, for example, the USW succeeded in narrowing the pay gap between groups of tiered workers at Goodyear.
But in 2022, the union resolved to eradicate this system at a major employer once and for all.
A department staff member sat at the bargaining table, tracked the number of workers in each tier across the company’s various locations and costed the union’s proposals. This advanced the bargaining committee’s inroads with Goodyear and resulted in a final wage package that eliminated tiered pay for approximately 2,600 members.
Battling for Fair Trade
USW members will out-compete other manufacturing workers anywhere in the world on a level playing field.
But many countries dump underpriced goods in U.S. markets or try to disguise illegal trade practices by routing products to America through third countries.
The USW aggressively fights trade cheating to safeguard good-paying jobs, and our department plays a pivotal role in these cases.
We analyze data to determine how imports affect domestic industries, measure volume changes and identify the countries responsible for those shifts. This documentation enables the USW Legislative and Policy Department to file complaints and pursue duties on rule breaking countries.
Tackling Chronic Challenges
Health insurance remains a contentious bargaining issue due to the ever-growing cost of care and employers’ efforts to saddle workers with the bulk of the increases via higher premiums, deductibles, copays and out-of-pocket maximums.
Medical inflation continues to outpace overall inflation, driven by prescription drug spending, general inflationary pressure and increases in health plan use.
Specialty drug costs represent the bulk of prescription spending. Particularly expensive are certain medications prescribed for Type 2 diabetes—Ozempic and Mounjaro, for instance—because they’re also in high demand for off-label purposes like weight loss.
In response, the department continues to help establish and serve on joint labor-management health care committees like the one at ATI.
Most of these committees are in the auto supply, paper, steel, and rubber and tire sectors. Time and again, they’ve proven effective at staving off higher out-of-pocket expenses and finding creative, mutually agreeable alternatives to cost increases for union members.
Since the last convention, the department has stepped up analysis of the copay accumulator and maximizer programs increasingly common in the health insurance marketplace. We assist with the introduction of these programs when they offer real benefits to our members.
Department technicians also support retiree Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Associations (VEBAs), which face similar problems of rising medical and prescription drug costs.
Backing Health Care Workers
The department plays a crucial role in health care workers’ fight to improve workplace health and safety.
Our staff helped to roll out customized health and safety training for hospital and nursing home workers as well as an electronic incident reporting system, which centralizes observations, complaints and tips from members. This system debuted in multiple locals, improving member engagement while paving the way for stronger health and safety language for health care workers.
The department also stepped up last year and developed a special financial training to help locals in California maximize wage growth in the wake of a new state law establishing a $25-an-hour minimum wage for certain health care workers.
Recent improvements to the staff toolkit provide still more support for health care workers across the union.
Every contract in the health care sector is available through the toolkit and searchable by keyword, so it’s easier than ever for staff representatives and union officials to find specific contract language.
Enhancing Access to Other USW Resources
We worked with the USW’s Education and Membership Development Department to add online bargaining resources for members in many other workplaces, industries and sectors.
That included making sample contract language and model information requests available through the staff toolkit. As the union organizes new units and strengthens existing ones, it’s essential to leverage the bargaining experience of members who already tackled similar issues.
The same applies to arbitration cases.
The department’s Arbitration Division restructured its section of the toolkit to be more easily navigable. Staff representatives and union officials now find manuals, forms, sample briefs, information requests and an arbitrator evaluation spreadsheet in a format that’s easy to print out or customize.
Our searchable arbitration database, which provides local unions with free access to 18,500 cases via Steelweb, also continues to grow. We’re currently adding a large batch of flint glass and GMP awards.
Finally, the department has begun to digitize decades of files, including large settlements and their respective summaries as well as records from key negotiations and other important material.
We’re cataloguing, organizing and backing up these records, using optical character recognition software so the content is searchable.
This project serves both to meet daily research needs and create a permanent USW archive. The department is pursuing other ways to access these documents, analyze the data and compile reports to inform the union’s work.