Membership Update 2/14/2025

Brothers and Sisters,

Chad announced on 2/13/2025 that for now, the layoffs won’t be happening. We’re still working on the moves, and with the layoffs being off, there will be lots of work to do concerning the moves. We are expecting to have an answer on bringing the outside slitter work back into the plant soon. 

To the Negotiating Committee’s knowledge, all Holiday Pay from Christmas has been corrected. If anyone still has any payroll issues, please reach out to your Department Chair or the Negotiating Committee and we will start resolving the issue. 

Settled out the following arbitrations:

• Discipline was pulled back and employee paid for all days suspended.

• Employee held out of position due to CRT will be paid difference in JG for time held out but will remain in current position. 

•  Attendance was pulled back due to a procedural technicality, and we will be grieving the discipline that comes from the policy. Then we pursue this into arbitration. 

• Holiday Pay was ruled that we will get 3.5 pay any time that we are called in, this was the main issue of the original grievance and now we have an Arb ruling that solidifies it. Employees that were not paid at this rate from Labor Day, 2023-Present will be made whole. This will take us a little while to process who all needs paid, please be patient.

Indeavor grievances were settled as a plant wide settlement. We will be working to identify how we expect the company to pay this out. As I said in the Union meeting on 2/13/2025, the payout isn’t the win, but the fact that we don’t have this system in place anymore is the win. Furthermore, we know have documentation that the company cannot unilaterally implement another system without negotiating with the Union beforehand. Thank you all again for standing tall on this issue because it is 100% because of our solidarity that we won this fight!!

Top table Labor/Management meeting is scheduled for 3/10-3/12/2025. All the locations will be coming here for this meeting. We will also be hosting delegation from the unionized workforce of an Arconic plant in Hungary. 

President’s meeting will be 3/6/2025. District 9 Director Flippo will be here giving us a state of the USW update for the year. 

Veterans of Steel are going to be having a cookout at the Hall from 12pm-4pm next Thursday, 2/20/2025. All veterans are encouraged to come. If you haven’t already picked up your t-shirts, they will also be available at this time!!

We’ve had several major safety incidents that have occurred over the last couple of weeks. One thing we’ve got to start doing is stopping when the equipment is faulty or in an upset condition. You have the Union Leadership and Company Leadership’s full support to do this. 

Mike Bivens and I will be meeting with the company on 2/14/2025. This is to discuss a new standard to have a SWI with you to perform all jobs. This needs to be the normal and will be what the Union is pushing for.

Be sure that if you are filing grievances with the company that you are getting a copy of the grievance to your Department Chair. Many times, they won’t even know that a grievance has been filed if you do not tell them. Same for the Department Chairs, if you have grievances that have been answered in the 2nd Step be sure to get a copy to your Plant Chair. I’m working on getting another round of Steward training set up for some of new chairs and vice chairs. I’ll be getting this information out as soon as I have more information. 

Please be sure to share this link with as many as possible. 

In Solidarity,

Nick McCarter
President, USW Local 309
(865)254-6252
Nmccarter@uswlocal309.net