Buffalo Business First, March 7, 2008, Friday

Buffalo Business First

Buffalo Business First

March 7, 2008, Friday

Cooperation topping confrontation in saving jobs
Business First of Buffalo - by Thomas Hartley Business First

Much attention on the auto industry since 2006 has focused on the tens of thousands of workers who left with buyouts and early retirement packages in hand.

Lost in the dust of the mass exodus was recognition that as older workers left, thousands of others - possibly as many as 2,300 in Western New York eventually - were being hired by General Motors, Ford and Delphi Thermal.

The outward migration created no new jobs but generated new job opportunities.

The UAW begrudingly had accepted the grim reality that U.S. auto manufacturers had to lower labor costs significantly to survive increasingly fierce competition with foreign rivals.

The exchange of new workers for old is continuing as additional buyouts at GM and Ford is extended into March.

Not every case is as high-profile as the cooperation at General Motors Corp.'s Powertrain engine plant that was key to the Tonawanda plant being assigned five new engines and the upgrade of a sixth over a 10-year span between 1997 and 2007.

Positive examples are not confined to the manufacturing sector.

Richard Lipsitz Jr., business agent for Teamsters Local 264, cites a case involving his union and Tops Markets.

It was during tough bargaining in 1998, Lipsitz said, that the union agreed to a pay-for-performance system at the former Tops warehouse, now Erie Logistics, a food distribution center for Tops stores on Genesee Street.

"That one is a good example because even though the agreement is old, the 450 to 550 jobs that were preserved are still solid 10 years later," he said.

"It is a productivity-based pay system that is combined with the standard hourly wages. People make the standard wage but can earn over that by improving productivity," he said. "It has helped make their workplace a very strong place of employment."

Other examples of where union cooperation rather than confrontation helped preserve jobs occurred in the health care and municipal employee sectors.

When the Berger Commission report recommended the closing of two hospitals and conversion of a third, CWA Local 1168, which represents health care professionals, moved to help prevent a mass exodus of nurses from St. Joseph Hospital in Cheektowaga and Millard Filmore Gates Circle. Those two hospitals had been marked for closing. In addition, DeGraff Memorial in North Tonawanda was recommended for conversion into an acute care facility.

"We worked on incentive programs at all three sites to retain nurses or recruit nurses," said John Klein, president of Local 1168.

"We agreed to signing bonuses for new employees coming to Gates Circle and DeGraff, and at St. Joseph a stay-on bonus. Both plans worked to keep people and recruit new employees," Klein said.

Ultimately, St. Joseph was saved from closing, Millard Fillmore Gates Circle will be closed though its functions and employees will be moved to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Complexe around Buffalo General Hospital and Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and DeGraff will become an acute care hospital.

Michael Hoffert, president of the Buffalo AFL-CIO Labor Council, cites an agreement reached earlier this decade that saved the jobs of about 90 employees in Buffalo parks department.

"The city was looking to jettison its parks department and have the county take over," he said.

"We struck a deal for Erie County to take over that responsibility and in doing that, white- and blue-collar employees working for the city were able to keep their seniority and a number of other things," said Hoffert, who also is vice president of Buffalo's white-collar union, Local 650 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

A key to preserving jobs is solid communications between employees and management and a workforce that is educated and updated about conditions and trends in the global and domestic marketplaces.

The alternatives can lead to strikes and poor production.

"The biggest way unions have been able to cooperate is in the retention of jobs as opposed to recruiting," said Arthur Wheaton, an industry education specialist for the Buffalo-based Cornell University School of Industrial Labor Relations.

Wheaton and the staff of the school have conducted numerous industry programs aimed at creating and improving favorable union-management partnerships.

"They're called industry education programs and they help union members and management people learn more about their industry and the problems. They allow labor and management to try to attack those problems together, based on good informatioin," he said.

Some such programs began in Western New York before spreading nationwide.

"At the Ford stamping plant, we started an automotive industry studies program which went national for all of Ford," he said. "We delivered it for 10 years.

A General Motors version was started in 1986 at the GM Tonawanda forge plant, now American Axle. It was expanded nationwide and continues at GM facilities to this day.

"It is called the Paid Educational Leave program, or PEL. It helps provide a forum for the union and management to hear the latest information and trends in the industry and provides an opportunity for employees to get together with management to demistify the roles they play," Wheaton said.

"If (union members) didn't have some sort of knowledge of what's going on in their industry and weren't exposed to what's happening in other companies in their industry, they might not accept concessions, work in teams or change work practices," he said.


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