Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410050030
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Instead, members of Local 1023 of the United Rubber Workers will vote Wednesday on whether to ratify a new contract that contains a different seven-day work plan, proposed by the company.
The company's proposed contract would make all plant employees hired since Jan. 1, 1984, eligible for special weekend shifts at the plant. The union has rejected a similar plan at least twice before.
It would make about 175 more of the plant's 800 workers eligible for weekend work. About 150 workers hired since 1991 already have been working weekends.
The demand by the company that more employees work weekends has been the major issue in a strike at the plant that has continued since the union's last three-year contract with Yokohama expired at midnight July 23.
The company said it was turning down the proposal that the union's members agreed to last Friday because it was too similar to a weekend-work plan contained in a new contract that the union rejected by a 581-149 margin in a ratification vote last Wednesday, Local 1023 President Wayne Friend said Monday.
Yokohama declined to comment on these latest developments in a strike that is now into its 12th week.
The union's new proposal was approved Friday by a narrow two-vote margin out of 480 votes cast. Nearly 300 union members either didn't attend Friday's meeting or didn't vote.
The union plan called for a schedule in which all workers would work three days, be off two, work two days, and be off three. The union had voted down a proposed contract last Wednesday that would have established a work schedule in which employees would work four days, be off four, work three days, and be off three. The length of a shift under both plans would have been 12 hours.
Friday, union members chose the "3-2-2" schedule over staffing the plant on weekends with workers hired since 1984. They now face the latter choice in a ratification vote.
Wednesday will mark at least the third time union members will have been asked to voice their opinion on rolling back the eligibility for weekend work to 1984.
On Sept. 1, the union also turned down a contract containing the proposal without even taking it to a vote.
The company had termed that proposal their final offer but later returned to the negotiating table to come up with the contract rejected last Wednesday.
The ratification vote will be from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Salem Civic Center.
by CNB