Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 31, 1995 TAG: 9503310080
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
The final tally was 171-49.
Dennis Mabes, Inland Motor's vice president of human resources, said the company was happy with the outcome.
"We're very pleased with the results and anxious to get everyone working together as a team," Mabes said. The National Labor Relations Board conducted the election.
The plant employs about 325 people, including the 230 hourly production and maintenance workers eligible to cast ballots.
Eric Stump, a plant worker who pushed for union representation, said he thinks the company convinced the workers to give it another chance. But he also said the certification vote got the company's attention. "There's no doubt about that," he said after the votes were in.
Mabes said the company wasn't aware of union activity at the plant until early this year. The union formally filed for the certification vote Feb. 1, after collecting cards requesting it from at least 30 percent of the prospective bargaining unit.
Before Thursday's balloting, UAW organizer Frank Stoner had put the union's chances at 50-50, citing discontent over pay and seniority issues.
"They haven't had a raise in five years," he said, also accusing the company of laying off senior workers and keeping those brought in at the bottom rungs of the salary scale, around $8.50 per hour. The company laid off 35 production workers last April, citing a downturn in business.
Stoner said Inland Motor's workers have no recall rights either.
Mabes called Inland Motor's average hourly wages - $11 to $11.50 - "very good for this area," but he said "there are always issues that need to be resolved."
Stump said that in the wake of the union petition, the company "made a lot of promises that things would change." He said Thursday he hopes they will.
The plant in Radford's West End designs and manufactures specialty electric motors and motor controls for industrial and defense-related uses. Inland Motor is a unit of Kollmorgen Corp. of Waltham, Mass.
Mike DeNicola, Inland Motor's vice president and general manager, had said this week that the company viewed the Inland Motor vote as part of a continuing effort by the UAW to make up for "dramatic membership losses" in the past 10 years.
Stoner has been trying to sign up union members in the New River Valley for about five years. The union already represents about 1,200 wage workers at Dublin's Volvo GM plant, but Stoner was unsuccessful in efforts to sign up the plant's salaried office staffers five years ago.
Stoner maintains the UAW has a good relationship with Volvo GM.
However, he said Thursday that the UAW plans to withdraw a petition to certify the the union as bargaining agent for workers at Findlay Industries in Dublin, which does final assembly work on trucks. He said "better than 60 percent" of the 65 to 70 workers there signed cards asking for the vote, but about half of them later backed away from the petition.
Stoner is undeterred.
"The UAW will help anybody that wants to be helped, if they want to be a union member," he said. "It's far from just automakers."
by CNB