Goodyear workers to vote

ROCKY buffalo wrote:

it's like i said john, this union and its complete ineffectiveness speaks for itself. i'm not just throwing more stuff out there, i still have not gotten an answer to my origional question, what is good about this last aggreement and why would anyone vote for this. there is nothing beneficial about it at all. and why were we so ill informed about it by this do nothing union. if you ask me the people hanging around the union so they can get do nothig jobs are parasites, i have to work for my pay.

My initial comment was questioning your assertion that the vote was fixed. Your response was to throw more feces against the wall and hope it would stick. You tried smearing four people with your comments and still have no justification. Your only reasoning being people"s unhappiness. Those four people chose to get involved and have more integrity than you do judging by the way you throw unsubstantiated allegations around without remorse. Back up your allegations or back down from them and we can move on to your next question.

Let's move forward from here! I know why our contract passed. We shouldn't be arguing between each other. We should be planning for next contract. Goodyear & Firestone both got 4 Year agreements and Goodrich did a 3 year... Don't understand that. Also i was told by my local that Goodyear was the Pattern Agreement but I understand why Goodrich signed first. Can't help but understand why Rocky is feeling the way he does but how do we know what would have happened if we had turned it down. I think Goodyear & Firestone & Goodrich Unions should all hold out till we all get a fair contract or we all go out!!! United we Bargain Divided we Beg!!!

if goodyear wants to save money then cut the CEO's pay!

i was not trying to smeer anyone, all i know is what i was told by people who were involved. i know this is anecdotal but the only way to back that up is to name the people that spoke to me about this. and i'm not going to do that. now can we move on to what is now and always has been the question...why would anyone vote for this contract that cuts our pay takes away our seniority and divides the union even more than the last deal. no one i've spoken to(untill now) voted yes but we're stuck with it none the less. taking our seniority rights away does not seem like a financial necessity for the company. it only seems like a union busting tactic. IT IS A BAD DEAL. so after three days could you finally tell us, what is so great about this lousy contract, and why would anyone vote to cut thier own pay by nearly 50% and why would anyone vote to give up thier seniority and why on something so important did the union not inform us PROPERLY and ADEQUATELY about what was in this agreement. i think these are fair questions and questions that i get asked every day.

You neither backed up your comments or backed down from them. Just because you say you aren't trying to smear anybody doesn't change the fact that you are. You cannot have a fixed vote without every single person on the committee being involved that's how they (elections) work.

o.k.... for the sake of this discusion, i ROCKY buffalo, do hearby withdraw any statement pertaining to the possability of this election being anything but upfront and honest. NOW, can we get past that and on to the real issue?

The Italian wrote:

if goodyear wants to save money then cut the CEO's pay!

Here ! Here! I havn't heard of any Salary people taking a pay cut yet...If none of them do during the course of this contract then something has to be done by the USW!!!!
Let's get on our Locals about this. Next Time we all three Strike!

ROCKY buffalo wrote:

at the end of the day a lot of us think this contract stinks and we should of tried at least a little to get something better, and our union reps should want a better deal than this union buster. this is classic divide and conquer by the company and the union is letting it happen. this is what so many of us dont understand and what makes us wounder what the motivation is for the union to pass such an agreement.

If everyone voted NO like me, we would have gotten a better contract. We should have struk over this contract!

ROCKY buffalo wrote:

o.k.... for the sake of this discusion, i ROCKY buffalo, do hearby withdraw any statement pertaining to the possability of this election being anything but upfront and honest. NOW, can we get past that and on to the real issue?

Never had an issue with anybody being unhappy with this contract we all vote our conscience. That's part of being in a Union.

who would be happy about giving up thier seniority? who would be happy about giving up any chance to move into a better job or a better shift? some of us have worked at this plant for a long time waiting for a chance to do just that and now they are going to take that opportunity away. a new hire could move into a day job without affecting thier pay. if a senior person wants to use the seniority he has earned he would have to take a pay cut. who in the hell would vote to give up pay and seniority? the only people who would be happy about this are the new hires, or senior people who are already in thier retirement job. me and a lot of people like me who have been here for close to twenty years are completely screwed by this deal. we will not get the most basic benefit of being in "the union" that all of the more senior people got, and that is the right to use your seniority. that is an odvious attempt to break the union. if the vote passed legitimately it is because we were UNINFORMED by our reps. if you dont know anyone who is unhappy with this deal you need to talk to someone who has less than thirty years.

I read the summary not one thing you mention wasn't in it. As far as who would be happy with it? Nobody is happy with what they got but they probably looked around and saw what's going on in the rest of the country and WNY and realized THERE IS NOTHING OUT THERE.....NOTHING! The only way people could have been uninformed is if they chose not to listen. Went to the meeting listened to all the questions and as far as summaries go it was probably more on than any I've seen over the years. A Union will break when all it's members are narcissistic and lose sight of what a union truely is.

the summary was a joke. it was a very vague undefined outline. and the stuff i mentioned was not in there, at least not clearly. people will find this out during the four years of this lousy agreement. they will find out what a mistake they made by voting for this. if they voted yes, it was out of fear and ignorence. fear, as i said before, of there being another strike. which was never an automatic result of a down vote, spanky himself said at one of the meetings that a down vote would result in them having to go back to cincinnati and trying to secure a better deal. and ignorence because of the poor way this contract was presented to us with the very apparent slant the union had of trying to "sell" this piece of crap deal to us. a union breaks when the company successfuly divides it into seperate factions or interests. say like um i dont know.......... some who get payed a fair wage and those who do not, some who've had the benefit of using thier seniority to move up to a better job or shift and those who have had that opportunity taken away. thats what breaks a union. the company knows this and that is clearly what they are doing, with a union that is for some reason complicit.

Mike, you just don't grt it. Do you know that at one of the informational meetings, Spanky said the tire builders will soon be building at 100% and non-tirebuilders will have to get 100% their quota instead of 95% as it currently is? Did you even know that we have to get 95% of our targets? Yea, Spanky lied to us! No more fatigue allowance. They will want the same for every hour. EX. Hour one say you need 60 beads and hour 11-12, you need 60 beads. No allowance for getting tired of standing and busting your ass all 12 hours. You didn't know this did you? Spanky wanted us to vote yes for a contract that isn't even done being negotiated yet. And as far as still needing negotiation, why do new tirebuilders have to build at a flat pay rate for a specific number of tires when the tirebuilder rates were not negotiated yet? Mike! Mr. Know It All, answer that one!

A union is a group of people with similar goals to forward themselves. We have taken the second step to get rid of the union with this contract. First in 2006, then 2009. 2013, the company will try to destroy us again. As long as we don't let it, they can't. Just don't vote yes to let it happen!

shark, you make some good points. this contract, like all contracts, is very complicated. they wanted us to vote on it based on an eight page summary. and one of those was a table of contents! my biggest sticking point is the fact that we have given up our seniority rights for no reason. and i can see by your comments that there are many more reasons to not like this deal. i would hope more people would weigh in on this. and you are also right about what a union is. what the hell is narcissistic about wanting everyone to have the same rights and benefits mike? p.s. i appologize for my lousy spelling.

shark wrote:

Mike, you just don't grt it. Do you know that at one of the informational meetings, Spanky said the tire builders will soon be building at 100% and non-tirebuilders will have to get 100% their quota instead of 95% as it currently is? Did you even know that we have to get 95% of our targets? Yea, Spanky lied to us! No more fatigue allowance. They will want the same for every hour. EX. Hour one say you need 60 beads and hour 11-12, you need 60 beads. No allowance for getting tired of standing and busting your ass all 12 hours. You didn't know this did you? Spanky wanted us to vote yes for a contract that isn't even done being negotiated yet. And as far as still needing negotiation, why do new tirebuilders have to build at a flat pay rate for a specific number of tires when the tirebuilder rates were not negotiated yet? Mike! Mr. Know It All, answer that one!

Read the summary it specifically states "Builders on incentive at time of ratification will continue to work on the current incentive system." There's no mention of protection for future builders.

what about a guy who has been building for 18 years and wants to take a servicer job that opened up on a better shift? he cant bid on that job without taking a pay cut. he is stuck building no matter how bad of shape he might be in from years of building. that is something that you supper senior guys wont have to deal with. your already on days and you probably already have a retirement job. must be nice to not have to worry about moving to a shift where you can have a normal life and spend normal time with your family. seniority mike, that is whats being taken away for no good reason and you senior guys dont care because for a lot of you this is the last contract you'll ever have to deal with. the rest of us have been sold down the river by this bad deal. lets make it a four year deal so most of the union reps can retire before this deal is up. just want the same benefits of being in this union that you had mike, nothing special, and nothing different. its easy to understand that financial situations may call for pragmatic consessions, but giving up seniority is not a matter of finance. it is a way to break the union, plain and simple. and its happening on the watch of our current reps. SHAME ON THEM and shame on you for trying to deffend them. but i guess it does'nt matter now, we are stuck with this lousy deal. and all we can do is hope that next contract we will be better informed and have better people negotiating on OUR behalf and not just for thier own best interest.

Name me one manufacturing facility that doesn't have tiered wages. Then tell me how many jobs pay under $20.76 an hr. in our plant. I know because I went out and checked. I'll help you out 4 out of every 5 jobs in our plant are grade 4 or above you have a lot more options than you think. Shame on you for not being aware of that.

tell me how many times you had to take a substantial pay cut to move to a better job or shift in this plant? we do not have tiered wages. thats when a new hire starts at a certain rate and has the oppotunity to move up to the pay scale everyone else is at. not when people with seniority have to take a pay cut. new hires have a decision to make as to whether or not they want to work for that type of wage inequity,(which if you remember, the union said they were going to fight to bring back the tiered system for new hires in the next contract, i.e. 70% to start and 5% increases every 6 months. how did that work out?) the rest of us are getting that forced on us mid way through our careers. we've put time in this place and away from our families. we made a decision to work D shift in exchange for employment, and the chance to work our way up to a better position. most of the senior guys in this place never had to work D shift unless they wanted to. by the time this schedule was implimented they had enough time to work days. or at least knew they were going to days at some point, because of thier SENIORITY!!!!!! just want the same benefit of being in this union that you had mike, nothing different nothing special. me and a lot of other people in here think we've earned at least that. lord knows we've payed enough dues. the biggest fear is that we will never get our seniority rights back again. you and everyone else in here knows we never get anything back once we give them up.

Mike wrote:

<quoted text> Read the summary it specifically states "Builders on incentive at time of ratification will continue to work on the current incentive system." There's no mention of protection for future builders.

You idiot! It has to be negotiated in the future! Did you read the whole thing?