Alabama workers locked out after refusing $28k bonus to replace overtime pay
The lockout has reached the one-month mark
Workers in Alabama have been at the helm of recent upswings in the US labor movement, including the first Amazon warehouse union election and rerun election in Bessemer, Alabama in 2021 and 2022 .with challenges still pending in the rerun election at the National Labor Relations Board, currently the longest ongoing strike in the US where around 1,100 workers at Warrior Met Coal mines in Brookwood have been on strike over 16 months, and the launch of the first union organizing campaign at General Electric in nearly a decade at an aviation plant in Auburn.
Workers at a paper production mill in Cottonton, Alabama owned by WestRock, the second largest paper packaging company in the US, have joined the wave of activity within the labor movement in a fight to protect their pay and overtime protections on 6 October as their employer locked out around 480 workers.
Leading up to the new union contract rejection, workers had given a ten day notice to strike to WestRock, with the company locking out workers before a strike could begin. The United Steelworkers have claimed the lockout is illegal and asserted they will pursue action against the company through the NLRB. The lockout was initiated after workers rejected a new union contract proposal from the company that included a $28,500 ratification bonus in exchange for modifying the payscale to eliminate overtime pay for Sundays and pyramiding of overtime.
“It’s chump change. You can make that in a year alone in overtime,” said Joe Dunn, a worker at the Mahrt Mill in Cottonton, Alabama and member of United Steelworkers Local 971. “We worked through COVID and continued to make the company profitable, we were deemed essential then and now we’re nobody because we don’t want to lose our overtime.”
Dunn explained workers at the mill operate on a reverse southern swing schedule, where they work seven days in a row and rotate days off in between, but that due to understaffing and retention issues at the mill, workers have been forced to work 16 hour shifts or longer. Currently, workers have protections for excessive and forced overtime where they are paid wage premiums, but WestRock wants to eliminate those overtime penalties.
Workers at the mill are paid time and a half on Sundays or double time if over 40 hours for the week and time and a half if a workers’ shift exceeds 16 hours. They often work varying shifts throughout each month, day, evening, and overnight.
The current union contract expired 31 August, 2021, with an extension until April 2022 when negotiating began. He criticized what workers are asking for in a new contract compared to WestRock’s recent profits. WestRock reported a profit of more than $3.4bn in 2021, with record net sales in fiscal year 2021, while spending $122mn on stock buybacks and paying CEO David Sewell over $21mn in total compensation.
“We didn’t ask for anything extraordinary in our proposals. We asked for a standard cost of living raise and the rest, just leave us alone. Our fight is with keeping our overtime and the company feels like if we’re working seven days a week, then Sunday is just another day,” added Dunn. “We want no concessions. We’re set on our contract language that protects us from this abuse of the company wanting us to work over 12 hours, 16 hours, 24 hours in a row. There should be a penalty for it. If they want us to work seven days a week, including Sunday, there should be a penalty for that too, so that’s what we’re fighting for.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for WestRock claimed the ratification bonus in the company’s final contract offer would have compensated for several years of overtime penalty changes and claimed the payment practices are outdated.
“With no agreement in place the union could exercise its right to strike and there were strong indications the union would strike when the 10 days elapsed. This prompted WestRock to implement a lockout on October 6 to ensure the safety of our employees and maintain the functional integrity of our complex paper mill operations,” the spokesperson said in an email. “WestRock has negotiated in good faith and is disappointed the union declined our offer. We understand this is a difficult situation for all involved, and we hope that we will have resolution to this matter quickly.”