Melinda Tuhus Photo
Bill Coderre and his colleagues went to work at Sargent’s this week. So did supermarket workers across town. They weren’t sure that would happen.
Coderre (pictured) has worked at Sargent the past 31 years. He loves his job sharpening tools used to design the locks the company is famous for.
And, he said as he was leaving work at the Long Wharf plant Thursday, he loves the new contract he just voted for. It keeps his health coverage intact. And it averted a possible strike looming on the horizon during a recession that has cost so many other area workers their jobs.
“I’m lucky to have a job,” he said. “I know a lot of people that don’t have jobs, and they’re qualified.”
Coderre’s colleagues voted 243 to 36 at an early Wednesday morning to accept a new three-year contract that maintains their full health coverage.
Three days earlier, 150 workers at New Haven’s Amity Stop & Shop were among the company’s 15,000 workers statewide who settled their own three-year contract. They had previously voted to strike if their union and the company couldn’t come to terms in talks that went past the previous contract’s Feb. 20 expiration date. Stop & Shop workers kept working while some 100 supermarket employees at Shaw’s on Whalley are preparing to lose their jobs when their store closes at the end of the month.
Both Sargent and Stop & Shop are owned by European-based multinationals. In both cases, workers said they got a better deal than many thought possible in this season of economic gloom.
In addition to sharpening tools, Coderre designs some of the tools that are used to cut the metal parts to make the locks. He is a go-to guy, since he’s the only one in the plant who does that work.
He said holding on to the workers’ medical coverage was his — and the union’s — highest priority in the contract negotiations that ended this week. The contract preserves a plan that pays 100 percent on medical claims with no deductibles.
To achieve that, the union—United Electrical Workers Local 243—agreed to additional $5 per week co-pays and $5 co-pays or doctor’s visits. That’s up from an employee weekly contribution of $15 per week for an individual or $20 per week for a family.
“I’m pretty happy with it,” Coderre said at the afternoon shift change as workers sped out of the plant toward their cars. “All I can say is, I didn’t expect to get what we got [because of] the time s… the economy.”
He remembers a strike at Sargent from his first year on the job, in 1979. Labor relations have been pretty smooth since then.
The company is owned by Assa Abloy, based in Sweden.
Local Union President Ray Pompano said that months before negotiations began, many of his members came to him and confided, “You can keep everything the same, but no matter what, don’t take away our 100 percent medical coverage.”
The bargaining committee was able to do better than the status quo, winning wage increases of 2 percent, 2 percent and 2.5 percent over three years, and an increase in the pension formula, though not as much as they had wanted.
Union Vice-President Chris Fiorentino gave credit to those on both sides of the negotiating table.
“I think the key to our negotiations is that we have a good working relationship [with management],” he said. “If you don’t have a good relationship, you’re doomed from the start.”
Zaya Oshana, director of human resources for the company, agreed. Although the company held the union to significantly smaller wage and pension wins than it first proposed, he said, “We went to the table to negotiate,” not stonewall.
The mood was different for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in their battle with Stop & Shop.
The company’s parent is another profitable European giant, Ahold of the Netherlands.
UFCW Local 371 President Brian Petronella said it took a strike vote to get management to negotiate seriously. “We had to push the envelope,” he said. “We had to be pretty aggressive. Otherwise we’d still be sitting in Providence trying to negotiate a contract.”
He said wages were the union’s top priority. Full-time workers won a ratification bonus of $750, while part-timers got between $100 and $400, depending on their length of service. Full-timers will get $1.25 an hour more for the life of the contract, while part-timers will get 60 cents. The company had wanted to give out bonuses and otherwise freeze wages.
Regarding health coverage, Petronella said the company wanted to initiate co-pays for part-timers; the union beat that back. Starting in 2011, full-timers’ co-pays will rise to $8 per week from $5 for individuals, and to $20 from $15 for family coverage. The company’s contribution goes to $690 from $655 for full-timers.
Members of Connecticut’s two locals approved the deal by unanimous voice votes at Sunday morning meetings in New Haven and Hartford.
Besides being aggressive, how did the union pull it off?
“Stop & Shop is the dominant leader in New England,” he said. “The package probably cost Stop & Shop between $150 and $200 million additional. But when the parent company is making a billion dollars in profit, and Stop & Shop is a good part of that, it was a fair agreement for everybody.”
Stop & Shop’s spokeswoman was on vacation, and the company did not provide anyone else to speak on the negotiations and the settlement for this story. Last weekend the company issued a press statement calling the agreement fair, with “very competitive wage packages and retirement benefits as well as access to quality, affordable health care.’’