Timken's workers will vote today on a second tentative contract between the company and the United Steelworkers Local 1123. The union rejected the company's first offer last month, a contract that would have guaranteed a $225 million plant expansion.
View full sizeWorkers at Timken's Canton-area steel plants voted today on a new tentative contract between the industrial equipment company and the United Steelworkers. Timken has said it will spend $225 million to upgrade its Faircrest Steel Plant near Canton if workers approve the contract.CANTON, Ohio -- With a bitterly cold wind blowing snow into their faces, steelworkers from the Timken Co.'s Canton-area plants approved today a second tentative contract that would guarantee a $225 million plant investment.
"It's better than the last one," said Leroy Sword, a newly hired worker. Workers last month rejected Timken's first offer on a contract that would run through 2017. Though the new contract offered bonuses and wage increases, union officials with the United Steelworkers Local 1123 in Canton said it would still have left too large of a gap between the wages and benefits of new hires and older workers.
Late Tuesday, the union announced on its website that the new deal passed with 1,520 votes for it and 260 against.
After workers rejected the first contract, the union and the company made some changes to the tentative deal, including a provision that would raise wages of new hires to the levels of their older peers in two years instead of three.
"We still have to pay for our own insurance, and the older guys don't have to, but it's a step in the right direction," Sword said.
Timken has said winning a new labor deal is the last critical step toward the company's approval of an expansion to its Faircrest Steel Plant, a facility it built in the 1980s. Workers from that plant and two other Canton-area steel plants were voting Tuesday. The Steelworkers local union represents about 2,300 workers.
Several workers said they voted against the first contract in January because they felt the company could offer more, especially to its lower-paid new hires.
Mike Simon, a 33-year veteran of Timken's steel plants, said he voted against the deal in January, but he supported this one because the company and the union did a better job of explaining what was at stake.
For example, the contract called for 80 percent of the employment from Timken's plant expansion to come from active workers. Simon said in January, he took that to mean that 20 percent would be lower-wage new hires, meaning there would be little job security or room for advancement for senior workers.
"I talked to some of the guys who were around when Faircrest opened, and they said they used the same language back then. But it still worked out for the best for us," Simon said.
Sheldon Kennedy, a 17-year employee at Timken's Gambrinus plant, said he voted no in January and voted no again on Tuesday.
"If we keep approving deals like this, I don't think we'll ever get" rid of the two-tier system that allows Timken to provide less generous wages and benefits to new hires, Kennedy said.