ated for years.

¢ Long time employee Stan Marshall, standing near press machine he has oper-

Company fires worker then
shifts him around plants

PRESCOTT, ONTARIO - In the some-

times heartless world of employer-
worker relations, employers can go
overboard and the union has to fight
to get labour relations back into even
line. That is what happened here dur-
ing the past year when Domtar Sono-
co Container Inc. drastically down-
sized its local workforce and twice
fired one of it’s most skilled and
senior employees.

IWA-CANADA Local 1-1000 member
Stan Marshall, an employee at the
plant for the past 28 years was arbi-
trarily terminated by a manager who
didn’t like him for whatever reason.

The company, which laid off 52 of
its 65 workers in October, tried twice
to dismiss Brother Marshall for “poor
attitude and performance.” And twice
the IWA went to bat and got his job
back at the composite container plant.

Domtar Sunoco began pulling
equipment out of the Prescott plant in
June of 1992. The company moved the
equipment to its Chatham, Ontario
operation while it left the Prescott
plant’s workforce hanging by its fin-
gernails.

Even though it fired Brother Mar-
shall twice, on April 16 and June 16,
the company subsequently asked him
to visit the Chatham plant to show
workers how to run a press machine
which he operated for years in
Prescott.

Quite simply put, the press depart-
ment couldn’t run without Stan. So
the company needed him in Chatham
even though they fired him for incom-
petency.

Local 1-1000 Financial Secretary and
Business Agent Mike McCarter says
“they (the company) treated Stan ter-
ribly.”

“There is no way a company should
be allowed to act so rough with a long
term employee that has been loyal to
it for nearly 30 years,” says Brother
McCarter.

Bob Navarretta, an IWA-CANADA
National Staff representative from the
union's office in Toronto took on an
arbitration case to get Stan his job
back.

Brother Navarretta feels that the
company tried to get rid of Marshall
for reasons other than his job perfor-
mance. He says the firings were an
example of a “rich multinational com-
pany that eliminated a large number
of jobs and was becoming even more
cynical in its approach to a long term
employee.” ze

Brother Marshall was and remains
the number one employee on the
seniority list. He has bumping rights
and all the other benefits accrued to
him from years of loyal service.

The firings put Stan and his wife
Barbara in a financial bind. Barbara, a
local homemaker, had her work week
cut to 6 hours a week from 20 hours a
week. They began to have serious
trouble paying the mortgage on their
home.

But the Marshall’s hung tough. Stan
turned down a $5,000 offer from
Sunoco to drop the arbitration case.
Then he said no to a $13,000 sever-
ance pay offer from the company, and
eventually wound up having to go on
welfare.

As a result of a two day arbitration
hearing, Brother Navarretta got Stan
his job back in September along with
$5,000 in compensation for time lost.

In the second arbitration hearing
the company argued that Stan had
breached a probation order from a
first reinstatement agreement arrived
at locally and signed away his rights
to arbitration when reinstated after
the first firing.

But Brother Navarretta, backed by
a Supreme Court of Canada decision
made earlier in 1992, argued with
some success that an employee's right
to arbitration must be upheld. Espe-
cially when they are part of a collec-
tive agreement between a union and
the employer and are guaranteed
under the Ontario Labour Relations

t.

Even at this point however, the
case was still difficult because it
would have enough for the company
to prove any small misconduct to sus-
tain the discharge.

The discussed letter contained ten
so called “incidents“ that the company
was using in building the phony cause
for discharge, Systematically the
union was able to successfully
destroy the phony charges one by one
with the result of leaving the company
without any argument which could
justify any discipline whatsoever, let
alone a discharge.

Now that Brother Marshall and 14
other workers are on the job at the
Prescott plant, no one knows how
long they will work or if and when
Sunoco will pull the plug on the rest
of the jobs left.

Stan and his fellow workers make
the plant go 24 hours a day, five days
a week in order to largely fill orders

for the Nestles Corporation.

The manager who fired him has
been shipped off to the United States.

Brother McCarter says the workers
and the sub-local union committee
made a lot of noise last year when
Sunoco was pulling out the machin-
ery.

The union made direct contact with
Sunoco headquarters in North Caroli-
na and squawked loud over the pull-
out.

Just how much lasting effect that
will have remains to be seen.

“If the plant has been mismanaged
is it fair for workers to take the blame
for things they didn’t do?” asks Navar-
retta.

McCarter says there’s a feeling that
the ex-manager ransacked the place
when equipment was sent to
Chatham.

Meanwhile at the Prescott plant
workers continue to prove that they
can run the operation competitively
and production has shot up.

Whether it shuts down or increases

production in the future depends on
Sunoco’s strategy.

McCarter cautions that Sunoco may
be keeping the plant down to do some
clearing out of the seniority list. The
collective agreement says that work-
ers can retain their seniority for up to
12 months.

After the major layoffs a job search
committee was set up to help the
unemployed workers. It’s been a hit
and miss proposition, as unemploy-
ment is high in the area.

Stan’s still in the plant and Sunoco
is still sending him to Chatham to
show them how to run his old press
machine. As of January he’s been put
up in Chatham three times for about
three weeks.

In Prescott he’s been redesignated
to the service department where he
makes $1.86/hr. less in wages. Among
his duties, Stan runs presses, sharpen
dyes, and does shipping and servicing.

Like others in the plant he’s now
wondering whether or not the rest of
the plant will last.

° The company has kept a skeleton work force going in the composite container

plant.

Local 1-1000 get certification
at Mont Roc retirement home

HAWKESBURY, ONTARIO- Iwa-
CANADA’s move to diversify its mem-
bership took another step forward in
the summer of last year when IWA,
Local 1-1000 won certification at a
home for retired persons. On July
1992, 33 new union members were
certified at Beacon Hill Lodges Inc.’s,
Place Mont Roc retirement home after
a 2 week campaign conducted by
National Organizer Rene Brixhe.

The upper scale retirement home
has been in operation for the past six
years, having been taken over by the
Beacon Hill company over a year ago.

Since then wages and working con-
ditions have remained poor. That’s
why the IWA was contacted.

Eventually job classifications in the
home became overlapped and more
duties were being heaped upon the
workers, of which 80% are women.

“Things got to a point where nurses
aides were washing floors and there
was a lot of jobs overlapping,” says
Brother Brixhe who organized the
workers in about 2 weeks. Fortunate-
ly there was no anti-union situation or
other types of interference from the
employer.

Wages for some workers were as
low as $5.36/hour with a lot of heavy
work included in their jobs. Before
the organizing drive the employer was
amalgamating job categories, putting
employees in the category as “guest
attendant.”

“People became very concerned
and definitely overworked,” says Brix-

e.

In the Hawkesbury area IWA-CANA-
DA has a good reputation of service to
its member, thus the workers contact-
ed Local 1-1000 to represent them.

Local 1-1000 represents workers at
Amoco Fabric and Fibre, Fib-Pak Inc.,
and Texturon Inc. in Hawkesbury. All
plants manufacture synthetic fibres
and fibre products.

A negotiation team headed by Local
1-1000 Financial Secretary Mike
McCarter, sub-local chairperson
Joanne Taillon, vice-chairperson Car-
ole Thibodeau, and Brother Brixhe
met with management to being negoti-
ations in October 1992.

In late December the committee
ratified an agreement on a 19 month
contract which expires at the end of
July 1994. The vote passed with 100%
support.

The new agreement has straight-
ened out a lot of problems in job cate-
gorization to put a halt to the free
flowing work habits that happened
before the union appeared.

Now there are 6 categories; recep-
tionists, personal service attendants,
dietary, housekeeping, cooks and reg-
istered nursing assistants.

The IWA negotiated some major
wage realignment and readjustment
language in the contract.

For instance a receptionist who
was making only $5.56 hour has now
been boosted to $7.15 hour and will
receive $8.10 by July 1, 1994.

Continued on page sixteen

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LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1993/7