Local 2078 members, employed at Luminant’s Three Oaks Mine in Lee and Bastrop counties, called for the strike vote during a recent meeting at the union hall between Rockdale and Thorndale, but “the union bargaining committee has not made a decision whether that has to be done,” Crawford said. “The first and foremost priority is to try to negotiate a fair contract settlement with Luminant representatives.”
Union officials do not know how long discussions will continue this week in Arlington, Crawford said.
“The parties have been attempting to work things out through meetings in the Rockdale area, but have not been successful,” Crawford said.
Tom Kleckner, Luminant Mining spokesman, said “We’ve been negotiating and we will continue to negotiate.” Kleckner, declining to discuss specifics topics of discussion on the bargaining table, said, “we’ve got good relationships with other bargaining units and we hope to establish that same relationship here.”
Labor contract negotiations have continued since Sept. 1 when Alcoa Inc. transferred ownership of its Three Oaks lignite surface mine to TXU/Luminant. The current labor pact between Alcoa and IBEW expired Sept. 19.
During the ownership switch, about two dozen Alcoa employees were not hired by Luminant Mining, formerly TXU. Recently, during the negotiation process, Local 2078 business manager Bernie Holstine resigned and moved to Missouri and has been replaced by David Caffey, a union spokeswoman said.
“TXU/Luminant came in as a new owner proposing a whole new set of terms and conditions of employment,” Crawford said. “Many of those new conditions were radically different than what Alcoa was providing their workforce.”
Among the myriad issues on the negotiating table, “compensation of the workforce along the lines of what they were receiving from Alcoa, obviously is one important issue.” A multi-year pact is preferred by the union to ensure labor stability in Rockdale, Crawford said.
Ultimately, IBEW wants a “fair and reasonable” contract signed as soon as possible to avoid “any disruption in the operations,” Crawford said. “We are at a pretty critical point right now.”
Alcoa Inc.’s divestiture of its lignite mining operations in Lee and Bastrop counties came eight months after the aluminum company shut down its Sandow Units 1, 2 and 3 on Dec. 31, 2006, as part of a consent decree stemming from air pollution litigation by environmental groups several years ago.
Alcoa operates one of the nation’s largest aluminum smelters near Rockdale in Milam County. The aluminum company phased out surface mining in Milam County in 2004, and developed the 14,000-acre Three Oaks Mine.
The surface mine has an estimated 250 million tons of lignite reserves, enough to supply, at a rate of 8 million tons per year, TXU/Luminant’s Sandow 4 and Sandow 5 power generating stations for 30 years. The three Alcoa power units are being replaced by Luminant’s $890 million, 581-megawatt lignite-fired Sandow 5 electrical generating plant under construction at the Alcoa compound in Milam County.
IBEW represents about 725,000 laborers in the U.S., Canada, Guam, Panama and Puerto Rico in construction, utilities, telecommunications, manufacturing, government offices, broadcasting and the railroad industry.
“These are tough situations when you have a major employer like Alcoa, which sells the operations to another major employer, and there are radical changes in the working conditions,” said Crawford, adding that when a new employer takes over, the labor force must accept the new terms, conditions and the new pay structure to remain employed.
Luminant Mining agreed that “we would begin the bargaining process because they knew the IBEW would have some different ideas about how the conditions should be,” Crawford said.
Kleckner said it is important to the company to have that qualified, highly skilled workforce.
“That is why we went through the process of interviewing Three Oaks employees who wanted to work for Luminant Mining,” Kleckner said. “Former Alcoa employees hired by Luminant will be compensated based on Luminant’s compensation structure and eligible to participate in our benefit plan.”
