PPG workers focus on first contract

Since voting for the UAW on June 28, 2006, Evansville PPG workers have elected officers and a bargaining committee, and been assigned their own local union number: Local 2828.

They also produce a newsletter and meet regularly in another union’s hall. They’ve formed several committees and even took political action collecting names on a petition to support the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill that would strengthen workers’ right to organize.

Although the workers are meeting their responsibilities as a union, the company isn’t meeting its responsibility. It is objecting to the election results and delaying the process of bargaining a first contract.

Like their PPG counterparts in Crestline, Ohio, and O’Fallon, Mo., these new union members in Evansville are not waiting for Congress to pass a bill to defend their right to organize and achieve a first contract. They’re taking action now.

"When the company challenged our vote, we had to keep active and keep up the participation we had when we were organizing. We didn't want people to get discouraged. It's better than sitting back," said Terry Hall, president of the Evansville unit, a general maintenance worker with 27 years of seniority.

“It’s all about our future, and our families,” said 35-year seniority furnace operator Toby Barnhart who works at PPG’s Crestline facility. “Negotiations are going at a snail’s pace, but we’re confident.”

“We have a lot of workers who will be retiring in four or five years. We want to make pensions better for them. We also have 80 temps who have been here for as long as five years. They’re praying they can become part of the union, too. We’re fighting for their future, our families’ and our kids’ futures,” said Barnhart, a bargaining committee member.

By uniting with UAW members at other PPG facilities that are already organized – and with UAW members in auto plants that receive PPG products – workers at newly organized PPG facilities are developing a comprehensive strategy to win justice at all of the company’s plants.

PPG’s main tactic for avoiding long-term obligations to their employees backfired when a plant of temporary workers voted for the UAW in O’Fallon. While these workers finish glass products in a PPG plant and the parts sport the PPG name, all the production workers are actually employees of a temporary labor agency called Staff Management.

Since going union, the 140 “temps” at O’Fallon have been working toward negotiating their first collectively bargained contract.