In Covanta Struggle, Utility Workers Go Global (to join a union without management interference)

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/05/03/in-covanta-struggle-utility-workers-go-global/

by Mike Hall, May 3, 2010

In 2008, after some 140 workers at Covanta Energy Corp.’s Rochester, Mass., plant voted to join the Utility Workers (UWUA), the “green” energy company started a two-year-long campaign of delay, “intolerable” contract demands and other bargaining table stalls. As UWUA President Michael Langford says:

They thought we’d just go away.

Well, they didn’t go away. They went global. Now, UWUA Local 369 members in Rochester have a contract signed just last week and the union may be on the verge of winning an agreement that would allow Covanta workers at its 30 U.S. facilities, as well as its overseas operations, to choose to join a union without management interference (more below).

Covanta, a multinational firm, is seeking to expand its waste-to-energy operations in several nations and that, says Langford, was the key that eventually opened the lock on nearly two years of fruitless negations.

Covanta put on the table outrageous contact provisions like worker gag orders on and off the property and new termination provisions. Then early last year, says UWUA Organizing Director Stewart Acuff, Covanta announced it would stop paying all union members annual wage increases and semi-annual bonuses.

The union filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It was then time, says Langford, to turn a local organizing campaign into a more strategic global effort.

UWUA is an affiliate of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Union (ICEM). Langford and Acuff say the relationships and strategies union leaders developed at AFL-CIO and international organizing and labor conferences began to pay off.

FULL story at link.