General Dynamics Union Pickets For Fair WagesBy Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
06:08AM / Tuesday, June 27, 2023 | |
 General Dynamics workers rally at Park Square in advance of upcoming union negotiations. |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Unionized workers at General Dynamics are demanding an end to a pay system that they don't see as equitable.
On Saturday, the IUE-CWA Local 255, which represents employees at General Dynamics Mission Systems, held an informational picket in the rain at Park Square to get community support for its upcoming contract negotiation.
The park was filled with employees from both of the company's tiered pay systems advocating for a fair contract.
"We're ready to make changes," Union President Andrew Burdick said. "And we did it rain or shine because we're willing to do whatever it takes to make the difference in the contract."
The union's main priority is to do away with the company's two-tier pay system that results in about a $10 hourly difference depending on when someone was hired. Of the union's roughly 150 members, about 100 are tier-two employees and feel they should earn a more competitive wage for the precision, high-impact work they perform.
GD's Mission Systems manufactures defense and space communications hardware.
A five-year contract was settled in 2018 and negotiations will begin in the last week of July and go through the first week of August.
The pay system was approved in 2014. A two-tier wage structure is defined by having a group of employees who perform the same type of job receive lower pay.
Business agent James Mole said he can see a strike in the future if a fair contract can't be negotiated. The average Tier 2 employee — anyone hired after 2014 — makes around $22 to $23 an hour and the average Tier 1 about $33.
"The obvious one is to eliminate the second tier, to have better health care or sustain our health care that we have with a better rate for it. Obviously, more sick time, more vacation time," he said.
"It would be nice to have Veterans Day off. We work for General Dynamics but we're contracted with the Navy and we don't get Veterans Day off. We're told basically that if you want Veterans Day off you can have it but you have to use your floating hours."
Aside from working for a federal contractor, Mole added that there are a lot of veterans who work in the Missions Systems. There has also been no talk of implementing Juneteenth as paid holiday, which Mole said is surprising because the company talks a lot about diversity efforts.
Mechanic James Ward, who is the longest-standing member of the union, said the two-tier system has a "big effect" on workers and feels that it will be fixed in this contract.
"We've always negotiated for pretty good benefits and we want to stay where we are on that," he said.
"And I'm sure with the interest, I'm sure the offices are thinking that they're going have to increase the pay with all the inflation that we've been suffering lately."
There was a great contract when he first started with the company in 2004 with cost-of-living agreements, Ward said, but it wasn't the best thing when the company went to a two-tier system, which the union is now trying to counteract.
"It goes up and down, it's different every time," he said.
Burdick has been with the company for 15 years and was a part of the union when the two-tier system was voted in. He feels that the workers were "duped" in the process.
"We were told that if you we didn't take this contract, 'You've got rocks in your head,'" he said.
"The people that were going to get second tier, they had no faces, we didn't know those people yet. Now we know them and a lot of us know each other's families and we're that close but when you've got somebody that's building what we build making that much less, there's some animosity."
Mole said that, in hindsight, the five-year contract was a "huge mistake" when you look at everything that has happened in the world since. Another five-year contract is not something the union wants, he added.
Wages have reportedly always been an issue.
"It's a huge issue. It causes a lot of dissension in the shop, which there shouldn't be," he said. "We should be there working as a team, especially with what we do."
Mole said there are single parents and employees with second jobs on the team and everyone deserves to make a living wage.
He pointed out that General Dynamic's Chairman and CEO Phebe N. Novakovic had a base salary of $1.7 million last year along with bonuses, stocks and other compensation that raised it to $21 million.
"These guys need to have a living wage, where they can have pride and go home and, you know, they can let their kids play sports and they can go buy new clothes they need to wear to go to school," he said.
"It's a big deal. It's not just at General Dynamics. There are a lot of second-tier employees at a lot of companies."
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