| Conoco Group NEGOTIATION UPDATES |
 |
| January 31-February 1, 2002 |
| January 31, 2002 |
| TO: National Oil Bargaining Groups International Representatives Servicing NOB Locals FROM: James E. Pannell, Administrative Vice President COPY: PACE International Executive Board National Oil Bargaining Committee Robert Wages, Attorney NOBP GENERAL MESSAGE #9: Greetings: Please be advised that the offer from Shell and its affiliated companies reported in General Message No. 8 has been followed by B.P./Amoco at several locations; Chevron/Texaco at several locations; Phillips/Tosco at several locations; and Sun Oil at its Toledo, Ohio refinery. In accordance with prior communications, these offers have been rejected. There has been no new offers received today although negotiations are continuing and will continue this evening. We encourage you to step up your activity in support of your contract demands and to insist at all locations that the industry provide a meaningful response. All locations should feel free to stand down this evening (recess until tomorrow) and as further developments occur you will be notified. All locations should be prepared to make arrangements with your respective employers to offer an orderly shutdown of your facility if you are instructed to do so and if you are instructed to serve strike notice on your employer. It is expected that a number of facilities will be placed on notice sometime tomorrow. Please review your collective bargaining agreements to make sure of the contractual requirements for serving strike notice and when a strike may lawfully commence once notice is served. If you have any questions, please contact your International Representative or this office. In preparation for possible strike action, you should be advised that continuation of medical benefits during a strike is covered by COBRA. Of course, the individual beneficiary is required to make arrangements for premium payment but you should take care to find out what the employer’s COBRA policy is. Should you have any questions regarding that policy, contact your International Representative who can assist in obtaining answers to your questions. Please be advised that International Headquarters Office will be closing this evening at 6:00 p.m. We will advise you of the schedule for tomorrow’s closing in the next General Message. Thank you for your continuing support. |
| Jan. 31-Feb. 1 |
| February 1, 2002 |
| January 31st was a very busy day indeed. Several tense hours were spent at the International level trying to reach final agreement on the National Package while your Committee spent all day locked in with a Federal Mediator trying to work issues at the local level. We appear to have agreement on the National Package and will now present it to Conoco for their anticipated acceptance. You are encouraged to go to the International Link on this web site to learn more about the National Package. We are now working under a rolling extension that requires we give management 24 hours notice of a work stoppage. Local negotiations (which include the Federal Mediator) will continue in earnest starting at 9AM on Friday! Our hope now is that the Company will come off of dead center and get serious about local issues. One issue they have said is a big one to them is their new language for Management’s Rights. When they handed this proposal to us they stated that they thought they already have the rights contained in the proposal, but just wanted to add the new language to clarify things. Let us make this very clear – management already has an enormous amount of rights. In fact, we generally agree that these rights they currently have are rights that they should have! We want the day to day business of this refinery to be run in a fluid and efficient manner. We know that for this to happen requires Management to have gobs of flexibility to allow them to run the business in a way that assures we stay profitable and guarantees that we all stay employed. Management already has almost all of the rights. Basically, the Contract Agreement is a document that contains the exclusions to their rights. Pretty much everything else belongs to them. This creates a nice balance that gives them the flexibility to run our business and gives us some stability that protects our pay, time off, overtime allocation, schedules, etc. What their proposal would do, however, is tip the scales grossly out of kilter. Their proposal would take away our rights under the National Labor Relations act to bargain on changes to our working conditions. As an example, if we accept their proposal, they could make sweeping changes to the way we pick or take vacations and could claim they don’t have to bargain with us over the changes. Their proposal goes on to insist that we sign away our right to grieve or arbitrate any unilateral decisions they make. Without even mentioning names, imagine giving some of our front line supervisors total and complete control over the time you spend with your family. Imagine giving them no restrictions on the covering of overtime. No more examples – just keep imagining on your own. Not very pretty, is it? We hope to be able to Update daily as negotiations continue, but indications are that the current phase with the mediator could go through the weekend and into the wee hours of the morning. Stay strong and keep the faith! |