In this update, the second in a series to bring you all up to date on the situation in Billings, we will examine elements of the Company’s new Exclusive Agreement language (Zipper Clause). At issue in this update is the section of the language that states, "No practices, payments of wages or benefits prior to or subsequent to this agreement date shall act to change or enlarge the express wording of this agreement”. This phrase, along with a letter the Company presented to our Union back in November where management unilaterally determined that, “all agreements, such as Side Letters of Agreement, Letters of Understanding, or Memorandums of Agreement, or any other agreements of similar title, known or unknown, whether they exist inside or outside the collective bargaining agreement shall become null and void with the expiration of our current collective bargaining agreement”. As most of you remember, in order for us to represent the membership properly during the pending negotiations, (which lead up to the, “expiration of our current collective bargaining agreement”) we presented the Company with a letter requesting information. We believe that the Company’s obligation to provide this information is required under the National Labor Relations Act. To date, they have ignored our request.
A problem we have had with this issue from the beginning has been with the inconsistencies in responses we have gotten when we ask the Company about their intent of application. For that reason, we have consistently requested a couple of modifications to their language. One is that they modify their language to reflect that their intent is not to disallow the use of past practice to interpret the contract. The other is to modify their language to reflect that past practice still applies unless it was specifically changed in the body of this contract during these negotiations. We thought we had made conceptual progress on these points during meetings in Denver, which led to further talks in Billings. When we met in Billings, we discovered that those conceptual agreements didn’t make the trip from Denver.
Something that we have found very frustrating throughout this entire process has been the unwillingness of the company to consider inclusion of past practices in the body of the contract. This stance seems to us to have no reasonable foundation. In many parts of the contract, the “express written word” does not do a good job of explaining how the “express written word” is actually applied on a day to day basis. However, much of the “express written word” does have decades of practice associated with it that allows the “express written word” to function in real life. Their refusal to allow for the inclusion of language that will clarify the contract and minimize disputes over contract interpretation in the future goes beyond the bounds of reason. A tongue-in-cheek comment was made to your Committee last week that, with the Conoco/Phillips merger on the horizon, people in the Human Resources department may be purposely sabotaging our contract so they will have plenty to do after the merger. We would suggest that one would have to actually be employed with this company after the merger in order to enjoy the security of “plenty to do”.
Be sure to attend the informational meeting on Wednesday at 4:30PM as we will delve into the individual past practices and try to make some sense of this mess.
Stay tuned. More to come! |
