| Conoco Group NEGOTIATION UPDATES |
 |
| March 26-30, 2002 |
| March 26, 2002 |
| This will finish our short series of updates geared toward bringing the membership up to date on the situation in Billings. We should start out by reminding you to get to the Informational Meeting at the Union Hall on Wednesday the 27th. There are some things we just can’t put on this web site. To get the details on the subjects we have been referring to the last few days will require a more intimate setting. We had some serious concerns with the Company’s last offer, which they took upon themselves to present directly to the membership of this Union. One of the things those of us who were directly involved in the negotiations noticed was that the Company offer didn’t include some items that they had already agreed would be in their offer. Their answer to inquiries as to why these items didn’t end up in the last proposal was almost benign. To paraphrase, they said that they had determined that the inclusion of such items would not have helped to get an agreement, so these items were not included in the last offer. Let us help you get past the double talk so we can all understand what that statement means: During a negotiations process where both sides are acting honorably, one side will present a collection of scenarios they would be willing to entertain if the other party would be willing to entertain another collection of scenarios with the goal being an agreement on the combined collection of scenarios. In theory, when the process is complete, both sides would have hammered out their differences and objections to individual elements of the scenarios in question and end up with a tentative agreement. (Stay with us, we’re getting there) Large documents, such as our labor agreement, require that this process be carried out dozens of times until someone looks up and says, “Hey, we’re out of scenarios to talk about. I guess we have a final agreement!” When the agreement is finalized, the agreed to elements of the various scenarios will end up on the document signed by both parties – in this case, we would have our new labor agreement. Now let’s get to what they mean when they say, “We determined that the inclusion of such items would not have helped to get an agreement, so these items were not included in the last offer”. What they mean is that even though they had committed to some elements of our scenarios, they got to thinking about it later and determined that we probably wouldn’t strike over the omission of those items. So, therefore, they would just go back on their word. This may or may not fit the legal definition of bad faith bargaining. This absolutely meets the moral definition of dishonorable bargaining. On another subject, some of you have complained to your Committee that questions you have submitted to the Company negotiations site have not been answered. The short answer to your complaint would be, “Why are you complaining to us, it ain’t our stinking site!?!”. However, to show proper respect for our membership, we will give this a try: We have our own web site. It is our method of getting our message out to our membership. It is no big secret that we have not turned this site into a forum to allow the Company to get their message out. We don’t work for stupid people, so it should come as little surprise that they are going to try to find a way to get their message across. In this case, they are using a question and answer forum attached to their intranet site in an attempt to sell you on the idea that their contract offer is a good idea. We don’t blame them, we would do the same thing if we were in their shoes. Just as we control the content of our site, it would be reasonable to expect that they control the content of their site to assure that their message is conveyed. It would be foolhardy for them to fail to filter the content of their site if that content would circumvent their efforts to convince you that their contract offer is a good idea. To those of you who are convinced that many of the questions in their forum absolutely had to be written by a member of the Refinery Leadership Team, it doesn’t really matter who wrote the question. It’s much like reading a question and answer article in one of our BeneFlex flyers. It probably doesn’t matter who wrote the darned question as long as the people presenting the forum get their message out. In closing, we would say that any questions you might have concerning the inclusion or omission of your thoughts or questions in the company web site should be directed to someone other than your committee. Don’t forget the meeting at the Union Hall on Wednesday evening at 4:30PM. |
| March 26-30 |
| March 30, 2002 |
| Negotiations action should be a little slow for the next few days. It is our understanding that the person who does the negotiating for this facility is scheduled for negotiations meetings in Ponca City the first part of the week. Ponca City is now working under a 24 hour rolling extension and took a three day Easter weekend. Talks are also taking place in Ponca City geared at getting us back to the table in Billings. There are some tough issues still needing addressed in Ponca, but hopefully they will work through them early in the week and move the talks up here right away. Stay tuned. |