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MiddletownJournal.com

AEIF preparing information packages

Members to see proposals by union, AK and 'standards'

Workers locked out of AK Steel's Middletown Works for nine weeks may see today more of what's on the table in contract talks.

Brian Daley, president of Armco Employees Independent Federation, said Wednesday the union is preparing comparisons of its latest contract proposal to AK's proposal and also to what he says are industry standards.

Daley and other AEIF negotiators have met with AK representatives 24 times since AK's lockout started March 1. Another meeting is set for this morning.

The packages may be distributed today, Daley said. AEIF leaders want to illustrate why talks appear to have yielded little agreement so far. Tentative agreements have been reached on four issues, with 22 remaining, both sides have said.

Comparison packages will be distributed "for informational purposes, to show the rank and file exactly where we are at at the bargaining table," he said.

"AK Steel has not moved from its original proposal on wages," Daley said. "They are still insisting on major concessions."

For example, Daley said, AK is proposing to contribute $1.40 an hour to worker 401(k) plans after current pensions are frozen. The industry standard is a company contribution of $1.80 an hour, he said.

Also: AK wants future retiree health insurance plans for families to cost more than $600 a month in premiums with no cap on future increases, Daley said. The industry standard allows "some cost sharing with built-in caps" on future premium increases, he said.

Daley called those points "two of the major sticking points" in negotiations.

Alan McCoy, AK vice president, government and public relations, declined to respond to those specific numbers.

But McCoy said the amount of any company contribution to 401(k) plans is open to negotiation, as it is at other companies.

On retiree health insurance, he said most AK retirees currently pay some share of their health insurance benefit, while AEIF retirees do not.

McCoy also said it is industry standard to cap the company's contribution to retiree health care plans at some point — not to cap retiree contributions.

"That's been the case for a number of years in the industry," McCoy said.

While Daley said "everything" in the union's proposals are industry-comparable, McCoy has said an option to strike over AK's reaction to arbitration decisions — something the AEIF has pursued — is not industry-standard.

McCoy also has said that minimum work force size requirements are no longer honored across the industry.

While McCoy said there is no single set of criteria that can be called "industry standard," steelmakers have been trying to emulate what some industry observers call "new era" agreements in recent years. Such agreements mirror contracts crafted by former steelmaker International Steel Group Inc.

Those "new era" tenets include fewer workers, about five job classifications (down from hundreds in some cases) and the absence of required minimum worker numbers.

Another key tenet: The ISG model entirely shrugged off past retiree health care benefits and pensions. The company did that through cobbling together assets of steel companies that had declared bankruptcy, such as LTV Corp., Bethlehem Steel and others.

"We have not abandoned retirees," McCoy said. "We still have the pension obligation."

U.S. Steel Corp. and Mittal Steel USA have enshrined those new-era tenets in their own agreements, and AK officials say they must compete with those lower costs.

C

ontact this reporter at (513)

705-2833

or

tgnau

@coxohio.com.