Stonemountain Workers Score 3-year Contract, Raises, Healthcare!
Submitted on Sat, 08/09/2008 - 11:23am
The workers and management at Stonemountain & Daughter, a Berkley California based Fabric Store, have signed a new contract. Tentative agreement on the contract was reached in the final bargaining session on the night of June 26th, the shop vote was unanimous in favor of the contract, and the contract was officially ratified on July 22nd.
The gains for all the workers in the shop are huge: a raise in the starting wage from $9.25 per hour to $10.60 per hour, employer funded health care for employees working over 24 hours per week, a 35% raise in paid time off, new holidays, and even an easy chair in the break room. In a win for the campaign to retain the eight hour day, all overtime is now guaranteed to be voluntary, meaning that anyone who chooses to work only eight hours cannot be disciplined for refusing overtime.
In a change from the bargaining for the previous two contracts, this session was run totally by IWW members who work in the shop, with the addition of one representative from the local branch. The shop negotiating team consisted of Fellow Workers Heather Gardner, Maggie Wihnyk, Masae Kubota, and Janet Sandberg with Fellow Worker Gardner serving as the lead negotiator and shop delegate.
"We are excited about this new agreement because we believe it will lead to less turn over in the shop which will result in long term workers and union members" said FW Gardner.
Management tried several times to reduce the progress that the workers were seeking by claiming that there was not enough money to fulfill the workers requests, even proposing to set a cap for wages.
Management claimed that they followed "industry standards" in the "notorious" retail industry, refusing to acknowledge the experience and expertise in textiles and sewing demanded of their workers. The bargaining committee successfully resisted all of the regressive management proposals and used shop floor agitation to put pressure on management.
"Rank and file shop floor pressure played a key role in our ability to win this great agreement" said FW Gardner.
The new three-year agreement is without a no-strike clause nor does it have binding arbitration as the final result of a grievance procedure, preserving the rights of the workers to take direct action over shop floor issues.