Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Yokohama Tire talks making progress
Union and plant officials would not comment on the contract negotiations.
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Three years ago, union members at the Yokohama Tire Corp. plant in Salem ratified a new labor agreement.
That contract expires May 16 at midnight.
Negotiations began in late March for another three-year contract for about 670 members of United Steelworkers Local 1023.
On Monday, neither Steve Jones, president of Local 1023, nor John Holladay, a Yokohama spokesman, would comment about the status or tenor of the negotiations.
But Eddie Lowery, USW International's subdistrict director for Virginia, said he "is satisfied with the progress we are making."
He said the company and union negotiators have met about a dozen times since March.
"I think all negotiations are difficult, depending on the day and the issue. But we've made progress," Lowery said. "It's collective bargaining. It's a process."
The last strike at the Salem facility occurred in 1994 and lasted about 12 weeks.
Last July, the plant had more than 800 employees. Holladay did not provide an updated figure.
The plant manufactures passenger, high performance and light truck tires. California-based Yokohama Tire Corp. is a subsidiary of Yokohama Rubber Co., based in Japan.
Union negotiations in the domestic tire industry typically follow a process called "pattern bargaining," by which contracts secured with larger tiremakers can serve as templates for subsequent negotiations with competitors.
Negotiations last year yielded new contracts for USW-represented workers at Michelin's BFGoodrich tire unit, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and Bridgestone-Firestone.
Job security was a key issue for union members as tire manufacturers struggled with a recession, an ailing auto industry and competition from Chinese imports. And unions made related concessions in wages and other benefits.
Predictably, negotiations focused also on health insurance benefits and retiree pensions.
In mid-September, USW members at seven Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plants ratified a new four-year contract. USW reports it represents about 10,300 workers at the Goodyear plants.
Ohio-based Goodyear said the contract will save the company about $215 million, a figure it said pre-agreement job cuts could boost to about $555 million over the term of the contract.
Goodyear agreed to "continued job security" for six of the company's plants with USW representation. The plant in Danville, which has suffered layoffs in recent years, was included in the six. Goodyear closed a plant in Radford in January 2009.
On Oct. 3 last year, USW announced that Bridgestone-Firestone workers had ratified new four-year contracts covering about 4,500 workers at five plants.
In February, Yokohama Rubber Co. reported that profits improved during the international company's first nine months of its current fiscal year. But it said sales for its Yokohama Tire subsidiary were off about 14.6 percent when compared with the same period last year.
On April 30, Yokohama announced plans to increase prices on all of its consumer tires by up to 8 percent, effective June 1. It attributed the increase to escalating costs of raw materials, manufacturing and transportation.
News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.
