Hourly paper mill workers in Covington voted overwhelmingly Sunday to authorize their labor union's negotiating team to call for a strike if ongoing contract talks with MeadWestvaco officials fail to address key union concerns.

The authorizing vote does not mean a strike is either imminent or certain.

Roy Hall, president of United Steelworkers Local 8-675, said members sent a clear message to both the negotiating team and MeadWestvaco. He said 96 percent of members who voted authorized Hall and other union negotiators to ask members to walk out if negotiations break down.

"It gives us the right to call a strike at any time," he said. "Of course, our goal is to get a contract."

Hall said 887 ballots were cast. Local 8-675 has 966 members at MeadWestvaco's Covington paper mill, according to the union. The plant employs about 1,450 people.

MeadWestvaco spokeswoman Alison von Puschendorf said Sunday that the company "looks forward to getting back to the negotiating table [today]."

She reiterated that the company will not comment about specific contract proposals. She said the mill will continue to operate if a strike occurs, but at a reduced production capacity. The plant would welcome any hourly employees who want to continue working, said von Puschendorf.

"The bottom line is to ensure that our customers' needs are met," she said.

Hall said sticking points remain -- among others, health care coverage, wages and pension contributions by the company.

For health care, he said MeadWestvaco wants the union to agree to coverage and premium payments similar to salaried workers' and that the company's plan "would drive monthly premiums for family coverage into the $700 range" for union workers.

For the three-year contract, MeadWestvaco has proposed that wages would increase 1.25 percent the first year and 1 percent each of the subsequent years, said Hall. He said those increases are unacceptably low. MeadWestvaco also wants to eliminate premium pay, he said, for employees who work Sundays, holidays or days off, offering instead a one-time payout of $4,000 per employees who tour through different production shifts.

"It'll never happen," Hall said.

In addition, the union rejects, he said, the company's offer of increasing monthly pension payments by 48 cents.

"Obviously, we'd like to see an increase considerably higher than that," he said. He would not disclose what increase the union wants.

The authorization vote should send a message to MeadWestvaco, he said. Negotiations resume today in Roanoke.

"When we go over there we're going to take a very hard line with the company," said Hall.

The last strike at the Covington mill started in November 1978 and lasted about 80 days.

Covington City Manager Claire Collins has said a strike would have dramatic economic and human effects for the city and region. The paper mill draws workers from adjacent counties and even West Virginia.

Union wages at the mill range from about $17 an hour to about $30 an hour. At a Nov. 13 union rally held outside the plant, workers Bruce Wood and Jean Porterfield described serious injuries suffered in separate incidents involving paper machines. They said people who read about union wages, comparatively high for a manufacturer in the region, might not understand the work can be dangerous.

The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry recently issued citations to MeadWestvaco, with fines totaling $19,000, related to an April accident that led to the death of one worker and injured another. The department's investigation revealed that similar unsafe conditions also caused accidents that injured employees in 1993 and 1989.

Two employees were injured at the plant Friday and taken to Alleghany Regional Hospital. They were treated and released, according to von Puschendorf.

The Covington mill's products include, among others, paper used in food packaging (such as TV dinners), paper used for lottery tickets or baseball cards, activated carbon for catalytic converters in automobiles and papers for cigarette packaging.