Jewel Teamsters Continue Negotiations with Slow-Moving Employer
Local 710 Bargaining Committee Ready to Negotiate Around the Clock to Reach Agreement
The Local 710 met for another marathon bargaining session today at Park Ridge. The committee first met to discuss priorities as set by the membership.
The members need a light at the end of the tunnel. The light eighties work as hard as us heavy eighties; they’re my brothers in the trenches.
We have to do something for them.
Martin Wilscher
710 Committee Member
The union wants to focus on coming up with ways to address issues pertaining to the disparity between workers, but additional information is still needed from the information requests. Jewel continued to drag their feet to provide the necessary response.
“The company is really slowing negotiations down,” said John T. Coli, Trustee of Local 710. “We’re handicapped by a lack of response on our information requests. The union wants to move forward and reach an agreement.”
“This is already our sixth meeting, and we’re going too slowly,” Business Agent Bernie Sherlock told the company. “Your proposals constantly contain mistakes. We’re waiting days to get information requests. We’re here to get a deal. Speed it up.”
The union went through their latest contract proposal in full, noting which proposals have been resubmitted and which have been modified or dropped. The committee expressed egregious distrust among the entire membership with the employer, backing it up with two separate instances where the employer attempted to violate the contract within the last week alone.
The employer continued to present healthcare packages that did not fully outline all weekly contribution situations. In order to move negotiations along, the union prepared a document illustrating the weekly contributions and dove into the information request responses to find confusing and inaccurate data.
The employer cut the day’s session short in order to make a flight in time. Negotiations are scheduled to continue Thursday, February 4th at 10:00 a.m. Questions or concerns may be directed to any member of the bargaining committee.
Teamsters Local 710 is an affiliate of Teamsters Joint Council 25, America’s premier labor union for Chicago, Illinois and northwest Indiana.