Keokuk, IA – President Dominique Taret says Roquette America's approach to negotiations with the BCTGM, Local 48G has been to prepare for the future.
He and the company recently released a second open letter to the community.
In it, Taret says his company's contract proposal focuses on six core goals. They include increasing workforce flexibility, stabilizing its compensation system, and enhancing job performance and accountability.
The letter goes on to provide answers to questions about Roquette's need for temporary workers, training requirements and proposed employee compensation.
The two sides are scheduled to meet again on December 13, December 14, and December 28.
Public Safety
The Keokuk Police Department says it is doing everything it can to keep everyone connected to the Roquette America lock-out safe.
The BCTGM, Local 48G has set up informational pickets outside of each of the plant's entrances. The largest groups are located along South Fifth Street and Twin Rivers Drive.
Keokuk Police Chief Tom Crew says his officers are regularly patrolling those areas. He says the top priority is the safety of the locked-out workers and the employees still working at Roquette America.
Crew says the Keokuk Police Department is also maintaining an incident log. Most of the calls for service have involved vandalism and harassment.
Crew says the call volume is down compared to previous weeks. He hopes that trend continues, especially with Christmas less than three weeks away.
Roquette's Letter to the Community
Let's move forward together
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR COMMUNITIES #2
December 3, 2010
Clarification of Roquette America's Core Contract Proposals
Negotiations for a new labor contract between Roquette America and Local 48G union leadership began on August 19, 2010, and since then the parties have conducted a total of 18 meetings. Roquette continues to negotiate in good faith with the union to reach a new contract.
Roquette's approach in these contract negotiations has been to focus on preparing for the future. Today's business environment is significantly different than four years ago when our last labor contract was negotiated. Uncertain economic conditions, increasing regional and international competition, changing market demands and more strict governmental regulations require businesses to adapt quickly and perform better in order to be competitive.
The Company's contract proposal focuses on six core goals to improve plant operations; achieve greater workforce stability; improve competency development; enhance job performance and accountability; increase workforce flexibility; and compensation system stability. These labor proposals attempt to balance the needs of our employees and protect their interests while seeking changes that will allow us to accomplish these six critical goals.
Although there has been progress bringing the positions of both parties closer, there are still a number of key issues which need to be resolved. The following discussion is intended to help our employees and community members better understand why these six core goals are critical to our future success.
Sincerely,
Dominique Taret
President and CEO
Answers to frequently asked questions:
Q1: Will current employees be eligible for more pay?
A: The Company has offered several different monetary incentives to increase total employee compensation. These include an annual lump sum increase, a department seniority bonus and up to an additional 5% per year with a performance bonus. Equally important to note -- there are NO pay or benefit reductions. In 2009, union employees' average annual earnings were over $50,000. Total average annual compensation is approximately $75,000 including benefits.
Q2: Why does Roquette want a lower wage scale for new hires?
A: Other companies have implemented a 2-tier wage plan. Instead of asking current employees to take wage cuts as other companies have, we believe it is better to implement these changes with new hires. Even with the proposed 2-tier wage plan, these wages are still very competitive, exceeding the Lee County average wage. In addition, new employees will be eligible to receive the same benefits and bonus plans offered to all current employees.
Q3: Why won't Roquette provide the projected costs of health benefits for the next 4 years?
A: Just as your home or car insurance provider cannot project your insurance premiums for the next four years, our health insurance provider cannot accurately project a 4-year schedule of health insurance premiums. The future impact of health care reform is unknown making it even more difficult to project what health care costs will be over the long term.
However, if employees participate in Roquette's new wellness program, their lifestyles may improve resulting in better health. It has been proven that a good way to manage rising health care premiums is to reduce health care claims.
Q4: How will Roquette achieve greater stability by properly managing job movements?
A: Most of the jobs at Roquette America require several months of training for initial job qualification. Training is an important investment in both time and resources. Each time employees change jobs, a chain of movements occur. If employees don't stay long enough in jobs to gain expertise, efficiency of operations is nearly impossible to achieve. Frequent job movements result in more safety incidents, quality problems for our customers and environmental upsets. When job movements do occur we need to ensure enough qualified people remain in their jobs to continue to operate efficiently.
Q5: Why is it necessary to evaluate skills?
A: Roquette currently evaluates skills to ensure employees have the necessary skills and competencies to perform the job. We are not planning to change this practice and want to maintain the flexibility to conduct such evaluations where and when needed.
Q6: Why does Roquette want to use an interview process to fill jobs in new facilities?
A: Production requirements in new facilities that are designed to produce new products will have jobs that require higher or different expertise and advanced skills. Candidate selection needs to be based on skills and competencies, past job performance, safety/ quality/ environmental performance, attendance, seniority, etc.
Furthermore, a new facility may add additional jobs which may then generate the potential for considerable internal movement. As noted above, we need to ensure enough qualified people remain in each area to run these jobs when movement does occur so we can continue to operate efficiently.
Q7: What is the need for temporary employees?
A: Using temporary workers is a short term solution to meet a short term need such as shifting business demands and covering for individual needs when employees are absent due to vacations, personal and other leave of absences such as short term disability and other business short term situations.
Q8: Why does Roquette want to continue to use contractors?
A: Roquette has used different contractors for many years for various reasons such as capital investment projects, providing special expertise and equipment and other needs.
Q9: Why won't Roquette America allow the locked out employees to return to work while the negotiations continue?
A: To date, the union negotiating committee has refused to substantially address the Company's six core negotiation goals. The Company has no reasonable expectation that the union would act any differently regarding these core goals if bargaining unit employees were returned to work. Furthermore, the previous contract does not wholly support our effort to meet the six core negotiation goals.