GENERAL ELECTRIC Union ratifies 4-year contract

The average GE worker will earn more than $22 an hour by the end of the pact.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The president of General Electric's largest labor union said its 13,000 members across the country ratified a new, four-year contract that includes pay raises totaling more than 11 percent.
"Every one of our major local unions passed the agreement overwhelmingly," said Ed Fire, president of International Union of Electrical Workers/Communications Workers of America and a Lowellville native.
Fire said official results on what he called "the richest package we have ever bargained with GE" would be released later today. He said he'd heard of just one small plant in Colorado which rejected the agreement.
Locally, unionized workers at the Niles Mahoning Glass Plant and the Austintown Product plant approved the pact; results of voting at GE's Lamp Assembly Production plant in Warren, the largest local GE plant with about 412 union members, were not available at press time. GE has about 600 local employees at the three plants.
At the others
Janet Bernard, president of IUE/CWA Local 734, which represents 112 members in Austintown, reported the agreement passed by a margin of 80-6 in voting Tuesday.
Ed Baran, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 751 in Niles, said its 215 members approved the contract by a 91 percent margin. He declined to give the vote count.
The UE, which represents about 3,000 GE employees nationwide, negotiated with IUE/CWA but has separate ratification rights, Baran said. He's been advised by the national UE office that its results will be released tonight.
Bernard, who served on the 34-member national negotiating team in New York, said the average worker now earning $19 hourly will see that rate increase to $22 by the end of the contract. The pact includes yearly raises totaling 11.6 percent and cost-of-living increases.
Fire said the improvements will increase the average worker's pay $15,200 over the contract period.
He said union leaders made a "major breakthrough" when they negotiated a one-time 13th pension payment for retirees because unions have generally not been allowed to bargain for retirees. The agreement also provides early retirement opportunities for 1,020 union members.
Health-care costs were a major concern, Fire said, because GE had talked about passing along 30 percent of its health-care costs to workers. While members will see some increases over the life of the agreement, he said, their cost-sharing percentage will remain at the current level, 18 percent.
"I think we really did hold the line, and we're proud of that," he said. "I think it will have an impact on other major collective bargaining agreements coming up later this year."
GE also agreed to join the National Coalition on Health Care, Fire said, a group of unions, corporations and health-care providers whose goal is to establish a national health-care system.
vinarsky@vindy.com