RMI LOCKOUT RTI board refuses to join talks

RMI employees picketed outside the meeting, calling for a settlement.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Company officials say competition from a massive Russian titanium mill, combined with a continuing depression in the aerospace market, is forcing RMI Titanium to hold its ground in a contract battle with locked-out union employees.
About 50 union representatives attended a shareholders' meeting for RTI International Metals, RMI's parent company, at the Holiday Inn here Friday. They hoped to persuade its board of directors to push for an end to the lockout of 370 RMI workers, which is entering its seventh month.
Todd Weddell, president of Locals 2155 and 2155-7, appealed to the board to intervene. "I sometimes believe this is a vendetta to get rid of the union," he said.
Other members of United Steelworkers of America Locals 2155 and 2155-7 picketed outside, carrying signs demanding a contract.
Panel's stance
But Robert Fernandez, chairman of the RTI board, said the panel will not get involved in negotiations and fully supports the management team's decisions so far.
He said other metals industry workers around the country "would kill" for a contract offer like the one RMI workers rejected last October.
Tim Rupert, RTI president and chief executive, said the Weathersfield Township titanium mill is losing millions of dollars. There's less demand for titanium, since commercial aircraft producers have slowed production, he said, and the company has lost sales to lower-priced competitors.
RTI must reduce costs at RMI with a new, money-saving union contract, he said, or risk losing the profits generated by its other, more successful plants and distribution centers around the country. The company wants concessions that would save about $2.8 million a year over five years.
"Our customers are demanding a 15 percent to 20 percent decrease in [titanium] prices, and they're getting them, not just from Russian and China but from our American competitors," Rupert added.
"RMI lost $6 million last year, and it lost $4 million in the first quarter of this year. We've got to do something if you're really serious about having a long-term future at that plant."
Part of problem
The massive Russian titanium mill known as VSMPO is part of the problem. Rupert said the mill has the capacity to make 40 million to 50 million pounds of titanium a year -- the United States uses about 35 million pounds a year -- and its low-wage workers make it possible to sell at a deep-discount price.
Rupert said the union members have only themselves to blame for the lockout, which started the day after workers rejected what the company called its final contract offer.
"We told you the old contract won't work anymore. It's too costly," Rupert said. "That's why you're out on the street. You chose to be out there."
Gary Steinbeck, a USWA subdistrict official, argued that RMI should be willing to prove to the union that the mill is losing money by opening its books to an audit by the union. The company has refused.
"What kind of message does that send us?" Steinbeck asked. "It leads us to believe that somebody's not being up front with something here."
He said the USWA will stand behind the RMI workers. "We will stay out there as long as we have to, if it takes a year, two years, three years, whatever it takes."
Rupert called the request for a union audit "an artificial issue." He said RTI is a publicly held company, so its financial reports are already filed every quarter with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
An offer to mediate
State Sen. Marc Dann of Liberty, D-32nd, offered his services to help mediate a settlement between the company and the union.
Barring that, he suggested RTI consider selling the Weathersfield mill to a group of local investors or to employees under an employee stock ownership plan. In either case, Dann said, he would help to work out the deal.
Rupert said after the meeting that it was the first time he'd heard the investor buyout or employee buyout suggested. "If somebody wanted to make an offer for anything that belongs to RTI, we would certainly look at it," he said.
He said the company's offer to Locals 2155 and 2155-7 is a two-tier plan that would leave wages, pensions and profit-sharing unchanged for current RMI workers.
The company would continue to pay 100 percent of current workers' health insurance premiums, but workers would pay a greater share of their health-care bills.
New hires would earn $3 an hour less than current workers to start, would pay 10 percent of their health-care premiums, and would get a 401(k) retirement plan instead of a pension plan.
Rupert said the company's proposal also includes money-saving work-rule changes which, in part, would train employees to perform several different jobs.
He said the company already has made cuts in RMI's management team, reducing its numbers by about 28 percent over the past five years and requiring them to pay a larger share of their health-care expenses.
Management employees received only one raise in five years, he said, while union workers got raises in each of the last five years.