Lockout to end as Machinists approve new Triumph contract

The following is from Machinists Union District Lodge 751:

SPOKANE (June 23, 2016) — Machinists Union members who work at Triumph Composite Systems have accepted the company’s offer on a four-year contract and will return to work on Monday. Union members voted by 82 percent to accept the offer, which ends a lockout at the aerospace parts factory that was going into its sixth week.

“We are proud of the fight we conducted,” the union’s negotiating committee told its members. “We are proud of every member’s efforts to stand together, and we are proud to be associated with you.”

The union’s 400 members have been locked out at Triumph since May 10. Some 93 percent of union members at Triumph had voted on May 9 to authorize a strike at the company, but the company moved to lock them out before the strike could start.

The new offer made significant gains over the one rejected on May 9, said Jon Holden, the president of Machinists Union District Lodge 751. In particular, new four-year contract makes improvements in four key areas that union members had identified as priorities:

●  Over the next three years, the contract cuts in half the 12.5 percent gap in pay between workers hired before 2006 and those hired after, by giving raises to the newer workers. In addition, all workers will get lump-sum bonuses totaling $7,000 spread out over the first three years of the contract; in the fourth year, all workers will get a 3-percent raise.

●  The contract establishes a new company-funded retirement savings plan for workers hired since 2013, which will be in addition to their already-existing 401(k) plans.

●  The contract keeps the current health care cost-sharing in place for the next four years, with caps on how much costs can go up each year.

●  The contract provides for a process that will allow the union and the company to jointly explore alternatives to outsourcing work now done by workers in Spokane.

“What has happened here over the past six weeks is a shining example of the power of union membership where workers have the right to bargain with their employer,” IAM 751 President Jon Holden said.

“Our members stood together and supported each other,” he said. “By doing that, they won a better contract that improves the quality of life for everyone who works at Triumph Composites. In the process, they made the Spokane community and its economy just that much stronger.”

Originally formed in 1935 by hourly workers at the Boeing Co., District Lodge 751 of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers now represents nearly 33,000 working men and women at 53 employers. In Eastern Washington, they are represented by a network of local lodges: Local 86 in Spokane, Local 1123 in Coulee City and Local 1951 in Richland. Learn more here.