CMP Workers Discuss Concerns and Union Strategies at Gardiner Meeting

September 22, 2009 - IBEW members at Central Maine Power Company gathered in the Gardiner Area High School Gymnasium on Tuesday, September 22 to discuss our options and provide feedback to the Union Negotiating Team. Many of the approximately 150 members on hand offered their candid opinions about the Union’s efforts to get a fair contract for everyone in this – the largest bargaining unit at IBEW Local 1837. Throughout the meeting, brothers and sisters with widely diverging views remained polite and respectful of one another.
 
IBEW 1837 Assistant Business Manager Bill Dunn reviewed the status of several unfair labor practice charges that the Union filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Although the NLRB filed a complaint against the Company on one of the charges, they dismissed several others. IBEW 1837 is challenging those dismissals with the NLRB in Washington, D.C.
 
The meeting came in the wake of an announcement that CMP’s owner, Iberdrola, S.A. of Spain would be receiving a total of $545 million in federal stimulus money to support wind power projects in the United States. IBEW members – while not questioning the value of the actual projects – reacted bitterly to the news that a corporation seeking to cut their benefits would be the beneficiary of a federal program supported by their tax dollars.
 

The Union Negotiating Team has reviewed the latest final offer from CMP, and they think it is not enough. The Company is not hurting and they can afford to offer CMP workers a better contract. They just don’t want to.
 
At the meeting, the Union Negotiating Team reviewed what they see as the options:

• Vote on the latest final Company offer.
• “Stay the course” and continue working without a contract, retaining the right to call a strike while pursuing other strategies.

Although there were some members who favored another vote, an overwhelming majority agreed that the Company’s offer was woefully inadequate and encouraged the Union Negotiating Team to “stay the course.”
 
Some members at the meeting voiced their perception that they were being left “out of the loop” and that the Union’s communications were not what they should be. Brother Dunn said that some of that secrecy may have been necessary for tactical reasons in the past, but that’s no longer the case.

“We’re entering a new phase and we’ll redouble our efforts to keep you up to date on any and all developments,” Bill Dunn said.
 
“We are well aware that in order to get a fair contract at our Company, we are going to have to go well beyond the service area of CMP and reach into the boardrooms of Energy East and Iberdrola,” Dunn continued. In an email to the Union’s membership, he laid out some of the other strategies that the Union is actively pursuing, although they may add more in the weeks ahead:

1. Engaging our local, state, and national legislative leaders to inform them about our struggle and how Energy East and Iberdrola are denying their workers a fair contract while receiving the benefit of federal stimulus programs.
2. Continuing IBEW 1837’s efforts to network with other local unions representing Energy East workers in other states including USW, UWUA, CIUW and five other IBEW local unions – some of whom are having their own problems with Energy East.
3. Reaching out to other Iberdrola union workers across the Atlantic through the AFL-CIO International Department in Washington, D.C.
4. Making regular appearances at Public Utility Commission hearings – not only in Maine – but in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, as well.

“In brief, wherever Central Maine Power, Energy East and Iberdrola don’t want us to be – we will be there – until we get a fair contract for our members at CMP,” Dunn said.