Official Statement of Teamsters Local 200 Secretary-Treasurer Tom Millonzi
MILWAUKEE, Aug. 31 — Our union’s policy has always been to keep bargaining issues at the table, between the two sides where they belong. Bargaining in the press doesn’t serve any purpose but to distract from our ultimate goal — securing a fair agreement. However, due to misinformation and blatant lies by a company representative who has never even been at the bargaining table, our union feels pressed into refuting these statements.
Waste Management has stated in the press that we “refuse to withdraw” from the Central States Pension Fund. This is completely false and can be confirmed by Federal Mediator Gary Lisiecki.
The truth is that we have countered with our own proposal to create a Teamster-WMI single-employer fund based on the UPS-IBT fulltime employee pension plan model — a plan that Waste Management has in-hand.
Whether it is due to their ignorance or stubbornness, the company’s representatives have ignored our proposal and have yet to produce a full, written proposal of their plan. They seem more content on spending their energy on crafting anti-union literature and sending it to our membership instead of drawing up a complete proposal on paper.
The most we have received are hand-written notes that, at best, appear to be hurriedly written and poorly conceived. I would expect more professionalism from company representatives of a multi-billion dollar, Fortune 500 company. As you can imagine this has been a frustrating experience for our bargaining committee which has continued to bargain in good faith for the last seven months.
The company has also claimed that we are only willing to meet in Chicago on September 5. This is also false. Following the conclusion of our bargaining session yesterday, we informed both the company and the mediator, in writing, that our representatives were prepared and willing to meet every day until we have a tentative agreement.
In contrast, our union has been early to each bargaining session, fully prepared, and has presented our proposals in a timely and professional manner.
This pattern by Waste Management of issuing misinformation to the press to directly affect bargaining is disappointing. However it is not surprising given the lack of professionalism by their representatives we have seen to date.
I would like to reiterate that we were ready to continue bargaining with the company as early as today, however it is Waste Management that not been responsive, and seems content to continue to issue false statements through the press to mischaracterize what is actually happening during our bargaining sessions.
CONTACT: Galen Munroe, +1-202-439-7427, gmunroe@teamster.org
