M&W EMPLOYEES TO VOTE ON TEAMSTERS REPRESENTATION

Workers at the M&W Packaging U.S. Inc. plant in Cape Girardeau will vote this month on whether to have Teamsters representation.

Teamsters Union Local 574 had asked M&W management to voluntarily recognize the union as the bargaining agent for M&W workers but the company refused.

"We have a very strong doubt that a majority of our employees really want to pay this union to speak for them or to represent them for purposes of collective bargaining," said Elden L. Lingwood, executive vice president of M&W's local operation.

A secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board will take place at M&W March 28-29. Fifty percent of employees plus one vote will be required for a union victory.

About 150 production, maintenance and shipping employees will be eligible to take part in the election. This is the first attempt to organize workers at the plant since it opened in May 1990.

"We think we do a better job managing the company's growth in a global market without involvement of union representation and collective bargaining," Lingwood said.

Workers at The Ceramo Co. in Jackson rejected Teamsters representation in January. Company president Vernon Kasten Sr. said the approximately 110 workers participating in the vote defeated union representation by a 2-to-1 margin.

"We had a campaign to try to keep from going union because we ended up feeling like we were better off without it," Kasten said.

Kasten said management tried to show workers that wages and benefits at the plant are equal to or better than unionized facilities without costing workers dues. He also feared that a union would make the relationship between management and labor adversarial.

In the NLRB's St. Louis region, employees of 84 companies have filed petitions to decertify Teamsters unions since Jan. 1, 1990. A majority of employees in 153 other companies have voted against Teamsters representation. Thirty employee groups have signed Teamsters labor agreements, while 16 employee groups represented by the union have failed to reach any agreement and six companies have gone out of business.

Jayne Hopkins, a member of the M&W management team, said the Teamsters have called 277 strikes since Jan. 1, 1993, with more than 4 million workdays lost.

"Our average hourly wage including normal weekend pay at M&W Packaging is $12.36," Hopkins said. "If those 116,300 employees who were called out on strike by the Teamsters Union were making $12.36 an hour, they would have lost over $300 million in wages, plus their important family benefits."

The United Auto Workers is involved in an organizing a drive at another area manufacturer.

Dave Blanchard, plant manager at Dana Corp. in Cape Girardeau, said the UAW organizers have not yet gained support of 30 percent of the plant's employees required under federal labor regulations to trigger a vote. The local Dana plant, which opened in 1989, produces axle components. It employees about 320 workers.

Dana is bound by a neutrality agreement in labor matters involving its facilities across the country. Under that agreement, company officials are not allowed to directly campaign against a particular union but can provide workers with factual information on how they could be affected.

This is the third time a union has attempted to organize the plant. The Allied Industrial Workers tried in 1991 and the Paperworkers Union in 1993. Both times union support was not enough to bring the matter to a vote.

"Dana's Cape Girardeau facility has been very good to the people that are employed here," Blanchard said. "It's been a win-win situation. The people who work here make better fringes and wages than where most of them worked previously. This plant has been very good for Dana Corp. and we hope to continue that."

Dana Corp. has 88 manufacturing facilities and 39 warehouse facilities in North America. Of the manufacturing facilities, 22 are unionized. Six of those are represented by the UAW.

Twelve UAW-represented plants have closed since 1985. The last plant organized by the UAW that is still open is in Lima, Ohio. It was organized in 1972.

According to U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 16.4 million wage and salary employees were union members in 1995, or 14.9 percent of all such workers. These figures were down from 16.7 million and 15.5 percent in 1994.