ATI employees to return to work with new contract
With a newly ratified contract in hand, Allegheny Technology Inc. employees will be back on the job next week.
Both the United Steelworkers union and ATI announced the breakthrough Tuesday. Around 1,300 employees had been on strike at nine ATI facilities, including the Canton Township plant, since the end of March.
ATI also has locations in Natrona Heights, Latrobe, Brackenridge and Vandergrift.
“Our members showed tremendous strength and solidarity, beating back demands for concessions that would have hurt generations of workers,” said Tom Conway, USW international president, in a news release. “This contract reflects how truly powerful working people can be when we fight together.”
Randy Denman Jr., unit president of Local 7139-5 of USW said there are about 170 employees at the Canton Township plant, and they were happy with the outcome.
“We really stuck together and got through this,” Denman said. “We feel that we got a fair deal.”
A major sticking point for employees was health care costs, while an offer from ATI to offset raises by having employees pay health care premiums was a non-starter. There was also an issue with ATI proposing lower tier of health care for new employees.
According to Denman, officials managed to avoid the two tiered system, and found a compromise for rising premiums.
Denman said employees will not have to pay premiums for the first two years of the four-year contract. There will be a committee comprised of three representatives from ATI and three from USW who will work to keep premium costs from rising more than 3.5%.
“Anything above the 3.5%, we’ll have to make up the difference,” Denman said.
According to the statement from USW, the contract provides $7,000 in direct payments and a 9% wage increase over the course of the four years. Denman said the employees will see their first raise in 2022.
“This contract achieves the objectives we shared from the beginning,” said Kim Fields, executive vice president of advanced alloys and solutions and high performance materials and components as part of a prepared statement. “It rewards our employees for the important contributions they make to ATI’s overall success, with wage increases and continued excellent, affordable health care.
At the same time, it secures the controls we need to reduce our exposure to health care cost inflation,” Fields added, “which is critical for the long-term viability of ATI’s Specialty Rolled Products business.”
For the three months they were striking, ATI employees went without pay. While USW does have a fund for striking workers, Denman said it only provides a couple hundred dollars every month.
“I really have a group of great guys. A lot of us went and found jobs. We believed in what we were doing and did what we had to to get the job accomplished, Denman said.
According to ATI, the contract is retroactive to March 1, and lasts until Feb. 28, 2025. Both ATI and USW said employees should be returning next week.
“We look forward to resuming operations with our employees in place, working safely to deliver our commitments to customers,” Fields said.
“We appreciate the efforts of our salaried workforce and the temporary replacement workers who helped maintain operations during the work stoppage, enabling us to meet our customers’ needs and protecting the business during the strike.”
Denman said the striking employees felt a lot of encouraging support during the course of the strike.
“We couldn’t have asked for better support from the community. So many people dropped off donations. It was great to see the community come out to help us,” Denman said.