United They Stand
Re: "One Strike and They're Out" by Francis X. Gilpin (Dec. 6-12)
I am one of the employees on strike. I have been an employee of Group Technologies for 24 years and have been a member of Teamsters Local 79 for just as long. I am not a radical or greedy person and like all of my fellow employees, have great concern for our country at this time. There have been a lot of problems at Group Tech in the last 10 years. Mr. Cocke has only been CEO of the company for about three years. For more than six years Group Tech didn't have solid contracts and business was down. They needed new equipment and to update the business so they could bid on good contracts. The employees agreed that for six years they wouldn't receive an hourly raise in order to help the company get going again.
Those of us on strike have about a total of 2,500 years of service and take pride in what we do. We care about our country and our nation's security. These things have nothing to do with fair wages and benefits. Taking a holiday away, doubling our out-of-pocket health-care cost and taking away five days of vacation is not showing that you appreciate the hard work of your employees. Looking at the whole picture, you can see that we have not been treated very fairly.
In the last 11 to 12 years we have not received any new holidays or vacation days, although we do get 12 unpaid personal days and are able to buy five vacation days at our hourly wage plus 15 percent. Our medical benefits have not improved and employees have been paying more and more as the years go on. Without getting raises and benefits going up, we took home less pay as the years went on. If we hadn't reopened the contract negotiations this year then by the year 2002 we would have only received $1.15 raise in the last 11 years. (For eight of these years we received no raise at all.)
In your article you stated that the employees make about $25,000 a year. This is not true. Everyone makes different yearly wages. Most of the employees make about $20,000; those with less seniority make $11,000 to $17,000. There are only a couple employees at the highest labor grade making $25,000.
We are not a group of radical, greedy employees. We have worked hard and care about what we do for the good of our country and for the company. Everyone is very happy the company has been so successful. We just hoped that all of us could benefit from it in some way. If Mr. Cocke would come on the floor and talk to the people, get to know them and what they do, he might change his mind on how he sees things. There are employees who don't even know who he is and wouldn't recognize him if they saw him. This just doesn't seem right to me.
We all have room to improve, both the company and the employees. To do this we must all become involved and really learn what is going on around us. They need to look at the whole picture and be concerned with everyone and the issues that we have. There were some things stated in your article that were not true. I have numbered them below and hope to set the record straight.
1. When the extra 5 cents was offered it wasn't said that it was to make up for the holiday. This was only added later on as an afterthought by the company.
2. We worked two extra weeks after our contract expired to give the company time to come up with a fair and acceptable contract. We didn't go on strike until Oct. 19, 2001. At this time the October productivity was already done by us.
3. The still-employed son of one of the most vocal strikers has personal reasons for continuing to go to work. She is in no danger of being "molested" when she drops him off to work as Mr. Cocke stated.
4. Employees have not signed up for welfare. Most of us do not qualify for any type of assistance from the state or anyone else. A lot of employees have gotten temporary or part-time employment. They continue to support their brothers and sisters until the dispute is settled.
Pamela A. Poulter
Via e-mail
Corrections In last week's story on the cost of hosting the Olympic games, "The Thrill of Defeat," we got our numbers crossed up.
The U.S. General Accounting Office calculated the total direct cost of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta at $2.4-billion (not $4.4-billion, as we erroneously reported).
That means our estimate of the hypothetical cost to Florida taxpayers of hosting the 2012 games—using Atlanta's experience as a guide — was too low. Instead of $132-million, state taxpayers would have been on the hook for $240-million of the $2.49-billion that Florida 2012 projected the Tampa games would have cost.
We apologize for the confusion.
Burden Fly's new bassist is named Mark Tinker. He was misidentified in a Music Menu item in our Dec. 13 issue.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2002.