ANTIOCH — More than 100 union members on the local Georgia-Pacific wallboard plant walked off the job this week in protest, frustrated with their wage and contract negotiations.
A day after their strike, employees gathered outside the Minaker Drive manufacturing plant on Tuesday holding signs reading “Strike” and “Unfair to unions.”
Christian Ortega, a union representative for manufacturing and transportation, said two union groups met with management on the Atlanta-based pulp and paper company, but employees felt the meetings weren’t held in good faith and the corporate offered only a 3 percent wage increase.
“What they offered us was basically a slap in the face. Their lawyers told us we lived in a three percent world and therefore we would not get more,” Ortega said.
He said that while the unions cited the difficulties related to the rising cost of living in California, their pleas fell on deaf ears amongst corporate lawyers who don’t live within the Bay Area.
“These negotiators come from states like Kentucky, where the cost of living is not high, so when they see what is being presented here, they think it's all exaggerated,” Ortega added.
Stephan Noorwood, who has worked on the plant for six years, said the corporate also hired busloads of employees from Texas and Las Vegas to maintain operations running through the strike.
Jose Tobar, who has been with Georgia-Pacific for 4 years, said the union's collective bargaining agreement for 2018 through 2022 was prolonged for 2 years, leading to a ten percent across-the-board wage increase. That agreement expired on July 1, he said.
“They had to give us a raise, so they offered us an (extended) contract and said there would be a better one in the future, but that didn't happen,” Tobar said.
Ortega said union members would protest outside the plant until management comes up with a proposal that might provide a “fair” wage increase. The protests, which is able to involve about 130 union members, will last from 3 a.m. to five p.m., Ortega said.
“We just want to sit down and talk with them so that they can offer us a fair contract so that our people can go back to work because we have a lot of good employees here,” Ortega said.
Antioch Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe, who attended the protest in support of the unions, said Georgia-Pacific is one among the biggest manufacturing plants in Antioch and employees deserve an honest and fair wage. The mayor said any violence in town may be traced back to a scarcity of well-paying jobs.
“I'm tired of people telling me over and over why there are shootings in Antioch. You want to know why? Because they don't have jobs. They need jobs in our community,” Hernandez-Thorpe said, adding that providing decent employment opportunities with fair wages is the “best crime prevention” a city can have.
When asked for comment on Tuesday, a Georgia-Pacific representative said a written statement could be provided shortly.
Originally published:
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