Still smarting from a six-week strike in the fall that failed to win many concessions from Kansas City Plant contractor Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has kicked off a push to get salaried workers at the plant to join the union. The union earlier this month began a membership drive at the plant to get engineers and technicians to join IAMAW Local 778, which already includes approximately 860 hourly workers at the plant. If the drive is successful, it would more than double the union’s ranks and significantly strengthen its bargaining power during future negotiations. According to the union, there are approximately 1,200 salaried employees at the plant, and when the hourly workers went on strike in the fall, Honeywell turned to the salaried employees to help keep the plant’s production lines running.
Claude Harris, Local 778’s Directing Business Representative and a machinist at the plant, said that the reception from salaried workers at the plant has been good, but he stressed that the effort was still in its infancy and was largely being run by IAMAW officials, and not officials from the local. He said that information had been distributed to salaried workers, and that union officials were eager to answer questions about the union, and have set up a website to aid in the drive: kcpfairness.org. The first step in forming the union is to have salaried workers fill out signature cards signaling their interest in forming a union. If more than 50 percent of the workers fill out signature cards, the union will push for the bargaining unit’s recognition from the National Labor Relations Board. Harris suggested that the increased numbers could pay off in future contract negotiations. “I would assume that a company would deal with three-fourths of their workers a lot easier than they would with a third of the workforce,” he said. “The bargaining power becomes a lot greater in that case.”