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80 Protest Lack of Union Contract at Ventra Salem
SALEM, Ohio – Under gray February skies and temperatures just above freezing Wednesday afternoon, some 80 members of the United Auto Workers stood shoulder to shoulder along the berm of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of Ventra Salem SPD, an auto parts plant owned and operated by Flex-N-Gate Corp. of Urbania, Ill. The protesters said they were there to help the employees inside in their efforts to be represented by their union and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
The 80 were part of a UAW effort at seven Flex-N-Gate Corp. plants in five states yesterday. Five of the plants are nonunion and the UAW seeks to organize and represent employees of what it says is “one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing automotive suppliers.” Flex-N-Gate provides parts to General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Toyota and Nissan.
The UAW describes Flex-N-Gate “as a $3 billion global auto parts supplier.”
Among the 80 outside were three who reported for the second shift that began at 2:30 p.m., press operators Tina Hawk, Daryl Dettweiler and Dianne Pipero. They’ve worked there 12½, one and six years respectively and said management was aware of their efforts to organize the plant.
Of the dayshift workers, not one was seen to join the informational pickets outside after their shift ended.
In a press release issued by the UAW, spokeswoman Christine Moroski said workers at the five nonunion plants have been trying over a year to obtain recognition. The release quoted Hawk as saying, “We are American workers making quality American parts for American-made vehicles. All we want is dignity, respect and the ability to earn a decent living.” Some who work at the Ventra plant are still paid around $10 an hour after working there one and two decades, the UAW says. The average wage at the two plants where the UAW represents Flex-N-Gate workers is $14 an hour, the UAW says.
Hawk told a reporter, “I’d like to have a legally binding way to reach an agreement with management so they have to listen to our concerns.”
Efforts to obtain a response from Ventra Salem were turned away. A reporter and cameraman walked across the parking lot toward the plant office only to be met by a Securitas private guard waiting for the press. He was polite, declined to give his name, said no one in the plant had anything to say before pointing the way out.
Preparations for the demonstration began about 1:40 p.m. in the Broadway Plaza parking lot a mile away as UAW members from across Ohio met there to be driven in vans to Ventra Salem. Mike Gearhart, a labor organizer from UAW Local 450 in Des Moines, Iowa, greeted the Auto Workers he said came from across Ohio to demonstrate. After identifying the five marshals the demonstrators could to turn to, Gearhart stressed, “Do not stand on the road. Do not block the driveways. Stay safe. …
“Everybody here is a proud union member,” he continued to applause and cheers. “We’re here to support that right. We don’t want to start a fight. We don’t talk back to [belligerent individuals].”
And with that, the white vans took the first group of demonstrators to Ventra Salem where they stood in a single line between the two driveways, one to the employees’ parking lot, and that extended beyond the driveways.
Standing near Dave Green, president of Local 1714 at Lordstown, was Bonnie Reinhardt of Salem, who worked at the plant nearly 40 years (1969 - 2009), 30 as a receiver, and left without so much as a pension, a UAW member told a reporter.
She was not given a pension, Reinhardt confirmed to a reporter. As she explained what happened in 2009, Flex-N-Gate had just acquired the plant and wanted her to sign a paper if she wanted to stay on. Her husband of 40 years was seriously ill and “I wanted to spend time with my husband. I always called him ‘My Sweetie.’
He died four months later.”
So she left. “I got ‘Good Bye,’ “ she recalled. “No pension. I didn’t get so much as a watch.”
A frail looking woman, Reinhardt wanted the reporter to know that her father, husband, brother, sister and brother-in-law either had been or are members of the UAW and she supports the union’s efforts to organize the plant.
The traffic on Pennsylvania consists mostly of semi tractor-trailers that deliver supplies, employees going to and leaving work at the factories on the road and Salem City school buses garaged just beyond Ventra Salem.
A Salem police cruiser drove by quickly at 2:18 p.m., the officers apparently satisfied no incidents were likely. Salem fire trucks went by as well, the drivers slowing down and honking their horns in support. So did five of the six school bus drivers who also smiled and waved.
As the day shift exited the driveway and turned left into Pennsylvania, the vast majority looked grim as kept their eyes on the road and acted as if the pickets weren’t there. One of the early departures, however, made it a point to peel out and flip the bird at the pickets as he got on Pennsylvania.
That was as close to an incident as the demonstration got.
The other plants where the UAW picketed yesterday are in Warren and Grand Rapids, Mich., Belvidere and Urbana, Ill., Veedersburg, Ind., and Arlington, Texas.
Copyright 2013 by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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