Marine shipbuilder Bath Iron Works and production staff have reached a tentative agreement to end a strike that lasted more than a month during the global pandemic, the union announced Saturday.
The agreement, which was unanimously signed by union negotiators, will be submitted for approval to the 4,300 members of Machinists Local S6. Due to the pandemic, voting will take place online and by telephone over a three-day period from Friday 21 August to Sunday 23 August. If approved, the new contract will run through August 2023.
Production workers went on strike on June 22 after overwhelmingly rejecting the final offer.
The strike focused more on subcontractor, seniority and work rules than on pay and benefits. The tentative agreement maintains the company’s proposal for annual wage increases of 3 percent over three years, and there have been some improvements in the health care package, said union official Jay Wadleigh.
“It maintains our subcontracting process, protects facilities for seniors and calls for a collaborative effort to get back on schedule,” Wadleigh said Saturday. The agreement was reached late Friday, he said.
The strike came in the wake of a global pandemic in which workers lost their company-paid insurance and an election year in which some politicians tried to stand up on behalf of workers.
The pandemic added to tensions at the shipyard. Some workers were angry when the shipyard returned requests for closure at two weeks. The shipyard was considered essential and continuous production, although hundreds of workers remained at home.
Bath Iron Works, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, builds destroyed missile destroyers for the US Navy. The strike threatens to put the shipyard further behind schedule in delivering the warships in a time of growing competition from China and Russia. Bath Iron Works was already six months behind the strike, partly due to the pandemic, officials said.
BIW President Dirk Lesko said in a statement Saturday that the company had worked ‘hand-in-hand’ with the union’s bargaining committee to address the concerns of employees.
Frustration had been building since the last contract among workers in which the Machinists accepted concessions deemed necessary to win a contract from the U.S. Coast Guard – and save jobs for shipbuilding.
Bath Iron Works lost that contract to another shipyard in 2016. It also lost a lucrative competition for naval frigates in late April.
Shipbuilders avoid production workers should not shrug off the costs for problems they blame on mismanagement.
The shipyard, a major employer in Maine with 6,800 workers, has undergone a transition when workers reach retirement age. The shipyard hired 1,800 workers last year and expects to hire 1,000 workers this year.
Despite all the new workers that need to be trained, the shipyard said it needed the flexibility to hire subcontractors.
Story by David Sharp. BDN writer Jessica Piper contributed to this report.
