What can 20 workers spread over four states do to improve working conditions at a massive multinational? Maybe not much, on their own. But boosted by union brothers and sisters, a group of Northwest medical imaging technicians got a union and a first contract with big gains.
The workers maintain and repair MRI and CAT scan machines in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana for Siemens Medical Services USA, a subsidiary of the giant German conglomerate Siemens. Salaries for the highly-skilled work ranged from $44,000 to $112,000 a year, but workers wanted less arbitrary pay, more job security, and other improvements. With a little solidarity, they got those things.
Solidarity is the trade union principle of groups of workers supporting each other — standing strong together.
First, international solidarity helped the Siemens techs get a union: One day after a Siemens board member from the German union IG Metall complained, the company dropped a legal objection that was delaying a union election, and the workers voted 13 to 6 to unionize.
Then, in June, regional solidarity unclogged first-contract talks that were slowing to a crawl — letters from labor organizations made the difference, Local 48 organizer Ray Lister explains.
It took six years — and the defeat of an effort to vote out the union — before a similar Siemens tech group in Boston got its first union contract. Bargaining for the Northwest group got off to a good start, Lister says, but bogged down after eight months when the two sides started talking about economic issues. Local 48 reached out to other labor organizations, and got letters of support from the Oregon AFL-CIO, Idaho AFL-CIO, Montana AFL-CIO — and from the Oregon Nurses Association and Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, two unions that represent over 16,000 nurses in total.
“We are … very disappointed to hear that you have been meeting with resistance at the bargaining table from the employer,” wrote ONA executive Paul Goldberg June 26. “Please let our new brothers and sisters know that they have the full support of the Oregon Nurses Association. We will be pleased to help educate our membership about your struggle for representation and offer our support to your campaign in any way we can to assist in achieving a fair contract.”
The IBEW bargaining team presented the letters to their management counterparts on June 30, and the next day, the Siemens negotiators came back with an offer even better than what the union had last proposed. Ratified in ballots counted Aug. 1, the four-year contract gives workers a one-time $2,000 bonus, a one-time pay bump of $1,000 to $6,000 a year for workers who are considered underpaid relative to their coworkers, annual merit pay raises of 2.75 to 3.75 percent, stand-by pay for being on-call, and pay for travel time in some cases. It also locks in existing benefits like medical insurance and a 401(k) match, and it provides an array of union rights and benefits, including a progressive discipline process, grievance and arbitration procedures, and a successor agreement so that union contract terms continue if the company is sold.
