To: All Represented BMRF/B&P Employees
Re: When will the Company End the Lockout?
In response to the USW flyer “Fastest Way Back to Work,” the Company is providing information on how locked out employees return to work and on Company and Union promises and union-free wages and benefits.
Option 1: Signed, Ratified Agreement
The Company will end the lockout when we have a signed, ratified agreement with the USW. The Company’s current proposal followed 10 months of bargaining and reflected our best available offer. We repeatedly emphasized these two simple facts to the Union prior to the ratification vote, but Union Leadership campaigned against the Company’s offer.
When the offer was voted down, it left you locked-out, and left the Company and the Union no closer to a ratified agreement than we were when the contract expired on February 1.
Option 2: Decertification of the Union or Withdrawal of Recognition
On November 12, the NLRB sent mail-in ballots to the homes of USW-represented employees. You have until December 22 to return the mail-in ballots to the NLRB’s Fort Worth Office. Ballots will either be counted or impounded on December 29. If the Union is decertified, the Company will welcome back every single employee.
Union Leadership claims the ballots are likely to be impounded on December 29 and that it could take months for the ballots to be counted (if at all). What the Union did not tell you is that, if the ballots are impounded, it would be because the Union has filed baseless legal charges.
The Company remains confident that it will prevail against the Union’s charges. Through the decertification election, our employees (regardless of their standing with the Union) can end the lockout and avoid the risk of strikes or lockouts forever, but your union is trying to stop your vote from ever being counted and your voice from being heard.
In the NLRB’s election, we encourage you to put an end to Union self-interest by Voting No for No Union!
The vote is not the only way employees can become union-free. If the majority of you signed the decertification petition, the law allows the Company to withdraw recognition of the USW immediately without an election and even if ballots later are impounded. Following withdrawal of recognition, employees would no longer be represented by the USW, and the Company could return employees to work.
Wages and Benefits – And Promises
Finally, the Union knows the law prohibits the Company from promising to increase wages and benefits, so the Union is trying to scare you. The Company always follows the law and will not make promises, but the Union cannot stop the Company from comparing the higher wages, better benefits, and less discipline at its union-free sites. The law allows the Union to make promises, so will they? Will the Union promise that you will not have to pay Union dues and that they will get you a 7% wage increase (even though they proposed a wage freeze) and better benefits? Will the Union promise that, without decertification or withdrawal of recognition, the lockout will end by a certain date? The answer is no.
Any questions related to the employee led decertification effort can be submitted to Beaumont Area HR Department at Beaumont.Area.HR@exxonmobil.com.