Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Until further notice: If the siren blows in Kent County, our members will be in the basement. Our Local Agreement doesn’t say that if the siren blows we are in the pit. That was the demand, but it isn’t the settlement. This comes after at least three occasions when we didn’t go there. Management has hired a service called "Weather Data" that is supposed to be better than the National Weather Service, even though they use the same National Weather Service data. The service is expensive and has a good track record, but the membership was never fully educated on it and neither were we.

Even if management is convinced this service is better protection for the plant, the fact that our brothers and sisters can walk out of our plant when sirens are going off is very disconcerting. On top of that, some of our members drove into a potentially serious storm without possibly knowing it was there. Part of the problem is that there was no tornado watch; the storm went straight to a warning with at least two sightings and maybe more. Several things came out of this latest situation.

1. We are working on a better communication system for notifying our members of severe weather as they are leaving the building.
1. If management is going to continue with the Weather Data Service and use it as the primary source for protection of the plant, then we have to be sure that it’s trusted and that trust is not misplaced.

Over the last few weeks there have been a few hiccups, the enthusiastic clean up on the floor for the Wiemel’ visit was a little too enthusiastic, and some people got carried away. We just get by that and the tornado warning debacle hits.

None-the-less, we are almost halfway done with our demands; and generally speaking, the meetings have been professional and productive. We are working toward a goal of being done by the end of September; and hopefully, we will get there. Having said that, we know that we can’t finish before the National Agreement.

The new communication tool for the Material Handling Department is R.F., or whatever they are calling it today. It has the potential to help level the workload in areas that always have trouble keeping up. The ability for management to use it as a time study device exists. The ability for management to time study a job is present today, and that isn’t likely to change.

What the R.F. technology won’t do is automatically reduce demand jobs, nor is anyone agreeing to any such thing. Whether the tool helps in communication or not, will be proved out. Whether or not the workloads get leveled will also be proved out. The cat teams input has been used to determine and clarify several work rules pertaining to how drivers leave the zones.

In the 99 Agreements, the responsibility for Inspection was transferred to the Production Tech classification, as well as, the pay. It seems that having the Production Techs taking some responsibility for inspection works if our PPM is any indication. After that, maintaining hourly presence in the Quality Department is vital to our plant. To that end we are trying to develop the Q.R.T. classification, which will keep an hourly presence in the Quality Department.

The potential pilot area will be the North end of the plant where Production Techs will assume the inspection duties that belong to them per the 99 Local Agreement. If the pilot area is successful, then the pilot area will be expanded throughout the plant.

One of the primary reasons for doing this now is to help address any problems that arise during negotiations instead of waiting. If this is successful, it will offer new opportunities for the Production / Production Support members. The initial scope of selection for this new classification will be from the current Inspection classification. After that pool has been exhausted, it would be open to general membership.

The physical work on the project should have started July 14^th, but it didn’t. The full utilization did start then. The reason the 10 Bay Project and Retention Area Projects had to be let is that we don’t have enough Millwrights to accomplish all the tasks at hand. We’ve been there before, and we kept the bulk of the work for our people once again.

Negotiations were suspended Friday morning so we could meet in the Plant Manager’s Conference Room to respond to a call from Jim Wiemels for the corporation. Consumers Power requested we shut down operations, as well as, several other heavy users on the power grid. The concern was that the entire grid could be shut down, affecting potentially the rest of the state. Because this was considered a National Emergency, there was no reluctance on the part of the UAW or Corporation.

Any questions on short work week will be answered by the Benefit Section. Any other contractual problems that arise will be dealt with by your committeeperson. The full utilization for any affected trade was suspended for the duration of the emergency.

Yours in solidarity,

LOCAL 730, UAW

Mike Mansfield

Chairman

Shop Committee

We have reached an understanding with management concerning Production Tech Leader. In the past we have had different classifications connected with lines in Production. These were Toggle Press Operator, Double Crank, Single Crank, and Conveyor Attendant. These all had separate shift preferences, because they were different classifications. The understanding we have reached is that Production Tech Leaders will exercise shift preference amongst themselves, as was done previously with groups connected with lines. This comes after much debate and final understanding of the way separate classifications connected with lines’ work.