Borders Workers reach a tentative agreement

The following is what we agreed upon. Read past that to see what Borders changed at the last minute.1. We are no longer “at-will” employees. We have rights, especially in the current climate when unions are under assault from corporations and only a little over fifty percent of new pargaining units get contracts we have to remember what a victory it is to win a contract. And we certainly had to fight for it.

2.Agency shop status. This means that we are all required to participate in the union at least on a financial level. Dues will be between -7 per week and will be automatically deducted from your paycheck. This invests people in hte process and is an incentive for people to participate on other levels. The ‘open shop’ caluse which Borders managed to get into a couple of its previous contracts it negotiated back in the late 90’s seriously weakened the unions in those stores and led to their being ineffective, unable to represent the workers fairly and eventually to the dissolution of the unions in those stores.

3. A Grievance Procedure. A Grievance Procadure gives us real teeth in disputes and in the rectifying of unfair situations. A fair way to resolve conflicts that does not depend on the goodwill of management.

4. A 2 year length of contract. It expries on March 31st 2006. Borders original proposal to us was only one year. This is long enough for us to see how the contract works and short enough that we can rectify needed changes in a second contract.

5. Union/Management committee that will discuss non-grievance issues and which will meet at least twice a year.

6. A more discrete and efficient bag check policy. Borders has agreed to conduct bag checks from the gift-wrap counter instead of the front desk., accomodate workers who have to catch the bus (subject to grievance, such as if a worker misses the bus because of waiting too long for a manager that person can file). They have also agreed to exempt school items from the sticker policy so students dont’ have to violate the 5 sticker limit.

7. A weekly listing by employee number of occurrences. This will enable workers from reaching warning stages as well as enabling us to watch for mistakes in the tracking of occurrences.

8. We succcessfully fought the outsourcing of the maintenance crew to outside companies paying low wages and no benefits.

9. An Article preventing the outsourcing of unit jobs, that still preserves the sort of work flexibility to which we are accustomed.

10. Two 15-minute breaks instead of 10-minute breaks.

11. We agreed not to negotiate benefits into the contract so our benefits plans will remain the same as in other Borders stores and Borders Inc. While this was difficult for us , we do feel that Borders has a decent benefits plan and that they are unlikely to radically cut it. They also said they were looking into a benefit plan for part time wokers that would possibly be implemented this year [note from Oz- I don’t buy it]

12. An agreement that Borders will not eliminate benefits for workers until they drop below 32 hours rather than the current 35. This will give fulltime workers some extra flexibility with their schedules.

13. The elimination of wage caps for workers at the top end of the pay scale. We are proud that our store has so many long time workers and sicne the maintenance of a long term professional workforce is on eof our primary goals the elimination of the wage caps is a significant gain.

14. An increase of the milestone program for one additonal year to a total of two years. making for a total of four guaranteed (as opposed to ‘merit’ based) 25 cent increases at 6 month intervals.

15. An increase in the base rate from .50/7.00 per hour to .75/7.25 per hour that will be applicable to all new hires as well as al lthose in the milestone program. We feel that the increase in the base reate combined with the extension of the milestone program will lower turnover and will encourage newer workers to stay and become professional sellers.

16. An anual wage increaseof 3% or the Borders national rate whatever is higher with an option of an extra .5% on top of this in 2005 should we be in the top 25% of performing stores according to the balanced scorecard.

17. We also negotiated the merchandise credit into wages. While many of us appreciated the merch credit it had not gone up in a decade and was being taxed in our paycheck and so was being constantly devalued. Being in our paycheck it is subject to overtime, annual increases, and we get to choose where to spend it. THis would effect full time wokers over six months and would translate into an 11 cent wage increase.

******

Although Borders had agreed to all of these things in a room full of witnesses, they came back and said that agreeing to #14 was either an oversight or something that they had once agreed to but was pulled off the table. We disagree with this view. They offered a compromise of giving any employees currently within the milestone program an extra .25 cent raise.

We ratified this contract with that compromise. This was a very hard decision for most of us. We felt that this tactic was a last minute attempt of Borders to divide, confuse and conquer. It’s probably been used in the past, as well.

All in all, I think it’s significant to say that we got the first starting wage increase in nearly a decade. If Borders decides to raise it a tad for everyone else and pretend they were always going to do that, I think what we’ve done is well worth it.

Every year at this time they take benefits away and the raises aren’t enough to compensate for the takeaways and inflation. I hope that what we’ve done helps everyone in some way. Someone’s got to plug the holes in the dam.

Also, if the overtime kill bill goes through Congress and the Prez like it most likely will, Borders store #01 employees will still receive time and a half for overtime. yay!