Libbey Bankruptcy – October 19, 2020

The bankruptcy court announced today that it will approve the confirmation of Libbey’s plan of reorganization, a signed order should be entered this week. 

Our new CBAs will go into effect when the plan of reorganization goes into effect, which is expected to occur by the end of October. The company is working to complete the final details.

Thanks to the solidarity of the union membership and the tireless commitment and dedicated work of the bargaining committees, the company has reorganized its business and will exit bankruptcy with a business plan to keep our facilities operating.

More importantly, the sacrifices we have chosen to make will provide Libbey the financial flexibility it needs to continue production and provide some security for our jobs without undermining decades of the collective bargaining progress.

We have provided the company what it needed to emerge from bankruptcy and allowed all of Libbey's stakeholders to avoid the tremendous risk associated with management's motion to reject our contracts.

Thank you for your steadfast support and patient solidarity throughout this process. We have proven once again that even though union workers did not create the company's financial problems, we are standing united and working together to find a solution.

As always, please stay focused on working safely and keeping each other safe at work and in the community.

In Solidarity – USW/IAM - Libbey Bargaining Committee

We are excited to announce the International's first virtual education conference: Smarter is Stronger!

The conference will take place on Tuesday, November 17 and Wednesday, November 18 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. EST. 

This education conference will consist of nearly 100 different training sessions about representation, officer duties, health and safety, and many other topics that reinforce the great work of our union and provide you with practical knowledge to take back to your local and workplace.

There will also be district breakouts and opportunities to socialize with others from our activist groups like Veterans of Steel and Next Gen. 

Registration for the conference will open on Oct. 1, 2020, and is free to all USW and SOAR members. Use the code your local provided when prompted in the password field.

WORKSHOPS

This conference will be structured like in-person USW trainings. You will choose the classes you want to attend, register for them (coming soon!) and once the class you have selected begins, just push the attend button --much like you would walk into the room at an in-person conference. 

The schedule and full list of workshops is here. Here are a couple of examples of topics and workshops that will be available during the conference. 

Health and Safety: Hazard Mapping: Assessing Hazards at Work

This training will help members map areas of health and safety concerns within their workplace, especially in regards to new guidelines to protect workers against the coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19. 

Collective Bargaining: The Laws of Collective Bargaining

In this workshop we’ll review the most basic aspects of the National Labor Relations Act with respect to the employer’s duty to bargain. We’ll briefly look at the Union’s right to information; mandatory, permissive, and prohibited subjects; and the different types of...

The M/V Lee A. Tregurtha of the Interlake Steamship Company returned to service last week, departing Fraser Shipyards in Superior, Wisconsin on October 12. The return to service marks a return o 11 permanent crew positions and opening up room for approximately 5 relief positions throughout the Interlake Fleet. 

The 826' self-unloader returned to service after being laid up very early on in the shipping season, and at one point over the summer, Interlake Steamship President Mark Barker announced to employees that the Tregurtha would not sail for the remainder of the 2020 shipping season. The Tregurtha was laid up due to the lack of demand for iron ore at U.S. steel mills in Detroit and Indiana Harbor, the Tregurtha's primary cargo. 

With the Tregurtha returning to service, Interlake Steamship is now operating its entire fleet of U.S. flagged vessels. Of the 19 vessels crewed by USW Local 5000 members, only four remain in temporary layup. This represents a loss of approximately 44 permanent positions and roughly 20 relief crew positions. The S.S. Wilfred Sykes of Central Marine Logistics remains in layup and is expected to remain so until late spring in 2021; and the Edgar B. Speer, Roger Blough, and Philip R. Clarke of Key Lakes, Inc. remain in layup without any indication of returning to service this season. 

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, steel producers report that while the steel industry is still down from where it was a year ago, the market has been stable for the past several weeks. Steelmakers continue to burn through stockpiles, albeit at a reduced rate, but facing the winter season and the accompanying close of the shipping season, steelmakers are once again rebuilding their stockpiles in preparing for the winter season.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced over the summer that there would be no extension of the shipping season, nor early opening of the Soo Locks citing the larger than normal backlog of required maintenance at the facility. The Soo Locks close on January 15th and reopen on March 25th each year. The Soo Locks separate steelmakers located on the lower lakes from the mines located on the upper lakes. 

Since the closure of the Empire Mine and its loading dock in Escanaba in 2017, there is no way to move ore from the mines to the steelmakers during the winter months.