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Former Weyco Workers Keep Jobs
August 16, 2008 Official Board MarketsThe sale of Federal Way, Wash.-based Weyerhaeuser’s containerboard packaging and recycling divisions to International Paper (IP), Memphis, Tenn., will not affect employees that are represented by the United Steelworkers (USW). All of the employees represented by the union will keep their jobs and their contract will also remain the same. The USW represents approximately 2,845 workers at Weyerhaeuser’s containerboard packaging operations.
Because of a contract protection clause the USW negotiated last year with Weyerhaeuser and IP in framework agreements, this is the first asset sale that has experienced a seamless transition of employees, says the USW. Typically, employees would reapply for their jobs, but the contract protection clause made this unnecessary. The 26 USW-represented Weyerhaeuser containerboard packaging sites were simply transferred to IP’s ownership.
“The one great benefit was we didn’t have to reapply for our jobs,” says USW Local 380 President Robert Tapp, who works at the former Weyerhaeuser facility in Barrington, N.J., and is president of the Weyerhaeuser council. “I have seen in other facilities where workers did not have that successorship clause and they had to either reapply for their jobs or start over with a new owner at less pay. The day of the Weyerhaeuser-IP transaction it was business as usual.”
