Alabama workers locked out after refusing $28k bonus to replace overtime pay

Workers in Alabama have been at the helm of recent upswings in the US labor movement, including the first Amazon warehouse union election and rerun election in Bessemer, Alabama in 2021 and 2022 .with challenges still pending in the rerun election at the National Labor Relations Board, currently the longest ongoing strike in the US where around 1,100 workers at Warrior Met Coal mines in Brookwood have been on strike over 16 months, and the launch of the first union organizing campaign at General Electric in nearly a decade at an aviation plant in Auburn. 

Workers at a paper production mill in Cottonton, Alabama owned by WestRock, the second largest paper packaging company in the US, have joined the wave of activity within the labor movement in a fight to protect their pay and overtime protections on 6 October as their employer locked out around 480 workers. 

Leading up to the new union contract rejection, workers had given a ten day notice to strike to WestRock, with the company locking out workers before a strike could begin. The United Steelworkers have claimed the lockout is illegal and asserted they will pursue action against the company through the NLRB. The lockout was initiated after workers rejected a new union contract proposal from the company that included a $28,500 ratification bonus in exchange for modifying the payscale to eliminate overtime pay for Sundays and pyramiding of overtime.

“It’s chump change. You can make that in a year alone in overtime,” said Joe Dunn, a worker at the Mahrt Mill in Cottonton, Alabama and member of United Steelworkers Local 971. “We worked through COVID and continued to make the company profitable, we were deemed essential then and now we’re nobody because we don’t want to lose our overtime.” 

Dunn explained workers at the mill operate on a reverse southern swing schedule, where they work seven days in a row and rotate days off in between, but that due to understaffing and retention issues at the mill, workers have been forced to work 16 hour shifts or longer. Currently, workers have protections for excessive and forced overtime where they are paid wage premiums, but WestRock wants to eliminate those overtime penalties. 

Workers at the mill are paid time and a half on Sundays or double time if over 40 hours for the week and time and a half if a workers’ shift ...