Local 727 Pepsi Bargaining Committee Makes Movement to Narrow Focus to Most Important Issues
The Teamsters Local 727 Bargaining Committee opened the final day of contract negotiations by emphasizing to Pepsi management which issues are most important to the membership.
“This is where the rubber meets the road. We have narrowed our focus to spend as much time as possible talking about the biggest issues,” said John T. Coli, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 727. “These are the things our members are willing to go to the wall for, so consider yourselves on notice.”
Local 727 Bargaining Committee members then voiced their opinions on those important contract proposals, which the union initially submitted on the first day of bargaining.
“Our Bargaining Committee spent countless hours working with Pepsi management on the merger of the four contracts at the bargaining table and in subcommittee meetings because that was important to the company,” Coli said. “Now, it’s time for the company to spend time on what’s important to the union.”
The union’s important issues include:
- The ability of employees to honor picket lines
- Daily overtime for all employees
- Overtime assignments by classification
- Only sanitizers performing sanitation work
- Premium pay for MEM employees
- MEM classification job bidding (Chicago only)
- Addition of Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and two additional personal days
- Five weeks of vacation for employees with 20+ years of seniority
- Vacation pay based on average hours worked
- Seven paid sick days
- Hourly pay for commission drivers
The Local 727 Bargaining Committee also made movement on several less important issues and withdrew others in order to demonstrate its commitment to reaching a fair agreement by the contracts’ expiration at midnight.
“We got the ball rolling, and it’s up to management to keep it going,” Coli said.
Teamsters Local 727 will continue to update members throughout the day as negotiations progress.
