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Negotiations Update: Spectrum Moves Backwards

Latest Insult: Six Year Contract, Only One Raise

spectrum negotiations
Winsted, CT—In negotiations last night, Spectrum showed their true colors by presenting a new proposal that moves backwards from their last position prior to the strike.

“We came here prepared to settle a fair contract,” Vice President Almena Thompson told the sixty-plus Spectrum strikers packing the conference room at Northwestern CT Community College in Winsted. “Instead, we got insulting new demands even more unacceptable than before. And they don’t even have the courage to face us.”

Spectrum management never even sat down at the table, remaining hidden in a side room and sending Mediator Joe Dubin in to “explain” their backwards proposal.

At the last negotiations for Laurel Hill before the strike, Spectrum agreed to our contract expiration date of March 15, 2011, along with sisters and brothers in other 1199 homes. Spectrum’s “new” proposal?

  • Contract expiration date: – more than six years since our last contract!
Wage “increases”:

  • Only one guaranteed during the life of the contract - 2.5% November 4, 2010
  • NO raise at all during 2011
  • From 2012-2015, we only get a raise if the state increases Spectrum’s Medicaid rate – and if that’s just 1%, we only get 1%.
  • If the state cuts Spectrum’s Medicaid rate Spectrum would cut our wages by the amount. Governor Rell suggested a 2% Medicaid cut in her first budget – that would mean our wages would go down by 2%

Spectrum described their offer as a “guarantee of labor peace,” but what it really guarantees is that we take all the future risks and Spectrum takes all the future profits.

These changes are in addition to their demands that we give back two Holidays and a Personal/Free Day, slash Light Duty Pay to $10 hour – with no written guarantee that “insurance will make up the difference” and give up the Training Fund for 12 months.

“We went to negotiations to bargain, but Spectrum wants us to beg,” said Secretary-Treasurer David Pickus. “This is an outrage and a violation of all human decency. What they want are servants, not employees.”
Even though Spectrum was too cowardly – or too ashamed – to sit down with us, we let them know just how we felt about this backwards proposal, chanting “No contract – No work, No peace!” until the whole building vibrated to the sound.

Our job now is to keep our picket lines strong and united until we start moving Spectrum in the right direction – forwards, not backwards.

The next negotiations are for Park Place on May 10th at the Sheraton Hotel in East Hartford. Dates have been set up for Hilltop and Birmingham on May 17th and May 26th.