Update 28 May

Negotiations are still going somewhat smoothly. We have had a few issue that have been brought up and tabled, because things were getting bogged down, but we are still making headway and we did get a tentative agreement on a couple of more issues today.

It is our goal to get links to PDF's copies, of the items that have been "tentatively" agreed upon, on the net tomorrow or Saturday, so that our membership can look at each item. That way you will know what your committee is doing.

This is my first time to sit in on negotiations, and it is tedious work. We have five negotiating members on our side (Leon, R.C., Benny, James, and Neal) making our case. The company has Hutton, Geiger (Sp.?), Keating, Livingston, Stoll, and Sumner on their side of the table.

Let me give an example of how this works. Let's say we discuss a proposal from our side, we explain what we want to happen with our proposal, then discuss it with the company in some depth. After clarification and counter clarifications, the company's negotiators will leave the room to discuss the proposal among themselves. After a while they return with their counter proposal, more discussion for clarification and then it is time for our team will leave the room to confer with one another about the companies points. After a good discussion we return and give our position, etc... It is often slow and tedious work.

Thus far, we have signed tentative agreements on 17 of the combined 49 items that the union and company have brought to the table.

The items tentatively agreed to from the company side are numbers 10, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22. The company has agreed to drop item 7 from their list.

On the union side, we have tentative agreements on 3, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25.

With any luck, we will get the tentative agreement up loaded on to the web tomorrow or Saturday. This blog will have links to the each of the agreements, so check back this weekend for those items.

Later,