(TONWANDA, NEW YORK) - Management at DuPont’s Tonawanda/Yerkes Plant has fired two Company Negotiators, including one said to be making $150,000 a year, after a number of disparaging, Anti-Union and racist drawings were discovered by United Steelworkers (USW) Representatives following a recent bargaining session, USW Leaders tell WNYLaborToday.com.

USW Local 6992 represents 340 Workers at DuPont’s Yerkes Plant off River Road in Tonawanda where it manufactures Corian (which is used in the manufacturing of counter-tops) and Tedlar (which is used in the Airline Industry) Products – both of which are made with the use of toxic ingredients.  Both sides are attempting to negotiate a new contract.  The old agreement expired on June 16th.  The next negotiating session is scheduled for August 16th, but now the company has brought in a Union-busting law firm, Jackson Lewis, to sit in on negotiations, USW Representatives tell WNYLaborToday.com

Twenty pages of insulting drawings said to be the work of two DuPont Management Employees – identified to WNYLaborToday.com by USW Representatives as Corian Production Superintendent Fred Flores and Human Resources Manager Conni Krysiak – were distributed to the company’s Unionized Workers at the plant by the USW after they were discovered following a recent bargaining session.  

While the book was believed to be owned by Flores, both he and Krysiak had “initialed” some of the drawings, Union Representatives said. 

“It was Freddy’s book, but Conni initialed some of them,” Guralny said. “They’re ‘playing games and laughing about it.”  We’ve filed a ‘bad faith’ bargaining charge with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board).” 

As a result of the Union making the matter public inside the plant, both Flores and Krysiak, whose salary the Union said was in the neighborhood of $150,000, have been “terminated” by the company, USW Officials told Your On-Line Labor Newspaper.

“I’m ‘pissed’ - While we’re caucusing in another room, ‘they’re making fun of us,’” USW Local 6992 President Gary Guralny tells WNYLaborToday.com, pointing out several of the drawings (pictured throughout this Labor News Story) featured Anti-Union messages and also depicted Workers inside the Western New York plant as “lazy,” as well as what Union officials describe to Your On-Line Labor Newspaper as a “racist” drawing of a Native-American, which has upset several Native-Americans who are employed at the Tonawanda facility.

“When I first saw a book that contained the drawings (which was apparently dropped on the floor by the DuPont Managers after a bargaining session and picked up by USW Officials), I said: ‘What the hell is this?  Some of the drawings (also make a statement) that the Workers are ‘stealing’ from the business.  What’s going through their minds?,” Guralny said.

USW Region 4 Sub-Director Jim Briggs, who also serves as President of the Niagara-Orleans AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and who is a member of the Union Bargaining Team, was especially upset over one drawing that depicted Workers “blowing up the plant.”

“I was ‘appalled’ by all of this.  ‘Instead of paying attention’ to what is happening (at the bargaining table), they’re ‘drawing pictures,’” Briggs told WNYLaborToday.com.  “It’s ‘extremely upsetting,’ especially the drawing involving a Native American.  It’s ‘total disrespect’ of the Labor-Management relationship.  (DuPont Management) depicted our Members as ‘waste.’  In all of my twenty-five years (at the negotiating table), I’ve never seen anything like this.  It’s a ‘new level of low’ and we raised our concerns over it with DuPont Management.”

The USW and DuPont have had a history of rocky roads when it comes to contracts.

It initially took 15 years for the USW to negotiate its first Union Contract and more than one year to come to agreement on its now-expired four-year contract that replaced a previously expired four-year pact.  The process was sped up by the Local 6992’s high-profile public campaign that exposed unsafe working conditions and toxic chemical exposure inside the plant. 

This time around, the company’s has presented a new four-year deal with yearly wage increases of 1%, 1%, one-half-percent and one-half-percent, Guralny tells WNYLaborToday.com.  However, DuPont is “insisting” the right to contract out work that would be done by USW-represented Plant Employees, as well as institute a new Two-Tier Wage System that would cut new hires’ pay by 40%.

“They’ve hired lawyers from Jackson Lewis to represent them at the table,” Briggs said.  “This company is doing ‘perfectly well’ (economically), yet they want to subcontract out work and take the profits and give them to other companies outside of New York State.”

“We will continue to expose what’s going on inside that plant and we are in the process of ‘reaching out’ to our elected officials, since DuPont is the recipient of low-cost power here in Western New York,” Briggs continued.  “To receive such power, the concept is to ‘create economic strength in the community,” but their proposals ‘do not meet that criteria.”

“Our Members (employed at the Yerkes Plant) are ‘fired up,’ because ‘they know it’s them who make this business successful’ - and now they know the company ‘wants to put them to the side’ - ‘it’s not fair.;  DuPont ‘wants a two-tier wage system and we will continue to fight for equal wages.’  ‘We won’t betray an entire generation,’” Briggs said.

USW Local 6992 has held several informational rallies outside the plant entrance over the past several weeks.  More public actions are certain to occur should a new contract agreement not be reached in the too distant future – and due to the series of drawings made by management in the discovered book, it’s sure to fire up the Western New York Labor Community, which more than likely will be extremely upset by what has transpired at the Tonawanda plant and what management’s take is on Labor Unions.  

On another front, management at DuPont’s Tonawanda/Yerkes Plant has brought in at least 50 “Scab Workers” in anticipation of what Local 6992 might do.