IP unions begin vote on severance package

BUCKSPORT – Members of four unions at the International Paper Co. mill have begun voting on a severance package for employees who will lose their jobs as a result of downsizing at the mill.

Voting by the membership of four of the five unions at the mill began Thursday and will continue through the weekend and into Monday, according to Jeff Snowman, president of Local 1-1188 of the Paper Allied Industrial Chemical and Energy Workers International (PACE).

Snowman was optimistic about the outcome.

“Speaking just for my local, I think it’ll pass,” he said Thursday.

After negotiating for about three months, mill officials and union leaders from the four unions last week reached a tentative agreement on the severance package. One union, representing mill office workers, did not accept the package and opted to continue to negotiate with IP on its own.

The proposed package will pay departing hourly workers 3 percent of their annual wages times the number of years they have worked for the company. Also, in exchange for the $600 lump-sum payment to the remaining workers, the unions will give up their right to arbitrate wage adjustment requests for those workers.

IP officials announced in August that they needed to eliminate at least 100 jobs – and possibly as many as 150 jobs – at the Bucksport mill in an effort to improve operational efficiency. The first round of job cuts, which will eliminate 70 hourly jobs and 10 salaried positions, will take place by the end of this year.

Ratification of the agreement is the first step in the process, IP spokeswoman Kelly McFarlane said Thursday. If the union membership approves the proposal, the mill will then start implementing the plan, she said.

“A lot of planning goes into this,” McFarlane said. “We make the package available for them to look at the severance and retirement information so they can make an educated decision. We give them the information, the unions explain the package and then they need to make a decision.

“If they agree, we’ll open the process to apply for a package.”

That process will begin once the unions have ratified the proposal, she said.

Mill officials indicated early on that they hoped to make the desired job cuts through early retirements and voluntary severances.