EAST BOULDER - Miners and support staffers at the East Boulder mine south of Big Timber have voted to approve a new four-year contract with Stillwater Mining Co.

Jim Williams, president of the Steelworkers International 11- 001, said the vote tally was completed minutes after midnight Wednesday.

"It was close," he said, declining to offer an exact count. Of the 420-plus union members, 399 cast ballots, he said.

The new contract, which includes a 4 percent across-the-board raise for each year of the contract, varies little from its predecessor. However, Williams said, some of the issues important to union members came only as a result of negotiations.

The new contract maintained the existing level of benefits and the former incentive program for support staffers, although the latter came with some modifications. According to Williams, SMC had wanted to make drastic changes to the incentive program, which is now based on more concrete criteria.

"We believe it's more line-of-sight with the workers and the company can see the tangible effects," he said.

When union member Jack Burns heard the news, he breathed a sigh of relief The railroad man-turned-mechanic at East Boulder did not share some of his coworkers' eagerness to strike.

"Striking isn't cool, period," he said. "You don't gain what you think."

With a four-year contract ratified for Nye last year and now the East Boulder deal sealed, the negotiation committee can take a hiatus until 2011. Williams said the length of the new contracts was important for the union, which sought job security as the company made the transition through the expiration of long-term, favorable auto contracts.

Likewise, the union wanted to lock in its medical benefits, including its 20 percent co-pay, for an additional year, he said.

"We didn't want that touched," Williams said.

Copyright Billings Gazette Jul 10, 2008

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