Union approves Whirlpool agreement

Union members at Whirlpool’s Fort Smith refrigeration plant on Wednesday approved an “effects” agreement” that stipulates how they will be paid — including retirement and medical benefits — as the company shuts down the plant in mid-2012.

Whirlpool announced Oct. 27 it would close the plant by mid-2012, resulting in the expected loss of 1,000 jobs. The refrigerator manufacturing plant, which employed around 4,600 as recent as early 2006, has been operated by Whirlpool more than 45 years.

Clyde Dailey, an international representative with the United Steelworkers who also worked 32 years in Whirlpool’s Fort Smith plant, said the Whirlpool proposal is probably the best deal union members will see.

Dailey said in this previous report with The City Wire that the contract was probably the best the about 900 union members at the plant could expect. However, Dailey referred to the Whirlpool proposal as a deal that “shortchanged” long-term employees of the plant.

Whirlpool officials have not responded to repeated requests by The City Wire for comment on the contract agreement.

Dailey said Wednesday the approval of the new contract means the “document is in place” that mandates pay and benefits when the plant closes. He said there was a wide range of emotions among the hundreds of union employees who came by the Local 370 union hall between 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

“There are people that are little upset that they didn’t get more, and then we had people who just wanted to put it behind them,” Dailey explained.

He said there has been “a lot of anxiety in the plant” among the workforce who know the plant closing approaches without “having an agreement in place.”