Local Teamsters join pipeline strike

BY LAURA LEGERE

Times-Shamrock Writer

A national strike of Teamsters pipeline construction workers has spread to Wyoming and Bradford counties, where about 25 workers walked off the job on Friday over a breakdown in retirement negotiations with an association that administers pipeline labor contracts.

The strike began on Jan. 1 with 200 workers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and has spread to selected sites, including an Appalachian Pipeline Contractors yard near Tunkhannock and an Otis Eastern Services yard near Towanda on Friday, said Craig Pawlik, secretary and treasurer of Teamsters Local 229 in Scranton.

The strike may eventually include more than 700 workers nationally.

“At this point, it can only grow to other companies,” he said.

The strike began after contract negotiations over changes in retirement plans broke down between the Teamsters and the Pipe Line Contractors Association, an organization that administers labor contracts for about 70 pipeline construction and maintenance member companies.

Local Teamsters members in the strike generally drive trucks hauling pipes and other materials to pipeline construction sites being built to transport gas from the Marcellus Shale.

The union said in a statement that the Pipe Line Contractors Association “wants to force Teamsters into a 401(k) savings plan and ultimately eliminate all traditional defined benefit pensions,” a move it said would trade workers’ retirement security for the “instability and unpredictability of Wall Street.”

“This is yet another example of the rich getting richer on the backs of the middle class,” Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said in a statement.

The PLCA said in a statement that it does not want to force the union into a 401(k), but that retirement contributions must be moved from a pension fund facing insolvency. The Teamsters have proposed a pension fund the association considers “underfunded” and “inflexible” and which would require the PLCA to make excess payments for retirees “that never worked in our industry.”

“The work stoppage is likely to put pipeline projects and associated jobs at risk,” the association said.