News

In the past couple of weeks, two Great Lakes freight vessels experienced an outbreak of COVID-19 that necessitated an extended stay in port in order to quarantine infected crew members.

Interlake employees received an email from Human Resources a couple of weeks ago with information about changes being made to the process of reporting earnings to state tax agencies.

We are now just days away from seeing the vessels crewed by our members returning to service across the Great Lakes.

As we are all aware, last season the Local Union negotiated new bargaining agreements with Interlake Steamship, Central Marine Logistics, and Key Lakes Inc. While a lot of time and effort went into the negotiation process, the work didn't end as soon as an agreement was reached between the Local Union and the individual companies. Upon reaching an agreement, both the Local Union and companies needed to update the language of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and proofread the updated terms to ensure that no mistakes or non-negotiated terms and conditions were put into print.

Dear Sisters and Brothers, needless to say that we have all suffered through some very difficult times in the last 6 months or so.  I hope this message finds you and your families safe and healthy. As I am sure you are all aware there have been boats laid up and some of our members laid off.  There also has been some bumping from one boat to another which has caused a bit of confusion only because our decreases in forces language has not been used much and there is some debate as to the intent.

Our contracts with Central Marine, Keylakes, and Interlakes have been concluded . We have proofread Central Marine and Keylakes contracts and they currently being circulated to get the proper signatures from the respective parties. Interlakes was proofread just last week and their were some issues that needed to be addressed. Those items were corrected and we have a meeting set up for the week of June 15th   to review changes and then move the agreement to get signed. Leasing III is still a problem with their pension plan and we are activley working on this issue.

we have reached tenative agreements for interlakes and Keylakes. all of you should have the summaries. we are still having issues with Central Marine and we hope to have them solved soon. The issues with Central are around retro pay and the sighning bonus. as soon as we get central marine done we will be visiting the boats and getting the agreements voted on. We know this has taken longer than we all wanted. But it was and is difficult getting all the parties together logistically. Please hang in there

Dear sisters and brothers recent updates in negotiations

Interlakes: we have a tentative agreement that we will be coming to the boats to explain and then to figure out the best way to vote.

Central Marine: we are not done yet a couple of other items the biggest one is the retro money

Keylakes: we are not done yet we still have a couple of issues the big one is Maintenance Assist

we will send the tentative agreements through email to the boats as soon as they are done and then we will try and visit all the boats to explain and to figure out the best way to vote 

Dear Sisters and Brothers just an update on the unprecedented events unfolding in our union and our country as it pretains to Covid-19 or Coronavirus. We are trying to coordinate with our local union leaders and the companies to develope the best strategies to make sure that all of our members and their families are as safe as possible during this very difficult time and crisis. We are strongly urging the companies we have under contract to follow the protocals that have been developed by the CDC, the state and the federal government.

All members,

We've been hearing that some of our members did not receive the email notification regarding the Winter Meetings. We used the email addresses provided to us by the Company. It sounds like some of them were out of date. Please send an email with your name and your employer to jwalker@usw.org and I will update the list as I get them. Thanks.