Nearly three years after voting to unionize with the Industrial Workers of the World, workers at the longtime Berkeley salvage yard Urban Ore have secured a collective bargaining agreement with ownership.
The deal followed a 40-day strike last spring.
“I am very happy with what we’ve managed to accomplish. The strike was, I think, the pivotal thing in making progress on this,” Spencer Jordan, a salvager on the bargaining committee, said in an interview.
As detailed in previous pieces, a just cause termination clause and full reinstatement for all striking workers were two pivotal points in previous negotiations. Springtime negotiations stalled largely around ownership’s unwillingness to meet those demands, among others.
The others included a cost-of-living wage adjustment, which the workers secured to the tune of $3.50 an hour in accordance with Berkeley municipal law, and more standardized pay.
“We have a just cause termination standard. We have pay on the closed holidays, extra pay on working holidays. We have new categories of leave that you can take including bereavement leave that is paid and extended parental leave with partial company subsidy for that extension. The company will make up the difference in your wage for the workman’s comp,” Jordan said of the most recent contract.
The successes of this contract reflect workers’ steadfast commitment to organization, Jordan said.
“It really showed to me that the strength you experience as a worker is really only in your organization. Winning the election was great but what collective bargaining has shown me is that the legitimacy of your effort isn’t predicated on NLRB approval, it’s predicated on your capacity to take collective action.”
Workers and ownership agreed to a strike pause in the early summer, and both parties returned to the negotiating table. This ostensible progress unfortunately did not last as ownership repeatedly claimed they couldn’t afford the workers’ proposal—but union members said management also consistently refused to provide the bargaining committee with any financial information needed to assess that claim.
By the end of June, workers and ownership were closer to finalizing a deal than ever before save for one serious blockade: Even though the owners initially agreed to rehire all the striking workers at once, they then claimed it was unaffordable, but again refused to allow the bargaining committee to verify the claims.
Thankfully, this final hurdle was cleared and all the workers who wanted to come back to the Murray Street salvage yard, were brought back.
“Everyone was returned, the only person who didn’t, decided against it,” Jordan said.
Longtime owners Mary Lou Van Deventer and Dan Knapp did not respond to requests for comment.
This victory is a win not just for Urban Ore workers but also for industrial and service workers across the Bay Area fighting to keep up with ever increasing costs of living in the tech capital of the world.
“It’s been really great to see the ways in which this effort has inspired other people who are considering doing something like what we did. I’m really glad that we’re reaching an end of this… so we can at least close the book on this part of the fight and have another solid example in the book of the worth of this network.”
