Workers express relief, frustration

By Michelle Partridge World staff writer

WENATCHEE -- Alcoa officials called Wednesday's plan a "win-win" plan for saving the Wenatchee Works plant. But among workers there are definite winners and losers.

And worker reaction was mixed in the hours after its unveiling.

"When I was hired on, I was told that Alcoa was a company you could retire from," said Arthur A. Martinez, a carbon setter in the potrooms. "A year and four months later, I'm gone."

Martinez said he is among about 80 employees who will lose their jobs at the end of June as part off the rescue plan, which includes halting aluminum production, layoffs, cashing in on electric prices and the promise of a rebirth powered by locally controlled electricity. The plan calls for firing up potlines in about 15 months.

Martinez's concerns are more immediate. "What am I going to do?" he said at a small gathering of workers outside the Malaga Market a few hours after the rescue plan was made public. "Working in the orchards picking cherries isn't going to make my house payment and pay my bills. Have you checked the want ads lately? There's nothing but minimum wage jobs."

Wenatchee Aluminum Trades Council President Wayne Pretts called the plan "the most positive news I can remember ever getting." Pretts, a general mechanic, said it would "secure our future and secure a lot of jobs in the community." He said Wednesday at the plant that he planned to tell workers about the deal immediately after the announcement. He declined to let a reporter go with him as he spread the news.

"What this does for me and a lot of others is give us a place to retire," said Glen Lueders of East Wenatchee, a general mechanic and an executive board member for the trade union. "Just to know we have a future here will take so much pressure off workers."

Mechanic Barry Wright, one of the few workers to attend Wednesday's announcement, said he was just happy to still have a job. "I'm an industrial mechanic," he said. "Where else is there in the Wenatchee Valley to do that kind of work?"

The 400 to 450 workers who remain will continue to get paid even though aluminum production will be shut down. Some workers said they were bracing for slimmer paychecks because of the loss of overtime, weekend pay and premium pay for working late or more undesirable shifts, which can all add up to hundreds of dollars a month.

"That's a house payment, a car payment, or rent to a lot of these guys," said Zane Barr at the Malaga Market.

Most of the dozen or so men complained that no one from management told them about the plan that was announced to the public earlier in the day in an administrative building not far from where they were working. Instead, they said, they heard second- and third-hand accounts that filtered down from another worker who heard about the meeting just minutes before it happened and showed up.

Ken Maple said he sold his house in Tonasket last year and moved to Wenatchee after landing a job in the potrooms at the Wenatchee plant. He said he was assured in January by company officials that he wouldn't lose his job, so he bought a 2000 Ford half-ton pickup truck and a house in Waterville. After learning a few months later that he might lose his job, he sold the truck and bought a well-worn 1979 Ford Bronco. He was recently told he would be laid off on June 30.

Don Dunagan, a carbon setter at the plant for 28 years, said he deliberately works the long hours, odd shifts and dirtier jobs to get as much extra pay as he can get. He said getting paid a base salary for a straight 40-hour week will be tough.

Barr, a pot tender who has worked at the Wenatchee plant for 21 years who will keep his job, estimated that if he quit putting money into his 401(k) retirement plan, he would still end up $150 a month short to pay his bills once he loses his extra pay.

Still, he admitted that he was better off than those workers losing their jobs. "These guys (Alcoa officials) made promises to us," Barr said. "Supposedly we were not going to lose anything. I don't know how they figure we're not losing here."