Workers Picket Asphalt and Concrete Plants

About 150 striking union workers picketed at nearly a dozen plants that excavate and manufacture asphalt, concrete and cement in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties on Tuesday to protest wage cuts.

Members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 12, who operate heavy machinery in the plants, said they would continue to picket plants and quarries owned by Calmat, Southern Pacific Milling and Transit Mixed Concrete until they were offered what they consider to be equitable wages.

“We’ll stay as long as we have to,” said Bill Leonardo, who works for Transit Mixed in Moorpark. “It’s better to fight than to die a slow death.”

Contracts between the union and the companies expired last September, and negotiations for a new contract faltered this spring after the companies unilaterally cut wages, according to union officials.

“We’re doing the same amount of hard work but receiving less money,” said Paul Real, who works for Southern Pacific Milling in Oxnard and says his hourly wage was cut from $21.50 to $15. “They cut us back to 1988 wages. It’s not as if it has gotten any cheaper to live since then.”

Ted Garcia, who works for Transit Mixed in Moorpark, agreed.

“We have families,” he said. “This is our living. What they are doing to us isn’t right.”

Other workers voiced concerns about house payments, college and retirement.

But officials at Milling maintained the cuts were less dramatic and necessary to keep the company competitive.

“We need to keep our wages on par with non-union companies,” Milling Vice President Brian Brubaker said. “Compared to non-union workers, our employees are overpaid.”

Brubaker said his plants would be up and running today with the use of other workers in the plant.

That was a relief to Ralph Copus, who runs a paving business out of Ojai.

“We need asphalt every day,” Copus said. “We can’t pave until the plants open up again.”