NIPSCO 'flatly rejected' further negotiations, USW workers locked out
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Friday, the roughly 1,600 United Steelworkers (USW) members who work for NIPSCO in Northern Indiana are locked out of their jobs. This comes after negotiations collapsed when the union and the utility company did not reach an agreement on a new contract before Thursday's deadline.
NIPSCO stated the lockout will continue until the union agrees to its "last, best, and final offer."
"Right now, there's nothing for us to strike about because they locked us out from the table, so we're not at work," said Jon Doust, USW District 7 sub-district director.
Members are not striking, despite a strike being authorized, because that would mean walking out of the job, but NIPSCO instead locked them out before they could strike.
Doust said they were ready to continue negotiations, but NIPSCO "flatly rejected that." He said the sticking points in the negotiations were not about pay.
"This company came to the table with a lot of demands," Doust said. "Not only concessionary-type demands, but, like, demands of mandatory overtime acceptance, to the rate that it's not sustainable in a lot of the areas. You would not have a work-life balance. It's not fair to these employees to expect those demands on them when they already do work long hours."
When asked how this could affect utility customers, Doust said that's up to NIPSCO.
"Well, that's the piece we don't know, right?" he said. "They took 1,600 of us who do this work every day out. I don't know what plans this company has to try to mitigate the impact to customers. Again, this was not our decision. We did not look for this fight. We did not want this fight. This company made the decision to lock out its workers."