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Show AGREEMENT REACHED BY SIX UNIONMOMPANY Officials of Utah Copper Division, Di-vision, Kennecott Copper Corn., and six unions representing 4100 employees at the mine and mills announced jointly last Saturday that an agreement had been reached on a three-year contract calling for a package increase of approximately 30 cents per hour. The agreement, signed Saturday Satur-day by six of ten local unions whose contracts are now open, already has been ratified 'by the membership of the signing unions. un-ions. Wages will be increased 10 cents per hour the first year and 6 cents each in the second and third years. The increment between be-tween job grades also will be increased in-creased Vi cents per hour in each year. Numerous improvements were made in the company's medical-surgical-hospital plan, already one of the best in the country. Improvements included raising surgical 'benefits from a maximum maxi-mum of $300 to $600, nearly doubling maternity benefits, rais ing hospital ward rates and increasing in-creasing miscellaneous hospital charges from $220 to $300. The insurance program Was ' liberalized to give further protection pro-tection to employees. For off-the job accidents or illness the present pres-ent maximum payment of $40 a week for 13 weeks was raised to $50 for 26 weeks. The company's group life insurance program was modified to provide cash payments to a totally and permanently per-manently disabled employee of m per month lor each $l,ixiu oi insurance with the last $1,000 reserved re-served for payment to the beneficiary. bene-ficiary. Although the present pension plan would not have expired until un-til 1958, it was re-opened to include in-clude an increase in the monthly payment from $1.75 per year of service with a maximum oi 30 years to $2.25 for each year of service up to a maximum of 35 years. The higher pension payment will be effective July 1, 1957, and also will cover former production produc-tion employees already receiving pensions. The increase would provide a married man with maximum service a monthly pension pen-sion of $241.50 and a single employee em-ployee with maximum service $187.25 per month, including social so-cial security in both cases. The agreement also includes hospitalization expenses for a retired re-tired employee and his wife with a lifetime maximum of $1,000 each. Unions involved, which have been bargaining jointly, are International In-ternational Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers, locals 392 and 485; International Associa- tion of Machinists, lodge 568; System Federation No. 155; Brotherhood Bro-therhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, lodge 844; and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, local 1438. The Non-Ferrous Clerical and Technical Workers, which has negotiated jointly with these unions, has a membership meeting meet-ing scheduled for early next week to consider the proposed agreement. Statement by L. F. Pelt, General Manager, Utah Copper Division, Kennecott Copper Corp. "Both union and management representatives have worked earnestly for long hours to reach an agreement without a work stoppage. I am particularly happy hap-py that it is a three-year contract which will provide three years of industrial peace for operations at the mills and the mine. Contracts between the company com-pany and two unions - the Steel-workers Steel-workers and the Electrical Workers Work-ers representing refinery employees, em-ployees, will expire August 31. Negotiations with these two unions un-ions will get underway soon." . |