After nearly 30 months of unsuccessful labor negotiations, US copper producer Asarco plans on Tuesday to unilaterally implement its "last, best and final" contract offer to the United Steelworkers union, a union official said Monday.
"The company advised us of this," Manny Armenta, a USW subdistrict director in Albuquerque, New Mexico, told Platts in an email.
Although the previous collective bargaining agreement originally expired on June 30, 2013, more than 2,000 Asarco workers in the US Southwest have been working under most of their existing terms and conditions of employment while negotiations continued.
Armenta said the two sides are scheduled to return to the bargaining table on December 14.
But unilaterally implementing the Grupo Mexico subsidiary's offer would be illegal, the USW said in a statement, and the union would respond by filing a formal charge with the National Labor Relations Board.
The NLRB recently said it intends to prosecute Asarco for unilaterally changing working conditions at its facilities on multiple occasions without first negotiating the moves with union representatives as required by law.
An NLRB administrative law judge has scheduled a January 12 hearing to review evidence and hear testimony in the case.
Attempts to reach Asarco officials for comment at the company's headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, were unsuccessful.
In November, the USW urged a federal court to order Asarco to honor a December 5, 2014, arbitration ruling and pay more than $9 million in unpaid bonuses to 750 employees.
Asarco filed suit in the US District Court for the District of Arizona earlier this year to overturn arbitrator Michael Rappaport's decision that the company must pay the bonus tied to the price of copper on the London Metal Exchange under a labor agreement with the union.
Asarco operates the Ray, Silver Bell and Mission mines in Arizona that produce about 400 million lb of copper annually and a smelter in Hayden, Arizona, that produces about 720,000 mt/year. The company's Amarillo refinery in Texas, meanwhile, is capable of producing 279.5 million lb a year.
