“We manufacture machines for the plastics processing industry, specifically machines used to produce caps for beverage bottles. For example, for those plastic squeeze bottles where you can press down on them and the liquid comes out. The machine sorts the parts so that the open side of the cap faces upward. Then a red tamper-evident ring is stamped into it. That’s there so you can see whether the bottle has actually been opened yet. Then the mouthpiece is added, and finally a rubber membrane. The machines go all over the world—to France, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, Peru, Australia, and Singapore. There’s one in Israel that produces 120,000 caps per hour. When you see that thing in action—it’s amazing. It goes at breakneck speed. Yeah, we’re doing pretty well here.
I always tell my younger colleagues: When the union calls, you should definitely listen. Take money, for example: Now, following the collective bargaining agreement, we’re getting a 2.8 percent raise—without a union, every single person could just walk up to the boss’s office and ask for more money. You can imagine where that would end. The company is family-owned and now in its fifth generation. I even knew the current boss’s grandfather. There are 80 of us here, so everyone knows everyone else. As a works council member, you can’t take such a hard line as you might in a large corporation. But of course, a soft approach isn’t really the way to go either. I’m on the five-member works council myself—I was even chairperson at one point—and I’ve learned that sometimes you have to compromise. And then there are cases where you really have to step on the gas. Once, when things got really heated and I was even supposed to be fired, I had a very strong union behind me that fought for me. I’m still grateful for that today. Fortunately, that was a long time ago, and we have a good relationship with management again today. We’re accepted here as the works council.”
