By KEVIN NEVERS

Employees of NiSource Inc. and its subsidiaries should know by July 1 whether their positions will be affected by the company’s out-sourcing initiative.

But Local 13796 of the United Steelworkers of America—which represents 430 clerical workers employed by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company—has declined to participate in what NiSource is calling a “transition staffing process.” As part of that process, employees in areas targeted for possible out-sourcing have been asked to submit information like work history and job skills directly to IBM, with which NiSource is currently negotiating an out-sourcing contract.

According to Local 13796 President Debra Birkholz, that process—by putting members in the position of having to deal individually with IBM—would have constituted nothing less than an end-run around the basic premise of the union, which is that the local “is the exclusive bargaining unit for the people it represents.” NiSource, in short—even less IBM—“can’t bargain directly” with the members, she told the Chesterton Tribune.

The transition staffing process as implemented by NiSource would have infringed on the local’s autonomy in one other way, Birkholz said. “In our bargaining unit you don’t apply for jobs. You bid on them by seniority.”

In any case, she noted, her membership has not yet completed the first year of a five-year collective bargaining agreement reached with NiSource last year, which specifically includes a no-lay-off clause protecting the jobs of members with five years or more of service. “It’s kind of silly,” Birkholz said, “to negotiate a new contract in June and then in December say you’re going to lay-off.”

Birkholz added that she was not especially keen on the way in which NiSource broached the transition staffing process in the first place. On May 24, Birkholz said, one hour before the company was scheduled to e-mail a letter to employees from President and CEO Robert Skaggs Jr. explaining that process, she was given a copy of the letter. Her response: the letter neither informed members what they would be applying for nor indicated what their information would be used for, and Local 13796 would have nothing to do with it. “I only declined the opportunity for the company to e-mail the letter to the membership,” she said.

Members who wish to participate in the transition staffing process anyway may do so, Birkholz said, although she was unclear on how they could. Probably they could find the necessary information on NiSource’s intra-corporate website. “If there’s a will there’s a way.”

NiSource spokesperson Kris Falzone agreed with Birkholz on that point: members may participate in the process without the local’s endorsement. “There are other channels,” she said. “But I can’t speak to what IBM would do with that information.”

Falzone did say that, because NiSource and IBM are still negotiating a contract, the number of positions which could be affected by out-sourcing is unknown at this point. And not all of those positions would necessarily be eliminated. Under a process dubbed “re-badging,” a worker or group of workers employed by NiSource or a subsidiary could be hired by IBM to do the same job or a different job at the same location or a different location.

For eligible employees whose positions are eliminated, Falzone said, NiSource has a severance policy, which includes a payment of a certain number of weeks of base salary, depending on length of service; the payment of accrued vacation time; and out-placement services like resume writing and job leads. Temporary health-care benefits could be maintained under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act or COBRA passed by Congress in 1986.

NiSource has said that it is looking to out-source up to $2 billion worth of business support activities over the next 10 years. NiSource and IBM have not yet determined which activities would be out-sourced, but the following areas are on the table: information technology, purchasing, billing and collection, human resources, finance and accounting, customer contact services, and communications.

Not on the table: “front-line” positions in the company’s core natural-gas and electric businesses. Members of Local 12755 of the USWA—which represents the linemen, meter readers, and other field and operations workers employed by NIPSCO—would not be affected by the out-sourcing initiative and accordingly have not been asked to participate in the transition staffing process.

One other bargaining unit—a local of the Utility Workers Union of America, representing employees of NiSource subsidiary Bay State Gas Company of Massachusetts—has declined to participate in the transition staffing process, Falzone said.

NiSource has implemented that process, Falzone added, for the sole purpose of meeting its “commitment” to employees to inform them by July 1 of their status under the out-sourcing initiative.