Bernie Sanders Teases Warren Buffett: “Pay Your Employees Better”

Warren Buffett, the ninth richest person on the planet, says it’s not up to him to end a strike by 450 metal workers at a company he owns.

Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a letter to the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, requesting that he intervene in a steel workers union strike at the Special Metals plant in Huntington, West Virginia. They have been on strike for three months. Special Metals is a unit of Precision Castparts, a company owned by Buffett’s Berkshire.

“At a time when this company and Berkshire Hathaway are doing very well, there is no reason why workers you employ should worry about whether they will be able to feed their children or get medical care,” Sanders wrote. “There is no reason why the standard of living for these American workers should decline. I know you and Berkshire Hathaway can do better than that.”

His letter said that employees received a contract offer with no salary raise for the first year, just a $2,000 signing bonus, and then paid raises of 1% for the second year and 2% per year for the next three years. Sanders said the company wants to increase the cost of health coverage for workers from $275 a month to $1,000. And it reduced the vacation time they already accumulated.
Sanders called the offer “outrageous and insulting.”

But Buffett responded with a letter quoting Berkshire’s annual financial report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), equivalent to the CVM (Securities Commission) in Brazil, which informs investors that the management of its different companies is left to the investors. executives of each subsidiary – not Berkshire (or Buffett) itself.

“Our companies individually deal with their own labor and personnel decisions (except for choosing the CEO),” he said in his response to Sanders, released by Sanders’ office. “I am forwarding your letter to the CEO of Precision Castparts, but I do not recommend any action to him. He is responsible for his business.”

Unlike many of the country’s wealthiest people, Buffett has positioned himself as someone concerned about workers and income inequality. He called for higher taxes on the rich and promised to donate most of his fortune, which now stands at just over $100 billion, according to Forbes’ billionaire real-time tracker.

Buffett lacks the anti-union reputation of many other billionaires, like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos or Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who have fought union organizing efforts.

Buffett’s letter to Sanders cites several examples of his company’s syndicated subsidiaries, including NetJets and See’s Candy. And Sanders’ letter makes use of an appeal to Buffett to fulfill his expressed concerns about income inequality.

“Mr. Buffett: You spoke eloquently about the crisis that our country is now facing in terms of income growth and wealth inequality. You correctly pointed out that while working families struggle, the top 1% is doing extremely well,” wrote Sanders.

A greve na Special Metals

Special Metals is active in the transformation of essential nickel alloy metals for aircraft and spacecraft. Berkshire bought Precision Castparts in 2016 for $37.2 billion.

Berkshire said Precision Castparts reported third-quarter revenue of $1.6 billion, and that its third-quarter profit was $217 million up on the third quarter of 2020, although it did not state how much of its profit in the quarter arrived. Berkshire said its overall revenue was $10.3 billion for the quarter and $50.1 billion for the first nine months of the year.

A video posted on the steel workers union website quoted strikers as saying that Special Metals continued to operate, although it does not say whether it is using temporary workers, permanent replacements or salaried workers to operate the plant.

The number of strikes has increased in recent months as unions and common members are unwilling to accept the concession contracts they sometimes accepted in the past, especially given the record number of job openings in the market and the difficulty that many employers are having to find qualified workers to fill job openings.

Precision Castparts’ communications department issued a statement saying that its “desire is to achieve a respectful and productive relationship with employees, and ultimately we have achieved that goal in past contract negotiations over many years.”

He said he has and “will continue to negotiate in good faith” with the union. It did not respond to questions about the offer reported to the union or how it has managed to act and intends to continue acting if the strike continues.

*Text translated from English. To read the original, click here