Contract talks are due to restart today between the Teamsters Union and SCS Refrigerated Services after the union called off a weeklong strike Sunday night.
Teamsters Local 117 said it agreed to halt picketing after the company agreed to resume bargaining in good faith. The union had claimed SCS had not been bargaining earnestly.
But the company said it had always bargained in good faith.
Forty-one union members, 15 at the SCS cold storage warehouse in Tacoma and 26 at its facility in Algona, were idled last week because of the picketing.
Meanwhile, at Pierce County’s Community Health Care, no new talks are scheduled in a dispute that erupted into a two-day work stoppage in August.
David Flentge, Community Health Care president, said the health care organization’s union employees are working under Community Health’s last contract offer implemented in June.
Those working conditions raised the workers’ share of health care insurance costs from an average of 4 percent of Community Health’s costs to 10 percent.
That same offer eliminated step raises for union workers and kept wages frozen at June’s levels.
Flentge said such measures were necessary because of difficult economic conditions and funding cutbacks for public health care.
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