The Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation union (SMART) is attempting to unionize Kingspan sites across the USA. In attempting to do that, it is engaging in a national campaign to damage Kingspan’s reputation. Its aim is to pressure us to sign a so-called ‘neutrality agreement’.
A neutrality agreement would, among other things, allow the SMART labor union access to employees’ personal information, give it site access during work hours to recruit members, and take away our employees’ rights to the secret ballot election process available to them under federal law. The neutrality agreement pushed by the SMART labor union would apply to employees in every Kingspan manufacturing facility located in the USA.
Kingspan will not compromise the rights of its employees to make an informed and uncoerced choice on whether they want to be represented by a union through the National Labor Relation’s (NLRB) established secret election process.
We respect our employees’ right to decide for themselves if they want to join a union or not. For decades, the NLRB has conducted secret ballot elections to decide if a majority of employees wish to be represented by a union. Indeed, having followed these procedures, the SMART labor union already represents workers in two of Kingspan’s facilities in Connecticut and California.
Because we won’t agree to the neutrality agreement it wants, the SMART labor union is attempting to pressure us to accept their demands. To date, this has involved a variety of tactics, including misleading allegations and disparaging statements, to try to unfairly damage Kingspan’s reputation with our employees, customers, industry associations and others involved in our business and industry.