[09CTSV]

Back in November it was announced Alcoa was selling our Rolling business to Kaiser and keeping our Smelter and Power Plant. We have a metal agreement to provide Kaiser molten metal and also Power and utilities from the Power plant. As we keep getting closer to the sale date, March 31, the BS keeps getting larger than life.

I currently have 83 hourly employees with a support staff of 16. The maintenance department is taking our vehicle maintenance shop and store room functions. We were supposed to get 8 "Truck Shop" mechanics, a planner, supervisor and fleet management personnel. Friday I find out we are getting 4 mechanics, no supervisor, no fleet management and the union is fighting any contract out I do for fleet maintenance. Let's put a cherry on that Fudge Sunday, the store room is supposed to be staffed with 4 hourly and a supervisor. I'm getting 1 Employee who is out with a medical issue and the other employee I'm supposed to get from another department but they can't release them because they are transferring 13 people out of the pot rooms to the Kaiser side.

It is disheartening to watch the fence being erected between the two sides of the plant. Here we were an integrated facility for 60 years and in less than 3 weeks we will be split. There are a lot of support services like a Machine shop, hydraulic shop, carpenter shop, Operational Services for pump trucks and IT support which we won't have in 3 weeks.

It was a pain to sit down with the union for our first talks about permanent contracting out tasks which used to be done by the union but are now going to be accomplished by contractors.

My work load has tripled and the stress load has quadrupled in the past month all with no compensation increase. I've been putting in 14 hour days to keep up managing our maintenance and trying to get in front of the separation. Everyday we find out something else we get screwed on. I feel all Alcoa is looking at is that $670 Million dollar check and not concerned about how to badly it screws the Smelter in the process.

Retirement is looking extremely good real soon. My wife and I have the state and area picked, we might purchase the house, move her and the dogs and then pull the surprise rip cord and retire.