These are slogans on the picket signs workers are holding in front of the Earthgrains Company bakery here. On August 26, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) Local 611 voted overwhelmingly to strike, and immediately set up a picket line that is now being maintained 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This is the first strike at this bakery ever. Union members on the picket line September 2 said one major issue in the contract strike is forced overtime.

Violet Whitmore and Juanita Guinn, who have each worked at the bakery for 23 years, said they don't usually mind the overtime, but that "people like to have a choice." Whitmore said she has worked as many as 62 days in a row.

About 700 members of Local 611 are on strike here. Don Guthrie, a member of the local negotiating committee, said fewer than 20 workers had crossed the line.

The bakery is on a main road in Fort Payne, and many people driving by honk in solidarity with the strikers. The unionists report they have gotten support from workers at UPS, Bell South, the nearby Norfolk Southern railroad, and Scottsboro Aluminum, where the Steelworkers recently won a contract fight, and that a farmer had dropped off watermelons for them.

A sign at Fort Payne's city limits proclaims this as the "sock capital of the world." There are many large and small unorganized hosiery mills here. As in many parts of Alabama, there are now many Mexican immigrant workers living and working here.

Teamster truck drivers are refusing to cross the picket line. Trucks are pulling in and out, but Donny Whitmore, a 21-year veteran of the bakery, asked, "Do you smell anything like honey buns or croissants? This is a bakery, but you can't smell anything baking. They're driving empty trucks up and down the road."

Whitmore said the company had brought in bosses to try to run some of the lines but had failed. "All the knowledge is out here," he said.

Besides overtime another major issue in the strike is an increase in wages, especially in starting pay.

Juanita Guinn said that although she had been making $12.64 an hour, new workers were only paid $9 an hour. It takes three years to get full pay. This leads to a high turnover.

Strikers also talked about the conditions on the job. "The speedup has been outrageous," said Ralph Bender, a maintenance worker with 24 years at the bakery. "A year ago they were making 700 donuts a minute. Now they're making 1,570 a minute. For this they added one machine and only four workers."

Christine Brown, a worker on the donut line with 22 years of service, said, "It's illegal that the company immediately cut off the health insurance benefits when the strike began, and that Earthgrains has even stopped paying the premiums for retirees' benefits.

Earthgrains, the country's second largest bread company, has more than 50 plants across the United States with more than 6,000 workers. Union members at more than 20 bakeries are now out, either on contract strike or honoring picket lines set up by strikers. They include plants in Decatur and Forest Park, Georgia; Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis, Tennessee; Mobile, Alabama; and Meridian, Mississippi.

Lary Aultman, business agent for Local 611, said the owners of Earthgrains were surprised at the support strikers have won from workers at other bakeries.

Local 611 is putting out a "Fort Payne Strike Journal" daily. There is also a solidarity newsletter that goes out to workers at all the Earthgrains plants. The "Special Strike Edition" of this newsletter quotes "absolute and total" support from the Teamsters bakery drivers for Northern California, and notes that the bakery workers union organizes Earthgrains bakeries in Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, and Oakland, California.  
 

"Shorter hours. We want to work our shift, and then go home and rest and be with our families," said James Freeman, a member of BCTGM Local 42, with 30 years at the bakery. Workers currently work up to 16-hours shifts and some workers have gone for 61 days without a day off.

Freeman added, "We think it's unfair for a company like Earthgrains to spend $650 million to buy up other bakeries, and then offer us a pitiful 30 cents an hour for a three-year contract. We're going to get what we want. You could say we're optimistic."  
 
 
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