Vol. 72/No. 39      October 6, 2008

According to Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 50, which represents the workers, the company is trying to impose a new contract that would cut wages and vacation and holiday pay, eliminate paid sick days and Saturday premium pay, and increase health-care co-payments.

Joyce Alston, president of Local 50, reported to the Riverdale Press that “the five-year contract would slash some workers’ salaries by $1 per hour for each year of the contract,” with some immediately losing as much as $2.32 per hour.

Striker Alex Nardella, 51, told the Militant that earlier this year the company laid off all of its truck drivers and security personnel. Before the strike began, the company had been running production six days a week with 12-hour shifts.

According to picketers, the company has been hiring strikebreakers and held a job fair on September 13. Angelo de la Cruz, 49, said he and other strikers tried to explain to those attending the job fair why they should support the strike. “The majority entered the plant, but about 25 turned around and left after we talked to them,” said de la Cruz.

“Many of the workers have been here 25-35 years. I have been here 20. We want to work, but not under these conditions,” stated de la Cruz.

“Their goal is to get rid of the union,” said Michael Flippou, a mechanic and union representative. “With the contract they’re proposing, the company is trying to pit skilled workers against unskilled.”

Nardella, an assistant maintenance engineer who has worked for Stella D’Oro for 30 years, explained that under the new contract he would not face a wage cut. “I could go back in and get the same wage, but how could I do that when my fellow coworkers’ wages will be cut?”

—Maura DeLuca

Grain workers are
locked out in Iowa
MUSCATINE, Iowa—Grain Processing Corporation, one of this small town’s biggest employers, has locked out its 360 production employees since August 22.

Second-shift workers were escorted out of the plant hours before the contract between United Food and Commercial Workers Local 86D and the company expired. The union had requested a two-week extension of the pact with the manufacturer of corn-based products.

“We have got to get rid of the B-scale and reestablish seniority,” Brad Blaser, a worker on the picket line told the Militant. He explained that five years ago workers accepted a concession contract that established a substantially lower pay scale for new hires and gave the company the ability to assign jobs regardless of seniority.

Day and night, dark clouds of smoke billow from the 50-year-old plant’s smokestacks, giving evidence of the company’s efforts to keep production going with around-the-clock 12-hour shifts of management employees and temporary workers.

Terry Grime, a shop steward, doesn’t believe the company will succeed in maintaining production. “Several workers have been taken out in ambulances in the last two weeks,” he said.

Grime noted that the spirits of the locked-out workers have been bolstered by acts of solidarity from area unionists and community members. He said firemen, electrical workers, steelworkers, and others have visited the picket line and made donations of food and money. Many homes throughout the town have signs and red ribbons supporting the workers’ fight.

—David Rosenfeld
and Becca Williamson  
 
 
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