![]() ![]() ![]() Then, we’d like our benefits: we’re not paying for our health care and we’d like to keep it that way. We want to be able to leave after our regular shift. Number two is: we just want to do our eight hours. When they took our pension back in 2018, whatever we made at that time, that’s what we’re going out with. The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Her pay is just under $30 an hour - Nabisco remains one of the few living-wage jobs on Chicago’s South Side. Flowers-Lewis is a utility operator who has worked at the plant for twenty-seven years. Press spoke to April Flowers-Lewis, one of the workers on strike in Chicago. ![]() Similar questions were present at another BCTGM shop, the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, where after a strike, workers voted to ratify a contract that, while getting rid of the worst scheduling practices, was well below their desired terms.įor the moment, the Nabisco strike continues to spread: this morning, workers at the Nabisco distribution center outside of Atlanta, Georgia, walked off the job. That conditions have gotten so bad raises questions about BCTGM’s strategy in years prior. While such an approach means high wage costs (though this is precisely what Mondelez is seeking to get rid of in the new contract), understaffing saves on the benefits to which new hires would be entitled, as well as hiring and training costs. Such schedules are increasingly common across the food-production industry as employers turn to mandatory overtime instead of finding new hires. Some three hundred fifty workers remain.Īt the Chicago shop, scheduling is brutal: workers are regularly “forced over,” assigned a second eight-hour shift following the first one, with eighty-hour weeks a frequent occurrence. The workers refused around five hundred people lost their jobs. The plant on the city’s southwest side was the site of mass layoffs in 2016, when the company presented workers with an ultimatum: concede to a 60 percent cut in wages and benefits or face a huge reduction in the workforce. On August 19, Nabisco’s Chicago shop joined the strike. If the company gets its way, they’d lose such premium pay, a change workers say could cost some of them $10,000 a year. At present, Mondelez pays 1.5 the standard rate for hours worked beyond an eight-hour shift, 1.5 on Saturdays, and double pay on Sundays. Workers say the company is pushing for concessions that include a two-tier health care plan - with newer workers slotted into a worse deal with higher costs - and a reduction in premium pay. Employees at Nabisco in Aurora, Colorado, and Richmond, Virginia walked off the job within days as contract negotiations dragged on between Mondelez International, the company behind Nabisco products, and the workers’ union, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). When workers at a Nabisco bakery in Portland, Oregon went on strike on August 10, they weren’t on their own for long. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |