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May 6, 2016 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Dads & Daughters
...Nabisco’s union standoff
“Launching Your Daughter’s Interest in a Trades Career”
Special Workshop with Coffee and Refreshments
Saturday, May 14
Dads & Daughters Workshop
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Women in Trades Career Fair
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Come to Oregon Tradeswomen,
Inc.’s FREE Women in Trades
Career Fair!
Attend interactive workshops
with your daughter, including this
workshop for adults & the young
women in their lives.
NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center
16021 NE Airport Way, Portland OR 97230
)5((JLIWWRWKH¿UVWGDXJKWHUV
attending with an adult!
www.tradeswomen.net
info@tradeswomen.net | 503.335.8200 x 21
From Page 1
would pay a deductible and then 10
percent of all medical costs up to a
maximum. Mondelēz also proposes
to withdraw from the union’s multi-
employer defined benefit pension
plan and instead contribute the same
amount to a 401(k)-style defined con-
tribution plan. Whereas the former of-
fers a guaranteed monthly benefit, the
latter would be a tax-deferred savings
plan in which workers would take on
all the risk of investments performing
poorly.
At Nabisco’s Portland bakery, 100
NE Columbia Boulevard, BCTGM
Local 364 President Cameron Taylor
says the company’s pension proposal
has led 33 workers to retire since
March 1 — in a workforce of about
200 — in order to preserve their
“Golden 80” rights. Workers whose
age plus years of service equal 80 or
more are eligible for full pension ben-
efits, but they’d get a smaller benefit
if they wait until after the company
withdraws from the plan.
Taylor said local managers have
been polite lately, and workers have
seen no further sign of company plans
to bring in strikebreakers, after unfa-
miliar faces were brought onto the
plant floor in February.
Nationally, the union has focused
on publicizing its boycott of Nabisco
products that are made in Mexico.
Presidential candidates Bernie
Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald
Trump have made an issue of the
company’s 2015 decision to shift pro-
duction to Mexico — and lay off 600
of its 1,200 Chicago workers. Mon-
delēz told BCTGM it would spend
$130 million to install four new pro-
duction lines in Salinas, Mexico, and
close nine of its 16 production lines in
Chicago — if Chicago workers didn’t
give back $46 million a year in con-
cessions. BCGTM Strategic Cam-
paign Coordinator Ron Baker said he
thinks the company intended all along
to put the new lines in Salinas.
Nabisco has been making some prod-
ucts at a plant in Monterrey, Mexico,
since 2003. And in 2014, it opened a
$350 million plant in Salinas, Mexico,
and closed plants in Philadelphia and
Toronto.
On April 6, BCTGM asked the
U.S. Department of Labor to investi-
gate whether Mondelēz’ Mexican
workers are represented by a bogus
company-dominated union, in viola-
tion of the NAFTA labor side agree-
ment.
So far, 251 BCGTM members have
been laid off in Chicago, and May 27
is the last day for 43 more. Adding to
the insult, Baker says: Those who re-
main are being required to work over-
time. Nabisco hasn’t done any hiring
in Chicago since 2014, Baker said,
and the workforce there was already
down about 150. Meanwhile, a union
grievance heading for arbitration ac-
cuses the company of violating the
contract when it hired more than 50
nonunion temps to do union mem-
bers’ work in the Chicago plant, at less
than half the union wage. Those temps
were let go before union members
were laid off, but Baker says the com-
pany may owe over $1 million in back
pay for the union contract violation.
To protest the company’s bargain-
ing stances and to publicize the boy-
cott, BCGTM members have been
picketing company-sponsored events,
including a NASCAR race in Rich-
mond, Virginia. They’ve also picketed
outside the company CEO’s suburban
Chicago mansion. Irene Rosenfeld,
paid $21 million in 2014, lives in ul-
tra-rich Kenilworth, Illinois, the sec-
ond-richest neighborhood in America.
HEAR FROM LAID-OFF CHICAGO NABISCO
WORKERS
A “boycott education team” made up of laid-
off Chicago workers will be in Washington and
Oregon in late May and is seeking invitations
to speak at union meetings. If your union
would like to hear from them, email
nabisco600@bctgm.org.