norTHwEsT lAbor PrEss |
June 1, 2018 | PAgE 5
nabisco unilaterally implements its terms on union workers
Two years after talks stopped,
Mondelēz-Nabisco is leaving the
union pension and giving two
years of retro raises
by Don McIntosh
Mondelēz is unilaterally imple-
menting parts of its final union
contract offer at Nabisco bak-
eries around the United States.
The move comes after a two-
year standoff during which no
negotiations have taken place —
and three days after the expira-
tion of a company ultimatum.
Mondelēz asked its roughly
2,000 union workers to agree to
let it worsen their health benefits
and withdraw from the union-
sponsored pension plan in ex-
change for a one-time $15,000
contract ratification bonus, pay
raises, and a new 401(k); the
company said the bonus offer
would be valid through May 20
only. Bakery, Confectionery, To-
bacco and Grain Millers
(BCTGM) rejected the com-
pany’s request that union mem-
bers vote on that offer.
Then the company notified
BCTGM May 22 that it in-
tended to implement two as-
pects of its offer — wage and re-
tirement — and laid out the
details in a May 23 letter to
workers.
“It’s another cutesy move by
the company,” said Ron Baker,
BCTGM International Strategic
Campaign Coordinator. “We’re
certainly not done with them.”
“Hands off Our Pensions!” said signs in vehicles all over the employee parking lot at the Portland Nabisco plant.
Bakers Local 364 officers helped to distribute them to show opposition to company plans to withdraw from the
union-sponsored pension. (From left: Local 364 secretary-treasurer Victor Weekes, president Jason Lind, and vice
president Leo Lovato.)
As spelled out in the letter,
workers will get a set of pay in-
creases retroactive to the March
1, 2016 expiration of their pre-
vious union contract. That
means they’ll get back pay
checks equal to what they
would have made if they’d got-
ten the company’s proposed
2.25 percent annual wage in-
creases on March 1 of 2016,
2017, and 2018. For full-time
workers whose pay has been
frozen at about $26 an hour, the
back pay amounts to about
...VA privatization
From Page 4
than the rest of America, and
one that suffers from very spe-
cific conditions, from traumatic
brain injury to post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) to Lou
Gehrig’s disease, which is re-
lated to exposure to Agent Or-
ange during the Vietnam War.
VA doctors specialize in treat-
ing those and many other serv-
ice-related conditions. They also
spend more than twice as long
with patients in their office visits
than doctors in the private sec-
tor. And as salaried public em-
ployees, they have no incentive
to overtreat.
Healthcare
journalist
Suzanne Gordon, author of a
2017 book about veterans
healthcare policy, says the VA
health system has gotten an un-
fairly bad reputation in recent
years, mainly because of a wait
time scandal in which the
Phoenix VA hospital was falsify-
ing wait time records. The wait
time scandal led to the passage
of the VA Choice Act, in which
opening the door to private care
was sold as a temporary solution
to the wait time problem. But
there’s evidence the problem
was overstated to begin with,
and that the VA system is the
victim of a double standard: A
2014 RAND Corporation study
that was mandated by the VA
Choice Act found that VA wait
times are not notably worse than
wait times in other health sys-
tems.
AFGE legislative and politi-
cal organizer Ian Hoffman calls
the VA Mission Act a Trojan
horse. Entering under the guise
of an expansion of care, it will
divert VA patients to more ex-
$4,000 before taxes.
The company is also halting
contributions to the Bakery and
Confectionery Union and Indus-
try International Pension Fund
effective May 23, and instead
will begin to contribute to a
401(k)-type retirement savings
account managed by Fidelity In-
vestments. The contributions will
range from 26 cents to $4.73 an
hour, depending on employee
age, with the oldest employees
getting the biggest hourly contri-
butions.
Notably, Mondelēz is not yet
implementing other parts of its
final offer, including less gener-
ous health insurance terms. Mon-
delēz proposed that workers pay
deductibles of $200/ $400 (for
single/family coverage) and face
out-of-pocket maximums of
$1500/ $3000, while for the first
time paying $28 to $68 a month
toward the insurance premium.
The moves by Mondelēz to
hold the line on wages, pension
and health care costs for its union
member workers comes at the
pensive, less effective private
care, and will reduce patient
numbers at VA facilities, which
will then serve as the justifica-
tion for the closures the bill en-
ables.
“If in five years you’ve out-
sourced enough, you’ll have a
lot of underutilized facilities that
look like they should be closed
— because you’ve rigged the
game,” Hoffman says.
Privatization is a very real
agenda for the Trump adminis-
tration. After Trump fired VA
secretary David Shulkin by
tweet on March 28, Shulkin
wrote, in an op-ed in the New
York Times: “They saw me as an
obstacle to privatization who
had to be removed. That is be-
cause I am convinced that priva-
tization is a political issue aimed
at rewarding select people and
companies with profits, even if
it undermines care for veterans.
… The department’s under-
standing of service-related
health problems, its ground-
breaking research and its special
same time the company is paying
executives such astronomic
salaries that even shareholders
are objecting. At the company’s
May 16 annual meeting, share-
holders passed a non-binding ad-
visory resolution by 55 percent
that rejects last year’s outsized
compensation to Mondelēz’ out-
going and incoming CEOs.
Mondelēz paid its longtime
CEO Irene Rosenfeld $17.3 mil-
lion last year; she left the com-
pany in November after five
years as CEO. Then Mondelēz
paid her successor Dirk Van de
Put $42.4 million. That included
$30 million in stock awards, a
$10 million cash bonus,
$975,000 in stock options, a $1
million incentive-plan payout,
$268,000 in other compensation,
and a base salary of just under
$163,000 for the 41 days of work
he performed in 2017. Some $38
million of the total was suppos-
edly a “make whole” package
compensating him for what he
would have made if he stayed at
his previous employer, privately-
held frozen french fry maker Mc-
Cain Foods.
Mondelēz also gave raises to-
taling $8 million to its chief fi-
nancial officer and “chief growth
officer.”
And as Crain’s Chicago Busi-
ness newspaper pointed out, this
was while the company’s stock
dropped 3.45 percent in value,
even as the S&P 500 index for
equivalent companies rose 10.46
percent.
ability to work with military vet-
erans cannot be easily replicated
in the private sector.”
Every Republican in Con-
gress voted for the VA Mission
Act. In the House, it passed 347
to 70, with 70 Democrats voting
“no” and 116 Democrats joining
231 Republicans voting “yes.”
In the Senate it passed 92 to 5,
with only Oregon Democrat Jeff
Merkley, Bernie Sanders (I-Ver-
mont), and three other Democ-
rats voting in opposition.
wHAT s.2372 DoEs
How loCAl MEMbErs of CongrEss VoTED
■ More home care: Expands access to
home health aides to vets from all eras
■ Privatization: Greatly expands a
program that pays for vets to get care
from private doctors
■ Closure: Creates a commission to
recommend closure of under-utilized
veterans health facilities, at the
discretion of the VA chief, not Congress
for
AgAInsT
senator ron wyden (D-OR)
U.s. rep. Peter Defazio (D-OR)
U.s. rep.kurt schrader (D-OR)
U.s. rep.greg walden (R-OR)
senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
senator Patty Murray (D-WA)
U.s. rep. jaime Herrera-beutler (R-
WA)
senator jeff Merkley (D-OR)
U.s. rep. Earl blumenauer (D-OR)
U.s. rep. suzanne bonamici (D-OR)