Bakery workers at Earthgrains win strike with solidarity
BY JEANNE DENNISON
FORT PAYNE, Alabama--After a nearly one-month strike that reached out in solidarity to thousands of other bakery workers around the country, workers at Earthgrains Co. voted 556 to 26 to ratify a new contract here September 22.
The workers, who are members of Local 42 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) won some important gains. The new three-year agreement includes an average annual wage increase of 3.9 percent, an added paid holiday, and increased pensions. The pact restores medical and dental insurance as if the strike never happened, provides workers the ability to honor picket lines, and increases the starting rate of pay and the night shift premium.
In addition, workers cannot be forced to work more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period, and if the bosses call someone back to work after their shift the worker has the choice of taking a 12-hour break. The union won amnesty, which means that a probationary employee the bosses at Fort Payne tried to fire will get his job back.
Shortly before casting his ballot on the contract, Ken Bearden, who has 18 years at the plant and works on the pan bread line explained, "We work 12 to 16 hours a day. The company was always short of workers. People quit over this overtime. A lot of people don't understand why we're out. We just want to spend time with our families like everyone else. We don't even get holidays off."
Rita Hairel, 22, who works on the bagel line, was among the strikers who traveled to California to picket bakeries in Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, and other cities. She said that at the Fresno plant "the boss told us that there were nothing but 'rednecks and hillbillies' in Alabama and that they weren't going to shut his plant down. I told him that I was 'one mad redneck' and that we were too going to shut it down. Only about eight people there crossed out of about 150."
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BY ANNE PARKER
DECATUR, Georgia--Union members turned the picket line here into a victory rally September 21 as carloads of strikers arrived from the union hall after hearing a report on the provisions in a tentative settlement of the walkout.
Members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) Local 42 here had been on strike for more than three weeks. "I didn't know the significance of a strike until now," explained Quinton Grant, with 27 years in the bakery. "Workers at our sister plant in Forest Park honored our picket lines. When I arrived, a couple of others were already there. The workers were pouring out of the plant. I mean pouring out. They were willing to help in our fight. They wanted to fight, too. When I see a strike, it will be different. I'll be different," he said.
Several union members said the expansion of the strike, with 27 of the 45 union bakeries out, was one of main reasons the company was driven to bargain with the union. "Real solidarity, like we had in this strike. Commitment to the union. These are very powerful things," added Otis McBurrow, with almost 28 years in the plant, and 22 as union steward. "Plus it is not true that the public won't support you. They do. It is the media that won't support you."
Strikers also pointed to a union press release reporting messages of support from the Food, Agricultural and Forestry Workers union of Portugal. Earthgrains has bakery operations in France, Portugal, and Spain.
"I'm feeling satisfied," said Dock Bullock. "Even though I don't have any money in my pocket. This is better than money. I stood up for something." Bullock, a truck loader with 13 years at Earthgrains, described conditions at the warehouse. "They want 18 hours work in eight hours. The speedup is something else."
With 32 years as a bakery worker, James Brown told the Militant, "We are the union. When the union is weak, it's because the members are weak, although not everyone likes to see it precisely in those terms." Brown, like many workers at the Earthgrains plant in Decatur, worked at Flowers, an Atlanta bakery that closed in 1995. "They built a new plant out in Villa Rica, Georgia, and said we didn't have the experience for their new, 'high-tech' operation. But it was nothing but a union bust. Two years later they hired off the street for $7.50 an hour. They also reopened the old Atlanta plant as a nonunion operation.
"The union did good for us in the present situation. It seems like I've noticed that more unions are fighting for their rights today."
The ratification of the contract at the Fort Payne, Alabama, plant establishes a "pattern agreement" for the Fourth Region of the BCTGM. Union members in Decatur returned to work September 24 and will negotiate a contract based on the pattern. "We still have work to do when we get back, but at least the heavy lifting is over for now," stated Dock Bullock. An important provision in the new contract is that union members can continue to honor each others' picket lines. "In the back of the company's mind now, there's always going to be a question. If they try to break us, will it snowball again?" he said.
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BY BERNIE SENTER
AND JIM ALTENBERG
OAKLAND, California--Two weeks into a strike against Earthgrains, the country's second largest bakery, the 700 workers at the Fort Payne, Alabama, facility took a chance. They dispatched strikers to picket out 3,000 co-workers at 27 other Earthgrains plants throughout the country.
From Alabama they traveled to California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, and Wisconsin. And everywhere they went fellow workers honored their picket line. They shut the company down tight. They also got word that workers at Earthgrains' European plants would join the walkout.
Then the company caved in. On September 22, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union voted to accept a new, improved contract, ending the month-long strike.
"They didn't count on all the support we'd get," said Nathaniel Stanton, who traveled to California from Alabama. "I kind of had doubts we might be by ourselves. But we took a chance and it worked."
Charles Garmany, a baker with 24 years at the Fort Payne plant, explained, "I came 2,500 miles from home. I've never been to California before. I didn't expect to see such support. It's amazing. They took my heart. I can't believe the solidarity."
One of the central issues in the strike was forced overtime work. Bakery workers were among the first to win a 35-hour workweek in the 1930s, one baker said. But you'd never know this today. "In reality," one striker from Oakland said, "we often worked 12 hours a day, six days a week." Stanton pointed out they would sometimes work two months without a day off.
Billie Cook, from the Oakland Earthgrains plant, said, "The most important thing is we stuck together. The number one word is solidarity. Without that we have nothing."
At a victory rally of more than 100 workers at the Oakland plant the day of the vote, Alabama workers pointed to the exemplary role played by Salvador Martinez, who showed up to the picket line all day, every day. "And we did it after three hard weeks," Martinez said. He certainly wasn't alone.
Six different unions represent workers at the Earthgrains plant in Oakland. On September 16 the Teamsters agreed to a contract. Michael Fouch, president of BCTGM Local 119, explained, "On Monday morning, 75 out of 86 bakers that work here showed up and met the Teamsters at their 4:00 a.m. start time. It turned into a kind of rally. We convinced the 25 to 30 Teamsters not to cross."
Martin Espinoza noted, "We all stuck together and showed true solidarity. This is just round one." Espinoza was referring to the fact that the bakers' contract at the Oakland plant expires in six months.
Judith Goff, from the Central Labor Council of Alameda County, acknowledged other union members who came to the rally, including those from the Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, Service Employees International Union, and Longshoremen's union. "Now we need support at See's Candies," she said, referring to the strike of 800 workers in San Francisco that started September 21.
Charles Garmany from Alabama was beaming with pride. "I have learned more about unions in the last two weeks than in the last 20 years. When we drop the 'I' and 'me' in an issue, and replace it with 'we,' then we've got power."
Deborah Liatos, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, contributed to this article.
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