Vol. 76/No. 43      November 26, 2012

Workers have rejected the company’s concession contracts three times—the first by 96 percent, the second by 90 percent, the last, by a margin of 63 percent, this past June.

Company demands include replacing some union jobs with nonunion contract workers, ending seniority as the basis for recalling workers after seasonal layoffs, expanding second-tier workers, the ability to increase health care costs at whim, and eliminating health coverage at retirement for new hires.

“Our offer is still out there, and I think it’s a very good offer,” said Brian Ingulsrud, a vice president of American Crystal, in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

“They never really negotiated with us,” Wayne Netterlund, a locked-out worker from Drayton, N.D., told the Militant. When the union made counteroffers that included concessions, the company said the union didn’t go far enough.

“All of us want to go back to work, but they’d like to see us crawl back,” Steve Eliason, a locked-out worker from Hillsboro, N.D., said last fall.

As the lockout dragged on, more and more workers, who receive a weekly union stipend of $100, found other work. Others were forced to retire. The number of retired workers and those who have resigned from the company by taking another job is now more than 400 and growing. Some 1,300 were locked out by American Crystal Aug. 1, 2011.

“I’m never going back,” Brad Nelson, former vice president of the Drayton local, told the Militant. “For my own personal health, the anger and hate I feel for the company, I have to move on. I’m looking to get in another plant, hopefully one that is union.”

More than 400 locked-out workers from the two North Dakota plants, in Drayton and Hillsboro, have been denied unemployment benefits by the North Dakota Job Service. Benefits have also run out for workers from the Minnesota plants in the Red River Valley.

On behalf of some 230 North Dakota workers, the union appealed to the state Supreme Court Sept. 18 a district court order supporting the state’s decision to deny unemployment compensation. The court has up to 90 days to decide.

As the months passed and the union rejected the second contract proposal Nov. 1, 2011, the locked-out workers organized food drives, weekly “scab change” picket rallies at all the plants in the valley, fundraising efforts sponsored by unions throughout the region, and solidarity caravans, including a six-state “Journey for Justice” trip with Steelworkers locked out by Cooper Tire.

A few days before the one-year anniversary of the lockout, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, announced at a press conference in St. Paul that the federation was organizing a national campaign against American Crystal Sugar. “The campaign will escalate until American Crystal negotiates,” the AFL-CIO president said.

A couple months later the AFL-CIO announced a national consumer boycott of American Crystal Sugar products. Locked-out sugar workers have been going to stores across the Red River Valley—the region of eastern North Dakota and northwest Minnesota where American Crystal plants are located—asking working people to support their struggle by not buying American Crystal Sugar products.

“Every day union picketers protest at stores in the morning and evening,” Becki Jacobson, a locked-out worker from the Moorhead plant, told the Militant. “We have been getting a good response, lots of honks and waves, some thumbs up, as well as some who flip us off, but they are a small minority.”

“We should give the boycott a chance even though it was called very late in the game,” Russell Grandstrand, a locked-out worker from Drayton, told the Militant. “It might just be a flash in the pan.”

“A very small percentage of the sugar is sold in stores, the rest goes direct to the big candy and cereal companies.” said Grandstrand, who now works at an electronic parts factory.

American Crystal sells sugar across the country. Outside the Red River Valley the AFL-CIO boycott campaign mainly involves a petition on the Internet asking people to sign a boycott pledge.

About 10 locked-out workers got hired this past summer at a unionized bus plant near the Canadian border in Pembina, N.D. Not long after workers there rejected a proposed contract and took a couple of strike votes.

“Not only am I locked out, I may also be on strike,” former sugar worker C.J. Hanson, now at the plant, told the Militant with a grin on his face.

In September workers at the bus factory, organized by the Machinists, approved a three-year contract that included a small wage increase, health coverage and a $1,000 signing bonus.

Tony Lane contributed to this article.