CROCKETT, Calif. — C&H Sugar bosses have stepped up their attack on the three-week-old strike by 91 warehouse workers at its plant here, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6.
On July 2 C&H moved the Tai Herald, a ship laden with raw sugar from the Philippines, from anchor in San Francisco Bay to a terminal in Port Richmond to unload. The company intends to truck the raw sugar from there through the picket line into the plant.
The Tai Herald has been unable to berth at the plant since June 15, as longshoremen from ILWU Local 10 who dock and unload the ships are honoring the Local 6 picket line.
The Crockett sugar refinery normally processes 25 shiploads of raw cane sugar a year, about two ships a month, processing and shipping out 6 million pounds of refined sugar a day. Without raw sugar, production will stop.
Two more sugar ships are headed to the area, due to arrive later in July.
Local 10 is picketing the facility in Richmond. The local’s president, Mike Villeggiante, denounced the fact this food product is being handled in a mixed-use facility contaminated by airborne cement, recycled metal, coal, sand and gravel.
“We are not after gold-plated work shoes,” Kendra Sparks, who operates a mechanical sweeper and has 24 years’ seniority, told the Militant. “We just want to keep what we have,” Charles Uoo added.
“C&H refused to engage in good-faith back-and-forth negotiations while at the table,” the Dispatcher, the ILWU’s magazine, said. It has “cut negotiations short by declaring premature impasse, and unilaterally implemented its full list of takeaways.”
The bosses’ demands include eliminating overtime pay after eight hours work — when the company routinely forces people to work 12 — and replacing it with overtime pay only after 40 hours worked in a week; discontinuing medical care for retirees and their spouses; cutting sick days from 10 to California’s legal minimum of five; and getting rid of the current union-controlled job-dispatch system based on seniority.
“The company’s proposal gives management the power to handpick employees for advancement and overtime,” Sparks told the Dispatcher. Up to now, “‘manning’ is controlled by the company, but job assignments are controlled by a union clerk,” Cesar Garibay, Local 6 business agent, told the Militant.
Solidarity is crucial
A truckload of welcome food and supplies for the strikers arrived from Labor Community Services in Los Angeles June 30. Harold Daggett, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association on the East and Gulf Coasts, pledged the ILA’s full support, as did Tom Doran, president of the ILWU in Canada. Support has come from other unions as well.
“Every letter makes a difference in giving strength to the workers out on strike and letting the employer know that Local 6 has support up and down the West Coast, across the United States and around the world,” ILWU International President Robert Olvera wrote.
C&H Sugar is part of the American Sugar Refining Group, which owns 53% of the U.S. cane refining capacity with refineries and plantations around the world.
Solidarity is needed! Send a letter from your union local, your co-workers or your organization to ILWU Local 6, 99 Hegenberger Road, Oakland, CA 94621. Join the picket line in front of C&H in Crockett! Contribute to the strike fund at square.link/u/ifFpgkRO.