BUFFALO, N.Y. — The 165 members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 36G continue to win broad support in their strike against Milk-Bone in Buffalo, New York. The workers walked out Oct. 28 after the company, owned by giant conglomerate J.M. Smucker, demanded they accept health insurance plans that are vastly inferior to the one they currently have.
AS WE GO TO PRESS…
Milk-Bone workers voted Dec. 18 to
ratify a new contract, end their strike.
BCTGM President Anthony Shelton:
“The SOLIDARITY of the Labor
Movement was vital to this victory.”
BCTGM Local 81 in Traverse City, Michigan, organized a raffle for the strikers. Local President Coty Ryder designed the posters and union members sold tickets on the job, raising $945. In late November, two Local 81 union officers drove to Buffalo with a carload of supplies for the picket line.
“It’s a completely different thing reading about a strike and then being there,” Local 81 Chair Melissa Straubel told the Militant. “You realize that these people are just like us. They are trying to scratch out a living in a factory against the big corporation that owns it.”
The Southern Region of the BCTGM organized union members to pass out informational flyers on the strike outside the nonunion Smucker’s plant in Memphis, Tennessee.
Teamsters Local 449 in Buffalo has been a stalwart in solidarity with the strikers. The unionists organized cookouts and bring truckloads of firewood for pickets’ burn barrels, which are critical in the Buffalo winter. Strikers picked up baskets of groceries that the Teamsters organized. The Teachers Federation visits weekly with coffee and donuts. The Communications Workers of America, United Auto Workers locals and other area union members join the picket line and bring supplies.
“CSX union rail workers brought in two railcars of flour early in the strike but refused to hook them up to the plant,” picket captain Tony Serra told the Militant. “First railroad management and then Milk-Bone management tried, and none of them could make the connections work. Two weeks later the railcars were hauled away because the flour was ruined.”
Serra said one railcar holds four to five truckloads. Not being able to use railcars is contributing to the slowdown in production, as management tries to keep it going using scab labor.
Steve Palumbo, chief union steward at the plant, said photos of empty store shelves where Milk-Bone products are normally stocked have come in from as far away as Florida. Strikers say the company warehouse is 85% to 90% empty.
“I am writing to convey the unequivocal support of the nearly 13 million members united in the AFL-CIO for the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) International Union Local 36G members who are on strike at the Smucker’s-owned Milk-Bone plant in Buffalo, New York,” wrote AFL-CIO President Elizabeth Shuler in an open letter to Mark Smucker, chair of the board and president and CEO of J.M. Smucker Co. “I strongly urge you to get back to the bargaining table.”
After stalling for weeks, Milk-Bone management now says it will sit down with the strikers, BCTGM International Representative Jared Cummings told the Militant.
Sergio Zambrana contributed to this article.