It’s been a long time coming. Provoked by round after round of demands by Nabisco for concessions, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Millers (BCTGM) union reached a breaking point. At noon on Aug. 10, members of Bakers Local 364 walked off the job and began a 24-hour-a-day picket line on the sidewalk outside the Portland Nabisco bakery at 100 NE Columbia Boulevard in Portland.
“They walked out of there with huge smiles on their faces because they’ve been wanting to fight back against this company for a long time,” said Local 364 business agent Cameron Taylor.
At the core of the dispute is a shameless demand for worker concessions by a highly profitable company that paid its CEO $18 million last year. Mondelez-Nabisco earned over $1 billion in the second quarter of 2021 on $6.6 billion in sales. But instead of inviting production workers to share the good times, the company is demanding sweeping cuts in pay and benefits. In contract negotiations in Nashville in May and again in Baltimore in July, the company proposed to eliminate premium pay for work on weekends, end bonuses for perfect attendance, and get rid of daily overtime pay after eight hours. It also wants to stop providing supplemental health care for retirees, require workers to start paying part of the health insurance premiums, and increase the use of nonunion temps.
Read the full article here: https://nwlaborpress.org/2021/08/nabisco-workers-strike-around-the-nation/