Union Workers Strike at Pennsylvania Coca-Cola Distribution Center

Delivery truck drivers, loaders and warehouse workers began picketing Sunday at the ABARTA Coca-Cola Beverages plant in Bethlehem, PA.

Dec 8th, 2021
Mike Hockett

Teamsters Local 773 union members picketing outside the ABARTA Coca-Cola Beverages distribution center in Bethlehem, PA. Teamsters Local 773

Amid an ongoing strike at Kellogg's cereal plants that has stretched beyond two months and a weekslong strike at Nabisco factories in September, workers at a Coca-Cola distribution center in far eastern Pennsylvania have followed suit with a strike that began Dec. 6.

Local news reports say that 77 Teamsters union members— comprised of delivery truck drivers, loaders and warehouse workers — began picketing at the ABARTA Coca-Cola Beverages distribution facility in Bethlehem, PA at midnight Sunday, which, according to the company, is when those workers' contract expired. They have been picketing outside the facility since.

The facility is about 15 miles from the New Jersey border and 60 miles north of downtown Philadelphia.

Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773 (Whitehall, PA) told Lehigh Valley Live that the strike centers on the company’s desire to switch healthcare plans and move employees from a pension to a 401(k) retirement-planning account, while the union's social media posts also note wage issues.

“We told the company we’re ready to sit down and talk whenever they are. Hopefully we’ll get to an agreement,” Hower said. “We’ll be out as long as we need to. Everyone is strong. No one’s going to break. People worked here for decades, they count on that pension. The union members are picketing almost around the clock during their usual work shifts and are receiving strike benefits."

ABARTA Coca-Cola is the exclusive distributor of Coca-Cola beverages in the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia region, carrying products that include sodas, Dasani water, Monster Energy Drinks, VitaminWater and Powerade. The company has 15 distribution centers, with 12 of them in Pennsylvania.

ABARTA said union members rejected the company's 4-year contract offer, which followed about 10 negotiation meetings over the past two months.

“Unfortunately, despite our lengthy negotiations, the union rejected our last, best and final offer,” ABARTA's human resources manager told local media. “We hope to reach a resolution in the near future and will continue to negotiate in good faith with union leadership.”

Meanwhile, ABARTA said it has a contingency plan to continue production and delivery.

The Bethlehem plant was a longtime soda production facility until it was purchased by ABARTA in 2017.

Canadian small businesses face labour shortage despite wage hike, report finds

By David Lao Global News
Posted December 9, 2021 

'We need to grow immigration,' Manitoba premier says in state of the province address – Dec 2, 2021

More than half of Canada’s small businesses are currently unable to hire enough staff to continue operations or meet new demand — a new report says — despite an almost economy-wide raise in wages.

It’s a dilemma small business owner Jason Schnurr experienced since the beginning of September.

Schnurr, who owns and manages a handful of surf and sportswear stores in Sauble Beach and Port Hope in Ontario, said that his businesses, although seasonal, have been running on a “skeleton crew” for the last three months — and will be expected to stay that way until April of next year.

Schnurr’s businesses, Beachin’ and Jack n Jill’s surf shop, have seen extremely high rates of turnover since the onset of the pandemic, and cannot hire or keep employees despite an increase in wages.

READ MORE: Ghosting at work: As labour shortage persists, employers lament increasing no-shows

“We have a manager job that has been open since March that we cannot fill, we just don’t get applications for,” said Schnurr in a phone interview with Global News.

“If we weren’t having the labour shortage, we would have filled this position.”

The report, released on Thursday by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), found that 55 per cent of small businesses would not have the staff required to run their stores, though another 16 per cent would be able to continue their operations but at a significant additional cost.

“Small businesses were already experiencing a very significant shortage of labour at the beginning of 2020, and the pandemic has made the situation only more complex,” said CFIB vice-president of national research Simon Gaudreault in a press release

“Industries that were locked down for long periods of time, like hospitality, have seen a mass exodus as workers upskilled or switched to other jobs, and virtually all sectors are facing major demographic upheavals with not enough new workers coming in to replace those who are retiring.”

According to the report, such widespread labour shortage comes despite the “majority” of affected businesses having already raised employee wages. The problem has led many brick-and-mortar stores to try to hire temporary foreign workers (TFWs). Some are also trying to automate their businesses as an alternative.

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven large parts of the economy to the brink over the last two years, and has especially hammered small businesses.

READ MORE: Ontario government seeking to double skilled immigrants to address labour shortage

Business owners have attributed both the labour shortages — a majority of which are in food services, health care and retail — to workers choosing to avoid work in a public setting during the pandemic, as well as the previous federal COVID-19 income supports.

According to a report from RBC, the number of job vacancies n Canada jumped by about 22 per cent in the summer as the economy reopened. In June, there were over 800,000 job vacancies in Canada, though the country’s unemployment rate in October dropped to a pandemic low of 6.7 per cent.

Despite the recent uptick in employment numbers over the fall, the CFIB warns that the labour shortages are now “back with a vengeance,” and that more and more small businesses will see the issue persist.

Wage hikes not the 'expected silver bullet'

According to the report, small businesses with labour shortages had expected to increase their wages by 3.7 per cent over the next year.

Over 80 per cent of affected businesses have already raised their wages, but the CFIB found that their success rate was a “mere” 31 per cent, and that three out five of those businesses that raised wages did not find it helpful in attracting workers or qualified applicants.

Other businesses have turned to other alternatives in order to fill that labour gap, according to the CFIB, with the most successful ones being automation or hiring temporary foreign workers.

Schnurr hopes that he’ll be able to fill his shortages in the coming months, or he would have to otherwise take further measures like “reducing hours, reducing days or reducing stores.”

The report found that a third of affected businesses have invested in automation with a success rate of 81 per cent, while over 15 per cent have hired TFWs and have a success rate of 52 per cent.

READ MORE: Labour shortage causing business owners to delay or cancel orders: survey

“The low utilization to high success rate ratio suggests that TFWs could be a promising solution for Canada’s labour shortages, especially if the program were expanded to other sectors,” read the report.
Candidates and qualifications

The report also found that the shortage was being driven by several factors, namely a lack of candidates, qualification mismatches and market disruptions.

About two thirds of affected businesses said they couldn’t find applicants with the right skillsets, while just over half said they had a lack of any candidates at all.

“One reason for this is that the distribution of job seekers to jobs in different education categories is imbalanced: in Q1 2021, 22 per cent of the unemployed had a level of education equal to or higher than a bachelor’s degree, while only 15 per cent of the market requires this level of education,” read the report.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT


The pandemic’s disruption in relationships between employers and employees also “pushed” workers out of certain sectors according to the report, with nearly one in four of small businesses stating that their workers switched industries due to the pandemic.

#FIGHTFOR15

“Small businesses have a long and steep climb to recovery, and having the right workers in place or other tools to address labour shortages is a big part of that,” said Corinne Pohlmann, senior vice-president of national affairs at CFIB in a statement.

“They are already doing all they can to attract workers, but they need governments to do their part by adopting policies that increase productivity, connect job seekers with employers and don’t put the cost of hiring out of reach.”

© 2021 Global News,

Why the resurgence of organized labor hasn’t helped gig workers

FASTCOMPANY

12-06-21

Drivers for DoorDash, Instacart, and Gopuff have all staged work stoppages recently. But most workers won’t strike—and some actively love their gigs.

[Source Image: Boris Zhitkov/Getty]

On October 16, an unknown number of drivers for grocery-delivery service Instacart went on strike. These shoppers, as Instacart calls its independent contractors, vowed to forgo logging on to the app that provides their dispatches. Other drivers who couldn’t afford to go without work still promised to reject the lowest-paying grocery orders, which pay $7 to the driver. The protestors demanded that Instacart meet a number of demands around higher fees, commissions, and tips, plus a reformed rating system.

You might have known about the strike if you read the technology business press or followed it on Twitter. But if you are an Instacart customer, you probably didn’t notice it. Organizers couldn’t provide a figure of how many people took part, but they concede it’s a small number compared to Instacart’s more than half a million shoppers.

In a Facebook group, Instacart workers vent frustration at colleagues who settle 

for low-paying assignments.

The striking Instacart drivers aren’t the only gig workers who have found it difficult to improve their working conditions by banding together. Many sectors of the service economy are facing dire labor shortages, as part of the “Great Resignation.” In theory, that should give the remaining workers plenty of leverage to demand better pay. But many gig-economy companies, especially delivery services, have an overabundance of workers with little or no power to negotiate.

“The operational level of Instacart is one that’s reached a level that’s beyond what we can reach as workers,” says Willy Solis, a lead organizer with the Gig Workers Collective (GWC), which coordinated the strike. In fact, Instacart workers have been organizing protests against the company for years, including in late September, with little to no effect.

Labor organizing has made inroads lately in traditional industries, as varied as food factories, hospitals, and newsrooms. But the diffuse nature of gig work, in which everyone is on their own, makes it hard for workers to join together. What’s more, labor organizing seems to go against the ethos of being an independent contractor for many workers.

Striking drivers for food-delivery service DoorDash ran into the same issues last summer. On July 31, some of them logged off the app to demand a higher base pay, which can be as little as $2 per order. They also sought clarity on how much tip to expect, which can make the difference between earning and losing money. They recommended that drivers instead log on to DoorDash’s rival Uber Eats, which has not faced such worker strikes in the United States (although it has abroad, including in South Africa and the U.K).

But like Instacart, DoorDash has no shortage of labor in the U.S., boasting more than 1 million active “dashers,” as its contractors are called. Even fellow dashers haven’t noticed the effects. “I’ve been doing this for five years now,” says Anna Witte, a dasher in Fremont, California. “And I have not seen anybody take any strike on DoorDash or anything else. So it hasn’t affected anybody getting orders.”

Drivers for rapid-delivery service Gopuff are the latest to go on strike, staging a one-day walkout on November 23 to demand better base pay and other changes. A far smaller company than Instacart or DoorDash, Gopuff has only about 10,000 contractors. And strike organizers estimate that about 200 to 300 people took part.

A Gopuff warehouse in Athens, GA temporarily shut down, possibly due to the strike.

Gopuff strike organizers reported to Fast Company that drivers didn’t show up for, or left early from, scheduled shifts in at least five warehouse locations—including at least one that temporarily shut down. They noted pay boosts, meant to attract more workers, offered at six locations on strike day. For perspective, the company has more than 550 facilities across the U.S.

“Gopuff tells Fast Company that delivery times were normal across markets for a Tuesday. Further, Gopuff says that it often issues pay boosts when demand spikes. In a statement, the company said, “In the case that we are not able to respond quickly to uptick in orders in some of our smaller volume markets, we may choose to briefly pause customer orders until we are able to effectively address the current demand.”

Even if they’ve scored a few small victories, strikers’ actions have fallen well short of affecting any gig company’s business on a scale that causes real pain. For various reasons, very few workers feel motivated to skip work in protest, even for just a day.

DISAGREEMENT OVER PAY

Pay is the main factor driving the workers who do strike. In September, for instance, Gopuff workers on scheduled shifts in the company’s hometown of Philadelphia saw their minimum guaranteed hourly pay cut from about $12 to about $7.75 (pay rates vary by location). Workers are now demanding $20 per hour, plus expenses. Once tips are factored in, Gopuff says that workers average $18 to $25 per hour; but Candace Hinson, a driver and strike organizer in Philadelphia, estimates that she’s now making as little as $10 per hour.

As shown in Instacart’s driver app, its lowest-paying assignments start at $7.

Instacart workers point to changes in the pay formula made in 2018. Once, workers were paid on a per-order, per-item basis. Now pay is determined by an algorithm that they believe ends up paying less. Shopper assignments, called batches, can contain up to three grocery orders and offer $7 to $10 minimum payments (before tips). Postings of $7 batches, some of which can take an hour to fulfill, are common in the Facebook group Instacart and Shipt: Gig Workers’ Collective.

Why don’t drivers simply pass over the low-paying offers? That’s what Anna Witte does. “I make really good money doing DoorDash,” says Witte, who says she averages about $40 per hour. “So I wouldn’t see a reason to do a strike.” Her earnings beat DoorDash’s estimated national average of $25 per hour, including tips. Witte attributes some of her good fortune to being in a busy, affluent market.

Perhaps the most successful gig worker organization is the group #DeclineNow, which encourages members to reject any DoorDash gig that advertises a fee under $7. Founded in late 2019, it’s based on gaming the algorithm. If no one takes a low-paying assignment, the system has to offer progressively higher fees until someone bites.

Boasting over 35,000 members, the #DeclineNow Facebook group is massive compared to its Instacart and Shipt counterpart (with 1,800) and Gopuff workers’ current organizing efforts. But only a tiny fraction of DoorDash’s million-plus dashers participate.

The founders claim that their movement is big enough to affect wages, and there’s some anecdotal evidence of that in the Seattle area, based on data from gig-pay tracking service Solo. Hourly earnings on DoorDash increased from about $24 per hour in March to about $30 per hour in May, as #DeclineNow started gaining traction. “You can’t prove causation, but we did see quite a dramatic increase in average hourly earnings during that time,” says Bryce Bennett, the CEO of Solo and a former regional manager for Uber. “And we also saw a slight uptick in tips from about $5 to $6 per order.”

If #DeclineNow is succeeding, it’s not through workers resorting to traditional strike tactics. Rather, the group is driving a hard bargain with its business partner, DoorDash. (We tried to learn more about #DeclineNow by interviewing its cofounders, but they declined to speak with us unless we paid a consultation fee.)

THE VALUE OF FREEDOM

Regardless of pay, some workers are attracted to gig work for the freedom and flexibility it provides. “The pandemic and everything that’s happened has made clear how difficult it is for low-wage workers to balance work and anything else in their lives,” says Shelly Steward, director of the Aspen Institute’s Future of Work Initiative. Most retail workers have no influence over—and little notice about—their schedules, she says.

But in the gig economy, workers make their own hours. “Lots of [shoppers] have kids,” says Steve Labinski, an Instacart shopper in Dallas and author of the book Shop Like a Pro. “So they’ll send the kids to school, and during the day, they can deliver groceries.” Anna Witte delivers for DoorDash after she drops her son at school.

FLEXIBILITY AND FAST CASH ARE BRINGING A LOT OF NEW RECRUITS INTO GIG WORK.

Part-time Gopuff driver and strike organizer Ronald Moody concedes that he doesn’t work the most lucrative times. During early morning shifts, he can sit idle for hours. “I have no problem getting up that early,” he says. “And it gives me the flexibility to do other stuff the rest of my day.” For Moody, that other stuff includes his main work as a financial services compliance consultant.

He’s far from the only person doing gig work as a side hustle.

“Maybe they’re in between jobs, or they’re truly just doing it as supplemental income,” says Lindsey Cameron, an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of Business. “[Those] people are going to be less vested into the platform and less vested into getting rights for workers.” DoorDash estimates that 90% of dashers spend less than 10 hours per week delivering. Gopuff says that 70% of drivers work less than 20 hours.

Flexibility and fast cash are bringing a lot of new recruits into gig work, especially delivery services such as Cornershop and Postmates (both of which are owned by Uber), DoorDash, Gopuff, Grubhub, Instacart, Shipt, and Uber Eats. In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic prompted more people to order delivery, Instacart expanded its pool of shoppers from about 200,000 to about 500,000 in a matter of weeks. As the economy opened up in 2021, demand for grocery delivery tapered off, but the pool of drivers remains the same.

Workers aren’t just coming in from traditional job sectors but also from ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber, says Harry Campbell, who covers the gig economy through his media company the Rideshare Guy. (Uber won’t say how many drivers work for it in rideshare or food delivery, but reports that it’s taken on 640,000 new drivers since January.)

DIVIDED POLITICS

Views on economics—and associated politics—divide gig workers. While pro-strike activists demand reforms, other workers have a free-market philosophy, rooted in the nature of freelance work.

“You strike when you want to protest your boss,” says Labinski. “When you’re a self-employed gig worker, you are your own boss. So you’re only punishing yourself.”

Striking gig workers “want to have their cake and eat it too,” says Chad Polenz, a Florida-based delivery driver who covers the industry on his YouTube channel GigTube. “They want all the benefits and protections of being a W-2 [on-staff] employee, but they want all the freedom of being a 1099 independent contractor. And you can’t have it both ways.”

Working mainly DoorDash and Instacart, Polenz reckons that he makes from about $20 to over $30 per hour, depending on the day. And he agrees with gig-worker activists that Instacart pay has declined over the years. (An Instacart representative told Fast Company that the earnings formula has stayed the same since February 2019.) Yet Polenz is not joining the strikes and protests.

For Polenz, it’s partly about politics. “The spokespeople for the Gig Workers Collective, they’re all like Bernie Sanders-type people, antifa-type people, BLM-type people,” he says. Gig Workers Collective founder Vanessa Bain has the terms “BLM,” “Antifa,” and “Capitalism Ruins Everything Around Me,” in her Twitter bio. Willy Solis’s Twitter page features a photo of Bernie Sanders. As a libertarian, Polenz doesn’t feel welcome. He doesn’t agree with the typical slant of press coverage either.

“The media have a more critical perspective on gig work,” says Wharton professor Cameron. “And when I started actually interviewing drivers, a lot of them have very different experiences,” she says, describing the research for her 2021 study “‘Making Out’ While Driving.”

For some, gig work has been a step up from low-skilled and dangerous jobs that often paid less. One immigrant Cameron spoke to described himself as “living the American dream,” as a gig worker. Far from anti-capitalist, some workers see themselves in partnership with the gig companies. Cameron spoke to a rideshare driver who told her, “It’s a pleasure to work with them. To work with them, because we’re partners, so I don’t say work for them.”

THE PR BENEFITS OF STRIKING

While strikes and protests may not substantially slow the gig companies’ business, they do generate publicity that affects politicians. “Some of the strikes have really functioned to bring attention to the issues facing gig workers,” says Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. “And the work and organization of gig workers had an effect on California passing AB5.”

He’s referring to a 2019 California law that classified gig workers as employees. It entitled them to protections and benefits, such as workers comp, unemployment insurance, paid sick and family leave, and health insurance. The law was spearheaded by Lorena Gonzalez, the former head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, who was elected to the California State Assembly in 2013.

Jacobs also cites the influence of strikes in Seattle and New York City. In 2020, Seattle passed ordinances that guaranteed premium pay for food-delivery workers and paid sick leave for all gig workers. In September, New York City passed six laws to protect food-delivery workers, including providing better information about assignments and tips. It also launched a study to determine the minimum pay for couriers.

But politics and public opinion are fickle. In 2020, voters in famously progressive California overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, which undid the AB5 protections. (They may have been swayed by a $206 million campaign funded by Uber, DoorDash, Lyft, Instacart, and Postmates.) A recent court ruling held that Prop 22 is unconstitutional, but nonemployee status of gig workers persists.

Gopuff drivers stage a protest at company headquarters on November 23, 2021.

 [Photo: courtesy of Working Washington]

A strike is “definitely bad publicity for Instacart or whatever company,” says Polenz. “But the public has a very short memory. So after like a week or two, people just forget about it.”

The tech industry is full of companies that can weather negative publicity. (Think Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber, and so many more.) Consumers may sympathize with downtrodden workers. But the utility and convenience of these services make it hard for them to break up with the companies, and hard for governments to exert much control.

Organized labor has been the most effective means to truly turn the direction of a company. But it requires overwhelming numbers. With a huge surplus of labor and scant appetite for activism among their ranks, gig workers are mightily challenged to change their predicament.

This article has been updated to reflect additional input from Gopuff.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Captain is a business, technology, and science journalist based in North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter @seancaptain.

INCO STRIKE
Memory Lane: The 1958 miners' strike, or the year Sudbury almost didn't celebrate Christmas

Vicki Gilhula

SUDBURY.COM



 Members of Mine Mill Local 598 were on strike for three months in 1958. 

The strike was settled days before Christmas. 

Greater Sudbury Public Library collection

At a children's party in December 1958, a five-year-old whispered her Christmas wish to Santa Claus. She wanted what everyone in Sudbury wanted: an end to the strike at Inco.*

Just days before Christmas, Mine Mill Local 598 president Mike Solski and national president Nels Thibault returned by train to Sudbury from Toronto to announce an agreement had been reached with a three-year contract and a six-per-cent wage increase over three years on offer.

A small group of 100 people braved -28 C temperatures to welcome the men at the downtown train station. They sang "Solidarity" and hoisted Solski on their shoulders.

Sudbury.com invites readers to share memories of the Strike of 1958, and in particular, stories of kindness and charity in a time of hardship. Memories can be sent to mgentili@sudbury.com or vgilhula@gmail.com. A follow-up article will be published later this month.

Most miners, as well as city politicians, did not think there was going to be a strike. There had been labour peace since Mine Mill signed its first contract in 1944. The company had offered wage increases in all previous contracts.

Earlier in 1958, Inco laid off 1,300 workers and another 300 after contract talks began. At the time of the strike, miners were working a 32-hour week as an alternative to losing another 2,500 jobs.

The union asked for a 10-per-cent increase on the hourly rate. Inco's opening offer was no wage increase in keeping with the Conservative government's “Hold the Line on Wages” policy during an economic recession.

As autumn approached, union leaders asked members for a strike mandate. They voted 83 per cent in favour of a strike action during a vote held Sept. 12 and Sept. 13. When contract negotiations broke down Sept. 16, the union called for a strike.

The impact of a strike at the city's biggest employer was almost impossible to imagine.

Mayor Joe Fabbro called an emergency council meeting to ask the Ontario minister of labour to intervene and reopen talks.

The mayor also called for a special day of prayer on Sunday, Sept. 21 to ask for guidance and help to find a solution to the labour troubles.

Politicians and prayers could not stop pickets from being set up Sept. 24 at Copper Cliff, Creighton, Levack, Garson, Frood-Stobie and Coniston. An estimated 14,000 workers in Sudbury and 1,200 in Port Colborne were now dependent on strike pay.

Meanwhile, Inco had a stockpile of nickel that could last until spring. How long the strike would continue was anyone's guess.

Miners' wives were called into action. They went out to work if they could find jobs. They organized clothing drives and made sandwiches and coffee for the men at union halls in Sudbury, Garson, Chelmsford, Coniston and Creighton.

December 1958 was colder than usual with temperatures 17 degrees below normal. In the weeks before Christmas, Mine Mill handed out 8,000 food vouchers, The Salvation Army and city churches collected food, fuel and clothing for strikers' families.

Sudbury Barbershop Singers raised $15,000 during the holiday season to purchase toys for children. This was about 50 per cent more than the year before.

Christ the King Church started an adopt-a-family program. Unions in Toronto, Hamilton, Guelph and Peterborough donated 58 tons of food.

Local businesses made donations of cash and supplies. Some companies cancelled staff holiday parties and gave the funds to those in need. Families borrowed money from family and friends.

The contract was ratified Dec .22. Even the most cynical observer would have to admit the end of the three-month strike seemed like a Christmas miracle.

On Christmas Eve stores in Sudbury were particularly busy with last-minute shoppers. Churches were filled to capacity the next morning.

Community leaders had been afraid Sudbury would be crushed by a strike at Inco. An estimated $8 million in purchasing power was lost, but no business bankruptcies were reported.

People moved away to find work elsewhere. Some families lost their homes. There was an increase in requests for social assistance and the poverty rate increased by 10 per cent. But as The Globe and Mail reported Dec. 22, 1958, no one starved or froze to death. No one had their heat, hydro or telephone cut off.

Mine Mill Local 598 was left almost bankrupt and this set the stage for the later raids by the United Steelworkers of America.

Sudbury had survived its worst nightmare although it would take at least a generation before the community would heal the divisions caused by the 1958 strike.

Vicki Gilhula is a Sudbury freelance writer and a former editor of Northern Life and Sudbury Living magazine. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.

Sources
* The Globe and Mail, Godfrey Hudson, (Dec. 22, 1958), Quiet Elation in Mining Belt: End of Strike Brings Thanksgiving Prayers in Sudbury.
The Globe and Mail, Wilfred List, (Sept. 18, 1958), Walkout set for Sept. 24: Nickel strike by 15,000 alarms Sudbury.
The Globe and Mail, Muriel Snider,(Dec. 23 1958), Sudbury's Independence: The 'Prestige' strike left city apathetic.
The Globe and Mail, Joan Hollobon. (Dec.16, 1958), Financial blow: Sudbury residents facing bleak Christmas as result of Inco strike.
The Globe and Mail, Inco strike hit hearts and minds, survey shows, (Dec. 22, 1958).

Cereal Killers: How 80-Hour Weeks and a Caste System Pushed Kellogg's Workers to Strike

After decades on the losing end, company workers are demanding a better deal. The cereal giant has other plans

LONG READ

By STEPHEN RODRICK

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

OMAHA — The shelves at the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union Local 50 are lined with boxes of Kellogg’s products that the union members and their mothers, brothers, and grandfathers have packed over the past century. A Froot Loops box commemorating the 2012 Olympics sits next to Special K Plus, a cereal that for some reason comes in a milk carton. A toy truck delivers Corn Flakes. Still, what catches your eye is a box featuring an impossibly cute boy slurping up his Rice Krispies. No one knows when exactly the box is from — probably the early 20th century — but it conjures a homier time for the company. That’s when company founder W.K. Kellogg was asked about profits and said, “I’ll invest my money in people.”

That was a long time ago. Now, the investment only goes to certain people, like Kellogg CEO Steve Cahillane. He brings in nearly $12 million a year in compensation, nearly 280 times the company average.

The workers? They’ve time-traveled to William Blake’s dark-satanic-mills era of factory work, where a purposely understaffed labor force­ endures, according to union workers, 72- to 84-hour work weeks — not a typo — that includes mandated overtime and a point system that dings you if you dare beg off to go watch your son’s Little League game. (Kellogg’s claims its employees only work 52 to 56 hours a week and 90 percent of overtime is voluntary, a claim BCTGM workers hotly dispute.)

“The worst is when you work a 7-to-7 and they tell you to come back at 3 a.m. on a short turnaround,” says Omaha BCTGM president Daniel Osborn, a mechanic at the plant. “You work 20, 30 days in a row and you don’t know where work and your life ends and begins.”

In 2021, as a potential strike loomed, Kellogg’s stopped hiring workers when others retired or quit. The reasoning, the workers say, was twofold: It meant that the company would spend less on benefits and that there would be fewer workers to man picket lines in the case of a strike.

“There’s been times during Covid when we were 100 workers under what we should have,” says Osborn, a man with close cropped blond hair and a quiet disposition that runs counter to the image of the burly union leader. He is 47 and has worked for Kellogg’s for 18 years, often 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

In 2015, he gave more than just his time. Osborn was looking forward to a Colorado vacation when he was called into the heat and white noise of the factory floor to fix a high-speed engine lathe. With his right hand inside, the machine bucked and broke his index finger and his wrist in half. It took five surgeries to get him back to a semblance of whole.

That was the same year Kellogg forced through a wage cut that divided 1,400 workers into a caste system that benefited stockholders but devastated employees. Claiming that cereal sales were down, the company threatened to close down two factories if the union didn’t accept a two-tier pay system. Veteran workers would keep “legacy status” and their salaries and benefits, but new hires would, according to the union, pay $300 more a month for their health benefits and would be paid an hourly rate as much as a third less than their more-senior union brothers and sisters.

Here’s an example: A line packager in the first tier could make around $30 an hour, while newbies make $19.50 an hour dealing with the same dystopian working conditions. Over the course of a year, the new employee would make $30,000 to $40,000 less a year for the same job, depending on the amount of overtime. The two-tier system has become a standard tool used to destroy the working class in modern America, particularly in the auto industry. The union, fearful of losing half their jobs, conceded and ratified the contract.

The message to workers was a simple one that American laborers have been hearing for decades across the country: You will not enjoy the middle-class lifestyle that your parents did working on these very same machines. Well, unless you work 72 hours a week.

Kellogg’s did offer a fig leaf, promising that every time an old-tier worker retired, a new-tier worker would be advanced into the higher-paying tier, a one-for-one deal. But the company had bureaucratic ways to prevent that from happening, including classifying mechanics like Osborn outside the purview of the tier system. The exchange rate was closer to one promotion for every three retiring old-tier workers.

“The union agreed to a two-tiered system in 2015 to help address rising labor costs, which were out of sync with the market and the rest of our network,” Kellogg’s spokesperson Kris Bahner told me. “We paid a $15,000 signing bonus to each hourly cereal employee in exchange for these changes. We [have] presented a concept that provides immediate ‘graduation’ to legacy for all employees with four or more years of service.”

That’s not the way the workers see it.

Workers from a Kellogg’s cereal plant picket along the main rail lines leading into the facility, on Oct. 6, 2021, in Omaha. The Kellogg Co. has filed a lawsuit against its local union, complaining that striking workers are blocking entrances to its cereal plant and intimidating replacement workers who are entering the plant.
Grant Schulte/AP

“You sign on at a place like Kellogg’s, and you know they basically own your life,” says Osborn, flexing his repaired hand. “You decide it is OK because you do it to support your family and give them a good life.” He stares down at his constantly buzzing phone. “But it has to be a relationship where you’re valued, and the company doesn’t look to squeeze out every last drop of profit at your expense.”

Osborn’s buddy Jeff Jens has been listening and sighs under his breath. He is the prototypical American union worker, a tatted-up bear of a man who walked the picket line in a driving rainstorm last night, his clothes and skin soaked to the bone. He looks like he could overturn a Chevy Blazer with his bare hands, but he is a sweetheart concerned about his kids and his legacy. His family, including two uncles, has 150 years of work experience at Kellogg’s — 46 for his father.

“The whole reason I came in was because it was a family,” says Jens. “You felt good about working somewhere your dad and his brothers worked. You almost had to know somebody or have family there to get in. They treated you with decency.”


Osborn laughs. “It used to be that you’d get hundreds of applicants for six openings. Now, they’ll take you if you can fog a mirror, and that’s because of how they treat us.”

Still, it is 2021. There’s a labor shortage and Covid-era cereal sales are booming. The company just announced more than $4 billion in gross profits. If there was ever a time for workers to regain what has been lost, it is right now. Remarkably, Kellogg’s first offered a contract that made all new workers part of the lower tier with no chance of advancement.

Kellogg workers responded by striking on Oct. 5. Since then, the company has brought in strikebreakers that it has put up at the local Doubletree Hotel, paying them $30 an hour and giving them a $75 per diem. Alas, their dedication to their craft has been less than that of union members. Videos have emerged purporting to show fistfights on the factory floor amid rumors of scabs being sacked for indolence.

The idea that their Froot Loop lords would bargain in good faith quickly evaporated, with the union anticipating that Kellogg’s would just increase the importing of cereal from their non-union Mexico plants to make up for any domestic shortfall. Shortly after the strike began, management cut off their health care, and workers were forced to pay up to $2,980 in COBRA payments, something not even John Deere management dared pull during its recent strike. (I checked with Kellogg’s about whether health benefits had been eliminated. Bahner responded succinctly: “Correct.”)

Osborn has three kids and a wife, and so far, they’re rolling the dice without insurance. “I’m just hoping to ride it out and this gets settled. He tells me his adolescent daughter — who needs special medication for a preexisting condition — is having anxiety over the cost of her meds. He has to tell her repeatedly it will be OK.

That night, I meet Daniel outside the factory where union workers walk the picket line. Whether for safety or a torture device out of The Manchurian Candidate, Kellogg’s has illuminated the area with giant floodlights that gives the spot an eerie day-for-night feeling. Billy Bragg’s “There Is Power in a Union” blasts from a sound system. I talk to one old-timer, and he asks about other stories I’ve done. I mention a piece on Virgin magnate Richard Branson shooting himself into space. The man gives a joyless laugh. “We got a man going into space, and we got a company cutting off our insurance. This country is heading in a shit direction.”

A little later, I meet John Rosenthal Jr., a modern Alexey Stakanov, a mythically hardworking Soviet coal miner of the Stalin era. Rosenthal claims he worked over 350 days last year. (Another worker showed me his timecard; it was just a line of 84-hours, seven-day-a-week entries, for months on end.)

“You take one day off and your whole sleep schedule is screwed,” jokes Rosenthal. “I tell my wife on my day off we’ve got to keep me moving or I’m just going to pass out on the couch.”

He turns serious. “I do this so my wife can be a stay-home mom. Nowadays, to do that you have to work every day.” Rosenthal is a second-generation Kellogg’s worker, following his father into the plant. His dad still works there, when he is not getting chemo treatment that he now must pay for with his exorbitant COBRA insurance.

Michael Shlee, a bulk unloader at a Kellogg’s cereal plant, pickets outside the facility’s main entrance on Oct. 6, 2021, in Omaha. Workers have gone on strike after a breakdown in contract talks with company management.
Grant Schulte/AP

Sadly, fairness isn’t a component of American exceptionalism. For 30 years, politicians from both parties preached about the benefits of a global economy that to workers largely meant getting kicked in the groin repeatedly, taking lower wages as corporations threatened to send their jobs overseas. Now, Kellogg’s is making billions and — with the labor shortage — it is the first time that circumstances have favored labor in decades. The American labor movement has claimed it doesn’t want a bigger slice of the pie, it wants a bigger pie. It’s nice rhetoric, but here in Omaha the workers would settle for their slice of pie being upgraded to a regular piece from a child’s portion.

That isn’t Kellogg’s take. A few days before Thanksgiving, the company and union broke off negotiations claiming they were at an impasse. The company of “we invest in our people” went thermonuclear, announcing it would begin to hire permanent replacement workers, the ultimate fuck-you to labor. Hiring permanent replacement workers has been a harsh step that Congress has periodically contemplated making illegal but never had the votes to change. It begins the tit-for-tat phase of the strike with the union filing multiple charges against Kellogg’s with the National Labor Relations Board for bargaining in bad faith. If the NLRB upholds even one of the charges, Kellogg’s ability to legally replace union workers with permanent replacement workers is eliminated. Furthermore, the first plank of any future agreement between Kellogg’s and the BCTGM will certainly force the company to rehire all of its union workers.

Still, it is a frightening development. The Nebraska wind is picking up and winter snow is imminent as BCTGM workers face a Christmas without any presents under their trees. Back on the picket line, it’s near midnight. Nearby, an SUV breaks the night silence, honking its horn in support. John Rosenthal digs his hands deeper into his jacket trying to stay warm while his union brothers down energy drinks and chain-smoke the night away. He makes a joke about his kids freaking out because he is home so much. But immediately his smile fades.

“We’re just looking for something that’s fair,” says Rosenthal. He shrugs his shoulders and looks over at the factory that consumes over half of his waking hours.

“Something fair doesn’t seem like asking for too much.”

People Are Spamming Kellogg’s Job Applications in Solidarity with Striking Workers

r/antiwork is trying to flood Kellogg's applications system after the company announced it would replace 1,400 striking workers.

By Samantha Cole
9.12.21


Kellogg is seeking people to work in its factories to replace union workers who are striking for better wages and working conditions—and people on the antiwork subreddit are flooding the company’s job portal website with fake applications in solidarity with those workers.

In October, Kellogg’s workers shut down factories in cereal production facilities in Battle Creek, MI, Lancaster, PA, Memphis, TN and Omaha, NE. The striking workers are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union; they’ve been in negotiations with the company since September, after Kellogg's proposed pay and benefits cuts while forcing workers to work severe overtime as long as 16-hour-days for seven days a week. Some workers stayed on the job for months without a single day off. The company refuses to meet the union’s proposals for better pay, hours, and benefits, so they went on strike.

Earlier this week, the company announced it would permanently replace 1,400 striking workers.

In a Reddit post in the r/antiwork subreddit—which recently mobilized to hack businesses’ receipt printers to send out anti-work messaging—the user BloominFunions listed each of the job application sites and suggested that spamming the systems would throw some grit into Kellogg’s gears.

“It’s time to clog their toilet of an application pipeline,” they wrote. “Using the job posting links above, submit an application for one or more sites. When you apply, pretend you’re a resident of one of the cities with a Kellogg strike (Omaha, Battle Creek, Lancaster or Memphis) and make up an address and phone number using the zip codes and area codes listed below. This way they can’t filter out our apps easily.”

They also suggested downloading a sample resume from Google Images to send with the fake applications.

The job applications blame the union workers for labor shortages at the factories. “The Unions representing Kellogg employees in these plants are on strike, and we are looking for employees to permanently replace them, joining hundreds of Kellogg salaried employees, hourly employees, and contractors to keep the lines running,” the job descriptions state. These job listings have been up since at least October.

‘Our Future Is Not for Sale’: America Is Witnessing the Biggest Strike Wave in a Generation

LAUREN KAORI GURLEY19.10.21

"We're working 12 to 16 hours a day to meet the increased demand in the cereal market," Kerry Williams, an 18-year employee of Kellogg’s, told Motherboard in October at the start of their strike. "I’ve worked for two years with no weekends off other than vacation days. You miss out on a lot—family time, don’t get to see kids play sports, don't get to see your spouse."

Reddit users band together showing support for Kellogg’s workers on strike

By Julian Paras,
FOX 13 Memphis WHBQ
57 minutes ago


MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The strike against Kellogg is garnering national attention.

People on the internet want to show support for the workers, and that’s exactly what’s happening here on Reddit.

After workers voted down a new labor deal, Kellogg’s said it would hire replacements at four plants, including in Memphis.

With more than 50,000 reactions and more than 3,000 comments, Reddit users want a piece of the action on behalf of the workers.

It’s something Donnie Millbrooks, a striking Kellogg’s worker in Memphis, said he didn’t know about until I told him.

“That’s my first time hearing about it, but it’s actually a good thing,” said Millbrooks.

The Reddit thread wants people to apply online sending hundreds, maybe thousands of applications to locations in Memphis, Nebraska, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Through this process, they hope to do one thing, and that is clogging the application pipeline.

Supporters said it gives strikers more ground to stand on against Kellogg’s.

“I think it’s great. I mean, Kellogg’s is doing this to their people, so they’re giving them a taste of their own medicine,” said Supporter Stephanie Sanderlin.

One striker said the support is appreciated but could be counter-productive depending on how it plays out. They continue to spread this message as they receive this support.

“We really want people to understand what we’re out here fighting for because if it’s not us it’s going to be somebody else,” said Millbrooks.

Millbrooks believes a response like the one on Reddit is accepted.

“Don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but it supports and we’re good with that,” said Millbrooks.

Kellogg’s released a statement saying they are ready to hire and are expecting new employees very soon.

Millbrooks said the strike will continue, and they said if Kellogg’s is willing to talk, then they’re willing to get back to work.

“We’re ready. Y’all call us tomorrow. We’re ready to go. Let us know where we got to go. We’re there,” said Millbrooks.

PERSPECTIVE

Mobilize the working class against the strikebreaking drive at Kellogg’s!

Tom Hall

The World Socialist Web Site urges workers everywhere to come to the defense of 1,400 strikers at Kellogg’s in the United States, who are being threatened with being permanently replaced by management after they overwhelmingly rejected a sellout contract on Sunday.

The move to break the strike through mass firing amounts to a declaration of war on workers everywhere. Using the tactics appropriate to a dictatorship, management is declaring that workers must accept what they are offered, and that any resistance will be met by company and state violence to forcefully remove workers from their jobs and strip them of their livelihoods.

The defense of the Kellogg strike is an urgent task for all workers, who must answer these threats with a national and international campaign. A network of rank-and-file solidarity committees must be built, drawing together Kellogg's workers around the world and workers across different industries and prepare common action to defeat this strikebreaking assault.

Striking Kellogg's workers stand outside the company's cereal plant in Omaha, Neb., Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/ Josh Funk)

Overwhelming experience has shown that the unions will do nothing to defend the strike; if this attack is to be defeated, workers must organize the counter-attack themselves.

Workers everywhere will recognize issues in the Kellogg’s strike that are universal. Kellogg’s workers are fighting against poverty wages, brutal working hours, and the continued exposure of workers to infection and death from COVID-19. The contract they rejected included wage increases of only 3 percent, less than half the current rate of inflation. Worse, it would have eliminated caps on the number of second-tier “transitional” workers that the company hires.

Significantly, the rejection came even though the company had offered to move many current second-tier workers up into the higher-paid “legacy” tier, in a transparent attempt to prey upon the economic insecurity of the new hires and pit young and old workers against each other. The vote shows that workers saw through this and rejected this divide-and-conquer strategy.

That the deal was even brought to a vote was a betrayal of the more than two-month-long strike by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM), which is functioning as management’s police force. The BCTGM attempted unsuccessfully to ram this contract past workers as quickly as possible by forcing them to vote immediately following informational meetings last Sunday.

The BCTGM has not even acknowledged the move to hire permanent strikebreakers on either its website or its social media pages. This silence bespeaks consent. It is just as determined to shut down the strike as management is and will cross any boundary in order to accomplish this.

This is not the first time that such threats have been made or carried out this year. For months, management at the St. Vincent’s hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, has been hiring replacements to break a strike by nurses that has lasted most of the year. Management also threatened striking distillery workers at Heaven Hill, Kentucky, with mass firings this October. At John Deere, executives said they would not rule out replacing strikers. In each of these cases, the unions did nothing to oppose these threats, or even to inform other workers about them.

The turn towards open strikebreaking is a return to the methods used by the ruling class in the 1980s to shatter the resistance of workers to mass layoffs and wage cuts. It was pioneered by the Reagan administration to defeat the PATCO air traffic controllers strike 40 years ago in 1981.

The critical role was played by the AFL-CIO union bureaucracy, which secretly reassured Reagan that it would not do anything to defend the air traffic controllers, in spite of overwhelming support in the working class for a general strike. This opened up a period in which unions collaborated with management to defeat one strike after another, while carving out for themselves a piece of the action by establishing corrupt corporatist financial relations with the companies that gave them a direct stake in enforcing concessions.

Since then, the unions have worked jointly with the companies to drive down conditions in the United States and around the world to a virtual subsistence level. At Kellogg’s, the workforce in the US is only a fraction of what it was 25 years ago. Working days of 12 and even 16 hours are the norm, as they are for millions of other workers in the so-called wealthiest country in the world. This enabled the ruling class to enrich themselves to new heights, and inequality has reached the highest levels on record.

The ruling class, and in particular the Democratic Party, sees in the unions a critical instrument for the suppression of the class struggle. President Biden, who never tires of calling himself the most “pro-union president in American history” and who sent the Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to the Kellogg’s picket lines in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has not issued a word of acknowledgment of the strikebreaking threat by management.

Nor has Bernie Sanders, the so-called “democratic socialist” who repeatedly gave BCTGM officials such as Trevor Bidelman a platform to posture as leaders of the working class. Sanders has not even acknowledged the outcome of the vote.

Pseudo-left groups in and around the Democratic Party such as Labor Notes, who continuously promote the BCTGM and the union bureaucracy as a whole and never hinted beforehand that the contract workers were voting on was a sellout, were caught flat-footed by the rejection, and insincerely hailed it after the fact in a bid to maintain their credibility.

The ruling class is terrified that the instruments and mechanisms through which it has suppressed the class struggle, allowing for its massive accumulation of wealth, are breaking down. It is holding in reserve instruments of violence and repression to deploy as needed, and the action at Kellogg’s to break the strike should be seen as a warning.

But without underestimating the danger at Kellogg’s, if management believes that they can resort to open strikebreaking without provoking massive opposition within the working class, they are badly mistaken. It is no longer the 1980s. The period in which the unions were able to carry out betrayals with impunity is over.

A growing wave of rebellion against these outlived organizations, decades in the making, is now underway, and a new atmosphere of determination and boldness is taking hold within the working class.

The mood of anger and opposition is fueled by disastrous social conditions that have been immensely worsened by the criminal response by the ruling class to the pandemic. The subordination of all public health policy to profits and share values has not only led to 800,000 deaths in the US, but the emergence of new, hyper-infectious variants such as Omicron.

While a handful of the super rich are making more money than ever before, the massive transfer of cash into Wall Street is producing rising prices throughout the economy, worsening conditions for billions of workers around the world.

The Kellogg’s strike is part of a broader upsurge in the working class, including strikes earlier in the year at Volvo Trucks and John Deere, and ongoing walkouts by teachers and students in Detroit public schools. The rejection of concessions contracts by nine-to-one margins or even more has become a regular phenomenon over the course of the year, as the trade unions respond with ever more blatant betrayals.

But these desperate maneuvers have only succeeded in obliterating whatever residual illusions remained. Their attempts to sow demoralization and pessimism among workers have not succeeded. Instead, whatever the immediate outcome in each individual struggle, the opposition as a whole continues to grow, tempered by experience.

This is being expressed by the rapid formation of independent rank-and-file committees by workers across the world to oppose the betrayals of the unions and take the initiative into their own hands. At John Deere, Volvo Trucks, Kaiser, auto parts company Dana and elsewhere, the committees have rapidly established themselves as poles of attraction for the opposition, helping workers to not only resist the union sellouts but to organize their own response.

Workers cannot allow the strike at Kellogg’s to be crushed! Rank-and-file solidarity committees should be established at every factory and workplace to prepare action to defend the workers against management’s police-state operations. Kellogg’s workers themselves must form their own rank-and-file committee to take the strike out of the hands of the union and make the broadest appeal to the entire working class.

New Brunswick nurses vote overwhelmingly in favour of strike

Social Sharing

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Email

• Reddit

• LinkedIn

Three bargaining units return votes of up to 96% in favour,

 with both sides returning to talks on Tuesday

Marie Sutherland · CBC News · Posted: Dec 06, 2021 

New Brunswick Nurses Union president Paula Doucet said the mood was 'very jubilant' during vote counting on Monday. (Tori Weldon)

New Brunswick nurses have voted resoundingly in favour of strike action.

About 9,000 members of the New Brunswick Nurses Union began voting last week, with votes being counted Monday at the Delta Hotel in Fredericton.

By late afternoon, union president Paula Doucet confirmed the results of the three bargaining units' votes — with a combined vote of 92 per cent in favour.

"Our nursing home nurses voted 89 per cent in favour ... Our Part 3 nurses — so all of Vitalité, Horizon and [Extramural] — was  91 per cent  and our nurse managers and supervisors 96 per cent," Doucet told CBC News, noting the mood was "very jubilant."

• Nurses say working conditions have reached 'crisis'

The union and the province are to return to the bargaining table on Tuesday, the first time they have done so since late September.

Doucet declined to comment Monday on what the union will be seeking during bargaining, citing a media blackout. 

"But I think anybody just has to look at recent media reports of working conditions" across the province, she said.

"Right now for a nurse in New Brunswick, it hasn't been great."

Doucet has often warned of the pressures of nursing shortages and the increasing reality of burnout, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

No job action planned at this time

Doucet noted no strike or other job action is planned at this time.

"We would have to give seven days notice before we take any job action," she said. "In the spirit of going back to the table, that would be where we would want to get our deal, is at the table and not out on the sidewalk."

Erika Jutras, communications manager for the province's Finance and Treasury Board, told CBC News that the province would likewise not be making any statement while talks are ongoing.

The union represents 9,000 licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and nurse practitioners. They have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2018, and members have twice rejected tentative agreements.

Monday's vote comes just weeks after a strike vote by provincial workers who are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

More than 20,000 public servants, including school bus drivers, educational support staff and workers in transportation, corrections and the community college system, went on strike in late October for more than two weeks. 

The province ordered striking health-care workers, which did not include nurses, back to work using an emergency order. CUPE is challenging the order in court.

The other locals remained on strike. All but one local voted to accept a contract proposal worked out during the strike.

QUEBEC

SAQ workers reject agreement in principle, meaning strike might resume


Selena Ross CTVNews

Montreal.ca Digital Reporter
Monday, December 6, 2021 

MONTREAL -- SAQ workers have rejected the agreement in principle their union reached last week, meaning they may be back on strike.

The 800 workers had temporarily suspended their strike while they waited to vote, but now it's unclear if they'll be stay on the job while their negotiators head back to the table.

The tentative agreement was reached on Nov. 29, last Monday, the union CUPE wrote in a release on Dec. 6.

"The agreement was presented to a general meeting and the employees rejected the agreement by 86 per cent," CUPE said.

The union represents all 800 warehouse and delivery workers for the liquor-control Crown corporation. Their walk-off left many SAQ outlets' shelves bare.

“We had suspended a strike in order to give negotiations one last chance," said Michael Gratton, a union advisor for CUPE.

After the rejection vote, "we will meet tomorrow morning with the executive committee of the union to determine what our next actions will be. Obviously, we will also contact the employer," Gratton said.

The union said its representatives won't be giving any interviews until they have set their action plan.

Related Stories
Surprise! Hundreds of SAQ workers hold unannounced strike Tuesday
Some Montreal bars running dry amid ongoing SAQ strike
Union suspends strike for SAQ workers until November 29 at 5 a.m.
SAQ, warehouse workers reach agreement in principle