![]() The workers are covered by a pattern agreement, meaning they have identical contracts, all of which expired earlier this summer. Nathan Williams, an oiler at the Richmond plant who has worked there for thirty years, told Vice that, during the pandemic, “Some people worked every day - 16 hours a day - for three months.” The strike has spread to Aurora, Colorado, and Richmond, Virginia. In the days since the roughly two hundred workers in Portland began their strike, other Nabisco bakery and production workers have followed them out the door. The Portland workers are members of Local 364 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), the same union that represents the Frito-Lay workers in Topeka. As the Northwest Labor Press noted, Nabisco CEO Dirk Van de Put received $18 million in compensation in 2020, 561 times that of the company’s median worker. While Nabisco, which is owned by parent company Mondelēz International (the company was spun off from snack giant Kraft Foods in 2012), saw profits nearly double in the latest quarter of 2021, its workers have seen none of that money, all while working through the pandemic. One worker told the Huffington Post that the changes could amount to a loss of $10,000 a year for some workers. Nabisco is also pushing for a two-tier health care plan, which would slot newer workers into a higher-cost deal while also serving to divide workers within the union. The workers say the company is pushing for an alternative workweek, a concession that would take away overtime pay for Saturdays and Sundays, with time paid at regular rates until a worker hits forty hours, regardless of the shift’s length or the day of the week. They have been working twelve-to-sixteen-hour shifts, with some working seven days a week. Workers at a Nabisco bakery in Portland, Oregon, went on strike on August 10. ![]() Now, workers are on strike at another snack-food company, one responsible for Oreos, Triscuits, Planters nuts, and Ritz crackers - Nabisco. When workers at a Frito-Lay production plant in Topeka, Kansas, went on strike last month, they threw into relief the fact that the increased pandemic-era snacking that has boosted profits for PepsiCo, Frito-Lay’s parent company, has come courtesy of working conditions so bad as to lead to suicides and divorces. ![]()
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