About the only thing the two sides in the Darigold labor dispute seem to agree on is that it is becoming costly for all concerned.
On Aug. 31 WestFarm Foods locked out 194 workers represented by Teamsters Local 66 at its Rainier Avenue and Issaquah Darigold plants and its lab on Elliott Avenue West. WestFarm Foods maintains that the union's failure to come to terms with the company left it with little choice but to operate the plants without the Local 66 workers. Without a new contract, the Teamsters could have walked out at any moment, the company says, leaving it with no way to process 700,000 gallons a day of its highly perishable product. So it began hiring replacement workers and brought in WestFarm Foods employees from its plants in other cities.
Local 66 leadership and workers picketing on Rainier Avenue say WestFarm Foods had been gearing up for the lockout, and it suspects the company of trying to break the union.
"The company is resolved to spend tens of millions of dollars to achieve the objective-that's to break the union," says Mark Jones, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 66. "They say we were demanding $1 million more than they were willing to give. And then they say they spent $30,000 a day in August in preparation for the walkout. So, they spent nearly a million dollars in August. So what does that tell you their motive is?"
The rubs appear to be job security and future increases in health-care benefits costs. Health plan costs have skyrocketed, having risen 20 percent in the past year alone, says Rae Klein, a WestFarm Foods spokesperson. The company proposes that the workers pay half of future health plan cost increases. The company had been paying 90 percent of the health plan costs, according to a WestFarm Foods statement released last Friday.
Klein says that WestFarm Foods wants the Local 66 workers back on the job. It would like to send its employees from other areas back home and the replacement workers on their way, she says, but the union leadership is getting in the way.
"Part of the problem is the Local 66 leadership, which is unable to deal with reality and bargain reasonably," Klein says. "We're anxious to have this situation over and have the workers back, but the union has some unrealistic economic proposals."
What's unrealistic is the absence of job security, according to the locked-out workers. They point to the company's termination of its truck drivers, who are now working under a Teamsters agreement with a trucking firm contracting with WestFarm Foods. The drivers were not crossing the picket line at the Rainier Avenue plant; they instead waited outside the plant while the trucks were driven onto South Andover Street.
"They want to be able to outsource," says Brent Fremmerlid, who, before the Labor Day weekend lockout, had worked at the Rainier Avenue plant. "Our jobs aren't protected. They want to contract out whenever they want to. They did that with the drivers."
"It's job security," says James Robinson, who has been with the company 15 years. "They got rid of the drivers. They do it without any concern for the employees."
And if the company accuses the union local's leadership of intransigence, it might also take a hard look at itself, Robinson suggests.
"This new management isn't like the old management," Robinson says. "Morale is down. The old management was more concerned about the company and the employees."
Klein says WestFarm Foods has reached contract settlements with Teamsters locals at its plants in the Washington cities of Lynden, Chehalis and Sunnyside, where 83 percent of workers approved the contracts.
"When workers at the other plants say, 'This is good for us, this is fair,' we don't know why we have a problem with Local 66," Klein says.
"The economic settlement offered to the rural locals has always been lower than that offered to the metropolitan locals" where living costs are higher, Jones says. "They are attempting to shove a rural settlement down the throats of our metropolitan members."
The Local 66 workers are seeing support from another group of union workers at its Seattle-area facilities. Some members of Operating Engineers Local 286 are honoring the Teamsters' pickets, and more may join them, once they've put in enough hours to maintain their health benefits, according to Jan Pelroy, the local's general vice president and business manager. His local's contract with WestFarm Foods is set to expire soon, Pelroy says, and he would like to have the Teamsters on his side.
"We see that the problems the Teamsters are having there are the same ones we'll be having in a few months," Pelroy says. "I sat in on some of the negotiations with the Teamsters. They're attacking the health benefits, for one thing ...Part of it is a long-term thing-every time we negotiate, they try to take more from the workers. In agreement after agreement, the workers lose."
WestFarm Foods extended another contract offer to Local 66 late last week, offering workers less than it had in its previous proposal. In a statement, the company says that the lower offer is necessary to keep WestFarm Foods competitive. It cites the recent demise of another local unionized dairy company, which it says strengthened WestFarm Foods' closest competitor, a non-union company that pays its workers considerably less than WestFarm Foods offers its employees. The company further asserts that it has lost business in some of its product lines, and that the cost of the dispute with Local 66 has been considerable.
The company is a co-op of 716 farmers, who have themselves been struggling with ongoing economic difficulties in their industry, Klein says. WestFarm Foods had to prepare for a walkout-"something Local 66 has indicated was likely as far back as March," the statement says-and which has left it with "costs far beyond what was anticipated" for "security; recruiting; hiring and training replacement workers; legal fees; freight; transportation and lodging for WestFarm Foods employees from other plants; and supplemental product purchased from other dairy processors."
Local 66's Jones says the latest offer is punitive.
"They put something out to punish us for not acquiescing to the last one," Jones says. "They gave us a bad [offer], then a worse one, then a worser one. It just strengthens the resolve of our members."
Jones says his union is prepared to turn up the heat.
"The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is making plans to hold this company accountable," Jones says. "All up and down the West Coast, everywhere they do business, you'll see picket signs."
WestFarm Foods is preparing for that.
In the statement, the company says, "Local 66 has indicated it will establish picket lines at the company's plants in Lynden and Chehalis. It is not known if employees at those locations will honor the picket lines, but the company has replacement workers in place to run those facilities if necessary."
In the meantime, the Teamsters Local 66 workers remain on the sidewalk, wondering if and when they'll see a steady paycheck.
"There is no greater pressure than that on the guy who is out," Pelroy says.
