If WestFarm Foods and the Teamsters have gotten any closer to settling the lockout at the company's Darigold plants in Issaquah and on Rainier Avenue, there is little outward sign of it.
The nearly 200 locked-out Darigold workers in the Seattle area are represented by Teamsters Local 66, which is now operating under the trusteeship of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Teamsters Joint Council 28, which represents locals in Alaska and Washington state and is tending to the day-to-day operations of Local 66, put up pickets last Tuesday at WestFarm plants in Lynden and Chehalis, Wash., effectively putting the company on notice that Teamsters Locals 231 and 252 workers at those plants could walk out in a sympathy action.
WestFarm issued a statement March 10, stating that Teamsters at the Lynden and Chehalis plants had walked out on March 2 and returned to work on March 5, and that any further "intermittent" sympathy strikes are illegal. The statement says that workers participating in any further such actions "will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including discharge, since their intermittent strike activity is not protected under federal labor laws." The statement further threatens a lawsuit against the Teamsters should they continue in their calls for intermittent sympathy strikes, "to recover any damages caused by the improper strikes ... "
Scott Sullivan says that just isn't so.
"No, we don't think it's illegal," said Sullivan, a Joint Council 28 organizer. "Our attorneys feel we're on good, solid ground. Pickets went up on Tuesday [March 9]. We were scheduled to pull our people out Friday."
New strategies
But then the Teamsters tried another tactic. They appealed directly to WestFarm Foods member farmers.
"We had a meeting with the farmers in Sumas, Wash.," Sullivan said. "The Teamsters put out an invitation to the farmers and to John Underwood [a WestFarm vice president] to attend. Underwood declined the invitation. But the meeting with farmers took place. There was some frank discussion. The farmers got some information the [WestFarm] board of directors had not shared with them. They asked Garnet [Zimmerman, a Teamsters International vice president], as a show of good faith, if we would not walk out and take down the pickets."
And so they did.
"We can play that card later," Sullivan said.
Joel VanEtta, a WestFarm spokesman, said that Underwood declined the Teamsters invitation because it was a breach of protocol.
"Well, you know, there's an established process in place, the bargaining table," VanEtta said. "Mr. Underwood thought it would be better to work within that process."
But has the member farmers' faith in the company's handling of the labor dispute been at all shaken?
"The member farmers have supported the bargaining team," VanEtta said.
The Teamsters have for months now called for a consumer boycott of Darigold products. Sullivan said the union will now be urging a boycott of Haggen and Top Foods stores because WestFarm produces dairy products sold by those stores under their house brands.
"We're changing our tactics," Sullivan said. "We're going directly to a boycott of the Haggen/Top Foods stores. WestFarm makes their dairy products on a private label. Instead of just standing in front of Top Foods saying 'boycott [WestFarm products],' we're saying 'boycott Haggen/Top Foods.' "
WestFarm has consistently argued that interrupting its production schedule threatens its member farmers, whose cows produce milk, a highly perishable product, each and every day.
"Forcing us to bring in temporary workers and employees from our other plants every few days is clearly designed to disrupt operations and do financial damage," the WestFarm statement says.
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