The Mott’s applesauce and apple juice workers held their picket line for 114 days. Dr Pepper Snapple bosses blinked on Sept. 13. That Monday, in the midst of the local apple harvest, DPS offered Local 220 of the Department Store union, which is a division of the Food and Commercial Workers union (RWDSU-UFCW), very different contract terms than the workers had rejected on May 23. Gone were demands for $1.50 an hour pay cut, with additional 50-cent cuts the next two years, for a total of $2.50 an hour. Gone were the demands for a pension freeze and a big jump in employee costs of medical care. Gone were DPS’s dreams of being able to run the plant with low-paid scab labor, jettison the skilled workers and kill the union. Instead DPS offered a wage freeze, with a $1,000 signing bonus, reduced pension contribution and a 401(k) plan for new hires, and 20 percent employee costs for medical care. Local 220 RWDSU-UFCW voted 185 to 62 to ratify the three-year contact on Sept. 13.
Though it wasn’t a clear-cut victory, the workers were able to stop a highly profitable company’s draconian attack. A very dangerous precedent would have been set for all workers in this recession if the strike had failed. But the workers are returning to work with …
http://www.workers.org/2010/us/picket_line_0923/
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