Nabisco workers on strike for better conditions

Portland, September 11 (RHC)--In U.S. labor news, Nabisco workers in five states remain on strike one month after workers at a Portland, Oregon, plant walked off the job to protest management’s demands for changes to work schedules and cuts to overtime pay. 

Some workers have been forced into 16-hour shifts during the pandemic; others were asked to work 12-hour shifts three to four days a week, including on weekends. 

Nabisco worker April Flowers-Lewis, who joined a picket line outside a Chicago plant, told reporters: “We have a family just as well as the people in human resources and management.  While we’re working on the weekend and being forced, they’re at home with their families.  We can’t even get a chance to enjoy birthday parties for our grandkids.  We can’t go away to take our kids to college, because we’re being forced to work.  We can’t enjoy our husbands, our spouses, because we’re at work.  By the time we get off work, it’s go home, go to sleep, try to fix up something to eat, get into bed and be back at work.”

Meanwhile, in Buffalo, New York, workers at five Starbucks locations have joined an unprecedented push to unionize the coffee and fast-food chain.  Members of the newly formed Starbucks Workers United have filed petitions for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board.  They say they’ve faced an intense union-busting effort by Starbucks corporate executives.