011110 UFCW Says Campbell's Locks Workers In Texas

Washington - The following was released by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW):

Barricades at the gates of Campbells' Paris, Texas plant are both a symbol and the reality of management's hostile and confrontational approach to dealing with the plant's more than 1,000 workers. After more than thirty years of mutual respect and positive working relations, management has gone on a rampage against the workers, their pay and their benefits.

Since Oct. 4, 2001, workers have been locked out of their plant, their jobs and their livelihoods. Campbells' is demanding abandonment of the guaranteed benefit pension plan, a one time bonus instead of a pay raise and tripling the cost of family health care coverage. And Campbells' won't let workers work until they accept management's demands.

Texas workers seem to have been singled out in an apparent effort to break workers' resolve to maintain their pensions and affordable health benefits. In contrast, Campbells' reached an agreement with workers in February of this year that kept the defined benefit pension and gave pay raises in each year of the contract at the company's Napoleon, Ohio plant. The workers in both Ohio and Texas are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).

The Texas workers are holding strong on the pension and health care issues. UFCW Local 540 has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), charging that Campbell's is illegally refusing to bargain in good faith, and expects that the labor board will take action to force the company to respect the legal rights of workers.

The Paris, Texas dispute reflects a national struggle between workers and management over the issue of defined benefit pensions. Corporate management, while protecting itself with gold-plated benefit and retirement packages, is playing a shell game with workers' retirement plans. On one hand, management is dumping its responsibility to provide retirement security with a real pension for workers, and then, on the other hand, is trying to redefine individual saving or cash balance plans with no guaranteed benefit as a "pension."

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has issued warnings to workers on the pitfalls of the corporate push to cash balance plans. The AARP referred to such plans as a "sleight of hand" under which "long term employees lose out." The AARP, as early as 1999, contended that some conversions to cash balance plans violate federal age discrimination laws.

An article by a leading consumer advocate, published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in September 2000, called "switching to cash balance plans" as one of the "most heinous of ...schemes" to ripoff worker pensions. The reality is that cash balance plans are not real pensions.

The cash balance plan demanded by Campbells' management would leave senior workers with less, and all workers with an insecure future. Under a cash balance plan, the company deposits a specified amount in an account for each worker. The company determines how the money is invested. And, in the case of the Campbells' proposal, the workers' money would be put in a low interest bearing account. Many senior workers, under the cash balance formula, will not have a retirement benefit equal to current plan, and younger workers could have too little in the plan to retire or could outlive the cash amount in the account. There is no predictable lifetime benefit.

Campbells' management is also demanding the effective elimination of affordable retiree health benefits. Instead of paying a portion of the insurance premium, nontaxable to the retiree, the company proposes to make a taxable cash payment to the retiree. The payment barely equals half of the cost of health insurance. For active workers, management would triple the cost of family health insurance coverage.

"The Campbells' workers are on the front line of the fight for retirement security. The battle being fought in Texas is a battle for all workers who hope to retire someday in dignity and with a decent standard of living. All 1.4 million UFCW members are rallying in the support of the Campbells' workers," said Bill Schmitz, UFCW International Vice President and Director of the union's Packing, Processing, and Manufacturing Division.

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