Sugar Beet Labor Battles Spill Out Onto The National Stage

[Teamster Jeff]

Source: NPR

It's not just nutritionists who have a problem with sugar these days, so does organized labor. The AFL-CIO is calling for a boycott of one the country's biggest sugar producers, the American Crystal Sugar Company, based in Moorhead, Minn. American Crystal locked out 1,300 union workers more than a year ago, when those workers rejected the company's offer for a new contract. It has been operating with replacement workers ever since.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/19/163098202/sugar-beet-labor-battles-spill-out-onto-the-national-stage

[SemperEadem]

1. I've been weaning myself off of sugar

been doing honey and now I'm onto Stevia.

Sugar interferes with fat burning because it triggers insulin, which shuts down fat burning. Eat something sugary, and it'll be 3 days before fat burning kicks back in, that is, if you don't keep on consuming sugar.

[Teamster Jeff]

2. I never had a much of a sweet tooth

but I used to put suger in my coffee until I read about how bad it is for you.

[Brickbat]

3. Been boycotting since the lockout began, and I write the CEO a letter every time I buy a bag of

C&H. So sad all around.

[roody]

4. Sugar beets are almost all genetically modified.

If you want real sugar, you have to buy cane sugar.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

5. I only buy cane sugar...

... maybe it is me, but beet sugar tastes like dirt to me. So I have been boycotting American Crystal sugar for over a decade the way it is.

[Thor_MN]

11. No personal offense intended, but that is utter bullshit.

Sucrose is sucrose and it doesn't matter where is comes from. Sucrose is a double sugar, it is one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose linked together. It does not matter if the glucose comes from corn and the fructose come from elsewhere, It does not matter if the sucrose comes from beets, carrots, cane. It's the same thing and we eat too much of it.

[senseandsensibility]

6. Kick for the workers!

I support the boycott.

[Omaha Steve]

7. K&R!

[azurnoir]

8. Earlier this evening I ran this past my sons Grandparents

they live in Hillsboro ND where one of Crystal's plant is located, the strike has hurt the town and its people immensely, needless to say they had nothing good to say about the beet farmers who they say have bought up most of the land and are running the show which is destroying families and what is actually a nice little town, they fullly support the workers and said it was this that had a part in changing NoDak from red to blue (note I paraphrased and milded down what was said)

[Odin2005]

9. My dad is one of the locked out workers.

He finally gave up and found another job.

Fuck American Crystal Sugar!!!

[Teamster Jeff]

10. I'm glad things are working out for your dad

and yes Fuck American Crystal Sugar!

[senseandsensibility]

12. This may be an ignorant question, but

what products does this company produce, under what brand name, for us to boycott? Is it all sugar?

[Teamster Jeff]

13. That's not a ignorant question. These are from their site under "retail"

[senseandsensibility]

14. Oh, so its name is on the products?

Thanks.. I think it could be a regional thing because I haven't seen this brand in California.