Want a job? Mott's plant in Wayne County is hiring strike breakers

[Omaha Steve]

The public and the city council are supporting the workers. If you don't know the CEO got over 6 million last year. The company made 550 million. The company wants to cut pay, benefits, end the pension, etc.


http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/want_a_job_motts_plant_in_wayn.html

Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 6:00 AM Updated: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 12:51 PM
John O'Brien / The Post-Standard John O'Brien / The Post-Standard

Williamson, NY -- They’re hiring at the Mott’s plant in Wayne County.

Anyone searching the recent “help wanted” ads of the newspapers in Syracuse and Rochester, cities where as least 66,000 people need work, would know that. “Immediate Temporary Openings Available,” said the color half-page ad decorated with glistening apples.

It’s an invitation to join the workers who drive past the striking workers outside the plant on Route 104 in Williamson, 60 miles west of Syracuse. As they arrive, the newly hired hear their daily dose of “Scab!” from the strikers. All for a job that pays $9 an hour with no benefits, replacement workers said. The company won’t be specific, but says it’s gotten a lot of responses.


Stephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardAnne Vollertsen and other members of Local 220 of the Retail Wholesale Department Store Union picket outside of the Mott's processing plant on Route 104 in Williamson. She has worked at the plant for 32 years, where she is a filler operator.

A strike at the Mott’s Inc. apple-processing plant has entered its 10th week, with no end in sight. The plant’s 305 workers walked out May 23 rather than accept cuts in benefits and pay. The result is a good, old-fashioned strike, the kind which has grown uncommon.

Both sides have deployed hardball tactics. The union uses aggressive picketing, urges boycotts, invokes class warfare and mobilizes its friends in political office. Management from the Dr Pepper Snapple Group has hired a new work force of at least 100 temps and is testing just how desperate the Upstate job market has become.

FULL story & video at link.


Stephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardMembers of Local 220 of the Retail Wholesale Department Store Union picket outside of the Mott's processing plant on Route 104 in Williamson. About 300 workers have been on strike since May 23.

[YOY]

1. Ah the scab...both loathed and pitied at the same time.

Never was a more clever scheme devised by the industrial giants than to use desperate men and women to foil the workers who have simple humane demands in the economic hardship that the giants themselves created.

[uncommon]

2. It's awful when you pit abused workers against unemployed people who need to make

money badly.

:(

[YOY]

3. Despicable really. Brilliant, but despicable.

n/t

[guitar man]

4. I'd rather die

I would literally rather starve to death than cross a picket line, it's just something I couldn't do.

[blondeatlast]

7. Agreed. I think it's in my genes; I can't even for a moment consider it. nt

[guitar man]

9. I definetly is in my genes

My Father was a die hard Teamster, union man to the core, Grandaddy was a union painter, part of the labor movement in the 30s that stood up to power when the chips were really down.

I got off a crew bus one time, damn near got into a fist fight but I wasn't going to cross the picket line. We had been traveling from town to town doing sandblast and paint work. We finished a job and headed to the next one and when we arrived, there was a picket line. The bus stopped and I walked to the front and informed the foreman and driver I wasn't going in, that I'd like to draw up the money I had coming and go home. The foreman told me "sit down, we're going to cross the line". I told him "not with me on this bus, now give me my goddamned money and let me off this bus or you're going to need an ambulance!"

He thought about it a minute, pulled out his book to see what I was owed, took the money out of the cash box and paid me and I got off the bus and walked toward the picket line. The guys on the line looked like they wanted to kill me until I walked over to the fence where there were some extra picket signs leaning up against it. I picked up a sign, joined the picket line and shot the asshole foreman on the bus the finger. The picket line erupted in laughter and applause. :)

I walked and talked with them for a couple hours then I put down the sign, said goodbye and started hitchiking down the highway toward home.

[Brickbat]

5. Fuck scabs.

[JVS]

11. +1

[Romulox]

6. You think the guy driving by in a Subaru is a big supporter of labor?

:shrug:

[Omaha Steve]

10. I know lots of union members that don't drive the BIG 3

When my son in law sold Nissans, that was what we bought. Had it 10 days and the low miles Altima broke down. After Marta had some young college girl in a hurry turn in front of her it got a new front clip. We did some maintenance work. Then we traded it in with my Caprice under the clunker program a year ago. Only Japanese car we have ever had. Glad it is gone.

OS

[AmandaRuth]

8. further proof to what we already know

corps are going to use the economy to force down wages, while the upper echelon management continues to make mega bucks, and I mean mega, as in hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions.