Pending strike by catfish workers in Mississippi defused by new contract negotiations

[Omaha Steve]

http://laborsouth.blogspot.com/2010/09/pending-strike-by-catfish-workers-in.html

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Pending strike by catfish workers in Mississippi defused by new contract negotiations

Months-long negotiations between Delta Pride Catfish Inc. and members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1529, have defused a potential strike by hundreds of workers at the company's plant in Indianola, Miss., and with plants operated by a partner firm in Isola and Belzona, Miss., all in the perennially poor Mississippi Delta.

"The strike vote woke them up," said Lonnie Sheppard, president of UFCW Local 1529, referring to nearly unanimous votes by plant workers in May to strike rather than accept a company-offered contract that would have created a seven-day work week, deleted daily overtime, doubled the probationary period for new hires to six months, reduced seniority benefits, given the company free reign in contracting out work, tripled worker contributions to company health insurance over a three-year period, and other measures considered intolerable by workers and their union representatives.

Union officials felt the provisions would have nullified the hard-fought gains made by workers as a result of their highly publicized strike at Delta Pride in 1990, the largest by black workers in Mississippi's history and one that prompted a national boycott of Delta Pride products.

"I was wanting to get this behind me," Sheppard said Thursday. "There's got to be common ground."

The newly negotiated contract, which workers will vote on next week, includes wage increases, daily overtime, and a "modified co-pay on insurance but not bad," Sheppard said. "All the 84 proposals they (previously) gave are off the table."

Had the dispute gone to a strike, he said, "it would have been a revitalization of 1990. It would have been exciting, but also disastrous for all sides."

FULL story at link.