Pressure grows on sugar company to end lockout

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4965

By John Wojcik
19 August 2011

EAST GRAND FORKS - The City Council here voted unanimously Wednesday to send a letter urging American Crystal Sugar to return to negotiations with its locked-out workers.

"The council recognizes the importance of the facility and the people who work there to our city," city administrator Scott Huizena said. "Obviously, it's a very important part of our economy in East Grand Forks."

The council took the vote after a presentation by AFL-CIO spokesman Mark Froemke who, a night earlier, had asked the City Council in Grand Forks, N.D., to do the same thing. The Grand Forks council did not take an official position but Froemke said several of its members told him they would individually write letters to the company urging it to end the lockout.

Froemke said the union - the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers - is asking all the city councils in the affected region to call for an end to the lockout. American Crystal Sugar has barred more than 1,300 workers from coming to work at the company's seven facilities in East Grand Forks, Moorhead, Crookston and Chaska, Minn., in Hillsboro and Drayton, N.D., and in Mason City, Iowa.

The lockout began when workers voted overwhelmingly on July 30 to reject a contract offer from the company that their union says would gut health care, benefits and job security.

FULL story at link.

John Wojcik writes for The People's World, where this article originally appeared.