Fires at American Crystal Sugar raise concerns about replacement workers
Friday, September 09, 2011 at 3:06 pm
- 8 Comments
In the past few days fires broke out at two of the American Crystal Sugar factories staffed by replacement workers, which leaders of 1,300 locked out union members said was the result of poor training and preparation.
The fires occurred at the company’s the East Grand Forks, Minn., and Drayton, N.D., facilities. There were no injuries.
Union leaders have repeatedly warned that the use of replacement workers threatens the workers’ safety and the company’s sugar production.
“When you put poorly trained replacement workers into these facilities, preventable accidents can and will happen. That is exactly what happened last night in Drayton and in East Grand Forks this morning,” said John Riskey, president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Millers Union, in a statement.
American Crystal Sugar Vice President Brian Ingulsrud told the Associated Press at the start of this week that replacement workers have spent much of the last month in safety trainings. “We feel confident we are going to be able to run the factories with the replacement workers,” Ingulsrud said.
This isn’t the first accident involving replacement workers provided by Minnetonka’s Strom Engineering, a firm that specializes in providing support for company labor actions like lockouts and strikes.
In 2006, a Strom replacement worker was killed in an accident in an Alaska AK Steel factory. OSHA initially cited AK Steel for a serious violation of safety in the accident. During that same lockout, three other replacement workers were injured in an explosion. Former Strom workers also alleged unsafe conditions in a recent Star Tribune article.
Union members were locked out by American Crystal Sugar after they overwhelmingly rejected a contract proposal at the end of July.
The lockout affects 1,300 union workers at facilities in Moorhead, East Grand Forks, Crookston, and Chaska, Minn.; Hillsboro and Drayton, N.D.; and Mason City, Iowa.
Follow Jon Collins on Twitter8 Comments
Comment posted September 9, 2011 @ 8:26 pm
I don’t understand this war on american workers. Union trained workers are more skilled, conscientious, and efficient than non union trained workers. The sooner we get back to a union backed work force, the sooner american manufacturing will again be considered the best in the world.
Comment posted September 10, 2011 @ 5:45 am
Societies collapse when the mutual bargains of its various elements get broken.
The people breaking the bargains are always the ones at the top.
The people at the bottom notice first. Eventually, their dire straits creep upwards.
Now that we folks who have assumed our worth and comfort was assured realize
we’re getting screwed – and can’t do anything about it – things fall apart.
FDR really was a “middle-of-the-road” force, saving the capitalists from their greed and stupidity. That bargain lasted a long time, but then came Reagan. Clinton slowed the
process, but then came Bush Jr. With Obama, we thought we were getting FDR again, but only got Hoover instead.
Comment posted September 11, 2011 @ 11:29 am
yes john we are more skilled than non union replacements but its all about corperate GREED Ingusrud dose not care about skilled workers all he cares about is his own pocketbook. he dose not care if anyone gets killed , its not him out there.. if we didnt have scum like ingulsrud in the world we wouldnt need unions .
Comment posted September 12, 2011 @ 9:03 pm
Thank you American Crystal Sugar for standing up to unions. In a free nation, owners can hire and fire without permission from those with no stake. If the company is so wrong and the workers are so right – why doesn’t the union start its own sugar beet operation and compete with American Crystal Sugar?
As for me and my family, we will go out of our way to buy products not made with union labor. I think products should be marked to aid us in our purchasing decisions.
Give ‘em Hell, American Crystal Sugar!
Comment posted September 15, 2011 @ 2:00 am
I agree 100% Jim!
If it wasn’t for unions we wouldn’t need to make $20+ an hour just to survive, and a new pickup wouldn’t cost $40,000! What union people don’t understand is that every time they get a raise, that money has to come from somewhere, and they end up paying for their own (or another union members) raise. The price of goods, services HAS to go up to pay for their raises, so it becomes a circle of raise and inflation.
Union, more skilled than non-union?!?! I guess maybe at leaning on shovels!
I will be the first to agree that when unions first came to be, there was a need for them. BUT what most union people don’t see is how corrupt the unions have become. The union bosses become rich and the members just keep paying dues the make them rich. Sounds like a good scam to me, kinda like a piramid scheme. The closer you get to the top, the more money you get for doing very little.
Usually each non-union worker wil take the place of between 2-3 union workers in productivity…pretty sad. And the reason…because union people don’t have to worry about being fired, even for gross negligence. They can be as slow and lazy as they want to be, with no worry of being fired…..that is as long as they vote for the right people for public office… the ones who give union bosses paybacks after the election. Let me see now…the names obama, reid, and frank come to mind right off hand.
Dave P. you might want to look at the history books again. FDR created the biggest industrial bomb in history. Then you say that Reagan happened, when it was johnson that put OUR social security funds from the special funds they were in, into the general fund, never to be seen or heard from again. Then you brought in carter…my… wasn’t that a good idea! The man that started our country’s recent financial downfall way back then. Clinton even realized that affirmative action wasn’t a good idea anymore, Bush JR tried to stop it and barney frank, chuck schummer, maxine waters, all said Bush was crazy and that the financial sector was just fine. Well we all know what happened next. And now we have the WORST President in the history of our country, setting in the White House making deals for votes with union bosses, and members are expected to vote the wishes of the bosses, or else. Yep, unions are wonderful! OH YEH I forgot ….blame Bush! it’s his fault! Right?
Seems to me that working for a union is NOT nearly as free as working for a non-union employer. Too many bosses for me!
It sounds like Strom Engineering must employ a lot of people, all over the country, and to have only 1 death and a couple of injuries is probably not all that bad, if they are high risk jobs in the first place. Not that ANY deaths or injuries are good, but accidents do happen. They happen at union jobs too, I know, I see them all the time.
Comment posted September 16, 2011 @ 9:49 pm
You talk about union skills, but your trying to force the company to promote the person with the most seniority even if he has no skills over a worker with the best skill, how does that help the company? You end up with a lot of peop[le with seniority and no skills trying to keep the place going. If you were going to hire a roofer for your house, one guy was the best roofer in town , the other had fixed shed roof once, but you were forced to hire the shed guy because he had seniority, does that make sense?
Comment posted September 21, 2011 @ 1:25 pm
Jim B
Comment posted September 12, 2011 @ 9:03 pm
//Thank you American Crystal Sugar for standing up to unions. In a free nation, owners can hire and fire without permission from those with no stake. If the company is so wrong and the workers are so right – why doesn’t the union start its own sugar beet operation and compete with American Crystal Sugar?
As for me and my family, we will go out of our way to buy products not made with union labor. I think products should be marked to aid us in our purchasing decisions.
Give ‘em Hell, American Crystal Sugar!//
and
//Dave
Comment posted September 15, 2011 @ 2:00 am
I agree 100% Jim!
If it wasn’t for unions we wouldn’t need to make $20+ an hour just to survive, and a new pickup wouldn’t cost $40,000! What union people don’t understand is that every time they get a raise, that money has to come from somewhere, and they end up paying for their own (or another union members) raise. The price of goods, services HAS to go up to pay for their raises, so it becomes a circle of raise and inflation.
Union, more skilled than non-union?!?! I guess maybe at leaning on shovels!
I will be the first to agree that when unions first came to be, there was a need for them. BUT what most union people don’t see is how corrupt the unions have become. The union bosses become rich and the members just keep paying dues the make them rich. Sounds like a good scam to me, kinda like a piramid scheme. The closer you get to the top, the more money you get for doing very little.
Usually each non-union worker wil take the place of between 2-3 union workers in productivity…pretty sad. And the reason…because union people don’t have to worry about being fired, even for gross negligence. They can be as slow and lazy as they want to be, with no worry of being fired…..that is as long as they vote for the right people for public office… the ones who give union bosses paybacks after the election. Let me see now…the names obama, reid, and frank come to mind right off hand.
Dave P. you might want to look at the history books again. FDR created the biggest industrial bomb in history. Then you say that Reagan happened, when it was johnson that put OUR social security funds from the special funds they were in, into the general fund, never to be seen or heard from again. Then you brought in carter…my… wasn’t that a good idea! The man that started our country’s recent financial downfall way back then. Clinton even realized that affirmative action wasn’t a good idea anymore, Bush JR tried to stop it and barney frank, chuck schummer, maxine waters, all said Bush was crazy and that the financial sector was just fine. Well we all know what happened next. And now we have the WORST President in the history of our country, setting in the White House making deals for votes with union bosses, and members are expected to vote the wishes of the bosses, or else. Yep, unions are wonderful! OH YEH I forgot ….blame Bush! it’s his fault! Right?
Seems to me that working for a union is NOT nearly as free as working for a non-union employer. Too many bosses for me!
It sounds like Strom Engineering must employ a lot of people, all over the country, and to have only 1 death and a couple of injuries is probably not all that bad, if they are high risk jobs in the first place. Not that ANY deaths or injuries are good, but accidents do happen. They happen at union jobs too, I know, I see them all the time.//
What was once a bickering amongst two private entities: American Crystal Sugar and the union, is now involving you folks. How so? The fire. The fire Marshall will come in, investigate the fire, file charges against American Crystal Sugar, send them to court, which will cost millions in taxpayer money, when it was cheaper to negotiate between the two entities and save you again millions of your tax money.
When you have trained people working in a private factory, this RARELY happens, and if you do hate unions Jim B, yes, you are correct, you can buy non-union sugar. But guess what, now you’re going to have to pay the fire fighters, in investigation, the court fees, when it would have cost you nothing had American Crystal Sugar NOT hire RATS.
Well, American Crystal Sugar has given Hell…not to the workers, but to you.
Comment posted September 23, 2011 @ 6:44 am
2% well off and 98% poor and desperate for work…welcome to Amexica, a country bought and paid for by corporations with the help of their theocratic allies.
It will continue on the present slide or people will wake up, join unions and control some of their own destiny. If 30+ years of trickle down hasn’t awakened the middle and lower classes, then maybe we are in for a quicker slide to Amexica.
Maybe I’m wrong but, I think we were better off before we cut the income and capital gains taxes and started to elect the folks who appeal to the bishops and MCCL…remember when we all thought we could make it better for our kids than we had it?
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