Crockett C&H Sugar warehouse workers enter third week of strike

CROCKETT – Warehouse workers at the C&H Sugar factory are entering their third week of a strike over workers’ overtime pay, retirement benefits and other rules governing employment. 

“We just want to keep what we have,” said Charles Uoo, a forklift driver who has worked at the C&H warehouse for 25 years. 

Negotiations between the warehouse workers union, ILWU Local 6, and C&H Sugar, broke down earlier this month and workers walked out on June 15.  

Union shop steward and foreman Otis Brown, who has worked at the warehouse for 25 years, said that under the company’s proposed contract, workers would not receive time-and-a-half overtime pay until they have worked 40 hours in a week. The prior contract required overtime pay after working eight hours in a day. 

The C&H warehouse workers often work 12 hours a day, Brown said. “What they want to do is have you work three 12-hour shifts and then lay you off for the rest of the week so you don’t accrue overtime,” he said. 

Uoo said that the lost overtime could equate to a 20-50% pay cut.

The C&H Sugar factory is owned by the American Sugar Refining Group, the world’s largest marketer and refiner of sugar, according to the company’s website. 

ASR Group Vice President Peter C. O’Malley said in an email that the company offered ILWU members a 2% signing bonus, a 4% wage increase in the first year and 20% increase over five years. 

“We remain committed to an open and constructive dialogue with the union as our goal has always been to reach an agreement that supports our employees while ensuring the long-term sustainability of our company and the communities we serve,” O’Malley said.

Brown said that in addition to the changes to overtime pay, the C&H proposal would also reduce the number of paid sick days that workers are allowed and it would eliminate medical benefits for retirees. 

“Part of this fight is to maintain the retirement benefits that many employees have already earned,” Brown said. 

According to Brown, due to prior bargaining agreements, C&H Sugar no longer offers medical benefits to retired employees hired after 2009, but there are about 25 workers who will still be able to retire with that benefit and some 89 retired workers who are on the company’s health care plan.

Although the company is only obligated to provide retirement medical to less than a third of the approximately 90 workers currently employed, the issue is still a major sticking point in part because families in Crockett have worked for the company for generations.

Peggy Lazzarini, who loads trucks at the C&H warehouse, has worked for the company for 6 years and said she will not receive the medical benefit when she retires. But those benefits are still important to her and her family, she said.

“My dad worked for the company for 41 years,” Lazzarini said. “He passed away five days after he retired.” Lazzarini’s mother has spousal benefits and is on the company’s health plan.

“They want to take away her benefits. My mom is on dialysis – she can’t come down here and fight for those benefits,” said Lazzarini.

Ryan Crum, who has worked for C&H for 14 years, said that his mother also receives the retirement medical benefit from the company. He said that many people in the community have given a big part of their lives to the company and now they deserve to receive that care.

Other workers feel they have a duty to defend an older generation of workers. “They fought for those benefits and paved the way for us at the same time, so we are going to stand up for them,” said Bertha Spencer, who has been employed with C&H since 2004.

Workers at the neighboring sugar refinery are represented by a different union than the warehouse workers and have continued to work during the strike. Brown said that he is disappointed that the refinery workers have crossed ILWU’s picket line. 

The last time workers at the C&H factory went on strike was in 2003 when the refinery workers union, Sugar Workers Union Local 1, was fighting to maintain retirement medical benefits and to secure other contract provisions. During that strike, ILWU local 6 refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with the refinery workers. 

The ASR Group bought C&H Sugar in 2005, according to the company’s website. C&H Sugar’s name, the California & Hawaiian Sugar Company, comes from its long relationship with Hawaiian sugar farmers who operated the company as an agricultural cooperative from 1921 to 1993. 

The company unloaded its last ship of Hawaiian sugar in 2017. The ASR Group cited low sugar prices and foreign subsidies as the reason for decline in domestic sugar production, according to reporting from the East Bay Times . 

ILWU organizer Evan McLaughlin said that the factory’s raw sugar is now sourced from Brazil, Guatemala and the Philippines, among other countries. 

Though the sugar refinery continues running for now, McLaughlin said it won’t be able to run for much longer. ILWU represents both the warehouse workers who handle the packaged product and the longshore workers who unload the raw sugar from bulk cargo ships.

McLaughlin said ILWU has relationships with other maritime workers, so the bar pilots that help larger ships navigate difficult waters and tug boat pilots that maneuver the ships close to the dock are not going to cross the picket line. 

According to the warehouse workers, about 25 bulk carrier ships are unloaded at the Crockett facility each year. One ship that arrived from the Philippines, the Tai Herald, has been anchored in the San Francisco Bay since June 15, McLaughlin said. Another ship is expected to arrive on July 12 and another is scheduled toward the end of July.

“At the end of the day, they are not going to be able to bring another ship up to the dock and unload it during this strike, " McLaughlin said.

The company has hired workers to do the jobs of the striking warehouse employee and trucks are still departing from the factory, apparently loaded with the company’s products. 

“We will be here until they are out or until they start losing customers because they don’t have any product to load,” said Clay Deamaral, who has worked for C&H for 26 years. “We will see how much they are prepared to lose, but that goes for us too because we are not getting paid.”