After six months of negotiations, workers voted to accept a new
labor deal with San Benito Foods Sunday, narrowly averting a strike
at the county’s second largest employer.
Hollister – After six months of negotiations, workers voted to accept a new labor deal with San Benito Foods Sunday, narrowly averting a strike at the county’s second largest employer.
On Friday afternoon, less than two hours before union members were to gather at Dunne Park in Hollister to organize their pickets, union negotiators received a palatable contract offer from the cannery.
“We’re recommending a yes vote on this , but it’s your call,” union negotiator Mike Johnston told workers during a meeting to ratify the contract Sunday.
When it was time to vote on the offer, 186 workers voted for the contract, two voted against it.
In July, the cannery employees rejected an offer that would have frozen wages, decreased healthcare coverage for year-around employees and eliminated health coverage for the cannery’s approximately 400 seasonal employees. Union negotiators had recommended that the workers vote against that offer.
“We feel like we’ve made significant progress,” Johnston said.
Under the new contract, both year-around and seasonal employees retain their healthcare benefits – though now they have co-payments and reduced dental coverage, and the out-of-pocket amount that workers pay for healthcare was raised from $3,000 to $10,000 for year-around employees. For seasonal employees, out-of-pocket healthcare costs raised from $2,000 to $5,000.
The contract also includes a 6.5 percent wage increase over the three-year span of the contract. A 1 percent wage increase is retroactive to April, when the workers’ previous contract expired. Workers will receive another 1 percent next month and 2.25 percent each year until 2007. Currently, wages at the cannery range from $9.57 per hour to $20.45 per hour.
“This is about the best we’re going to see, the best the company will give us,” Pete Hallet, a long-time mechanic at the cannery, said Sunday before he and his co-workers voted. “I think we’re better with this than striking. Because when we strike … no one gets paid.”
With about 600 full time and seasonal workers, the cannery is the second largest employer in San Benito County, according to the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce.
Cannery officials refused to comment about the contract.
The mood of the workers gathered Sunday was markedly different than during a July meeting when the crowd booed the company’s offer and a least a dozen employees spoke out against it. This time, cannery employees seemed anxious to vote and approve the contract.
Only one worker spoke against the cannery’s offer Sunday, asking Johnston in Spanish how the union could recommend the contract. Johnston said it was an acceptable contract because it keeps health benefits and includes wage increases. Johnston’s reply received scattered applause, and then many of the workers began to call out “voto, voto.”
Luke Roney covers politics and the environment for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or at [email protected]
