With the start of the canning season less than a month away, San Benito Foods employees went on strike Friday, June 23.
About 50 workers chanted slogans and waved flags outside the cannery in downtown Hollister, while inside, supervisors rushed to pick up the slack, hauling product and loading pallets onto trucks.
Owned by Neil Jones Food Company, San Benito Foods employs around 450 seasonal workers from July through September and 100 full-time workers year-round.
The cannery has been negotiating with Teamsters Union Local 890 over a new contract.
One of the strikers, Luis Valdez, has worked at the cannery since 2013.
“I’m on-call all year round,” said Valdez. “If they need me, they’ll call me. If not, I’ll get laid off.”
Valdez said he attended the labor negotiation meetings between the cannery and the union where the main issues were holidays, insurance costs and wages.
“They try to take away and not give anything back,” he said. “They’re taking away Memorial Day and they want to take Good Friday, which is a good time to spend with family.”
San Benito Foods Plant Manager Sam Humphrey addressed the strike in a Friday phone call.
“We’re surprised and disappointed with the happenings,” Humphrey said. “We’re in negotiations with the union on a new contract. We have had some positive discussions. We thought we were making some headway. At this point we’ll continue with negotiations and hope for a positive resolution in the near future.”
The union is fighting for a better contract, Valdez said, which means leaving holidays alone and lowering insurance costs.
“It’s getting harder to live here in Hollister,” Valdez said. “Rent’s getting higher and [the cannery] is paying $11.55. Some people come from Merced to [work] over here. There are no jobs out there so they come this way.”
Employee Mark Jeffcoat said this is the first time something like this has happened during his eight to nine years working at the cannery.
“I’d rather be working, but I’m in the same union as these guys,” Jeffcoat said Friday. “If I stay in and these guys go out, what’s going to happen to me when they come back? You either sail as a group or sink as a group.”
