Dairy Workers Join BCTGM

by James Parks, Mar 24, 2009

Nearly 100 workers at Land-O-Sun Dairy in Richmond, Va., withstood a strong anti-union campaign by management and voted last week to join the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 358. 

The plant manufactures and ships all varieties of fresh milk. The workforce, nearly all African American, sought a union to end favoritism and discrimination, especially in job bidding. 

Even though 70 percent of the workers signed cards seeking a union, the company demanded a National Labor Relations Board election. If the Employee Free Choice Act had been enacted, the workers would have been able to decide for themselves how they wanted to choose a union.

Like many employers, the company used the lead-up to the vote to hire a professional union-busting firm to thwart the worker’s desire for a union. Management launched an aggressive campaign against the union, holding mandatory meetings and conducting one-on-one meetings with workers.

The workers withstood the management campaign and still chose the union—but this outcome is rare. In fact, a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that every time workers try to exercise their freedom to form a union, there’s a better than one-in-four chance that a worker will be illegally fired as a result. As a result, workers are often intimidated into voting against a union.

The key to the Land-O-Sun win was the hard work put in by a “dynamite committee” of workers who stood up to the company at mandatory company meetings and handed out union leaflets in front of the plant, says Jim Condran, a BCTGM international representative.

Dignity, justice, favoritism and discrimination—those were the key issues and they kept them out front all the time. The fear tactics didn’t work because the workers were educated on the issues. When the company said “give us another chance,” the workers said “we’re willing to give you another chance so long as we have a binding contract with a grievance procedure.”

The workers were so determined to have a union, Condran says, that on election day, two employees got out of sick beds and came to the voting site to vote for the union and then returned home.

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