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Payments to Crystal Sugar shareholders shrink as lockout continues
13 April 2012
| FARGO, North Dakota - Maintaining good relations with employees pays off with more profits, if recent figures from American Crystal Sugar and Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative are any indication. |
Minn-Dak, based in Wahpeton, N.D., has a contract with workers represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco & Grain Millers Union. The Board of Directors has estimated the payment to members for the 2011 sugarbeet crop will be $72.72 per ton of average quality harvested sugarbeets.
This is significantly more than the estimated payment to shareholders at American Crystal Sugar, which has locked out its 1,300 unionized employees since Aug. 1, 2011, and is using replacements. In fact, the Minn-Dak estimate is over 23% higher than Crystal Sugar’s.
This is also a departure from the last seven years, according to figures analyzed by the union. When comparing final sugarbeet payments from 2004 to 2010, on average, payments to Crystal Sugar shareholders were nearly seven per cent higher than payments to Minn-Dak shareholders.
The most recent collective bargaining agreement between Crystal Sugar and BCTGM members covered the years 2004-2010, and corresponded with a period of record profits for the cooperative. Since the lockout began, profits and the amount of beet payments have dropped.
Locked out workers argue the decline in profits and sugar beet payments reflects the high cost of the lockout to the company and its shareholders.
“We believe this reversal is directly connected to the company’s decision to lock out its experienced workers and bring in less experienced and less productive replacements,” said Gayln Olson, president of BCTGM Local 327G in Hillsboro, ND. “Dave Berg keeps telling farmers that the costs of this lockout will be worth it in the end. Are farmers willing to keep paying for his determination to kill middle-class jobs in our community?”
For more information
See the Workday special section on the sugar beet lockout.
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