Posted on 06/26/2002 11:16:48 PM PDT by chance33_98
No lunch for you
By: Randy Yohe, WSAZ NewsChannel 3
Jackson, Oh, June 25 - When you work a full day, You expect to get a lunch break. But when one local food plant recently cut out lunches, hundreds of union workers complained. Then, a lunch break battle turned into a labor-managment war.
Luigino's Jackson, Ohio food processing plant is a good sized facility. 850 union employees work around the clock shifts. This is a plant trying to correct what the union says are some health and sanitation issues. It's a plant that found out there are not enough hours in a day.
Some of the employees we talked to said they ate before they came to work. David Laudermiot told us "They just cut out our lunches, it's not fair." Lon Arend said "they gave us no warning, I don't like it." One employee told us they needed to cut the 8 hour shifts so they could get sanitation in after she left.
Luigino's corporate people didn't return our calls. Local managers weren't available for comment. Luigino's makes frozen dinners and pizzas. An employee union leader out of Columbus told me the plant runs separate production and sanitation shifts. The union rep. says the plant is under pressure from USDA inspectors to meet higher sanitation standards. That means an increase in sanitation shift hours and a decrease in production shift hours.
The union rep. told us Luigino's had to choose between giving employees 8 hour shifts or their usual half hour lunch. He says they chose the 8 hours and cut the lunches, which violates the union contract. Employee Lon Arend thought it may last a couple of months.
However, the union rep told us Luigino's relented. They will reinstate lunch breaks, but only offer production workers 7 and a half hour shifts.
Union folks say it's not a state law in Ohio that you have to offer workers a lunch break, except for minors...but mandatory lunch breaks are in the workers contract.
As for an 8 hour shift, the contract says Luigino's must do everything in its power to comply. So, the bargaining continues.
Again, we repeatedly tried and failed to get Luigino's managers to comment.
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