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Activists plan giant Nabisco boycott
Wednesday, August 12, 1998 By Jim McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Community activists yesterday pledged to mount a boycott of Nabisco products, from Ritz crackers to Oreos, after the company made official its plans to close its East Liberty bakery by Nov. 20.
"We're looking at putting on one of the biggest boycotts that this world has ever seen," activist Aggie Brose, of the East End Neighborhood Forum, said after a two-hour closed planning meeting.
The session at a Teamsters hall in Lawrenceville drew many of the 350 bakery employees who had been told earlier in the day that their jobs were being eliminated as part of the closure.
"This is our reward for being excellent workers," said Myron Rodzay, president of Local 12 of the Bakery Confectionery and Tobacco Workers union, which represents production workers at the bakery.
Rodzay pulled a slip of paper from his pocket with the figure $919,500 written on it. That, he said, was the amount of money that the plant's labor-management committee had saved the Pittsburgh bakery so far this year, substantially exceeding goals.
"I have hope that we're coming back," he said. "I have hope that if it isn't Nabisco it will be someone else. We have a superior workforce here. Everything we know, we'll pass on to new owners."
The activists' coalition, with volunteers from the plant, plans to ask large users of Nabisco products, including grocery chains, restaurants, schools and other institutions, to join the boycott. Individual shoppers will be asked to sign boycott pledge cards.
Brose, a veteran of a successful public campaign to save the bakery in 1982, is hoping to embarrass Nabisco and its president, James Kilts, through the boycott and through protests planned for next week at the company's New Jersey headquarters and at a contract baker that does work for Nabisco in Ohio.
"We've lost too many jobs," Brose said. "What I would ask every Pittsburgher to do is to stand in front of the mirror on the way to work tomorrow and say, I'm next . . . If it's me, who is going to support me?"
Pittsburgh and the bakery's workers are paying the price for sluggish cookie and cracker sales that left the giant food company with too much manufacturing capacity in the United States and abroad.
Nabisco cited overcapacity and the age of the bakery, the oldest in Nabisco's system, as reasons for the closure. The company said it made the decision after extensive studies of its domestic operations.
"Those studies show that based on both current and future sales projections, Nabisco has far more baking capacity than is required to meet consumer demand for its cookies and crackers," the company said.
The bakery has been running at less than 60 percent of its capacity for nearly a year, the company said. Nabisco recently moved production of Chips Ahoy cookies from Pittsburgh to another plant.
The bakery currently makes Ritz, Wheat Thins, Better Cheddars and Swiss Cheese crackers, Ritz Bits cheese or peanut butter sandwiches and Twigs snacks.
Union officials were told that the company would move the plant's biggest-volume product, Ritz Bits, to a bakery in Atlanta. The company would only say that Pittsburgh's products will be transferred to other bakeries.
The seven-story bakery complex, located at 6425 Penn Ave., has been a fixture in East Liberty since at least 1919. The company said it would work with state and local economic development agencies to find a new use for the site.
Hank Sandbach, a company spokesman, said Nabisco has 11 bakeries in the United States, all with employees represented by unions. It also uses 17 contract bakeries, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Nabisco executives praised its Pittsburgh employees in press statements and in a letter to Mayor Murphy signed by Kilts.
"Eliminating the positions of more than 350 people - many of them with long years of dedicated work to Nabisco - is not something we take lightly," Kilts wrote. "And we will do everything we can to help assure the best possible transitions for our people."
In June, a company spokesman had estimated bakery employment at 395. In a statement yesterday, the company said the number of workers who would lose their jobs was 350.
Salaried employees were told that they would receive severance pay, extended benefits and career planning services. Union members were told their shutdown benefits were subject to negotiation.
William Cagney, business manager for Local 95 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, said he hopes to improve pensions for older employees and bargain retraining funds for younger workers. "I have a long list," he said.
The state Department of Labor and Industry said laid-off workers may receive up to 26 weeks of unemployment compensation plus job training and other assistance.
Thomas McBrady, executive vice president for operations, called the decision to close the plant difficult. "While 80 years old, Pittsburgh is very well run and our people there have made significant contributions for Nabisco for many years. Had there been an alternative to closing the facility, we would have chosen it," he said.
Mayor Murphy has called the closure decision arbitrary.
He also criticized Nabisco for making the decision to close the plant before he had a chance to engage in discussions about ways to save it, including bringing in state and city financial incentives.
In his letter to the mayor, Kilts said Nabisco did act in good faith by sharing detailed information with Murphy about its bakeries and the "exhaustive review that made closure of Pittsburgh as compelling as it is difficult."
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