Alex Foods Workers Vow to Fight Cuts

Officials at Alex Snack Foods say they don’t want to force employees to quit over the company’s decision to slash wages and benefits--and many of the Anaheim factory’s workers say the company will get its wish. The employees vowed to fight, through their union, before they leave.

“We won’t let other people down and quit,” said Aurora Morales, a 57-year-old worker who raised five children on the paychecks she has received in 32 years as a packer at Alex.

In those three decades, Morales had worked her way up to a pay scale of $7.07 an hour--until three weeks ago, when the company slashed her wages to $4.25 an hour--$131 a week after deductions.

And while company officials said Tuesday that they don’t want to force workers out, a spokesman said Monday that part of the reason for the pay reduction was to encourage turnover so the plant could hire part-time help, senior citizens and unskilled labor--people who would not complain about lower wages and a lack of benefits or job security.

“I gave them my youth and worked hard . . . now they turn around and lower our wages, or tell us to quit,” Morales said. “It hurts a lot.”

If the workers strike--as representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 551 say is likely within two weeks--Morales said she has no idea how she’ll pay her monthly bills.

“But we have to see it through. If we lose, at least we’ll have had our say,” she declared.

Rosa Alvarez is another employee who vows not to quit.

The 44-year-old mother of twins had been doing fairly well in the United States until the change at Alex Snack Foods.

Despite the lack of both a green card and English-speaking skills, she had a job and was making enough money to live comfortably in a one-bedroom apartment in Fullerton with her 11-year-olds.

Since the late 1970s, Alvarez--now a single parent who left her native Mexico 14 years ago--has packaged potato chips for Alex Snack Foods. The job, she says, means long hours of working near huge, hot ovens.

Despite the conditions, Alvarez is fighting to keep her job.

She is one of 65 workers--41 of whom have been with Alex’s for more than a decade--who met and unanimously voted last weekend to reject the pay cuts and other provisions of the company’s latest contract offer.

For Alvarez, the company’s cost-cutting measures mean hourly wages plunging to $4.25 from $7.14. Even worse, she said, is that her hours have been cut to as few as 16 a week from a full-time job just three weeks ago.

Steve Charton, a director and officer of Alex Snack Foods, denied union claims that the company has changed some employees’ work schedules to try to force them to quit.

The company has lost $500,000 in the past 2 1/2 years, he said, and has a 25-year history of adjusting to seasonal sales declines by laying off workers or reducing their hours.

All that, however, means little to Alvarez. She paid last month’s rent with her federal tax refund and now, with the first of the month two weeks away, wonders where she’ll get the money to pay the rent and cloth her children.

“How can you not be angry?” Alvarez asked, speaking through an interpreter in her cramped but clean apartment, where a utility bill lay unopened on the counter.