Agreement Signed on Nabisco Restroom Policy : Oxnard: In response to sex bias claims, firm agrees to reopen previously closed bathrooms but denies any wrongdoing.

It took seven hours of negotiating, but officials from the Teamsters and Nabisco have signed an agreement that outlines and clarifies policies regarding restroom usage at the Oxnard plant for its female employees.

The document requires Nabisco to reopen previously closed restrooms, stipulates that 20 employees per shift will be designated to relieve assembly-line workers when nature calls and expands the two break periods by three minutes each, union officials said Friday.

In the document, Nabisco denies it committed “any act of wrong doing against any employee.”

The Thursday night talks came after allegations surfaced last month of policies that spurred female employees to wear diapers and sanitary napkins in case they could not make it to the restroom in time.

“We feel absolutely great,” said Scott Dennison, secretary-treasurer of the union, which represents more than 500 workers at the 3rd Street plant.

“Now, our responsibility is to hold the company accountable to that agreement. And we will do that.”

Still, lurking behind the agreement is yet more disagreement. While the union claimed victory, a Nabisco spokesman said Friday that the talks broke no new ground.

“The meeting was really a clarification of existing policy,” Nabisco spokesman Hank Sandbach said. “It was a very helpful and constructive dialogue.”

Dennison said in response that such a characterization was inaccurate. “Before, they didn’t have any relief workers. Period. . . . Now they’re officially designating individuals.”

The union stepped in on the workers’ behalf after about 30 former and current Nabisco employees, most of them seasonal workers, agreed to file a class-action lawsuit against Nabisco claiming, among other things, sex discrimination. They assert that while men were allowed to use the bathroom at their whim, women employees were not allowed to use the restroom.

Nabisco has, from the beginning, denied the women’s claims. “The allegations of sex discrimination are utterly, completely off the wall,” Sandbach said. These complaints, he said, “involve a small number of people, seasonal workers. Our belief is that they don’t speak for the vast majority of employees” at the plant.

Attorneys for the women who are preparing to file the lawsuit said they still plan to go ahead with the action.

“The fact that the company and the union have entered into a new agreement would not have an effect on remedies that we would be seeking for our clients for past wrongs,” said Eileen McCarthy, a staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, one of the firms handling the case.

None of the women was available for comment Friday.

Employees have also filed claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to which Nabisco must reply by the middle of this month.

As the EEOC continues to investigate the employees’ claims, attorneys for the women say their case is getting stronger.

“Additional information confirming evidence of the allegations is coming in a weekly basis,” Gregory Ramirez, lead attorney for the case, said.

Noting the irony in Nabisco’s denial, he said, “Why do you think negotiations take so long over something that never happened?”