Teamsters File a Retaliation Claim Against Nabisco

The Teamsters Union filed a retaliation claim Thursday against Nabisco Foods, alleging that the company is requiring displaced workers to surrender their rights to pursue labor complaints against the food maker in order to receive severance pay.

More than 130 full-time employees for the former Nabisco plant in Oxnard are scheduled to be out of work next month, following the company’s decision last year to sell its local factory and shift key operations to the East Coast.

In response, Teamsters representatives and Nabisco officials negotiated a severance package for the displaced workers that included extended health benefits and a week’s pay for every year an employee has been at the plant.

But in a complaint filed Thursday with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, union representatives contend that, in return for the severance pay, workers are now being compelled to waive their rights to pursue sex-discrimination and retaliation complaints filed against Nabisco over the past year.

The move amounts to a retaliatory strike against workers who have asked state and federal officials to investigate those claims, a union member alleged in the complaint.

“It’s basically designed to prevent people from exercising their rights,” Teamsters representative Joe Fahey said of the waiver. “Basically the company is holding that money hostage until and unless the employees waive those rights and basically kill those investigations.”

A spokesman for the New Jersey-based company said a “standard release of claims form” was included in the severance package provided by Nabisco and agreed to and signed by the Teamsters.

Nabisco spokesman John R. Barrows said that based on initial concerns about the language in that release form, company officials agreed to exempt workers’ compensation claims and a class-action lawsuit currently pending against the food maker from the waiver.

Nevertheless, Barrows said the Teamsters Union now wants to back out of that deal.

“We negotiated a fair agreement with the union,” Barrows said. “We have since gone above and beyond . . . to be as fair as possible, and we believe it is fair.”

The retaliation complaint is the latest chapter in a long-running labor dispute at the Oxnard plant.

In January 1995, more than 30 mostly seasonal employees at the 3rd Street factory filed sex-discrimination complaints against Nabisco, alleging that managers unduly restricted the restroom privileges of female employees.

Some of the assembly-line workers said the restrictions were so severe that they were forced to wear diapers on the job and even suffered bladder infections because they were forbidden from going to the bathroom when needed.

In March, lawyers filed a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against the company on behalf of the female employees. Nabisco officials have denied those charges. That lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

In September, Nabisco announced that it would be selling its Oxnard plant and its line of Ortega Mexican foods to a division of Nestle USA Inc., and that it would shift production of its A-1 Steak Sauce and Grey Poupon mustard to Maryland.

Later that same month, lawyers representing dozens of current and former employees filed charges with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that Nabisco was selling the plant in retaliation for the filing of sex-discrimination complaints against the company. Union representatives filed a similar complaint with a state agency in November.

Nabisco officials have long denied the sex-discrimination complaints. And they say the retaliation claims are groundless, adding that the company’s decision to sell the Oxnard plant and shift operations to the East Coast has nothing to with the labor dispute.