Nabisco’s 1995 Pullout Still Leaves Bitter Taste
For Lydia Hernandez, the nightmare is always the same. She is running through the old Nabisco plant, desperately in need of a bathroom but unable to find one.
She snaps out of a fitful sleep, drenched in sweat and gasping for air. She tells herself it was only a bad dream. But some dreams are hard to shake.
Three years after the closure of the Oxnard cannery, which once pumped out the world’s supply of A-1 Steak Sauce and Grey Poupon mustard, hard feelings and economic devastation still linger from a labor dispute that erupted when women complained that their restroom privileges were so restrictive that they had to wear diapers on the job.
As many as 700 employees were thrown out of work when Nabisco folded its local operation, and many are still trying to recover. Marriages have crumbled, some lost their homes and others were plunged into bankruptcy.
Some blamed Hernandez and other female employees, saying Nabisco never would have left if they hadn’t filed sex discrimination complaints, and a subsequent lawsuit, against the New Jersey-based food maker.
But Hernandez said she doesn’t regret her decision to speak out, saying something had to be done about working conditions.
“I try to put it in the back of my mind, but it’s something you don’t forget,” said the 63-year-old Saticoy resident, who packed peppers for 25 years at the 3rd Street cannery before being shoved into retirement by the shutdown. “I’m still very bitter about the way we were treated and about the way it all ended.”
Nabisco settled the lawsuit without admitting wrongdoing, but not before selling off part of its local operation and shifting the rest to the East Coast.
Company officials, who have denied the sex discrimination charges all along, said neither the sale nor the move back east had anything to do with the dispute, which pushed the company into the national spotlight and even spurred threats of a Grey Poupon boycott.
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But for the employees who were left behind, the result was the same.
“It was devastating to everybody,” said Frances Chacon, 61, who rose from a seasonal employee to a $14-an-hour lab technician in her 25 years at the company. She was among eight employees hired by the county after the closure to help find jobs for displaced workers.
“People suffered quite a few hardships; they went from having nice, comfortable lifestyles to losing everything and starting over,” Chacon said. “I don’t think Nabisco realized the impact they were going to have on the people they left behind. And if they did, I don’t think they really cared.”
Not everyone was worse off after the closure. Dozens of employees took advantage of work-training programs and other services cobbled together to help the cannery workers get back on their feet.
Some Lives Improved
Some, like 42-year-old Francisco Hernandez, moved into better jobs. After 13 years at Nabisco, Hernandez transferred his forklift-driving skills to a Pepsi plant in Ventura. He now earns $17 an hour, compared to $14 an hour in Oxnard.
“It’s much better for me now,” Hernandez said. “My life has improved.”
But Hernandez was the exception. Many former employees ended up like Jose Luis Rodriguez, left scrambling for a decent-paying job after 24 years as a machine operator at the cannery.
The 45-year-old Mexican immigrant was earning $13 an hour when the plant closed. Better than that, he met his wife, Dina, at the factory, where she worked part time as a lab technician. Together, the couple made a good life for themselves and their four children, buying a home in south Oxnard and saving money to send their kids to college.
But all that ended when Nabisco went away. Stressed, Rodriguez took medical leave a month before the closure. He received an $11,000 severance check for his decades of service, but the money was gone before he knew it.
After eight months of unemployment, Rodriguez said, he was close to losing his home when he landed an $11-an-hour maintenance job in Santa Barbara. He traded that two years ago for an $8-an-hour job at an Oxnard factory so he could be closer to home.
Rodriguez is finally starting to get back on his feet. But he isn’t sure whether he will ever be all the way back.
“My wife and I, we don’t spend money on things we don’t need--it’s only the house payment and food, that’s it,” he said. “They took away 24 years of my dedication on the job. That was the hardest thing of all.”
A Half-Century of Food Processing
The original food-processing operation began half a century ago at a smaller factory just down the road in Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood, when the Ortega Chile Co.--born in an adobe home on the banks of the Ventura River--was incorporated into the Coastal Valley Canning Co.
Ownership changed hands several times, with A-1 and Grey Poupon added to the mix in 1966. Nabisco bought the operation in 1988.
Jobs at the cannery were the foundation upon which members of the mostly Latino work force built their lives.
Paychecks from the 3rd Street factory helped buy new homes and new cars. They helped finance family vacations and helped parents put kids through college.
This was never white-collar work. Much of it was dirty, sweaty factory toil. But the work was regular and it paid well, an average of $12 an hour for full-time employees.
That was a lot of money, especially to the first-generation immigrants who came to the plant straight from the fields.
“There was a lot of competition for those jobs,” said Rusty Montano, 44, a forklift driver who put in 20 years at the company.
Aside from an occasional construction job and some work as a movie extra, he hasn’t been employed full time since the closure, deciding to take an extended vacation until his severance pay runs out.
“They were a very large company, so I think people felt secure that they wouldn’t lose their jobs,” he said. “It didn’t really change my life that much, but I know quite a few people took it real bad.”
The labor conflict took root in the fall of 1993, when Lydia Hernandez lost her job after tangling with company supervisors about the restroom restrictions.
Hernandez was a seasonal employee, one of hundreds of assembly-line workers hired during a peak period that ran from July to October.
In complaints filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in early 1995, several of those workers said restroom visits were limited to break times and that they were prohibited from leaving the food-processing line to go to the bathroom.
Alleged Bathroom Restrictions
Female employees alleged that managers restricted their restroom privileges while allowing men to go whenever they needed.
Some women said they even suffered bladder infections as a result of not being able to go when they needed to. All of those allegations were contained in a class-action lawsuit filed in March of the same year.
Five months later, Nabisco officials announced that they had sold the Oxnard plant and the company’s line of Ortega products to a division of Nestle USA Inc. While Nabisco was shifting the rest of its operation back east--a move said to save the company $5 million a year--Nestle decided to shift production of Ortega products to other plants and put the cannery up for sale.
With hundreds of jobs at stake, workers organized a campaign to keep the factory open.
They held prayer vigils and marched on City Hall to urge city leaders to fight for their jobs. They circulated petitions and won support from high-ranking Teamsters officials at a national civil-rights conference.
There was even talk about a Grey Poupon boycott, an idea first proposed by a West Hollywood city councilman sympathetic to the workers’ plight.
But in the end, none of it did any good. The plant shut down in March 1996. And the lawsuit was settled a month later for an undisclosed amount, officially ending the long-running dispute.
Nabisco spokesman Hank Sandbach said the company, which shifted production of steak sauce and mustard to a factory in Cambridge, Md., stands by earlier statements that it never mistreated employees. Other than that, he had little to say about the last days of Nabisco in Oxnard.
“It’s just the ebb and flow of business,” he said.
But Oxnard attorney Greg Ramirez, one of the lawyers who represented the women in the lawsuit, said he believes there is more to it than that.
He said he believes Nabisco shut down the local operation in retaliation for the filing of sex discrimination charges against the company, claims included in a separate volley of complaints filed with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 1995.
After the plant was closed and the lawsuit was settled, Ramirez said, he learned that some workers blamed the women, and the lawyers who represented them, for bringing the operation to an end.
“Obviously that didn’t feel good, even though we knew it was not our fault the plant closed,” Ramirez said. “I thought they did a hell of a job exposing to the public a tremendous wrongdoing. To say that I’m proud of these women would be an understatement.”
Mixed Feelings for Some
Life after Nabisco has been easier for some than others.
Frances Chacon decided to retire when the closure was announced, taking with her an $870-a-month pension, medical benefits and a Nabisco wristwatch for her quarter-century of service.
Chacon, who was a shop steward for the Teamsters local that represented the workers, said she has mixed feelings about the company. On one hand, the money she earned helped build a comfortable life for her family and put her children through college. On the other hand, the closure tore apart so many lives and left longtime friends scraping to get by.
“I get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I think about it; I don’t even want to go through 3rd Street and see that plant again,” she said. “Making money, that was their main goal regardless of what happened to the people who had been loyal to the company for years and years.”
Richard and Margaret Guzman were among those employees. He put in 16 years at the company, driving a forklift most of that time. She was a seasonal worker during that same period, packing chiles from August to October.
Together, the high school sweethearts raised six kids on Nabisco paychecks and were saving to buy a home. After the factory closed, they declared bankruptcy and struggled to stay afloat.
Richard Guzman, 47, was only able to find work in short spurts, always for less money than he earned at Nabisco. Long dry spells without employment plunged him into depression. He and Margaret fought often as the futile job search took a toll on their marriage.
Finally, early last year, he was hired as a forklift driver by Haas Automation in Oxnard and has worked his way up to $10.50 an hour.
Initially, Margaret Guzman, 46, fared better. She landed one of the county jobs created to help Nabisco workers. That lasted two years until she got laid off in April of last year.
She has since gone back to work for the county, although as temporary summer help. Ironically, she is helping youngsters find jobs for the summer. Friday was her last day of work.
“We suffered a lot,” said Margaret Guzman, one of the workers who complained about the restriction of bathroom privileges and one of three named plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit.
“You work all your life to make a company grow and grow, because you believe the more they grow the more it will benefit you, and then all of the sudden they just pack up and leave,” she said. “It makes me angry. They shouldn’t have treated the workers that way.”
Lydia Hernandez couldn’t agree more. Even with all that has happened, she said she wouldn’t change anything if she had it do over again. Conditions were unbearable for the women who worked the assembly-line jobs, she said, and that needed to change.
“To tell you the truth, I was surprised that I went ahead and did that,” she said. “But I knew somebody had to listen to us. As long as we spoke the truth, I knew people would believe us.”
