USW: Huhtamaki Must Respect U.S. Workers Right to Organize

Contact: Lynne Hancock, (615) 831-6782, lhancock@usw.org
               R.J. Hufnagel, (412) 562-2450, rhufnagel@usw.org

PITTSBURGH (July 17) – The United Steelworkers (USW) union today called on Finnish packaging conglomerate Huhtamaki to respect the rights of its workers and to meet with workers at its Commerce, Calif.,  site who have sought to address job-related concerns. Huhtamaki will report its quarterly earnings in a public call at 2 p.m. Finnish time on Friday, July 18.

Huhtamaki, which produces cartons and containers for food and other consumer goods, has 15,000 employees at 61 facilities in 30 countries, including 3,500 at 21 facilities in the United States. Workers at five of those plants are members of the USW.

Workers at the Huhtamaki plant in Commerce, Calif., have repeatedly sought meetings with management to address substandard working conditions – including oppressive heat and arbitrary discipline – requests that management has refused to honor, while actively attempting to thwart any effort to organize a union.

“Huhtamaki continues to build significant profits off the productivity of its U.S. workforce, but then refuses to show that workforce the respect that it deserves for generating such revenues,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. “Huhtamaki should be treating these workers as partners, but instead has chosen to ignore their collective concerns and call in union busters to undermine their organization.”

This month, workers in Commerce elected worker representatives and also filed unfair labor practice charges against Huhtamaki with the National Labor Relations Board. The workers say that Huhtamaki has interfered with employees’ right to organize by changing its no-solicitation policy and retaliating against workers who have spoken out. The company also has hired a union-busting law firm, spied on workers, forced them to sit through anti-union meetings and mailed anti-union propaganda to their homes.

“We came together to respectfully to discuss problems that affect us as workers and, instead of meeting with us, the company has made every effort to try to convince us not to form a union,” said Arnold Moreno, a worker at the Commerce plant. “We will continue to stand together until the company changes it anti-union position, provides us assurances of no retaliation, and meets with us to address our legitimate concerns.”

Huhtamaki has expanded rapidly in the U.S. acquiring and opening new facilities, including many in low-wage areas where workers do not have union representation.

“It is time for Huhtamaki to meet the high standards for labor relations that apply to its unionized operations in the U.S. and abroad,” said Gerard. “This company must not be allowed to continue to build huge profits by denying its non-union work force fair wages and basic rights.”

Over the past several weeks, workers at other unionized Huhtamaki plants around the world have expressed their solidarity with their fellow employees in Commerce by submitting letters to management calling on them to respect the California workers’ rights. Workers have held solidarity actions at USW-represented Huhtamaki plants in the U.S. and in Finland, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, U.K., South Africa, and Turkey. 

“Sadly, Huhtamaki is choosing locations to expand where it can hire temporary workers and pay near-poverty wages,” Gerard said. “If this is part of this company’s ‘growth strategy’ in the United States, that is bad news for workers, their families and their communities.”

In May, the USW and the AFL-CIO released a report on Huhtamaki that demonstrated how the company’s expansion strategy in the U.S. was creating low-wage, precarious employment while threatening the job security and living standards of unionized employees. Click Here for the report.

The USW is the largest industrial union in North America, representing workers in a range of industries including metals, mining, rubber, paper and forestry, oil refining, health care, security, hotels, and municipal governments and agencies.

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