Machinists Lodge 63 won a $33,492.56 grievance settlement at the Mondelēz-Nabisco bakery in Portland last month, ending a two-year battle over subcontracting work on production line 15, which makes Ritz crackers.
Thirty-two Machinists at the plant will each get checks for $1,046.64.
Lodge 63 filed the grievance in April 2018 after the company used sub-contractors to perform demolition work on production Line 15. According to Business Rep Bob Petroff, the union has battled the company repeatedly about subcontracting work without the union signing off on the scope of the work.
Petroff said the contractor, who has done work at Mondelēz’s Portland plant on other occasions, was informed that the in-house Machinists would do the demo work on the bakery line. However, the work was pulled from the Machinists and awarded to the contractor during a time when chief shop steward Jeff Obermiller was away on union business.
The Machinists grieved the action to get their members paid for the loss of work.
On April 28, 2020, two days before an arbitration hearing was to take place, Mondelēz settled for $33,492.56.
They reached that amount after union attorney Noah Warman subpoenaed documents from the contractor showing the number of hours worked to demolish the production line. Warman is an associated at the Tedesco Law Group.
A second grievance filed by the Machinists a few months later in 2018 involving subcontracting demolition work on production line 14 is still pending.
Mondelēz was created in 2012 as an independent spinoff of Kraft-Nabisco’s global snack division.
