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Highlands Today

Union Consolidates Cases Against Elberta Crate

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: May 22, 2008

Read the documents

AVON PARK — A labor union representing several employees at the Elberta Crate & Box Company's Avon Park plant consolidated cases against the company, accusing it of intimidating and firing employees for unionizing and even logging their restroom use, according to court documents.

Elberta, which has approximately 65 employees in Avon Park, manufactures wire-bound crates used for vegetable packing. The company is headquartered in Bainbridge, Ga. and also has a plant in North Carolina.

Representatives from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board's Tampa office earlier this month, requiring Elberta representatives to appear in court for a Aug. 4 hearing.

"The government found sufficient behaviors that were in violation of the law to hold a hearing," said Bill Street, an Oregon-based national representative with the Machinists.

Street said that the Elberta employees at the 224 Hatcher Ave. plant asked for the Machinists to represent them as they complained about the disproportionately high rate of injuries there, mostly caused by long hours of repetitive motions. He also claimed that the average wages there were $1.30 an hour less than the Bainbridge plant.

According to the complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board, employees began complaining about the plant's conditions in the middle of 2007, and the first of the seven complaints was filed in October.

The complaint alleged that Plant Manager Gregg McNeil, Elberta CEO and President Tom Simmons and plant production supervisor Tony Torres promised better benefits, wages and working conditions if they ditched the union. In September, the plant fired one employee and suspended another specifically for working with the Machinists union.

Calls to the Avon Park plant were deferred to Simmons at the company's headquarters. Multiple calls to Simmons were not returned.

A Day In The Plant
Theresa Jackson, an Elberta worker and a Machinists union member, said that she and another employee bend wires that hold the crate boxes together. She has to bend wires for 12 boxes within one minute.

Her shift runs from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., relieved by two 10-minute breaks at 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. and an hour-long lunch break that starts at noon.

Aside from those times, she and her partner have to bend wires around the boxes on the assembly every five seconds or less.

The factory has fans but it's not air-conditioned, and during the summer Jackson said it often reaches 100 degrees.

Jackson was hired by Elberta on and off since 1976, but she said it was only during the past two years that the plant's working environment deteriorated.

Leon Blocker, the president and directing business representative for the Machinists' Woodworkers District W2, said that Elberta's ownership changed around that time. The work environment became even more hostile, he alleged, once the current plant manager took over last year.

"Part of the problem has come with a new plant manager," Blocker said. "That's when the timing of the bathrooms really began."

Blocker was referring to the timed bathroom breaks –– one of the seven complaints lodged with the labor board –– and one that particularly irked the unionized employees. Jackson said that one of the mechanics doubles as a supervisor who requires employees to write in a log whenever they take a restroom break.

Jackson said her fellow employees would have to let the supervising mechanic know that they had medical conditions that required them to take more than the two bathroom breaks allowed during a shift.

Street thought that could be an illegal invasion of the employees' privacy.

"If you used the bathrooms three times in one day you got disciplined," Street said. "I think in their efforts to be 'reasonable,' they developed an exception where if you're a woman worker and you were on your menstrual cycle, they would give you an extra restroom break. It's absolutely outrageous."

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