The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Highlight

The sickout, along with the company’s pressing desire to staff up temporarily to keep the lines going when people began getting Covid, prompted Mondelez to offer an emergency one-year contract. To the Portland workers, it sounded like a terrible deal: the contract meant agreeing to give up the pension, and the unit would be watered down with temps. Only two union members in Portland out of two hundred voted for the contract. But they were outvoted by workers at other Nabisco locations, who found the temporary stability of simply having a contract, and the modest signing bonus it came with, too attractive to pass up after years of uncertainty.