Crystal Sugar union going after US sugar import controll

Well done Adam. You caused the scourge of Seattle to show his/her/its true color. YELLOW!

Well done IrassWn, you lied AGAIN !

IrishMN wrote:
It doesn't work with door to door people, but phone solicitors are always welcome to call me. When I answer the phone and they ask for IrishMN, I respond with:
"Oh, I am sorry. He just died. I am here clearing out the last of his belongings."
The silence is deafening.
And yes, I am that warped.

Adam-OK, what are the actual terms of your "bet"?
Me-If you're actually interested in a 10k wager, SAY SO ! To keep it legal, the loser will be donating money to the Crystal Sugar striking workers fund, if union workers are employed at Crystal Sugar 1/1/2012. We will BOTH give checks to an attorney to hold and I'll provide his information. Now, dance some more...
Adam-Bring the wager amount down to something realistic and let the winner determine where the wager is donated and maybe we can do this.
Me-You asked for MY offer. Either accept it or STFU !
DID I FAIL TO MAKE THE TERMS CLEAR ???

Seattle SLEW Adam wrote:

Adam-OK, what are the actual terms of your "bet"?
Me-If you're actually interested in a 10k wager, SAY SO ! To keep it legal, the loser will be donating money to the Crystal Sugar striking workers fund, if union workers are employed at Crystal Sugar 1/1/2012. We will BOTH give checks to an attorney to hold and I'll provide his information. Now, dance some more...
Adam-Bring the wager amount down to something realistic and let the winner determine where the wager is donated and maybe we can do this.
Me-You asked for MY offer. Either accept it or STFU !
DID I FAIL TO MAKE THE TERMS CLEAR ???

You act as if you are in charge. You aren't.

Adam wrote:

<quoted text>
You act as if you are in charge. You aren't.

You asked ME for details, if I want to watch "dancing" you'd need a C cup...

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Stop the virus from Seattle: JOIN THE BOYCOTT THIS WEDNESDAY!

OCCU_PUPPY wrote:

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Stop the virus from Seattle: JOIN THE BOYCOTT THIS WEDNESDAY!

Sounds GOOD, lets do nothing Wednesday... You're a straight up "genius" MY MAN !?? LMAOROTF !

IrishMN wrote:

Well done Adam. You caused the scourge of Seattle to show his/her/its true color. YELLOW!

Ditto your remarks Irish. Did you know that no actual "Crystal Sugar striking workers fund" even exists? You can donate to the "Sugar Beets workers fund" or the "BCTGM Lockout Relief Fund", neither of which specify the entire amount goes to the Crystal Sugar beet workers. The donation would be to the AFL-CIO in St Paul. He/she/it was bluffing the entire time.

Sloppy SLEW wrote:

<quoted text>
Ditto your remarks Irish. Did you know that no actual "Crystal Sugar striking workers fund" even exists? You can donate to the "Sugar Beets workers fund" or the "BCTGM Lockout Relief Fund", neither of which specify the entire amount goes to the Crystal Sugar beet workers. The donation would be to the AFL-CIO in St Paul. He/she/it was bluffing the entire time.

This union's goons lead the ignorant members to slaughter and then turned their backs on them.

The local union goons took their marching orders from the national union goons and the national had absolutely no concern for the local workers what so ever.

The national union told the local they could not fold on work rule changes because of the precedent that would set for every other local union that would be negotiating their contracts in the next couple of years.

These are unskilled laborers. They were offered a 17% INCREASE over a 3 year period. They would have to adjust some work rules and agree to pay up to the level of what non-union workers pay for their health care benefits. But that should not be a deal breaker.

The company was very public with how they approached the long and difficult negotiations. When they got to their final offer, they made sure everyone understood that this was the final offer.

The union told the workers they could bring the company down, if they held out. Sadly, the workers believed the union goons.

The freakin' union knows the unemployment law in ND. They knew that there were no unemployment benefits for 80% of the employees. Yet they had nothing for a strike fund.

Do you realize that? The union told these unskilled workers to strike, yet had no contingency funds set up at all – including knowing that ND does not pay unemployment for work stoppages.

This is one of the saddest stories around. These foolish people believed in their union leadership, and have now gone into their 7th month with no income.

All because a union wanted to appear strong nationally rather than do what was best for the local membership. How pathetic.

Once again the scourge of Seattle is spewing crapola.

Everything was exactly as I said.

The union has crapped on the membership big time. The members will never get their jobs back now.

That is sad.

IrishMN wrote:

Once again the scourge of Seattle is spewing crapola.
Everything was exactly as I said.
The union has crapped on the membership big time. The members will never get their jobs back now.
That is sad.

IrishMN, did you know that there were fires at ACS before the Union was locked out?

"East Grand Forks Fire Chief Randy Gust says a pulp dryer fire isn't unusual and that his department responds to about one each year."

There was one in April 2011 as well.

JTY wrote:

<quoted text>
IrishMN, did you know that there were fires at ACS before the Union was locked out?
"East Grand Forks Fire Chief Randy Gust says a pulp dryer fire isn't unusual and that his department responds to about one each year."
There was one in April 2011 as well.

Were those fires when they had those very experienced 30 yr union employees in the plant? OMG!!!!!!!!!!

This would be the perfect time for the union to start a competing business, they have the union workers available, they can pay everyone high wages, free health care, workers paradise, oops I forgot unions only leach off companys, they know its easier to steal complain and bitch about a business than to create one. Just like govt welfare job workers. In the meantime the union bosses are drinking cognac and smoking cigars and laughing at the morons in North Dakota

JTY wrote:

<quoted text>
IrishMN, did you know that there were fires at ACS before the Union was locked out?
"East Grand Forks Fire Chief Randy Gust says a pulp dryer fire isn't unusual and that his department responds to about one each year."
There was one in April 2011 as well.

It is a good thing they had those 25-30 year union employees in place!

JTY wrote:

<quoted text>
IrishMN, did you know that there were fires at ACS before the Union was locked out?
"East Grand Forks Fire Chief Randy Gust says a pulp dryer fire isn't unusual and that his department responds to about one each year."
There was one in April 2011 as well.

Except 2 in the last 6 months is unusual, son. Multiple fires at American Crystal Sugar plants are raising questions about safety while replacement workers are staffing the plants during the lockout of the company's union workers:

This is the second fire at Moorhead's plant since the lockout began. In the past five years, there has only been one other fire that's required a fire department response.

Another fire at the Moorhead American Crystal plant is causing people to wonder if the plants are safe without the union employees. On August 1st, 1300 American Crystal union members were locked out of their jobs after a contract dispute.

The fire happened around 4:30 Thursday morning in the pulp dryer and spread to the room next to it. No one was injured but there was a considerable amount of damage.

This, along with all the other fires, makes Ross Perrin and other union members shake their heads.

"It's kind of strange. Six fires out of the valley and the equipment is being monitored by people running it," says union member, Ross Perrin.

"The pulp dryer at crystal sugar had a fire inside it and the extinguishing system that's in it had gone off and they were having a hard time getting some of the hot spots off," says Moorhead Fire Marshal Rich Duysen.

The pulp dryer is one of the most fire prone places in the plants and there's always someone there to watch it.

"There's a control room where there's an engineer I believe he's an engineer that would sit and monitor a lot of controls," says Duysen.

This is the second fire at Moorhead's plant since the lockout began. In the past five years, there has only been one other fire that's required a fire department response.

Duysen says "They've had a really good safety record over the years."

We called the fire departments in all five communities with plants. The numbers in Dryaton, Hillsboro and Crookston haven't changed. However, East Grand Forks has had one fire since the lockout... and only a total of two in the past five years.

"They'll write it off as a common occurrence. Any situation you know that you have like this can turn into a devastating event. Lucky nobody got hurt," says Perrin.

Another day, another fire at an American Crystal Sugar plant being run (badly) by inexperienced scabs. ACS is, quite literally playing with fire. And the risk of a flaming halocaust is not overblown- these are huge plants the size of small towns, towering higher than even many big city fire trucks can reach. And there's plenty of fuel for the fire- dry sugar beats are flammable, you can even make ethanol from them, and plants stockpile them by the truckload in piles several stories high. So there's very real potential of a massive, wind blown (we get plenty of wind out here) total conflagration at the sugar plants. All these tiny to small town's volunteer fire departments would be able to do is evacuate the populace and let the fire burn itself and the sugar plant out.

There's no "idiots" guide to running sugar plants, and food processing plants in general. A couple decades ago I worked for a huge wholesale bakery. You learned how to run a bakery from the old hands, who passed on the knowledge to you that they'd similarly acquired from the previous generation of bakers. The company had manuals, but they were written by writers not bakers- If you actually followed the manual, you'd produce some nasty bread if you didn't set the bakery on fire.

Couple years back a friend and I considered buying a small rural elevator and feed mill. The price was attractive and my partner had experience maintaining track and locomotives and I'd learned a bit of industrial maintainence at the bakery and later the Postal Service. But run a grain elevator or mill? We were lost, and sure as heck we'd probably screw up and drive our customers away while we learned at their expense- Buying a mill and elevator for a six figure sum is attractive until you screw up and ruin a 7 figure sum's worth of grain!

It's the same way with really big sugar plants- in fact, the bigger plants allow you to screw up in even more and bigger ways. In the last days our bakery operated some newbie bakers were brought in to run the place as the old heads had transferred elsewhere. They made the newbie mistake of turning on every electrical motor at once and blowing the transformer supplying the bakery. After we sat around for damn near the whole shift waiting for the electric company to replace the blown transformer, the newbie bakers did the same thing again and blew another transformer. When they finally managed to get the plant running hours later, they forgot that the folks that wrapped the bread at the end of the line had been sent to lunch... A 20 foot dumpster full of bread was dumped on the floor before they caught their mistake!

Sadly, we can export more stupid newbie mistakes and fires at American Crystal Sugar if management doesn't wake up and put their experienced union workers back on the job. ACS has been lucky so far... But they've only got a handful of plants and rebuilding one from a catastrophic fire would take it out of production for years. Meanwhile, ACS's competitors (some of whom are foreign) would grab ACS's market share for good.

Hopefully ACS and it's farmer owners will come to there senses and bring their experienced union workers back before that tragedy happens.

Seattle SLEW wrote:

Since you're arguing minutia, the wager will be paid to the Union members defense fund. Donations to the defense fund can be made online at http://www.gofundme.com/d6aas .

So I follow your link and get some two-bit "how to raise money online" web site. First you try to make a bogus bet using some non-existant fund, and when some one calls you on it, THIS IS ALL YOU CAN COME UP WITH?

Seattle SLEW wrote:

<quoted text>Nope, we BOTH donate the winnings to the union fund. You asked for my offer. As for my cushy job, I'm perfectly happy to be a better provider and have a better job, than you. Are you an idiot ?

I'll take your bet but you will have to donate to whatever fund I choose when you lose - the one I have already chosen for you. And, since you are so certain that the union will get back in, that shouldn't be a problem should it?

Adam wrote:

<quoted text>
I'll take your bet but you will have to donate to whatever fund I choose when you lose - the one I have already chosen for you. And, since you are so certain that the union will get back in, that shouldn't be a problem should it?

I told her to put a $100,000 and he ignored me. A lot of hot air, big talker on Topix