They don't want us to get the crumbs that fall on the ground. Nothing. Matter fact, they want to take it all away from you. And that's the part that I can’t understand. I think these guys are getting in the back
room, smoke-filled room, and they're saying, “Hey, let's do this. Let's try to kill
and let's try to change the market so we don't have to worry about unions
anymore.” [Narrator]
Since June, unionized food manufacturing workers in Memphis have been on strike against management, against a conglomerate that owns their factory and against an economy
that's still tilted against workers. The factory makes soy protein isolate.
Its clients are some of the biggest food manufacturers in the world, including Nestlé, Abbott and virtually
anyone that makes a protein bar. The factory has been in operation for decades, providing good middle-class jobs...until now. It's not just about the contract
at this point. It's about being able to assemble,
and unionize and fight
for your working conditions in general. The strike was forced upon us. Nobody wanted to strike. We didn't want to come out here. Me being second generation,
my father retired from here. I would like to be able to preserve
this job for the next generation. When we started negotiation,
we brought forth about 19 proposals and only a few of them affected
people monetarily. And we agreed on absolutely nothing. We have a sister
plant that’s in Gibson City. Right before we went through negotiations, those guys ended up, the maintenance department, ended up with a 9% pay increase and the production department ended up with a 6% pay increase. They didn't ask to eliminate anything. But since [our factory] is 90% African American in a predominantly African-American town... [Narrator]
For years, the factory was
owned by DuPont Chemical, which agreed to contracts
with good benefits and working conditions. But it was sold in 2020 to a conglomerate called International Flavors and Fragrances. And that's when things began to get dire. IFF made more than $4 billion in gross
profit in 2022. But now it wants to take away
overtime and wreck worker health care plans. They even want to take away
paid lunch breaks. The company
doesn't want to give us what we deserve. They don't want to give us anything
after eight. They don't want to give us better
benefits. They don't want to give us, you know,
the ability to take breaks freely with no consequence. They don't want to give us incentives. And so, we're fighting for those unions that want to continue to fight for their betterment. The sanitation
strike happened here in Memphis. If you can't stand for something that you truly believe in, and your history, history has a way to go over again. I would think that it would get better,
but it hasn't. Instead of it getting better, it’s going downhill. We're going back to slavery time. Anytime you take all your stuff away, you have no rights, no say so, no nothing. Right now, we have a year notice
on our health benefits. Well, all of our benefits, actually. So they want to change that to 30 days. What that would mean for us
is that all they have to do is give us a 30-day notice. They can take whatever they want
away. Our premiums have gone up. Our premiums have doubled and tripled. Before we switched over
to United Healthcare, we had Aetna, and Aetna was actually pretty good. Each week with Aetna, I was paying $167 a week and this is for a family of four. So for me, my husband and my two children. Now I'm paying almost $300. That is a significant chunk
out of my paycheck. I would at least get $700 a week. But now that has dwindled down
to almost $400, $500. [Narrator]
IFF’s holdings and subsidiaries
make it a massive corporation. It owns the single largest
share of the Flavors and Fragrances market and owns one of the largest shares of the soy protein market. Much of that comes
thanks to the workers in Memphis. We put our life into our job because we held it to a higher standard. We have to recognize what we're doing. We're not making dog food, nothing like that. We're feeding the world. Babies, old folks like me and people with different health issues, drink the Ensure, different stuff like that from them. They very much rely on us,
but they may claim that they don't by saying that, since we've been on strike, we're going to hire what we need to keep it running. But the last time I checked, without us, you can't run the metric tons you need each day. Now you're running less than what,
pretty much 90% less than what, we usually run in a day. When it comes down to the final product stuff, that's what matters. Then it's a lot of unskilled, unknowledgeable people in there working who put their life on the line every day.
Because the stuff in there, it only takes a split second for something to go wrong and you’ll be missing
a foot, a toe, a head. We've got that kind of equipment
and we run old pieces of equipment like that. And if you don't know what you're doing, you'll get hurt, you’ll get hurt or lose your life. They absolutely want to, in my opinion, they want to break up the union. This is one
of the few jobs in the city that pays
above the average warehouse wage. They're trying to force us out
in hopes of, you know, having a company without a union because unions are fighting for stuff that they don't want to give. You know, we're a single shop union. So, you know, it's kind of hard for 150 people
to fight a $1,000,000,000 corporation. It is. It seems like they've got endless money, endless resources, but it's going to come a time where they're going to need to produce, and that's where we come in.
