Local News

Picketing the Plant

AHF Products union workers on strike

BEVERLY -- Union workers at the AFH Products factory in Beverly voted to strike after rejecting a new contract proposal over the weekend. 

In a press statement, AHF Products officials said, "Last week, the AHF Products Beverly manufacturing facility and Teamsters Local 175 together developed a good-faith agreement which would result in the largest economic package for workers in the history of the location. 

"Unfortunately, a narrow plurality of the members has voted against the tentative agreement and voted to strike."

Workers at the plant voted down the agreement on Saturday night and officially went on strike at 12 a.m. Sunday morning. 

"The AHF Products Beverly facility remains open, and work is available for any bargaining unit member who wants to work," the press statement reads. "The company continues to serve its customers through abundantly available product.  Our team stands ready to move forward with the agreement that both sides have already worked successfully to craft. "

Employees began picketing outside the facility Sunday and continued throughout the day on Monday.

"We are striking because of the way they treat people, along with unfair wages and unfair insurance," a union worker who has worked with AHF for close to 20 years, and who asked to remain anonymous, told The Inter-Mountain Monday. "Some of the supervisors here treat the employees pretty badly. When you have 20-plus year employees leaving and going somewhere else, there's something wrong. The way they treat people, it's unreal – it's crammed down your throat and out your backside every day."

An employee who has been at AHF for 18 years was picketing Monday beside another worker who has been there for 31 years, and said he had a problem with the fact that they make the same amount of money.

"For the 18 years I've been here, I make just as much as he does, and he's been here over 30 years," he said. "That just doesn't seem very fair to me at all. You would think he'd be making much more than me, considering how much longer he's been here."

Ken Hall, president of Teamsters Local 175, told The Inter-Mountain Monday that the union workers voted to strike for a variety of reasons, adding their treatment at the plant has become an issue.

"They are certainly looking for more wages, but one of the problems here that we don't see everywhere is the way they are treated on the job," Hall said. "They have a few supervisors who are just not very respectful to workers, and that has really boiled over and became a very big issue."

Hall said employees at AHF work very hard and the one thing they shouldn't have to worry about is being treated poorly while they are doing their job.

"There's no point in it, no reason for them to be treated poorly," Hall said. "People deserve to be treated with respect in any workplace. And I think that's quite frankly what's driving an awful lot of this, in addition to them wanting more pay."

Hall said there was in fact more money in the proposed agreement, but insisted AHF isn't taking into consideration how the price of everything has gone up.

"The company will tell you this is the most money they've gotten in any contract, but you have to also factor in that going out and buying anything is also more expensive than it's ever been," he said. "We are in sort of a unique situation where we have never seen the prices of goods increase like it has the past three or four years. And that's something the company has to respect." 

Hall said the bottom line is that the workers want more money and want to be treated with respect.

"There's a couple other issues, but I think those two issues, pay and respect. are the main two," he said. "They work hard up there, it's a tough job. And when you add in that some of those supervisors simply have no respect for them, it makes it that much harder… They just want to be treated like human beings."

Hall said he hopes the union and company can get things resolved sooner than later.

"I notified the company Saturday after the vote and I haven't heard from them," he said. "Hopefully we will hear from them in the near future. We are eager to get back to the table."