What Are the American Crystal Workers Going to Do When They Find Out That Others Can Do Their Jobs?
One of the strangest things I’ve seen is the ideas espoused by the locked out American Crystal workers that they are somehow irreplaceable.
But union supporters have questioned how replacement workers with limited experience in highly technical sugar processing plants would be able to handle demanding jobs without affecting production efficiency, safety or damaging expensive company equipment.
“They’re not going to be able to produce the sugar that we do because they’re not going to be able to run the plants,” union spokesman Mark Froemke said. “It’s going to be a chaotic mess inside the factories.”
Froemke said last week replacement workers damaged a sugar pan at the company’s East Grand Forks plant, one of a number of mishaps in the past month involving replacement workers.
Come on. This is factory shift work. If Apple can find a replacement for Steve Jobs then someone who works in the sugar factory can be replaced.
But this seems to be a common fantasy among the union that somehow at the end of the season beets will be rotting on the ground. While there’s going to be a few setbacks (as has happened with union workers on the job) within a short period of time things are going to work out fine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if after a short period of time that the plant is operating better than ever. After all people that are motivated to do the job will often do better than people who have been on the job too long.
I think we’ll see shortly that things are doing fine. At that point what will the union workers fantasize about?
Now if these union workers don’t want to take the job that Crystal is offering that’s fine. I hope they don’t resort further into intimidation and violence. Already the union has degenerated into racial insults when they hung a monkey from a rope at the Hillsboro plant as a threat to the replacement workers that happen to be black.