Unions have scored new wages, bonuses and benefits for North Texas food supply chain workers.

“Food workers are on the front line of this fight. We play a very important role for food safety and supply,” said Johnny Rodriguez, president of the UFCW Local 540, the food processing and meatpacking local in Dallas.

Since the pandemic gained speed, the union has secured hourly pay increases and bonuses for more than 6,000 Texas workers at Frito-Lay in Irving, Quaker Oats and Danone in Dallas, Campbell’s Soup in Paris, and Cargill in Fort Worth and Friona.

While the pandemic is “horrible,” Rodriguez said in an interview, “the importance of the food worker has never been more highlighted than it is now.”

As shelter-in-place rules have been adopted in cities and states, grocery workers and people in less visible jobs like those who process food in factories have been deemed essential alongside health care staff and police and firefighters.

In the past week, Local 540 has secured $300 bonuses — $100 now and $200 in May — for workers in Lufkin and Nacogdoches from Pilgrim’s Pride, making it the first poultry company to offer worker bonuses.

In the U.S., the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union represents about 250,000 meatpacking and food processing plant workers. While some unions have lost ground in recent decades, more than 70% of beef and 60% of pork consumed in the U.S. is still processed by UFCW-represented packing plants.

Companies in Texas including Smuckers Foods, Hormel, JBS, Maple Leaf Foods and Seaboard Triumph have agreed to pay bonuses in April and May amounting to several hundred dollars per employee, offered additional paid leave, and waived co-pays for coronavirus testing and treatment. Some are also creating better spacing between workers on factory floors.

Grocery workers aren’t as unionized as food processing workers in Texas, but retail grocers have responded similarly in the past couple of weeks. Kroger, Albertsons, Tom Thumb, H-E-B, Walmart and Target have boosted pay for store employees by $2 an hour.

Only Kroger store employees in Dallas-Fort Worth are represented by a union, UFCW Local 1000. A recent change for Kroger employees included more paid sick time and waiving of co-pays and testing costs for coronavirus.

Albertsons, which also owns Tom Thumb and Randalls in Texas, has a unionized workforce in California and other states but only a small group in El Paso in Texas. Earlier this month, when Idaho-based Albertsons raised wages $2 an hour, it said the “appreciation pay” program was for “all non-union and union front-line associates.”

While the coronavirus pandemic has put a spotlight on food workers, unions had already gained some momentum in the last two to three years, Rodriguez said. “It’s been a good experience for us during collective bargaining agreements.”

Rodriguez represented most of the plants that have gotten recent new pay and benefits. He’s seen decades of changes in Texas, both as a worker and in union leadership.

Today employers are reaching out, he said, “as new industry protocols and food safety and additional cleaning rules are put in place.”

Rodriguez says companies are asking "how members are doing, how they can improve communications with their employees and what they need to do and not do.”

“Now that the role the food worker plays has been identified, that will shed a different light for us,” he said. “It’s important for our industry negotiations. We’re optimistic and enthusiastic about future negotiations.”

The federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 an hour, but 26 states have changed their minimum wage laws since 2014. Texas still follows the federal guidelines. And 44 U.S. cities have increased minimum wages, but none in Texas.

Amazon, Walmart and Target have all been increasing hourly wages over the past couple of years. Amazon said in 2018 that it would raise all hourly pay to at least $15 an hour.

Most workers in bigger cities in Texas are being paid hourly wages well above the $7.25 an hour floor.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

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