The strike
town, pitting the company that concocts a 28-calorie yellow spongy baby chicken against the union workers it employs. It has splintered the workforce of mechanics and candy makers who make 2 billion Peeps every year.
The company has suggested that if these changes are not made, its future in Bethlehem could be in doubt.
“To remain a sustainable business we need to continue to contain or reduce our costs in order to invest in our infrastructure, our associates and our brands,” said Matt Pye, a Just Born vice president. “Our goal is to keep producing iconic candy brands for generations to come.”
To many of the workers who make Peeps, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union, it is a line that cannot be crossed.
“There comes a point in time when you have to take a position,” said Alex Fattore, 55, who has worked at Just Born for 37 years, and walked out during the stunning 2016 strike that escalated the feud. “You have to make a stand.”
The stand came on Sept. 7, 2016. It was supposed to be peak Peep time, when the company accelerates production to prepare for an Easter binge that locks in almost half the company’s annual sales.
Five days earlier, at a union building in nearby Allentown, 272 Just Born employees met and voted against the company’s latest contract proposal. That offer would have directed all new employees into a 401(k) savings plan — which does not ensure benefits after retirement — and blocked them from participating in the pension.
The workers to strike.
The following Wednesday, Fattore and more than 100 others walked out of the sprawling candy factory that also makes the candies Mike & Ike and Hot Tamales.
They marched up and down the sidewalk, screaming “No Justice! No Peeps!” again and again. The strike went around the clock.
Belt One, the first-floor marshmallow-moving sidewalk that produces most of the company’s 5.5 million Peeps per day, stood idle.
Striking workers noticed the Peepsmobile, a yellow Volkswagen Beetle adorned with a giant lookalike chick head, had disappeared from the front of the factory, to be voted unanimously found later locked up in a cage where it could not be damaged.
Many in Bethlehem and the surrounding area were stunned. Just Born and the union had coexisted since the 1970s without a strike. The company’s revenue was reportedly growing. In an area where steel jobs had mostly disappeared, candy jobs had endured.
Peeps are an iconic brand for Bethlehem and central to its identity. On New Year’s Eve, they do not drop a crystal ball. They drop a giant yellow Peep. The union workforce volunteers at soup kitchens and local churches.
“It’s not exactly like ‘us versus them,’” said Thomas Hyclak, an economics professor at nearby Lehigh University. “It’s not like management was trying to take jobs and move them to South Carolina. This is a good company. But the workers are our friends and neighbors too. It’s hard for people to take sides.”
The strike went on for several weeks. Candy production plummeted, workers said, but the company refused to budge. The same family has owned Just Born for three generations, and they had complained that personnel-related costs were rising too fast. They needed to contain these costs to keep the firm competitive with others that have moved overseas.
“Many companies are moving part or all of their operations outside of the U.S. to take advantage of lower sugar prices available outside the U.S. and lower labor costs,” Pye said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Just Born has, so far, been able to retain all of its manufacturing in the U.S. which puts us at a competitive disadvantage.”
Union workers were skeptical. Candy Industry magazine had projected Just Born’s net sales climbing to $231 million in 2016, up from $222 million in 2014. (The company would not comment on the candy magazine’s estimates.)
The union tried to hold ranks, but people started slipping away. Twenty workers crossed the picket line and went back to work. They warned striking friends they would lose their jobs if they did not return immediately. The company even held a job fair, and more than 150 people showed up, enticed by the attractive pay people could earn without a college degree.
People panicked. Union officials said Just Born hired 100 new workers, while more striking workers ran back to their old jobs, fearful of losing their careers. Longtime friends hurled verbal, vulgar threats as they ducked away.
The union’s worst nightmare was coming true — its members were splintering.
“If they break the union, do these people realize they could lose everything?” said Gordon Grow, a mechanic who spent 41 years at Just Born but retired after the strike because he refused to work with people he said crossed the picket line.
The striking workers, half of whom were older than 50, were losing money and knew their health benefits would run out in October. The strike had begun with unity but now they were wondering about the endgame. Jobs in Lehigh Valley that pay between $15 and $25 an hour for people without college degrees are hard to find.
So the union agreed to end the strike after four weeks. The damage between the company and its workforce was done. Many people staffing Belt One would not look each other in the eye. It only got worse. Union officials put a list of all the people who crossed the picket line on their bulletin board with the word “scab” — a labor epithet for someone breaking solidarity — written across it. It was ripped down less than two hours later.
Fattore wore a T-shirt of Calvin, a comic strip character, urinating on the word “scab.” He was reprimanded by management.