Pepsi, Iowa workers have reached a tentative deal
What did workers get in the new contract?
Teamsters Local 90 and Pepsicola Beverages Co. in Urbandale have reached a tentative agreement on a new, three-year contract, which will go to a vote of members on Sunday.
Workers earlier in October voted down the first proposed contract with the Pepsi bottler, which supplies Iowa and beyhond, earlier in October. On Monday, members of the local staged a “practice” picket line in front of the Pepsi facility on Douglas Avenue.
The tentative, three-year agreement includes a $2-an-hour raise in the first year of the contract, a key concession sought by union members, according to Alano De La Rosa, secretary-treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 90.
De La Rosa said the new contract has the unanimous endorsement of the Teamster Pepsi bargaining committee. It would cover about 220 workers in production, warehousing and transport.
If the members don’t ratify the contract Sunday, they could continue bargaining in the three days before the current one expires, then work under the expired contract while talks go on or go immediately on strike.
Purchase, New York-based Pepsi did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Union members at Pepsi are coming off a fouryear contract with annual increases of 50 cents an hour, but they say their pay hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Compounding the issue is that the employees, like many others in the food and beverage industry, were deemed essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and because they were in an existing contract, they weren’t able to obtain the wage bumps some other workers received for working through the period of shutdowns.
“We need to catch up on wages to where we were before the pandemic,” De La Rosa said Monday, adding that “front-loading” the contract by getting the majority of the wage increase in the first year “is the only way we are going to get caught up.”
“We don’t want any employee to get less than a $2-an-hour increase in the first year,” he said during the picketing practice.
De La Rosa said the union and Pepsi already had agreed to the new contract being for three years instead of four.
Workers said the Urbandale operation is recognized as the most productive and efficient in the Pepsi system. And they pointed to a substantial boost in Pepsi Chair and CEO Ramon Laguarta’s $28.4 million compensation package last year, saying they, too, deserve to be rewarded for the company’s strong performance.
In its third-quarter report Oct. 10, Pepsi said its net income rose 14% to $3.1 billion, or $2.24 per share. That beat the $2.15 per share that analysts had forecast.
Pepsi now expects its full-year earnings per share to increase 13%, up from previous projections of 12%, due to the strength of its sales and cost-cutting efforts. But it also says it has raised its prices in pace with the rising cost of raw materials, and that those increases are likely to moderate in the coming year.