Not sweet, but it is low

Sugar substitute maker leaving B’klyn after 70 years

Over the factory entrance near the Brooklyn Navy Yard is a brand name known all across America. The words “Sweet’N Low” are emblazoned on a musical scale, marking the spot where businessman Benjamin Eisenstadt manufactured the first artificial sweetener back in the 1940s.

Since then, the Cumberland Packing Corp. — founded by Eisenstadt — has been churning out millions of packets. More recently, it has branched out to natural brands like Sugar in the Raw and Stevia in the Raw.

But the sweet years have suddenly turned bitter for Cumberland’s workers.

Two weeks ago, company CEO Steven Eisenstadt, Benjamin’s grandson, convened a meeting of his 320 unionized employees and made the surprise announcement that he plans to shut down manufacturing in Brooklyn by the end of the year and to shift that work elsewhere — reportedly to an unnamed contractor in Minnesota.

“They admitted to us they’re still making money,” said Mark Carotenuto, president of Local 2013 of the United Food and Commercial Workers. “They just want to make more. This is all pure greed.”

Maria Mijangos, a packer at the factory for 26 years, was stunned.

“None of us were prepared for this,” Mijangos told the Daily News. “My husband has been at the plant for 24 years. We have three daughters to support. How are we supposed to survive?”

“I’ve got a rent of $1,200 a month and a teenage son, and I’m not sure what to do,” said Delbert Ranger, a machine operator at the plant for the past six years.

The workers are mostly immigrants and their average pay at Cumberland is about $13 an hour, a low amount cushioned only by a decent benefits package.

“Cumberland wants to help every employee who wants a new job find one, and they want to give retraining and job search services to anyone who is interested in them,” said Stu Loeser, the company’s spokesman.

The Eisenstadt family should at least be credited for staying in Brooklyn so long after other manufacturers fled the city, noted Loeser, and the firm will still keep a certain number of office jobs in Brooklyn after production is shifted.

Union president Carotenuto isn’t buying that line. The taxpayers gave generous subsidies to Cumberland to preserve those jobs, he said.

Back in 2009, the company received more than $6 million from the state and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Corp. to modernize machinery. In addition, the Navy Yard has rented the firm warehousing space at just a tenth of the current market price.

Carotenuto and a new group of union leaders had been in contracts talks with Cumberland since September. Not once during that time, he said, did the owners mention any financial problems or even hint at a move.

But this was the first time the new union leadership had bargained with the company. The previous union officers were all crooks connected to the Genovese crime family.

Their names were Anthony Fazio Sr. and Jr., and John Fazio. In 2012, all three were convicted in federal court of racketeering and money laundering and shipped off to prison. By then, the Fazios had stolen millions from union members’ funds while also extorting bribes from the employers.

Now that the Cumberland workers finally have honest union leaders, the Eisenstadt family has chosen to move production out of New York.

City Hall said it has offered financial aid to save the jobs, but has been rebuffed by the firm.

“We’ll move heaven and Earth to do right by these workers,” mayoral spokesman Wiley Norvell said.

Now we have a Brooklyn tale more low than sweet.