Strike One………….

Back in the spring of 1999 my former employer announced the “Midwest Consolidation” project. With this project the company would be moving all of its bottled salad oil production to their Champaign Illinois facility. It was their intention of running it all next to their bottle supplier located in Champaign on high speed lines which would save them transportation cost.

This impacted me in that I was the production scheduler for the Jacksonville plant bottled salad oil lines and thus would no longer be needed. Now of course I didn’t end up losing my job due to my tremendous work ethic and the fact that I was a snappy dresser. My talents were moved to the accounting department and as they say, the rest was history.

Like all projects in every country in the world this project did not roll out smoothly. Like all companies this project was moved up or attempted to so they could get those savings sooner or at least on time. Unfortunately the new lines, shockingly, did not come up and run quite as well as planned. Before long the company was behind on orders and the poor folks assigned to the new lines in Champaign were working all the time. I believe most worked every hour from mid-August through the beginning of November.

It was about this time when those folks had had enough. They went out on strike. The other plants were asked to send people over to try and run the plant. I was quickly offered up by my facility. I had worked in many positions throughout the plant during my rise through the ranks. (Worked might not be the correct term)

I arrived at Champaign and as luck would have it ended up with the best job there. I was assigned to be the shipping clerk in the bulk truck shipping office. I worked the night shift from 7pm to 7am. The plant was being run management folks, salesmen and other plant castoffs like myself so it was like 3 weeks before they were able to make a truckload of product that past enough quality checks to not for sure kill all those who consumed it.

They also brought in a ton of food. There was a cafeteria where they had catered food 24 hours a day. And best of all free Mountain Dew on tap. I spent all night just walking between the cafeteria and the shipping office with a Mountain Dew in one hand and a piece of pie in the other. I gained 47 pounds the first week.

The shipping clerk during the day shift was a gal named Mary. At least so I was told. I never really saw her. Everyone at the Champaign plant was afraid of her and I’m pretty sure she just came and went when she wanted. My only slight interaction with her was one day I came in and there were at least 200 post it notes placed around the office with the word “click” on them. I think the night prior, between trips to the cafeteria and leaving crank phone messages to folks back in Jacksonville, I must have somehow hit something on the keyboard that made it no longer make the “click” sound when hitting a key. Mary left me her only note to me from my entire time there that said, “Fix the God Damn Keyboard”. Something I did right away.

I remember coming in to work one day and someone telling me of a fire that somehow started that morning. I guess the management folks rushed to the scene but were unsure how to best put out the fire. They scheduled a meeting for the following Tuesday to discuss. Coffee and donuts would be served.

The strike ended right after the start of the new year. People just started showing up to work. The thought was that those people just wanted some time off which might be true.

I kind of think Mary told them to come back or else.