When Susan dePasquale, a former AFSCME member in Cleveland, heard that 1,300 workers at American Crystal Sugar had been locked out from their jobs for more than a year, she immediately volunteered her support.

I was just very moved by what I heard…I wanted to do something. Instead of sending well wishes, I thought I’d write a check.

Help locked-out American Crystal workers. Please donate to the BCTGM Lockout Action Fund, care of  the Minnesota AFL-CIO, 175 Aurora Ave., St. Paul, MN 55103.

Despite waking up with the flu one morning this week, Bonnie Holter headed out to take part in a 6 a.m. vigil outside the home of a member of the American Crystal Sugar Co. board of directors in East Grand Forks, Minn. Tired and ready to head back to bed after returning home, she still exuded the resolve that, despite having retired from American Crystal Sugar this year, propels her to actively back the 1,300 locked-out workers.

“It’s important to support the workers,” says Holter, 60. “They were our family. I was proud to be a union member and I still want to help the union out.”

Holter and her husband, Jerome, who most people call Jay, spent decades working for the sugar beet processing company before management locked out workers in August 2011.

This is a cross-post from Crystal Greed, the blog for workers locked out of their jobs at American Crystal Sugar plants in Iowa, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Beet growers who own Crystal Sugar—the cooperative that’s been locking 1,300 workers out of their jobs for the past 13 months—haven’t had to walk through a picket line on their way to work each day.

Until now.

Locking out workers is costing American Crystal Sugar Co. shareholders lots of money.

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2011—the period immediately preceding American Crystal Sugar’s lockout of 1,300 employees—American Crystal’s production costs were $382 million (click on graphic
to expand).

The production costs for the first nine months of this fiscal year shot up $90 million to $471 million. That’s more than a 23 percent increase. During the same period, another sugar beet cooperative, Minn-Dak, saw its costs decrease, dropping 16 percent.

Tell American Crystal CEO Dave Berg to stop wasting shareholder’s money and go back to the bargaining table.

Now.

When a company locks out skilled employees and replaces its entire workforce with inexperienced new hires, here’s what happens: productivity plunges and profits tank.

Losing money is not a wise corporate strategy. Yet, unless American Crystal Sugar Co. agrees to return to contract negotiations with the 1,300 workers the company locked out a year ago, the company is on course to repeat its sorry fiscal 2012 performance. After the company replaced all its seasoned employees, production costs increased by 23 percent and payments to its shareholders lagged behind the rest of the industry, which saw their shareholder payments increase. That followed a year in which Crystal Sugar was hugely profitable, with $1.5 billion in net earnings.

(Sign a petition calling on American Crystal Sugar CEO Dave Berg to treat workers fairly and return to the bargaining table.)

After 8,000 utility workers were locked out earlier this summer, Utility Workers (UWUA) Local 1-2 in New York City approved a new labor contract with Consolidated Edison. 

The New York Times reports:

Harry Farrell, president of Local 1-2 of the Utility Workers Union of America, said on Wednesday that its membership voted by a margin of 93 percent to accept a new four-year agreement with Consolidated Edison.

This is a cross-post from the New York State AFL-CIO website.

New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento on the end of the Consolidated Edison lockout:

This was one of the toughest contract fights New York has seen in recent memory, and I could not be prouder of the way the labor movement responded. Up against Con Ed’s billions, union members from across New York City and the state joined together to support the 8,500 workers and their families who were forced to the street. Public sector, private sector and building trades—our unions wholeheartedly embraced Utility Workers (UWUA) Local 1-2 members as their own, walking picket lines, rallying in Union Square, and reaching out to our communities.

This is a guest post from New York State AFL-CIO social media coordinator Kevin Eitzmann.

A diverse group of thousands of union members and community supporters marched in the heat from Con Edison’s "ivory tower" at 4 Irving Place to Union Square, New York City. With chants of “We Are One!” and signs bearing such slogans as “Con Ed Can’t Con Me” and “Con Ed Took Away My American Dream,” people were expressing their frustrations and showing solidarity with the locked-out Utility Workers (UWUA).

New York’s Consolidated Edison Power Co. made $1 billion in 2011 profits and its CEO Kevin Burke raked in a nearly 40 percent pay hike over the past several years, making it “hypocritical and inhumane for Con Ed to propose cuts in employee health care and retirement benefits,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Con Ed locked out some 8,500 workers after contract negotiations stalled July 1. The power company wants to replace pensions with a 401(k)-type savings plan. After locking out the workers, members of Utility Workers UWUA Local 1-2, Burke cut off health care for all of them.

Some 8,500 workers locked out at Consolidated Edison Power Co. after contract negotiations stalled Sunday, say they hope the company's promise to go back to the bargaining table on Thursday means management is serious about bargaining a fair contract. The power company wants to replace pensions with a 401(k)-type savings plan, according to the New York Post, and the workers, meanwhile, are asking for a 4 percent pay hike, said union spokesman John Melia.