Tacoma Union Members Make It a Banner Year for Union-Made Peanut Butter Donations
Alice Phillips of Tacoma, Wash., is a union leader who’s willing to create a little buzz.
At least, that’s the sound the clippers will make when Phillips, the IBEW business manager, fulfills her pledge to get a Mohawk haircut if the members of Electrical Workers ( IBEW ) Local 483 would double last year’s donation of union-made peanut butter as part of the Letter Carriers’ ( NALC 's) National Food Drive. They brought the jars. So she’s on the hook.
“We’ll see what I look like, and then we’ll see if it’s awesome!” she says with a laugh.
An aggressive spirit of giving took hold all over the Tacoma area, as 35 union locals nearly tripled last year’s record haul of JIF and Adams brand peanut butter—bringing in 10,000 pounds of the nutritious and popular food made by UFCW members at the J.M. Smucker Co. in Ohio. The peanut butter was donated to the Emergency Food Network, which provides food to 67 food banks and feeding programs in Pierce County.
“We had one of the Teamsters' 117 members from Davis Wire (where workers were on strike for three months last year) stop by in his work clothes and drop off a donation. He said he was giving back after all the help labor gave them during their strike,” says Patty Rose, secretary-treasurer of the Pierce County Central Labor Council .
The 21st annual drive, the nation’s largest one-day food drive, was Saturday, May 11, and more than 1,400 NALC branches across America participated. Letter carriers, family members and thousands of volunteers helped collect, sort and distribute the cans, boxes and jars of non-perishable food items, which were left in bags next to mailboxes. Last year, the drive collected a record 70 million pounds of food.
