All 320 manufacturing workers at the the Sweet'N Low factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard will be laid off before year's end, but a new $7 million agreement between Cumberland Packing Company and the workers' union, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 2013, insures severance packages and a 70-cent-per-hour raise retroactive to October.
"The company needed to continue to manufacture here for a period of time, and we had some good language in the contract that protected some of the workers," union president Mark Carotenuto told Politico, which first reported on the agreement.
The factory, where artificial sweeteners have been mixed since the late 1950s and where Sugar in the Raw, Stevia, and Sweet'N Low are packaged and shipped internationally, will be shut down this year. Tasks performed by the local workforce—two thirds of current employees live in Brooklyn, and a third in Queens—will be entirely outsourced to what Cumberland has since described as "domestic 'co-packing' companies," or second-party factories.
A source close to the matter confirmed in January that the Navy Yard is in the midst of a 20-year reduced rent agreement with Cumberland, although exact amounts were not disclosed. The planned outsourcing of industrial labor does not impact the reduced rent.
The union said in January that three quarters of the staff makes less than $15 per hour. According to the new agreement, workers will get between two months and a year of severance pay depending on their seniority, and three months to a year of retirement plan contributions and healthcare, in addition to the 70 cent raise.
Cumberland has also pledged to work with the City and the Navy Yard to ensure that each of its employees finds a new job. The new agreement reportedly includes forklift training and English classes.
"I'm bilingual so that's a plus for me, but a lot of my coworkers don't speak English, which is why many of them are hurting," said 52-year-old Delbert Ranger, a Sugar in the Raw packager, in January. "A lot of people here are in their 50s and 60s. Where is a person who is 50 or 60 going to do? Is an employer waiting to employ you if you can't speak the language?"
"We said from the very start that we want to give our workers retraining and job search help to land jobs at other companies and then excel there, as well as financial support and recognition for valued years of service," said CEO Steven Eisenstadt in a statement.
"The process was long and drawn out, and at times, given the circumstances, it got pretty heated for both parties," Carotenuto, the union president, said on Monday. "Given the scheme of things, given that these people are going to be out of work, the 70-cent raise is disappointing. But when you couple that with the severance package, I think the company finally put their money where their mouth is."
