Jerry Hoiseth, Crookston, column: Crystal workers, not growers, took biggest hit

By Jerry Hoiseth

CROOKSTON -- Recently, there have been several letters from American Crystal Sugar union members telling us of their great concern on how much this lockout is affecting Crystal's beet payment versus Minn-Dak's.

Some of the letters put out dollar amounts -- $59 a ton for Crystal, $73 for Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative -- then specify the money lost to the farmer.

While I commend everyone's concern about the farmers, I would not be too worried about them. As Herald readers drive through the countryside, they can see for themselves the big four-wheel drive and quad-track tractors laying this year's crop seed into the ground.

Here's a hint about where those come from: Area farmers raise several other cash crops besides sugar beets. I don't think they're storing beets in all those shiny new grain bins we see.

In the early part of the lockout, another letter documented what it was going to cost union members to pay for their health coverage. At around $40 dollars per pay period, it was going to be a devastating blow -- a step backwards.

But couldn't one of these writers tell us how much money the locked-out workers already have lost?

While we wait for that letter, let's do some of the math for ourselves. Take 9 months times 4 weeks per month, and you get 36 weeks. Multiply that by 40 hours a week, and the result is 1,440 hours.

Use $18 an hour as an average, and see what you come up with for the basic wage-loss total. Then add in the lost premium pay for all the holidays, the lost 2 percent 401(k) match, the lost retirement account contributions and so on.

Add them all up, and you'll get the dollar amount lost by a single worker. Then multiply that by the number of year-round employees.

Put that result down in black and white in front of you. Now, that's a large sum of money, people. And it's money that could have and should have gone into local workers' pockets rather than replacement workers' bank accounts.

If I were a locked-out worker, I'd start thinking about that line from the movie, "Jerry McGuire": Show me the money. I would tell my union representative to stop worrying about the beet farmer and start worrying about us. In other words, get back to the table, and "show me the money."

These days, elected state representatives are trying to harm an industry that has paid Minnesota taxes for 90 years. We can only hope that such uninformed lawmakers will be voted out at election time.

And how about Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., condemning Crystal on the floor of the U.S. Congress? Or the Feb. 3 headline in the Herald that read, "Crystal union to fight U.S. sugar program"?

The list goes on. Now, this little glimmer of hope and love for the farmer has come along, but it kind of gets lost in all this hate-and-destroy-American-Crystal rhetoric.

Everyone is mentioning the Minn-Dak cooperative, so let's take a quick look. The co-op's annual Form 10-K shows that president and CEO David Roche got a salary, bonus and other compensation in 2011 that totaled $664,173.

But Roche has only one sugar factory to worry about as well as a fraction of the beet acres, number of growers and employees that American Crystal CEO Dave Berg oversees. If Roche were in charge of five locations, then at the rates quoted above, he'd draw compensation worth more than $3 million (that's $664,173 times five).

I do believe we may have found our next rallying point: either get Dave Berg's salary up on par with Roche's or bring Roche's salary down to what it really is worth to oversee only one factory.

The rallies could be called "Journey for Justice, Part Two."

Hoiseth is retired American Crystal Sugar employee with 39 years of service. For 22 of those years, he served as financial secretary/treasurer of his local union.