Union to try to block bakery gear removal
The union representing employees at the former Nabisco bakery in East Liberty says it will attempt to block the removal of the bakery's mixing and packaging equipment by a St. Louis company in coming weeks.
Bill Cagney, business manager for Local 95 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, said representatives of Ralcorp Inc. visited the plant Thursday and told union members that it will begin the equipment-removal process next week.
"We're not going to make it easy for them," Cagney said. "Legally, it might not be permitted, but morally, we're on solid ground."
Ralcorp, whose Bremner unit is a leading private-label cracker baker, intends to warehouse the equipment, effectively taking the Pittsburgh volume out of the market so it can increase production at other facilities it owns, Cagney said.
"We were sort of surprised they admitted that to us," he said.
Ralcorp spokesman Scott Monette declined comment yesterday.
Cagney compares the pending action to that of 1995 when Local 95 joined the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers Local 12 in preventing Leaf North America Inc. from removing equipment from the former Clark Candy Co. plant in O'Hara, helping buy time for a temporarily successful rescue of Clark Bar production here, which ended in 1999.
Ralcorp bought the equipment from GE Commercial Finance, which had financed the equipment in 1999, when baking executive Rod Willcox engineered a plan to reopen the bakery upon its closing by Nabisco in 1998.
Willcox left the company, known as Atlantic Baking, after three years when the investment group behind the effort installed a new group of executives who acquired six more plants in an attempt to build a larger presence in the private-label cookie and cracker business.
The renamed Bake-Line Group moved its headquarters to suburban Chicago. It ran out of cash in January and closed its seven plants, putting 250 people in Pittsburgh out of work.
Willcox was attempting to put together a new business plan to again restart the bakery and said he thought he had preliminary agreement in place with GE to refinance the equipment when he learned it had sold the equipment to Ralcorp for about $4 million.
Willcox said yesterday from his home in Portland, Ore., that he will be meeting in Pittsburgh next week with his potential investors.
Cagney, who also will meet with the investors, said the ovens and two older production lines will remain in the plant, which means there could be limited production capability while awaiting the installation of new equipment.
He said labor agreements are in place with Willcox should his investors come through.
The building's owner, the Regional Industrial Development Corp. earlier this month received proposals for reusing the building, including one from Willcox.
