Ingredion workers on strike. ( KCRG TV file photo)
Nearly 120 unionized workers at the Ingredion grain processing plant in Cedar Rapids have reached a tentative agreement with the company.
The workers have been on strike since August first. Mike Moore, president of Local 100-G of the Baking, Confectionery, Tobacco, and Grain Milling Union, wouldn’t discuss specifics of the deal, but says it’s a good contract. “Nobody wins in the strike,” Moore says. “Obviously, the union doesn’t win, the company doesn’t win. Everybody suffers losses, and everybody suffers disappointment but hopefully, come Sunday, they have time to look at and we go through it with them, and then we’ll take a vote and see what happens.”
Moore says it’s been a long road for workers on strike. “I’m very, very proud of my members. Every member stood tall and stood strong,” he says. “I said back on August 1st, when we voted this contract down, that we went out as one and we go back in that plant as one. We’re not 116, 117 people, separate. We’re all one.”
Moore says if all goes well, he can present the tentative agreement to the workers sometime today (Friday) and they will likely hold a vote on Sunday.
(By Catherine Wheeler, Iowa Public Radio)
