Mondelez workers at Portland’s Nabisco plant say they’re forced to work overtime with little notice, or face penalties

Joshua Roos is supposed to pick up his 3-year-old son from daycare by 3:45 p.m. every day. But he never knows if he’ll make it.

Roos and other workers at the Nabisco plant in Northeast Portland say they are routinely forced into overtime at the very end of their shifts, often with just a few minutes’ notice.

“You’re on the line, shaking in your boots … expecting to go home,” Roos said. “Then, literally, eight minutes before it’s time to clock out, your supervisor will call you on the phone, or either come find you on the line, and tell you they need you an extra five hours.”

Sometimes, Roos said, he makes it as far as the time clock before he’s forced into overtime. Sometimes he makes it to the parking lot.

“They’ve come running out to the car multiple times,” he said.

Donna Marks, who has worked at the Nabisco plant for 18 years, said even the security guard has stopped her on the way out.

“They’ll call security and say, ‘Hey did Donna walk out yet?’” Marks said. “And then they say, ‘Stop her.’”

The plant, owned by global food giant Mondelez International, makes quintessential American snacks: Oreos, Chips Ahoy! and Ritz Crackers. Mondelez did not respond to four requests for comment from OPB, by phone and email, over several days.

Mondelez employees who refuse mandatory overtime get an attendance point. Eight points can get you fired, according to workers and their union, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 364.

That leaves workers facing the prospect of losing their jobs if they have to leave at the end of their regularly scheduled shifts.

Some employees, bolstered by their recent contract strike against Mondelez, which spread nationally, are now speaking out against an overtime system they say penalizes low-seniority workers with caregiving responsibilities.

And Oregon lawmakers are considering a union-backed bill to change the situation.

Bill would outlaw penalties for refusing overtime without due notice

Oregon law already addresses how much overtime manufacturers can require employees to work — and how much they should pay for it. But the law doesn’t say how much warning of mandatory overtime those employers need to give.

Senate Bill 1513 would apply to about 300 bakeries and tortilla makers across the state, employing some 5,900 people, according to the Oregon Employment Department. The measure would prohibit those companies from disciplining employees who refuse mandatory overtime, unless workers have been given advance notice.

“It’s not taking away mandatory overtime. Just to be clear. That will still be there,” Sen. Kathleen Taylor, D-Milwaukie, told members of the Senate Committee on Labor and Business last month.

Under the bill, however, workers couldn’t be penalized for saying no to a last-minute overtime shift.

How last-minute is still in question.

The original bill called for employers to alert staff two weeks before a mandatory overtime shift. At least one business group found that timeline impractical. At a recent public hearing, Paloma Sparks of Oregon Business & Industry pointed to the pandemic’s chronic worker shortages, as well as the acute disruption caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

“Employees of bakeries and tortilla makers deserve adequate notice of mandatory overtime,” Sparks said in a statement to OPB. “However, the two-week notice window required by SB 1513 does not recognize the workforce realities of businesses, which often must react quickly to unexpected staffing shortages.”

“We believe,” she continued, “a 48-hour notice requirement would better meet the needs of employers and employees.”

A forthcoming amendment to the bill is expected to require five days’ notice of mandatory overtime instead — a compromise that, at first glance, appeared acceptable to employer and labor groups.

“Five days feels more reasonable than five minutes,” said Jess Giannettino Villatoro, political director of the Oregon AFL-CIO, which has championed the bill.

It’s unclear how common it is for bakeries and tortilla factories in Oregon to discipline employees who refuse to work overtime. Businesses including Dave’s Killer Bread in Milwaukie and Juanita’s Fine Foods in Hood River did not comment on those questions. Neither did the industry groups Food Northwest and the American Bakers Association.

So far, state senators have not heard any public testimony on how the proposed measure could affect smaller operations, with fewer resources.

For now, the narrowly tailored bill appears to have a giant in its sights.

‘Chronic understaffing and extreme discipline’

The Nabisco plant in Northeast Portland runs three shifts, around the clock — a scheduling challenge for any manufacturer operating in a global pandemic.

Employers around the state have struggled to fill jobs, reporting record high vacancies in 2021. And the competition for workers is fierce. Manufacturers listed 10,500 job vacancies last fall, according to the Employment Department.

But workers say problems with mandatory overtime at the Nabisco plant have persisted for years and were only heightened by the pandemic. They say Mondelez, which earned $4.3 billion in net income last year, has the resources to fix them.

Mike Burlingham, a 14-year Nabisco worker and a bakers union official, said forced overtime “runs rampant” at the plant. He criticized what he called an “ongoing culture of chronic understaffing and extreme discipline for workers.”

“I was forced to work 13-hour days, every day, for five weeks straight,” he told lawmakers at the public hearing.

Donna Marks recalled, in an interview, the delicate balance she struck with her then-husband, years ago, when her daughters were little and she worked the graveyard shift.

Her regular shift ended at 7:15 a.m. Her husband started work at 8 a.m. If Marks was pulled into overtime, her husband might miss five hours of work. But if she said no, she got a point.

“No one should be punished just for having a kid,” she said. “For being a mom. For being a dad. No one should be punished for profit.”

These days, Joshua Roos works a lot: 12 days on, two days off, like other members of his union. The overtime pay adds up fast — it’s money the union fought to protect — but the points can, too. Roos feels anxious every day. Will he have to scramble to find someone to pick up his son?

“Try having no idea when you’re getting off,” he said. “Try telling your daycare that you need them to watch your child for five more hours, let alone they close at 6:30.”

Five days’ notice of mandatory overtime would help, he said.

“‘Cause then you could plan your life around it.”