James Skinner Baking to Reinstate 6 Employees, Provide Back Pay

The Fort Worth Regional Office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that James Skinner Baking Company (Employer) agreed to a settlement that includes reinstatement of six employees and payment of back pay totaling more than $112,000. The agreement also grants Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, Local 111 (Union) access to its facility to communicate with employees and posting and reading a NLRB Notice to employees about their statutory rights at its Paris, Texas facility in response to a complaint filed by the NLRB, Region 16 Office in Fort Worth. The Employer is a wholesale production baking company with headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Union filed unfair labor practice charges alleging the Employer unlawfully:

Interrogated employees about their own and other employees’ support for the Union,

Promised employees better benefits in order to discourage them from supporting the Union,

Implemented a new rule that employees must get permission to visit the facility when off duty,

Threatened employees with discharge, layoff, loss of benefits, and other unspecified reprisals if they engaged in activities with other employees to protest actions by their manager,

And disciplined suspended, and fired employees because of their support for the Union and/or their joining together with other employees to improve their working conditions.

The Employer agreed to remedy the alleged unlawful conduct. It and the Union are currently engaged in negotiating a collective bargaining agreement following the Union’s successful organizing campaign in late 2014.