Union head: Crown Holdings meeting was like “being in Putin’s Russia”

Thursday’s Crown Holdings shareholder meeting drew nearly 100 union protesters to its Philadelphia headquarters. Although it took place on U.S. turf, the dispute considers a Canada facility issue that’s gone global.

For about eight months, union workers from Crown’s Toronto plant — one of the company’s top producers of soup and beverage cans — have been on strike. They’re fighting against Crown’s decision to implement a wage structure that pays new workers 42 percent less than other workers doing the same job.

The dispute didn’t go quite as planned for United Steelworkers protesters, who made their way into the meeting. But, it was still worth it, the group’s strategic campaigns head Joe Drexler said.

“We demonstrated that we are ready and willing to come back to the table,” Drexler said while on a bus traveling back to Toronto Friday morning. “We want to negotiate a fair and equitable resolution of this dispute. The ball is clearly in Crown’s court.”

Whether Crown will end up negotiating an appropriate agreement with the labor union or decide to shut down the plant is up in the air. But either are a possibility, said Chip Dillon, an analyst from Vertical Research Partners.

Drexler said Crown has recently threatened to close a plant in Turkey due to union issues.

"That's how anti-union this company has been," Drexler said.

Drexler said his group was hoping to have the opportunity in the meeting to provide transparency to the Toronto situation.

“We think both the board of directors and shareholders are not informed of what is happening in Toronto,” he said. “Crown wants to establish a new wage in the plant that would equal the starting wage that was there 28 years ago.”

Dillon said from a dollars-and-cents perspective, the Toronto facility strike hasn't made an impact on Crown's global company, which reported a first quarter that was better than Wall Street expectations.

"It's such a small issue in the scheme of things for Crown," he said. "I'm sure it’s a big deal for whoever works in the plant, and their union representatives and all that. But it's not a big deal in the scheme of people who are investing in Crown stock at this point."

Dillon said if this was an important issue, he'd be paying attention to it. But, he's not.

"From what I can tell," he said, "It's a very isolated impact."

"If there was a fundamental problem or issue with how this company manages its labor issues, then this would be a problem," he added.

Drexler said the union wanted to expose how shareholder value may be affected by the strike, how Crown could be risking its customer demand and how Crown has been refusing to meet to negotiate.

“We went into the meeting peacefully,” he said. “We had no intention of disrupting the meeting. We routinely do shareholder meetings.”

The union members wanted answers from John Conway, Crown’s chief executive officer, Drexler said.

“We wanted to ask why the CEO would allow a small strike to evolve into a global issue…and why they are risking their reputation over matters that could be easily resolved,” he said.

Questions were allowed by way of writing, which Drexler said still went unanswered.

When union members verbally protested in front of shareholders about their inability to speak or ask questions, Drexler said Conway told them they would have a private meeting with James Deaver, Crown’s vice president of industrial relations.

“That meeting was for just us and [Deaver], so shareholders and the board wouldn’t hear anything,” he said. “It was like being in Putin’s Russia.”

Crown declined to comment on Thursday's events.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal