MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP) — The union representing sugar processors says over 1,200 employees have been turned away from seven American Crystal Sugar plants in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa.
Their labor contract expired at midnight Sunday after workers overwhelmingly rejected the company's final offer.
Replacement workers arrived before dawn Monday. Security guards were posted at entrances to a plant in East Grand Forks, Minn., and union employees have been told to not cross a line that was spray painted outside the doors. WDAZ-TV reports about 120 union workers who showed up at 6:15 a.m. were turned away. Some stayed to picket.
American Crystal is the largest beet sugar producer in the U.S. It has plants in East Grand Forks, Moorhead, Crookston and Chaska, Minn., and in Hillsboro and Drayton, N.D. and Mason City, Iowa.