Last week, Workday Minnesota ran stories about the workers and Teamsters Local 120 representatives passing out leaflets to customers at Cenex gas stations and at the company’s annual stockholders meeting in Minneapolis, urging phone calls to ask the company to bargain in good faith.

Friday morning, Teamsters Local 120 met in federal mediation with Cenex Harvest States for two hours, reported Bryan Rademacher, Local 120 recording secretary and business agent.

Rademacher said the public pressure evidently had “a huge impact” on the negotiations. “That issue was raised,” he said. “They were not happy we went and did what we did at their shareholders meeting.”

At the mediation session Friday, the company agreed to one of the workers’ main concerns, that full-time workers should not be replaced by temporary workers. “The company took the temporary employee proposal off the table,” Rademacher said. “That was the big issue.”

In addition, Rademacher said, the company agreed to add a fourth year to the proposed three-year contract, including annual wage increases with “nice increases” in the third and fourth years.

The group of 29 workers voted Friday evening on the proposed settlement and “it was accepted overwhelmingly,” Rademacher reported.

A week ago, workers had rejected the company’s contract proposal and voted to authorize union leadership to call a strike.

The company’s new proposal, Rademacher said, came “as a result of us putting pressure on the company through our handbilling and through our attending the shareholders meeting.”

“The company has made record profits during the past four years,” the Teamster Local 120 leaflet read, “and it’s time the company starts sharing those profits with the men and women responsible for the company’s success — its workers.”

Steve Share edits the Labor Review, the official publication of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation. Learn more at www.minneapolisunions.org

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