Striking Union Presents Evidence Penford Products' Cedar Rapids Plant Not Operating Safely and Effectively

Striking Union Presents Evidence Penford Products' Cedar Rapids
Plant Not Operating Safely and Effectively 


CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, Sept. 22  /PRNewswire/ -- The Bakery, Confectionery,
Tobacco and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 100G today released a detailed report
containing evidence that the Penford Products (NASDAQ:PENX) industrial starch
plant has not been operated safely and effectively contrary to the company's
public statements in recent days.

David Holmes, President of BCTGM Local 100G, stated when issuing the report:
"Penford management is willfully misleading and deceiving shareholders,
industry analysts, and the public about its ability to operate the Cedar Rapids
plant safely and effectively during the strike."

The report comes on the heels of Penford press statements saying they spent an
extra $3 million during the first month of the strike, which began on August
1st, but are operating "safely and effectively."

"In the days immediately before Penford's public statement, they had a
two-alarm fire in a tunnel dryer that couldn't be put out by the sprinkler
system because incompetent scabs had damaged and then locked out the sprinkler
system," Holmes said.  "Fire and starch dust are a terribly explosive
combination," he added.

The report contains key pages from Cedar Rapids Fire Department report on the
incident and also reveal that when "the fire was still in the air units that
went to the scrubbers ....  The supervisor was trying to shut them down but it
was going to take him a little while, he did not know where the access panel
was," according to the firefighter.

"This fire occurred just two days before Penford told the world it was
operating safely," Holmes said.  "The only conclusion one can reach is that
Penford decided it would lie to the public about what is going on in the
plant," he added.

The BCTGM report also documents, with freeze-frame photos taken from a video, a
corn starch spill of thousands of gallons which occurred on September 5th.  The
video shows the starch flowing from "Building 8" into the Cedar Rapids sewer
system as scabs scramble to contain it.

"The most damning evidence Penford is not operating effectively comes from the
company's own documents," Holmes said as he revealed computer-generated reports
measuring the moisture levels in the starch being produced at the struck plant.

"These documents clearly show that that before the strike, when we were working
in the plant, that the targeted moisture levels were hit nearly all the time;
and, during the strike they have been fluctuating wildly," Holmes said.

"Customers and shareholders should be worried," he continued.  "Customers
should be worried about the quality of the product, and shareholders should be
worried about the lost revenue," Holmes said.  Copies of Penford's sewer bills,
attached to the report, show a 31.3% jump in the first month of the strike.

The union's report, which was prepared with the assistance of the Food and
Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL-CIO also documents shoddy and
dangerous maintenance practices by Tritech, a company hired to replace striking
workers; and serious damage done to rail tracks by inexperienced scabs.

The full report is available online at http://www.fastaflcio.org/. 

DATASOURCE: BCTGM Local 100G



CONTACT:  David Holmes of BCTGM Local 100G, [phone]



Web site:  http://www.fastaflcio.org/ 

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