Teamsters Deliver Message to Sara Lee Shareholders

Teamsters Deliver Message to Sara Lee Shareholders

At Houston Annual Meeting, Teamsters Say: Sara Lee, You’ve Got Some Problems

November 1, 2005

(Houston, Texas) -- The Teamsters Union delivered a strong message to Sara Lee Corp. shareholders, managers and directors at the company’s annual meeting in Houston, Texas. By a vote of more than 60 percent, shareholders last week supported a proposal that limits executive severance agreements. The Teamsters presented the proposal October 27 on behalf of the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund.

The Teamsters Union pointed out during the meeting that Chicago-based Sara Lee has diversity issues, potential antitrust exposure and has not lived up to its own global standards for suppliers.

“There has been a fundamental abandonment of the corporate values and an erosion of sound business practices that for years have helped Sara Lee grow, generating dividends for its shareholders and jobs for its employees,” said Richard Volpe, Teamsters Vice President and Director of the Bakery and Laundry Conference. The conference represents 100,000 workers in the bakery, snack foods and laundry industries, including over 4,300 Teamsters who work at Sara Lee.

The Teamsters outlined several issues:

• Sara Lee stereotypesAmericans with distinct generational, gender, cultural and learning differences. The company has trained its employees to believe that most Hispanic Americans and African Americans view work as a “job” rather than as a “career;” that Asian Americans are “quiet,” “time-oriented,” and “respectful,” and that regular Americans are “self indulgent” and “health conscious.”

• Sara Lee effectively sets the prices of bakery productssold by its so-called “independent” franchisees in a vertical distribution system, which could raise potential price fixing allegations under the nation’s antitrust laws.

• Sara Lee fails to live up to its own global standards, which call for respecting “the right of employees to exercise their lawful right of free association [and] to choose or not choose collective bargaining representatives, (Sara Lee Global Standards for Suppliers, 2005.) Sara Lee has a systematic pattern of permanently laying off route driver employees, offering them the same work and purchase of their routes as non-employee independent contractors.

“Both as shareholders and as workers, the Teamsters are in Sara Lee for the long haul,” Volpe said. “Given the recent behavior of management, we question their long-term commitment to the success of the company.”

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents more than 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States and Canada.