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A banner year has produced big profits for
American Crystal Sugar Co. and big paydays for its executives.
Locked-out union workers at Crystal plants in three states say
that's evidence the cooperative can afford to make a better
contract offer.


      The company's net revenue for fiscal 2011 was $1.5 billion, up
from $1.2 billion the previous year, 

 High sugar prices, a strong crop
and good storage weather added up to record earnings, said Brian
Ingulsrud, the company's vice president of administration.


      The success triggered six-figure incentive-driven increases in
compensation for Ingulsrud and other top executives. For example,
President and CEO David Berg saw his total compensation climb 23
percent, from about $2 million to $2.4 million. Ingulsrud's
compensation rose from about $700,000 last year to $809,000 in
2011.


      Ingulsrud said the value of incentive-driven increases rises and
falls with the fortunes of the company.


      "It mimics what our (farmer) shareholders are experiencing
financially," he said. "In a good year like this year, you're
going to see some higher compensation levels."


      John Riskey, a local president for the union that represents the
1,300 workers who have been locked out at Crystal plants in North
Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa since Aug. 1 when contract talks
stalled, said the company should share the prosperity with its
workers.


      "We were the ones who were responsible for helping them make
those record profits," he said. "We worked our tails off to make
sure that they got every beet sliced."


      Sugar beets grown by farmers are sliced and refined for their
sugar at the company's processing plants, where replacement workers
have been handling this year's crop.


      American Crystal says the average wage and benefits package for
union employees is worth about $75,000 a year. The company has
offered 17 percent pay increases to union workers over the next
five years. A sticking point has been proposed changes to health
insurance coverage that would more than double employees' maximum
out-of-pocket costs for family coverage.


      Ingulsrud said the company is trying to strike a deal that will
hold up in less-profitable years as well as in record ones. Riskey
said the union has offered shorter-term deals to prevent the
company from committing to an untenable position.


      "We don't want to see them go belly-up," he said.


      American Crystal was holding its annual meeting on Thursday.
Union leaders planned talks in the same hotel on the compensation
packages for company executives.


Meanwhile, more than 100 workers gathered outside the sugar company's
corporate offices in Moorhead Wednesday night, holding candles, singing and
praying. Leaders of four area churches joined the workers.

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Locked-out union workers at American Crystal  plants in three states say executive pay raises mean the coop can afford to make a better contract offer.

Good year means big bucks for Crystal executives

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