Local woman marks 50 years at Nestlé plant
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
Among other items, 78-year-old Marilyn Elverman collects Nestlé memorabilia.
She has a ceramic Nestlé Morsel cookie jar, figurines, and Nestlé model NASCAR racecars.
But special among her collection is a Little Jersey, believed to be from the 1950s, with the No. 1 on it. She won it an auction last year, paying about $30 for a pair of jerseys.
Her coworker who had been bidding for one as well, and Elverman gave him the No. 2 jersey. She kept the one with the 1 on it.
“My sister told me to keep No. 1, because I’m the No. 1 employee,” explained Elverman. Added Nestlé Human Resource Director Toni Hansen, “She’s No. 1 on the seniority list.”
In November, Elverman will celebrate her 50th anniversary at Nestlé. During her time there, she has moved through various departments – and the women’s rights movement as well.
Elverman started in 1966, wearing a yellow uniform dress while working as a “feeder/packer” – taking candy bars off the line and putting them into boxes.
“You rotated every half hour,” said Elverman, who started at Nestlé to bring in extra income so that she and her husband could afford a washer and dryer for their home.
The couple worked split shifts, Harold working the day shift as a well driller and Marilyn working second shift as … well, wherever she was assigned in the plant.
But as women gradually began getting more privileges in the workplace, so it came to Nestlé. Marilyn was one of the first machine operators at the Burlington plant, working on the tea and cocoa line when those items were still produced in Burlington.
“It made these envelopes that came down the line, and it filled these envelopes,” Marilyn said of the tea and cocoa. “Then we’d send it down the line to a feeder/packer.”
In 1983, she started on the Morsel line – Nestlé’s equivalent of chocolate chips. Now, she works in the “D” department, helping produce 100 Grand and O’Henry bars.
As her job has evolved, so has the plant – and her uniform. The Burlington plant is now chocolate only, and Marilyn is in slacks, along with a lab coat and pants.
“We had a yellow dress, and we had an old-fashioned hairnet. It went up with a brim that said, ‘Nestlé,’” Marilyn said of the beginning. “Then we had blue dress. They weren’t so fitted.”
Like many at the plant, Hansen said, Marilyn has enjoyed a long tenure. They will celebrate her 50th anniversary by capturing a photo out by the Nestlé sign.
It’s been a job Marilyn has enjoyed.
“Nestlé is a very, very nice place to work,” she said. “All the people are really nice to work with, and I really like my job. I just enjoyed my job. I would miss it if I wasn’t doing it.”
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