NY nonunion construction: With guns, threats and empty promises this modern day gangster keeps his w

[Joesunionreview]

Originally posted on http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2008/06/ny-nonunion-construction-with-guns.html">Joe's Union Review

NY nonunion construction: With guns, threats and empty promises this modern day gangster keeps his workers from joining a union



Capoccia rose as a housing developer as he donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Mayor Giuliani, Governor Pataki, and President Bush. He recently told the newsletter The Real Deal that he launched his career by using a truck full of day laborers hired from a street corner.

Word is that there are about 52 hotels in the works that will be built completely Nonunion in New York, when they are complete there will be no Hotel workers union either, heres a kinda/sorta follow up to http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2007/11/nyc-four-points-by-sheraton-paying.html">NYC: Four Points by Sheraton Paying Poverty Wages / Using Taxpayers For Workers Healthcare

How does New Yorks biggest Non-Union contractor stop his employees from being union?

With guns and threats, this isn't a new thing, but in todays main stream media, it's hard to come by. We have focused on the contractors in the past and the illegalities in the nature of their business, these are the scum bags that are building high rise towers for the likes of Sheraton all over the city. They have immense Bush/Neo-Con/corp ties, and hire an almost entire undocumented workforce. Not only that, when the business opens up they treat their employees like shit too. I know, on previous I have been on the picket lines and when there was a union vote about a month after the employees signed cards to become union, I was there in support of these workers getting the rights to collective bargaining they deserve. Think about it, these workers who work in fear and have absolutely no voice signed the majority of the cards needed to be in a union and a month and a half later, from the amazingly accurate "http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0826,478472,478472,4.html/1">High-Cost Condos, Low-Cost Labor—and Threats of Violence to Union Organizers"- Village Voice (6/24/08):

Workers there tried to vote in the carpenters union last year. In an affidavit to federal labor officials, a former supervisor at the hotel project described the response from Auringer's project manager after he asked the boss about the union: "He said he had about six guns on the job, and he had people there who would do whatever needed to be done. He said that he could dig a hole and put me in it and make the records showing I worked for the company disappear."

Other workers at the project told the National Labor Relations Board that managers promised them a $5-an-hour raise to vote against the union. Last November, the NLRB ordered Auringer to post a notice promising not to make such threats. A new vote was canceled after Auringer fired 10 pro-union employees on the election's eve. An NLRB official said the matter is under investigation.

The article fails to mention, the private meetings that the employees had to sit through.

This is a good reason that America needs http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2008/06/tell-next-president-we-want-right-to-be.html">the Employee Free Choice Act. They sign the cards, they get into a union. No guns, no threats, no bullshit propaganda.

Today the corporate backed, immigration enforcement ignored, slave owners of multi national corporations get everything on a silver platter, while the working class people and those that actually want to embrace them and get them representation are almost totally ignored in the anti-union main stream media. Thank goodness for people like Tom Robbins, from the Village Voice and Steven Greenhouse at the Times for actually writing facts about workers here in New York.

From the same article as above:

The ironworkers decided to blow up a photo of Capoccia and mount it on a truck. They wrote beneath it: "Shame on Donald Capoccia—Don't profit off immigrant worker poverty." It also carried the developers' office and cell-phone numbers. Then they drove the truck around the work site, City Hall, and Capoccia's bank.

On Saturday evening, June 14, Lopez was in front of his Elmhurst home about to take his nine-year-old daughter to buy some ice cream when a menacing figure appeared. "The guy was about five-foot-nine; he's carrying this big green umbrella and glaring at us. I had a bad feeling. I told my daughter we had to go back. She knew something was wrong. She ran right upstairs and told my wife to call 911, that Daddy was in trouble."

Lopez ducked inside and peered through the window. The lurker walked past his door and disappeared. When he opened the door to look down the street, the man was standing on an adjacent stoop, staring. "I said, 'Are you looking for me?' He cupped his ear like he didn't hear me. I said, 'Are you fucking looking for me?' Then he ran at me with the umbrella and reached under his jacket. I closed the door. He hit the door a bunch of times with the handle of the umbrella. He was shouting, 'I find you and I got you now!' He did that a few times and then went away.' "

The entire article and a counter point towards Bernie Carr are at Joe's Union Review
http://anti-union.blogspot.com/2008/06/ny-nonunion-construction-with-guns.html