Workers Fighting Back

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workingamerica.org/blog/2009/09/30/workers-fighting-back/

Workers Fighting Back

I’ve previously written about struggles at Stella D’oro in New York and Hyatt in Boston. In both cases, employers just decided to go after their workers, to increase profits by slashing pay and benefits. That’s not uncommon, but in both of these cases, the workers and unions fought back. So what’s going on with them now?

James Parks at the AFL-CIO blog writes that:

In July 2009, 136 Stella D’oro workers, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 50, returned to work after an 11-month strike to maintain family-supporting wages and health care.

Yet on the day they returned, Brynwood Partners, the private equity firm that currently owns the company, announced it would shutter the plant, an action the union says is a direct retaliation against the workers.

On June 30, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge ruled that Stella D’oro refused to bargain with the union, improperly declared an impasse in negotiations and illegally refused the workers’ offer May 6 to return to work. The law judge ordered the company to reinstate the 136 workers with back pay and interest. BCTGM Local 50 then filed charges with the NLRB seeking to block the shutdown and also demanded the company reopen contract negotiations.

Help out Stella D’oro workers here.

As for the Hyatt, they’ve faced massive outrage in Massachusetts and elsewhere. At least two professional groups canceled contracts to hold events at the Hyatt or said that they planned to do so, while the Boston Taxi Drivers Association announced a taxi drivers boycott of the Hyatt unless the housekeepers were rehired.

Perhaps most surprising was Governor Patrick’s unusual response.

Last week, he wrote to Hyatt chief executive Mark S. Hoplamazian, asking him to rehire the housekeepers. After Hyatt offered them a three-month extension of their health care benefits and assistance looking for a job, Patrick rallied on the workers behalf, announcing he would direct state employees to boycott Hyatt hotels unless the workers were reinstated.

FULL story at link.