Main Street

Working Life in a Biscuit

The AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff brings us the story of a struggle going on right now in the Bronx:

Stella D’oro, which was once an iconic, national, premium Italian-style biscuit brand, was also once a successful family-owned firm acquired by RJR Nabisco, then taken over by Kraft when RJR Nabisco broke up (in the wake of the disastrous KKR LBO). Stella was run into the ground by its corporate overseers, then dumped to private equity earlier this decade when Kraft began to dispose of “non-core” assets under pressure from Wall Street. Workers there have been represented by the Bakers’ union since 1964.

Apparently the PE guys see the modest union contract of the older, experienced work force as a good target for their next round of pillaging. In the first round, the company disposed of its unionized route sales drivers by outsourcing distribution to a non-union company.

This time, Stella’s new owners have gone directly at the workforce, ignoring the National Labor Relations Act and demanding steep wage and benefit cuts with no opportunity for the workers and their union to bargain. The National Labor Relations Board, after the usual delay and indecision issued a “refusal to bargain” complaint charging the company with violating the law. The case only went before a federal judge last week; American labor law is so broken that it may take years for justice to prevail.

What’s happening at Stella D’oro is a microcosm of the pressures that have hit working people in the U.S. and around the world in recent decades. When you wonder why median income fell by $2,000 from 2000 to 2007, for instance, think about things like this: the multiple sales of a company from family ownership to one corporate giant after another, with ownership becoming less and less connected to the business of making biscuits; the attack on the gains that union membership had provided workers despite the company long having been profitable with unionized workers; the “delay and indecision” of a National Labor Relations Board gutted during the Bush years and the overall weakness of American labor law. It’s not accidental that wages stay stagnant or get driven down. America’s workers aren’t losing ground because of some mysterious abstract thing called “the economy,” they’re losing ground because of corporate campaigns against them exactly like the one Acuff describes here.

Acuff closes with an action item:

Meanwhile, in the Bronx, 136 workers continue to take a stand. They need your help and support. So do working families across the US.

Email Henk Hartong and Brynwood Partners at huppsv@brynwoodpartners.com or info@brynwoodpartners.com. Tell them to go back to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair agreement to preserve the living standards of their loyal employees!