Main Street

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.

In response to all this, the Hyatt generously announced that the workers would be offered replacement jobs. With a staffing organization doing contract labor.

The workers have rejected this offer.

“We want our jobs back, nothing else,’’ said Lucine Williams, who worked at the downtown Hyatt for nearly 22 years. “We will not accept temp positions that are designed to put others out of work.’’

–snip–

Williams, who has become the main spokeswoman for the housekeepers, said they had to stand up to Hyatt. “If we let them get away with it, I think about all the other families that work at hotels,’’ she said. “It’s the principle.’’

And the Boston workers are not alone—in addition to the boycotts announced in Massachusetts, they drew support from union workers in Chicago:

About 200 union and hospitality workers were arrested yesterday afternoon in Chicago as they demonstrated their support for 98 workers who lost their jobs in Boston-area Hyatt Hotels, the Chicago Tribune reported in a story.

According to the Tribune, about 900 members of Unite Here Local 1, the union that represents hospitality workers in and around Chicago, participated in the demonstration; those arrested sat in the middle of a street as an act of civil disobedience.

Corporations aren’t going to stop trying to hurt workers until more working people fight back. All of this is what we need to see, anytime an employer tries to increase profits by harming workers.