Re: [Marxism] FreshDirect

[Jon Flanders <jonflanders@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2007-12-14 at 19:21 -0500, Joaquin Bustelo wrote:

> I understand the need of white bureaucrats to find themselves some new
> members so they can keep their cushy jobs and expense accounts. I wish them
> all the best. But in terms of union organizing at heavily Latino workplaces,
> the legitimate organizing drives are those where the organizers and union
> higher-ups are willing to interpose their bodies --physically-- between the
> workers and the immigration Gestapo. The others, at this point, are,
> whatever the intentions, quite likely to wind up as Judas goat operations.
> 
> The reason for this is quite simple, and it has to do with how I referred to
> la migra above. The left and the unions are living in a bourgeois democracy.
> The Latino community isn't. 
> 
> JoaquÃn

This all may be true. But we have to start somewhere when a battle like
this breaks out. How do we get to the point where unions will take a
stronger stand on the side of immigrant workers? Do we just write off
these workers as hopeless victims? You sound a bit like a Third Period
stalinist circa 1931.

I think we have some good things to work with in this case.

A yuppie company vulnerable to bad publicity.

The reputation of the mighty Teamsters in New York City, a union town.

A Teamsters local run by a TDUer and a woman to boot, not some pinky
ring gangster type, someone who can go out and appeal to the public.

New York City has a media spotlight like no other, when it comes to news
and public opinion.

New York City is not only a union town, but it is a city of immigrant
workers, where politicians rightly fear their potential power, which is
shifting the balance beneath their feet.

Jon Flanders


I found this article by Juan Gonzalez while googling around. I also
found a EdHeisler handle on a Teamster discussion board. This person is
very active there, with 8000 posts?????????



Juan Gonzalez 
________________________________________________________________________
FreshDirect takes heat, workers try to unionize 

________________________________________________________________________

Friday, September 28th 2007, 4:00 AM 



Those squat, white trucks with the splashy green-and-orange FreshDirect
logos have turned into constant fixtures on New York's streets the past
few years - at least in the upscale neighborhoods.

How can anyone miss a FreshDirect truck?

It's invariably double-parked with its engine idling while the driver
rushes into a building to deliver groceries and gourmet meals that some
customer ordered online.

The fast FreshDirect is the food phenom of the Internet age, say
business experts and many middle-class New Yorkers who no longer can
find time to shop in a supermarket or cook.

Despite the company's glitzy image, some of the 900 workers at
FreshDirect's huge Long Island City warehouse say it's run like an
old-fashioned sweatshop.

Those workers are in the midst of a campaign to win union recognition,
and they're following in the footsteps of 500 FreshDirect truck drivers
who won the right to unionize last year.

"They made us work 12 and 14 hours a day, then ... when some of us
refused we were suspended for three days without pay," says Loreto
Gomez, one of the union advocates who worked in the warehouse until the
company fired him this month.

The warehouse workers, most of them Hispanic or black, say their pay is
far below that of other New York grocery chains. Starting salaries at
FreshDirect are just above $7 an hour and average pay is around $8.50,
they claim.

For a company with estimated revenues of more than $200 million,
FreshDirect can do better than poverty wages, they say.

Moreover, employee health insurance premiums, especially for family
coverage, are so high most can't afford it, they say.

Gomez and another worker, Lonnie Powell, an employee in the dairy
department who was fired last month, claim they were victims of
retaliation after company managers learned they were part of the union
campaign.

Company officials reject their claims.

"We have incredibly generous benefits that are more than competitive,"
said Jim Moore, FreshDirect's vice president for business.

While Moore acknowledged that overtime is mandatory at FreshDirect, he
said every employee is informed of that when he or she is hired, and
many welcome the chance to make more money.

Instead of having to work two jobs, Moore told me, FreshDirect's
employees get to work longer hours at their existing jobs, earn
time-and-a-half pay, and avoid the hassle of commuting to a second job.

As for the two fired employees, Moore said, one was dismissed for coming
to work drunk and the other after repeated warnings because of numerous
absences.

"The managers had no inkling these employees were involved in union
organizing," Moore said.

"The indisputable fact is that both of these guys were fired within days
of their becoming publicly known as union organizers," said Evan Thies,
a spokesman for Teamsters Local 805. "In Powell's case, he wore a
Teamsters T-shirt and patch to work the day he was fired."

The 500 FreshDirect truck drivers who affiliated last year to Local 348
of the United Food and Commercial Workers have already seen an
improvement in their salaries and working conditions.

Anthony Fazio, secretary-treasurer of the local, said the truck drivers
are averaging $14 an hour and have won full company payment of their
health insurance.

"The company has always and will always honor its employees' desires if
they decide to unionize," FreshDirect's Moore said.

While the union battle unfolds, FreshDirect trucks keep delivering each
night to the city's affluent neighborhoods.

In the Bronx, for instance, FreshDirect delivers only in Riverdale. In
Queens, it serves customers in neighborhoods such as Forest Hills and
Little Neck, but not in Woodside and Jackson Heights, which are far
closer to the Long Island City warehouse. It supplies downtown Brooklyn
and Park Slope but not Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Company officials say they supply neighborhoods where they perceive
demand is high.

"I worked for the company but never saw a truck in East New York where I
live," said former employee Powell.





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