Foodstuff Workers Industrial Union 460

All workers except agricultural and fishery workers, engaged in producing and processing food, beverages, and tobacco products.

Time to Keep Working

Posted Thu, 12/16/2010 - 11:07am by x360279

By Bill Reed, December 15, 2010

Perhaps you have heard about the Flaum Appetizing company cheating their employees out of large amounts of overtime pay and firing the workers for joining the IWW. Perhaps you were leafleting or picketing at supermarkets last summer or last spring to support the workers and get customers to boycott Sonny and Joe’s hummus. Perhaps you were in court or read about the National Labor Relations Board ruling against the owner.

The owner has simply refused to obey the federal laws including the NLRB ruling.

The Flaum company has been treating their staff badly and breaking the federal labor laws for a long time. This is business as usual in New York - and many parts of the U.S.

These workers have been standing up for their human rights. This shows that they are stronger and smarter than a lot of people who get cheated and unjustly fired. Lots of people just take it and move on with their lives. Look for a new employer. Hope that they are not repeating the situation.

When the labor union movement grew in the U.S., or anywhere, it was because labor united. People have to band together and try some ways to demand and get better treatment. It is just that simple. Sure, it is complicated in many ways, but the solid rock bottom basic truth of the matter is that people need to unite together and do something with as many of the other regular working people/taxed consumers as possible. We need to stick together to somehow force the wealthy powerful owners of the businesses and the government to stop their wicked ways.

The government is not normally enforcing laws when the wealthy break them. The law tricks us and deceives us. The rich - they have no legal obligations. We will always have some problems in our lives. If your problem is with an employer who does something wrong or even illegal – I’ve heard owners and managers tell my coworkers, “What are you gonna do? Call a cop?” We’ve got to help each other.

Brandworkers and Martin Garbus Pledge Vigorous Defense of Gorilla Coffee Workers

Posted Mon, 12/06/2010 - 1:35pm by x344543

New York, NY- Legendary First Amendment litigator Martin Garbus and noted workers' rights organization Brandworkers have taken on the representation of gourmet coffee workers being subjected to a controversial defamation lawsuit by prominent Brooklyn-based coffee company, Gorilla Coffee and its owners. After sustained attempts to improve what they viewed as a hostile work environment, the workers caused a stir in the gourmet coffee community and in the news media by resigning their employment at Gorilla Coffee as a group and discussing their decision in a letter to the New York Times. The Times, which published the letter online, and one of its reporters are also defendants in the suit which erroneously argues that the letter was defamatory. The letter is available online here.

"Retaliatory, anti-speech lawsuits like the one from Gorilla Coffee have the potential to both harm innocent people who choose to speak out and chill the speech of others who would like to make their voices heard," said Martin Garbus. "This lawsuit is without merit and will be defended vigorously until victory."

A well-known Park Slope institution, Gorilla Coffee was shuttered for over two weeks after essentially the entire staff resigned en masse last April. The workers took issue with what they viewed as the heavy-handed management style of operations director Carol McLaughlin and finally had enough when it became clear that company owner Darleen Scherer was unwilling to remedy the situation. In their letter to the Times, the workers cited their repeated attempts to create a tolerable work environment at Gorilla Coffee, attempts which ultimately proved unsuccessful. Instead, they were left to deal with a workplace that in their view represented a, "...perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment that was not only unhealthy, but also, as our actions have clearly shown, unworkable."

Flaum Appetizing Products Dropped by Prominent Market over Workers' Rights Concerns

Posted Thu, 12/02/2010 - 3:39pm by x344543

Park Slope Food Coop to Discontinue Sale of Sonny & Joe's Hummus Brand

For Immediate Release: Brandworkers - Contact: press (at) brandworkers.org, December 1, 2010

New York, NY- Members of the Park Slope Food Coop, a highly-regarded Brooklyn market, voted last night to stop selling Flaum Appetizing Corp. products, including Sonny & Joe's hummus, over workers' rights concerns. Flaum, a kosher food company, and its owner Moshe Grudhut illegally fired seventeen of their Latino workers en masse after the employees stood up against over a decade of unlawfully withheld overtime pay, denial of benefits, and abusive treatment from management. Though Flaum's retaliatory conduct was judged illegal in February 2009 after a full trial, the company is resisting compliance with the judge's order including the payment of over $260,000 in lost wages. Flaum has profited for years from the hard work of its immigrant employees but only raised the question of immigration status in a discriminatory bid to avoid the lawful court order.

"I was grateful for the opportunity to share my experience with almost two hundred members of the Coop yesterday evening," said Placido Romero, a Flaum worker whose firing was held to be illegal. "I worked at Flaum for 13 years and my co-workers and I didn't receive a penny of overtime, working sometimes as many as 80 hours per week. After all those years, Flaum didn't hesitate for a moment to throw me out of work leaving me incredibly worried about how I would pay rent and support my family. But we're campaigning with energy to win respect for our labor, the respect every worker deserves, and this decision by the Coop is an important step toward that goal."

In addition to cutting off orders of Flaum's Sonny & Joe's hummus brand, the Coop will refrain from purchasing Flaum-branded hummus, pickles, and Middle Eastern salads in addition to Tnuva diary products and Bodek cut vegetables which Flaum distributes in New York. The Flaum workers are part of the Focus on the Food Chain campaign, a joint effort of the IWW labor union in New York and non-profit organization Brandworkers. Focus on the Food Chain is organizing with recent immigrant workers to overcome sweatshop conditions in an industrial corridor of food processing and distribution warehouses that snake through Brooklyn and Queens. Flaum is emblematic of the working conditions in the sector where violations of basic workers' rights, exploitation of recent immigrants, and relentless retaliation against worker organizing are the norm. Still, workers have shown a steely resolve to speak out and take action for positive change.

Flaum Workers on Pacifica Radio

Posted Thu, 12/02/2010 - 3:25pm by x344543

Featured is a nice piece featuring Flaum workers Maria Corona, Gloria Torres, and Jose Pani; you can listen online here - (starts at 23:14).

Note how co-host Ken Nash ends the piece:

"IWW is Industrial Workers of the World; they have a great history, and a great present, and a better future."

Note: Maria misspoke on one point; in 2007, the workers joined the IWW and went on strike. Brandworkers got involved in 2010.

Kosher business refuses to pay $260,000 in back wages to fired workers

Posted Sat, 11/27/2010 - 1:39pm by x344543

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW. The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Izabela Rutkowski and Erin Durkin - New York Daily News, November 26th 2010

A Williamsburg kosher food company is locked in a battle with former workers who charge they were stiffed out of overtime pay - and then fired when they complained.

National Labor Relations Board investigators found that Flaum Appetizing Corp. illegally booted the workers, and ordered the company to cough up around $260,000 in back pay. But owner Moshe Grunhut has refused to comply - saying he won't pay the workers because they're undocumented immigrants.

The fired employees said they spent years working as much as 80 hours a week for minimum wage with no overtime, for bosses who often peppered them with verbal abuse.

"I worked 11 years for that company and I never received a dollar of overtime or one holiday or one sick day, nothing," said Gustino Romero, 32, of Bushwick. "I worked from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. ... We always asked for [overtime], but they said no."

Maria Corona, 36, of Williamsburg, said frequent insults from her boss made the situation worse.

"The manager called us cockroaches, tarantulas, all kinds of offensive names," she said. "The truth is we were unfairly exploited."

When the workers tried to form a union and went on a brief strike in 2008, management ordered them off the Flaum premises - a move the National Labor Relations Board ruled was illegal retaliation.