While a representative for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recommended certification of the union in September, Refresco has signaled that it intends to appeal. After the union won the election, Refresco moved rapidly to scrap the results on a technicality. The workers ultimately won their union by a near-unanimous vote.Ĭruz’s strategy also failed at Refresco, but the workers’ fight isn’t over. Labor activists say Cruz, himself a former union organizer, is infamous for his attempts to thwart organizing in industries with large numbers of immigrant workers.Īlejandro Coriat, who encountered Cruz in 2017 while organizing a union at his job at a Hilton Hotel in Stamford, Conn., even coined a term to describe this approach: “intersectional union-busting.” In a workplace dominated by Latino and Haitian immigrants, Cruz and his team “divided us according to two language groups, and with each group, they tried a different tack,” Coriat says. The tactic is old, but it speaks to the increasing specialization of a multi-million-dollar union-busting industry. The recordings provide a window into an especially insidious union-busting strategy: exploiting ethnic and linguistic differences to sow doubt and confusion among immigrant workers. The company pulled out all the stops, posting anti-union flyers and a fake UE contract - and hiring Lupe Cruz, a union avoidance expert who specializes in “bilingual consulting.” In These Times obtained more than eight hours of recordings from six weeks of mandatory anti-union meetings led by Cruz at the Refresco plant this spring. To win the election, Moreira and his co-workers also had to overcome an aggressive anti-union campaign targeting their predominantly Spanish-speaking workforce. Their 250-person bargaining unit is one of the biggest victories of blue-collar organizing during the pandemic. In June, 15 months after the walkout, Refresco workers voted 114 – 101 to join the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).
Their spontaneous protest quickly blossomed into a full-fledged union drive. Workers at a Perdue chicken plant in Georgia and a meatpacking facility in Nebraska soon followed suit, the food production sector being a particular hotspot for Covid- 19 cases and emergency organizing by a heavily immigrant workforce.īut workers at the Wharton plant didn’t stop there. On March 21, 2020, Moreira and his coworkers walked off the job to demand adequate protections and contact tracing, part of a wave of safety-related stoppages in the first months of the pandemic. In mid-March, as workers at the plant began to call in sick with coronavirus symptoms, Moreira says plant management ignored their concerns and refused to temporarily halt production. That the company would risk the health of its employees to maintain the supply of sugary drinks angered him. Management for Resfresco Beverages Inc., the owner of the plant and one of the largest bottling companies, told workers these operations fell under the umbrella of “essential services.” Moreira was incredulous. During 12-hour shifts, Moreira mixes vats of powdered concentrate and sugar to churn out brand-name beverages like Gatorade and Arizona Iced Tea.
As the spread of Covid- 19 forced millions of workplaces to close in March 2020, Cesar Moreira continued to report to a bottling plant in Wharton, N.J., where he works as a batching technician.
0 kommentar(er)
