What happened when the workers tried to form a union?
Fired in a Pandemic 'Because We Tried to Starting time a Marriage,' Workers Say
Employees who were in unions or pushing to join them have been laid off and replaced past nonunionized labor. Information technology'southward role of a blueprint stretching back decades, experts say.
The Cort Piece of furniture Rental warehouse in North Bergen, N.J., where employees were permit get shortly earlier a unionization vote was to take place. Credit... Ben Solomon for The New York Times
Truck drivers and warehouse workers at Cort Furniture Rental in New Bailiwick of jersey had spent months trying to unionize in the hopes of securing higher wages and better benefits. By early this twelvemonth, they thought they were on the cusp of success.
But when the coronavirus arrived, Cort, which is owned by Warren E. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, laid off its truck drivers and replaced them with contractors, workers said. The wedlock-organizing plans were dashed.
"They fired us considering we tried to start a union," said Julio Perez, who worked in Cort'south warehouse in Northward Bergen, N.J.
As American companies lay off millions of workers, some appear to be taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to target workers who are in or hope to bring together unions, according to interviews with more than two dozen workers, labor activists and employment lawyers.
Nurses in North Carolina accused Mission Hospital, which is owned by the for-profit hospital concatenation HCA Healthcare, of using the pandemic to delay a matrimony election. At Uovo Fine Arts, a company that packages and transports art for wealthy individuals and galleries, workers said they were laid off equally punishment for trying to unionize last year. Everlane, the online vesture visitor, laid off much of its client-service squad four days after a small number of its members informed the visitor's chief executive that they had plenty back up to class a marriage. The company that owns the Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer this month laid off journalists who were in a guild and increased its reliance on nonunionized workers.
Companies say the layoffs are legitimate responses to an extraordinary economic crisis that has left many businesses on the cusp of plummet, non punishment for unionizing. Unionized employees tend to be more expensive, and getting rid of them tin can be an especially potent cost-cutting move.
Some big companies have accused workers of trying to exploit the crisis to glean public sympathy and gain momentum for unionization. A spokeswoman at Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., for case, said National Nurses United, the wedlock behind the drive, "is trying to use this crisis to advance its own interest — organizing more members."
There already take been some well-publicized cases of employees at major companies agitating for alter — and then feeling that they are existence punished for it.
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, North.Y., recently accused the company of firing employees who complained near working shoulder to shoulder in the midst of the pandemic. In a letter sent last week, the New York attorney full general, Letitia James, said the company may have violated federal worker safety laws and the state's whistle-blower protections when information technology fired one worker.
In Louisville, a worker at Trader Joe'due south supermarkets said he had been fired after he created a Facebook folio to talk over working conditions. On March 31, Trader Joe's main executive circulated a letter opposing labor unions and calling whatsoever attempts to recruit workers "a lark." A spokeswoman for Trader Joe's denied that the worker had been fired because of his Facebook postal service. Amazon said that information technology respected its employees' rights to protest, simply that those rights "do not provide blanket immunity confronting bad deportment."
The pattern is playing out beyond the American business landscape.
"This is a continuation of behavior that has become all too common, of employers existence willing to apply increasingly aggressive tactics to end unionizing," said Sharon Cake, a old National Labor Relations Board fellow member appointed by President Barack Obama. "The pandemic has given them another tool in their toolbox."
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Companies have seized on crises before to target marriage organizers, said Joseph A. McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown Academy. During the 1918 influenza pandemic, just equally organizers were making inroads at steel plants and big industrial companies like General Electrical, local officials, at the behest of large companies, began banning meetings. Their stated rationale, Mr. McCartin said, was public health and the take a chance of workers infecting one another at large gatherings. K.Due east. managed to stall matrimony-organizing drives, he said.
During the Great Depression, Mr. McCartin said, companies targeted union members for layoffs.
What makes this time even tougher for matrimony organizing, Mr. McCartin said, is that it combines a pandemic with a period of mass layoffs. "I suspect that merely similar the pandemic itself, a lot more of this is happening than we even realize," he said.
In some cases, the actions are subtle. Some companies take hired consultants to warn employees about the risks of unionizing. "They imply that with this coming recession, in that location are hundreds of workers who would be more happy to come in and take your jobs if you unionize," said John Logan, a labor good at San Francisco State University.
Workers at Comanche Top Nuclear Power Plant in Glen Rose, Texas, had been trying to organize a union. The plant is operated by a subsidiary of Vistra Energy, but a firm called Day & Zimmermann provides the labor. At a meeting with a scattering of workers last calendar month, a consultant hired by Solar day & Zimmermann warned about the perils of organizing during periods of extremely loftier unemployment. He said huge numbers of skilled workers had recently lost their jobs in the oil and gas industry and "would absolutely be willing to come to a place similar ours and work," according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times.
In New Jersey, truck drivers and warehouse workers at Cort Piece of furniture Rental, which supplies desks, chairs and other furniture to homes and businesses in New York and New Jersey, began meeting in January to discuss joining the local chapter of the Teamsters wedlock. Most people were in favor of joining, organizers said, and nearly everyone signed a union dominance carte du jour supporting a vote.
Simply earlier a vote could take place, Cort hired exterior truckers to deliver furniture for the company, drivers told The Times. By the end of March, Cort had laid off most employees at the North Bergen location.
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"Now we don't accept insurance, nosotros have nothing," said Walter Infante, a driver who helped to lead the organizing efforts and who spoke to The Times through an interpreter.
A spokeswoman for Cort declined to comment other than to say the visitor "does not comment nearly possible, pending or ongoing litigation."
In Cleveland, Advance Ohio owns both The Plain Dealer and the cleveland.com website. The paper's journalists are unionized; the website's are not.
The visitor announced last month that it would lay off eighteen of its unionized newsroom employees, saying it would rely on the website's journalists to fill some of the void. The Plain Dealer's guild accused Accelerate Ohio of "union busting."
Fourteen journalists remained in The Plain Dealer'due south newsroom, down, the lodge said, from more than 300 just a decade agone. Since the layoffs, most of them were reassigned to cover far-flung counties, which the lodge characterized as "part of a broader move to eliminate The Plain Dealer and its staff birthday."
Tim Warsinskey, The Evidently Dealer's editor, said in a statement that the reassignments were meant to complement cleveland.com's coverage, not to sabotage the union.
This month, 10 of the remaining Plain Dealer journalists were laid off. The newspaper'due south impress edition is now filled largely by cleveland.com content.
It's hard — sometimes impossible — to show that a visitor is dumping workers in order to undermine a matrimony as opposed to simple cost-cut.
David Martinez and Peter Mackay have no doubt. They had worked for years at Uovo Fine Art in Queens, N.Y., storing, packaging and transporting artwork among the visitor'due south warehouses. When the coronavirus started spreading, the men knew business would irksome down, simply they figured they would be fine, in part considering of their seniority at Uovo.
But Mr. Martinez and Mr. Mackay had been leading a button to unionize the company'due south workers. When Uovo furloughed nearly of its staff concluding month, informing the workers that they would go along receiving paychecks, Mr. Martinez and Mr. Mackay were among the few to permanently lose their jobs.
"This is obviously retaliation," said Mr. Mackay, who had worked at Uovo as a driver and art handler for more than five years.
A Uovo spokeswoman said: "The claims subsequently asserted by ii of the squad members are entirely unfounded."
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Employees at Housing Works, a nonprofit counseling center in New York City, planned to vote by mail service on March 20 on whether to form a matrimony. Two days before the ballots were set to become out, the police business firm representing Housing Works, Seyfarth Shaw, urged the National Labor Relations Board to delay the vote.
The N.L.R.B. postponed union elections nationwide until April three.
Less than 2 weeks afterward, Housing Works laid off 29 people and furloughed 167. "That was pretty cold," said Adrian Downing-Espinal, 39, who worked equally a substance abuse advisor in that location and had been leading the button to unionize. She was among those to lose their jobs.
"Never did we target — or ever would consider targeting — anyone based on union affiliation," said Matthew Bernardo, Housing Works' president. He said that at the time the ballots were set to go out, Housing Works was struggling to figure out what the coronavirus meant for its clients, services and stores.
"It simply didn't seem like the fourth dimension to leave there and run an election that was fair," Mr. Bernardo said.
Marc Tracy contributed reporting.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/business/coronavirus-unions-layoffs.html
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