Brooklyn Warehouse Workers Fight to Form Union, End Discrimination
By Joel Feingold /October 29, 2015 / Labor Notes
Raising
banners into the cold Atlantic wind, 100 warehouse workers from Mexico,
Honduras, and Guatemala marched on October 18 to the Manhattan showroom
of their boss, B&H Photo Video, the nation’s largest non-chain
camera store.
They carried cardboard boxes inscribed with a few of their demands—the hora de comida (the meal hour); respeto (respect); the right to call their families in an emergency; sick days; and their most fundamental demand, igualdad (equality—with the store’s Hasidic Jewish foremen). Close behind them marched a phalanx of 400 supporters.
This
was their second major picket in a week, wrapping around the face of
the B&H store on Ninth Avenue. There were so many people at the
gates that a concerted decision to block entry could have closed the
store for the afternoon—though so far, the storefront pickets have
remained symbolic.
Three
days earlier, the warehouse workers had taken their fight to the next
level: direct action. Demonstrations at B&H’s two Brooklyn
warehouses on October 15 turned back the bosses’ attempt to fire workers
en masse and to snuff out their campaign.
At the march and picket, that victory became a jubilant chant: “El jueves demostramos que no tenemos miedo!” (“On Thursday we showed that we are not afraid!”)
TOXIC CONDITIONS
Near
the front marched Raul Pedraza. Like many in B&H’s warehouses, he
has suffered years of unpaid overtime and stolen wages, beginning with
his very first shift.
Pedraza
has endured managers’ racist taunts. He’s chafed at how Latinos and
young workers are excluded from the higher pay scales and even from health care benefits.
He’s
breathed air so thick with dust that his nose bleeds, a daily reminder
that he and his coworkers have no say over conditions.
He’s
gone without food or a lunch break; worked 14 hours a day; and been
unable to take a day off when his children got sick—all illegal in New
York City, but common in its warehouses, restaurants, laundries,
factories, stores, and offices.
Workers say B&H warehouses are rife with toxic conditions and fire hazards. Two trailers on the company’s Navy Yard lot exploded in September 2014,
engulfing the Latino and ultra-Orthodox Jewish workers in smoke and
threatening to consume the entire facility in flames. B&H’s Navy
Yard operations are currently under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
‘OVER MY DEAD BODY’
Days before the picket, managers and anti-union consultants tried to fire scores of workers.
But
the Navy Yard workers—well-prepared by a year of underground training
in labor law and worker-power tactics led by organizers from the Laundry
Workers Center—were unmoved by management’s closed-door union-bashing
sessions.
“They told me they would take away our benefits,” Pedro Ramirez, a worker at the Navy Yard facility, told Al Jazeera America. “But we don’t have benefits.”
One
by one behind closed doors—and then all together on the plant floor—the
Navy Yard workers refused to sign a vague legal document. Managers told
them they had to sign or face termination. When workers balked, the
managers flew into a rage.
Hollering,
“Get out! Get out! Get out!” managers pushed Ramirez and his fellow
workers out of the warehouse and past its gates, where workers took up a
vigil.
Text
messages flew to the company’s other warehouse, on Evergreen Avenue in
the industrial section of Bushwick, Brooklyn, where workers were ready
for direct action, too. Edwin Rojas told Al Jazeera America he had been told, “If you think a union will enter here, it will be over my dead body.”
“I told them,” said Rojas, “You are no one to change my mind.”
Soon scores of workers streamed out, shuttering Evergreen too. Another worker, Jorge Lora, told The Nation that the action showed how “workers have the power—because in the city, nothing can move if there’s nobody working there.”
Combined,
the protests numbered 150 or more workers. B&H immediately bowed to
their power, rehiring everyone. Later the company claimed no one had
been fired in the first place.
WAREHOUSES ARE CENTRAL
At the picket, there wasn’t a trace of fear. Pedraza and a hundred fellow workers were resolute and cheerful.
Flanked
by their families, the members of the B&H Warehouse Workers
Association chanted as they marched toward the showroom: “Arriba los trabajadores, abajo los explotadores! (Up with the workers, down with the exploiters!)”
Shoring
up their ranks were hundreds of labor movement veterans, young
socialists, fellow workers from other industries, and organizers from
Laundry Workers Center and the United Steelworkers, which have joined
forces to support this fight.
Out of 240 B&H warehouse workers, 199 have signed union cards. The United Steelworkers filed on October 13 for a National Labor Relations Board election to represent them. The election is scheduled for November 4.
Warehouses—and transportation to and from them—are central nodes in the world economy.
Tactics that succeed in this sector could ripple through the supply
chain, which knits together workers in Amazon distribution centers, port
truckers, fast food workers, airport fuelers, and Target clerks.
That’s
part of why, as Lora said, this struggle is about more than these few
hundred workers in Brooklyn. It is also a fight to show all low-wage
workers that “unity is strength.”
“Why
are we here?” Pedraza asked the crowd as the demonstration drew to a
close. “We are all here because we all have the same blood, and the same
heart. We’re fighting for our future.”
Joel Feingold is an organizer and writer in Brooklyn, New York.
- See more at: http://www.labornotes.org/
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