| Icy Day Finds Old Union Outside Modern City Shops
By Colin Moynihan, New York Times 
January 22, 2008
From The New York Times:
The dramatic battles of the American labor movement were often fought in hazardous settings like the coal fields of Kentucky or the textile mills of Massachusetts.
In recent times, though, a different type of labor dispute has become familiar in New York, focused on the retail outlets that keep upscale customers fed and caffeinated.
And so it was that a crowd of about 50 people wrapped in scarves and bandannas against the cold gathered Monday morning outside a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 33rd Street.
As their breath steamed the air, they chanted and sang. They carried long banners bearing the logo of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union founded in 1905 that has been trying to organize Starbucks workers since 2004.
Red and black anarchist flags waved in the wind, and one woman held aloft a placard depicting a pouncing black cat toppling what appeared to be a venti latte cup emblazoned with a dollar sign.
This type of labor action has become a familiar story in a city that takes its coffee and takeout seriously. For example, the Teamsters accused FreshDirect, the grocery delivery company, of firing workers just before a union vote last fall, an assertion the company denied. The unionization effort failed.
In October, the National Labor Relations Board said that two Saigon Grill restaurants, among the most highly rated Asian restaurants in New York, had illegally retaliated against workers who banded together. The owner has denied wrongdoing.
The home of the caramel macchiato, Starbucks, has drawn some of the most consistent criticism, often from employees associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. Last April, the National Labor Relations Board accused Starbucks of breaking the law 30 times in fighting union activity at four Manhattan shops. The company has attributed the accusations to a handful of disgruntled workers.
Outside the shop Monday, Daniel Gross, 28, a former Starbucks employee, said the group was there to advance its union organizing effort and to protest Starbucks’s refusal to pay workers overtime for working on Martin Luther King’s Birthday.
Inside the shop a Starbucks company spokesman, David Vermillion, distributed a written statement saying the company pays overtime for working on several other holidays, like Memorial Day and Thanksgiving.
After about half an hour outside the Starbucks, the crowd walked east to hold a second demonstration outside another target of the I.W.W., Wild Edibles, a seafood store on Third Avenue.
The protesters lined Third Avenue in front of the seafood shop, chanting and holding placards. A man delivering a laundered supply of white uniforms for Wild Edibles approached. Rather than pass through what he was told was a picket line, he wished them well, went back across the street and waited in his truck.
Among those protesting was Cesar Barturen, 47, who said he had worked for 10 years as a driver for Wild Edibles, delivering seafood from a Long Island City warehouse until September, when he and several other workers were fired after trying to organize a union drive.
“The owner, he told me he didn’t want the union,” Mr. Barturen said.
Thomas J. Bianco, a lawyer for the shop, did not respond to a request for comment.
Shortly after noon, the protesters began to disperse. When they left, the delivery man waiting across the street took the uniforms into the basement.
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MLK Day March Against Wage Slavery
By Wobbly City 
January 19, 2008
For Immediate Release:
IWW Starbucks Workers Union and IWW IU 460/640
Contact:
Daniel Gross, 917-577-1110
Stephanie Basile, 201-787-6035
Join the IWW in our annual MLK Day march!
Monday, Jan 21
11:00am Starbucks Headquarters - 5th Ave & 33rd St
11:45am Wild Edibles - 3rd Ave bet 35th & 36th
2:00pm Union Square
6:30pm Flaum Appetizing - 288 Scholes St (L Train to Montrose)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 while supporting over 1,100 striking workers in their fight for a union and justice on the job.
Starbucks baristas have demanded the company pay the same holiday premium on Martin Luther King Day that it pays on several other federal holidays.
Immigrant food warehouse workers have been met with fierce retaliation for exercising their right to form a union.
Dr. King stood firmly for labor rights leading the workers to call for a march on the federal holiday commemorating his birthday.
The march will start at the NY regional HQ of Starbucks reiterating the union's demand for Starbucks to treat MLK Day the way it treats several other federal holidays. Marchers will proceed to Wild Edibles, a seafood retailer and wholesaler, where workers have also joined the IWW and are being discriminated against because they are immigrants.
www.wobblycity.org
www.iww.org
www.starbucksunion.org
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EZ Supply Workers Win Reinstatement
By Stephanie Basile 
January 15, 2008
An NLRB judge recently ruled in favor of the IWW in the case of 13 workers who were terminated from EZ Supply last winter. The workers were ordered to be reinstated and paid backwages. The amount of backwages is to be determined at a compliance hearing that will take place in the near future.
Throughout 2006, the IWW had multiple bargaining sessions with EZ Supply Corp. In December of that year, the company changed its name to Sunrise Plus and fired the IWW members from the shop. The judge’s decision concluded that Sunrise Plus was an alter ego EZ Supply and that the workers were fired due to union activity.
Though the ruling is a symbolic victory, IWW organizer Billy Randel says it’s too soon to tell if the decision will be challenged down the road. So far EZ Supply has not appealed the case, but it has until January 25th to do so.
Complications could also arise from the fact that different sectors of the NLRB have differing interpretations of the law, especially with the current anti-union appointees working at the federal level. When the IWW won a reinstatement case against Handy Trading four months ago, it was the NLRB themselves who decided to appeal the case.
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Starbucks Emails Describe Efforts to Stop Unionization
By Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal 
January 09, 2008
From the Wall Street Journal:
A series of emails by Starbucks Corp. managers sheds
light on the company's efforts to thwart union
organizing among its baristas.
The emails, which are part of a labor-dispute
proceeding in New York and were reviewed by The Wall
Street Journal, open a rare window onto the company's
labor relations practices. Labor experts not involved
with the case said the activity is not illegal. But
the emails could prove embarrassing because they show
managers using various methods to identify pro-union
employees.
The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, has been
trying to organize workers at Starbucks since 2004 and
has been able to organize only several dozen at a
handful of stores in New York and a few other cities.
According to several emails, in early 2006, Starbucks
managers discovered that two pro-union employees in
New York were graduates of a Cornell University labor
program. According to an email, managers took the
names of graduates from an online Cornell discussion
group and the school's Web site and cross-checked them
with employee lists nationwide. They found that three
employees in California, Michigan and Illinois were
graduates of the program and recommended that local
managers be informed.
The emails are exhibits in a pending case before an
administrative law judge in New York. Brandon Borrman,
a Starbucks spokesman, said most of the documents
relate to issues that were already settled in a
separate agreement with the National Labor Relations
Board, in which the company didn't admit any
wrongdoing. He said the claims in that case were
baseless but declined to comment on specifics, and
said disclosure of the documents violates a
confidentiality order.
Referring to Starbucks employees as partners, he said:
"We honor the free choices of partners, and we
strictly comply with labor laws, including those for
organizing activities. It is unfortunate that a small
group of activists continues to misrepresent itself as
speaking on behalf of more than 150,000 partners
world-wide when it does not."
In the pending NLRB case in New York, the IWW has
accused Starbucks of committing about 30 labor law
violations during 2005 and 2006. The union argues that
the company's effort to identify union supporters was
part of a broader campaign of unlawful activity, and
it argues that the company discharged three employees
because they supported the union.
"What possible nondiscriminatory reason could
Starbucks come up with to scrutinize Cornell graduates
working at the company?" said Daniel Gross, a former
barista in New York. He alleges that he was fired in
August 2006 because he is a union activist, and his
termination is a subject of the pending NLRB case.
Workers at Starbucks often have higher pay and better
benefits than typical part-time food-service
employees. Starbucks in 2006 said its New York
baristas typically start at about $8.75 an hour.
According to the Department of Labor, the group that
includes counter attendants, cafeteria workers,
food-concession workers and coffee-shop workers had a
median wage of $7.76 that same year.
The company emails show that managers have been
fighting the union since 2004. "Below is a summary of
the recent developments in New York City regarding our
attempts to thwart a potential union situation,"
begins an email dated Oct. 29, 2004 by a Starbucks New
York regional official.
In subsequent emails, managers identify whether an
employee is an "IWW supporter" and discuss when
pro-union employees will be reviewed and those that
are "at risk" of being terminated.
Taking action against an employee based on union
sympathies, such as firing an employee or directly
asking if they support the union, would be illegal,
said Chuck Cohen, a former member of the National
Labor Relations Board and a partner at Morgan Lewis &
Bockius in Washington. But "employers speculating
about individual union sympathies is not unlawful," he
said.
Several times, managers expressed concern that emails
could turn up in a legal case. On May 13, 2005, a
manager warned: "Also, not to sound too 007 here but I
am going to ask that we delete these messages after
reading and stick to verbal conversations as none of
this is protected under attorney client privilege and
is subject to full disclosure."
In an email the prior day, the manager suggested that
managers avoid "any specific language around 'union
avoidance,'" and added, "It's semantics but we really
wan [sic] to avoid any wording that suggests we
engaged in counter union activity."
In other emails, managers discuss employee
relationships to discern their union preferences. In
one case, executives sought information about a
Halloween party employees attended, and noted that a
discussion about the union between two employees ended
in part because they "were attracted to each other and
this became the focus of their evening."
Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com
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Judge Enjoins Retaliation Against Plaintiffs Seeking Overtime
By Beth Bar, NY Law Journal 
January 06, 2008
From the New York Law Journal:
A Manhattan federal judge has ordered a New York City
seafood purveyor not to retaliate against workers who
are suing the company for allegedly violating state
and federal labor laws.
Southern District Judge Louis L. Stanton has issued a
preliminary injunction against Wild Edibles, a
wholesale and retail chain that has been featured on
"The Martha Stewart Show" and on the Food Network. The
judge prohibited the company from taking any "adverse
employment action against, or terminating the
employment of" any worker who decides to be part of
the suit.
"Wild has not refuted the evidence showing that they
have intimidated Wild employees who are not parties in
this action and deterred them from asserting their
rights...and have caused named plaintiffs to consider
dropping their claims in this case," Judge Stanton
wrote in Barturen v. Wild Edibles, 07 Civ. 8127.
The decision appears on page 36 of the print edition
of today's Law Journal.
The case began last summer when the Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW) attempted to organize Wild Edibles
workers at the company's Long Island City warehouse.
"From June until September 2007...IWW union
representatives regularly stood outside of the
warehouse facility, approached Wild employees, and
spoke with them about their working conditions," Judge
Stanton said. "Several of those employees [said to the
union representatives] that Wild was not paying them
overtime wages."
On Aug. 11, the union hosted a meeting to discuss the
wage concerns. One of the workers who attended,
Raymundo Molina, was fired six days later.
Raymundo Molina and other Wild Edibles employees and
union representatives staged a demonstration on Aug.
20. Plaintiffs Jason Borges, Julio Cesar Mareno
Gonzalez, Marco Antonio Corona, Raul Lara Molina, Lino
Alberto Martinez, and Jose Antonio Fernandez Tavara
were among the group that marched in front of the
warehouse.
The plaintiffs allege that Mr. Borges was fired the
same day as the rally, Raul Molina around Aug. 30, Mr.
Gonzalez at the end of the month and Mr. Corona in
early September.
"Wild does not dispute that the employment of those
plaintiffs ended on or about those dates," the judge
said. "But...Wild denies ordering any retaliatory
discharges."
In an affidavit submitted to the court, Richard
Martin, the company's owner and a defendant in the
suit, said, "We have taken no actions in retaliation.
Everything we have done has been for bona fide
business reasons consistent with our regular practices
and procedures."
The company said Raymundo Molina was fired because he
had been late 20 out of 30 days in one month. It said
that Mr. Borges voluntarily quit, while Messrs. Raul
Molina, Gonzalez and Corona resigned by failing to
appear for work without notifying the company in
advance.
In their lawsuit, which was filed on Sept. 17, the
current and former workers said Wild Edibles failed to
pay them overtime and "spread-of-hours" wages in
violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act,
§190 of the New York Labor Law, New York's
"spread-of-hours" regulation and New York contract
law. They also asserted three claims of retaliatory
discharge under state and federal law.
Judge Stanton entered a temporary restraining order
against the company in September. In granting the
plaintiffs' request to convert the order into a
preliminary injunction, the judge noted that the
plaintiffs had to demonstrate a threat of "irreparable
injury and either the probability of success on the
merits or sufficiently serious questions going to the
merits of the claims to make them a fair ground of
litigation" in order to prevail on a motion for
preliminary injunction. Time Warner Cable of New York
City v. Bloomberg, 596 F.2d 70, 72 (2d Cir. 1979).
Moreover, he said that the balance of hardships must
tip "decidedly" in favor of the moving party. The
judge said the Wild Edibles workers had met these
criteria.
The judge said that if he did not enter the
preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs would be left
"exposed to the perceived risk of losing their
livelihoods at the hands of an employer that has
concededly fired other employees, under ambiguous
circumstances, and with full knowledge of the statutes
forbidding retaliation."
Carmelo Grimaldi and Richard M. Howard of
Mineola-based Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone
represent Wild Edibles. Mr. Howard declined to
comment, as the litigation is still pending.
David B. Rankin, a Manhattan solo practitioner who
represents the plaintiffs, called his clients
"fearless."
"They know [that] they are risking their livelihoods"
by taking part in this lawsuit, he said.
Beth Bar can be reached at bbar at alm.com.
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