| NYC IWW Needs Financial Support
By 460 Solidarity 
July 30, 2007
The workers from the IWW Food and Allied Workers Union ask for your solidarity. The union has financially supported twenty-one fired workers and another five whose hours were dramatically reduced. Our strike fund is in heavy debt and we are looking to you for additional resources to sustain our campaign.
We ask that all Wobblies who can afford it pledge $5.00 per week for the next four months. With enough Fellow Workers participating, this small weekly amount will ensure that we can continue the fight to build a powerful rank-and-file union in the food industry.
Here's how your donation will be spent:
Relief Fund: rebuilding our workers defense fund. Our goal is to put 25,000 dollars from contributions into the fund over the next four months.
Organizing: helping to defray the costs of an organizing drive, i.e. transportation, literature and other campaign materials, and small stipends for worker-organizers when they take off from work on union business (the IWW Food and Allied Workers Union has no paid staff).
Overhead: rent for office space ($50/month) and other related costs, such a phone line and internet service. No more than 5% of donations will be spent on overhead costs.
To make an online contribution follow the instructions on this page. Thank you in advance for your solidarity and generosity.
In Solidarity,
460 Solidarity Committee
IWW Food and Allied Workers Union, I.U. 460/640
P. O. Box 7430
J. A. F. Station, New York, NY 10116
http://www.iww.org/en/node/3166
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Take action with the IWW Food and Allied Workers Union I.U. 460
By 460 ![]()
July 13, 2007
Take action with the IWW Food and Allied Workers Union I.U. 460
Tell Penang to Stop using Sunrise Plus!
The IWW is organizing in one of NYC's most exploitative industries. Workers throughout the food industry are being denied minimum wage and overtime. As these workers fight back, bosses are coming down with a heavy hand in an attempt to extinguish a fiery organizing drive among NYC's underpaid immigrant workforce.
WE NEED YOUR HELP!
We need YOU to join us in a weekend phone blitz! Call Penang, ask to speak with a manager, and tell them to stop using Sunrise Plus (aka EZ Supply) as a supplier!
WHEN: Thursday, July 12th through Sunday, July 14th
Call (212) 585-3838 and demand Penang cut all relations with Sunrise plus / EZ supply!
Since December of 2006, workers have been kicked out of their workplace for organizing a union at EZ-Supply, a restaurant wholesale supplier. After repeatedly violating the law, owner Lester Wen changed the name of his business from EZ Supply to Sunrise Plus in an attempt to evade a backwage claim against his company. Apparently Wen thinks by changing the name of his business, he can continue exploiting workers as usual. The IWW thinks otherwise! We have been asking all customers of Sunrise Plus to change suppliers immediately.
Penang Restaurant needs to stop using Sunrise Plus and we need your help!
FOR MORE INFO VISIT WOBBLYCITY.ORG
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Wobblies March on HWH
By FW Stephanie Basile 
July 03, 2007
Across the street from Sunrise Plus and down the road from Amersino, wobblies recently marched on HWH Trading Corp to demand fair pay and better working conditions for the company’s 15 warehouse employees. Workers at HWH are the latest to join the IWW’s Food and Allied Workers Union. The march was held to show that the workers have the support of fellow wobblies and to officially alert the boss of their membership in the union. About 30 people came out in support of the workers.
At HWH, a produce distributor in Queens, workers are not only expected to work extremely long hours, but routinely travel up and down the Eastern seaboard. Workers come into the warehouse Sunday night, spend the night loading up their trucks, and head out for long trips Monday morning. One employee works 116 hours per week and makes weekly trips between NYC and Maine, while another makes routine runs between NYC and Syracuse.
At the march, the boss was informed that the workers were demanding he respect minimum wage laws. He agreed to pay workers minimum wage, to pay time and a half for overtime, and to reduce the workers’ weekly hours.
In addition to gaining better working conditions, the workers are looking to collect what they rightfully earned while working below minimum wage. Two days before the march took place, workers met with a lawyer from the attorney general’s office. As a result of the meeting, the attorney general is expected to launch an investigation into HWH’s minimum wage violations. The workers are hoping that the investigation will lead to a win in backwages.
The march was the first public action of an ambitious organizing drive that the NYC IWW is undertaking this summer. Dubbed “9 in 90,” the IWW is hoping to organize nine new shops in the next 90 days. HWH is the first of the “9 in 90” to sign onto the IWW.
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Take Action: Starbucks Barista Homeless After Racist Demotion
By SWU 
July 02, 2007
Sisters and Brothers:
Simone Gordon and the IWW Starbucks Workers Union
[StarbucksUnion.org] need your solidarity now. Ms.
Gordon is homeless and on welfare after Starbucks
demoted her from shift supervisor to barista on New
Year’s Day and cut her schedule to a stunning five
hours per week. Simone’s store manager, Graham
Higgins, falsely accused Ms. Gordon, who is
African-American, of being racist against white people
and stated that she wasn’t fit to be a leader in the
store. The allegation that Ms. Gordon is racist is so
patently absurd that we won’t even dignify it with a
response. Suffice it to say, Simone Gordon, who has a
white grandparent, opposes all forms of
discrimination.
Starbucks’ discriminatory conduct has caused Ms.
Gordon to lose her home as she struggles to care for
her father who is suffering from a severe heart
ailment. To add insult to injury, store manager
Higgins has been spreading the falsehood that Ms.
Gordon is racist to customers and other employees at
the New Jersey mall where the store is located. One
customer subsequently stated that she didn’t want “the
black girl who doesn’t like white people” to touch her
drink. Ms. Gordon has also been criticized by
management for wearing her hair in an Afro from
time-to-time and for, “the way she talks.” Legal
charges are pending.
Instead of bowing down and quitting as Starbucks
intended her to do in our opinion, Simone Gordon has
chosen to fight back and she has joined the SWU. She
is one of a growing number of precarious workers in
the U.S. and abroad who refuse to be brushed under the
rug like so many workers have. Here is Simone Gordon
in her own words:
“I always had to fight for things- I’ve been on my own
since I was 17. I want to fight because if they’re
going to do this to other people I’m not going to
allow it. No one should be treated like trash. We’re
all human; we’re all taxpayers. No matter our salary,
no matter a fancy car, we’re all equal.”
Please take a stand with Simone Gordon and her union
as we struggle to get her back into the shift
supervisor position with her work hours restored. She
needs that income to get back on her feet and she
needs to be respected at work to regain her dignity.
Please help by taking part in this e-mail action to
Starbucks.
Thank you for your solidarity. United and looking
beyond the boundaries of our individual workplaces, we
can challenge the logic of corporate supremacy over
our lives and communities. Together we win.
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