NYT: Union Blues Amid the Gourmet Groceries

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/nyregion/thecity/14fres.html?ref=thecity


Kenneth Dickerman for The New York Times

“They got me on my attendance,” Lonnie Powell said, “but they waited till I started talking about the union.”


By EMILY BRADY
Published: October 14, 2007

LONNIE POWELL, a 49-year-old Brooklyn native with melancholy eyes, used to spend most of his nights working in the dairy department of FreshDirect’s sprawling warehouse in Long Island City, Queens.

For the past year, surrounded by chilly air and an array of milk products, Mr. Powell earned $8.75 an hour filling orders for blocks of French butter, tubs of organic yogurt and other items destined for delivery around the city in the company’s trademark cardboard boxes.

That rhythm came to an end on Aug. 9. According to FreshDirect, after repeated warnings about poor attendance, Mr. Powell did not show up for work and did not call with an explanation. Because of this spotty attendance record, the company said, he was let go the next day.

But Mr. Powell and members of Teamsters Local 805, the labor group that has been trying to organize the more than 900 FreshDirect warehouse workers, contend that he lost his job for trying to help unionize his co-workers.

“They got me on my attendance,” Mr. Powell said in an interview, “but they waited till I started talking about the union.” He acknowledges he missed work that day but says he had called and left a message explaining that he needed to stay home and care for his sick mother, with whom he lives in East New York, Brooklyn.

To protest the firing of Mr. Powell and another FreshDirect worker, Loreto Gomez, who was also a union advocate, the Teamsters held a rally on Sept. 28 in front of the company’s warehouse. The union also filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

FULL story at link.