Golden Farm: VICTORY!

By Eleanor Rodgers, Occupy Kensington

Almost 2 years after it first started the boycott of Golden farm is over!

This week the workers met with members of OK to inform us that they now have a contract.

The contract includes paid sick days, holidays and vacation time and a 35c raise which takes their pay above the minimum wage for the first time. It also includes a “good cause” clause, which requires that there be a reason for firing an employee and the right of the workers to have active union representation (something Sonny deeply objected to for the last two years).

This victory is a testimony to the determination of the Golden Farm workers, the support they received from their union, RWDSU Local 338, and from our community.

For the workers and their union the fight is not completely over, not all issues are resolved yet and of course they have to make sure that Mr Kim honors the contract. The workers will continue to build the union in their workplace and fight for their rights.

For our community the time has come to end the boycott and start shopping in our new union store.

It will feel strange for many of us who have been boycotting for so long to go back into the store and obviously it is a personal choice whether to return there or not.

We do not believe Mr Kim has changed his personality or his fundamental attitude to his workers but he has been forced to concede what they, and we, have been asking him for, a contract, and it is now the job of the union to make sure it is enforced. The positive role our community can play now is in demonstrating to him the practical advantages of giving his workers a contract by returning our business to the store.

Thank you for your support

The workers asked that we pass on these messages to the Kensington community.

“We the workers of Golden Farm thank you for all your help, thank you for your time on the picket line. Above all thank you for making this campaign a dream come true – a campaign that nobody stopped, only victory.” Yours Truly Martin Gonzalez

“Hi, My name is Roberto and in the name of my co-workers from Golden Farm we greet you most sincerely and thank you very much to everyone of you for the unconditional help. This victory is also yours. Thank you to everyone and God bless you.”

Occupy Kensington would also like to thank everyone who supported the boycott by not shopping there but also for all the other acts of support:

Thank you to everyone who spoke to Mr Kim or his manager expressing their support for the workers.

Thank you to the lady who went on vacation and left a note for her apartment sitter telling her where the best local takeouts were and NOT to shop in Golden Farm. (The sitter stopped by our picket line to find out why).

Thank you to the local graphic designer who made us very cool buttons, and the teenage Hasidic rapper who composed a song for the workers.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the support fund for Felix’s wife and children after he died, and everyone who contributed to the Xmas toy drive for the worker’s kids.

Thank you to the local blogger who wrote reviews of alternative places to buy good fruit and vegetables.

Thank you to the dedicated few who chalked the word BOYCOTT on the sidewalk day after day.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in front of the store for pickets, or rallies, and to everyone who stopped by to get updates and find out how the campaign was going.

And thanks also to the members of the Green Party, Socialist Alternative, Occuevolve and OWS Labor Outreach Committee who helped us sustain the pickets over the course of the last 2 years and to the Rude Mechanical Orchestra for visiting us several times.

What next?

The boycott is over. For the workers in Golden Farm the struggle continues. They have a contract, now they must ensure that Mr Kim abides by it. Occupy Kensington will continue to be in contact with the workers and let Mr Kim know that our community continues to take an interest in their situation.

Occupy Kensington continues to meet, discuss and campaign on issues both local and further afield. We have recently gotten involved with the $15 Now campaign which is pushing to raise the minimum wage to $15. In Seattle they have already succeeded. San Francisco will vote on $15 this fall. In Chicago 21 city aldermen have put forward a call for $15. In NY, Cuomo has recently been forced to verbally shift his position and commit to supporting legislation which would allow municipalities to raise the minimum wage by up to 30% above the state level. But we can expect resistance to any attempt to seriously raise the minimum wage and also attempts to water it down by putting in a lot of loopholes. It will require a serious grassroots campaign to make sure working people, including the Golden Farm workers, get what they deserve.

More Info:

To read about the history of this years-long labor dispute–including attempts at intimidation and efforts to pit immigrant groups against each other–visit the blog “Kensington Community Supporting Justice for Golden Farm Workers” at goldenfarmjustice.wordpress.com.

If you’d like to join a neighborhood group to get involved in workers’ rights struggles and other significant issues of our time, see Occupy Kensington’s Facebook page athttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Kensington/513510922042949.

15now.org, whose mission is to have the minimum wage set at $15 per hour, has a New York City branch, 15 Now NYC. Its Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/15NOWNYC.

Occupy Kensington and the Fight for $15

While the question of getting a union contract for the Golden Farm workers remains in limbo till the NLRB judge rules on the charges of Mr Kim’s failure to negotiate. Occupy Kensington will continue to support remaining pro-union workers in the store in whatever way we can. At present the main action we can take is to continue to boycott, encourage our neighbors to do likewise and keep chalking the sidewalk in front of the store so that the public remains aware that there has been no resolution and the boycott is still active. To date the only part of the legal process that has really delivered for the workers has been the class action lawsuit on unpaid minimum wage – they are receiving setllement payments from Mr Kim and he does now pay minimum wage. In addition to that two different pieces of legislation are set to improve their situation somewhat, at state level the minimum wage increased from $7.25 to the still paltry $8/hr on January 1st and Mr Kim has been forced to accept that increase, in 2015 it will rise again to $9.10. At city level last year’s city council bill providing 5 paid sick days per year will come into effect in April and we expect Mr Kim to honor that also (at least as long as the union remains recognized and the workers who organized are in the store). Nationally the need to raise the minimum wage has been becoming a more prominent issue – sparked in large part by the heroic struggle of the Fast Food Workers led by SEIU. While Fast Food Forward called for $15/hr the Democrats in many areas are stepping forward to push for a raise, but less substantial, as with Obama’s raising of the Federal minimum to $10.10. Despite this there is a growing movement to push for $15.

In SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle a $15/hr ballot initative passed last November and In Seattle itself there is now a huge campaign to push for $15 which looks to have every chance of success. If this happens it will encourage similar moves in other large cities. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/24/the-murky-politics-of-the-15-minimum-wage/

While an increase in wages is not a susbsitute for union representation, particularly in a working environment as unpleasant as Golden Farm, it would be a massive practical assist to thousands of working people in NYC, the Golden Farm workers included, and it would be a boost to unionizing drives like the one at Golden Farm, many of which start with a challenge on illegal wages.

This Friday Feb 28, 15now (the campaign started in Seattle) is launching in Brooklyn. https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/288459724637778/ (flyer text attached at the bottom of this post) Occupy Kensington members will be attending.

Next Wednesday, March 5, 7:30pm 309 E5th St, Occupy Kensington will show a movie “Inequality For All” http://inequalityforall.com/ about the plight of low wage workers and the need to raise the minimum wage, we’ll follow that with a discussion about the fight for $15 and how we can best contribute to the struggle of low wage workers.

Please join us at either event.

Eleanor Rodgers

 

Help us launch 15 Now in Brooklyn! 

Have you heard about Kshama Sawant? Kshama is an outspoken

socialist who was just elected to the Seattle City Council shocking

the political establishment. Her main slogan was for a $15 an

hour minimum wage and now that she’s in office Kshama and her

organization Socialist Alternative has just launched a new grassroots

campaign called

15 Now (15 Now.org) fighting to raise the minimum

wage in Seattle to $15 an hour. Seattle could be the first major city to

win $15 and if they can win in Seattle we can win here too.

So come help us bring 15 Now to New York and join low-wage

workers across the country fighting for better pay.

Friday, February 28, 2014 at 7pm

St Paul’s Church, 157 St Paul’s Place (Q train Church Ave and B35 bus stop)

NLRB Court report

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing concerning Golden Farm (GF) ended Tuesday, following several days of testimony.  Occupy Kensington activist Sue Braverman observed the entire proceeding and Eleanor Rodgers observed two days of the testimony.  They brought back the detailed report below. First, however, a bit of context.

Many recall that For GF workers to elect a union and get it recognized was a long process, also involving NLRB proceedings, which employer Sonny Kim kept losing. Mostly, this concerned Sonny’s frauds as to who was an employee entitled to vote, and his other unlawful attempts to influence the outcome of the election.  Once recognition was won, labor law provided a one-year period during which the union could concentrate on bargaining, without worrying about attempts to undo union recognition through “decertification”.  In general, if the union goes for a year without bargaining a contract, the workers can petition for a new election to decertify the union.  However, the law recognizes that this rule should not be implemented where the lack of a contract within one year, and/or a majority for decertification, is not the fault of the union but is the result of the employer’s bad faith bargaining and/or other “unfair labor practices” (actions which violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and its protection of concerted activity, actions such as retaliatory cuts in hours and wages to drive out union supporters).  At  GF, the one-year period after workers finally got union recognition was characterized by “surface” bargaining and unlawful attempts at interference. Many of these were committed by Sonny’s manager, Steve.  (Steve’s last name is not also Kim, as many of us had believed, and his given first name is not Steve, but he goes by Steve and uses that name to sign documents.)  After the year ended without a contract, Sonny saw to it that a decertification petition was circulated and that it got as many signatures as possible.  It is generally understood that if Sonny were to succeed in getting the union election rolled back, the remaining union supporters would be unlikely to last long in their jobs.  This set the stage for the hearing, on which Sue and Eleanor reported as follows:

Lawyers for the union attended, but The NLRB had already determined that the complaints against Sonny had enough merit that the NLRB itself presented the case against him, through the NLRB’s own lead attorney.  She did an excellent job.

The evidence showed that a first decertification petition was circulated among the workers but was not filed because Sonny’s own lawyer found that it was technically defective.  Another, which ultimately became the subject of the hearing, was prepared and circulated.  GF workers testified that they had observed Sonny and Steve encouraging other workers to sign the decertification petition and telling them, among other things, that when the union and its supporters were gone, there would be more hours and therefore more income for them.

It was quickly established on documentary evidence that two of the persons who had signed the decertification were not even listed as being on payroll.

The “employee” who initiated the petition was actually a representative of the same Small Business Association to which Sonny belongs, an international business man who, in his testimony, complained bitterly about his experiences with unionization at a business he owned in Mexico.  Sonny had put this man on the payroll for twelve hours a week at approximately $9/hour. Sonny had also placed on payroll this man’s son.  Their story was that the son had been hired for reasons that had nothing to do with the labor dispute, but he had come to dislike the union presence at the store and had decided independently to complain about this to his father, who went on line and, independent of management, stumbled across the form and instructions for a decertification petition on the website of an anti-union organization known as National Right to Work.

GF workers testified to a number of acts of retaliation and intimidation by Steve, including physically seizing workers (by the shirt), destroying property (a radio), and summarily firing workers on repeated occasions so that Sonny could step in and play the good cop by putting them back to work.

Sonny’s response to this wasn’t so much to deny Steve’s antics as to claim that he (Sonny) should not be held responsible for them because Steve is actually not a manager. Steve is just, according to the testimony of Sonny’s consultant Joe, a “very tough” guy.  Sonny also offered several completely contradictory statements within fifteen minutes concerning Steve’s command of English or lack thereof. Angelina, one of the cashiers whose relatively privileged position has been used to split them from the stock workers, undermined her own credibility by leveling allegations of anti-immigrant comments and loud, disruptive behavior in the store.  What made these allegations so harmful to Angelina’s credibility was that she leveled them at the interpreter who had been supplied by the government for the hearing—who also happened to be a very soft-spoken woman, and who turns out to be an immigrant from Latin America herself.  To Angelina’s credit, she did avoid denying outright that Steve is a manager.  Others were found who were not so squeamish.  At one point, the judge admonished Sonny to stop giving visible signals to employees during their testimony.

There was plenty of evidence to contradict the tale of Steve as an independent actor.  The judge who presided over the hearing admitted an inspection document from the NYS Department of Agriculture, posted in the store and identifying Steve as a manager.   (Steve claimed this was just because the state rep had said he was such a good worker that he should be a manager).  Also admitted into evidence was a disciplinary report on another worker, written in Steve’s own hand and signed by him. Evidence also showed that Steve is paid more than any other worker in the store.  Workers testified that there are only two desks in the upstairs office at the store.  One is Sonny’s.  The other is Steve’s, in which he keeps his pills, his shoes, etc., and on which is the computer Steve uses.  (Sonny claimed that lots of people use that computer.)   Near the end of the trial, Sonny’s lawyer took the unusual step of calling himself as a witness, so that he could deny testimony that he and Sonny’s consultant Joe had both previously spoken of Steve as a manager before various witnesses.

Sue’s perception was that the judge seemed sympathetic to the workers’ case and skeptical of Sonny’s various rationalizations.

When the hearing ended on Tuesday, the judge asked for post-hearing briefs to be submitted by March 15.  An NLRB who was assisting the agency’s lead attorney surprised  union supporters when he said that it could well take until August to get a decision, although there is a procedure for seeking a more expedited decision.

If the decision is favorable and decertification is denied, a disaster for the unionized workers will be averted, and this alone will make it a very significant victory. Sonny will be directed to return to the table and to engage in good faith bargaining.  The union has asked that he also be directed to come to the table within three weeks of the judge’s ruling,  and thereafter to bargain a minimum of 24 hours each week.  However, it is quite conceivable that Sonny might simply return to “surface” bargaining, more retaliation, and other unfair labor practices, and that he might keep it up for another year, then attempt to orchestrate yet another decertification—if all he had to fear were another hearing with perhaps similar results.   But that is not all that Sonny has to fear.  He must also fear the continuation of the boycott, which he testified has been costing him 20% of his business and revenues.

Please join us in court this Monday

Do you know this man?

This is Steve. If you are a former customer of Golden Farm or if you’ve spent time on the picket lines you’ll likely recognize him. Many people in the neighborhood mistake him for the owner of Golden Farm because as manager he’s far more visible than Sonny Kim, the owner.

It may come as a surprise to hear that he is in fact not the manager, just an ordinary employee with no special standing. At least that is what Sonny’s lawyers have been arguing in court for the last few days.

The worker’s have alleged that they have been systematically harassed and abused by Steve for their union organizing. That he has pushed them, shouted at them, called them faggot, fired them arbitrarily (to be rehired the next day), broken their property, removed work tables as they are working on them, and told new employees not to speak to them.

Sonny’s primary defense appears to be not to deny that Steve has done these things but to argue that this is the behavior of an unpleasant co-worker – not of a manager acting on behalf of the employer.

That Steve is not a manager would come as a surprise to Erin Durkin of the Daily News who interviewed him as the manager of Golden Farm back in 2012 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/workers-neighbors-fighting-kensington-golden-farm-supermarket-wage-violations-article-1.1020005, it also would come as a surprise to Councillor Brad Lander and Senator Eric Adams who spoke with him at a rally in front of the store and received assurances from him about the payment of workers. http://youtu.be/EvoZZRZfCQ0

On Monday Sonny will testify and so may some of the cashiers. Based on their legal presentation so far it seems definite that a central part of their testimony will be to lie about Steve’s job description.

We want as many community witnesses present as possible, please join us.

Monday Feb 3, 10am 2 Metrotech Center, 5th Floor (bring photo id for security)

Contact rodgers_eleanor@hotmail.com, 347 4033798

NLRB hearing update

The NLRB hearing on Golden Farm began today. It ran from 9am till 4pm and will reconvene tomorrow, hopefully the judge will rule by the end of court tomorrow but if not the case will continue on Monday next week.

There will be a report from today’s hearing at the Occupy Kensington meeting this evening – 8pm 309 E5th St – following the scheduled discussion on affordable housing.

NLRB hearing postponed

The Golden Farm hearing at the NLRB has been postponed until Wednesday, January 29 at 9a.m.. The Board agent in charge of the case requested that some of the current workers in the store and union reps do affidavits in connection to the pending ULPs before the board.

Picket Friday, Court on Wednesday

The date has been set! An NLRB Judge will finally rule on the Unfair Labor Practice filed by the RWDSU last August for Mr Kim’s failure to negotiate in good faith.

The hearing is scheduled for 9am Wednesday January 15th at the NLRB, 2 Metrotech, 5th Floor,  and is open to the public. A couple of members of Occupy Kensington are going to attend and we’ll post an update Wednesday after the judge rules.

There will be a picket at Golden Farm this Friday from 6 to 8 please join us to let Mr Kim know that even though the union rat has gone to Queens, his former customers in our community are still right here and still support the workers. It’s important to keep giving him this message because if the judge rules in favor of the union he is going send Mr Kim back to the bargaining table and continued economic pressure from the boycott may help tip him in favor of actually negotiating.

Some movement at the NLRB

 

Back in August the RWDSU filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over Sonny Kim’s failure to negotiate in good faith. At the best of times the NLRB moves slowly, add in the 7 week government shutdown and progress has become glacial. However in December they did finally look at the complaint and concluded that it had a strong basis, so it is going to a court hearing, most likely in late January.

If the court rules in the union’s favor Sonny will have to return to the negotiating table and hopefully negotiate for real this time.

The rat has gone to Queens but the boycott is still on.

Trade Fair in Jackson Heights Queens fired all it’s workers with zero notice early December and the RWDSU has thrown it’s picketing resources behind the struggle of those workers. Check out the Daily News coverage of the story, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/ruiz-queens-supermarket-owner-cold-hearted-article-1.1546243.

The union continues to call on community supporters of the Golden farm workers to shop elsewhere until the workers get a fair contract.

Kensington Community Says “No!” to Union Busting at Golden Farm!

The Kensington Brooklyn community rallies in support of the workers at the Golden Farm grocery, where owner Sonny Kim has been trying to bust the union. Kim is one of the worst abusers of workers rights in New York City, and was caught by the Department of Labor stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of the wages he was supposed to be paying his workers. No to union-busting and abuse of workers in Brooklyn!