Berkeley Bowl’s New Union-Busting Campaign

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Berkeley_Bowl_s_New_Union_Busting_Campaign_8246.html

by Zelda Bronstein‚ Jun. 22‚ 2010

Six years ago, federal officials forced the owners of Berkeley Bowl to accept a union at their Oregon Street store. In 2003, 70% of the employees had voted not to unionize. After the United Food and Commercial Workers Union protested to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB – George Bush’s NLRB, mind you – found that the employer’s alleged unfair labor practices were so “pervasive and serious” that a fair election was impossible and ordered the Bowl to bargain with the union. The result was a contract that store employees ratified in August 2005 by a vote of 117-12. The union contract brought Bowl workers new benefits: previously workers had been fired at will; today they have a formal grievance procedure, as well as guaranteed paid vacations and health insurance for all employees. Now these gains are threatened by the Bowl owners’ new anti-union campaign.

The current contract expires on July 31. Three months ago UFCW Local 5 asked the Bowl to start new contract bargaining sessions; to date the company has failed to respond to the union’s request. Local 5 has a grievance pending over the termination of Olimpia Moreno, accused by the owners of giving a friend a discount on a sandwich; and another grievance pending over proposed changes on the employees’ health plan.

Meanwhile a petition to decertify the union has been signed by 30% of the 196 employees at the Oregon Street store – enough to trigger a decertification election. Tomorrow (June 23rd), the election will take place in three sessions conducted by the NLRB and monitored by one representative from labor and one from management. A simple majority vote will decide the outcome.

Efforts to preserve Berkeley Bowl workers’ right to union representation are underway. A pro-union workers’ committee is marshaling support on the shop floor. The UFCW has set up a table with information outside the Oregon Street store, staffed with its own members and representatives from other unions.

Last Saturday, members of the California Nurses Association, dressed in their scrubs and wearing pro-Berkeley Bowl worker buttons, went into the store to express support for the union. On Sunday, Harry Brill led thirty community members, many of them Berkeley residents and all wearing pro-worker buttons, into the store, where they engaged the workers in non-confrontational, pro-union dialogue and bought something on their way out.

Buttonless, I went into the store myself on Sunday. I saw workers with “Vote No” buttons and others sporting UFCW insignia. When I asked an employee in the produce section who had a “Vote No” button pinned onto his apron why he was against the union, he told me that he’d been working at the Bowl for ten years – and that since the union had come in, he was making only twenty-five cents more an hour.


FULL story at link.