Since declaring their intention to form a union, employees of J. Goodison, a marine repair business at Quonset, say work conditions have actually improved.
“At this moment they are kind of treating us right,” David Ozuna, one of the employees, said through a translator. “And that is because they know that we can do something. Every little thing we want they are giving it to us They are giving us attention, if we ask for something they are giving it to us because they know and they think that they can stop this by doing that.”
Before they began to organize as with District 11 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, company policy used to be that sandblasters would get a respirator after 90 days, Ozuna said. Not now that they’re organizing.
“Because they are seeing the pressure we are putting on them, they are giving them to us.” he said.
Respirators aren’t the only way J. Goodison is trying to convince its workers not to unionize. According to Justin Kelly, an organizer with IUPAT, the company has also hired a Los Angeles attorney named Carlos Flores to convince the mostly Latino workers not to vote to join the union. He told the workers and some of their supporters about it at a rally outside J. Goodison on Thursday afternoon.
J. Goodison management, which watched the rally from behind the company property line, declined to comment.
There are some 30 employees who have signed union cards. After a similar rally last week, the group filed for an election. If a majority vote to join the union, J. Goodison will have one year to negotiate a contract with the employees. While management has been kinder as of late, Ozuna said the work is still grueling – especially on hot humid days.
But Ozuna isn’t intimidated.
More than 30 workers, in addition to an equal or greater number of union organizers and progressive activists, held court on the Quonset-area road leading to Goodison starting at 6:30 this morning. They chanted, gave motivational speeches and, using a megaphone, implored company officials – who watched the action from afar – to negotiate with the workers.
Members of Occupy Providence, supported by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, along with representatives from a wide range of progressive groups such as DARE, the Progressive Democrats of Rhode Island and others, gathered at the entrance to the Walmart on 51 Silver Spring St in Providence to demand living wages for workers and to encourage customers to shop locally. The protest was held in consort with 1,500 similar protests across the United States.
Over 800,000 Walmart “associates” work for wages that keep them well below the poverty line. Walmart, like many other national retail and fast food corporations, encourages their employees to make up their wage gap by applying for public assistance, meaning that taxpayers to help subsidize these corporations through SNAP and other government assistance programs. The money Walmart saves in underpaying their employees is used, as part of a vicious cycle, to directly lobby Congress to pass laws that benefit Walmart, at the expense of everyone else.
