UFCW – RI Future

May 19, 2016

Eastland Foods Inc workers successfully vote to unionize

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Workers at Eastland Food Products Inc voted overwhelmingly to unionize with UFCW Local 328. The vote Thursday was 74-37 in favor of the union. Last week there was a rally held outside the company, located in Cranston, to support the workers and protect them from anti-union intimidation.

There are employees at Eastland who have worked there for twenty years, and they’re still making minimum wage. Workers claim to have never been paid time and a half to work on Sundays. There are allegations of sexual harassment, wage theft, and 60 to 80 hour work weeks. No one working there has ever had a vacation or paid sick days.

With the power of a union, these workers will now be able to bargain for better pay, better working a conditions, and the right to be treated as people, not commodities.

May 13, 2016May 19, 2016

Workers fight to unionize at Eastland Food Products in Cranston

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I had never heard of Eastland Food Products Inc before hearing about the efforts of workers there to unionize. The company cleans, cuts and packages fruits and vegetables for supermarkets up and down the coast. Think of the half a butternut squash you might see at your supermarket, wrapped in plastic on a styrofoam tray. That’s likely come from Eastland Foods, 69 Fletcher Ave, in Cranston.

It’s the kind of situation we don’t imagine happening in Rhode Island. It’s the kind of company we picture operating in a right-to work state down south, where workers are not treated fairly or humanely.

But it’s happening right here in Rhode Island.

An overwhelming majority of workers have already signed authorization cards expressing their desire to form their union and now have an upcoming union election with UFCW Local 328. In response, the owners of Eastland began mandating that employees attend anti-union workshops ahead of a unionization vote this coming Thursday. The owners seem to like the status quo, and don’t want a union to mess with their ability to treat their workers as disposable commodities.

As a consequence, workers today picketed outside Eastland, supported by UFCW 328 and representatives from Prov CLC, IBEW 2323, IBEW 99, Prov Newspaper Guild, Teamsters 251, IATSE 481, RI ALC-CIO, RI Painters Union DC 11, and the American Friends Service Committee.

2016-05-13 Eastland Food 020 — Mike Araujo and David Bennett

The owner of Eastland drove by in his white Cadillac Escalade as the picketers organized across the street. He and his office workers and family used their cellphones to take video and pictures of the brave employees who dared to call on their boss for fair treatment. When the protesters crossed the street and walked to the door of the offices to deliver a letter outlining their grievances, the owner locked the door and called the police.

The worker committee of Eastland Foods read the undelivered letter on behalf of the workers stating, “After many years of working very hard for this company, we have been neglected and we have been treated with very little respect. We know that for the work that we do, we deserve better. We feel that it is unfair that we only earn minimum wage and we have no vacations, paid sick days, or paid holidays.” They continued, “In less than a week, we will cast our votes in favor of forming our union and we look forward to finally addressing the major problems that we have struggled with here for so many years.” They ended the letter by respectfully demanding that management “put an end to the intimidation and scare tactics” and to accept their decision to form their union.

The owner kept the door locked even when State Representative David Bennett knocked and asked to speak with him.

The police arrived and after consulting with the owner, asked the protesters to move to the sidewalk. In all the protest lasted about half an hour.

When I called Eastland to ask about the workers and the protest they hung up on me. According to this website, Eastland was established in 1986 as a “fruit and vegetable broker.” It has estimated revenues of between $100 and $500 million dollars and employs about 75 people.

July 31, 2015August 3, 2015

Healthcare workers fight for $15 in Rhode Island

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Over 150 front line medical caregivers rallied on Newport Avenue in Pawtucket yesterday afternoon to demand a minimum wage of $15. The timing and location of the event was carefully considered.

It was the 50th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid. The location, near Slater Park, is around the corner from two healthcare providers, ARC of Blackstone Valley, which provides services to adults with developmental disabilities and the Pawtucket Center, a Genesis Heath Care skilled nursing facility.

The rally was also just two miles from the Massachusetts border, where home care workers recently won a minimum wage of $15 to be phased in over the next few years. Rhode Island does not pay nearly as much.

SEIU 1199, representing the healthcare workers, released figures showing that at Pawtucket Skilled Nursing & Rehab, the starting rate is $11.75. 63 percent of workers make less than $15. At ARC of Blackstone Valley many direct care staffers earn $10.75 and 94 percent earn less than $15. Meanwhile, two miles up the street, a caregiver could find a job paying $15.

I spoke with two women whose adult, disabled children are cared for at ARC of Blackstone Valley. Both attested to the excellent care their families receive and to the need for paying better wages. The caregivers at ARC are like family, said Pat, whose daughter Rachel has many special care requirements.

Two women who work as personal care attendants in Massachusetts also addressed the rally. Deborah Hahn said, “…if Massachusetts PCAs can win $15, if New York fast food workers can win $15, you can too.”

This event is seen as part of the “expanding #fightfor15 movement” which has been defying expectations and scoring significant wins in recent weeks. The healthcare workers were joined at the rally by a host of labor and community groups, including the AFL-CIO, Unite Here! 217, Jobs with Justice, Fuerza Laboral, NEARI, Teamsters 251, UNAP, UFCW 328, and the RI Progressive Democrats. State Representatives David Bennett, Mary Duffy Messier and Scott Slater were also on hand.

March 9, 2015March 10, 2015

Raimondo supports a $10.10 minimum wage

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Governor Gina Raimondo announced her support of bills in the General Assembly that would raise the minimum wage in Rhode Island to $10.10 an hour at a press conference held at the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 328 on Silver Spring St. in Providence. The location was chosen because Raimondo’s grandfather helped found the union 77 years ago.

Raimondo pledged to support the bills introduced in the Rhode Island House by Representative David Bennett and in the Rhode Island Senate by Senator Erin Lynch.

“Nobody who works full time should have to live in poverty,” she said, even as she acknowledge that raising the wage to $10.10 won’t be enough. That’s why her budget, to be introduced on Thursday, will be “focused on creating more family-supporting jobs.”

Activists from the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC United RI) were present at the press conference and encouraged by the Governor’s support, but “they are also arguing for an increase in the wage of tipped workers who have worked without an increase in base pay for more than two decades,” according to their literature.

In an apparent nod to their concerns, Raimondo has tasked the new head of the RI Department of Labor and Training, Scott Jensen, to head up an investigation into “tipped minimum wage enforcement” and review restaurant labor law compliance after the present legislative session ends.

RI AFL-CIO President George Nee said that “we have to keep the momentum going” on raising the minimum wage, citing the “tremendous problem with income inequality.”

Deborah Norman, owner of the restaurants Rue De L’Espoir and Rue Bis said that “as a business owner I support an increase in the minimum wage to at least $10.10. It would not hurt my business in any way,” a very different message from that presented by the Rhode Island Restaurant Hospitality Association at a recent House Labor Committee hearing held to discuss Representative Bennett’s bill.

August 30, 2011January 6, 2012

Remember Saylesville: The Long Memory is the most radical idea in America

“The long memory is the memory radical idea in the country.” — Utah Phillips

On Monday, September 5 there will be a Labor Day rally at the Saylesville Massacre Monument at 11:00 AM. Jim Riley, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 328, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the RI AFL-CIO’s largest organization, will speak about our history and the current state of affairs.

The monument is located in Moshassuck Cemetery, 978 Lonsdale Avenue in Central Falls, still the scene of Labor-Management strife. Come and commemorate the martyred activists from the 1934 textile strike, hear blistering talk, and show the world we haven’t forgotten our roots and we’re not going away.

From prior posts

Celebrate Labor Day this year by remembering the Great Textile Strike of 1934 and the Battle of the Gravestones .

Join the Rhode Island Labor History Society this Monday at the Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls, 978 Lonsdale Ave, at 11:00 AM for a ceremony remembering the valiant battle waged by the workers against the power of the State and corporate exploitation.

On Labor Day, 1934, a national textile strike began in Rhode Island and spread to southern cloth mills in an attempt to raise wages and improve working conditions during the Great Depression.

The event turned ugly when local management ask for protection at the non-union Sayles Finishing Company. National Guardsmen, with fixed bayonets, confronted hundreds of unarmed strikers and chased them into the Moshassuck Cemetery. Ironically, union picketers too cover behind headstones in the graveyard. The bullet holes remain dozens of stones to this day. Strife there lasted almost three weeks resulting in the injury and wounding of hundreds of protesters and the deaths of several others. The strike would erupt in violence in Woonsocket as well.

In this period of the Great Recession, let’s remember the struggle of our ancestors and learn the lessons of the past. Pay homage to those who made sacrifices so long ago so that we, their grand children, could have a better life. And in doing, we must learn to mobilize in a very different world to maintain the food life that our families fought and died for.

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Original Post

This year is the 75th anniversary of The Uprising of ’34. The “Uprising” was a national textile workers strike that saw some intense street fighting in the Saylesville neighborhood of Lincoln. Check out this VIDEO. Anyway, while researching the strike for a project with the Rhode Island Labor History Society, I came across this section of text is an issue of Time Magazine. Governor TF Green, after declaring that there was no strike, but “It is a Communist insurrection,” he faced the following situation:

Jitters, Lawyer, banker, scholar, Fellow of Brown University, 66-year-old Governor Green belongs by birth to Rhode Island’s Republican mill-owning class but has cast his lot with plebeian Democrats. Last week he was an old man badly frightened when he asked his State Assembly for: 1) $100,000 to up the State police force from 51 to 1,000 during the emergency; 2) $100,000 more to put 1,000 War veterans under arms; 3) power to close any or all textile mills in the State; 4) power to call in Federal troops, which he said President Roosevelt had promised him.
Republicans lined up behind the Governor, his own partymen against him. The Republican leader of the Senate said he had received the following message from Brig.-General Herbert R. Dean, commander of the State’s National Guard: “I think I can control the situation but for God’s sake tell the Legislature to do something. We need Federal troops!”
Answered the Democratic leader of the Senate: “Don’t call in the regular army! Don’t militarize Rhode Island for the sake of the selfish interests of a small group of mill-owners! If you want to stop the trouble, stop it at its source, the mills, which are a cancer in this body politic.”

When the shouting died that night the Assembly had granted none of the Governor’s requests. Voluntarily mills at Woonsocket, Saylesville and four other trouble spots closed and the Governor started a Communist round-up on his own authority. Though Federal troops were reported mobilizing in New York and New England, President Roosevelt at Hyde Park appeared to be in no rush to send them to Rhode Island.