The fight goes on at Stella D’oro

NEW YORK--Workers at the Stella D'oro cookie factory in the Bronx won a battle earlier this month and returned to their jobs. But they're now fighting a wider war to keep their plant open.

The 136 workers, members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) International Union Local 50, finally returned to work after 11 months on strike. Management was forced under a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling to reinstate workers under the terms of their old contract and to pay back wages retroactive to May 6, when the union had offered to return to work.

But no sooner had the company agreed to bring workers back than it announced it would shut the doors and move operations out of the Bronx.

The union has vowed to continue the fight. Workers returned to the factory July 7 with heads held high and fists in air, chanting pro-union slogans and "La lucha continua!" as they marched in together. Community and labor supporters formed a solidarity rally of more than 100 to celebrate the victory and help send them back.

"This is not the end," declared BCTGM Local 50 President Joyce Alston at the rally. "We need to engage the community, we need to mobilize." To Brynwood Partners, the private equity firm that owns Stella, she promised: "If you close [the factory], we're going wherever you go. We will not let you go to another city and circumvent this union and its membership."

Judy Gonzalez, of the Committee in Support of Stella D'oro Workers, vowed continued community support. "It takes a village to save a factory," she said.

Many workers wondered if management's closure threat was a bluff used to leverage concessions from the union. But no one seemed prepared to compromise. "We didn't stay out on strike for 11 months for that," said one striker.

Gurdip Mann, a longtime worker at the plant, explained, "I think it's a bluff to scare the workers into accepting any contract. But we're going to fight anyway. These are good jobs. We want to keep them in the Bronx."

UNION MEMBERS at Stella D'oro have good reason to be proud. Not one person crossed the picket line in 11 months. The pickets were up every single day, through the sweltering days of summer and bitter cold days of winter--and through increasingly dire prospects of joblessness as the recession deepened.

"When the decision came out, people were cheering, screaming, crying, laughing on the picket line," said lead mechanic and shop steward Mike Filippou. "They [management] have seen that people are strong. The strike has cost them a lot of money--they have lost a lot of customers lately between the loss of quality and the boycott."

At stake in the strike were management demands that employees accept a 20 percent pay cut, the elimination of sick days, and increased contributions to their health care coverage.

Stella D'oro had been bought by Brynwood--which specializes in acquiring companies and then selling them at a profit--in 2006. Brynwood's tactics are part of the standard corporate greed playbook--plead poverty and threaten closure of the plant if the workers don't surrender. But private-equity firms typically demand even higher profits--and that's what makes the story at Stella the latest example of "casino capitalism."

According to AlterNet writer Art Levine, "Private-equity investors expect average returns as high as 25 percent after a company they purchase is resold, and some equity firms promise a 40 percent return...They borrow heavily to take over companies and then load up that debt to be paid off by the companies they acquire, rather than by their own firms."

When Brynwood and the union began negotiations in May 2008, the company claimed that it had lost $1.5 million in 2007 and that annual sales had declined by $5 million since Brynwood had acquired the cookie making operation.

Yet despite claims of financial difficulties and the demands for concessions that followed, Brynwood refused to offer financial documentation of these supposed losses. It was this fact that eventually forced the company to reinstate the strikers.

Following a legal challenge by the union, the NLRB ruled that the company had violated the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to provide the union with relevant financial documents and by unilaterally imposing new employment terms after the strike began.

The solid picket line, NLRB hearings packed with union members, and continuing community support and rallies helped keep the pressure on and create a favorable terrain for legal challenges.

Shamefully, when Brynwood Partners could not get its way with the NLRB, it announced that the plant would close in October. "By refusing to compromise and insisting on maintaining a high labor-cost structure, the union leadership has ensured that the jobs they were trying to protect would eventually disappear from the Bronx forever," the company said in a statement.

Since returning to work, union members have expressed a mixture of emotions--pride in their struggle, disgust at the company, fear regarding the future, and a commitment to fight on.

Many workers said the plant was filthy and noxious when they got back to work. "They never cleaned in 11 months," said one worker. "The company gave us the choice of having a private cleaning service or doing the work ourselves, but the union said, no, it had to be the workers who cleaned. Then the workers made it spotless! We showed who's running the factory."

The union plans to file another NLRB complaint, arguing that the plant closure is retaliation against the union. They are also seeking a potential buyer who would keep the plant running. Several union members have also expressed the possibility of staking out a fight in the factory itself, arguing that the company will have to take the machinery out "over our bodies."

As Mike Filippou put it: "Our message to the rest of the labor movement must be: fight, fight, fight! Over the last few years, people have seen that you can step on the workers and they say, 'Thank you.' We have to show that you can fight back and win."