All workers except agricultural and fishery workers, engaged in producing and processing food, beverages, and tobacco products.
Submitted on Wed, 01/27/2016 - 12:26am
By a member of the Ottawa-Outaouais IWW, January 23, 2016
OTTAWA—The Industrial Workers of the World are picketing Wine Rack to defend a member unfairly fired on September 6, 2015.
Our member engaged in his legally-protected right to organize and was publicly engaged in a card-signing campaign by another union in efforts to certify a bargaining unit for Wine Rack locations in Ottawa, Ontario.
Wine Rack is owned by parent company Constellation Brands, a US-based multinational corporation with two billion dollars of profit in 2013. Front-line employees of Wine Rack are paid minimum wage and given only conditional yearly increases lower than the rate of inflation, compounding the difficulties posed by a part-time and unpredictable schedule for workers.
According to the Labour Relations Act, all workers have the right to form, select, and administer a union without interference from the employer. In response to our member’s organizing efforts, Wine Rack manufactured a spurious reason to terminate his employment without following their established disciplinary processes.
The IWW will continue to picket Wine Rack to demand fair treatment for our member until our demand for our member’s reinstatement on the job with back pay is met. All employees deserve to be able to organize without reprisal.
The IWW is calling on Ottawans to not cross our picket line and to respect a boycott of Wine Rack locations until management meets with our union to negotiate.
This is yet another instance of arbitrary firings and disrespect for the Labour Relations Act happening here in Ottawa. Workers can win these fights when they unite and take action. The IWW is a member-run union for all workers and is dedicated to organizing on the job.
Submitted on Sun, 01/20/2013 - 4:43pm
Richmond, Va - On behalf of Rain Burroughs, the Richmond, Virginia General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and Food & Retail Workers United (FRWU) delivered a formal letter to Rick Hood (owner) and Tommy Langford (store manager) on December 21, 2012 requesting that Ellwood Thompson's Local Market reinstate Rain Burroughs immediately to an equivalent job with comparable pay, benefits, responsibilities, and hours of work. We have yet to receive any response, and we ask for your support.
Summary
Rain Burroughs was granted, via the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), leave in order to assist her mother who was struggling with severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Burroughs' leave ended on November 20, 2012 when she returned to work at Ellwood Thompson's Local Market. Rather respect a loyal worker and honoring the commitment that had been made to them, Ellwood Thompson's chose to label Burroughs as a new hire and placed her on 'probation'. This action by Ellwood Thompson's violates federal law which
states:
Submitted on Thu, 10/04/2012 - 7:25pm
By to Focus on the Food Chain - September 27, 2012
A federal judge has awarded a group of immigrant workers over $950,000 in unpaid wages for work at a Queens-based beverage distributor. A group of Latino warehouse workers and truck drivers brought the class action lawsuit against Beverage Plus and its owners after years of disrespect and systematic violations of state and federal law, violations which the judge found were intentional. The workers are members of Focus on the Food Chain, a coalition promoting good jobs and a sustainable food system in New York City's growing food processing and distribution sector.
"My co-workers and I were deprived of our pay and badly exploited but we finally learned about our rights," said Richard Merino, who drove a delivery truck at Beverage Plus for six years and was a named plaintiff in the case. "We stood up together and now justice has arrived for us and more importantly for our families."
Beverage Plus employees were worked as many as twelve hours a day, deprived of overtime, and subjected to unlawful deductions from their pay.
Submitted on Thu, 10/04/2012 - 7:16pm
By Ryan Faulkner - September 18, 2012
Domino’s Pizza sucks. Not just in the sense that it treats its workers heinously, the pizza itself is of a low quality. Eating a slice of Domino’s pizza is a similar experience to swallowing a salt shaker. So its not surprising that on a Saturday night in Berkeley, the Domino’s storefront was dead. A delivery car would run out the back every 15 minutes or so, but business was not booming.
Us Wobblies posted up at a Chinese restaurant next door, waiting for 6 PM, when our demonstration was set to begin. We had committed to stage an action in solidarity with Domino’s Delivery Drivers in Australia, who have received an arbitrary wage cut of 19%, a punishment for the 23 delivery drivers who raised complaints over a trend of paychecks that came up short of their promised salaries.
The consensus in the Chinese restaurant was that this was going to be a git ’er done and out kind of deal. Walk around with signs in front of the location for a couple hours, chant some angry chants, and flyer passersby. Hopefully, by the end of the night, we’d cost Domino’s a few customers, get the workers thinking about the stability of their own wages, and bother the boss enough that they’d give corporate management a call.
But we got so much more.
Submitted on Wed, 05/23/2012 - 8:55pm
By Daniel Gross - May 7, 2012
We are overjoyed to announce the biggest victory yet from Focus on the Food Chain! Workers at Flaum Appetizing, with your unwavering support, have won their campaign with an exemplary global agreement. Our members have recovered $577,000 in unpaid wages and compensation for retaliation along with a binding code of conduct ensuring Flaum comports with all workplace rights going forward including anti-discrimination and health & safety protections.
You can check out some of the press coverage on today's victory:
New York Times: Kosher-Food Manufacturer to Pay $577,000 in Settlement
Crain's New York: Settlement paves way for end of hummus boycott
Jewish Daily Forward: Uri L'Tzedek Celebrates Flaums Victory
For over a decade, workers at Flaum Appetizing worked grueling sixty to eighty hour work weeks without overtime pay and sometimes not even the minimum wage. Latino workers were subjected to constant verbal harassment and forced to work at unsafe speeds. Focus on the Food Chain, a joint project of Brandworkers and the NYC IWW, helped the workers launch a powerful campaign that persuaded over 120 grocery store locations to remove Flaum products from their shelves and convinced the world's largest kosher cheese company to stop using Flaum as a distributor until workers' rights were respected. In the process, Flaum workers won a precedent-setting victory at the Labor Board in D.C. helping workers nationwide fend off unfounded allegations into their immigration status.