Hedge Fund Would Rather Shut Down a Plant Than Pay Its Workers a Fair Wage

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141185/hedge_fund_would_rather_shut_down_a_plant_than_pay_its_workers_a_fair_wage/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet_workplace

By Art Levine, AlterNet. Posted July 10, 2009.

The hedge fund "thought they could refuse to bargain with us ... break the law, tear up our contract ... and break the union."

Every morning at 6 a.m, starting in August 2008, a group of striking workers came to stand outside the Stella D'Oro cookie and biscuit factory in the Bronx, N.Y. They were fighting for what they saw as their right to a fair contract, and the middle-class way of life they spent decades building with their loyal work.

For many workers facing trouble paying their mortgages, sending their kids to college or even going out for a meal, remaining on strike was not easy.

Elizabeth Francisco told the Bronx Times Reporter during a recent rainy day on the picket line: "It's hard. When my daughter asks, 'Mommy, I want to eat dinner outside,' I have no money. Out here , I'm depressed."

It was especially rough when some of the 50 or so low-paid replacement workers, or "scabs," came out for their lunch break and literally waved their paychecks in the faces of these strikers who have been subsisting on little more than unemployment benefits and a $105-a-week union stipend.

Stella D'Oro workers returned to work Tuesday morning. The day before, Byrnwood Partners, the private equity firm that owns the plant, had decided to shut it down in October rather than maintain wage levels. As part of that proposal, the workers accepted an offer from the company to return to work at their original pay until the plant closes.

Meanwhile, despite the odds, union leaders vow to fight the plant closing; they are reaching out to the state's political leaders and seeking a buyer for the plant. On Tuesday, the Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. denounced the closing and said his office would try to find another buyer.

FULL story at link.

[Enthusiast]

1. That is sickening. nt

[Oregone]

2. To add insult to injury, hedge fund investors get taxes only 15% on profits

These are people that inherited money from the parents who inheireted.......right down from the plantation/slave owners of the South and the sweat shop owners at the start of the industrialized revolution. And such a birthright now only gives them a right to profit off people's labor, but profit from shredding businesses apart.

[Wapsie B]

3. And yet, we heard repugs whining about talk on eliminating things like golden parachutes

and bonuses to execs who run a company into the ground. They talk about that money as being a contractual obligation. Moral relativism at its finest.