NLRB faults Real Foods - fired IWW union members vindicated four years late

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070822061935409

NLRB faults Real Foods - fired IWW union members vindicated four years late

Wednesday, August 22 2007 @ 06:19 AM PDT
Contributed by: WorkerFreedom
Views: 122

NLRB faults Real Foods - fired IWW union members vindicated four years late

By George Raine, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, August 4, 2007

The National Labor Relations Board has concluded that the owner of the Real Foods store in San Francisco's Noe Valley neighborhood committed a series of unfair labor practices in 2003 when the store was closed and 31 employees, who had begun discussing the possibility of forming a union, were fired.

A three-member panel of the board in Washington upheld the 2005 decision of an administrative law judge in the San Francisco district, James Kennedy, who ruled that the employer's acts were associated with nascent union organizing.

The store on 24th Street remains shuttered, a farmers' market has been organized to provide the organic produce the store once sold and many of the fired workers have moved on with their lives. But even with the board's ruling, issued July 24, the matter is far from resolved.

Both sides - lawyers representing fired workers, and lawyers for the owner, Nutraceutical Corp., a Park City, Utah, manufacturer of nutritional supplements - filed appeals this week with federal appeals courts.

Almost four years ago, the owner said the closure was part of a planned remodeling, but Kennedy, the administrative law judge - and now the labor board - concluded the move was in response to the workers' exploration of union representation. As part of the ruling, the employer is instructed to put the former employees on a preferential hiring list when the Noe Valley store reopens, or offer them positions as they become available at the two other stores it operates in the city, one on Stanyan Street and one on Geary Boulevard.

FULL story at link.