New York City building workers locked out over demands for wage and benefit cuts

[Hannah Bell]

Seventy-three workers at the Flatbush Gardens housing complex in New York City’s borough of Brooklyn have been locked out since November 29. Renaissance Equity Holdings (REH), owners of Flatbush Gardens, forced the workers off their jobs after they refused to accept drastic cuts to their wages, health coverage, pensions and other benefits.

Workers’ wages, which currently fall between $18 and $21 an hour, would be reduced to the range of $9-14 an hour. The average wage cut comes to 34 percent of a worker’s salary. Under the deal proposed by REH, workers would be required to contribute roughly $100 a week for health coverage, making it virtually impossible to afford.

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ, which represents the workers, had been negotiating with REH for most of the year without any agreement. Workers had continued to work under the terms of the old contract, which expired in April. They had authorized a strike in August.

In order to impose its demands,REH has hired scab contractors to replace the workers. According to YourNabe.com,the company stated that “the complex will use temporary replacement workers until the union accepts the proposal.” These workers are largely untrained.

Workers have been picketing outside the management’s office, calling for the restoration of their jobs and previous wages.

Built in 1949, Flatbush Gardens, previously known as Vanderveer Estates, is a 59-complex housing over 10,000 people. Many of the apartments are rent-stabilized.

One of the principal owners of REH is David Bistricer, a real estate mogul and accused New York City slumlord. He and his partners bought Flatbush Gardens in 2005 for $138 million. Initially, Bistricer made repairs and the number of accumulated housing violations decreased.

As REH then aggressively marketed the complex to sections of the middle class looking for alternatives to the sky-high rents in Manhattan, housing violations started to increase after 2007. Residents have charged that the new management has deliberately attempted to create intolerable conditions in order to drive them out and make the property available to be rented to better-heeled tenants at much higher rents.

Management has blamed the maintenance staff for the problems plaguing the complex, but the workers point out that they were not given adequate supplies for cleaning and repairs. The media quoted one of the workers, Shawn Williams, a boiler technician, who said, “Maintenance workers were given just 10 buckets of joint compound to patch holes in walls at the 2,500-unit site.”






http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/flat-j13.shtml