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ETHNIC GOURMET WORKERS ON STRIKE!
March 5, 2006
This article was assembled from information from Ethnic Gourmet worker supporters
Multi-ethnic immigrant workers are waging a fierce struggle against a Boston area natural food processor. Brazilian, Central American, and Asian Workers at the Ethnic Gourmet plant engaged in a work stoppage that essentially paralyzed the plant on Friday, April 31st and discouraged the factory not opening Saturday.
Hain Celestial, the parent company of Ethnic Gourmet, has hired the most notorious of anti-union law firms, Jackson Lewis, to represent them in the dispute with the workers. They also informed 18 workers who they identified as having engaged in the work stoppage that they will be notified that they are "permanently replaced." After meeting on Sunday, the workers decided to stand up to management's demand to resubmit their papers, a tactic used to intimidate them into not returning to work so the factory can avoid its obligations to employees under the WARN Act, a federal law requiring 60 days' pay if notice of a plant closing is not provided!. The seventy workers at the plant have worked with Ethnic Gourmet for as long as 11 years.
Ethnic Gourmet has a history of abusing the workers.
- Workers complain about a series of serious irregularities with the deductions from their paychecks.
- When eight workers from the cooking crew engaged in a work stoppage to protest their pay checks being held more than a week late, plant management threatened to call police and immigration authorities, and locked the workers for several hours in a room in the factory to keep the protest from spreading to the rest of the factory.
- Workers injured at the plant are often left to pay the medical bills themselves.
- For years, the company has maintained a legal fiction in an attempted to insulate itself from its obligations to the workers: paying 85% of the workforce through two labor contractors with no function but to issue pay checks (they have no role in hiring, supervision or firing, and workers may not have contact with them for months at a time).
Ethnic Gourmet Foods produces frozen foods sold widely at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. It is owed by Heinz and the Hain-Celestial Group, a huge natural and organic products company whose brands include Celestial Seasonings, Terra Chips, and Soy Dream. Staff from the Chinese Progressive Association, Centro Presente, Brazilian Immigrant Center and Greater Boston Legal Services are providing support to the workers.
CALL, EMAIL, & FAX Ethnic Gourmet & Hain-Celestial TO DEMAND COMPENSATION & AN END TO INTIMIDATION!!
Phone: (508) 872-7924 or (508) 875-6212 ext. 29 - manager, Framingham
Ethnic
Gourmet factory
(631) 730-2200 - Hain-Celestial
Fax:
(508) 875-6457 - Framingham Ethnic Gourmet
(631) 730-2550 - Hain-Celestial
Hain Celestial at Nasdaq - Naturally Corporate
