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In the Bronx, a group of bakery workers are locked in a death struggle with a private equity firm (Brynwood Partners, www.brynwoodpartners.com) over Stella D'oro cookie company which is emblematic of the travails working class Americans have gone through at the hands of the money men.
The story of their struggle and what it says about the challenges facing the Obama Administration's efforts to preserve working families living standards is reported in an article posted on the Private Equity Buyout Watch, sponsored by the IUF, the global union federation for workers in the food, tobacco, hospitality and catering industries and in agriculture.
"Buyouts, Bread Sticks, Biscotti - and Challenges for the Obama Administration" tells the story of the 136 workers on strike for over nine months at the Stella D'oro bakery at West 237th Street in the Bronx. Members of BCTGM Local 50, they "are a microcosm of working America, as diverse as the neighborhood. Stella D'Oro is also a microcosm of what's been happening in corporate America for the past two decades -- and what urgently needs to be fixed."
Stella D'oro, which was once an iconic, national, premium Italian-style biscuit brand, was also once a successful family-owned firm acquired by RJR Nabisco, then taken over by Kraft when RJR Nabisco broke up (in the wake of the disastrous KKR LBO). Stella was run into the ground by its corporate overseers, then dumped to private equity earlier this decade when Kraft began to dispose of "non-core" assets under pressure from Wall Street. Workers there have been represented by the Bakers' union since 1964.
Apparently the PE guys see the modest union contract of the older, experienced work force as a good target for their next round of pillaging. In the first round, the company disposed of its unionized route sales drivers by outsourcing distribution to a non-union company.
This time, Stella's new owners have gone directly at the workforce, ignoring the National Labor Relations Act and demanding steep wage and benefit cuts with no opportunity for the workers and their union to bargain. The National Labor Relations Board, after the usual delay and indecision issued a "refusal to bargain" complaint charging the company with violating the law. The case only went before a federal judge last week; American labor law is so broken that it may take years for justice to prevail.
Corporate mismanagement, predatory private equity, the destruction of an iconic brand and now an attempt to destroy the livelihoods of modest working families, the story at Stella D'oro pretty well sums up all that's been happening over the past two decades with the financialization of the food and manufacturing sectors generally. The workers and their union, an affiliate of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, AFL-CIO have decided they have had enough.
Their strike has been strongly supported by the Bronx community and the New York labor movement. They have taken their struggle to the luxurious offices of Brynwood Partners in Greenwich, CT and to the home of Brynwood Partner and Stella D'oro chairman Hendrik Hartong III, son of former Pittston coal CEO and Brynwood founder Henk Hartong Jr. Through snow and ice, holidays and Spring blossoms, the workers have held the line in the Bronx. And, like working families in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere across America, they look to Washington to see if anything will be done to stop the predators.
IUF's interest is not only in the travails of affiliated cookie workers in the US, but also in the devastation caused by speculators in the global food industry. Based in Switzerland, with affiliates across the planet, IUF has been tracking private equity and its shenanigans longer and better than most...with a global perspective. IUF was among the first to raise the alarm among European workers about what private equity would do to their companies. And like much of the world, they are wondering if the Obama Administration will take serious steps to curb the US-based speculators who have helped bring the global economy to its knees.
Author and Buyout Watch editor Peter Rossman knows what he is writing about. He has been an adviser to the Party of European Socialists (EU grouping of Social Democratic and Labour parties) on private equity buyouts, is co-author of A Workers Guide to Private Equity Buyouts (which you can read through IUF's buyoutwatch site, and a regular contributor to the Nation in the 80's/90s on developments in Eastern Europe.
Washington's continuing embrace of hedge funds and private equity (manifest in Treasury's plan for partnering with them to buy toxic assets at inflated prices), the apparent indifference to struggles like that at Stella, plans to close US plants and increase imports as part of auto restructuring raise some important questions about what is being done to protect (or not) workers at the lowest of the grass roots.
Meanwhile, in the Bronx, 136 workers continue to take a stand. They need your help and support. So do working families across the US.
Email Henk Hartong and Brynwood Partners at huppsv@brynwoodpartners.com or info@brynwoodpartners.com. Tell them to go back to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair agreement to preserve the living standards of their loyal employees!