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Uniform Justice: Laundry Workers Organize

2003

September/October 2003 click here for related stories: labor movement

"Don't get surprised when you see a nice Cintas truck on the road. Keep in mind that behind that truck are workers fighting for their rights. Support them. Behind that nice truck is a labor dispute where workers are fighting for their right to belong to a union." -- Victor Hidalgo, Cintas worker

When UNITE! developed the strategy to take on Cintas, the largest industrial laundry and uniform provider in North America, a new page opened for labor organizing. The union drive is groundbreaking because instead of taking on the company one shop at a time, all 300 shops are being organized simultaneously. Instead of organizing the plants only within the US, workers across the border in Canada are being organized as well.

Cintas workers organized to gain job security and better treatment.

The Cintas empire has been built on the backs of new immigrant workers. It takes courage to organize a union in any workplace in George W. Bush’s America. It takes a special kind of courage to organize a union under threat of deportation or imprisonment for lack of “legal” status. The story of these workers is the story of the economic brutality of imperialist globalization. It is the story of workers forced to leave behind family, culture and country to take the dangerous trip North across the border, in homes of finding work, and being able to send financial help back home. Most of the people who work at Cintas are immigrants. Many are single moms. They came here to make a living, looking for a better life. They came with dreams that in the United States, where freedom is spoken of so proudly, they would have respect and the right to a union.

Companies like Cintas deny and violate these hoped-for rights. The company holds the threat of deportation over workers’ heads to stifle their right to organize. “Immigrant workers are subject to a lot of abuse in non-union shops,” said one worker involved in the organizing effort. “They have no security. They are afraid to lose their job and the ability to support their family, pay rent and other living expenses.”

“We are often treated like terrorists,” said an organizer.

According to workers the company employs many tactics to thwart organizing efforts. Threats are continually made to involve government agencies and inspect their papers. For example, every year Social Security sends “match letters” to employers if the Social Security number of a worker does not match their records. The letter is for information purposes only. However, Cintas uses these letters as an excuse to intimidate workers by demanding they present their paper work, even though the worker’s papers were checked at the time of hire.

After 9/11 immigrant workers have been subjected to more harassment than ever. “We are often treated like terrorists,” said an organizer. “New immigrants produce much of the economy of this country, but our contribution is often ignored. It is often forgotten that America is a country of immigrants.”

Health and Safety
Health and safety concerns are one of the big issues driving the campaign. “Workers complain that Cintas doesn’t educate the workers about health and safety in the plant,” said an organizer.

A fifteen-minute video in English is a poor substitute for safety training. Cintas gives workers a paper to sign after they see the video indicating they understand the health and safety hazards of the job. The workers are told that if they don’t sign the paper they will be fired. There is no translation into Spanish. Many times the workers are not sure what they are signing. Proper training is needed for workers to understand the dangers of the chemicals on shop cloths and the chronic diseases that can result from handling them without protection.

“Cintas thinks they are above the law,” said a former worker. “They act on the edge of the law. They think they can pay everything off with money. If they are fined for health and safety violations, they pay the fine and keep operating in an unsafe way.”

Since 1980, OSHA inspectors have cited Cintas for nearly 100 violations of critical health and safety standards including failure to provide chemical hazard training and failure to protect workers from hazardous equipment.

In many Cintas laundries, workers suffer disabling injuries at much higher rates than the industry as a whole. At the same time, the company does its best to avoid paying workers’ compensation, or to rehire workers after recovery.

Recently, OSHA paid a visit to the Branford, Connecticut Cintas plant. “Right away, the company began to fix things they had never fixed before,” remarked a worker at the plant. “This is a victory won by the workers who have raised these issues as part of their organizing drive, and shows the need for and value of a union.”

Environmental concerns factor into the organizing. Cintas jeopardized the health and safety of the community through environmental degradation. A targeted study of wastewater discharge records from Cintas plants revealed a pattern of violations at 23 of 27 plants in 10 states. The violations include excessive levels of lead, perc, toluene, chloroform, zinc, bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, total organic compounds and oil and grease. In many cases, the discharge was over 100 percent of allowable levels.

Over the last two years, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection has sued Cintas for more than 250 violations of the Clean Water Act, and for failing to test and label hundreds of gallons of hazardous waste.

Union Busters
The Cintas handbook says clearly that they are a non-union company. It comes as no surprise that founder and Chairman Richard Farmer is one of the largest campaign contributors to the Republican Party. His hefty gifts anticipated the union-busting climate a George W. Bush administration would produce.

As the story goes, Cintas CEO Richard Farmer exposed his bias in an incident in Ohio, where the company is based. Farmer pledged $1 million dollars for the expansion of a Catholic school, to the delight of the church. But it didn’t last long. When Farmer discovered that the school’s policy was to contract with union companies, the donation was hastily withdrawn. A special report issued by UNITE!, The Dirty Truth Behind the Uniforms, indicates that Cintas sales have increased twice as much as the size of the workforce over the last ten years. “Cintas has grown steadily in sales and profits for the last 33 years....It has over 30 percent of the market share, and management reported sales for fiscal year 2002 at $2.27 billion with profits of $234 million.” But what about wages? When the union organizing drive began in Branford, Connecticut, the company increased workers’ wages from $7.25 an hour to $8.01 an hour, and then told the workers they should be happy because they make more than some union shops. Not mentioned was the fact that these workers, who built the fortune for this company continue to pay their own medical costs.

“I have worked at Cintas for three years,” says Estela Regalado of San Jose, California. “In December our managers told us that all wages were frozen and that we would not be getting any raises. Then, in January, after we started organizing to improve our working conditions, they gave us all raises. I got a 31-cent raise. This is still not enough to support my family, which is why we need to keep organizing until we have a union contract,” she concludes. In an attempt to discredit UNITE!, the company has issued a flyers to the workers charging that the union only wants to organize Cintas for the $6 million in dues from 27,000 new members. Workers are continually expected to attend captive audience meetings against the union. Hypocritically, the company manual claims, “We maintain a listening environment, and even when we disagree, we maintain RESPECT!” One worker who was a leader of the union was fired and has filed charges against the company with the National Labor Relations Board. “We all know why I was fired,” says Victor Hidalgo. “It was because of my union activity. Stand together for your union...fear is their only tool to win.”

Getting Ugly
Cintas buys laundries where there is a union and then they move to decertify. Starbucks had a contract with Aramark, a union laundry which provided insurance, vacation, sick days, respect and a safe working environment. Now that shop is owned by Cintas, and there is no union. Across the country Cintas is buying off laundries and pushing out the union. When they do business with a company, Cintas insists on signing a contract. So, the workers ask, why not a contract for them? Without union protection, the company can let a worker go anytime they want, according to the regulation book. There is constant turnover. Many workers are not kept past their probationary period of three months. There is fear among the workers that the company will let them go and depend on constantly hiring new people. In February, Cintas workers and UNITE! filed 82 separate charges of violations of US and Canadian labor law at 42 Cintas facilities in 14 cities. Charges were for discrimination, retaliation and surveillance against workers for legal union activity.

Bad Business Practices
Cintas has notoriously bad business practices. Sometimes they fail to issue paychecks on time. They could be late by days or even a week. While the worker is left without enough to buy groceries, the company benefits from the interest on the workers’ money. Cintas rewards managers for speedup. The cheaper they run their plant, the larger the bonus the manager gets. The more they push the workers, the larger the bonus the supervisor gets. Cintas has over 500,000 customers, including many small businesses and some large corporations like Ford Motor Company, Firestone, Hershey, Sears and Delta Airlines. If a Cintas’ customer is not satisfied with the service, they are allowed no options to get out of their contract until it expires.

“As a Cintas driver for three and a half years I know that these are not isolated problems,” writes Wilfredo Huertas to Cintas customers in New Jersey referring to “inflated bills, service problems and frequent shortages.” He goes on to describe that the drivers are “ranked by our ability to raise prices and add new charges. If Cintas drivers could report shortages, price problems and unwarranted additions without fear of retaliation from managers, our customers would be better served.” In Alabama, Cintas settled a lawsuit for $74 million after adding on a fake “environmental charge” to customers’ weekly bills.

The Union Drive
UNITE! has taken on a powerful corporation and its textbook union-busting tactics. In so doing, new organizing strategies are being employed that have been tested in recent years by many unions.

The decision to organize all the plants simultaneously, rather than one at a time, makes it harder for the company to smash the drive, and helps the workers gain strength. Workers in each shop can learn and exchange experiences, ideas and victories with workers in the other shops. UNITE! is also collaborating with the Teamsters to organize truck drivers around their particular needs and concerns. Collaboration between international unions in large organizing drives is becoming more frequent, and also serves to strengthen labor’s unity. UNITE! is going for card check neutrality as a method of gaining union recognition. They are asking the company to recognize the union when over 50 percent of the workers sign cards. Many unions are abandoning the traditional NLRB election process because it is cumbersome, can take years, and is easily manipulated by the company. Cintas management has made it publicly known that they will not abide by card check neutrality, laying themselves open to public pressure.

In their quest for the right to decent wages and working conditions and union protection on the job, Cintas workers have reached out to the labor movement and the community. Support has been forthcoming from all quarters, including the 13 million members of the AFL-CIO, national church groups and elected officials. In Illinois, Congressman Luis Gutiérrez walked into a Cintas plant unannounced, accompanied by media, to learn first-hand about the conditions the workers face. He sought out the workers on the shop floor to hear their stories and expressed support for their right to organize. Members of Congress and state and local elected officials across the country are being asked to meet with Cintas workers, learn the issues and take a stand for the right to organize. Over 90 member sof Congress signed a letter initiated by Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and George Miller (D-CA) calling on the company to accept a cardcheck neutrality union recognition process. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also sent a letter to the company.

The largest customers of Cintas are also being publicly educated about the company’s anti-worker, anti-union practices. One of these customers is the upscale coffeehouse chain Starbucks. When the union passes out information leaflets about Cintas near Starbucks stores many of their customers want to know how they can help.

The AFL-CIO Voice @ Work campaign recently conducted a poll and confirmed that while “employers routinely violate workers’ fundamental right to gain collective bargaining, Americans don’t know it”, but strongly oppose such tactics. The campaign to unionize Cintas is one which is setting the pace for a broad education effort by local labor bodies within their own memberships and among the broader public to change the climate for organizing in our country. “It’s time for corporations like Cintas to really have to respect the workers. The workers make their fortune,” says Victor Hidalgo. “Not only Latino workers get hurt, all the workers get hurt. The customers and the community get hurt also.”

In the last five years, the policy of labor unions has undergone a sea change. Rather than blaming immigrant workers for “taking jobs,” the labor movement began to understand and embrace the cause of immigrant workers as its own. This fall, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in September and October will dramatically take this policy shift to a new level. Patterned after the freedom rides of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, buses of immigrant workers, labor, community and peace activists will depart from ten locations across the country and travel to Washington, DC, ending with a giant rally in New York calling for citizenship, equal rights on the job and civil rights for immigrants and all workers. The Freedom Ride’s spotlight on companies like Cintas that are especially guilty of abusing immigrants will give added strength to the workers and the union organizing campaign.

The experience at Cintas highlights the singular importance of defeating the Bush administration in the 2004 elections. “This is the most anti-union administration ever,” says AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. The Bush re-election campaign is receiving record high financial contributions from the likes of Cintas chairman Richard T. Farmer, who gave the Republican Party a total of $1.3 million between 2000 and 2002, in addition to raising $30 million at a dinner featuring George W. Bush. Not surprisingly, union households oppose Bush by a significantly larger margin than non-union households. A blow against the far-right next November will be good for the health of new immigrants, workers seeking union representation and everyone who depends on a paycheck to make ends meet.

--Joelle Fishman is the organizer for the Connecticut district of the Communist Party USA.

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