Workers at GOYA foods organized with UNITE to improve their working conditions and obtain a union contract in 1998. Today they still have no contract. How can this be? Where are these workers? Columbia? No, they are warehouse workers in Miami Florida. Goya Foods is the largest Hispanic owned company in the United States.
David Raynor of The American Prospect wrote in December of 2006 about The NLRB decision ordering GOYA Foods to negotiate with the workers union.
Quoting from his article;
"The union, the workers, and the General Counsel took the case to a trial under federal labor law before an Administrative Law Judge in June 2000. In February 2001, the judge ruled in favor of the union and workers on every single issue in a well written and thoughtfully reasoned decision. He ruled that the four Goya workers were fired illegally for supporting the union and recommended that the NLRB order their reinstatement and back wages (no penalties are provided by the National Labor Relations Act). He found the company guilty of threats against workers who supported the union, interrogation of union supporters, and failure to bargain in good faith as required by federal law.
Of course the Company appealed -- creating another delay of justice. But by July of 2001, the record was complete: the briefs were in, the Board had the transcripts and the exhibits, and the case was, as they say, "ripe for decision."
I don’t know what the Board was doing over the next five years and two months"
So GOYA had the inevitable delayed for five years. You might think that OK now they will surely bargain. Well that NLRB decision apparently didn't impress GOYA Foods that much as they still didn't negotiate.
What about the workers in these intervening TEN YEARS? Many are gone, tired or fired and frustrated by a system that is as broken as any in this country. An example is Rodolfo Chaves's story.
Now yesterday we learn that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Goya must comply with an Aug. 30, 2006 order by the National Labor Relations Board to negotiate with the union. Does this guarantee a contract for the workers? Heck No
There have been several diaries on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This case is yet another example of why our labor laws are in such need of repair. Union membership in the private sector is at 7-8%. This low rate of unionization is a direct result of the strong hand dealt to Corporations as they frustrate thier workers attempts to gain a voice.
Opposition to the EFCA is centered largely around the faux argument of the workers right to choose through an NLRB election. This is a "Concern Troll" argument that gets some traction by flag wraping themselves around the sanctity of the "secret ballot". It is a thinly veiled attempted to keep the current NLRB rules in place that favor employers desire to remain union free and continue the worker abuses that result.