Posted on 09/11/2009 4:04:51 PM PDT by Leisler
Workers at the Stella D'oro cookie factory in the Bronx were still in shock Thursday as the news sunk in that the business had been sold and was moving to Ohio.
They wondered how they'd pay their rents and mortgages, how they'd find another job in today's recession and what they'd do without health insurance.
"My family is going to suffer," said Evelyn Rivera, a packer at the plant for the past two years. "This is so sad. The company has been here for more than 70 years."
Machine operator Juan Torres, 51, said he doesn't know if he'll have the money for his 17-year-old son, Francis, to start college next year.
"There is nothing to pay for anything," Torres said.
Connecticut-based private equity firm Brynwood Partners announced Wednesday it is selling the popular Italian cookie and breadstick baker to snackfood maker Lance Inc.
The Kingsbridge plant will close at the end of the month.
Workers, who already went through a long, bitter strike that ended in July, trudged out at the end of the day's shift Thursday with hangdog faces and tales of heartbreak.
Rivera said she cannot afford the $1,200 to $1,600 monthly health insurance payments available through her union, Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.
"I guess I will go like everyone else on unemployment. Imagine this: 138 people out on the street."
George Kahssay, 51, a plant worker for 22 years, has two children in college.
"They're going to have to skip a few semesters," he said. "I've already sold my car and cleaned out my life savings during the strike. There is nothing left for them or myself and my wife. Obviously, they'll have to get a loan."
He and his wife will also go without health insurance.
"But we will just pray to God that we do not get sick."
After Brynwood bought Stella D'oro from Kraft Foods in 2006, it demanded sharp cuts in wages and benefits. Union workers went on strike in August 2008.
The strike ended in July when a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled Brynwood had negotiated in bad faith with Local 50 and ordered it to pay lost wages and benefits. Brynwood then said it would have to sell the firm.
Alem Fese, 58, a mixer at the plant for 27 years, said she has a $1,500-a-month mortgage and hasn't written a résumé in nearly three decades.
"Who's going to hire me?" she asked. "I don't know what I'm going to do. Really."
How do you figure a $1 an hour pay cut equals $10,000? There are 2080 hours in a work year. If the workers stayed at the job 24/7 they still would not equal $10,000.
I just don't understand why these people would have been unhappy with this.
I wonder how many of those 20-some-year employees voted straight Democrat for all those years?
Leftists, Statists, Socialists, Progressives, Democrats - whatever you want to call them, their policies are designed to kill the golden goose in the long run, and these mouth-breathers who proudly slap union bumper stickers on their Fords and Chevys apparently don’t have the capacity to connect the dots.
I guess they can't put two and two together and realize that bitter strikes have consequences.
They wondered how they'd pay their rents and mortgages, how they'd find another job in today's recession and what they'd do without health insurance.
Cause, meet effect.
Agree, they certainly are not, and I have worked for my share of them.
I was practically thrown out of an interview once, when I was told the place was Union.
"And what did Management do that so alienated the workers that they resorted to voting in a union?"
Obviously I did not end up working there.
Certainly nobody is happy about it. Of course having a job, even at a lower wage is far better than no job.
Bear in mind these people went on an extended strike to because the company was asking for wage and benefit concessions before their contract expired. Now they bemoan the fact the company doesn't want to operate in the red since they can't get concessions?
i’m sure ohio gave them som tax abatements/incentives to move there.
I know. No connection betweens action and consequences. That’s the ‘evolution’ of modern man.
These people make me sick.
Before I was born, mom worked at Sinclair oil as a secretary.
Dad worked second shift at Fairchild.
They had ONE car.
While mom was working, my dad rode around town asking people if they needed lawns mowed, gutters cleaned, *anything* that would make them extra money.
When her quitting time came, she drove him to work and went home.
She’d go pick him up at his quitting time.
They built their house with NO loans and literally one brick at a time.
When I was 3 years old, we still lived in the basement of the unfinished house.
When I was 4, dad had enough money to buy cinder blocks and the upstairs started being built.
To this day, I can remember riding my tricycle between the wall studs.
Many years later, dad mortgaged the house to buy the mountain behind me.
He was working second shift at the prison by then.
At daybreak, he’d go up on the mountain and cut timber and sell it to the local sawmill, come home, take a bath and “go to work” *again*.
By working hard 16 hour days, he paid off a quarter million dollar loan in just 2 years.
He was never part of any union strike and never asked anybody for a dime.
He abhors owing anybody anything, even to the point that if he needs something ordered off the internet, he will give me what it cost plus “extra” for the time it took me to look it up and buy it for him.
They don’t make people like they used to.
......Rivera said she cannot afford the $1,200 to $1,600 monthly health insurance payments available through her union,......
Guess what?
Neither can the cookie company. A union cookie maker is an unemployable cookie maker
No they don’t. We have stretched out people’s expectations to the point of very uncomfortable reset.
The strike went from August 08 to July 09? Who made all the bills for 11 months?
Never mind the bills, who made the cookies?
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