By Alex Ginsberg
A New Hyde Park-based Teamsters local is entering its second month on strike against Stella D'Oro and intensifying its campaign against the biscuit maker's plan to phase out jobs it calls redundant.
More than 65 route salespeople, members of Bakery Drivers Local Union 550, walked off their jobs Feb. 6 after repeated negotiations failed to yield progress. Stella D'Oro, which is owned by Kraft-Nabisco, wants to eliminate many of those positions and use the existing network of Nabisco drivers to service the associated stores.
“After 50 years of building the business, they've taken the work away from the people who built it,” said Rich Volpe, chairman of Local 550's bargaining unit.
Volpe described route salespeople as a cross between driver and salesman: they deliver merchandise via truck to retail outlets, but also form relationships with store managers, place merchandise on the shelves and make decisions on purchasing.
He said that in 18 separate bargaining sessions, the local had pledged productivity increases and tried to demonstrate that Stella D'Oro's reorganization plan had lost the company money in the other areas of the country.
“We showed them that we could streamline delivery, maintain the business, and bring the profits up,” Volpe said. “We had the numbers and everything. They had no interest. They said 'we're doing it this way.'”
Kathy Pernu, a spokeswoman for the Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft-Nabisco, said the company was not impressed with that offer.
“The union's plan was not a viable alternative and did not achieve the savings the company hoped to achieve through elimination of duplications of efforts,” she said.
Although Pernu would not discuss the specifics of previous offers, she said the union had rejected the company's most recent proposition, a compromise in which some positions would be eliminated and some retained.
Given that the collective bargaining agreement had expired in January, she said, the company decided to move ahead unilaterally with that most recent offer. To that end, it closed two depots in Carlstadt, N.J. and Farmingdale, N.Y. on Feb. 21 and began transferring some routes to Nabisco drivers. Pernu underscored the fact that those Nabisco drivers were Teamsters, although from a different local.
That plan would have preserved some Local 550 jobs, but because the union is on strike, she said, those positions are being filled by managers, supervisors and temporary workers.
She characterized the company's approach as a pragmatic one and the changes as necessary reforms.
“There is a costly duplication of efforts in the New York area,” she said. “Two trucks and two drivers – Nabisco and Stella D'Oro. Duplicate merchandising efforts in stores. In 99 percent of the country, we have one system.”
Both sides say they are willing to talk in order to resolve the situation. But no face-to-face negotiations are scheduled at this point, and with each passing day the company's reorganization plan proceeds apace.
So if the ongoing strike doesn't persuade the company to offer more concessions, the union also hopes to achieve results through a charge filed with the National Labor Relations Board. In the document, the local contends that the company improperly created a standoff in the discussions, a technique known as “negotiating to impasse.”
Officials at the NLRB would not could comment on the charge, except to say that it was being investigated.
In the meantime, union members continue to picket every day outside Stella D'Oro's main baking facility on West 237th Street in the Bronx, and a rally there that included many of the local's officers was held Tuesday.
Reach reporter Alex Ginsberg by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 157.
