By Bill Parry
Elected leaders joined union members to call on the Jackson Heights community to boycott the new Global Supermarket during a rally and news conference Wednesday, but the store did not open as planned.
Local 338 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union had scheduled the event to coincide with the first day of the new store, but the owner, Mohammed Haque, postponed the opening until later in the week.
Global Supermarket at 75-07 37th St. replaces a Trade Fair supermarket that closed without warning in December. Some 50 union workers were locked out two weeks before Christmas by the former owner, Frank Jabber, and union supporters have picketed in front of the store beside an inflatable rat every day since then.
“When the new owner, Muhammad Haque, took over, he promised to hire back some of the union staffers,” Local 338/UFCW representative Joe Fontano said. “All communication with him ceased after the first of the year. We’re going to stay out here until he talks to us. We’re not going away.”
During the midday rally in front of the supermarket City Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) voiced his support for the workers, saying, “We’re here to say as a community we’re not going to take it, we don’t want union busters here. It’s a disgrace and you don’t treat humans this way.”
State Sen. Joe Peralta (D-East Elmhurst) agreed.
“Let’s send a message loud and clear and we’ll send that message with our wallets until this injustice is made right,” Peralta said.
Reached by telephone, Haque said, “I don’t see any reason why they should boycott me. Their problem is with the previous owner, Frank Jabber. He’s got eight stores, they should go and boycott them.”
As for the 25 employees he has hired for the store, Haque said, “I have my own workers. They’re not union, but they are mostly local Jackson Heights people.”
There were no apparent changes to the store other than a Global Supermarket sign that was still being installed Wednesday. In December, Haque said there would be new refrigeration cases, shelves and a modern check-out system.
“The weather’s been so bad I haven’t been able to make those changes, so I figured I’d just go ahead and open and make those changes later,” Haque said, pointing out that the delay in the store’s opening was caused by some issues that have already been fixed and it would open in time for the weekend.
Fontana thinks Local 338 was the problem.
“He got wind of this rally and press conference so he put it off a day or two,” the union leaders said.
Fontana said Haque should not expect much of a turnout when he opens because “Jackson Heights is a tight community and all the locked-out workers were from the neighborhood. The community will do the right thing.”
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718.260.4538
