Talk Bronx New York

The Maldonado family had been living without gas, electricity or hot water, but did not move out until the school year ended.

 As the school year sailed to a close last month, Arielle Figueras crossed the stage in her cap and gown and proudly accepted her fifth-grade diploma.

The next day, she was homeless.

Arielle, a petite 11-year-old, and her parents, brother and sister packed their belongings and arrived at the intake center for homeless families in the South Bronx. Though they had been fighting with their landlord for months and their gas and electricity had long been shut off, they refused to leave their apartment while school was in session.

“She was graduating, so we had to wait,” Arielle’s mother, Marilyn Maldonado, said. “We just didn’t want to disrupt their routines. We couldn’t do that to them.”

Many New Yorkers view summer as a time for vacations, camp and lazy days at the beach. But city officials have been preparing for quite a different summer ritual: the swelling of the population of homeless families.

They call it the summer surge, and say that this year could be the worst yet.

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Cookies, that is. Seems that the bad folks at Brynwood Partners, owners of Stella D’oro, aren’t taking the NLRB decision that they’ve screwed over the 134 workers at their Bronx factory lying down.

“Last week, a federal judge ordered Stella D’oro to reinstate 134 workers after a protracted 10-month strike. This week, the company invited the workers back. It also announced that it would close the factory in October.”

snip

““The decision to close the Bronx bakery operations has not been made in haste or without significant planning,” a statement from the management said. Operations will be moved elsewhere and the products would continue, the statement said.”

Ah yes. They had plenty of time to figure out how to shutter this factory and move it elsewhere, by refusing to bargain with the union for 10 months and then, easily plan their escape. This looks like a pretty standard union-busting move here: demand massive pay concessions that you know are not fair, and either you get them and break the union, or you get enough cover to plan a move elsewhere and break the union. Read more..

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