\n<\/p>\n
Workers at popular New York City bakery chain Breads Bakery announced a move to unionize, claiming it has \u201cunderpaid, undervalued, disrespected, discriminated against, intimidated and hurt\u201d staff, as well as supported \u201cthe genocide happening in Palestine\u201d.<\/p>\n
The company, which has ties to Israel, expressed concern that \u201cdivisive political issues\u201d had been introduced into its stores. \u201cWe make babka; we don\u2019t engage in politics,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
But staff involved in the unionization drive claimed that employees were forced by the chain to create products for fundraisers for Israeli organizations, and unable to decline.<\/p>\n
The union, Breaking Breads, claims that more than 30% of the chain\u2019s 275 workers across New York City had signed union authorization cards, seeking to unionize with United Auto Workers Local 2179 and pushing for better pay, improvements to working conditions such as the replacement of broken equipment, and respect on the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe owners are the ones who are making it political,\u201d one worker, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said. \u201cAll of us in the union, we have lots of many different political beliefs, things we stand for. We\u2019re not telling anyone how they should behave, what they should believe in, where they should donate their money, absolutely not.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut imagine you\u2019re a baker who works at this company, and you\u2019re witnessing videos that are coming out of Gaza that are really difficult to bear, and then your boss tells you that you\u2019re going to be making a new specialty bread item that\u2019s sold special and discounted as a fundraiser for a country that\u2019s doing a genocide.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just asking that workers have the decision about whether or not they can make those.\u201d<\/p>\n
Breads Bakery uses profits to \u201cmaterially support the Israeli occupation\u201d of Gaza, the union claimed. The bakery chain has six locations in Manhattan, and was co-founded by Danish\u2013Israeli baker Uri Scheft.<\/p>\n
The bakery has hired union avoidance consultants, according to the worker, who claimed they had been meeting one-on-one with staff in office meetings, in a effort to deter support for the union.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy location makes around $15,000 to $20,000 a day on average. We\u2019re a bread bakery. We sell a lot of bread. We have several shelves of bread,\u201d the worker said. \u201cAnd for almost around a year now, we have not been able to use equipment that we really need to function.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur three demands are for equitable pay, respect, and safety for workers. I joined this unionization effort, because after long enough at Breads, I started noticing these sort of patterns. We have a very high turnover rate. Most people are only there, on average, maybe around three or four months, and I really think a lot of that can be attributed to the disrespect that is shown to workers by management.\u201d<\/p>\n
The union is calling for pay increases across the board; holiday and busy season pay, including Jewish holidays; overtime pay; automatic raises over a set period of time; premium pay for late-shift and overnight work; replacement of broken equipment; proper uniforms for workers doing outdoor work; guaranteed hours every week; a free meal each shift; and at least three days\u2019 notice of each shift schedule.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Breads Bakery did not comment on the hiring of union avoidance consultants, or the criticism of the bakery supporting Israeli fundraisers.<\/p>\n
\u201cBreads Bakery is built on love and genuine care for our team,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe celebrate peace and embrace people of all cultures and beliefs. We\u2019ve always been a workplace where people of all backgrounds and viewpoints can come together around a common purpose, sharing in the joy and love of a bakery, and we find it troubling that divisive political issues are being introduced into our workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Workers at popular New York City bakery chain Breads Bakery announced a move to unionize, claiming it has \u201cunderpaid, undervalued, disrespected, discriminated against, intimidated and hurt\u201d staff, as well as supported \u201cthe genocide happening in Palestine\u201d. The company, which has ties to Israel, expressed concern that \u201cdivisive political issues\u201d had been introduced into its stores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[8865,22169,303,12147,2017,19277,2313,1092,2161,2719,476],"class_list":{"0":"post-41739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bake","9":"tag-bakery","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-claiming","12":"tag-forced","13":"tag-fundraisers","14":"tag-israeli","15":"tag-push","16":"tag-staff","17":"tag-union","18":"tag-york"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}