In battle for EFCA, Obama goes after food giant.
Crain’s Chicago Business has a front page story on how the Obama administration through the NLRB is putting big time pressure on the giant US Foodservice Inc. They are based in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont. The Teamsters who are organizing to represent the employees are in a tough fight.
The NLRB is pushing more than a hundred complaints of illegal union busting tactics. Crain’s reports that the NLRB has “rebuffed the company’s settlement attempts, underscoring the seriousness of the charges.”
Both sides, US Foodservice on the one hand and the Teamsters, the Obama administration, the NLRB and the Democratically controlled Congress see this as part of the battle over the Employee Free Choice Act.
“Not only are they trying to make us an example for the Employee Free Choice Act, but they’re trying to get the company to voluntarily provide card-check recognition” and remain neutral in union organizing drives, says David Esler, chief human resources officer at U.S. Foodservice, which employs more than 26,000.
The Teamsters say the company has brought trouble on itself. A union official says U.S. Foodservice was a typical tough-nosed labor opponent until it was acquired almost two years ago for $7.1 billion by two New York-based private-equity firms, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Clayton Dubilier & Rice Inc.
“Our experience since KKR has come in has been much worse,” says Andy Banks, director of strategic campaigns for the Teamsters.
The Teamsters say that they are conceding nothing.
Meanwhile, the Teamsters are pressing U.S. Foodservice beyond the bargaining table. In recent weeks, several hundred union members picketed the National Restaurant Assn.’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., criticizing the trade group for lobbying against the card-check bill on behalf of U.S. Foodservice. The Teamsters also have demonstrated at the firm’s fast-food clients in the Northeast and passed out leaflets to patrons of those restaurants.
That may only be the beginning.
“We haven’t reached the level of intensity we’re going to see yet,” the Teamsters’ Mr. Banks says.
