Joliet Herald-News: In Dr. King’s footsteps
Group of 100 organizes a boycott to peacefully protest a company they say mistreated and fired local workers
January 19, 2010
By CINDY WOJDYLA CAIN
JOLIET — On a day set aside to honor civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a group of warehouse workers, community leaders and local clergy gathered at Sacred Heart Church to launch a peaceful protest of their own: a boycott of Bissell products.
The boycott stems from the termination of 70 employees who joined a union last year and complained about working conditions at the Bissell Homecare Inc. warehouse in Elwood.
Former warehouse employees allege they were paid below minimum wage, women were paid less than men, a pregnant worker was assigned heavy lifting and employees who complained were threatened with retaliation.
“How can we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King without addressing the injustice that exists in our backyard,” asked the Rev. Craig Purchase, of Mount Zion Tabernacle Church, who is president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s Joliet chapter.
Betty Washington, first vice president for the Joliet chapter of the NAACP, said she thinks King would have been pleased with Monday’s event, which drew about 100 people to the church at 337 S. Ottawa St.
“I believe Will County has become a place where warehouses come and use our citizens without paying them a living wage, and it adds to the poverty level here in Will County,” she said. “Yes they’re bringing jobs into the community, but for the most part people work 90 days and then they’re let go.”
Stacy Moskowitz, a Bissell spokeswoman, said the workers lost their jobs when Roadlink Workforce Solutions, a temp agency, decided to end its staffing contract with Maersk Distribution Services, the company hired by Bissell to manage the facility.
The termination of that pact, not worker complaints, appears to be “the root of the dispute,” she said.
“We have no information that Maersk has done anything wrong in the way that it has operated the facility,” Moskowitz said in a press release.
Both Maersk and Roadlink also have issued statements in the past denying any worker mistreatment at the warehouse that opened a year ago at Route 53 and Ira Morgan Road.
Boycott list
The Rev. Herbert Brooks Jr., who serves on the Will County Board, said he was happy with the “fantastic” turnout at Monday’s event.
“The 100 people told us, ‘We’re not going to take it anymore.’ And that’s what I loved best about it,” he said.
The Rev. Raymond Lescher, pastor at Sacred Heart, said the hearing was just the first step.
“We have to keep the pressure on and we have to stay focused.”
Leaders from Chicago-based Warehouse Workers for Justice, who helped organize the Joliet event, say they hope the boycott spreads from church to church and town to town. They distributed a list of Bissell products — including vacuum cleaners, mops, brooms, brushes, cleaning formulas and sweepers — that they urged the group to boycott.
Michael Meinster, a Warehouse Workers for Justice board member, said Bissell — not Maersk — is the target of the boycott because the company has the ultimate power to fix conditions at the warehouse and rehire the workers.
“They hold the strings,” he said. “Maersk works for them.”
‘Un-American’ acts
Scott Marshall, a mass communications professor at University of St. Francis, said he plans to go into area stores to tell managers that he is boycotting Bissell products to drive the point home.
“It’s un-American to treat workers that way,” he said of the alleged abuses.
Orland Rivera, of Wilmington, said his salary at the Bissell warehouse was cut from $12 to $10.50 with no warning. Rivera, 50, said he was laid off three times from warehouse jobs in 2008 and three more times in 2009. He remains unemployed after being fired from the Bissell job with 69 co-workers Nov. 6. He’s looked for other warehouse jobs, but they’re all staffed by temp agencies, he said.
After the Bissell workers were terminated, Warehouse Workers for Justice filed complaints against Maersk and Roadlink with the Illinois and U.S. labor departments and the National Labor Relations Board. In December, the group filed a class action lawsuit against the temp agency that staffs the Walmart warehouse in Joliet for allegedly not paying employees for all the hours they worked and for overtime. All of the cases are pending.