Our Perspective
Headline
Housing Works,
Respect Your Workers
and Negotiate!
Housing Works — which employs over 600
RWDSU members at housing units, thrift
stores, healthcare, and other locations
throughout its sprawling operations in New York
City — is hurting its employees by failing to negotiate a union contract in
good faith, which the RWDSU has alleged in a new unfair labor practice
charge filed with the NLRB. It’s outrageous conduct, but unfortunately, fits
the recent pattern from an employer that has fought its workers — and
betrayed the organization’s progressive roots — throughout the workers’
entire organizing campaign.
Housing Works was founded in 1990 by several members of ACT UP to
provide supportive services for people living with HIV/AIDS. But during the
workers’ organizing campaign, Housing Works has behaved more like an
insensitive corporate behemoth than a progressive organization with activist
roots. And now, during negotiations, we are seeing Housing Works’
management dive back into the same big-business anti-union playbook.
For almost a year, Housing Works employees have been trying to
negotiate their first union contract. They are seeking safer workplaces, a
voice on the job, and more manageable caseloads so they can give Housing
Works clients — some of the most vulnerable members of our
communities — better care. Housing Works is stalling on even the most
basic foundations of a union contract, including agreements on sufficient
layoff notice and protections and guaranteed livable wages for workers in
New York City. They fail to appreciate the bargaining committee’s concerns
on important issues, such as creating manageable caseloads, health and
safety training, safe workplaces, and providing unpaid mental health leave
for workers who may suffer mental health traumas on the job.
They reject the union’s wage demands but employ high-priced lawyers
as their contract negotiators. Management even showed its contempt for
workers by taking too long to engage productively in conversations about
workers’ preferred pronouns, which is painfully ironic considering Housing
Works was founded by LGBTQ activists during a global health crisis. Over
30 years later, amidst another global health crisis, Housing Works is
dismissing workers’ health and safety proposals and proper staffing
concerns, and making it clear that despite the workers’ successful union
organizing drive, management wants to pretend that nothing has changed.
On top of it all, Housing Works has wasted valuable time by providing
the bargaining committee with bad data for wage negotiations. As a result,
the RWDSU filed an unfair labor practice charge against Housing Works on
February 22, 2022 with the Brooklyn office of the NLRB for bad faith bargaining.
Housing Works employees started their grassroots campaign to
unionize with the RWDSU because they wanted to be able to do their jobs
better and provide better care for Housing Works clients.
These workers make a real difference in the lives of the
people they serve, and now, they want a union
contract to make a real difference in their ability to
provide for themselves and their families, and
provide proper care to their clients with the
protection, safety, and respect that they deserve.
COURIER L 10 IFE, MARCH 4-10, 2022
SUPER FUNDED
Schumer says Newtown Creek, should benefi t
from $3.5b toward ‘orphan’ sites
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
The long-delayed cleanup of the
Newtown Creek Superfund site needs
to be sped up, and an infl ux of federal
dollars toward National Superfund
cleanup should put the wind in the
sails of the Environmental Protection
Agency and the parties responsible for
funding the process, said Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday.
“Unfortunately, the polluters, even
when they agree to pay, want to delay
and minimize,” he said at a press conference
in front of the creek. “We want
the polluters to speed things up and
maximize.”
Brooklyn is home to three Superfund
sites — Newtown Creek, the
Gowanus Canal, and the Wolff-Alport
Chemical Company. The heavily-polluted,
often-dangerous sites are usually
a result of years of irresponsible
dumping of waste and chemicals by
large industrial companies. Once the
EPA designates a Superfund site, they
can identify the “potentially responsible
parties,” or PRPs, and force them to
contribute money to the cleanup.
Late last year, President Biden
signed off on the $1 trillion infrastructure
bill with promises of shoring
up the country’s roads and bridges.
Tucked away in the bill was $3.5 billion
for the cleanup of “orphan” Superfund
sites, like Wolff-Alport, which
don’t have any PRPs and rely entirely
on government funding for cleanup.
But Newtown Creek, a tributary of
the East River that cuts divides Brooklyn
and Queens, isn’t an orphan site,
with fi ve PRPs and the City of New
York agreeing to fund the cleanup under
a 2011 settlement with the EPA.
Since then, though, very little has
been done to clean up the Creek. In a
July 2021 community update, the EPA
said they anticipated issuing a cleanup
plan no sooner than 2024.
Schumer called for the “new Biden
administration EPA,” including recently
named regional director Lisa
Garcia, to hustle on the cleanup.
“We’re telling the EPA, we want
you to kick ass,” the longtime senator
said. “And get ExxonMobil, and Texaco,
and Phelps-Dodge, and National
Grid. All of these companies who so
polluted Newtown Creek to get moving
and clean it up.”
The $3.5 billion allocated to the orphan
sites should free up resources at
the EPA to “redouble their efforts” to
start pursuing the polluters, Schumer
said.
The money is a good start, but longterm
policy changes are needed to
keep the program funded and dirty
sites scrubbed, said Michael Lang, a
spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer visited Newtown
Creek on Friday, celebrating the allocation
of $3.5 billion to Superfund sites nationwide
and urging the EPA to take action
at Newtown Creek.
“In 2018, Velázquez introduced
legislation to reinstate the Superfund
tax on big oil and chemical companies,”
Lang said. “The Build Back Better
Act includes reinstatement of the
Superfund tax, taking action from the
congresswoman’s bill. This is imperative
to the fund’s long-term outlook.”
Velázquez’s proposed bill would
also create a special loan under the
Small Business Administration to
help small businesses who are suddenly
forced to move their operations
due to Superfund actions, he added.
Local Assemblymember Emily Gallagher
said the work to clean up the
creek goes hand-in-hand with ending
city and state reliance on fossil fuels,
which she said contributes to the ongoing
pollution at the creek as heavy
industry continues along its banks on
both sides.
“Oil is at the root of so many
harms, both human and environmental
and ecological, where we are seeing
so many things suffer because of
our legacy with oil,” she said. “So, our
fi rst step is getting this Superfund
site cleaned up, and our second step is
making sure there is never a site like
this again, and that we move forever
off of oil and gas as a source for anything.
We have other options.”
Cleaning up the polluted industrial
sites that border Newtown Creek
is necessary to keep the body healthy,
said Wllis Elkins, executive director
of the nonprofi t Newtown Creek Alliance,
because the chemicals that seep
into the ground often end up running
into the water.
“It’s not that, necessarily, they
need to shut down their operations,
per se, but it is that the industries that
have created a lot of the pollution still
have pollution on their sites,” he told
Brooklyn Paper. “In a larger sense,
yes, we need to be transitioning to
dirty fossil fuel, because that still is
posing not just a climate threat but
a threat to our local environment as
well.”
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union, UFCW
Twitter: @sappelbaum
www.rwdsu.org
/www.rwdsu.org
/www.rwdsu.org
