Thursday, September 7, 2017

Immigrant Workers: Important “Dirty Laundry” Piece, Update on Tom Cat Bakery Campaign

Dirty Laundry: An Investigation

By Annie Hylton, Dissent
Summer 2017
Drying and ironing press at an industrial laundry facility (xtrekx / Shutterstock)
It was before 6 a.m. on January 5, 2011 when Marlyn Gonzalez drove through darkness and freezing cold into the parking lot of the commercial laundry where she worked in Southampton, New York. After she dropped off her mother, who also worked at Suffolk Laundry, and parked her car, Gonzalez was surprised to find her manager, Rajindra Singh, waiting for her in the lot. When she tried to get out of her car, Singh blocked her. He put his hand on Gonzalez’s knee, running it all the way up to what she called her “intimate parts” and told her that he wanted “to touch [her] pussy.”

Gonzalez got away from Singh by telling him she had a boyfriend. She got to her workstation at the laundry and began feeding sheets into a machine. “I was shaking. I was very nervous. I felt my blood boiling,” she described in a later testimony.

This incident, which Marlyn Gonzalez recounted to me in an interview, was part of a lawsuit brought in 2012 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), suing Suffolk Laundry Services for a sexually hostile work environment and for retaliation by management against all eight plaintiffs when they complained. Suffolk denied both charges.[…]

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Tom Cat Workers Rally to Launch Next Phase of Campaign

August 29, 2017
Tom Cat workers. Photo: Erik McGregor/Sipa via AP Images
Tom Cat workers resisting the company's collaboration with a Trump administration ICE audit are ready to launch the next phase of their campaign and they need you to stand with them. Workers are demanding that Tom Cat a) pay dignified severance so they can rebuild their lives and b) adopt an immigrant worker protection policy for those who remain, which will serve as a model to other employers in the Trump-era.

The rally, hosted by Brandworkers, Immigrant Worker Justice, and the Food Chain Workers Alliance, will be held Thursday, September 7, 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm. Meet up at 51st Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.

More information:
More on the Tom Cat Bakery workers:          

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