Workers went on strike December 5 after Flex-O-Tex owner Gabriel Blau refused to negotiate with UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. "The owner does not want to negotiate with us," UNITE organizer Alfredo Mieses said. "He says he doesn't have the resources to meet the contract proposal."

The union's proposed contract includes medical insurance, paid sick days, paid personal days, the establishment of a union health and safety committee, and recognition of UNITE as the sole representative of the workers. It also includes a substantial wage increase--75 percent the first year, 45 percent the second year, and 40 percent the third year of the proposed three-year agreement.

The wage increases and other demands would bring conditions at Flex-O-Tex into line with those at other laundries in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area where UNITE won a number of organizing victories and contracts last year. Workers at Princeton Laundry across the street from Flex-O-Tex are covered by the agreement. Currently workers at Flex-O-Tex make minimum wage or slightly above it regardless of the amount of time they've been on the job.

All 52 of the workers at the plant signed the petition to join the union and it was presented to the company October 30. About half walked off the job December 5. Another worker, Juana Gonzalez, explained, "The workers still working inside are working only because they are intimidated by the boss. He threatened to fire them if they joined the picket line. We want a real union for all of us--for those still inside and for us out here on the picket line."

Workers at Flex-O-Tex decided to join UNITE after their previous union, the Teamsters, failed repeatedly to help them wage a fight for wage increases and benefits.

"The company wants us to have no benefits but that's not right," said Herlinda Martinez, a presser for nine years. "I have unpaid bills from the hospital and I can't possibly pay them. We have no insurance and I make less than $7 an hour. We are not asking for the world. We only want what is fair."

In an article in the Spanish language daily newspaper El Diario, Blau stated, "These people don't understand what is happening with the company. We have had to make bank loans to keep the business operating. Now members of UNITE are sending letters to my clients and we have lost our best contract."

Flex-O-Tex services hotels and nursing homes in New York City. Marino Morel, another UNITE organizer at the picket line, reported that one of the hotels that has stopped doing business with Flex-O-Tex is the Helmsley Hotel. Morel also said they are mounting a campaign to inform the surrounding community of what the union is fighting for, contacting the company's clients to let them know the stakes in the fight, and taking the issues in the fight to the media, as well as planning activities to build solidarity for the strike.

The workers at Flex-O-Tex are from various Latin American countries, including the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Maritza Córdoba, a leader of the strike, explained how the boss "thinks that because many of us don't speak enough English, he can treat us like animals and deny us our rights." She added, "He signs or closes down. We all work or nobody works."

Bill Estrada and John Hawkins are meat packers and members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 174.  
 
 
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