Cintas has 351 plants in North America and employs more than 30,000 workers. A spokesperson for the law firm Spector Gadon & Rosen said more than 1,000 Cintas employees will be part of the suit against the union, which was initiated in June 2004 by employees at the company’s Emmaus, Pennsylvania, plant. The suit also targets the union’s president, Bruce Raynor, and the Teamsters union, which organizes Cintas drivers.

The lawsuit claims that union organizers violated the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994, which prohibits most disclosure and use of personal information obtained through motor vehicle records, when they allegedly took down workers’ license plate numbers to find their home addresses. A U.S. district judge granted class-action status to the case last June and said workers could receive $2,500 each in damages for each time the union used motor vehicle records to make home visits or mail materials, potentially adding up to tens of millions of dollars in fines for the union.

Many workers support the unionizing effort and blame the company for the lawsuit. Eleuteria Mazon, 54, a sewing machine operator at the Cintas plant in Schaumburg, Illinois, told the Wall Street Journal that the company attached flyers to workers’ paychecks encouraging workers to call a toll-free number to join the lawsuit and posted it on the company bulletin board. “In my plant there are no people against the union. There are a lot of people who are afraid to support the union because of the retaliation that the company may have against them,” Mazon said.

Marick Masters, a professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh, told the Journal the lawsuit will have a “very chilling effect” on workers’ willingness to support the organizing drive at Cintas.

Cintas has acquired more than 200 companies, many of which had union workforces at the time they were bought. But only a few hundred of these workers are represented by unions today.

In 2003 about 2,400 Cintas drivers filed a lawsuit demanding compensation for overtime worked without pay.

A fact sheet posted on the union’s website reports that “the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has charged Cintas with illegally firing and disciplining union supporters, threatening workers with plant closures and unlawful interrogations, among dozens of other charges.” It also reports sex and race discrimination complaints from Cintas workers.Cintas made $300.5 million in profits last year, up 10.4 percent from the previous year. Many production workers at Cintas make $7-$9 per hour, the union website reports.
 
 
Related articles:
Longshore locals back labor defense case  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home