Campaign furnishes a win for Teamsters

shape the Democrats’ 2018 campaign.

“I feel that labor should be helping make the platform,” he said. “No more Hillary Clinton, no more Bernie Sanders.”

Figueroa is clear on what he would like: a progressive party that embraces single-payer health care and increased wages to bring up salaries for all workers, as well as comprehensive immigration reform.

With innovation and creativity, he believes, unions can help get some of those things done.

Figueroa has plenty of experience with solving knotty problems. He helped get the minimum wage raised in New York State by hitching the union’s power to the discontent of fast-food workers, who played a vital role in the national “Fight for $15” movement.

In that fight, as in 32BJ’s successful drive to represent lowpaid airport workers, Figueroa didn’t follow the traditional labor pattern of trying to organize workers in one shop at a time.

Instead, he reached out across the industry, and created an industrywide demand for change from the bottom up.

It’s a technique that has borne fruit for 32BJ before, with its storied “Justice for Janitors” drive in the 1990s that organized poorly paid service workers around the country. In 2000, it got the Hollywood treatment in the Adrien Brody flick “Bread and Roses.”

“We know that we can organize across an industry, and those workers, whether they join the union or not, will ben- efit,” said Figueroa.

His 32BJ also played leading roles in New York’s passage of paid sick leave laws and legislation forcing fast-food and retail employers to give workers advance notice of shift changes and schedule alterations.

Figueroa, who grew up in Ponce, P.R., and first got his start organizing textile workers with Workers United, says today’s “gig economy” is nothing to fear.

“Listen, it’s always existed. A century ago, garmentmakers hired women to make pieces of clothing in their own homes, and someone would come pick it up when the work was done — if there had been an app for it back then, you could have placed orders online,” he said.

“The point is, we figured out how to organize those workers, we organized the whole industry. It can be done,” he said.

Figueroa is also frank about some of the shortcomings of traditional unions. For working Americans to stand a chance at attacking income inequality, the labor movement has to start including them all in the fight, he said.

“If the future of unions is just to collectively bargain contracts for fewer and fewer members each year, then maybe they shouldn’t be around in 20 or 50 years time,” he said.

“A big part of our job is educating union members, who are only 10% of working America, about why they need to care about the other 90%,” Figueroa said. A HALF-DOZEN Teamster furniture workers who were fired by their employer two months ago are gainfully employed once again as of last Wednesday.

The drivers and warehouse employees — all part of Teamsters Local 814 — worked at Waldner’s Business Environments’ facility in Farmingdale, L.I.

But in early July, the company said it was closing the warehouse for good.

It said it was going to deliver its furniture from facilities closer to the city and would use subcontractors to do the work formerly done by unionized employees.

The company said it was a cost-driven decision — but the Teamsters challenged the move as union-busting and mounted an aggressive campaign to get the company to change its mind.

Last Wednesday, Waldner’s said it will only use subcontractors that pay their workers fair wages and benefits.

It also said it found jobs for its existing Teamster employees in other delivery companies — allowing the Local 814 members to still work with Waldner’s.

“We fought for what was right, and we won a fair settlement,” said Kevin Roach, a 33-year Waldner’s worker and Local 814 shop steward.

“When workers fight back, and have the community behind us, we can get what we deserve. Thank you to all of the unions, elected officials, and Waldner’s customers who stood with us. In the end, with your help, Waldner’s did the right thing.”

Waldner’s is one of the largest office furniture companies in the New York City area and has been unionized for more than 50 years.

For several months, Waldner’s refused to bargain a new contract with Local 814, before firing the union workers July 5, triggering the union protests.

Teamsters Local 814 and Waldner’s workers immediately staged repeat job actions outside New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia, a recipient of Waldner’s deliveries.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital received hundreds of emails and messages on social media from activists affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union also contacted Waldner’s other customers for their support.