It is the largest wholesale market for agricultural products in the country – described as “Costco with steroids” – and the nerve center for food supply in New York City, supplying more than half of the fruits and vegetables that end up in delivery boxes and dishes restaurants and supermarket shelves.
But a strike above a $ 1 hourly wage increased demand at the Hunts Point Product Market in the Bronx, the first in more than three decades, hampered its operations, leaving some products rotting and threatening to damage a normally perfect supply chain. .
The last strike, in 1986, led to a scarcity of everything from artichokes to grapes.
This time, the workers, members of a powerful local Teamsters, entered the sixth day of their strike on Friday after negotiations over a three-year contract broke over payment. The union called for an increase of $ 1.60 an hour each year from a three-year contract, with $ 1 of the increase to go to wages. The direction of the market, a cooperative made up of 29 salespeople, countered with an offer of 92 cents an hour each year, with 32 cents to pay.
The dispute raises questions about how employees are treated at a time when the pandemic generated a major divide between people who had to attend work and others who were able to work from home.
Workers, who earn between $ 15 and $ 22 an hour, say they deserve a better raise because they are risking health to supply the city with food during the outbreak.
Six workers died and about 300 fell ill after contracting the coronavirus, said Charles Machadio, union vice president, Teamsters Local 202, and a veteran market worker. Even so, the market remained open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“We all live in an uncertain world. I may be dead tomorrow, so can you, ”he said. Mr. Machadio said that market traders must recognize that workers “have come to work, keeping their businesses running, risking their lives”.
A dollar increase, he said, would be a way of saying “thanks for coming to work, you really are heroes”.
None of the traders contacted wanted to talk about the labor disagreement, but they did provide a joint statement.
She said the cooperative spent $ 3 million on personal protective equipment for workers and changed workflows and workstations to make the market safer, without having to fire anyone.
“Despite all these challenges, we are very proud to have kept our union workers – the vast majority of whom live right here in the Bronx – working and on payroll with all the health benefits, since the Bronx had an unemployment rate 40 percent, ”said the statement.
Although hundreds of workers have left their jobs, the strike so far does not appear to have had a significant impact on food supplies, according to some supermarkets supplied by the market.
Union members set up pickets outside the expanding market every day, and on Tuesday, police arrested six of them for obstructing traffic.
Several prominent politicians, all Democrats, entered the race. Deputies Ritchie Torres and Andrew Yang, who is running for mayor, met in front of the market terminal on Monday. And on Wednesday, MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez distributed hand warmers and coffee to strikers.
“There are a lot of things upside down in our economy,” she said. “One of the things that is upside down is the fact that a person who is helping to put food on their table cannot feed their own children.”
The strike comes at a time when labor groups are pressing the city to grant greater protection to workers, especially those in the food industry. Last month, the City Council passed two bills backed by unions that prohibit large fast-food companies from firing employees without a valid reason and allow them to appeal dismissals through arbitration.
But in Hunts Point, the cooperative backed down, saying the pandemic, which closed many restaurants permanently, was a blow to its business, costing tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
The cooperative’s merchants buy products from farms and importers and then distribute the products throughout the city and throughout the region. The market moves 300,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables every day – about 60 percent of all the city’s production, according to some estimates – and says it has about $ 2.3 billion in revenue each year.
Despite the strike, the market remains open and the cooperative has hired temporary workers to stop the strike to load and unload trucks, causing strikes of anger among strikers whenever a truck arrives at the market entrance.
Noah Lea, who runs a branch of the CTown supermarket chain on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, said he gets all of his green vegetables from Hunts Point, carrying 400 pounds five times a week.
“I’m not worried right now,” he said, adding that the chain protects itself from potential disruptions when it has multiple markets, including the Philadelphia Wholesale Market, a competitor to Hunts Point.
Other supermarket chains, including Gristedes, have also looked to markets other than Hunts Point since the last strike to avoid possible shortages and obtain lower prices. Large chains, like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, do not depend on the market for their products.
Striking workers from Hunts Point said that despite the security measures adopted by the cooperative, the market remains full of workers who sometimes work in closed spaces. The market is “as crowded as Penn Station,” said one worker, Francisco Soto.
Some 3,000 employees, 1,400 of them unionized, work in the vast 113-acre product market, said Machadio, who, along with separate meat and fish markets, makes up the Hunts Point Distribution Center.
“We are exposing ourselves to getting sick and making our families sick, but we have not shrunk a bit,” said Diego Rutishauser, 49, who has worked in various jobs in the produce market for 27 years.
Mr. Rutishauser wakes up at 2 am every day and takes two buses and a train from his home in Jamaica, Queens, to get to work at 5 am
“We are not asking for the impossible,” he said.
Charles Platkin, director of the New York City Food Policy Center, said that the longer the strike continues, the more likely it is that the supply of products will become more difficult.
But he said workers deserve some recognition for keeping the market going during a major public health crisis.
“Because it is responsible for much of our food supply, it is important to recognize the power of this market and the importance of these frontline workers,” said Platkin, “and how important it is for your city to pay attention to the workforce there. “