08/19/2022
A statement from a fired Foodlink worker on the National Labor Relations Board's investigation and subsequent settlement:
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My name is Cory Robinson, I worked at Foodlink mostly as a culinary and nutrition educator 2018-2021. I taught community cooking classes as my main job, but also was a part of the emergency response to Covid– if you received a box of emergency food during the first year of Covid, it’s likely that I supervised the warehouse where it was built. On Monday I signed a settlement agreement with the NLRB because I was illegally fired by Foodlink in July of 2021, at the height of a union organizing campaign. I write this letter to clarify the circumstances surrounding the union campaign, my firing, and the union-busting that took place when the campaign went public.
I came into Foodlink in April 2018 as an admirer of their work, and I still believe deeply in the necessity of a thriving, healthy Foodlink in our city. The union drive I was a part of in 2020 and 2021 was a labor of love to bring Foodlink into alignment with its stated goals and values.
Our union drive was met with threats, interrogations, lies, illegal firings, harassment, and surveillance of staff. If you take one thing away from this letter, let it be this: the violations which resulted in settlement were not incidental, accidental, or isolated: they were part of a broad and systematic campaign to undermine Foodlink’s workers’ basic rights to organize. The anti-union campaign was a series of coordinated actions by people who believed they were above criticism and above the law, a campaign executed to protect their power and their immunity from accountability which they’d come to expect and to abuse. Three different employee organizers were groundlessly fired during the campaign, I just happened to be the one who went to the NLRB.
On the specifics of my termination: in a broad sense, I was fired for being a known organizer on the union campaign, but in the proximate and immediate sense I was illegally and quite angrily fired by Foodlink’s President and CEO Julia Tedesco for advocating for the jobs of three women of color during a mass departmental layoff on July 29, 2021. This is not an editorial opinion– this was confirmed by a six-month investigation by federal investigators from the National Labor Relations Board, who unearthed and made official a wide variety of other illegal actions taken by Julia and the rest of the management team in their findings.
As for the origin of the campaign: it was born from a multitude of factors, as will happen with any grassroots workplace organization. On the generative side: we envisioned a workplace which was responsive and collaborative with its workers. We believed that people– all people– have a right to participate in the decisions that affect them. We believed this vision would benefit Foodlink’s direction in the long term by extending that philosophy outward to the people we serve and collaborate with.
There were also acute problems which the union campaign was a tool to address: a) Foodlink’s persistent and unaddressed racial segregation, immobility, and discrimination, b) hostile and unsafe working conditions, amplified by Covid, c) the constant refrain of “if you don’t like it here, you can leave” which was the standard response of leadership to any attempt at a change which they deemed threatening, and d) the systematic protection of workplace abusers and harassers, most notably and consistently by Mitch Gruber.
Regarding illegal activities during the height of union-busting activity in the building: employees were personally threatened that union organizing would ruin their careers, followed around the building, and of course fired and disciplined for their union sympathies. They were told that they would lose their benefits. It was made clear to employees that United Way Project Uplift support was conditional on Foodlink remaining a non-union workplace, and if they chose to unionize management would have no choice but to fire people for minor offenses. They used fear and job loss as their weapons, especially in the most segregated parts of the building.
Mitch Gruber told workers not to vote for the union, that the reason why Wegmans succeeds and TOPS doesn’t is because Wegmans is anti-union. Captive audience anti-union meetings were called, and these lies and others were offered to workers as fact. One manager removed a stack of union flyers from a public space illegally, was reminded of the law, and captured the attitude of Foodlink’s management in one unforgettably succinct phrase: “I can do whatever I want.” People became scared to be seen talking to organizers. The union campaign was, regrettably and illegally, halted in its tracks even as we had gathered over 60% of the workforce’s cards of support, and words of support from many others who were too frightened to sign. Although I am certain that we would have won a secret-ballot election, our union withdrew their support from our campaign in the face of an anti-union onslaught indistinguishable from that executed by Amazon or Starbucks.
The fact that Foodlink’s positive image and brand is being used to launder the abuse of power synonymous with our most predatory and immoral corporations should trouble you as it troubled me. These are people who publicly sell themselves as staunch supporters of unions and of working people, but fought them tooth and nail in their own workplace.
On Monday I signed a piece of paper that said I waive reinstatement to my position at Foodlink although I am legally entitled to it. I did so because it’s been over a year since I was fired, and I am so tired of continuing to litigate. However, in the spirit of still being a part of the Foodlink family until the back pay hits my bank account, I will be sending a letter to Foodlink’s board of directors sharing my thoughts and suggestions in more detail. In brief:
1) Do away with the practice of NDAs to maintain silence of employees at the end of employment.
2) Perform a board-level evaluation of Mitch Gruber’s behavior. It is an open secret in the building that Mitch is an abusive boss. When you have an semi-formal “crying room” for employees, mostly younger women, to retreat to after encounters with Mitch, and when “getting Mitched” (belittled and shouted at to the point of tears) is common parlance in the building even among upper management, that is a problem.
3) Share with the public how much money went toward fighting the union campaign with anti-union lawyers. No expense was spared– how much was it, and were community’s donations used for those purposes?
This settlement falls far short of justice served. I was made an example out of– when allyship becomes agitation, and furthermore grounds for termination, the message is clear: shut up or get fired. The amount of women of color who have been run out of Foodlink over the last five years is truly staggering, and detrimental to the long-term health of the organization. The amount of skeletons in this organization’s closet is staggering for a regional food bank. Fear was routinely used as a weapon to silence staff, and we turned to unionization as the only viable avenue to make the workplace safe to have conversations about race and structural change free from retaliation. Nothing about that state of affairs has fundamentally or structurally changed, and the best and brightest the company has to offer have been fired, chased away, or left in disgust in the last three years. The consequences of that loss on our community are tangible and can be measured in pounds of food– and are immeasurable in the way that only a hollowed out and morally broken environment can be.
I did absolutely everything in my power to make Foodlink a better and stronger organization for our community. I ultimately failed to do so. That said, my solidarity and love remains intact for all of those who refuse to shrug their shoulders and look away when they see people being harmed. With that, I pass the flickering torch of this affair to whomever feels inclined to pick it up– may you now do so armed with information.
Be cool,
Cory Robinson
