NEW BEDFORD — A complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board against New Bedford tire recycler Bob’s Tire Co. and the temp agency BJ’s Service Company, which supplied much of Bob’s workforce, has been settled for just under $1 million, an attorney has confirmed. The complaint was filed Oct. 28, 2021 after a group of workers there staged a protest about working conditions and were fired shortly after.
According to the settlement agreement between United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 328 and Bob’s Tire, Bob’s was required to ensure full payment by way of a “financial instrument” such as a surety bond or letter of credit for $999,908 by April 1.
When contacting BJ’s Service Company, which is not named in the settlement, The Standard-Times was referred to attorney John Whitesight, who did not return a voice message. An employee who answered the phone at Bob’s Tire said owner Bob Bates was unavailable, and they did not believe the company would wish to comment.
Get some background:Union stepping up protests over Bob’s Tire, citing wages, working conditions.
Requests for comment from the union were not returned, however an associate on the phone confirmed that Bob’s Tire employees are no longer unionized under Local 328.
What else is in the agreement?
The agreement, signed by the involved parties back in February, also entailed mandatory training for supervisors and managers of Bob’s Tire, requiring the company to schedule one mandatory 45-minute NLRB training session, to take place at the Bob’s facility at 55 Brooke St. during work time.
“The training session will cover employee rights protected under the National Labor Relations Act and will include additional time for questions and answers,” the agreement reads.
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In addition to posting notice of and announcing the settlement to current Bob’s Tire workers, the agreement also requires Bob’s to text a copy of the notice in English and Spanish to affected current and former employees who worked there after April 28, 2021.
What led to this?
The publicly-known troubles between Bob’s Tire Co. and its employees stem back to at least 2016, when workers began protesting working conditions. They’d unionized the year before in 2015. In July 2020, Bob’s was fined over $58,000 for OSHA violations.
Then, on Oct. 25, 2021, a group of workers — 26, according to media reports — were protesting again when someone from Bob’s Tire, whose name is redacted in the complaint document, allegedly “disparaged the Union and made statements of futility to employees,” according to the complaint, and acted “to discourage employees from engaging in these and other concerted activities.” The involved employees were then terminated.
According to a GoFundMe page set up by Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores to help the fired workers — identified on the page as being of indigenous Maya K’iché descent — the October 2021 protest was in response to alleged sexual harassment of employees at Bob’s “and their employer’s inaction” when it was reported.
In the investigation stage of the complaint filed shortly after, the workers were helped by Boston-based non-profit Justice At Work, according to staff attorney Pablo Carrasco. Carrasco said Justice At Work represented two workers in providing sworn, confidential affidavits to the NLRB and coordinated meetings between the workers, Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (“CCT”), and the NLRB.
