Workers have been holding strong at a picket line outside Dichello Distributors in Orange, Conn., since March 10, when they showed up to work at 4 a.m. and found themselves locked out by the owners.
Since that day, the 95 workers affected, members of Teamsters Local 443, have maintained a presence outside Dichello 24 hours a day. The company distributes Anheuser-Busch products to thousands of restaurants, bars and liquor and grocery stores in the area. People driving by honked their horns in support, and many have brought coffee and food to the line.
In February, the workers voted unanimously not to accept a new contract offered by Dichello. Under the proposed contract, the workers offered to sacrifice pay increases in order to maintain their benefits and pension program. Dichello's owner wants to end contributions to the workers' union-run healthcare and pension plans. The contract would also remove the guarantee of the employees having a minimum number of hours of work every week, and at the same time change the overtime pay structure to make it harder to earn overtime. Currently, the workers make overtime for any hours over eight per day. The proposal would limit overtime to any hours over 40 per week, which would be more difficult to reach with the reduced hours.
The company has put want ads in local papers for permanent replacements for the workers, and is hiring people from other states to continue operations.
It is clear to the workers what the owner is trying to do: "He's trying to break the union," said Randy Monsky, who has worked at Dichello since 1978. "The price of everything is going up around here, and we're just looking to keep our benefits."
The workers celebrated a small, but important, victory on April 12, when the state of Connecticut certified the situation as a lock-out and granted unemployment benefits to the workers. Dichello had been sending out press releases calling the action a strike, trying to shift the blame onto the workers.
The locked-out workers have asked local bars, restaurants and individuals to boycott the products distributed by Dichello, including Budweiser-brand beers, by not serving or ordering them. Some establishments have responded by taking the beer off their taps.
Monsky told Liberation: "We're holding out and we're going to keep holding out for the benefit package. That's what we need, that's what we want, and we'll be out here as long as we have to hold out for that."
