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Sunset Park food workers battle for living wage

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By Max Jaeger

Brooklyn Daily

Workers at a Sunset Park food production plant are fed up with an employer threatening to put them out of work to avoid paying a living wage.

The workers used their lunch break on Oct. 2 to protest Maramont Corp., which provided prepared meals to Brooklyn schools until the city yanked its $82 million contract in September after a judge ruled the company had been underpaying its workers.

The company has already announced it will close a plant in East New York and has hinted it will shutter the Sunset Park plant as well, which employs 130 people — mainly from the neighborhood, according to union officials, who said Maramont is known for its bullying tactics.

“They’re a real gang of thieves,” said Julie Kelly of the union group Workers United, citing a 2011 stunt when the company moved its operation to Pennsylvania for six months to try to avoid New York’s new living wage laws. “They kept the New York City schools contract and laid off 130 people with no notice.”

Now locals fear they may be out on the street again at any moment.

“We are worried they will lay everyone off,” said food worker Leticia Medina through a translator.

And she has seen it before. Medina worked at the Sunset Park plant when Maramont abruptly moved its operation to Pennsylvania in 2011, she said. Medina worked odd jobs but suffered financial troubles until Maramont returned to Brooklyn later that year, she said.

“We couldn’t buy food,” she said. “We had difficulty paying rent.”

Maramont returned because it wasn’t making food deliveries from Pennsylvania to New York on time, said Workers United’s Luis Gomez, but the return was a quiet one. The company re-hired former workers but told them they couldn’t unionize, according to Gomez — but after workers blew the whistle on the illegal tactic, they were able to join a union.

Until recently, Maramont was embroiled in a lawsuit stretching back to 2007, because workers claimed the food producer wasn’t paying the living wage — a minimum the city requires employers with municipal contracts to pay workers. A judge ruled in June that Maramont had underpaid workers to the tune of $88 million between 2001 and 2011.

Unions and workers are calling on Maramont to pay what it owes them, but they are also asking the city to reinstate the contract to provide meals for schools and homeless shelters, so they can keep their jobs.

On Sept. 30, Mayor DeBlasio signed an executive order expanding the scope of the city’s living wage law, and raising the base wage to $13.13 an hour for workers who do not receive benefits

Maramont did not return requests for comment. But chief executive officer Joseph Bistritzky contended the company was not subject to living wage requirements and characterized the requirements as a “cockamamie thing,” according to court documents.

Reach reporter Max Jaeger at mjaeg‌er@cn‌gloca‌l.com or by calling (718) 260?8303. Follow him on Twitter @JustTheMax.

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