Car wash business owners in the city seem to be increasingly worried about the growing number of their workers organizing to fight for their rights.
And who can blame them? These are not the same docile, fearful carwasheros they were able to exploit with impunity for many years.
The 20 workers of K&P Car Wash in the Bronx know their rights and are intent on having them respected.
They rallied outside their job Wednesday to protest a bold move by a group of owners to discourage them from becoming the eighth car wash in the city to have its employees join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union over the last two years.
The workers say the Association of Car Wash Owners’ top brass closed the business mid-day Friday to meet with employees and urge them to not unionize.
“They came bringing coffee, pastries, sodas, and told us, ‘Let’s talk,'” said Guillermo Brizuelas, a 23-year-old immigrant from El Salvador who makes $6.30 an hour at K&P.
“They said they are not opposed to the union, but that we should be careful, that there are bad unions,” he added. “It was harassment, it was intimidation. They wanted us to be fearful of reprisals if we continued organizing.”
It is not that the demand of the carwasheros is unreasonable. They are asking for a better salary, better working conditions and respect for their legal right to join a union.
But it seems those demands are too much for the 90-member Association of Car Wash Owners, which formed two years ago in response to their employees’ new activism.
The association’s president, Steve Rotlevi, took time off from running his East New York car wash to personally “harangue” the employees for half an hour, the workers said.
He was joined by the group’s lawyer Steve Hans and Frank Roman, who owns the Sunny Day Car Wash in the Bronx.
“These tactics on the part of the owners’ association are reprehensible,” RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said. “The workers felt threatened and intimidated.”
The Association of Car Wash Owners said in a statement the union is the one “using tactics of intimidation” instead of letting official labor board procedures move the situation along.
Workers say they won’t be derailed.
“For us there is no turning back,” Brizuelas said. “We have been exploited too much.”
albor.ruiz@aol.com