Grocery Teamster Gets Job Back, Prepares to Organize for More

Sixteen months after his illegal firing, Juan Vargas walked into work in June to cheers and pats on the back from his co-workers at the Anthony Marano Company, a major produce distributor in the Chicago area. He won full back pay.

“They fired me because they wanted to intimidate the other workers,” said Vargas in Spanish. “But with my reinstatement, we have won two against the company,” meaning his job and a better contract won through organizing.

With 23 years at the company, Vargas, a Teamsters Local 703 member, had led the charge to organize for a stronger contract in 2023. He had a target on his back because during contract talks, he agitated his co-workers to improve the subpar health insurance plan, low wages, management harassment, and grueling line speeds.

In his many years at the company, new contracts had come with meager $1 wage increases and no retirement plan. He asked the Local 703 business agent why the workers didn’t have a pension or 401(k) like other Teamsters. “The union rep would get upset when we asked these questions,” Vargas said. “To get answers, we had to go to the community.”

They also had to go to the community because the majority of the 600 workers were Spanish-speaking and the Teamsters business agent couldn’t communicate with them. They had no choice but to organize among themselves, with support from the worker center Chicago Community and Workers’ Rights and the national rank-and-file group Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

“When the Marano workers approached us with questions about their labor rights, we told them that if they wanted to improve their jobs, they had to participate in union meetings to press for the changes they wanted to see,” said Martin Unzueta, director of CCWR, in Spanish.

GRASSROOTS CONTRACT CAMPAIGN

At first the workers met in a garage. But when the weather got colder, they moved the meetings to Vargas’s home. He hosted weekly meetings with 40 workers in his basement to discuss bargaining demands and a plan for action.

In February 2023, 70 Marano Teamsters attended a workshop co-hosted by TDU and CCWR on building a contract campaign. They created and distributed flyers with contract demands. They made matching Teamster baseball caps and wore them to work during negotiations in a show of unity.

Meetings that had started with a few workers culminated when 200 people met with a Teamsters business agent to present their contract demands.

As the campaign gained momentum, management retaliated against four members who had appeared on a leaflet—reducing their hours and arbitrarily denying them bonuses.

The company fired Vargas after he refused to participate in a meeting where the union and the company tried to discourage the workers from meeting outside of work.

Members campaigned for Vargas’s reinstatement and continued to organize for a stronger contract. With TDU’s help, Vargas took his case to court through the grievance process and the National Labor Relations Board.

DALE: A FEAR-REDUCING TOOL

Vargas won at arbitration and returned to work in June with full back pay. His co-workers made use of new guidelines issued last January by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, under a program known as DALE—Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement.

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

The DALE program is meant to protect immigrant workers from deportation when they have experienced abuse on the job or are participating as witnesses in an investigation of workplace violations. These workers are granted a four-year work permit and protection from deportation.

Vargas’s reinstatement removes a powerful tool in bosses’ hands: immigration-related intimidation and retaliation. Immigrant workers are often afraid to endanger their status by organizing at work. With CCWR’s help, 90 workers who were witnesses to Marano's flagrant labor violations filed for work permits through DALE.

Workers said that after they got their work permits, the company started circulating rumors that it would deny them their benefits and seniority, cutting back their wages and bringing them on the books as new hires.

Angelica Campa started working at Marano in 2013. Her pay went up to $16.90 from $15.40 last year. Now she was worried that with a work permit, her pay might be docked to Chicago’s current minimum wage of $16.20, as if she were new.

The Anthony Marano Company refused to answer multiple requests for comment via phone and email. But Campa and other workers, with union backup, confronted management about the rumors.

“After some talks, now all our benefits will remain the same as before, including health insurance,” she said in Spanish.

A NEW PANORAMA

“The contract fight has changed the whole panorama,” said Margarita Hernandez, a packer who started working at the company in 2006.

Before, “we were routinely disrespected by managers with a haughty attitude,” she said, "and told to quit if we didn’t like the bad treatment. We knew that we deserved more, but we didn’t know where to start. TDU has offered us an education to fight with the fundamentals of the law on our side. We are no longer blind.”

Next she plans to run for shop steward.

Vargas said workers got a raise of between 50 cents and $3 immediately, and $5 over the course of the five-year contract. Previous increases were meager, in the range of 50 cents to $1, and didn’t keep up with the minimum wage.

Workers also won language on safety and harassment for the first time. And they got to vote on their contract—another first.

Now Vargas is focused on picking up the unfinished organizing from this last round of negotiations.

“We still need to improve the health insurance, so new hires have the same benefits as longer-term workers,” he said. “We still need to fight for a pension or 401(k).”