NYC is a Union-Busting Town: The “Progressive” Mayor, The Union-Busters, Hornblower & the NYC Ferry
Department of Labor Document shows the company running the New York City Ferry service, Hornblower Cruises, hired a union-busting firm early this year while Mayor Bill de Blasio claimed it to be a “strong union employer”. Hornblower has a history of anti-unionism, racist and homophobic work environments, and even wage and benefit theft.
The New York City subsidiary of Hornblower Cruises, HNY Ferry Fleet LLC, hired the union-busting firm Kulture Consulting in January of this year. NYC recently chose Hornblower to take over the city’s ferry services. Mayor Bill de Blasio said it was because “their proposal was better, period, on many levels and they’ve done great work in the harbor”. De Blasio also claimed Hornblower held a “decade-long record as a strong union employer.” This couldn’t be further from the truth regarding Hornblower’s labor record. Despite an image of being a “progressive”, this comment shouldn’t be surprising given De Blasio’s willingness to recently go to bat for notorious union-busters like Amazon.
Hornblower began an agreement with Kulture on January 14th of this year. The agreement was handled through Mitch Randall who serves as Hornblower’s general counsel. The document was filed with the Department of Labor by Kulture, however Hornblower has failed to file the required LM-10 document with the Office of Labor Management Standards. In August of 2017, a union election was filed by the Seafarers International Union. The election ended in a defeat for the union. Then in November of 2018, another election was filed by the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association. The election took place early this year and the union won. For both elections, as well as another one in California, Hornblower hired the anti-union law firm Greenberg Traurig.
THE UNION-BUSTERS: THE LAW FIRM
On Greenberg Traurig’s website under their Labor-Management Relations section, it’s written that they train HR and management in “union awareness”. A pamphlet on the website from 2015 advertises their Union Awareness Workshop. Included in the workshop is “best practices for avoiding a union”. Multiple attorneys on the website specialize in “union avoidance”. Union awareness, like union avoidance, is simply a nicer sounding phrase for union-busting. One attorney even has as one of their achievements that they:
“Acted as counsel to manufacturing and health care businesses in the conduct of counter-organizing campaigns and representation cases before the NLRB, thwarting union efforts to organize and defending unfair labor practice charges arising from the campaigns.”
Around the same time in 2018, Greenberg Traurig was hired by Amazon to fight the opposition to their now failed HQ2 in Queens, NYC. Former NYC Council Member Mark Weprin was brought in by Greenberg Traurig to help Amazon. Weprin left his position as Deputy Secretary to Governor Andrew Cuomo to join the law firm in 2017. Both Cuomo and De Blasio have received large campaign contributions from Greenberg Traurig. Cuomo even hired the firm as outside counsel during a scandal from early 2017 to the end of 2018 spending around $200,000.
THE UNION-BUSTERS: THE CONSULTANT
The union-busting consultant brought in by Kulture Consulting was former union official Rian Wathen. Before entering the union-busting business Wathen was a Director of Communications, Organizing and Collective Bargaining at UFCW Local 700. When Wathen was still working for UFCW in 2003 he was quoted saying that at Walmart:
“Behind that smiley face is a single mother who makes $7.50 an hour and can’t afford health insurance for her family…Now that’s not a very happy face.”
After leaving the labor movement in 2006 he went to work for the union-busting firm Labor Relations Services Inc. In 2017, he left and became a senior consultant at Kulture Consulting. A short video from 2009 of Wathen speaking to the Heritage Foundation about the Employee Free Choice Act aka Card Check is still available:
The DOL document states that Wathen “Presented informational meetings to company employees relative to the process of unionization, the role of the NLRB, and collective bargaining”.
THE UNION-BUSTERS: HORNBLOWER
Hornblower hiring a union-busting consultant and anti-union law firm is simply the most recent anti-worker behavior by the company. In 2006, Hornblower took over the ferry service to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco from a company that was union. Hornblower was non-union and only rehired some of the former union employees. The union has attempted to unionize the location but has yet to do so, claiming that Hornblower was illegally firing and spying on employees trying to unionize.
Hornblower has also faced multiple discrimination claims and lawsuits by employees. There are numerous cases of Black employees being harassed and discriminated against. One example from New York was:
“Two former black employees are currently suing the ferry operator’s subsidiary Statue Cruises, claiming they were fired because of their race. Their accusations were bolstered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigated the claims and found that the company created a hostile environment for the former workers. The federal agency also concluded that there was reasonable cause to believe the workers were discriminated against based on their race.”
Another employee in San Francisco, Ayo Jiboku, was repeatably terrorized and harassed by co-workers and even one of his supervisors. One co-worker left racist notes around the workplace and his supervisor sent him a racist text message:
“When Jiboku texted a Christmas greeting to numerous employees, including one of Jiboku’s supervisors, Doug Linares, Linares responded with one of his own. The text pictured a child with Down Syndrome, with his thumbs pointed down to a shirt that read, ‘At least I am not a dumb n*****r.’
Jiboku was stunned. He issued a formal complaint to Human Resources about the text. But he says Human Resources Director Anne Levine told him nothing could be done, and, in fact, that it was half his fault for allowing Linares to have his contact information.”
The company did nothing to protect Jiboku and their only response was to give one of the harassers a raise and move them to another department. The supervisor who sent the racist text was even promoted twice while Jiboku was there. Another employee, Vincent Atos, was one of the few openly gay employees and was pro-union. Atos says he was fired a week after openly supporting unionization. Hornblower claimed that Atos sexually harassed a co-worker, while Atos claimed that raunchy and graphic jokes were common among employees and that he was targeted for being gay and pro-union.
Howard Flecker III in New Jersey complained about the company failing to pay overtime and says he was then threatened and ostracized by management. Flecker brought a lawsuit against CEO Terry MacRae and Hornblower. The company even turned Flecker’s co-workers against him by sending out a company email saying the lawsuit forced them to cut hours. A jury eventually ruled in Flecker’s favor. Hornblower is also currently the subject of a class-action lawsuit for wage theft by withholding tips from employees. If that wasn’t enough, last October Hornblower was forced to pay $2.75 million for illegally denying healthcare benefits to workers by violating San Francisco law:
“An investigation by the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement found that the companies created complex policies to deny employees health benefits that they were entitled to under the Health Care Accountability Ordinance and the Health Care Security Ordinance. An enforcement action by the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and the City Attorney’s Office produced the settlement without the need to file a lawsuit.”
As of now, Hornblower is attempting to appeal the election results in NYC. Hornblower also recently bought Seadog Cruises from Governor J.B Pritzker’s venture capital firm. Workers were attempting to unionize and one worker, Billy Dean, even confronted the governor about the company’s union-busting campaign. The company hired the infamous union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis. The election was a loss and Dean was eventually forced out a few days after the sale. In an email, Dean said that shifts can frequently increase from 10 to 14 hours in the hot sun if the company wants, with breaks often impossible to take. Employees are even forced to take breaks near their boats in case they’re needed. Dean guaranteed the same “general bad conditions” were being continued by Hornblower.
