[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 106 (Wednesday, July 15, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H8162-H8163]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1815
                  CALLING FOR BOYCOTT OF STELLA D'ORO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues. I want to call 
everyone's attention to something that is happening in my district. It 
is actually very disgraceful. There is a plant called Stella D'oro. 
Everyone knows about Stella D'oro, the cookies and the cakes that they 
make. In fact, for many years I spoke about Stella D'oro with a sense 
of pride. When I appeared on the Colbert show, I took out a package of 
cookies, of bread sticks of Stella D'oro's and talked with pride about 
some of the things that were being made in my district.
  The Stella D'oro company was founded in 1932 and was family run until 
they sold to RJR Nabisco in 1992. RJR Nabisco became a part of Kraft 
Foods. It was taken over by Kraft. And what happened was, Kraft Foods 
then sold Stella D'oro to a company called Brynwood Partners. Brynwood 
Partners really doesn't care about running this place or being fair to 
its workers. It really only cares about the bottom line. So what they 
did was they pushed the workers, and they told them that in order to 
keep their jobs, in order to finance their purchase of Stella D'oro, 
the workers would have to take a 25 percent pay cut for its 135 
workers, many of whom had worked there for decades, were proud of the 
product

[[Page H8163]]

they created. And besides that, they didn't stop there. They told the 
workers that they would have to make health insurance unaffordable by 
imposing crushing premiums on these people, eliminating their holidays, 
eliminating their vacation and sick pay and other crippling costs. So 
the workers, who are not making a lot of money to begin with, there is 
no way that they could suddenly accept this. So they went on strike. 
And Stella D'oro--again, Brynwood Partners--responded by hiring a bunch 
of scabs to replace the strikers and, in essence, dismiss the strikers. 
Well, the strikers appealed to the National Labor Relations Board, the 
NLRB; and the NLRB ruled in favor of the strikers. It told Brynwood, 
who now runs Stella D'oro, that they must take the striking workers 
back with some back pay.
  And now what is Brynwood Partners threatening to do? They are saying 
that they're going to close down, shut down the company entirely; and 
in essence, these workers would totally lose their jobs. How vindictive 
that is. They win a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board only 
to have Brynwood Partners say they're going to shut down this company, 
which has been run since 1932. It's really disgraceful when a company 
like Brynwood Partners--which obviously doesn't care about making 
cookies, doesn't care about the neighborhood community-type of business 
that it was--only uses this company as the bottom line.
  Just the other day we had a rally in front of the Stella D'oro 
company in the Bronx, in my district, to show the workers that we stand 
by them and support them. I want to let Brynwood Partners know that I 
am not going to be quiet about this or take this lying down. There are 
other things that Brynwood Partners own, and we really ought to 
scrutinize and watch everything they do because if they are allowed to 
get away with this, they can get away with anything, if nothing more 
than the bottom line, as far as I am concerned, corporate greed. 
Something ought to be done for these workers. Again, the National Labor 
Relations Board ruled in favor of the workers, and so the reaction of 
the company is to just close it down. That is a disgrace. It should not 
be happening in 2009. This Congress needs to take note of it and needs 
to stand behind these workers.

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