NY Times
By SEWELL CHAN

The Stella D’Oro Biscuit Company factory in the Bronx, where 134
workers on strike since last August have been replaced, must reinstate
the workers and pay them wages going back to May, a federal
administrative law judge has ruled.

The 134 workers, members of Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery,
Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, went on strike on Aug. 14, two weeks
after their contract had expired.

Most of the workers at the factory, at 184 West 237th Street in
Kingsbridge, are paid $18 to $23 an hour, according to the union’s
lawyer, Louie Nikolaidis. The union and the company could not reach an
agreement over a new contract. Stella D’Oro demanded a $5-an-hour wage
reduction for certain workers, along with cuts in pension and heath care
benefits, Mr. Nikolaidis said.

A lawyer for Stella D’Oro — which started as a family company and
was later owned by Nabisco and then Kraft Foods before being bought by
Brynwood Partners, a private equity firm, in 2006 — did not respond to a
request for comment Wednesday.

*** In a 32-page ruling on Tuesday, Steven Davis, an administrative
law judge with the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, found
that the company had improperly refused to bargain with the union by
declining to give the union a copy of its 2007 audited financial
statement. ***

The company declared an impasse on Aug. 27, 2008, nearly two weeks
after the strike started, though legal conditions for doing so had not
been met, the judge found. And when the union made an unconditional
offer to return to work on May 6 of this year, the factory illegally
refused, Judge Davis found. He ordered Stella D’Oro to pay the workers,
with interest, going back to May.

The company may appeal the ruling to the full National Labor
Relations Board in Washington.

Most of the workers have been living on unemployment benefits or
benefits from a union strike fund. "That’s one of the remarkable things
about the strike, that the 134 people went on strike and not a single
person has crossed the picket line," Mr. Nikolaidis said. He said the
workers hired to replace the strikers would most likely be dismissed
when the union members were reinstated.

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It's nice when corporations are forced to follow the rules, even after
they ignore them.