Otilio Ignacio 'Nacho' Meza

Rite Aid Distribution Center, Lancaster, Calif., International Longshore and Warehouse Union

Otilio Ignacio "Nacho" Meza

Nacho Meza walked in to his job at the Rite Aid distribution center in Lancaster, Calif. on June 8 to cheers and hugs from his co-workers. He had been out of work since Rite Aid fired him Jan. 30 when he and his co-workers wanted a voice on the job with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Meza and Debbie Fontaine, another union supporter, were re-instated after their union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

"Rite Aid has fired a lot of people but none of them have ever come back," Meza says. " People can see the difference it makes when the union supports us."

The return of Meza and Fontaine gave the union supporters a shot of hope, but they have a long way to go to undo the damage Rite Aid inflicted with nearly a year of anti-union campaigning.

Workers at the warehouse began seeking union representation in March 2006.

They were tired of working at will, with no job security, and of mandatory overtime piled on to 10-hour days. They were sick of punishing production standards and of freezing in the winter and frying in the summer because the warehouse lacked adequate climate control.

"More than anything, we wanted them to respect us as workers," Meza says.

Meza runs a counterbalance in the replenishment department of the warehouse. A counterbalance is like a forklift, but the operators stand up instead of sitting down. Replenishment workers make sure goods from the receiving department get sent to the proper areas to be re-packed and shipped out to stores. Their hard physical labor plays a key part in the workflow at the warehouse.

"My co-workers will tell you I was always busy and didn’t talk much," Meza says. "I started work there in August 2000 and never had any problems from my managers until I started wearing the union shirt and buttons." He got written up in October 2006, then terminated in January 2007. This was the first time Meza had ever gotten fired from a job, and that in itself was hard. He had worked since he was 13, and he’s 41 now.

The loss of income hit his family hard, too, because Nacho supports his parents, who are in their 80s, and four nephews who range in age from seven to 17. "Even when I’m working I have to stretch every dollar," he says.

Meza’s firing sent a chill around the warehouse. "People were afraid to sign cards because they saw what happened to me," he says. Rite Aid played on people’s fears in many other ways as well.

Managers spied on union activities and interrogated people about their feelings for the union. They fired Meza and Fontaine, suspended another worker and demoted yet another. They threatened that employees would lose their regular annual raise if they chose a union. And they smeared the reputation of the union supporters, routinely referring to them as "union pushers" and painting them as thieves, thugs and vandals.

The NLRB was ready to bring Rite Aid to trial on 49 labor law violations. The company settled rather than face an NLRB judge. As part of the settlement, it had to pay some $40,000 in back pay plus interest to Meza, Fontaine and three other union supporters it suspended or demoted—but it didn’t have to pay other penalties and didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing.

The way Rite Aid has played the system—trampling workers’ rights, then escaping with such a wrist-slap—has showed the workers just how badly the system is broken. Things might have unfolded very differently if the Employee Free Choice Act were in place, Meza says.

"The act is a tool for all of us, everyone who organizes at Rite Aid, in hospitals, in hotels, so we can all have a free choice to better our lives not just for ourselves but for our families," he says.