Brynwood Partners, the owner of the Stella D'Oro Biscuit Co., is a private equity firm that takes over other companies. According to their website, they "create value" for investors. But how can you create value when you destroy families and the aspirations of men and women who work for a living?
The partners at Brynwood are not interested in productive investment. They make their profits by buying "distressed" companies with debt, weighing those companies down with the debt used to buy them, driving down the wages of the companies' employees, and ultimately dismantling and selling off the companies' assets.
Union-busting is part of the business -- and Brynwood Partners are professionals at it. The firm's Senior Managing Partner and co-founder, Hendrik Hartong, Jr., was President and Chief Operating Officer at the notorious union-busting Pittston Company in the 1980s. Yes, it's that Pittston Company.
Hartong won't talk to The New York Times or any other paper and explain why he won't treat his workers with dignity. Instead, he hides in the shadows in Greenwich and tries to starve them out on strike. Unfortunately for him, they've fought back -- and they've won.
Now Hartong and Co. want to shut down Stella D'Oro's Bronx factory and, they claim, relocate it. This is bad for the workers and bad for the community -- and neither are going to let them get away with it!
Brynwood Partners: We've beaten them once and we can beat them again!
Please email Hartong at huppsy@brynwoodpartners.com and ask him why he is trying to hurt Stella Doro workers in the Bronx.
Resources
Press Release: "Stella D'Oro Responds to Inacurate Reports Regarding Bronx Bakery Operations" -- July 22, 2009
Letter from Management -- August 27, 2008
Press Release: "Brynwood Partners closes Stella D’oro transaction and appoints new leadership" -- January 30, 2006
On August 13, 2008, over 135 members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 50, employed at the historic Stella D'Oro plant in the Bronx, struck because of the unreasonable and unethical concessions demanded by the company at the bargaining table. Negotiators for Stella D'Oro, now owned by an out-of-state private equity firm, Brynwood Partners, among other things, want to (1) slash wages as much as 25%, hitting working women hardest, (2) make health insurance unaffordable by imposing crushing premiums, (3) eliminate holidays, vacation and sick pay, and (4) eliminate extra pay for working Saturdays and giving up family life.
Stella D'Oro management bargained in bad faith, refusing to even consider the union's proposals and compromises. BCTGM Local 50 has represented the workers at the Bronx plant since the early 1960's, and has helped build Stella D'Oro into an American icon. Brynwood Partners acquired the company in 2006. Never before Brynwood's ownership has the Local and its membership been attacked in this way.
