Officials call for stop to Fresh Direct audit

Posted By: Carolyn Hileman* on December 30, 2007

Elected officials at the city and federal level called on federal immigration officials last week to halt their audit of Long Island City’s Fresh Direct following a mass walkout of nearly 100 warehouse workers earlier this month.

City Comptroller William Thompson and U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Ridgewood) joined a crowd of Fresh Direct employees at City Hall Friday to ask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop the investigation, which caused a number of workers for the online grocery distributor to quit or be suspended because they could not fill out paperwork for the audit.
Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) has also taken an intermediary role between Fresh Direct and the workers.

“Any practice that reeks of intimidation must stop now,” Thompson said. “These workers who spend so much of their day helping get food to the tables of so many New Yorkers need to be able to earn a living and put food on their own tables without fear of losing their jobs and their livelihoods.”

Fresh Direct, an online grocer that delivers to the five boroughs, could not be reached for comment.

Many of the employees, who could not prove they were authorized to work in the United States, were not able to pick up their paychecks after the walkout, said Sandy Pope, president of the Teamsters 805, which had recently been trying to unionize the factory’s 900 warehouse workers. The company’s delivery drivers are already unionized.

An ICE spokesman said the agency could neither confirm nor deny any investigation. Pope said that ICE was breaking its own internal policies by conducting an audit while a union drive was taking place. But an ICE spokeswoman said the agency’s policy would not prevent it from investigating a company if the department thought there was any irregular activity taking place.

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