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Immigrant workers known as Cabricánecos are seeking answers for employer’s retaliation and intimidation

About 40 immigrant indigenous workers at the non-union, Brooklyn-based demolition company Best Super Cleaning, have begun their monthly picket lines outside the company’s worksites again, this time demanding an end to the retaliation and intimidation from their employer.

Last month the workers filed two charges with the National Labor Relations Board, one on March 13 and the other on March 27, charging the company with surveilling its workers’ organizing activity and threatening workers who chose to organize.

Guatemalan worker Adelso Escalante, 21, said the company divided the workers who have been organizing into separate work crews. After speaking to the new hires, he learned the company was giving raises to the new workers who had not joined the campaign, most likely as an attempt to dissuade them from organizing.

“We understood since the beginning, that even if the company divided us as a group, we will stand united,” he said in Spanish.

The workers, who are organizing with the immigrant-worker-led grassroots organization Laundry Workers Center, launched their Cabricánecos Campaign last May. Their campaign called for ending wage theft at Best Super Cleaning, raising their wages from $15 an hour to $17 an hour, and making their workplace safer. The campaign was named after Cabricán, the Guatemalan town many of the workers immigrated from.