Thomas Breen photo
Mario Franco, play money in hand, at Thursday's protest.
A group of highway service plaza workers and union organizers showed up to a Church Street office lobby with $1 million in “cash” as part of a holiday-season pressure campaign against alleged wage theft at Dunkin’ Donuts.
That was the scene at 195 Church St. Thursday afternoon at a protest led by Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The union hosted the event to draw attention to an example of highway robbery, so to speak.
Neil Diaz leading the Church Street rally.
32BJ District Leader Neil Diaz and union spokesperson Franklin Soults said that an international fast food employer called Applegreen has defied state law by paying only $14 or $15 an hour instead of a prevailing wage of $18.21 an hour to 175 Dunkin’ Donuts workers at 23 plazas across Connecticut.
They said that the state Department of Labor requires state contractors like service plaza employers to pay their workers a prevailing wage that, for these Dunkin’ Donuts employees, should be roughly $4 above the current minimum wage.
“We’re here today to confront Applegreen,” Diaz said, “who is the leasing company that’s leasing the service plazas up on the state highways. … We want to give Applergreen a gift, which is a bag of a million dollars in play money, a million dollars that Applegreen has stolen from the workers in the past couple of years.”
Thus the rally and protest outside of 195 Church, where Applegreen’s regional CEO, Trevor Moore, purportedly has an office on the eighth floor.
DeShawn Brownell.
No actual Dunkin’ Donuts service plaza workers were present at Thursday’s protest. Though DeShawn Brownell, a SEIU member and security guard, did read a letter written by one someone who works at the Dunkin’ Donuts at the North Haven service plaza. That worker said that he was “shocked to learn Applegreen is not paying the minimum standard wage that the law requires,” Brownell read. “I struggle to make ends meet and my life would be much better if my employer wasn’t stealing wages every hour.”
Rosa Franco.
Two McDonald’s fast food restaurant employees who work at the I‑95 service plaza near Darien then took the mic to speak about the union’s successful campaign to get McDonald’s to pay their workers the state-mandated prevailing wage — and to show solidarity with their Dunkin’ Donuts colleagues.
“The work continues,” Rosa Franco said. “I hope that my co-workers in other restaurants stay in the union together with us.”
Mario Franco, who was tasked with holding the bag of play money across his chest, said that he’s worked at the McDonald’s in Darien for over 30 years. “We got a lot of discrimination in this place,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, to make support for 32BJ and make it stronger for everybody.”
Heading into the office lobby ...
... and rebuffed by the security guard.
The group then made their way into the office tower’s lobby with the intention of heading up to the eighth floor to hand deliver the bag of play cash directly to Applegreen’s CEO.
But they didn’t make it past a security guard, who said she had called up to the office, that no one was there, and that the group couldn’t come in.
So the union organizers called Moore on the phone instead. When he didn’t pick up, they left a message.
“If you’re upstairs, please come down and say hello,” Diaz said. Phil Andrews, a fellow organizer at 32BJ, then led the workers in the lobby in a quick call and response:
“32!” he said.
“BJ!” they replied.
Former 360 State workers.
Back outside of the office building, the union organizers convened one more time to recommit themselves to holding Applegreen accountable.
Diaz also described a protest that the group held earlier in the morning outside of the 360 State St. apartment building, where, he and several others claimed, seven unionized maintenance workers were recently fired after the apartment building was bought by a new group of investors.
“No matter what classification of work we do,” Diaz said, “cleaning, service workers, food servers, janitors, custodians, we are all one union. We are all one union, and we all support each other.”
A representative from Applegreen did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article. A representative from the new owners of 360 State declined to comment for this story.