One of America’s largest unions, the Teamsters represent 1.2 million workers in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. That includes 16,500 United Parcel Service workers in Florida who recently approved a new contract after a year-long campaign for a deal that would secure fairer wages, working conditions, and a better quality of life for themselves, their coworkers, and their families.
Employees of bottled water supplier ReadyRefresh, owned by a former subsidiary of Nestlé, filed their petition Oct. 10 to join Teamsters Local 79, which represents workers stretching from Lakeland in west Central Florida down to Naples in Collier County.
Twenty-one workers at the company's supplier location in Davenport, about an hour south of Orlando, are eligible to join the Teamsters labor union, per the labor board filing. John Sholtes, director of organizing for Local 79 told Orlando Weekly the workers “are simply looking to be treated more fairly, and they want a voice on the job.”
“These workers, like most seeking to form a union, like their jobs and they’re very good at what they do,” said Sholtes. “They just want to exercise their rights under the law to join together, to get a better deal for themselves and their families as a group rather than individuals fending for themselves.”
Without a union, he said, company management can “make rules on a whim,” enforce them inconsistently, with narrow opportunities for recourse and limited protections from retaliation and termination in Florida’s “at-will” employment setting.
A union contract, also known as a collective bargaining agreement, is binding. Whereas, verbal promises made to workers, regarding concerns in the workplace, are not.
ReadyRefresh, founded in 2015, has company locations throughout Florida, including locations in Tampa, Jacksonville, West Melbourne, and Casselberry, among others.It's owned by parent company, BlueTriton Brands (formerly known as Nestlé Waters North America, before it was bought out by a private equity firm and investment firm). According to its website, ReadyRefresh delivers a wide range of bottled water brands and other drinks (like nitro cold brew coffee) to homes, schools, and businesses across various regions of the United States.
Workers at the Davenport location first reached out to the Teamsters in August, Sholtes said, shortly after the Teamsters reached a contractual agreement with UPS. The agreement averted what would have been one of the largest strikes against a single-employer in U.S. history.
The union, representing 340,000 UPS workers, described the UPS deal in a statement as a “historic” contract. The contract delivered (no pun intended) raises for full-time and part-time workers, eliminated the tiered wage system, created more full-time jobs, and secured important worker protections, such as air conditioning and cargo ventilation in package delivery trucks.
There were “zero concessions” from the union, their statement added. UPS Teamsters across the United States had threatened to go on strike to secure a fair contract, but the company reached a deal with the union, later approved by 86% of voting union members, ahead of the strike deadline.
Sholtes, of Local 79, said his office has seen an uptick in organizing leads (i.e. people reaching out who want to join the union), and union filings nationwide show there are workers across the country — from Connecticut to Oregon, Colorado, and Idaho — who also want to join the Teamsters. Amazon workers have also taken notice.
When reached for comment about the new unionization campaign in Davenport, a spokesperson for BlueTriton told Orlando Weekly they “do not comment on ongoing legal matters.”
Federal labor law forbids threatening workers or retaliating against them for union organizing activity, even though employers often do it anyway to thwart unionization. Some employers also hire professional “union avoidance” consultants, generally shelling out thousands of dollars (sometimes millions), to bust organizing activity.
In 2015, for instance, Nestlé Waters North America (the former name of ReadyRefresh’s parent company) enlisted a former zone manager-turned-labor-consultant to travel to multiple California facilities to tell workers not to join the Teamsters, reimbursing him $1,139 for travel expenses.
“The purpose of the meetings was to advise employees of their right not to be represented by a labor organization and to vote no,” a company rep disclosed in a mandatory report filed with the federal labor department. According to the same report, they also paid a different former distribution manager more than $7,000 (also for travel reimbursement) to share with workers “his positive experiences with the Company.”
It’s unclear whether the company has hired labor consultants since being acquired by One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co. from Nestlé in 2021, based on publicly available information. Founded by billionaire investor C. Dean Metropoulos, Metropoulos & Co. is best known for its acquisition of Pabst Brewing Company (before selling it off in 2014) as well as other common household brand names like Duncan Hines and Hostess.
“Most employers don’t like the Teamsters, and that’s ok [sic],” Sholtes told Orlando Weekly. “It means that we’re effective and great at what we do, giving power to working men and women to help rebuild the middle class and get them respect and dignity in their workplaces.”
At least 30% of employees eligible to join the union must sign paperwork in support of unionizing in order to file a petition with the federal labor board. While Sholtes declined to answer what percentage they'd reached at ReadyRefresh, he said they typically don't submit a petition if they don't feel confident the union has majority support.
It’s common for employers to dangle sporadic pay raises (or fire pro-union workers) ahead of union elections to reduce support for the union. So it’s ideal for workers to get as many of their coworkers on-board ahead of a union election, or any attempt to seek voluntary union recognition from an employer before that.
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