Ben's Delicatessen On Strike

Deli employees switch pickles for pickets as contract negotiations go awry

Ben's strikeSteve Campbell for the McGill Daily

By Sara FreemanNews Writer

Robert Mayrand has been serving smoked-meat on rye, club sandwiches, and half-sour pickles for more than half a century at Ben’s Delicatessen, the Montreal landmark on the corner of Metcalfe and Maisonneuve. But not for the past seven weeks. Mayrand and his 21 unionized colleagues walked out on July 20, after months of complaints over deteriorating working conditions and their employer’s failure to present an adequate contract after the last one expired in February. Mayrand, who is 72 and has been an employee since the early fifties, said that the strike was a last resort. “It’s not because I want to complain. Ben’s is a part of my heart, I’ve spent more time there than with my own wife, but [the management] have lost their respect,” he said. The staff’s demands include air-conditioning, improved heating, a 10 per cent salary augmentation over two years, changes to the shift scheduling policy, and the implementation of a retirement package.

Waiters have also complained about the overall management of the restaurant, and claim that the owners have little loyalty toward their staff. “In March, one of the waiters who had been there for 42 years quit, and they never even wrote him a note,” said Charles Mendoza, the head of the union and a Ben’s employee since 1987. In the early nineties the restaurant came under the control of Jean Kravitz, the widow to one of three Kravitz sons, and her son. Neither could be reached before printing, but Danny Kaufer, their lawyer, said that all parties were re-evaluating their positions, and that he would be in touch with the strike conciliator some time this week. “I don’t negotiate through the press,” he said. The original Ben’s, founded in 1908 by Ben Kravitz, was located on St. Laurent. Having made its way to the corner of Metcalfe and Maisonneuve in 1950, it became a place you might have spotted Pierre Trudeau and Leonard Cohen sitting at opposite ends of the large dining hall. It now primarily serves lunch to tourists and people working downtown, in an atmosphere of decaying vinyl and friendly multilingualism. “Some of us speak French, some of us speak English. We’re Arabic, black, Jewish, Greek, Bangladeshi. We sing, we dance, we joke. We’re 100 per cent united,” Mayrand said. The deli once employed 72 staff members, and now has 22. Striking staff have complained about having to simultaneously perform the duties of a cook, slicing meat, and making sandwiches while serving customers. As the strike continues, the tables have turned, as regulars show their support with offerings of food, drinks, and friendly banter at the picket line. “They bring coffee and danishes and one of them even told me she’d been thinking of preparing a chicken-pot pie for us,” Mayrand said.
http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=5193

posted by Ben's Delicatessen @ 4:54 PM