HARTFORD, Conn. (Legal Newsline) -- A federal judge has ordered the Stamford Plaza Hotel and Conference Center to rehire 28 employees who were laid off after they expressed support for a union.
The workers were subsequently rehired by a subcontractor for the same job.
Judge Mark R. Kravitz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut issued the ruling March 22.
The workers had been laid off soon after the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local 371, began organizing activities. The National Labor Relations Board's Hartford regional office issued a complaint against the hotel, alleging an unlawful attempt to disrupt the organizing campaign.
The NLRB District Court to restore the work situation to what it had been while the case works its way through the NLRB's process.
The judge granted the injunction stating that the NLRB was likely to prevail and prompt action was necessary.
"Given the timing of the Stamford Plaza's decision to subcontract, its shifting explanations for that decision, and the testimony that the hotel continues to structure its subcontracting arrangements with the goal of frustrating union activity, the Court easily finds reasonable cause to believe that unfair labor practices have occurred," Kravitz wrote.
He also said the injunction was just because despite the fact that the employees had been re-hired "the termination of so many pro-union housekeeping and maintenance employees seems to have frozen, not just chilled, organization efforts at Stamford Plaza."
The judge decreed that the employer not question employees about their beliefs toward labor unions or any way interfering with organizing efforts at the hotel. He told the hotel that they must file an affidavit within forty-five days its compliance with his order.