by SAMER ELATRASH
The coda to the bitter labour dispute that shut Ben’s deli came Friday, Jan. 12, when bailiffs delivered employment records to the striking workers, days after they announced that they would resume picketing the restaurant. Ben’s owners announced in December that they would close the restaurant because of union demands, but last week’s dismissals ended lingering speculation among workers that the announcement was a pressure tactic.
“It’s over,” says Robert Mayrand, who worked at Ben’s for 52 years. “Finishing an institution like this, it is shameful. It’s part of my life. All the workers felt proud of it.”
Ben’s, which began as a tobacco-confectionary shop founded by Latvian Jewish immigrant Ben Kravitz in 1908, became a celebrated eatery that served its famed smoked meat to movie stars and prime ministers and was a well-known tourist attraction, but business slumped over the past 20 years.
Elliott Kravitz, the grandson of Ben Kravitz and part owner of the deli with his mother, Jean, dates the restaurant’s troubles to when his father died and the workers unionized in 1995, becoming affiliated with Confederation des syndicats nationaux. “There was a time in the 1980s when my father was sick,” he says. “Mum took care of him 24 hours a day, for more than five years. The restaurant ran on systems with no surveillance. The management was lax. When dad passed away, Mum came back and started applying good management principles. That’s when they unionized. When you have free reign for a while, you resent structure.”
Hot air and heating
The workers, who went on strike in July after management refused a new collective agreement that included a pay increase, say management’s practices were humiliating and work conditions were intolerable. “The employer would complain the sandwiches are too big—she wanted them weighed in a machine,” Mayrand says. “She would take the tomatoes upstairs to the office, and she would make us sign a paper saying how many tomatoes we took for the club sandwiches.”
Charles Mendoza, who headed the union and worked at Ben’s for 19 years, says that although the workers asked for a pay increase of 40 cents above their average $8 an hour, their main demand was better conditions. “We didn’t have air conditioning and the fans were simply blowing hot air around the restaurant,” he says, “Customers would walk out. In the winter, we didn’t have proper heating. We used to make toast on the grill, and it would always burn. The toast we threw in the garbage could have bought 10 toasters.”
The workers also asked for severance pay, Mendoza says. “We had a worker who worked there for 37 years, and when he left they didn’t so much as say thank you for 37 years of service.”
Kravitz says the workers had already negotiated three collective agreements after unionizing in 1995. “The collective agreements were reached not grudgingly,” he says. “Mum did an amazing job keeping it together all these years. I don’t think they appreciated how difficult it was to maintain the restaurant.
“I don’t want to get into accusations,” he says. “These guys were good workers. But this type of work is entry-level work. I said, ‘Produce me a contract that shows we’re not giving you top dollar.’”
McCord’s gain
Both sides in the dispute blame each other for the failure of the negotiations. “They went on strike before I could present them with my offer,” says Danny Kaufer, the owners’ lawyer. However, workers say management refused for months to discuss their demands. “They never put an offer on the table. We put articles on the table and they said no,” says Mendoza.
While the storied past of Ben’s will be preserved in the McCord museum, which has reached an agreement with the Kravitz family to display memorabilia from the deli, and Jean Kravitz has been asked to record an oral history, the future of the land on which the restaurant was built is still a matter for discussion. Real estate developers Hines Group and SITQ are constructing an office building next to Ben’s, and reportedly offered to buy the land, but Kravitz says the family is still discussing its options.
“We’re still in shock,” he says. “We’re going to have to address the land soon and look at the options. There have been offers and it’s in family discussion.”
The workers are now adjusting to being unemployed, some of them after decades of work at Ben’s. “We’re going to form a committee to find some way to get some jobs,” says Mendoza.
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