A high-end real estate firm is paying its Long Island City workers substandard benefits while charging tenants of its waterfront high-rises exorbitant rents, a local union is charging.
But a TF Cornerstone official said its employees get better benefits than some union members and chalked up the claim to union tactics.
Members of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which represents about 70,000 city doormen, security guards and janitors, also alleged the company bullied workers who want to unionize.
TF Cornerstone Executive Vice President Kevin Singleton dismissed the charge.
“They’re hollow claims,” he said. “We’ve seen this by [32BJ] over and over again.”
The union is trying to embarrass the firm into recognizing them at its Center Blvd. building without a secret ballot, Singleton said.
Union reps said they prefer not to pursue the lengthy election process.
The company, which owns several buildings in Manhattan and Queens, is developing seven luxury condo and rental towers on 21 acres in the once-industrial area.
Union reps, residents and a local lawmaker stood outside Cornerstone’s 47-20 Center Blvd. building on Tuesday, imploring the developer to unionize its workforce.
About 430 tenants of the 485-unit building — where a two-bedroom rental costs $5,400 a month — signed a petition in support of the building’s staff.
City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) and Cornerstone workers delivered the petition to the building’s leasing office after the protest.
“I’m a product of a union household and believe very much in workers’ rights,” Van Bramer said.
Joe Eisman, 32BJ organizing coordinator, said Cornerstone employees
don’t have access to union-sponsored training classes, which enable them to move up through the ranks.
“They could become handymen or a super,” he said.
But Singleton said the company offers training and retirement fund options to all of its employees. Eisman called the training and retirement benefits offered by Cornerstone “meaningless.”
After employees at Cornerstone’s 505 W. 37th St. building in Manhattan filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board last year, the panel ruled the company had to display a notice stating workers’ federally protected right to organize..
The management tells workers that union officials “promise you things they aren’t going to give you,” said Vincenzo DiTore, a porter at 505 W. 37th St. “It’s obvious they don’t want the union.”
