Fired day care workers fighting hard to get their jobs back

By Clare Trapasso

Workers at a chain of city-supported Queens day care centers who said they were fired after forming a union are fighting to get their jobs back.

But a company official denied they were let go due to union activities.

Annette Olivero and 17 other Books & Rattles workers said they were fired several weeks after about 90 workers voted to join the Communication Workers of America Local 1180 in May.

“We have a right to form a union,” said Olivero, a speech pathologist who worked for Books & Rattles for eight months.

Some workers made only $8 an hour and didn’t have benefits, Olivero said last week at a news conference with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Queens/Brooklyn).

The school, which has five day care and preschool centers in Queens, received $5.3 million from the city last fiscal year for services to special-education preschool students.

The company should not interfere with the workers’ legal right to unionize, Weiner said.

“It’s not too late for them to do the right thing,” he said.

Jeanne Karlya, an executive director at Books & Rattles, denied any wrongdoing. Some workers were let go because they didn’t have proper licenses and others because enrollment dropped, she said.

“Once the enrollment went up, we called back people from the laid-off list,” said Karlya, who didn’t say how many ex-employees were rehired.

The trouble started, she said, after the company lost its health insurance plan in January. Employees were then asked to pay half of the new plan’s premium.

Former employees said that was $440 a month for individuals. Family coverage cost more.

Karlya admitted that management was not initially supportive of the union.

But she emphatically denied allegations that employees were harassed or fired because they voted to join a union.

Oscar Gruchalski, whose 2-year-old son attends the Peek-A-Boo Learning Center in Elmhurst, owned by Books & Rattles, said he may remove his son from the center if the anti-union allegations were true.

“I’m in a union, so hearing that kind of upsets me,” he said.

The union has filed charges against Books & Rattles with the National Labor Relations Board. The charges were investigated and the board has sent a complaint to the day care, which could be forced to rehire ex-employees with back pay.

Karlya said the company wants “what’s best for our employees” and is working on a contract with the union.

But that’s not the way former Books & Rattles special education teacher Tara Baker sees it.

“The few people that are left are being intimidated now,” she said. “They’re afraid to support us….They don’t want to lose their jobs like so many of us did.”