With no agreement on a contract between building owners and doormen, porters, concierges and superintendents in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, Local 32BJ has their members geared up for a walkout after midnight on Friday. At the heart of the disagreement between the two sides are wages, pensions and health coverage with current members averaging about $37,315 a year. Sounds like another strike that recently ended, yes?
Less than an hour ago, Gothamist got an email from FreshDirect letting us know that they'll still deliver:
As you may know, if an employment contract agreement is not reached, 28,000 doormen, elevator operators, porters, and other residential building employees have indicated that they will strike on Thursday, April 20, at 11:59 p.m.
We anticipate a strike could bring delivery complications for your FreshDirect order. As a result, we encourage customers in affected buildings to schedule deliveries for early in the week. In the event of a strike, we plan to reduce time-slot availability on Friday, April 21.
Since we may need to make additional arrangements during your delivery, please use the Your Account section of our website to make sure your phone number and contact information are accurate and up-to-date.
Your building management staff may have additional information on delivery restrictions. As a reminder, in the event we are unsuccessful in delivering your order, standard restocking fees will apply.
As always, thank you for being a valuable customer. Please know we will do everything in our power to bring you quality service whether or not this strike occurs.
Lucky for us (or not), Gothamist doesn't have a doorman, but some of friends say that their buildings are passing around sign-up sheets to help cover shifts. So a few questions for those that have doormen and the such: How are your buildings preparing for the strike? Will they be turning away deliveries? And are you generally more receptive to the doorman strike than the MTA strike?
If the strike happens, New Yorkers will rue the day when they couldn't get their Chinese food delivered.
Photo of doorman by Rion Nakaya via Flickr
