National Labor Relations Board has issued a multi-tiered complaint against the owner and agents of a luxury residential tower at 100 Sudbury Street
BOSTON – Late on Friday, September 12, the National Labor Relation Board issued a complaint alleging that the employers of a luxury residential tower in downtown Boston restrained, coerced and illegally discriminated against a crew of eight building cleaners when they replaced them with a non-union crew in July 2024 and then concealed their various roles in that replacement for nearly a year.
The complaint follows the Board’s investigation of charges filed by the displaced cleaners’ union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, after the cleaners were suddenly told on July 13 last year that they would no longer have jobs there at day’s end. According to the 17-page complaint, the LLC that owns the building, known simply as “100 Sudbury Owner,” then oversaw a shell game with the former workers to prevent them from even re-applying for their old jobs.
Among the activities outlined in the 17-page complaint was an attempt to misdirect the former workers by utilizing a dubious “subcontracting” cleaning company, telling the new cleaners not to wear uniforms with a company logo, and a months-long effort to hide the role of the Sudbury Owner in directing this scheme. As the government complaint notes, the complicated ruse was undertaken, “in order to avoid recognizing and bargaining with the Union and otherwise restrain and coerce employees from exercising their [organizing] rights,” which are legally protected under the National Labor Relations Act.
According to comments by a Boston Building Trades representative at a rally last year, the luxury residential skyscraper was built in 2020 with an understanding that the building owner would give a fair deal to the workers who built and operated the building. However, this understanding quickly evaporated when the national real estate investment company Carmel Partners took principal ownership of the building last March. Within a couple months of Carmel’s arrival, the building’s management announced intentions to replace its unionized cleaning contractor, and the string of actions outlined in the complaint was set in motion.
“I was shocked when I heard the news that I was losing my job,” said Jesus Cuello, who cleaned at the Sudbury almost since the building opened. “I have been looking for a new job for months, but at my age, jobs are not easy to find. Now, thanks to the NLRB complaint, I finally feel like we are turning a corner toward a fair resolution for my co-workers and me.”
“We are deeply pleased on behalf of these workers,” said Kevin Brown, 32BJ SEIU Executive Vice President and the head of the union in Massachusetts. “Downtown Boston needs more residential spaces like the Sudbury, but the workers of Boston also deserve to make a decent living with the solid benefits that good union jobs provide. It’s a disgrace that the owner of this luxury tower should take away the jobs of modestly-paid janitors and then deceive them to prevent them from pursuing their legal rights. We eagerly await the responses of the owner, management company, and cleaning contractors to this very thorough federal complaint, and we will proudly stand by our members through whatever it takes to set them right.”
The LLC and other actors named in the complaint— including the management company Greystar and non-union cleaning contractor ProKeeping— must now respond to the government by September 26 and appear at a subsequent hearing before an administrative law judge, on a date yet to be announced.
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With over 185,000 members in eleven states and Washington, D.C., including 20,000 in Massachusetts, 32BJ SEIU is the largest property service workers union in the country.