Some 30 workers are planning a protest today against Baldor Specialty Foods in the Bronx, which they accuse of having fired them unjustly in order to prevent the company's more than 800 employees, 75 percent of them Latinos, from organizing to join Teamsters Local 202.

According to Johnny Alejo, 29, who had been working at the company for five years, ever since November of 2008, when the workers attempted to form a committee with Local 202 to try to get better working conditions, "the company started taking reprisals against the ones who were in favor of the union, by changing their delivery routes to shorter ones so as to reduce their working hours, or by firing them with any excuse at all. When the company saw that they were trying to organize, they put their names on a list and made life impossible for them so they'd quit the job, or they kicked them out for any reason," said Alejo.

The company told Wady Medina, 36, who had worked there for two years as a truck driver, that he was fired when he returned from his vacation two weeks ago, saying that he had taken one more day than he was allowed.

"I had asked for my vacation time until the third, and when I went back to work, they told me I was supposed to come back on the second, and they booted me," said Medina.

Another one of the drivers, Carlos Millien, 49, who is still working at Baldor, said he had been attacked and beaten so badly that he had to stay in bed for a month and a half, and since the company knew he had voted for the union, they changed his assignment from the Philadelphia route he had driven for four years to a shorter route, in Manhattan.

"What they want is for us to quit without collecting [unemployment benefits], as if one didn't have a family to support," said Millien.

Alejo said that when the company changes an employee's route, "it's to reduce your hours or to get rid of you."

The administrator of Baldor Specialty Foods, Henry Foreman, promised to send us his reactions to the workers' charges by email. As we went to press, his answer had not arrived.

Five of the workers yesterday visited the office of Congressman José Serrano, which will assist them in getting a legal representative. The picket line at Baldor Specialty Foods, located at 155 Food Center Drive in the Bronx, is scheduled for 3:30 a.m., the hour when the drivers arrive for work.