Hard Times: Significant Passage

"'Your name's Blackpool, an't it?' said the young man.
Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of ir, or both.  He made a feint adjusting the lining and said, 'Yes.'
'You are the hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?' said Bitzer, the very light young man in question.
Stephen answered 'Yes' again.
'I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you.'" (143)
 

To be sent to Coventry  means to exclude someone from their customary society, or to shun them.  In this case, Stephen is shuned away from the other Hands because he doens't agree with their ideas of forming a union. 
Bitzer see be rubbing it in Stephen's face that he has been exiled from the rest of the hands.  Bitzer, who became successful, seems to want to help to drive the wedge between Stephen and the other workers.  Stephen's suprise of being spoken to futher emphasizes his alienation from the pack.  Stephen thought so differently from the rest of the workers, they all felt the need to shun him from the group.  In this quote, Dickens is showing how even the people in authority know about Stephen's exile, and they feel the need to tell him they know.  This futher opens the riff between the authority figures and the hands.