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Slavery 21st Century
You thought it was over, think again
oct 16, 2019
Slavery did not end it was merely outsourced,
reconfigured, and made politically correct
The Global Slavery Index
published on Thursday by Walk Free Foundation, describes modern slavery as a complex and often hidden crime that crosses borders, sectors and jurisdictions. The US number, the study estimates, is almost one hundredth of the estimated 40.3 million global total number of people it defines as being enslaved.
labor history - recommended reading
*THE SILK STRIKE OF 1913
*AMERICAN LABOR VIOLENCE: ITS CAUSES, CHARACTER, AND OUTCOME
headlines and issues
*'Work or go to jail': how LA courts force thousands to do unpaid labor
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Employers Are Misusing State Department Visa Program to Abuse Workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We’re organizing to improve lives’: New York fast food workers push to unionize
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Graduate Workers Are Going to Fight Like Hell to Stop the Trump NLRB’s New Rule
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ENDING GM’S TWO-TIERED LABOR SYSTEM IS UAW MEMBERS’ TOP DEMAND — AND PART OF A BIGGER FIGHT AGAINST WORKER MISCLASSIFICATION
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE STRIKE AGAINST GENERAL MOTORS IS ONE FRONT IN A MUCH LARGER CLASS WAR
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Underpaid and undervalued': 10 women claim systemic discrimination at Disney
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*TRUMP’S NLRB, TRYING TO CUT PROTECTIONS FOR MILLIONS OF TEMPS AND FAST-FOOD WORKERS, TRIPS UP AGAIN(ARTICLE BELOW)
*More than 49,000 United Auto Workers strike against General Motors
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*In ‘disgusting’ move, Jeff Bezos abruptly cuts health benefits for nearly 2,000 part-time Whole Foods workers(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber and Lyft launch anti-labor misinformation campaign in response to historic California bill(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Lyft, Uber to spend $60 million on propaganda to keep workers maximally exploited
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*For Incarcerated Workers, Summer Heat Can Be a Death Sentence
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*From Kentucky Miners to Toys ‘R’ Us Employees, Workers Confront Corporate Greed
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*More than 20,000 workers across the South strike as AT&T refuses to bargain in good faith
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Nevada casino workers fight an uphill battle to get – and keep – their unions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CEOs rake in 940% more than 40 years ago, while average workers earn 12% more
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We won’t back down’: Over 50 catering workers arrested at American Airlines HQ in protest against poverty wages(ARTICLE BELOW)
*You Think Airline Food Is Bad? The Conditions It’s Made In Are Worse.
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Our paychecks bounced': US workers in limbo as coalmines suddenly close
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Here’s the ugly racist history behind tipping — and how it still persists today
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*How Corporations Block Workers From Asserting Their Rights
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Disney heiress 'livid' after going to one of her family's theme parks undercover
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Whole Foods workers say conditions declined after Amazon takeover
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘It’s a sexist and racist attack’: Trump’s regulation to weaken home health care unions takes effect
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Social security workers call new Trump administration contract ‘union-busting’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
'Work or go to jail': how LA courts force thousands to do unpaid labor
Exclusive: study finds county relies on laborers – largely people of color – threatened with debts and jail to do work that would otherwise be paid
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
the guardian
Wed 16 Oct 2019 03.00 EDT
Los Angeles courts force roughly 100,000 people to do weeks and even months of “community service” each year, exposing some of them to exploitative and hazardous working conditions without enjoying basic labor rights and protections, according to a first-of-its-kind study.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers analyzing court-mandated community service also found that government departments and not-for-profit organizations rely on workers threatened with debts and jail time to complete labor that would otherwise be paid – and that those impacted are overwhelmingly people of color.
The UCLA Labor Center findings released Wednesday and shared with the Guardian, show:
The new paper, the first in-depth study of these kinds of sentences in the US, presents court-ordered service as a type of legal coercion and labor exploitation, comparable to wage theft. While community service has traditionally been considered a progressive alternative to imprisonment, in LA county, which has the largest jail system in the world, it’s a punishment that exacerbates inequality and creates an unregulated labor force where workers are vulnerable to abuse, the authors said.
“There’s this invisible economy that is being produced out of the criminal justice system,” said Noah Zatz, a UCLA law professor. “Normally, it’s unconstitutional to threaten people with jail if they don’t work … This is a government-run system of extraction that is targeting communities of color and low-income communities.”
There’s been growing recognition of the unjust systems that send low-income people to jail because they can’t afford to pay municipal fines. Community service has received little scrutiny but operates in a similar manner by creating work mandates for people who can’t pay fees for traffic infractions or other offenses, Zatz said.
While defendants sentenced to labor are generally considered “volunteers” with few rights, they are also frequently assigned to positions alongside paid workers, sometimes manual labor such as graffiti removal, trash pickup and janitorial work. In LA, people most often work for places like CalTrans, the state transit agency, local parks and municipal departments, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and local community centers.
If they experience discrimination, sexual harassment, abuse, injuries or other forms of mistreatment on the job, they have few options, the researchers noted.
“Get to work or go to jail” is a looming threat, which means workers struggle to speak up, said Tia Koonse, the legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center. “It has a chilling effect on asking for accommodations, asking for a meal or bathroom break, asking for your rights.”
Spokespeople for LA county courts and a local agency involved in community service placement declined to comment.
Selena Lopez, 24, said she was forced to do service at a community center as punishment for a misdemeanor case in 2016. At the time, her father had been deported and her mother had died, and she was struggling with addiction, leading to minor run-ins with the law.
She said she was trying to get back on her feet and finish school, but that the community service system derailed her. Then 21 years old, Lopez had to clean the kitchen at a not-for-profit organization and was surrounded by men who sexually harassed her, she said. The cleaning fluids she was using also made her sick, she said.
“I’m in a situation that is not good for my health, that is not safe for me,” she said, recalling that when she complained to supervisors, they threatened to revoke her hours or say she didn’t complete her mandatory service. “I had to choose – do I get this done, or walk away and lose everything?”
Lopez had to complete more than 30 days of service, which forced her to put her education on hold.
“Do I want to be in school or do I want to be in jail? I had this haunting me everyday,” she said, adding, “Is community service doing good out here, or is it causing more harm?”
The UCLA report cited anecdotes of community service workers facing verbal and physical harassment harassment, with one saying “they treat people like trash”, and another reporting a male supervisor inappropriately touching women.
The authors recommend that the courts reduce the threats of jail and debt that force people into service jobs in the first place, noting that traffic stops and other policing of low-level offenses are plagued by racial profiling. They also support other sentencing alternatives that don’t rely on forced labor and argue that if punitive community service is used, it should lead to paid jobs and opportunities meant to help people.
Lopez, who is now studying communications and an advocate for the rights of incarcerated people, said people caught up in the system are “trying to make our wrongs right” and need support, not unpaid jobs. She said she hoped more people speak up: “I know I’m not the only one. There are so many people going through this.”
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers analyzing court-mandated community service also found that government departments and not-for-profit organizations rely on workers threatened with debts and jail time to complete labor that would otherwise be paid – and that those impacted are overwhelmingly people of color.
The UCLA Labor Center findings released Wednesday and shared with the Guardian, show:
- People in LA county are ordered to perform an estimated total of 8m hours of unpaid work over a year, the equivalent of 4,900 paid jobs. Government agencies receive an estimated 3m hours of free labor, replacing 1,800 jobs.
- People struggle to complete their work by imposed deadlines, and in criminal court, nearly one in five people sentenced to community service ultimately face a probation violation or arrest warrant as a result.
- While community service is supposed to be an alternative to debt, most criminal defendants are still forced to make payments averaging $323. People also often have to “pay to work for free” through initial fees to receive their community service referrals, which can be more than $100.
- In traffic court, which sentences people to community service for minor infractions, 89% of defendants are people of color.
The new paper, the first in-depth study of these kinds of sentences in the US, presents court-ordered service as a type of legal coercion and labor exploitation, comparable to wage theft. While community service has traditionally been considered a progressive alternative to imprisonment, in LA county, which has the largest jail system in the world, it’s a punishment that exacerbates inequality and creates an unregulated labor force where workers are vulnerable to abuse, the authors said.
“There’s this invisible economy that is being produced out of the criminal justice system,” said Noah Zatz, a UCLA law professor. “Normally, it’s unconstitutional to threaten people with jail if they don’t work … This is a government-run system of extraction that is targeting communities of color and low-income communities.”
There’s been growing recognition of the unjust systems that send low-income people to jail because they can’t afford to pay municipal fines. Community service has received little scrutiny but operates in a similar manner by creating work mandates for people who can’t pay fees for traffic infractions or other offenses, Zatz said.
While defendants sentenced to labor are generally considered “volunteers” with few rights, they are also frequently assigned to positions alongside paid workers, sometimes manual labor such as graffiti removal, trash pickup and janitorial work. In LA, people most often work for places like CalTrans, the state transit agency, local parks and municipal departments, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and local community centers.
If they experience discrimination, sexual harassment, abuse, injuries or other forms of mistreatment on the job, they have few options, the researchers noted.
“Get to work or go to jail” is a looming threat, which means workers struggle to speak up, said Tia Koonse, the legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center. “It has a chilling effect on asking for accommodations, asking for a meal or bathroom break, asking for your rights.”
Spokespeople for LA county courts and a local agency involved in community service placement declined to comment.
Selena Lopez, 24, said she was forced to do service at a community center as punishment for a misdemeanor case in 2016. At the time, her father had been deported and her mother had died, and she was struggling with addiction, leading to minor run-ins with the law.
She said she was trying to get back on her feet and finish school, but that the community service system derailed her. Then 21 years old, Lopez had to clean the kitchen at a not-for-profit organization and was surrounded by men who sexually harassed her, she said. The cleaning fluids she was using also made her sick, she said.
“I’m in a situation that is not good for my health, that is not safe for me,” she said, recalling that when she complained to supervisors, they threatened to revoke her hours or say she didn’t complete her mandatory service. “I had to choose – do I get this done, or walk away and lose everything?”
Lopez had to complete more than 30 days of service, which forced her to put her education on hold.
“Do I want to be in school or do I want to be in jail? I had this haunting me everyday,” she said, adding, “Is community service doing good out here, or is it causing more harm?”
The UCLA report cited anecdotes of community service workers facing verbal and physical harassment harassment, with one saying “they treat people like trash”, and another reporting a male supervisor inappropriately touching women.
The authors recommend that the courts reduce the threats of jail and debt that force people into service jobs in the first place, noting that traffic stops and other policing of low-level offenses are plagued by racial profiling. They also support other sentencing alternatives that don’t rely on forced labor and argue that if punitive community service is used, it should lead to paid jobs and opportunities meant to help people.
Lopez, who is now studying communications and an advocate for the rights of incarcerated people, said people caught up in the system are “trying to make our wrongs right” and need support, not unpaid jobs. She said she hoped more people speak up: “I know I’m not the only one. There are so many people going through this.”
op - ed: Employers Are Misusing State Department Visa Program to Abuse Workers
BY Jeremy McLean, Truthout
PUBLISHED October 10, 2019
After meeting Walter Schumacher at a job fair in Jamaica, Dorret Francis scraped together funds to enroll in the J-1 Summer Work Travel Program, the largest of the U.S. State Department’s cultural exchange programs providing temporary work authorization to J-1 visa holders. Schumacher, the president of APEX USA, Inc., a J-1 visa sponsor agency, extended a job offer to Francis, who arrived in the United States with the hope that a summer spent working in the hospitality industry would help advance her collegiate studies at home, lifting her out of poverty.
Upon arrival, however, Francis and other workers recruited under the program alleged that the Schumacher family — who also owned and operated the two hotels, a restaurant and waterpark where they worked — quickly defaulted on their promises, paying the workers less over fewer hours and charging unreasonable rent to live in overcrowded housing. They were also threatened with financial and physical repercussions should they try to quit their jobs, according to their federal labor trafficking lawsuit filed last year in Oklahoma.
These experiences are consistent with the many abuses revealed in an analysis of government data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the International Labor Recruitment Working Group. The report found employers increasingly use the J-1 program as a means to sidestep what few labor protections exist for temporary foreign workers.
In 2015 — the only year for which the Working Group was able to obtain data — nearly 16,000 companies, including large corporations like McDonald’s, Disney and Food Lion, hired nearly 95,000 young migrant workers through the J-1 program. Top destinations for the program include New York, California, Massachusetts, Florida and Maryland, where many J-1 workers fill positions in the hospitality, entertainment, arts and retail sectors.
While seasonal staffing and cultural exchange are not incompatible, too many employers compromise the cultural experience in order to increase their bottom line. Disney hired 2,355 J-1 workers in 2015, saving the company an estimated $15 million in labor costs. McDonald’s franchises hired J-1 workers across 167 different zip codes. In Pennsylvania, McDonald’s franchises were forced to pay out $205,977 in backpay to 291 fast food workers whose complaints included wage theft and working 25-hour shifts.
The dual tension of workers’ fear of reporting abuse combined with recruiters’ economic interest to suppress complaints makes it hard to determine the depth of illegality within the program. However, based on complaints reported to our organization, Justice in Motion, employers frequently bait and switch young workers who they know must work for them to maintain their visa, and may have debts back home after paying thousands of dollars in recruitment fees.
While working as an attorney in an anti-trafficking program a few years ago, I received a referral through the National Human Trafficking Hotline from a J-1 worker on Long Island, New York. He was one of a couple of dozen young workers from Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. to work in a restaurant where the workers were expected to work full-time and make enough money to pay their bills and program fees while experiencing the United States. They were each expected to pay several hundred dollars a month in rent for one of 20-plus bunk beds stacked in a filthy basement. They weren’t paid the wages promised to them or scheduled for enough hours to even cover their living costs, let alone any debt they incurred to acquire the job.
Poor treatment can quickly transform into labor trafficking, a form of human trafficking defined by forced labor or coercion. According to Polaris, a nonprofit organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 67 J-1 visa holders self-reported as victims of labor trafficking between 2015 and 2017.
To be sure, not all employers are abusing the program. But the State Department’s inadequate oversight — and an utter lack of transparency — exposes young workers from around the world to unnecessary risk.
In July, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members introduced the Visa Transparency Anti-Trafficking Act to standardize how agencies publicly report data on temporary foreign worker programs. The bill expands access to data the government already collects on temporary foreign worker programs, including businesses who use the program, working conditions, terms and conditions of employment, specific jobs and worksite locations.
If passed, expanded public reporting would aid workers’ rights organizations in identifying abusive schemes, preventing human trafficking and defending basic labor protections for all workers.
While the State Department created the J-1 program as a cultural exchange, employers increasingly use it as a temporary foreign worker program — and it should be regulated as one. With another season for summer work now closed, the time is ripe to hold a long-overdue hearing on this program with outsized impacts for workers’ rights.
Upon arrival, however, Francis and other workers recruited under the program alleged that the Schumacher family — who also owned and operated the two hotels, a restaurant and waterpark where they worked — quickly defaulted on their promises, paying the workers less over fewer hours and charging unreasonable rent to live in overcrowded housing. They were also threatened with financial and physical repercussions should they try to quit their jobs, according to their federal labor trafficking lawsuit filed last year in Oklahoma.
These experiences are consistent with the many abuses revealed in an analysis of government data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the International Labor Recruitment Working Group. The report found employers increasingly use the J-1 program as a means to sidestep what few labor protections exist for temporary foreign workers.
In 2015 — the only year for which the Working Group was able to obtain data — nearly 16,000 companies, including large corporations like McDonald’s, Disney and Food Lion, hired nearly 95,000 young migrant workers through the J-1 program. Top destinations for the program include New York, California, Massachusetts, Florida and Maryland, where many J-1 workers fill positions in the hospitality, entertainment, arts and retail sectors.
While seasonal staffing and cultural exchange are not incompatible, too many employers compromise the cultural experience in order to increase their bottom line. Disney hired 2,355 J-1 workers in 2015, saving the company an estimated $15 million in labor costs. McDonald’s franchises hired J-1 workers across 167 different zip codes. In Pennsylvania, McDonald’s franchises were forced to pay out $205,977 in backpay to 291 fast food workers whose complaints included wage theft and working 25-hour shifts.
The dual tension of workers’ fear of reporting abuse combined with recruiters’ economic interest to suppress complaints makes it hard to determine the depth of illegality within the program. However, based on complaints reported to our organization, Justice in Motion, employers frequently bait and switch young workers who they know must work for them to maintain their visa, and may have debts back home after paying thousands of dollars in recruitment fees.
While working as an attorney in an anti-trafficking program a few years ago, I received a referral through the National Human Trafficking Hotline from a J-1 worker on Long Island, New York. He was one of a couple of dozen young workers from Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. to work in a restaurant where the workers were expected to work full-time and make enough money to pay their bills and program fees while experiencing the United States. They were each expected to pay several hundred dollars a month in rent for one of 20-plus bunk beds stacked in a filthy basement. They weren’t paid the wages promised to them or scheduled for enough hours to even cover their living costs, let alone any debt they incurred to acquire the job.
Poor treatment can quickly transform into labor trafficking, a form of human trafficking defined by forced labor or coercion. According to Polaris, a nonprofit organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 67 J-1 visa holders self-reported as victims of labor trafficking between 2015 and 2017.
To be sure, not all employers are abusing the program. But the State Department’s inadequate oversight — and an utter lack of transparency — exposes young workers from around the world to unnecessary risk.
In July, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members introduced the Visa Transparency Anti-Trafficking Act to standardize how agencies publicly report data on temporary foreign worker programs. The bill expands access to data the government already collects on temporary foreign worker programs, including businesses who use the program, working conditions, terms and conditions of employment, specific jobs and worksite locations.
If passed, expanded public reporting would aid workers’ rights organizations in identifying abusive schemes, preventing human trafficking and defending basic labor protections for all workers.
While the State Department created the J-1 program as a cultural exchange, employers increasingly use it as a temporary foreign worker program — and it should be regulated as one. With another season for summer work now closed, the time is ripe to hold a long-overdue hearing on this program with outsized impacts for workers’ rights.
‘We’re organizing to improve lives’: New York fast food workers push to unionize
Manhattan-based local union that works with Fight for $15 has launched effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers
Steven Greenhouse in New York
the guardian
Mon 30 Sep 2019 02.01 EDT
The Fight for $15 low wage movement has long had two goals: winning a $15 an hour wage for low-paid workers and a union for fast food workers. On wages it has been a major success – seven states have enacted minimum wage laws scheduled to reach $15 – but so far it has made little progress unionizing fast food workers. That could soon change.
A Manhattan-based union local that works closely with the Fight for $15 has launched an effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers, getting workers at more than 50 restaurants to sign pro-union cards. “We’re running a campaign for workers in an industry that has been abusing its workers,” said Kyle Bragg, president of the local carrying out the unionization drive, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. “These workers want a union. We’re organizing in order to lift workers and improve their lives.”
Until now, the Fight for $15 – which was underwritten by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – hadn’t begun a formal unionization effort at fast food restaurants. When Fight for $15 began in late 2012, its original strategy was to exert so much pressure on McDonald’s that the fast food giant would agree to sit down and discuss wages and other matters and perhaps promise not to resist unionization efforts. But McDonald’s has refused to talk with the Fight for $15’s leaders.
With its latest effort, Local 32BJ, a powerful local union with 175,000 members, hopes to make clear to Chipotle and McDonald’s that it is intent on unionizing their restaurants in New York, and they shouldn’t oppose that effort. Union officials say a majority of the hundreds of fast food workers organizers have approached have signed cards supporting a union.
Jeremy Espinal, who works at a Chipotle in Greenwich Village, said he supports unionization because managers often treat workers with little respect. “The managers try to dehumanize you and try to beat you down mentally as much as they can so they can overwork you and make you feel you’re never doing enough,” said Espinal, a junior at Hunter College.
Espinal said the work includes lots of lifting and is far harder than he had anticipated. “I tore my Achilles heel at Chipotle,” he said. “I cut off part of my thumb. I have burn marks on my arm.” He also complained that after managers learned he was an outspoken union supporter, his hours were cut from 25 a week to 11.
Princess Wright backs unionization at her McDonald’s in downtown Brooklyn. She said the managers “make it seem like they’re for you, but there’s a lot of wage theft and playing around with our hours. If we start at 11, they’ll say we started at 11.15. Sometimes you work 48 hours a week, and they pay you for only 40.” She complained that managers want employees to be available to work any time of the week, and that they sometimes scheduled her to work certain hours even though she had told managers that those hours conflicted with her college classes.
Workers at various Chipotles and McDonald’s said managers sometimes failed to comply with New York City’s new Fair Workweek Law, which requires giving fast food workers two weeks’ advance notice of their work schedule and paying them premiums when their hours are changed with little notice or they’re called in at the last minute.
Helped by Local 32BJ, more than 30 current or former Chipotle workers filed complaints with the city about not receiving premium pay for schedule changes, prompting the city’s office of consumer and workplace protections to file a lawsuit against Chipotle, seeking more than $1m in restitution for violating its Fair Workweek Law.
With Chipotle having adopted the motto “food with integrity”, Bragg said, “Chipotle has branded itself to be this different fast food chain that strives for excellence with their workers, but you can’t achieve that if you treat your workers like trash. We want to help that company achieve what they want to be.”
Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief reputation officer, said: “Chipotle has been working cooperatively with the city to ensure we have systems and processes in place to comply with” the Fair Workweek Law. She added that the company’s employees “know that Chipotle is committed to complying with all laws, rules and regulations”.
One obstacle to unionizing fast food restaurants is that many are run by franchisees, and it could be labor-intensive and expensive to seek to unionize and secure union contracts from franchisees that have just a few restaurants. Then even if the Fight for $15 got a majority of workers at dozens of restaurants to vote to unionize, the fast food companies and their franchisees might drag their feet for years before agreeing to a first contract.
The more than 40 Chipotle restaurants in New York where Local 32BJ has begun organizing efforts are all owned and run by the parent company. That makes it easier to pressure an image-conscious parent company and secure union contracts covering more restaurants.
“We haven’t assigned any one strategy to get a union,” Bragg said. “The goal is to get the employer to the table and bargain in good faith.”
Chipotle officials declined to address the unionization push, but said Chipotle gives workers “industry-leading benefits such as tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year, competitive health benefits and quarterly bonuses for all employees”.
The McDonald’s Corporation said: “Together with our independent franchisees, we pride ourselves on building a workplace that supports crew members and their ambitions.” McDonald’s added that it “recognizes the rights under the law of individual employees to choose to join – or choose not to join – labor organizations”.
McDonald’s said it has begun an ambitious program to train more than 2,000 franchisees and 850,000 employees to make sure workers are treated with dignity and to combat bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.
Jahaira Garcia, a union supporter who works at a Chipotle on Second Avenue in Manhattan, said sexual harassment was a problem at her restaurant. “The men are too touchy,” she said. Garcia, a senior at City College, said she has talked to many workers “my age, 17, 18, 19, 20” and gotten them interested in the union, and they “started to talk to an older group in their 40s. The younger group has motivated the older people to join.”
“One reason I want a union,” Garcia continued, “is a lot of people don’t have papers, and they’re really scared to talk about not being paid fairly and sexual harassment and not getting enough hours and being treated badly.”
Espinal agreed that unionization can be a powerful tool for workers who feel powerless. “A majority of people who work at Chipotle” in New York “are minorities or immigrants or children of immigrants”, he said. “They are groups that never felt empowered. The most difficult part is to change the mentality that these people have. This effort is about educating them and letting them see this is stuff that’s been done before and this is something we have to do with each other to help each other because the company isn’t looking out for us.”
A Manhattan-based union local that works closely with the Fight for $15 has launched an effort to unionize Chipotle and McDonald’s workers, getting workers at more than 50 restaurants to sign pro-union cards. “We’re running a campaign for workers in an industry that has been abusing its workers,” said Kyle Bragg, president of the local carrying out the unionization drive, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. “These workers want a union. We’re organizing in order to lift workers and improve their lives.”
Until now, the Fight for $15 – which was underwritten by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – hadn’t begun a formal unionization effort at fast food restaurants. When Fight for $15 began in late 2012, its original strategy was to exert so much pressure on McDonald’s that the fast food giant would agree to sit down and discuss wages and other matters and perhaps promise not to resist unionization efforts. But McDonald’s has refused to talk with the Fight for $15’s leaders.
With its latest effort, Local 32BJ, a powerful local union with 175,000 members, hopes to make clear to Chipotle and McDonald’s that it is intent on unionizing their restaurants in New York, and they shouldn’t oppose that effort. Union officials say a majority of the hundreds of fast food workers organizers have approached have signed cards supporting a union.
Jeremy Espinal, who works at a Chipotle in Greenwich Village, said he supports unionization because managers often treat workers with little respect. “The managers try to dehumanize you and try to beat you down mentally as much as they can so they can overwork you and make you feel you’re never doing enough,” said Espinal, a junior at Hunter College.
Espinal said the work includes lots of lifting and is far harder than he had anticipated. “I tore my Achilles heel at Chipotle,” he said. “I cut off part of my thumb. I have burn marks on my arm.” He also complained that after managers learned he was an outspoken union supporter, his hours were cut from 25 a week to 11.
Princess Wright backs unionization at her McDonald’s in downtown Brooklyn. She said the managers “make it seem like they’re for you, but there’s a lot of wage theft and playing around with our hours. If we start at 11, they’ll say we started at 11.15. Sometimes you work 48 hours a week, and they pay you for only 40.” She complained that managers want employees to be available to work any time of the week, and that they sometimes scheduled her to work certain hours even though she had told managers that those hours conflicted with her college classes.
Workers at various Chipotles and McDonald’s said managers sometimes failed to comply with New York City’s new Fair Workweek Law, which requires giving fast food workers two weeks’ advance notice of their work schedule and paying them premiums when their hours are changed with little notice or they’re called in at the last minute.
Helped by Local 32BJ, more than 30 current or former Chipotle workers filed complaints with the city about not receiving premium pay for schedule changes, prompting the city’s office of consumer and workplace protections to file a lawsuit against Chipotle, seeking more than $1m in restitution for violating its Fair Workweek Law.
With Chipotle having adopted the motto “food with integrity”, Bragg said, “Chipotle has branded itself to be this different fast food chain that strives for excellence with their workers, but you can’t achieve that if you treat your workers like trash. We want to help that company achieve what they want to be.”
Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s chief reputation officer, said: “Chipotle has been working cooperatively with the city to ensure we have systems and processes in place to comply with” the Fair Workweek Law. She added that the company’s employees “know that Chipotle is committed to complying with all laws, rules and regulations”.
One obstacle to unionizing fast food restaurants is that many are run by franchisees, and it could be labor-intensive and expensive to seek to unionize and secure union contracts from franchisees that have just a few restaurants. Then even if the Fight for $15 got a majority of workers at dozens of restaurants to vote to unionize, the fast food companies and their franchisees might drag their feet for years before agreeing to a first contract.
The more than 40 Chipotle restaurants in New York where Local 32BJ has begun organizing efforts are all owned and run by the parent company. That makes it easier to pressure an image-conscious parent company and secure union contracts covering more restaurants.
“We haven’t assigned any one strategy to get a union,” Bragg said. “The goal is to get the employer to the table and bargain in good faith.”
Chipotle officials declined to address the unionization push, but said Chipotle gives workers “industry-leading benefits such as tuition reimbursement up to $5,250 per year, competitive health benefits and quarterly bonuses for all employees”.
The McDonald’s Corporation said: “Together with our independent franchisees, we pride ourselves on building a workplace that supports crew members and their ambitions.” McDonald’s added that it “recognizes the rights under the law of individual employees to choose to join – or choose not to join – labor organizations”.
McDonald’s said it has begun an ambitious program to train more than 2,000 franchisees and 850,000 employees to make sure workers are treated with dignity and to combat bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment.
Jahaira Garcia, a union supporter who works at a Chipotle on Second Avenue in Manhattan, said sexual harassment was a problem at her restaurant. “The men are too touchy,” she said. Garcia, a senior at City College, said she has talked to many workers “my age, 17, 18, 19, 20” and gotten them interested in the union, and they “started to talk to an older group in their 40s. The younger group has motivated the older people to join.”
“One reason I want a union,” Garcia continued, “is a lot of people don’t have papers, and they’re really scared to talk about not being paid fairly and sexual harassment and not getting enough hours and being treated badly.”
Espinal agreed that unionization can be a powerful tool for workers who feel powerless. “A majority of people who work at Chipotle” in New York “are minorities or immigrants or children of immigrants”, he said. “They are groups that never felt empowered. The most difficult part is to change the mentality that these people have. This effort is about educating them and letting them see this is stuff that’s been done before and this is something we have to do with each other to help each other because the company isn’t looking out for us.”
Graduate Workers Are Going to Fight Like Hell to Stop the Trump NLRB’s New Rule
BY JEFF SCHUHRKE - in these times
WEDNESDAY, SEP 25, 2019, 4:43 PM
At universities across the country, graduate student workers perform essential labor. We teach classes, grade exams and assignments, tutor and mentor undergraduates, maintain labs, and perform clerical duties. Some 66,000 graduate employees at over 30 universities in the United States are currently represented by unions and protected through collective bargaining agreements, because public-sector labor laws in many states recognize the obvious—we are workers.
In August 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a landmark decision recognizing that graduate employees at private universities—who do the same labor as their counterparts at public universities—are also workers, and therefore also have collective bargaining rights. Since then, private universities have seen an explosion of graduate worker organizing. At least nine now have recognized grad unions, and five of those already have union contracts in place.
But now President Trump is trying to permanently reverse the 2016 decision. His anti-union appointees who control the National Labor Relations Board declared on September 20 that graduate workers at private institutions are not workers at all, but only “students,” and therefore have no right to union representation or collective bargaining. Traditionally, the NLRB settles questions of labor law through case-by-case decisions, but this time it’s exercising its rarely used rulemaking authority to set a definitive policy.
Before the rule can be implemented, there is a 60-day public comment period, which opened on September 23. The unions representing grad workers at private universities—including AFT, SEIU, UAW and UNITE HERE—are teaming up by calling on all graduate workers and allies to submit a public comment to the NLRB expressing opposition to the proposed rule. Their goal is to get 30,000 comments. With enough public pressure, the unions hope to stop—or at least delay—the new rule.
“We’re looking at having flyers, petitions, delegations, rallies, and of course commenting guidelines, to engage as many folks as possible,” says Yiran Zhang a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.
Zhang is co-chair of the SEIU-affiliated Loyola Graduate Workers' Union, which the university has refused to recognize or bargain with despite a majority of graduate employees voting to unionize in February 2017. The administration has also faced multiple protests, including a civil disobedience action and one-day walkout this past spring.
“This is a crossroads for Loyola,” Zhang explains. “They must either publicly show they stand on the side of workers who are increasingly coming under attack by bargaining with us, or they will show once again that they eschew their professed social justice values to simply hide behind Trump’s anti-labor policies.”
Nationally, graduate employees have taken on increasingly heavy teaching workloads in recent years while making poverty wages and receiving few benefits. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of graduate workers employed by universities increased by 16.7 percent, while the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty rose by only 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, executive compensation at private universities has sharply increased, with the presidents of 61 private universities now making over $1 million every year.
The argument that graduate employees are not “real” workers is as old as it is absurd. It’s not an invention of Trump’s NLRB, but of university administrators who are determined to profit off of the exploited labor of their grad workers, and don’t want unions to get in the way.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of when the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became the first recognized graduate worker union in the country. Since then, graduate workers at dozens of other public institutions—where labor relations are governed by state laws instead of the NLRB—have won union recognition.
Almost every time, administrators fought tooth and nail to prevent unionization by trotting out the same line that grad workers are more “students” than “employees.” That’s because, once they’re required to negotiate with grad unions, administrators are eventually forced to guarantee higher wages, better healthcare, tuition and fee waivers, grievance procedures, protections against discrimination and other rights through union contracts.
After half a century, it should be obvious that the “students not workers” argument is nothing more than anti-union propaganda. In reality, there’s no question that graduate workers are indeed workers who can and should have collective bargaining rights.
While universities claim to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, administrators hate unions so much they are now allying themselves with the most anti-intellectual and mendacious president in history. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the same institutions that often cover up campus sexual assault and readily roll out the welcome mat for white supremacists have found common cause with the racist sexual predator who occupies the White House.
For all the talk from universities of fostering collegial dialogue and debate, administrators are afraid to sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate with their own workers. For all the talk of promoting critical thinking, they cling to lazy union-busting talking points. For all the talk of commitment to diversity and democracy, they do everything possible to prevent their graduate student workers from having an independent voice.
If campus administrators and Trump’s NLRB insist that graduate workers at private institutions really aren’t workers, then perhaps they should all decide to collectively stop working—and see just how long the universities can function without their labor.
In August 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a landmark decision recognizing that graduate employees at private universities—who do the same labor as their counterparts at public universities—are also workers, and therefore also have collective bargaining rights. Since then, private universities have seen an explosion of graduate worker organizing. At least nine now have recognized grad unions, and five of those already have union contracts in place.
But now President Trump is trying to permanently reverse the 2016 decision. His anti-union appointees who control the National Labor Relations Board declared on September 20 that graduate workers at private institutions are not workers at all, but only “students,” and therefore have no right to union representation or collective bargaining. Traditionally, the NLRB settles questions of labor law through case-by-case decisions, but this time it’s exercising its rarely used rulemaking authority to set a definitive policy.
Before the rule can be implemented, there is a 60-day public comment period, which opened on September 23. The unions representing grad workers at private universities—including AFT, SEIU, UAW and UNITE HERE—are teaming up by calling on all graduate workers and allies to submit a public comment to the NLRB expressing opposition to the proposed rule. Their goal is to get 30,000 comments. With enough public pressure, the unions hope to stop—or at least delay—the new rule.
“We’re looking at having flyers, petitions, delegations, rallies, and of course commenting guidelines, to engage as many folks as possible,” says Yiran Zhang a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.
Zhang is co-chair of the SEIU-affiliated Loyola Graduate Workers' Union, which the university has refused to recognize or bargain with despite a majority of graduate employees voting to unionize in February 2017. The administration has also faced multiple protests, including a civil disobedience action and one-day walkout this past spring.
“This is a crossroads for Loyola,” Zhang explains. “They must either publicly show they stand on the side of workers who are increasingly coming under attack by bargaining with us, or they will show once again that they eschew their professed social justice values to simply hide behind Trump’s anti-labor policies.”
Nationally, graduate employees have taken on increasingly heavy teaching workloads in recent years while making poverty wages and receiving few benefits. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of graduate workers employed by universities increased by 16.7 percent, while the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty rose by only 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, executive compensation at private universities has sharply increased, with the presidents of 61 private universities now making over $1 million every year.
The argument that graduate employees are not “real” workers is as old as it is absurd. It’s not an invention of Trump’s NLRB, but of university administrators who are determined to profit off of the exploited labor of their grad workers, and don’t want unions to get in the way.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of when the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became the first recognized graduate worker union in the country. Since then, graduate workers at dozens of other public institutions—where labor relations are governed by state laws instead of the NLRB—have won union recognition.
Almost every time, administrators fought tooth and nail to prevent unionization by trotting out the same line that grad workers are more “students” than “employees.” That’s because, once they’re required to negotiate with grad unions, administrators are eventually forced to guarantee higher wages, better healthcare, tuition and fee waivers, grievance procedures, protections against discrimination and other rights through union contracts.
After half a century, it should be obvious that the “students not workers” argument is nothing more than anti-union propaganda. In reality, there’s no question that graduate workers are indeed workers who can and should have collective bargaining rights.
While universities claim to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, administrators hate unions so much they are now allying themselves with the most anti-intellectual and mendacious president in history. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the same institutions that often cover up campus sexual assault and readily roll out the welcome mat for white supremacists have found common cause with the racist sexual predator who occupies the White House.
For all the talk from universities of fostering collegial dialogue and debate, administrators are afraid to sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate with their own workers. For all the talk of promoting critical thinking, they cling to lazy union-busting talking points. For all the talk of commitment to diversity and democracy, they do everything possible to prevent their graduate student workers from having an independent voice.
If campus administrators and Trump’s NLRB insist that graduate workers at private institutions really aren’t workers, then perhaps they should all decide to collectively stop working—and see just how long the universities can function without their labor.
ENDING GM’S TWO-TIERED LABOR SYSTEM IS UAW MEMBERS’ TOP DEMAND — AND PART OF A BIGGER FIGHT AGAINST WORKER MISCLASSIFICATION
Rachel M. Cohen - the intercept
September 26 2019, 4:00 a.m.
SINCE LAST WEEK, nearly 50,000 GM workers have been on strike, in part against a two-tiered system enforced by the auto giant that leaves “temporary” workers doing the same jobs as permanent staff for substantially less pay and fewer benefits.
The striking workers, represented by the United Automobile Workers union, or UAW, are demanding a defined path to “permanent seniority” for GM’s temporary workers — who make up about 7 percent of GM’s U.S. workforce. GM has also entrenched inequality in its ranks by contracting out some jobs, like custodial work, that were traditionally staff roles.
“I work right across from a temporary employee who’s been there for two and a half years,” Chaz Akers, a Michigan-based autoworker who has worked at GM for 3 1/2 years told Reuters. “I install the passenger side headlight. He installs the driver side headlight. I make more money than he does. I have better health insurance than he does. It ain’t fair. It ain’t right. If you’re going to pay people to do a job, pay them all the same.”
The workers’ demands are part of a broader push against worker misclassification, a tactic used by employers to lessen their labor costs. The fight has been playing out most aggressively in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping bill last week to transform the lives of workers in his state. The law — known as AB5 — sets strict limits on who can be classified as an independent contractor, rather than an employee, and is the most serious legislative threat to the gig economy in years. The law also provides new momentum for advocates considering similar reforms in other states.
Coming to an agreement on temporary workers has become the most difficult issue in the GM-UAW negotiations, according to the Detroit Free Press. Both sides are reportedly holding strong to their positions. The Free Press also reported that resolving questions around temp workers was union members’ top request when UAW leadership surveyed them last year.
Protests of temporary workers by the UAW is “not a brand-new development” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “What Unions No Longer Do.” “But it does seem really foregrounded now in the union’s complaints, and that seems new. These classification disputes, from my perspective, seem to be growing and tracks on to the same battles over classification in California with Uber and Lyft.”
GM, like Uber and Lyft, is pushing back against the workers’ demands by claiming that such “flexible” workers are necessary for its business model. Right now, GM is trying to convince permanent, full-time workers to accept raises and more job security in exchange for freedoms around temps.
For example, GM has reportedly proposed a boost to the company’s profit-sharing formula, financial gains that would only go to permanent, full-time employees. GM workers typically earn about $1,000 for every billion in GM’s North American pretax profits. In 2018, eligible employees earned payments up to $10,750.
TEMPORARY WORKERS, who often do the same work as traditional employees, are paid less, entitled to fewer benefits, and are easier to get rid of. “That’s a trend that we’re seeing all over the economy as companies try to shed conventional, full-time employees in favor of independent contractors, subcontracted workers, or franchised employees,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “The difference with the auto manufacturers is that their temporary workers are covered by the UAW and its contracts, unlike in most other sectors of the economy.”
In 2007, under pressure from the financial crisis, UAW leaders agreed to a two-tiered contract, in which new GM hires would be paid at lower rates than workers hired before. To get out of this arrangement, widely deemed unfair, the union negotiated a new contract in 2015, in which new hires would still have lower starting salaries, at $15 an hour, but could “grow into” the full UAW hourly wage of roughly $30 an hour after eight years. Union leaders — citing GM’s clear improved financial position with billions of dollars in profit — now want to shorten that process, under the basic principle of equal pay for equal work. GM and the UAW did not return requests for comment.
GM’s current arrangement with temporary workers is one of several ways that employers have managed to fissure their workplaces over the last few decades, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California Santa Barbara. Another example is by spinning off portions of their companies, like in the 1990s, when GM spun off its parts factory, Delphi. “What that meant was all of a sudden, Delphi was competing with lots of other non-union companies and went bankrupt [in 2005] and so then, of course, in the bankruptcy proceedings, you manage to transition to lower wages,” Lichtenstein said. Another way is by contracting out custodial staff who used to be company employees.
“In the auto industry, janitors used to be employed by the auto companies and got the same wages as autoworkers,” he said. “In fact, autoworkers would often become janitors as they got older because it was easier labor and still good pay,” said Lichtenstein. “Eventually, all the companies said, ‘OK, janitorial work is not part of our core business — we’ll just outsource it.’”
In general, there has been an upward trend in companies like GM moving toward temporary workers. In 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42 percent of all temp workers in the U.S. were in clerical positions, compared with 28 percent of temp workers in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. But by 2000, just a decade later, 47 percent of all U.S. temp workers would be working in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
The UAW, for its part, has a record dating back to the early 1980s of negotiating concessions around labor costs if economic conditions sour, with the understanding that if the company’s fortunes improve, those concessions would be phased back out, Lichtenstein said.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler all say that they may need to increase their use of temporary workers in the future, pointing to the fact that they’re competing with non-union foreign manufacturers that have more temporary workers and lower labor costs. In June, the Los Angeles Times reported that workers at rival auto plants run by Toyota, Nissan, and Honda make $50 an hour in wages and benefits, while GM workers cost $63 an hour. Temporary workers make up about 20 percent of the Japanese automakers’ plants.
A former GM temp worker, now in a skilled trades apprentice program, told Michigan’s public radio station last week that being a temp was one of the worst times of her life. “They have a way of pitting you against a permanent employee where you feel like, if you go the extra mile, if you work a little bit more than your union brother or sister, that will give you an opportunity to eventually get hired in full time and that’s not the case,” she told the radio station.
Lichtenstein believes it’s clear that these two-tiered systems are weakening labor organizations. “And it’s not just a humanism or good-feeling thing,” he said. “It’s also a recognition that this is going to divide and then destroy the union.”
The striking workers, represented by the United Automobile Workers union, or UAW, are demanding a defined path to “permanent seniority” for GM’s temporary workers — who make up about 7 percent of GM’s U.S. workforce. GM has also entrenched inequality in its ranks by contracting out some jobs, like custodial work, that were traditionally staff roles.
“I work right across from a temporary employee who’s been there for two and a half years,” Chaz Akers, a Michigan-based autoworker who has worked at GM for 3 1/2 years told Reuters. “I install the passenger side headlight. He installs the driver side headlight. I make more money than he does. I have better health insurance than he does. It ain’t fair. It ain’t right. If you’re going to pay people to do a job, pay them all the same.”
The workers’ demands are part of a broader push against worker misclassification, a tactic used by employers to lessen their labor costs. The fight has been playing out most aggressively in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping bill last week to transform the lives of workers in his state. The law — known as AB5 — sets strict limits on who can be classified as an independent contractor, rather than an employee, and is the most serious legislative threat to the gig economy in years. The law also provides new momentum for advocates considering similar reforms in other states.
Coming to an agreement on temporary workers has become the most difficult issue in the GM-UAW negotiations, according to the Detroit Free Press. Both sides are reportedly holding strong to their positions. The Free Press also reported that resolving questions around temp workers was union members’ top request when UAW leadership surveyed them last year.
Protests of temporary workers by the UAW is “not a brand-new development” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “What Unions No Longer Do.” “But it does seem really foregrounded now in the union’s complaints, and that seems new. These classification disputes, from my perspective, seem to be growing and tracks on to the same battles over classification in California with Uber and Lyft.”
GM, like Uber and Lyft, is pushing back against the workers’ demands by claiming that such “flexible” workers are necessary for its business model. Right now, GM is trying to convince permanent, full-time workers to accept raises and more job security in exchange for freedoms around temps.
For example, GM has reportedly proposed a boost to the company’s profit-sharing formula, financial gains that would only go to permanent, full-time employees. GM workers typically earn about $1,000 for every billion in GM’s North American pretax profits. In 2018, eligible employees earned payments up to $10,750.
TEMPORARY WORKERS, who often do the same work as traditional employees, are paid less, entitled to fewer benefits, and are easier to get rid of. “That’s a trend that we’re seeing all over the economy as companies try to shed conventional, full-time employees in favor of independent contractors, subcontracted workers, or franchised employees,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. “The difference with the auto manufacturers is that their temporary workers are covered by the UAW and its contracts, unlike in most other sectors of the economy.”
In 2007, under pressure from the financial crisis, UAW leaders agreed to a two-tiered contract, in which new GM hires would be paid at lower rates than workers hired before. To get out of this arrangement, widely deemed unfair, the union negotiated a new contract in 2015, in which new hires would still have lower starting salaries, at $15 an hour, but could “grow into” the full UAW hourly wage of roughly $30 an hour after eight years. Union leaders — citing GM’s clear improved financial position with billions of dollars in profit — now want to shorten that process, under the basic principle of equal pay for equal work. GM and the UAW did not return requests for comment.
GM’s current arrangement with temporary workers is one of several ways that employers have managed to fissure their workplaces over the last few decades, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California Santa Barbara. Another example is by spinning off portions of their companies, like in the 1990s, when GM spun off its parts factory, Delphi. “What that meant was all of a sudden, Delphi was competing with lots of other non-union companies and went bankrupt [in 2005] and so then, of course, in the bankruptcy proceedings, you manage to transition to lower wages,” Lichtenstein said. Another way is by contracting out custodial staff who used to be company employees.
“In the auto industry, janitors used to be employed by the auto companies and got the same wages as autoworkers,” he said. “In fact, autoworkers would often become janitors as they got older because it was easier labor and still good pay,” said Lichtenstein. “Eventually, all the companies said, ‘OK, janitorial work is not part of our core business — we’ll just outsource it.’”
In general, there has been an upward trend in companies like GM moving toward temporary workers. In 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42 percent of all temp workers in the U.S. were in clerical positions, compared with 28 percent of temp workers in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. But by 2000, just a decade later, 47 percent of all U.S. temp workers would be working in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
The UAW, for its part, has a record dating back to the early 1980s of negotiating concessions around labor costs if economic conditions sour, with the understanding that if the company’s fortunes improve, those concessions would be phased back out, Lichtenstein said.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler all say that they may need to increase their use of temporary workers in the future, pointing to the fact that they’re competing with non-union foreign manufacturers that have more temporary workers and lower labor costs. In June, the Los Angeles Times reported that workers at rival auto plants run by Toyota, Nissan, and Honda make $50 an hour in wages and benefits, while GM workers cost $63 an hour. Temporary workers make up about 20 percent of the Japanese automakers’ plants.
A former GM temp worker, now in a skilled trades apprentice program, told Michigan’s public radio station last week that being a temp was one of the worst times of her life. “They have a way of pitting you against a permanent employee where you feel like, if you go the extra mile, if you work a little bit more than your union brother or sister, that will give you an opportunity to eventually get hired in full time and that’s not the case,” she told the radio station.
Lichtenstein believes it’s clear that these two-tiered systems are weakening labor organizations. “And it’s not just a humanism or good-feeling thing,” he said. “It’s also a recognition that this is going to divide and then destroy the union.”
The Strike Against General Motors Is One Front in a Much Larger Class War
BY SEAN CRAWFORD AND MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ - in these times
WEDNESDAY, SEP 18, 2019
Nearly 50,000 General Motors (GM) auto workers left their posts and marched off the job en masse late Sunday night. Since then, it’s been all able bodies to the picket line. The strike is on.
With negotiations between GM and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) leadership hitting an impasse, the 2015 GM collective bargaining agreement expired at midnight on September 15. The UAW officially announced the strike after local union leaders from around the country convened on Sunday morning. The ensuing images of workers (including a coauthor of this article) hitting picket lines this week glow with an electric air of worker solidarity. From afar, one gets the sense of an undivided union showing its strength—united in the fight from top to bottom. But the view from the pavement tells a very different story.
Far from a unified front, the largest strike against GM in over a decade reveals something that everyone sitting at the bargaining table in Detroit knows and fears: The divide between the UAW leadership and the rank and file has never been wider. Much of this has to do with revelations from an FBI corruption probe implicating former and current union officials in alleged misdeeds, including rampantly misappropriating union funds and abusing the trust of their members. With news that even current UAW President Gary Jones is being investigated for corruption, anger and frustration among workers is palpable. And their feelings towards GM executives aren’t any rosier.
Workers have watched GM haul in major profits after having been bailed out by the public (to the tune of $11.2 billion) during the Great Recession—and kept afloat by the sacrifices its own employees agreed to make. Among those sacrifices was the introduction of a tiered wage system, which allowed GM to bring in more low-wage and temporary workers to do the same jobs for a lot less money. An ostensibly temporary fix that GM has more or less made permanent, this tiered system sows divisions on the shop floor, and UAW members want it gone.
Workers accepted these and other belt-tightening measures when the chips were down. But with GM generating a combined profit of $35 billion in North America over the past three years, it’s clear that the belt remains noose-locked around the rank and file while the engorged bellies and bank accounts of GM executives continue their unconstrained expansion. And after seeing these profits and their own sacrifices rewarded with plant closures and mass layoffs, workers are rightfully pissed.
Ask any long-term worker on the picket line and they will tell you just how vividly they remember what they had to give up to keep GM out of bankruptcy a decade ago—and how painfully aware they are of GM’s refusal to appreciate and adequately repay them for it. They haven’t forgotten, and they’re prepared for a long fight. Both GM and the UAW leadership have to know that they are sitting on top of a powder keg.
The rank and file tell the truth, and the truth is that this strike is decades in the making. The truth is that, like our fellow workers around the country and around the world, auto workers have had so much more taken from them over the past half century than they could ever hope to claw back in any collective bargaining agreement. And the truth is that what has been lost can only be taken back by the force of a democratic rank-and-file movement—a movement that refuses to be co-opted by the owning class the way the out-of-touch union hierarchies allowed themselves to be co-opted.
Day in, day out, we sweat and grind under the heavy sun of labor’s lost dreams: the dream of working to live, not living to work; the dream of workers having greater ownership over our workplaces, and having more of a say in what our economy produces and how; the dream of workers, not owners, actually being the ones who profit from our hard work; the dream of universal, guaranteed employment; the dream of necessities like healthcare being institutionalized as basic rights so that one’s employer could never have the grossly unjust power to take them away. A rank-and-file movement can and must re-ignite these dreams, and it must do so while recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls labor fell into before.
A strike against GM is one battle in a much larger class war waged against working people by the owners of society. To quote Walter Reuther, “There’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.”
The bigger the bargaining unit, the more power we have. And the ravages multinational corporations like GM wreak upon our communities can only be fought with international worker solidarity.
In the past we were unified by geography. Companies like GM would envelope an entire city. With workers living so close to one another they could develop a culture of solidarity that bound them together. Now the workforce is global, split up over invisible lines in the dirt, caged within imagined national communities that are held together by guns, walls and bureaucracies. If our goal is to regain the power we once had, the power that gave birth to the labor movement in the first place, we need to broaden our vision, we need to see the global class struggle for what it is, and we need to act accordingly.
Unionism in one country is no match for capitalism in every country. We can’t just focus on one industry, one nation, or one job classification. We need to unify with our fellow workers across borders in a collective effort to win back what’s ours, the fruits of our labor.
With negotiations between GM and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) leadership hitting an impasse, the 2015 GM collective bargaining agreement expired at midnight on September 15. The UAW officially announced the strike after local union leaders from around the country convened on Sunday morning. The ensuing images of workers (including a coauthor of this article) hitting picket lines this week glow with an electric air of worker solidarity. From afar, one gets the sense of an undivided union showing its strength—united in the fight from top to bottom. But the view from the pavement tells a very different story.
Far from a unified front, the largest strike against GM in over a decade reveals something that everyone sitting at the bargaining table in Detroit knows and fears: The divide between the UAW leadership and the rank and file has never been wider. Much of this has to do with revelations from an FBI corruption probe implicating former and current union officials in alleged misdeeds, including rampantly misappropriating union funds and abusing the trust of their members. With news that even current UAW President Gary Jones is being investigated for corruption, anger and frustration among workers is palpable. And their feelings towards GM executives aren’t any rosier.
Workers have watched GM haul in major profits after having been bailed out by the public (to the tune of $11.2 billion) during the Great Recession—and kept afloat by the sacrifices its own employees agreed to make. Among those sacrifices was the introduction of a tiered wage system, which allowed GM to bring in more low-wage and temporary workers to do the same jobs for a lot less money. An ostensibly temporary fix that GM has more or less made permanent, this tiered system sows divisions on the shop floor, and UAW members want it gone.
Workers accepted these and other belt-tightening measures when the chips were down. But with GM generating a combined profit of $35 billion in North America over the past three years, it’s clear that the belt remains noose-locked around the rank and file while the engorged bellies and bank accounts of GM executives continue their unconstrained expansion. And after seeing these profits and their own sacrifices rewarded with plant closures and mass layoffs, workers are rightfully pissed.
Ask any long-term worker on the picket line and they will tell you just how vividly they remember what they had to give up to keep GM out of bankruptcy a decade ago—and how painfully aware they are of GM’s refusal to appreciate and adequately repay them for it. They haven’t forgotten, and they’re prepared for a long fight. Both GM and the UAW leadership have to know that they are sitting on top of a powder keg.
The rank and file tell the truth, and the truth is that this strike is decades in the making. The truth is that, like our fellow workers around the country and around the world, auto workers have had so much more taken from them over the past half century than they could ever hope to claw back in any collective bargaining agreement. And the truth is that what has been lost can only be taken back by the force of a democratic rank-and-file movement—a movement that refuses to be co-opted by the owning class the way the out-of-touch union hierarchies allowed themselves to be co-opted.
Day in, day out, we sweat and grind under the heavy sun of labor’s lost dreams: the dream of working to live, not living to work; the dream of workers having greater ownership over our workplaces, and having more of a say in what our economy produces and how; the dream of workers, not owners, actually being the ones who profit from our hard work; the dream of universal, guaranteed employment; the dream of necessities like healthcare being institutionalized as basic rights so that one’s employer could never have the grossly unjust power to take them away. A rank-and-file movement can and must re-ignite these dreams, and it must do so while recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls labor fell into before.
A strike against GM is one battle in a much larger class war waged against working people by the owners of society. To quote Walter Reuther, “There’s a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.”
The bigger the bargaining unit, the more power we have. And the ravages multinational corporations like GM wreak upon our communities can only be fought with international worker solidarity.
In the past we were unified by geography. Companies like GM would envelope an entire city. With workers living so close to one another they could develop a culture of solidarity that bound them together. Now the workforce is global, split up over invisible lines in the dirt, caged within imagined national communities that are held together by guns, walls and bureaucracies. If our goal is to regain the power we once had, the power that gave birth to the labor movement in the first place, we need to broaden our vision, we need to see the global class struggle for what it is, and we need to act accordingly.
Unionism in one country is no match for capitalism in every country. We can’t just focus on one industry, one nation, or one job classification. We need to unify with our fellow workers across borders in a collective effort to win back what’s ours, the fruits of our labor.
'Underpaid and undervalued': 10 women claim systemic discrimination at Disney
Exclusive: more women join pay inequality case, expanding allegations to ABC Television and Walt Disney Pictures
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
the guardian
Wed 18 Sep 2019 20.27 EDT
Class-action case, which seeks to represent all women employed full-time by Disney in California since April 2015, is escalating at a time in which there is intense scrutiny of pay gaps Photograph: Richard Drew/AP
Ten women have now accused the Walt Disney Company of gender discrimination as part of a major class-action pay gap case that has expanded to include ABC Television and Disney’s film studio.
The wage inequality lawsuit against one of the world’s largest media and entertainment corporations alleges that divisions across Disney systematically mistreat women by giving them lower salaries than male colleagues doing equivalent work and by denying them promotions.
Four more women have come forward in a new complaint filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles, which provided detailed claims about their struggles to get paid the same as men. Their claims of unlawful discrimination are against Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Disney’s music label, ABC Television’s music department, and the company’s finance department. Six of the 10 named plaintiffs are women of color.
“Being underpaid and undervalued year after year has a very real cumulative effect, financially,” said Nancy Dolan, one of the new plaintiffs, in a statement to the Guardian, which first reported on the new complaint. “It’s also demoralizing and emotionally draining. It’s time for Disney to join the dozens of California companies who have pledged to pay their women workers fairly.”
The class-action case, which seeks to represent all women employed full-time by Disney in California since April 2015, is escalating at a time in which there is intense scrutiny of pay gaps in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the media industry and other sectors.
An earlier filing in July included accusations against Disney Music Publishing, a recording arm of the company; a business division responsible for ESPN and Hulu streaming services; Walt Disney Imagineering, a division that does projects for the company’s theme parks, resorts, cruises and venues; and the Hollywood Records label, which has signed singers such as Demi Lovato, Zendaya and Miley Cyrus.
“There’s trepidation about coming forward, but all of them felt like they had no other option,” Lori Andrus, an attorney for the women, said in an interview Wednesday.
Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new complaint and plaintiffs. The company previously said the lawsuit was “without merit” and that the corporation had “robust pay equity practices and policies”.
Dolan has worked for Disney’s film studio for 18 years and has been a senior manager of creative music marketing since 2015. Her supervisor has repeatedly told her that her job responsibilities were the same as someone several steps above her current title and that a promotion was “long overdue”, the suit said.
Her performance review in 2016 said she was “operating easily at director level, if not higher”. In 2018, the review said she was working at “vice-president level” and was an “unparalleled expert in her field”. Disney HR, however, has refused to promote her, the suit said, despite one review that stated: “Her contribution to Beauty and the Beast alone resulted in the most substantial music marketing campaign in recent years and yielded global success.”
At one point, HR allegedly told her she could not be promoted from manager to director because she would be skipping a level, but then subsequently promoted two of her male counterparts in that exact manner. When she asked about this, Disney told her that one of the men was promoted because he was more of a “retention risk”, since he was younger, the suit said.
One supervisor also directly acknowledged that Dolan was doing the work of an executive vice-president “for a fraction of the cost”, according to the complaint.
Anabel Pareja Sinn, another new plaintiff, worked as a senior designer for Hollywood Records from 2006 to 2017. She was doing equivalent work to a male colleague, but he was classified as an art director, and she made significantly less money as a result, the suit said.
Sinn told the Guardian in an email that if the company took this issue seriously, it could have widespread implications: “Disney has such influence in our country, and in the world. If Disney leads the way for gender equity, all women in the workforce will be better off.”
A third new plaintiff, Dawn Wisner-Johnson, worked for Disney’s ABC Television music branch until 2017 (ABC is home to Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder and other major hit television shows).
Wisner-Johnson was classified as a manager while doing director-level work and was also denied a raise, the suit said.
Kathy Ly, the fourth person to join the lawsuit this week, worked as an analyst in the finance marketing department from March 2017 to March 2018. She routinely worked 55 to 60 hours a week and received positive performance feedback, but made less than men doing the same work and was given a “much lower raise than her male counterpart” without valid reason, the suit said.
Andrus said it was difficult for some of the women to directly see the company valuing men over them without justification: “Sometimes the men are younger. Sometimes the men are not as good performers. Sometimes they are not as experienced. And they are just being promoted because of their potential.”
For the women, it was an entirely different experience, the lawyer said: “They’re getting great performance reviews and being told to wait a year while they are watching male colleagues skip steps and move up more quickly.”
Andrus, whose firm has a history of equal pay cases against major corporations, said it was a “red flag” that a majority of the plaintiffs were women of color. The case does not allege racial discrimination, though research has repeatedly shown that women of color suffer a worse pay gap than white women.
The attorney added that it was not easy to come forward: “All of them love Disney, they love the work they do, the people they work with.” But going public in court was the only step they had left after reaching dead ends internally, she said: “They’ve tried everything.”
The wage inequality lawsuit against one of the world’s largest media and entertainment corporations alleges that divisions across Disney systematically mistreat women by giving them lower salaries than male colleagues doing equivalent work and by denying them promotions.
Four more women have come forward in a new complaint filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles, which provided detailed claims about their struggles to get paid the same as men. Their claims of unlawful discrimination are against Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Disney’s music label, ABC Television’s music department, and the company’s finance department. Six of the 10 named plaintiffs are women of color.
“Being underpaid and undervalued year after year has a very real cumulative effect, financially,” said Nancy Dolan, one of the new plaintiffs, in a statement to the Guardian, which first reported on the new complaint. “It’s also demoralizing and emotionally draining. It’s time for Disney to join the dozens of California companies who have pledged to pay their women workers fairly.”
The class-action case, which seeks to represent all women employed full-time by Disney in California since April 2015, is escalating at a time in which there is intense scrutiny of pay gaps in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the media industry and other sectors.
An earlier filing in July included accusations against Disney Music Publishing, a recording arm of the company; a business division responsible for ESPN and Hulu streaming services; Walt Disney Imagineering, a division that does projects for the company’s theme parks, resorts, cruises and venues; and the Hollywood Records label, which has signed singers such as Demi Lovato, Zendaya and Miley Cyrus.
“There’s trepidation about coming forward, but all of them felt like they had no other option,” Lori Andrus, an attorney for the women, said in an interview Wednesday.
Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new complaint and plaintiffs. The company previously said the lawsuit was “without merit” and that the corporation had “robust pay equity practices and policies”.
Dolan has worked for Disney’s film studio for 18 years and has been a senior manager of creative music marketing since 2015. Her supervisor has repeatedly told her that her job responsibilities were the same as someone several steps above her current title and that a promotion was “long overdue”, the suit said.
Her performance review in 2016 said she was “operating easily at director level, if not higher”. In 2018, the review said she was working at “vice-president level” and was an “unparalleled expert in her field”. Disney HR, however, has refused to promote her, the suit said, despite one review that stated: “Her contribution to Beauty and the Beast alone resulted in the most substantial music marketing campaign in recent years and yielded global success.”
At one point, HR allegedly told her she could not be promoted from manager to director because she would be skipping a level, but then subsequently promoted two of her male counterparts in that exact manner. When she asked about this, Disney told her that one of the men was promoted because he was more of a “retention risk”, since he was younger, the suit said.
One supervisor also directly acknowledged that Dolan was doing the work of an executive vice-president “for a fraction of the cost”, according to the complaint.
Anabel Pareja Sinn, another new plaintiff, worked as a senior designer for Hollywood Records from 2006 to 2017. She was doing equivalent work to a male colleague, but he was classified as an art director, and she made significantly less money as a result, the suit said.
Sinn told the Guardian in an email that if the company took this issue seriously, it could have widespread implications: “Disney has such influence in our country, and in the world. If Disney leads the way for gender equity, all women in the workforce will be better off.”
A third new plaintiff, Dawn Wisner-Johnson, worked for Disney’s ABC Television music branch until 2017 (ABC is home to Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder and other major hit television shows).
Wisner-Johnson was classified as a manager while doing director-level work and was also denied a raise, the suit said.
Kathy Ly, the fourth person to join the lawsuit this week, worked as an analyst in the finance marketing department from March 2017 to March 2018. She routinely worked 55 to 60 hours a week and received positive performance feedback, but made less than men doing the same work and was given a “much lower raise than her male counterpart” without valid reason, the suit said.
Andrus said it was difficult for some of the women to directly see the company valuing men over them without justification: “Sometimes the men are younger. Sometimes the men are not as good performers. Sometimes they are not as experienced. And they are just being promoted because of their potential.”
For the women, it was an entirely different experience, the lawyer said: “They’re getting great performance reviews and being told to wait a year while they are watching male colleagues skip steps and move up more quickly.”
Andrus, whose firm has a history of equal pay cases against major corporations, said it was a “red flag” that a majority of the plaintiffs were women of color. The case does not allege racial discrimination, though research has repeatedly shown that women of color suffer a worse pay gap than white women.
The attorney added that it was not easy to come forward: “All of them love Disney, they love the work they do, the people they work with.” But going public in court was the only step they had left after reaching dead ends internally, she said: “They’ve tried everything.”
Trump’s NLRB, Trying to Cut Protections for Millions of Temps and Fast-Food Workers, Trips Up Again
The labor-relations board’s attempt to kill an Obama rule protecting third-party employees fizzled once because of a conflict of interest. Now, two representatives charge, there’s a new conflict and it involves the agency’s own use of temps.
by Ian MacDougall - pro publica
Sept. 16, 5 a.m. EDT
Under the Trump administration, the National Labor Relations Board has been trying to roll back an Obama-era decision that made companies more responsible for temporary staffers, fast-food-franchise workers and others who work for them indirectly. The first attempt was foiled in early 2018 when a Trump appointee to the board was found to have a conflict of interest.
Now, as the NLRB tries to undo the rule for a second time, it’s facing questions from two Democratic representatives about another potential conflict of interest — and this one involves the NLRB’s own use of temporary staffers. In May, the labor board engaged a company called Ardelle Associates to supply lawyers and paralegals to help review public comments on the proposed overhaul of the provision in question, which is known as the “joint-employer rule.”
Among those who submitted comments advocating a reversal of the Obama-era rule are two trade associations that Ardelle belongs to and uses to recruit temps, according to contracting records. In their comments to the NLRB supporting the rule change, the trade associations asserted that companies have grown more reluctant to hire temporary employees because the rule has left them uncertain of their labor law obligations.
In essence, the NLRB hired temps whose bosses have a stake in the outcome to review and potentially summarize the public comments. And that, two top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Labor say, poses a conflict of interest under federal contracting rules. In a letter the committee's chair, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and the chair of its labor subcommittee, Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., sent last week to the labor board's chairman, John Ring, they accuse the board of violating those rules when it selected Ardelle. Democratic committee aides provided a copy of the letter to ProPublica.
The NLRB’s repeated attempts to overhaul the joint-employer rule are one front in a broader national struggle over the rights of the growing proportion of the workforce — about one-third of U.S. workers, according to a Gallup poll last year — that large corporations engage through intermediaries. Other battle lines include the rules governing when a company can classify workers as independent contractors, who are not protected by key federal labor laws. Last week, California entered the fray, enacting a law that will make it harder for companies like Uber to deny their drivers employee status. The stakes are significant, as a recent ProPublica investigation into Amazon’s reliance on contractor-supplied delivery drivers shows.
During the Obama years, the NLRB expanded protections for workers employed by third parties, like temp agencies or franchise holders, by broadening the circumstances under which a company could be held responsible for labor abuses against those workers.
The Trump administration views that as handcuffing companies. That position is supported by many major corporations, like McDonald’s, a target of Obama-era enforcement of the joint-employer rule. In a comment to the NLRB’s current effort to loosen that rule, the International Franchise Association, of which McDonald’s is a member, argued that the present joint-employer rule “has cost the franchising sector as much as $33.3 billion annually and has resulted in as many as 376,000 lost job opportunities.”
Congressional Democrats generally support the current incarnation of the joint-employer rule, making them particularly attentive to how the Trump administration goes about attempting to change it.
The letter from the two Democratic representatives raises questions about the accuracy of statements the NLRB's Ring has made to Congress. Ring assured Scott and Wilson, in a March 22 letter, that the contractor (Ardelle hadn't yet been selected) would not be involved in "any substantive, deliberative review of the comments but will be limited to sorting comments into categories in preparation for their substantive review." Yet contracting records indicate that officials had a more substantive role in mind for the Ardelle temps: they might be asked to summarize comments. That provision was drafted more than a month before Ring sent his letter, internal NLRB emails obtained by ProPublica show, and the provision remained in the final contract. Board members will rely on those summaries as they consider whether to move forward with the proposed rule change, according to a copy of Ring's notes from a Feb. 13 talk he gave to board staff.
An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment on the issues raised by Scott and Wilson’s letter beyond saying that the NLRB is in the process of preparing a response. Ardelle did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision to contract out part of the comment review process raised concerns inside the NLRB. “I am a little worried moving forward with so much opposition” to engaging a contractor, a board contracting officer wrote on April 1, just after learning Ardelle had been selected. The contracting officer asked a supervisor whether to hold off on the contract “until you all meet with Congressional and Public Affairs?” (Scott and Wilson had already sent a letter to Ring raising initial concerns about plans to contract out review of the comments.)
“We can still move forward” and bring on a temp firm, the supervisor responded a few minutes later. “Congress may decide it’s fine or months from now come back and say it’s not fine terminate the contract.”
It is not unusual for federal agencies to outsource review of comments when proposed rules generate a large volume of them. The joint-employer rulemaking generated 29,000 comments, according to Ring’s notes from his Feb. 13 talk, of which 500 to 2,000 were substantive and nonduplicative.
The present rulemaking process is the board’s second attempt to replace the joint-employer rule announced in an Obama-era case titled Browning-Ferris. In December 2017, the board’s new conservative majority voted to rescind Browning-Ferris’s revision of the rule. But it later vacated that decision, after the board’s inspector general and an ethics official determined that one of the members, William Emanuel, should have recused himself. Emanuel’s former law firm represented a party in Browning-Ferris, which at the time was still on appeal before a federal court in Washington. ProPublica reported on the inspector general’s investigation and Emanuel’s potential conflicts last year.
The NLRB then decided to take a different route to unwind Browning-Ferris. The board generally makes rules by hearing cases and issuing decisions, much like a court. But it can also issue regulations through a public rulemaking process. Last September, the board, having failed to overrule Browning-Ferris by adjudication, decided to try again through rulemaking. Emanuel, the board member found to have a conflict in the earlier vote, is participating in the process. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)
A less stringent conflict-of-interest standard applies to rulemaking, and critics say the NLRB’s resort to that process amounts to an end run around federal recusal rules. “By pursuing rulemaking rather than adjudication,” current board member Lauren McFerran, an Obama appointee, wrote in a dissent from the proposed rule, “the Board is perhaps able to avoid what might otherwise be difficult ethical issues.”
Ring has insisted that the board’s use of rulemaking “will never be for the purpose of evading ethical restrictions,” as he wrote in a letter last year to three Democratic senators who had expressed concerns about the NLRB using the process to overturn Browning-Ferris.
Edwin Egee, a spokesman for the NLRB, noted that the board is presently undertaking several rulemakings, not just the joint-employer rulemaking. “Rulemaking provides the Board the opportunity to consider input from all individuals interested in a particular issue, not only those who are party to a pending case,” Egee said in a statement.
Federal contracting rules stipulate that government contracts “require the highest degree of public trust and an impeccable standard of conduct. The general rule is to avoid strictly any conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest in Government-contractor relationships.”
In their letter last week, Scott and Wilson say hiring Ardelle “runs afoul” of this requirement, given its membership in trade associations that have commented on the proposed rule its temps are reviewing. They note, too, that the board did not ask its ethics officials to review the decision to contract with Ardelle and criticize the NLRB for “refusing to produce” information the representatives previously requested.
Their letter raises additional concerns. Federal rules forbid contracting out “inherently governmental functions” and require that agency heads or their designees make “a written determination that none of the functions to be performed are inherently governmental.” The labor board appears not to have made that determination. It repeatedly told committee staff that it did not have any such document, Scott and Wilson say in their letter.
“The NLRB’s failure to analyze” the question, the letter states, “raises a question as to the role of the summaries the contractor will draft in the rulemaking process. The integrity of the regulatory process is vital to ensure that public comments are fully considered before the agency issues its final rule.”
Now, as the NLRB tries to undo the rule for a second time, it’s facing questions from two Democratic representatives about another potential conflict of interest — and this one involves the NLRB’s own use of temporary staffers. In May, the labor board engaged a company called Ardelle Associates to supply lawyers and paralegals to help review public comments on the proposed overhaul of the provision in question, which is known as the “joint-employer rule.”
Among those who submitted comments advocating a reversal of the Obama-era rule are two trade associations that Ardelle belongs to and uses to recruit temps, according to contracting records. In their comments to the NLRB supporting the rule change, the trade associations asserted that companies have grown more reluctant to hire temporary employees because the rule has left them uncertain of their labor law obligations.
In essence, the NLRB hired temps whose bosses have a stake in the outcome to review and potentially summarize the public comments. And that, two top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Labor say, poses a conflict of interest under federal contracting rules. In a letter the committee's chair, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and the chair of its labor subcommittee, Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., sent last week to the labor board's chairman, John Ring, they accuse the board of violating those rules when it selected Ardelle. Democratic committee aides provided a copy of the letter to ProPublica.
The NLRB’s repeated attempts to overhaul the joint-employer rule are one front in a broader national struggle over the rights of the growing proportion of the workforce — about one-third of U.S. workers, according to a Gallup poll last year — that large corporations engage through intermediaries. Other battle lines include the rules governing when a company can classify workers as independent contractors, who are not protected by key federal labor laws. Last week, California entered the fray, enacting a law that will make it harder for companies like Uber to deny their drivers employee status. The stakes are significant, as a recent ProPublica investigation into Amazon’s reliance on contractor-supplied delivery drivers shows.
During the Obama years, the NLRB expanded protections for workers employed by third parties, like temp agencies or franchise holders, by broadening the circumstances under which a company could be held responsible for labor abuses against those workers.
The Trump administration views that as handcuffing companies. That position is supported by many major corporations, like McDonald’s, a target of Obama-era enforcement of the joint-employer rule. In a comment to the NLRB’s current effort to loosen that rule, the International Franchise Association, of which McDonald’s is a member, argued that the present joint-employer rule “has cost the franchising sector as much as $33.3 billion annually and has resulted in as many as 376,000 lost job opportunities.”
Congressional Democrats generally support the current incarnation of the joint-employer rule, making them particularly attentive to how the Trump administration goes about attempting to change it.
The letter from the two Democratic representatives raises questions about the accuracy of statements the NLRB's Ring has made to Congress. Ring assured Scott and Wilson, in a March 22 letter, that the contractor (Ardelle hadn't yet been selected) would not be involved in "any substantive, deliberative review of the comments but will be limited to sorting comments into categories in preparation for their substantive review." Yet contracting records indicate that officials had a more substantive role in mind for the Ardelle temps: they might be asked to summarize comments. That provision was drafted more than a month before Ring sent his letter, internal NLRB emails obtained by ProPublica show, and the provision remained in the final contract. Board members will rely on those summaries as they consider whether to move forward with the proposed rule change, according to a copy of Ring's notes from a Feb. 13 talk he gave to board staff.
An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment on the issues raised by Scott and Wilson’s letter beyond saying that the NLRB is in the process of preparing a response. Ardelle did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision to contract out part of the comment review process raised concerns inside the NLRB. “I am a little worried moving forward with so much opposition” to engaging a contractor, a board contracting officer wrote on April 1, just after learning Ardelle had been selected. The contracting officer asked a supervisor whether to hold off on the contract “until you all meet with Congressional and Public Affairs?” (Scott and Wilson had already sent a letter to Ring raising initial concerns about plans to contract out review of the comments.)
“We can still move forward” and bring on a temp firm, the supervisor responded a few minutes later. “Congress may decide it’s fine or months from now come back and say it’s not fine terminate the contract.”
It is not unusual for federal agencies to outsource review of comments when proposed rules generate a large volume of them. The joint-employer rulemaking generated 29,000 comments, according to Ring’s notes from his Feb. 13 talk, of which 500 to 2,000 were substantive and nonduplicative.
The present rulemaking process is the board’s second attempt to replace the joint-employer rule announced in an Obama-era case titled Browning-Ferris. In December 2017, the board’s new conservative majority voted to rescind Browning-Ferris’s revision of the rule. But it later vacated that decision, after the board’s inspector general and an ethics official determined that one of the members, William Emanuel, should have recused himself. Emanuel’s former law firm represented a party in Browning-Ferris, which at the time was still on appeal before a federal court in Washington. ProPublica reported on the inspector general’s investigation and Emanuel’s potential conflicts last year.
The NLRB then decided to take a different route to unwind Browning-Ferris. The board generally makes rules by hearing cases and issuing decisions, much like a court. But it can also issue regulations through a public rulemaking process. Last September, the board, having failed to overrule Browning-Ferris by adjudication, decided to try again through rulemaking. Emanuel, the board member found to have a conflict in the earlier vote, is participating in the process. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)
A less stringent conflict-of-interest standard applies to rulemaking, and critics say the NLRB’s resort to that process amounts to an end run around federal recusal rules. “By pursuing rulemaking rather than adjudication,” current board member Lauren McFerran, an Obama appointee, wrote in a dissent from the proposed rule, “the Board is perhaps able to avoid what might otherwise be difficult ethical issues.”
Ring has insisted that the board’s use of rulemaking “will never be for the purpose of evading ethical restrictions,” as he wrote in a letter last year to three Democratic senators who had expressed concerns about the NLRB using the process to overturn Browning-Ferris.
Edwin Egee, a spokesman for the NLRB, noted that the board is presently undertaking several rulemakings, not just the joint-employer rulemaking. “Rulemaking provides the Board the opportunity to consider input from all individuals interested in a particular issue, not only those who are party to a pending case,” Egee said in a statement.
Federal contracting rules stipulate that government contracts “require the highest degree of public trust and an impeccable standard of conduct. The general rule is to avoid strictly any conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest in Government-contractor relationships.”
In their letter last week, Scott and Wilson say hiring Ardelle “runs afoul” of this requirement, given its membership in trade associations that have commented on the proposed rule its temps are reviewing. They note, too, that the board did not ask its ethics officials to review the decision to contract with Ardelle and criticize the NLRB for “refusing to produce” information the representatives previously requested.
Their letter raises additional concerns. Federal rules forbid contracting out “inherently governmental functions” and require that agency heads or their designees make “a written determination that none of the functions to be performed are inherently governmental.” The labor board appears not to have made that determination. It repeatedly told committee staff that it did not have any such document, Scott and Wilson say in their letter.
“The NLRB’s failure to analyze” the question, the letter states, “raises a question as to the role of the summaries the contractor will draft in the rulemaking process. The integrity of the regulatory process is vital to ensure that public comments are fully considered before the agency issues its final rule.”
More than 49,000 United Auto Workers strike against General Motors
Union members shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the US after contract talks with the company deteriorated
Associated Press - the guardian
Mon 16 Sep 2019 09.24 EDT
More than 49,000 members of the United Auto Workers walked off General Motors factory floors or set up picket lines early on Monday as contract talks with the company deteriorated into a strike.
Workers shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the US, as well as 22 parts distribution warehouses.
It wasn’t clear how long the walkout would last, with the union saying GM has budged little in months of talks while GM said it made substantial offers including higher wages and factory investments.
It’s the first national strike by the union since a two-day walkout in 2007 that had little impact on the company.
GM workers joined striking Aramark-employed janitors assigned to GM facilities on the picket lines on Sunday night at a sprawling factory on the border between Detroit and the small town of Hamtramck.
Worker Patty Thomas said she was not scheduled to picket, but came out to support her colleagues at the car plant, which GM wants to close.
She had heard talk that GM may keep the factory open and start building electric pickup trucks there, but she was skeptical.
“What are they going to take away?” she asked. “That’s the big issue.”
She said workers gave up cost-of-living pay raises to help GM get through bankruptcy, and workers want some of that back now that the company is making profits.
Striking GM employees were joined on the picket lines by workers from Ford and Fiat Chrysler, who are working under contract extensions.
The UAW vice-president Terry Dittes, the union’s top GM negotiator, said a strike is the union’s last resort but is needed because both sides are far apart in negotiating a new four-year contract. The union, he said on Saturday, does not take a strike lightly.
“We clearly understand the hardship that it may cause,” he said. “We are standing up for fair wages, we are standing up for affordable quality healthcare, we are standing up for our share of the profits.”
GM, however, said it offered pay raises and $7bn worth of US factory investments resulting in 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The company also said it offered higher profit sharing, “nationally leading” health benefits and an $8,000 payment to each worker upon ratification.
The union’s contract with GM expired on Saturday night, but pacts with the company’s crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, were extended indefinitely. The union has picked GM as its target company this year, and any deal it negotiates will be used as a template for the others.
GM was picked because it is the most profitable of the three, and because its plans to close four US factories have angered union members.
On Sunday, about 200 plant-level leaders voted unanimously to strike against GM if no deal could be reached by Sunday night. Although talks were halted over the weekend, the UAW spokesman, Brian Rothenberg, said there was still dialogue.
Before the talks broke off, GM offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according to a person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The person was not authorized to disclose details of the negotiations.
The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a huge factory that has stopped making cars and will be closed. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.
It is unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.
Rothenberg said UAW was striking for fair wages, affordable healthcare, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.
GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.
The talks this year have been overshadowed by a growing federal corruption investigation that snared a top union official on Thursday. Vance Pearson, head of a regional office based near St Louis, was charged over an alleged scheme to embezzle union money and spend cash on premium booze, golf clubs, cigars and swanky stays in California. It is the same region that UAW’s president, Gary Jones, led before taking the union’s top office last year. Jones himself has been touched by the investigation, leading some union members to call for him to step down, but he has not been charged.
This year’s talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because of GM’s plan to close four US factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, as well as Lordstown and factories in Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore.
Workers shut down 33 manufacturing plants in nine states across the US, as well as 22 parts distribution warehouses.
It wasn’t clear how long the walkout would last, with the union saying GM has budged little in months of talks while GM said it made substantial offers including higher wages and factory investments.
It’s the first national strike by the union since a two-day walkout in 2007 that had little impact on the company.
GM workers joined striking Aramark-employed janitors assigned to GM facilities on the picket lines on Sunday night at a sprawling factory on the border between Detroit and the small town of Hamtramck.
Worker Patty Thomas said she was not scheduled to picket, but came out to support her colleagues at the car plant, which GM wants to close.
She had heard talk that GM may keep the factory open and start building electric pickup trucks there, but she was skeptical.
“What are they going to take away?” she asked. “That’s the big issue.”
She said workers gave up cost-of-living pay raises to help GM get through bankruptcy, and workers want some of that back now that the company is making profits.
Striking GM employees were joined on the picket lines by workers from Ford and Fiat Chrysler, who are working under contract extensions.
The UAW vice-president Terry Dittes, the union’s top GM negotiator, said a strike is the union’s last resort but is needed because both sides are far apart in negotiating a new four-year contract. The union, he said on Saturday, does not take a strike lightly.
“We clearly understand the hardship that it may cause,” he said. “We are standing up for fair wages, we are standing up for affordable quality healthcare, we are standing up for our share of the profits.”
GM, however, said it offered pay raises and $7bn worth of US factory investments resulting in 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The company also said it offered higher profit sharing, “nationally leading” health benefits and an $8,000 payment to each worker upon ratification.
The union’s contract with GM expired on Saturday night, but pacts with the company’s crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, were extended indefinitely. The union has picked GM as its target company this year, and any deal it negotiates will be used as a template for the others.
GM was picked because it is the most profitable of the three, and because its plans to close four US factories have angered union members.
On Sunday, about 200 plant-level leaders voted unanimously to strike against GM if no deal could be reached by Sunday night. Although talks were halted over the weekend, the UAW spokesman, Brian Rothenberg, said there was still dialogue.
Before the talks broke off, GM offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according to a person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The person was not authorized to disclose details of the negotiations.
The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a huge factory that has stopped making cars and will be closed. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.
It is unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.
Rothenberg said UAW was striking for fair wages, affordable healthcare, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.
GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.
The talks this year have been overshadowed by a growing federal corruption investigation that snared a top union official on Thursday. Vance Pearson, head of a regional office based near St Louis, was charged over an alleged scheme to embezzle union money and spend cash on premium booze, golf clubs, cigars and swanky stays in California. It is the same region that UAW’s president, Gary Jones, led before taking the union’s top office last year. Jones himself has been touched by the investigation, leading some union members to call for him to step down, but he has not been charged.
This year’s talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because of GM’s plan to close four US factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, as well as Lordstown and factories in Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore.
In ‘disgusting’ move, Jeff Bezos abruptly cuts health benefits for nearly 2,000 part-time Whole Foods workers
September 14, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
“I am in shock. I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job—because of my benefits.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday cut benefits for part-time workers at his grocery chain Whole Foods, drawing criticism from the left for a move that could leave thousands of people without health insurance.
“Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world,” Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn said on Twitter. “This is disgusting.”
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of the Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits.”
—writer Elon Green
Business Insider reporter Hayley Peterson broke the story. The decision will affect 1,900 of the business’s 95,000 workers—the ones who work part-time, or around 20 hours a week.
“We are providing team members with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told Peterson. “All Whole Foods Market team members continue to receive employment benefits including a 20% in-store discount.”
One employee, who has been working for the company for 15 years but felt anonymity was necessary to avoid retribution for speaking out, said she was devastated by the news.
“I am in shock,” said the employee. “I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job—because of my benefits.”
Producer Jennifer Solotaroff took to Twitter to tell her story of being a Whole Foods employee and to explain to her audience the importance of benefits for the company’s part-time staff.
“I worked at Whole Foods and it was the kind of job where people were able to work and go about their life,” said Solotaroff. “Employees were taken care of and you could feel it—the morale was great, it was a diverse environment, and employees felt supported. So much of that had to do with coverage.”
The news of Bezos’s decision didn’t come as a surprise to writer Elon Green.
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of The Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits,” Green tweeted.
The move came less than a month after Bezos signed a pledge to invest in workers, The Verge explained:
Last month, Amazon joined a number of other tech companies and Fortune 500 firms in signing a letter outlining the purpose of a corporation as something not just designed to return shareholder value, but also to serve employees and the community. “Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the pledge read. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.”
That disconnect between words and actions, Business Insider columnist Bob Bryan said, proves there’s no substitute for solidarity.
“The Whole Foods decision is not just hypocritical of Bezos, but also proves why workers should never put too much trust in kind words from CEOs and instead push for lasting changes to uphold their interests and those of their coworkers,” Bryan wrote.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday cut benefits for part-time workers at his grocery chain Whole Foods, drawing criticism from the left for a move that could leave thousands of people without health insurance.
“Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world,” Boston-based activist Jonathan Cohn said on Twitter. “This is disgusting.”
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of the Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits.”
—writer Elon Green
Business Insider reporter Hayley Peterson broke the story. The decision will affect 1,900 of the business’s 95,000 workers—the ones who work part-time, or around 20 hours a week.
“We are providing team members with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told Peterson. “All Whole Foods Market team members continue to receive employment benefits including a 20% in-store discount.”
One employee, who has been working for the company for 15 years but felt anonymity was necessary to avoid retribution for speaking out, said she was devastated by the news.
“I am in shock,” said the employee. “I’ve worked here 15 years. This is why I keep the job—because of my benefits.”
Producer Jennifer Solotaroff took to Twitter to tell her story of being a Whole Foods employee and to explain to her audience the importance of benefits for the company’s part-time staff.
“I worked at Whole Foods and it was the kind of job where people were able to work and go about their life,” said Solotaroff. “Employees were taken care of and you could feel it—the morale was great, it was a diverse environment, and employees felt supported. So much of that had to do with coverage.”
The news of Bezos’s decision didn’t come as a surprise to writer Elon Green.
“Recall that one of Bezos’s first acts as publisher of The Washington Post was to cut his staff’s retirement benefits,” Green tweeted.
The move came less than a month after Bezos signed a pledge to invest in workers, The Verge explained:
Last month, Amazon joined a number of other tech companies and Fortune 500 firms in signing a letter outlining the purpose of a corporation as something not just designed to return shareholder value, but also to serve employees and the community. “Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the pledge read. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.”
That disconnect between words and actions, Business Insider columnist Bob Bryan said, proves there’s no substitute for solidarity.
“The Whole Foods decision is not just hypocritical of Bezos, but also proves why workers should never put too much trust in kind words from CEOs and instead push for lasting changes to uphold their interests and those of their coworkers,” Bryan wrote.
Uber and Lyft launch anti-labor misinformation campaign in response to historic California bill
The anti-labor propaganda tactics are straight out of the Trump playbook, one labor expert says
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 11:05PM (UTC)
On Tuesday night, the California State Senate passed a historic bill that is expected to improve the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of exploited contract workers for contractor-dependent rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which was designed to improve the livelihood of these workers, passed in a 29-to-11 vote. The bill now heads to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, though he is expected to sign it. Once signed, the law would take effect on Jan. 1, 2020.
Despite Uber and Lyft’s efforts to negotiate an exemption, the bill as passed will force both companies to make their drivers W-2 employees — thus requiring the companies to pay its driver-employees a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees make at least the California minimum wage.
This would upend the business models of those and similar Silicon Valley companies like Doordash, who depend on gig economy workers who often suffer inconsistent wages and few or no benefits.
Since the news broke about the bill’s passage in the most populous state in the US, both companies have responded by either spreading misinformation about the bill to organize resistance, or flat-out refusing to comply.
In an email to drivers, Lyft said that “as a result of AB5,” drivers may be required to drive “specific shifts, stick to specific areas, and drive for only a single platform.” “We continue to advocate for a solution that protects your independence—and your earnings,” the email read, including their proposed amendments.
---
Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon that such a change is not written in the law. It would be Lyft’s choice to implement those changes on their own.
“The decision to go to shifts rather than continue the model — there is nothing in the law that requires that... if Lyft does that that will be the decision of the company to do that. It isn’t a requirement of the law,” Jacobs said. “They are saying how they might respond, actions they might take — but those are their decisions... [not] the requirement of the law.”
In the email, echoing what Uber has said too, Lyft emphasized it wants to improve benefits for their drivers — including paid sick time and family leave — which drivers under AB5 would be able to access.
When asked about why Lyft continues to oppose the bill when both agendas are aligned to improve benefits, a Lyft spokesperson told Salon it is about retaining “flexibility” for drivers.
“We are fully prepared to take this issue to the voters of California to preserve the freedom and access drivers and riders want and need,” Adrian Durbin, a spokesperson for Lyft, said in an email statement.
Jacobs told Salon there are tradeoffs between flexibility and security, but ultimately those are best worked out in bargaining between workers and companies. Under AB5, gig workers for these companies will finally be able to unionize. Under national law, gig workers face antitrust issues while organizing and bargaining their wages.
Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said on a call with reporters said drivers may not fall under the new rules.
“Under that three-part test, arguably the highest bar is that a company must prove that contractors are doing work ‘outside the usual course’ of its business,” West said. “Several previous rulings have found that drivers’ work is outside the usual course of Uber’s business, which is serving as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces.”
He also said the company is dedicated to hiring “the best campaign team and best advisors we possibly can to run a successful ballot initiative” to amend or overturn AB5.
Kati Sipp, an expert in gig economy labor organizing, said it seems like these companies are almost taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook.
“It feels like they are taking a page from the Trump playbook and straight up misconstruing pieces of the legislation,” Sipp told Salon. “It will be interesting to see once the filing come in, and see how much they spent lobbying on this legislation, but it is extremely clear they believe their wealth gives them the right to do whatever they want.”
Uber driver Rebecca Stack-Martinez, an organizer for Gig Workers Rising, told Salon in an interview she is not surprised by the companies’ responses.
“They have been doing this from the very beginning of AB5,” Stack-Martinez said. “It is not surprising they are providing misleading fear-mongering tactics... we see this every time workers fight back and begin to win.”
Despite Uber and Lyft’s efforts to negotiate an exemption, the bill as passed will force both companies to make their drivers W-2 employees — thus requiring the companies to pay its driver-employees a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees make at least the California minimum wage.
This would upend the business models of those and similar Silicon Valley companies like Doordash, who depend on gig economy workers who often suffer inconsistent wages and few or no benefits.
Since the news broke about the bill’s passage in the most populous state in the US, both companies have responded by either spreading misinformation about the bill to organize resistance, or flat-out refusing to comply.
In an email to drivers, Lyft said that “as a result of AB5,” drivers may be required to drive “specific shifts, stick to specific areas, and drive for only a single platform.” “We continue to advocate for a solution that protects your independence—and your earnings,” the email read, including their proposed amendments.
---
Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon that such a change is not written in the law. It would be Lyft’s choice to implement those changes on their own.
“The decision to go to shifts rather than continue the model — there is nothing in the law that requires that... if Lyft does that that will be the decision of the company to do that. It isn’t a requirement of the law,” Jacobs said. “They are saying how they might respond, actions they might take — but those are their decisions... [not] the requirement of the law.”
In the email, echoing what Uber has said too, Lyft emphasized it wants to improve benefits for their drivers — including paid sick time and family leave — which drivers under AB5 would be able to access.
When asked about why Lyft continues to oppose the bill when both agendas are aligned to improve benefits, a Lyft spokesperson told Salon it is about retaining “flexibility” for drivers.
“We are fully prepared to take this issue to the voters of California to preserve the freedom and access drivers and riders want and need,” Adrian Durbin, a spokesperson for Lyft, said in an email statement.
Jacobs told Salon there are tradeoffs between flexibility and security, but ultimately those are best worked out in bargaining between workers and companies. Under AB5, gig workers for these companies will finally be able to unionize. Under national law, gig workers face antitrust issues while organizing and bargaining their wages.
Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said on a call with reporters said drivers may not fall under the new rules.
“Under that three-part test, arguably the highest bar is that a company must prove that contractors are doing work ‘outside the usual course’ of its business,” West said. “Several previous rulings have found that drivers’ work is outside the usual course of Uber’s business, which is serving as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces.”
He also said the company is dedicated to hiring “the best campaign team and best advisors we possibly can to run a successful ballot initiative” to amend or overturn AB5.
Kati Sipp, an expert in gig economy labor organizing, said it seems like these companies are almost taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook.
“It feels like they are taking a page from the Trump playbook and straight up misconstruing pieces of the legislation,” Sipp told Salon. “It will be interesting to see once the filing come in, and see how much they spent lobbying on this legislation, but it is extremely clear they believe their wealth gives them the right to do whatever they want.”
Uber driver Rebecca Stack-Martinez, an organizer for Gig Workers Rising, told Salon in an interview she is not surprised by the companies’ responses.
“They have been doing this from the very beginning of AB5,” Stack-Martinez said. “It is not surprising they are providing misleading fear-mongering tactics... we see this every time workers fight back and begin to win.”
Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog - salon
September 3, 2019
Wealthy corporations and their enablers have spread 5 big lies about unions in order to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom-lines. Know the truth and spread the truth.
Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.
Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income
inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.
Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.
Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.
Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.
Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.
Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income
inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.
Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.
Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.
Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.
Lyft, Uber to spend $60 million on propaganda to keep workers maximally exploited
A California bill that would give gig economy workers a middle-class life is terrifying Silicon Valley's C-suite
NICOLE KARLIS -Salon
SEPTEMBER 1, 2019 2:00PM (UTC)
On Friday, California state senators on the appropriations committee voted for Assembly Bill 5 — a bill designed to improve the livelihood of gig economy workers at companies like Uber and Lyft, whose business models depend on independent contractors who often suffer inconsistent wages and little or no benefits.
The vote brings the bill one step closer to becoming a law, one which has the potential to completely remake California's gig economy to make it more equitable for workers. Lawmakers voted 5-2 to send the bill to the Senate floor, which will be the final vote.
Yet Uber and Lyft seem frightened at the prospect of treating their workers better, and have been amping up their efforts to protect their companies in case the bill passes. Both rideshare companies' business models rely on having low-paid independent contractors that are exempt from full-time employee benefits — and even that seems not to be enough to break even. Uber lost $5 billion in the past 3 months, the same time period in which it went public. Lyft's quarterly loss was $644 million.
Assembly Bill 5, if passed, would force all companies to make their drivers W-2 employees — a move that would require paying a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees made at least minimum wage. Notably, many Lyft and Uber drivers have reported making less than minimum wage, a situation only possible because of the contractual nature of their labor.
But Uber and Lyft are not going to treat their workers any better without a fight. As The New York Times reports, both companies are taking extreme measures to keep their workers independent contractors, spending millions on propaganda to sway public opinion.
The two rideshare companies are spending $30 million each — $60 million total — toward a fund to put an initiative on the California 2020 ballot to exempt them from AB5, assuming it passes. DoorDash, whose business model also depends on independent contractors, said it would contribute $30 million, too.
In a statement to TechCrunch, a Lyft spokesperson said: “We are working on a solution that provides drivers with strong protections that include an earnings guarantee, a system of worker-directed portable benefits, and first-of-its kind industry-wide sectoral bargaining, without jeopardizing the flexibility drivers tell us they value so much.”
Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in an interview with The New York Times the fund is a “Plan B.”
“As a Plan B, we are reluctantly funding this initiative,” West said. “This is not our first-choice option. We would much rather have a historic deal that is good for drivers, good for innovation, good for labor.”
The news quickly followed requests made by both companies to their customers to contact their legislators to oppose AB 5 and support their proposed revision. In an email to California riders, Uber advocated for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour while on a trip, in addition to paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while working — all rights that drivers don’t have as independent contractors.
In a separate email from Lyft sent to its customers, the company said that AB5, as it is written, could mean that customers pay more, wait longer, and “risk losing reliable access to rideshare altogether.” They, too, promised a new proposal “with additional workplace protections for drivers and a minimum earnings floor.
AB 5 expands on and codifies the 2018 California Supreme Court decision made in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, and will make it harder for companies to claim that workers are independent contractors. The determination, according to the bill, would be an “ABC” test would ascertain whether a worker is an employee rather than a contractor. Under the test, as it stands, it is likely that gig economy workers — who are currently classified as independent contractors — would be considered employees.
While the bill only pertains to the state of California, some experts believe its repercussions will extend across the country — perhaps unsurprising given that California is both the largest state by population, and has the largest economy of any state.
“What happens in California will be closely watched around the country," Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon in July. “As we have seen with paid sick leave, $15 minimum wages, and fair scheduling, policies that start in one state or locality often spread elsewhere.”
Jacobs told Salon such a law can have a nationwide impact not only because it will set a precedent, but because a majority of gig economy companies are in California — like Uber, Lyft and Postmates.
“California makes up a significant part of the market for many of the gig economy companies,” Jacobs said. “It will have a large effect on their overall business model ... in the context [of] New York City, and other important markets, that have put higher labor standards in place.”
The corporations' massive propaganda efforts to exempt Uber and Lyft exempt from the bill come as an insult to Uber and Lyft drivers who support AB5.
“It’s insulting,” Uber driver Rebecca Stack-Martinez, an organizer for Gig Workers Rising, told Salon in an interview. “Here is a company claiming drivers are the heart of their business, and that they would do right by them.
"If that was true they would let AB 5 pass," she added.
Stack-Martinez said she felt "nauseous" when she heard that the companies had created a $60 million fund for the 2020 ballot measure.
“Why don’t they take that money and give it to their drivers who are sleeping in their cars and who can’t afford to put food on the tables for family?” she said.
Tech giants argue that their workers “prefer” freedom and flexibility in their workday. Jacobs, of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon that argument lacks steam.
“Their model is based on offloading as much risk to the drivers as possible while paying at the lowest possible rate,” Jacobs told Salon in July. “There is no reason there cannot be flexibility in an employee model .... this is a choice the company makes, and ultimately the best place to make the decision on trade-offs between security and flexibility is through a union — and workers need both higher labor standards and a union to have a voice in how policies are implemented.”
The vote brings the bill one step closer to becoming a law, one which has the potential to completely remake California's gig economy to make it more equitable for workers. Lawmakers voted 5-2 to send the bill to the Senate floor, which will be the final vote.
Yet Uber and Lyft seem frightened at the prospect of treating their workers better, and have been amping up their efforts to protect their companies in case the bill passes. Both rideshare companies' business models rely on having low-paid independent contractors that are exempt from full-time employee benefits — and even that seems not to be enough to break even. Uber lost $5 billion in the past 3 months, the same time period in which it went public. Lyft's quarterly loss was $644 million.
Assembly Bill 5, if passed, would force all companies to make their drivers W-2 employees — a move that would require paying a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees made at least minimum wage. Notably, many Lyft and Uber drivers have reported making less than minimum wage, a situation only possible because of the contractual nature of their labor.
But Uber and Lyft are not going to treat their workers any better without a fight. As The New York Times reports, both companies are taking extreme measures to keep their workers independent contractors, spending millions on propaganda to sway public opinion.
The two rideshare companies are spending $30 million each — $60 million total — toward a fund to put an initiative on the California 2020 ballot to exempt them from AB5, assuming it passes. DoorDash, whose business model also depends on independent contractors, said it would contribute $30 million, too.
In a statement to TechCrunch, a Lyft spokesperson said: “We are working on a solution that provides drivers with strong protections that include an earnings guarantee, a system of worker-directed portable benefits, and first-of-its kind industry-wide sectoral bargaining, without jeopardizing the flexibility drivers tell us they value so much.”
Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in an interview with The New York Times the fund is a “Plan B.”
“As a Plan B, we are reluctantly funding this initiative,” West said. “This is not our first-choice option. We would much rather have a historic deal that is good for drivers, good for innovation, good for labor.”
The news quickly followed requests made by both companies to their customers to contact their legislators to oppose AB 5 and support their proposed revision. In an email to California riders, Uber advocated for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour while on a trip, in addition to paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while working — all rights that drivers don’t have as independent contractors.
In a separate email from Lyft sent to its customers, the company said that AB5, as it is written, could mean that customers pay more, wait longer, and “risk losing reliable access to rideshare altogether.” They, too, promised a new proposal “with additional workplace protections for drivers and a minimum earnings floor.
AB 5 expands on and codifies the 2018 California Supreme Court decision made in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, and will make it harder for companies to claim that workers are independent contractors. The determination, according to the bill, would be an “ABC” test would ascertain whether a worker is an employee rather than a contractor. Under the test, as it stands, it is likely that gig economy workers — who are currently classified as independent contractors — would be considered employees.
While the bill only pertains to the state of California, some experts believe its repercussions will extend across the country — perhaps unsurprising given that California is both the largest state by population, and has the largest economy of any state.
“What happens in California will be closely watched around the country," Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon in July. “As we have seen with paid sick leave, $15 minimum wages, and fair scheduling, policies that start in one state or locality often spread elsewhere.”
Jacobs told Salon such a law can have a nationwide impact not only because it will set a precedent, but because a majority of gig economy companies are in California — like Uber, Lyft and Postmates.
“California makes up a significant part of the market for many of the gig economy companies,” Jacobs said. “It will have a large effect on their overall business model ... in the context [of] New York City, and other important markets, that have put higher labor standards in place.”
The corporations' massive propaganda efforts to exempt Uber and Lyft exempt from the bill come as an insult to Uber and Lyft drivers who support AB5.
“It’s insulting,” Uber driver Rebecca Stack-Martinez, an organizer for Gig Workers Rising, told Salon in an interview. “Here is a company claiming drivers are the heart of their business, and that they would do right by them.
"If that was true they would let AB 5 pass," she added.
Stack-Martinez said she felt "nauseous" when she heard that the companies had created a $60 million fund for the 2020 ballot measure.
“Why don’t they take that money and give it to their drivers who are sleeping in their cars and who can’t afford to put food on the tables for family?” she said.
Tech giants argue that their workers “prefer” freedom and flexibility in their workday. Jacobs, of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon that argument lacks steam.
“Their model is based on offloading as much risk to the drivers as possible while paying at the lowest possible rate,” Jacobs told Salon in July. “There is no reason there cannot be flexibility in an employee model .... this is a choice the company makes, and ultimately the best place to make the decision on trade-offs between security and flexibility is through a union — and workers need both higher labor standards and a union to have a voice in how policies are implemented.”
For Incarcerated Workers, Summer Heat Can Be a Death Sentence
BY ELLA FASSLER - In These Times
WEDNESDAY, AUG 28, 2019, 10:19 AM
PICACHO, AZ - JUNE 27: People incarcerated at Picacho State Prison work at LBJ Farms pitching watermelons for $2 per hour. (Photo by Nicole Hill/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images)
ABILENE, TEXAS—Temperatures reached 97 degrees on June 21 at the French Robinson Unit prison the day Seth Donnelly collapsed. The Texas Observer reported Seth passed out during his prison job of training attack dogs—running around in a 75-pound “fight suit” while the dogs tried to bite him. Seth’s internal body temperature was 106 when he reached the hospital, where doctors eventually took him off life support. He died on June 23, and his preliminary autopsy lists multiorgan failure following severe hyperthermia.
These conditions aren’t new. Danielle, who asked for In These Times to withhold her last name to protect her family-run business from social stigma, says she woke up in her cell in Texas at Gatesville Prison one typical early morning in July 2015, drenched in sweat. Without time (or permission) to shower or brush her teeth, she reports she was corralled to the fields in a heavy uniform.
“It didn’t feel safe,” says Danielle, who explains she picked tomatoes and jalapeño peppers without pay. Gatesville’s average high temperature that month was 98 degrees. “Texas in July, it’s like sitting on hell’s doorstep,” she says.
A guard who Danielle says she was “deathly terrified of” patrolled the “state property” (the term guards used for incarcerated people) on a horse. Danielle says she was not provided gloves, which often left her hands exposed to thorns and caustic jalapeño juices. One day, Danielle says, after several hours, another woman without gloves asked the guard if they could wash out their wounds. According to Danielle, the guard stopped, pulled her gun and yelled like a drill sergeant: “What are the rules of the field?” Danielle testifies that another group yelled back, “No breaks until work is done.”
Although there is little data or reporting on heat conditions for incarcerated workers, they may be especially vulnerable to being pushed to their limits because there are few labor protections and little to no oversight.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employers to protect workers from serious hazards (including heat-related risks). Though the Act does not cover incarcerated laborers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has said federal prisons must still uphold its standards—which include, when the heat index hits 91‑103 degrees, reminding workers to drink 4 cups of water an hour, scheduling frequent breaks in cool areas, and developing work/rest schedules for workers in heavy clothing.
But OSHA rules do not apply to state prisons. Twenty-two states have adopted OSHA “state plans,” which cover state prisons with standards intended to be at least as effective as federal standards. Eight of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates have declined to adopt these plans.
“The guards could literally do whatever they wanted to us,” says Danielle, who was incarcerated in Texas from August 2014 to September 2015..
Danielle’s stated working conditions appear antithetical to OSHA’s guidelines. “There was a vehicle that would come by and bring some water, but if the vehicle broke down you were out of luck for water that day,” she says. “That happened numerous times. Even when we get water it was gone within a few minutes and they won’t refill it for you. There are 50-plus women and the women in the back don’t get any.”
Danielle also says adequate work/rest schedules were not implemented. “We would go on for four hours or more before we sat in the shade,” she says. “I remember thinking—I know there were women there who were much older than me doing the exact same thing—‘What would my mother do?’ She would die. She would just fall over on the field and die. How is this possibly allowed?”
Danielle was not alone: Nearly half of people imprisoned in the U.S. work while incarcerated, a population disproportionately likely to be Black. Penal labor became a more significant part of the American economy following the Civil War; police would conduct sweeps and make arrests of Black men when plantations needed additional labor for planting, cutting and harvesting crops. Today, a majority of incarcerated workers perform “institutional maintenance,” which includes tasks like mowing the compound lawn and mopping floors. A relatively small number of others work in “correctional industries,” manufacturing things like license plates, sewing American flags and—as in Danielle’s case—harvesting vegetables that are later sold for a profit. All seven states that don’t pay for non-industry labor are in the South, which can reach dangerously hot summer temperatures.
Even indoor prison work can be dangerous, as 13 states—most of them in the South—do not equip prisons with air conditioning. As Time noted in 2016, more than 120,000 beds in Texas’ criminal justice system do not have air conditioning, while “less than 1% of free Texans live in a home without air conditioning.” OSHA recommends indoor temperatures between 68‑76 degrees, and Texas county jails must be between 65‑85 degrees—but not Texas state prisons.
While there have not been any assessments of the occupational health of incarcerated workers, it is well documented that heat-related illnesses are a general problem for people in prisons, even when they are not working.
Anecdotal evidence of heat-related problems inside prisons provides additional insight. In a first-person account for The Marshall Project, Timothy Bazrowxdescribed being beaten with a pipe and how a field captain shot at his feet during his first day of work in the fields. In 2017, The Daily Haze published a video of incarcerated workers screaming for help inside of a St. Louis workhouse as temperatures broke 100 degrees. The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, a group of grassroots advocates, said it is “common for prisoners within [the Florida Department of Corrections] to be routinely denied adequate food and safe drinking water, especially those who go outside the gate on work crews. They are never given enough to eat and are forced to work in all conditions despite injury, sickness, brutal temperatures.”
Andrew, a 31-year-old who has been incarcerated in Florida since he was 17, says confined laborers are routinely dehydrated on the job. Andrew says his first mandatory prison job, in 2006 at age 18 in Hamilton Correctional Institution (HCI), consisted of mowing the swampy compound lawn using a dull-bladed non-electric push mower in cloth shoes with poor soles from 8 a.m. until the end of the day and/or job completion alongside a group of other men. The closest large city to HCI, Valdosta, Georgia, had an average high of about 92 degrees during Andrew’s first summer on the job. The confined laborers were generally given water in the mornings, according to Andrew, but the igloo cooler was empty within an hour and a half. During his time on the job, he frequently witnessed people collapsing from fatigue, he told In These Times. And sometimes, he says, the simple act of taking a break resulted in violent discipline: “The officers will come and they’ll put you in handcuffs … and a lot of times the handcuffs turn into you getting slammed on the floor,” Andrew says.
Limited strides to cool prisons in Texas have been made through civil litigation. After four years of litigation, in May 2018, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) agreed to install air conditioning in the housing sections of Wallace Pack Unit, which houses many elderly and vulnerable prisoners. As recently as August 9, however, Federal Judge Keith Ellison accused TDCJ of not fully complying with the settlement.
The suffering endured in the heat, which will worsen with climate change, is stoked by cruelty. “Despite the heat and terrible conditions we lived in—basically, sleeping in a sauna—it was so much more than that,” says Danielle. “It was like [the guards] got a thrill out of making us feel we were lesser than people.”
These conditions aren’t new. Danielle, who asked for In These Times to withhold her last name to protect her family-run business from social stigma, says she woke up in her cell in Texas at Gatesville Prison one typical early morning in July 2015, drenched in sweat. Without time (or permission) to shower or brush her teeth, she reports she was corralled to the fields in a heavy uniform.
“It didn’t feel safe,” says Danielle, who explains she picked tomatoes and jalapeño peppers without pay. Gatesville’s average high temperature that month was 98 degrees. “Texas in July, it’s like sitting on hell’s doorstep,” she says.
A guard who Danielle says she was “deathly terrified of” patrolled the “state property” (the term guards used for incarcerated people) on a horse. Danielle says she was not provided gloves, which often left her hands exposed to thorns and caustic jalapeño juices. One day, Danielle says, after several hours, another woman without gloves asked the guard if they could wash out their wounds. According to Danielle, the guard stopped, pulled her gun and yelled like a drill sergeant: “What are the rules of the field?” Danielle testifies that another group yelled back, “No breaks until work is done.”
Although there is little data or reporting on heat conditions for incarcerated workers, they may be especially vulnerable to being pushed to their limits because there are few labor protections and little to no oversight.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employers to protect workers from serious hazards (including heat-related risks). Though the Act does not cover incarcerated laborers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has said federal prisons must still uphold its standards—which include, when the heat index hits 91‑103 degrees, reminding workers to drink 4 cups of water an hour, scheduling frequent breaks in cool areas, and developing work/rest schedules for workers in heavy clothing.
But OSHA rules do not apply to state prisons. Twenty-two states have adopted OSHA “state plans,” which cover state prisons with standards intended to be at least as effective as federal standards. Eight of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates have declined to adopt these plans.
“The guards could literally do whatever they wanted to us,” says Danielle, who was incarcerated in Texas from August 2014 to September 2015..
Danielle’s stated working conditions appear antithetical to OSHA’s guidelines. “There was a vehicle that would come by and bring some water, but if the vehicle broke down you were out of luck for water that day,” she says. “That happened numerous times. Even when we get water it was gone within a few minutes and they won’t refill it for you. There are 50-plus women and the women in the back don’t get any.”
Danielle also says adequate work/rest schedules were not implemented. “We would go on for four hours or more before we sat in the shade,” she says. “I remember thinking—I know there were women there who were much older than me doing the exact same thing—‘What would my mother do?’ She would die. She would just fall over on the field and die. How is this possibly allowed?”
Danielle was not alone: Nearly half of people imprisoned in the U.S. work while incarcerated, a population disproportionately likely to be Black. Penal labor became a more significant part of the American economy following the Civil War; police would conduct sweeps and make arrests of Black men when plantations needed additional labor for planting, cutting and harvesting crops. Today, a majority of incarcerated workers perform “institutional maintenance,” which includes tasks like mowing the compound lawn and mopping floors. A relatively small number of others work in “correctional industries,” manufacturing things like license plates, sewing American flags and—as in Danielle’s case—harvesting vegetables that are later sold for a profit. All seven states that don’t pay for non-industry labor are in the South, which can reach dangerously hot summer temperatures.
Even indoor prison work can be dangerous, as 13 states—most of them in the South—do not equip prisons with air conditioning. As Time noted in 2016, more than 120,000 beds in Texas’ criminal justice system do not have air conditioning, while “less than 1% of free Texans live in a home without air conditioning.” OSHA recommends indoor temperatures between 68‑76 degrees, and Texas county jails must be between 65‑85 degrees—but not Texas state prisons.
While there have not been any assessments of the occupational health of incarcerated workers, it is well documented that heat-related illnesses are a general problem for people in prisons, even when they are not working.
Anecdotal evidence of heat-related problems inside prisons provides additional insight. In a first-person account for The Marshall Project, Timothy Bazrowxdescribed being beaten with a pipe and how a field captain shot at his feet during his first day of work in the fields. In 2017, The Daily Haze published a video of incarcerated workers screaming for help inside of a St. Louis workhouse as temperatures broke 100 degrees. The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, a group of grassroots advocates, said it is “common for prisoners within [the Florida Department of Corrections] to be routinely denied adequate food and safe drinking water, especially those who go outside the gate on work crews. They are never given enough to eat and are forced to work in all conditions despite injury, sickness, brutal temperatures.”
Andrew, a 31-year-old who has been incarcerated in Florida since he was 17, says confined laborers are routinely dehydrated on the job. Andrew says his first mandatory prison job, in 2006 at age 18 in Hamilton Correctional Institution (HCI), consisted of mowing the swampy compound lawn using a dull-bladed non-electric push mower in cloth shoes with poor soles from 8 a.m. until the end of the day and/or job completion alongside a group of other men. The closest large city to HCI, Valdosta, Georgia, had an average high of about 92 degrees during Andrew’s first summer on the job. The confined laborers were generally given water in the mornings, according to Andrew, but the igloo cooler was empty within an hour and a half. During his time on the job, he frequently witnessed people collapsing from fatigue, he told In These Times. And sometimes, he says, the simple act of taking a break resulted in violent discipline: “The officers will come and they’ll put you in handcuffs … and a lot of times the handcuffs turn into you getting slammed on the floor,” Andrew says.
Limited strides to cool prisons in Texas have been made through civil litigation. After four years of litigation, in May 2018, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) agreed to install air conditioning in the housing sections of Wallace Pack Unit, which houses many elderly and vulnerable prisoners. As recently as August 9, however, Federal Judge Keith Ellison accused TDCJ of not fully complying with the settlement.
The suffering endured in the heat, which will worsen with climate change, is stoked by cruelty. “Despite the heat and terrible conditions we lived in—basically, sleeping in a sauna—it was so much more than that,” says Danielle. “It was like [the guards] got a thrill out of making us feel we were lesser than people.”
From Kentucky Miners to Toys ‘R’ Us Employees, Workers Confront Corporate Greed
BY Negin Owliaei, Truthout
PUBLISHED August 28, 2019
For the last few weeks, all eyes have been on Kentucky as coal miners blockade a railroad in protest of what’s essentially highway robbery. The coal miners in Harlan County are demanding their unpaid wages from Blackjewel, the company that employed them before suddenly declaring bankruptcy earlier this year. Their physical blockade of a train full of coal is critical given that Wall Street investors are still looking to eke out money from Blackjewel — even if it means leaving workers without the paychecks they’ve already earned.
The standoff is among the latest instances highlighting a system that funnels the wealth created by workers upwards to the elite. The statistics are startling. Incomes of the top 1 percent of U.S. households have grownmore than seven times more quickly than those of the bottom 20 percent of households over the past four decades. CEO compensation rose by 940 percent since 1978, the Economic Policy Institute reports. Meanwhile, the typical worker’s wages grew by only 12 percent.
Workers — from retail employees to rideshare drivers, teachers to bank tellers — are taking on the structures that allow this lopsided economy to thrive. Last year, more than 485,000 workers were involved in major work stoppages, the Bureau of Labor Services found — the highest number since 1986. They’re taking action against the insatiable corporate greed and predatory financial forces widening the chasm between the elite and everyone else.
What does that corporate greed look like? It’s industries that rake in billions and still pay their workers poverty wages, as airlines do. That’s why dozens of airline catering workers were arrested outside American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month, announcing that one job should be enough for them to live with dignity, especially during what their union calls “a time of unprecedented prosperity” for the industry.
The workers aren’t employed directly by American Airlines, but by a subcontractor that provides the company’s in-flight meals and beverages. But they know this type of system is essentially run as a scam — companies can pit subcontractors against each other to get the lowest price, all while avoiding direct accountability to the workers that allow them to prosper. Meanwhile, CEOs like American Airlines’ Doug Parker rake in nearly $12 million in annual compensation.
Thousands of airline workers have authorized a strike if negotiations continue to fail. Despite the fact that they negotiate directly with the subcontractors, workers know where the power lies, which is why they’ve taken their fight to American Airlines’s front door.
This is the same logic that animated the Uber and Lyft strikes, timed to the public offerings of their companies earlier this year. While executives were set to become instant billionaires as the companies went public, workers went on strike to show investors who actually generated the wealth and to ensure their concerns were front and center.
Like the airline industry, rideshare companies have found a way to avoid any responsibility to ensure their workers live with dignity. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing ahead of the public offering, Uber essentially admitted that its business model relies on misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, keeping the company from being required to provide a minimum wage, much less health care or other benefits.
Drivers were keen to contrast this fundamentally anti-worker business model with the sky-high profits expected by company executives, including disgraced former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Lenny Sanchez, a rideshare driver and co-founder of Chicago Rideshare Advocates, said he wished he could tell Kalanick how drivers reacted when they heard how much he had to gain. “They’re like, ‘I have to work. I’m away from my home for 14 hours, six to seven days a week … and this guy is going to make [billions] overnight.’”
It’s no secret that an economic system that allows executives to make such exorbitant profit off the backs of its workers is exploitative. But some worker campaigns are also pointing out how disparities between worker and CEO pay add a new level of risk into the economy, encouraging executives to pursue profit over absolutely everything else.
Bank workers, for example, are highlighting how the inequality baked into financial companies hurt the country’s economic systems as a whole. The Committee for Better Banks is a coalition of bank employees, community and consumer groups, and labor organizations fighting for better conditions for bank workers and advocating for more protections for bank customers. Bank workers in the coalition have blown the whistle on predatory bank practices, like a harmful quota system used by Wells Fargo connected to the fabrication of millions of additional bank accounts for depositors.
Bank workers are the ones both most motivated and most knowledgeable to regulate from below, as the Committee for Better Banks argues. That regulation is critical given that missteps from banks can bring down the entire global economy. Bank executives are more focused on a feedback loop of tax cuts, stock buybacks and inflated CEO compensation, further distorting inequality within their industry. Building power among bank workers helps the entire economy.
For retail workers, taking on predatory institutions means challenging the private equity vultures that profit off the job losses in their sector. Thanks to Wall Street’s “investments,” more than 1.3 million retail jobs have been lost over the last decade, a recent report found.
Toys ‘R’ Us workers, among the most affected by private equity’s greed, staged several protests, including a mock graveyard in the New York lobby of Bain Capital, one of the firms that drove the company into bankruptcy. Those workers initially didn’t receive severance pay when they were laid off — despite the fact that the company’s executives took home millions in bonuses.
The retail workers received a boost from public sector employees, who used their own financial power to challenge the companies that play an active role in destroying the well-being of their fellow workers. State pension funds across the country that had invested in KKR, Bain and Vornado Realty Trust — the profiteers who benefitted off the Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy — threatened to divest their ample capital.
“My teacher friends are disgusted,” Ann Marie Reinhart, a former Toys ‘R’ Us employee and an organizer for United for Respect, said. “They say that we’re all hard-working people, and it makes them sick to know their pensions are funded by people losing their jobs.”
Thanks to protests from retail workers and the solidarity from public sector workers, KKR and Bain Capital eventually agreed to put $20 million toward a worker severance fund.
All of this organizing has gotten attention from politicians, like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, and Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal — the sponsors of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act introduced in Congress last month. A direct response to the role of private equity and hedge funds in the demise of retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us, the legislation puts safeguards in place to protect the 5.8 million workers employed by private equity-owned companies, from newspapers to nursing homes.
Corporate leaders are also taking notice. In a recent statement from Business Roundtable, 181 CEOs announced a shared commitment to “investing in our employees” and “supporting the communities in which we work” — additions to their past mottos that put shareholders over everyone else. They may think a populist tone will help stem off criticism about heightened inequality, especially as concerns about a recession grow. But their statements amount to embarrassingly little, and far too late. Look to worker organizing, not CEO platitudes, for the path toward a new, equitable economy.
The standoff is among the latest instances highlighting a system that funnels the wealth created by workers upwards to the elite. The statistics are startling. Incomes of the top 1 percent of U.S. households have grownmore than seven times more quickly than those of the bottom 20 percent of households over the past four decades. CEO compensation rose by 940 percent since 1978, the Economic Policy Institute reports. Meanwhile, the typical worker’s wages grew by only 12 percent.
Workers — from retail employees to rideshare drivers, teachers to bank tellers — are taking on the structures that allow this lopsided economy to thrive. Last year, more than 485,000 workers were involved in major work stoppages, the Bureau of Labor Services found — the highest number since 1986. They’re taking action against the insatiable corporate greed and predatory financial forces widening the chasm between the elite and everyone else.
What does that corporate greed look like? It’s industries that rake in billions and still pay their workers poverty wages, as airlines do. That’s why dozens of airline catering workers were arrested outside American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month, announcing that one job should be enough for them to live with dignity, especially during what their union calls “a time of unprecedented prosperity” for the industry.
The workers aren’t employed directly by American Airlines, but by a subcontractor that provides the company’s in-flight meals and beverages. But they know this type of system is essentially run as a scam — companies can pit subcontractors against each other to get the lowest price, all while avoiding direct accountability to the workers that allow them to prosper. Meanwhile, CEOs like American Airlines’ Doug Parker rake in nearly $12 million in annual compensation.
Thousands of airline workers have authorized a strike if negotiations continue to fail. Despite the fact that they negotiate directly with the subcontractors, workers know where the power lies, which is why they’ve taken their fight to American Airlines’s front door.
This is the same logic that animated the Uber and Lyft strikes, timed to the public offerings of their companies earlier this year. While executives were set to become instant billionaires as the companies went public, workers went on strike to show investors who actually generated the wealth and to ensure their concerns were front and center.
Like the airline industry, rideshare companies have found a way to avoid any responsibility to ensure their workers live with dignity. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing ahead of the public offering, Uber essentially admitted that its business model relies on misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, keeping the company from being required to provide a minimum wage, much less health care or other benefits.
Drivers were keen to contrast this fundamentally anti-worker business model with the sky-high profits expected by company executives, including disgraced former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Lenny Sanchez, a rideshare driver and co-founder of Chicago Rideshare Advocates, said he wished he could tell Kalanick how drivers reacted when they heard how much he had to gain. “They’re like, ‘I have to work. I’m away from my home for 14 hours, six to seven days a week … and this guy is going to make [billions] overnight.’”
It’s no secret that an economic system that allows executives to make such exorbitant profit off the backs of its workers is exploitative. But some worker campaigns are also pointing out how disparities between worker and CEO pay add a new level of risk into the economy, encouraging executives to pursue profit over absolutely everything else.
Bank workers, for example, are highlighting how the inequality baked into financial companies hurt the country’s economic systems as a whole. The Committee for Better Banks is a coalition of bank employees, community and consumer groups, and labor organizations fighting for better conditions for bank workers and advocating for more protections for bank customers. Bank workers in the coalition have blown the whistle on predatory bank practices, like a harmful quota system used by Wells Fargo connected to the fabrication of millions of additional bank accounts for depositors.
Bank workers are the ones both most motivated and most knowledgeable to regulate from below, as the Committee for Better Banks argues. That regulation is critical given that missteps from banks can bring down the entire global economy. Bank executives are more focused on a feedback loop of tax cuts, stock buybacks and inflated CEO compensation, further distorting inequality within their industry. Building power among bank workers helps the entire economy.
For retail workers, taking on predatory institutions means challenging the private equity vultures that profit off the job losses in their sector. Thanks to Wall Street’s “investments,” more than 1.3 million retail jobs have been lost over the last decade, a recent report found.
Toys ‘R’ Us workers, among the most affected by private equity’s greed, staged several protests, including a mock graveyard in the New York lobby of Bain Capital, one of the firms that drove the company into bankruptcy. Those workers initially didn’t receive severance pay when they were laid off — despite the fact that the company’s executives took home millions in bonuses.
The retail workers received a boost from public sector employees, who used their own financial power to challenge the companies that play an active role in destroying the well-being of their fellow workers. State pension funds across the country that had invested in KKR, Bain and Vornado Realty Trust — the profiteers who benefitted off the Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy — threatened to divest their ample capital.
“My teacher friends are disgusted,” Ann Marie Reinhart, a former Toys ‘R’ Us employee and an organizer for United for Respect, said. “They say that we’re all hard-working people, and it makes them sick to know their pensions are funded by people losing their jobs.”
Thanks to protests from retail workers and the solidarity from public sector workers, KKR and Bain Capital eventually agreed to put $20 million toward a worker severance fund.
All of this organizing has gotten attention from politicians, like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, and Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal — the sponsors of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act introduced in Congress last month. A direct response to the role of private equity and hedge funds in the demise of retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us, the legislation puts safeguards in place to protect the 5.8 million workers employed by private equity-owned companies, from newspapers to nursing homes.
Corporate leaders are also taking notice. In a recent statement from Business Roundtable, 181 CEOs announced a shared commitment to “investing in our employees” and “supporting the communities in which we work” — additions to their past mottos that put shareholders over everyone else. They may think a populist tone will help stem off criticism about heightened inequality, especially as concerns about a recession grow. But their statements amount to embarrassingly little, and far too late. Look to worker organizing, not CEO platitudes, for the path toward a new, equitable economy.
More than 20,000 workers across the South strike as AT&T refuses to bargain in good faith
Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday August 27, 2019 · 6:15 PM PDT
The southern United States is not known as a bastion of union strength or worker power, but 20,000 AT&T workers across nine states are on strike this week. The workers’ union, the Communications Workers of America, has been trying to negotiate a new contract with AT&T and, with negotiations having broken down, has said the company is not bargaining in good faith.
“AT&T does not understand that CWA is prepared to bargain and is prepared to make a deal that benefits our members and AT&T,” CWA District 3 wrote in a statement on Friday. “It turns out that for over three months, we have been bargaining with people who do not have the real authority to make proposals or to reach an agreement with us.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders joined workers on a picket line in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday, telling them, “I want you to know that millions of American workers are standing with you today. Because what you are going through is exactly what they are going through. I’m proud to be here with you and what you’re doing is what needs to take place all over this country. Working people need to stand up and tell corporate America; enough is enough.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden also tweeted support for the workers.
AT&T got a massive tax break from the Republican tax law, and claimed it would invest in U.S. jobs, only to turn around and cut 23,000 jobs.
“AT&T does not understand that CWA is prepared to bargain and is prepared to make a deal that benefits our members and AT&T,” CWA District 3 wrote in a statement on Friday. “It turns out that for over three months, we have been bargaining with people who do not have the real authority to make proposals or to reach an agreement with us.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders joined workers on a picket line in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday, telling them, “I want you to know that millions of American workers are standing with you today. Because what you are going through is exactly what they are going through. I’m proud to be here with you and what you’re doing is what needs to take place all over this country. Working people need to stand up and tell corporate America; enough is enough.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden also tweeted support for the workers.
AT&T got a massive tax break from the Republican tax law, and claimed it would invest in U.S. jobs, only to turn around and cut 23,000 jobs.
Nevada casino workers fight an uphill battle to get – and keep – their unions
Despite winning six union elections, the opposition continues through legal appeals and stalled contracts
Michael Sainato
The Guardian
Tue 20 Aug 2019 02.00 EDT
Union workers protest in front of the Palms casino-resort in Las Vegas in June. Photograph: John Locher/Associated Press
Michael Wagner has worked as a bartender at the Green Valley Ranch Casino Resort in Henderson, Nevada since it first opened in December 2001. Wagner and other workers at the casino voted to form a union in November 2017, with 78% of the vote, after years of facing union busting, intimidation, and retaliation against those participating in union organizing.
It has been a long struggle. But it is still not over. The billionaire Trump allies who own the casino – and others like it – have embarked on a campaign of stalling recognition, delaying contract negotiations and intimidation and poor working conditions, casino workers say.
Since UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 began union-organizing drives at Station Casinos in 2011, workers have successfully voted to form a union at six of the company’s properties in Nevada.
But, despite winning six union elections, the anti-union opposition from the third largest private employer in the Las Vegas area, Station Casinos, continues through legal appeals, none of which have been successful, and stalled contract negotiations.
Station Casinos executives and spokespersons have repeatedly affirmed they would respect union election results. In 2016, Station Casinos president Richard Haskins told the Las Vegas Review: “We have said all along that if a fair and lawful election is held we will abide by the results.”
According to the Culinary Union, Station Casinos is still appealing union elections at its Green Valley Ranch, Palms, and Sunset properties, while a union contract has yet to be negotiated at three other properties that have voted to unionize. The union represents nearly 4,000 workers at all six properties. Meanwhile, dozens of unfair labor practice charges filed by workers against Station Casinos remain under review by the National Labor Relations Board.
The company is owned by billionaires Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. The Fertittas have donated $2m to Trump’s America’s First Action PAC, over $1.5m to Trump’s Victory Fund, and more than $3m to the Republican National Committee and other Republican candidates since Trump’s election.
Several casino workers have alleged wrongful terminations for engaging in union activity at Station Casino properties, and current workers report that the company continues to fire workers without just cause as Nevada is an employment “at will” state, which grants employers the right to terminate employment at anytime for any reason.
“The management hasn’t recognized the union because they do whatever they want to workers and with the union, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” said Paola Felix, a guest room attendant at Green Valley Ranch Resort. “Without a union contract to protect you, you don’t get a chance to defend yourself, they just terminate you for no reason.”
When the first Station Casinos property voted to unionize in September 2016, company management sent out memos to all its employees that health benefits would be increased for all employees except those who had unionized. As part of an NLRB settlement in March 2017, Station Casinos agreed to recognize the union at Palace Station Casino and reimburse the workers at Boulder Station for lower healthcare premiums they were denied.
“They’ve filed legal challenge after legal challenge,” said Gunaydin Milli, a uniform room attendant at Palms Resort & Casino since 2008, where around 900 workers voted to unionize in April 2018. In May 2019, the NLRB ruled the resort was violating federal labor law by refusing to bargain with the union, but a union contract has still yet to be negotiated as Station Casinos is appealing the ruling in federal court.
“They’ve refused to negotiate with us and they’re breaking the law. The hard work we do everyday makes the company successful. We deserve to have something to show for it too,” said Milli.
The most recent union elections occurred at Station Casinos’ Sunset Hotel & Casino, with 83% voting in favor of the union, and Fiesta Rancho Hotel & Casino, with 85% voting for the union.
Casino workers have held numerous protests and rallies calling on Station Casinos to negotiate with the unions and to cease union busting at properties where union organizing drives are ongoing.
“The company has been fighting these workers for a long time,” said Geoconda Argüello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226. “What the company has been doing is sending a message to workers they do not respect the democratic way these workers voted ‘yes’ to be represented by the Culinary Union.”
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro has recently called on Station Casinos to negotiate with the six unions. Senator Bernie Sanders has also publicly called on the Trump-supporting casino owners to negotiate.
The struggle is expected to gain more attention as Democratic presidential candidates compete for support from the Culinary Union ahead of the Nevada Democratic Caucuses in February 2020.
A spokesperson for Red Rock Resorts, the parent company of Station Casinos, Michael Britt told the Guardian in an email: “With respect to both Palms and Green Valley Ranch, although the union would clearly prefer that we not exercise our legal right to challenge the National Labor Review Board’s (NLRB) decisions regarding those properties in the United States federal courts – we have every right to do so and our challenges are both legal and appropriate.”
They declined to clarify the reasons behind those challenges.
In Red Rock Resort’s most recent annual report, the company claimed, “Union organization activities could disrupt our business by discouraging patrons from visiting our properties, causing labor disputes or work stoppages, and, if successful, could significantly increase our labor costs.”
It has been a long struggle. But it is still not over. The billionaire Trump allies who own the casino – and others like it – have embarked on a campaign of stalling recognition, delaying contract negotiations and intimidation and poor working conditions, casino workers say.
Since UNITE HERE Culinary Workers Union 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165 began union-organizing drives at Station Casinos in 2011, workers have successfully voted to form a union at six of the company’s properties in Nevada.
But, despite winning six union elections, the anti-union opposition from the third largest private employer in the Las Vegas area, Station Casinos, continues through legal appeals, none of which have been successful, and stalled contract negotiations.
Station Casinos executives and spokespersons have repeatedly affirmed they would respect union election results. In 2016, Station Casinos president Richard Haskins told the Las Vegas Review: “We have said all along that if a fair and lawful election is held we will abide by the results.”
According to the Culinary Union, Station Casinos is still appealing union elections at its Green Valley Ranch, Palms, and Sunset properties, while a union contract has yet to be negotiated at three other properties that have voted to unionize. The union represents nearly 4,000 workers at all six properties. Meanwhile, dozens of unfair labor practice charges filed by workers against Station Casinos remain under review by the National Labor Relations Board.
The company is owned by billionaires Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. The Fertittas have donated $2m to Trump’s America’s First Action PAC, over $1.5m to Trump’s Victory Fund, and more than $3m to the Republican National Committee and other Republican candidates since Trump’s election.
Several casino workers have alleged wrongful terminations for engaging in union activity at Station Casino properties, and current workers report that the company continues to fire workers without just cause as Nevada is an employment “at will” state, which grants employers the right to terminate employment at anytime for any reason.
“The management hasn’t recognized the union because they do whatever they want to workers and with the union, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” said Paola Felix, a guest room attendant at Green Valley Ranch Resort. “Without a union contract to protect you, you don’t get a chance to defend yourself, they just terminate you for no reason.”
When the first Station Casinos property voted to unionize in September 2016, company management sent out memos to all its employees that health benefits would be increased for all employees except those who had unionized. As part of an NLRB settlement in March 2017, Station Casinos agreed to recognize the union at Palace Station Casino and reimburse the workers at Boulder Station for lower healthcare premiums they were denied.
“They’ve filed legal challenge after legal challenge,” said Gunaydin Milli, a uniform room attendant at Palms Resort & Casino since 2008, where around 900 workers voted to unionize in April 2018. In May 2019, the NLRB ruled the resort was violating federal labor law by refusing to bargain with the union, but a union contract has still yet to be negotiated as Station Casinos is appealing the ruling in federal court.
“They’ve refused to negotiate with us and they’re breaking the law. The hard work we do everyday makes the company successful. We deserve to have something to show for it too,” said Milli.
The most recent union elections occurred at Station Casinos’ Sunset Hotel & Casino, with 83% voting in favor of the union, and Fiesta Rancho Hotel & Casino, with 85% voting for the union.
Casino workers have held numerous protests and rallies calling on Station Casinos to negotiate with the unions and to cease union busting at properties where union organizing drives are ongoing.
“The company has been fighting these workers for a long time,” said Geoconda Argüello-Kline, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226. “What the company has been doing is sending a message to workers they do not respect the democratic way these workers voted ‘yes’ to be represented by the Culinary Union.”
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro has recently called on Station Casinos to negotiate with the six unions. Senator Bernie Sanders has also publicly called on the Trump-supporting casino owners to negotiate.
The struggle is expected to gain more attention as Democratic presidential candidates compete for support from the Culinary Union ahead of the Nevada Democratic Caucuses in February 2020.
A spokesperson for Red Rock Resorts, the parent company of Station Casinos, Michael Britt told the Guardian in an email: “With respect to both Palms and Green Valley Ranch, although the union would clearly prefer that we not exercise our legal right to challenge the National Labor Review Board’s (NLRB) decisions regarding those properties in the United States federal courts – we have every right to do so and our challenges are both legal and appropriate.”
They declined to clarify the reasons behind those challenges.
In Red Rock Resort’s most recent annual report, the company claimed, “Union organization activities could disrupt our business by discouraging patrons from visiting our properties, causing labor disputes or work stoppages, and, if successful, could significantly increase our labor costs.”
CEOs rake in 940% more than 40 years ago, while average workers earn 12% more
BY KATE GIBSON - CBS News
UPDATED ON: AUGUST 14, 2019 / 11:18 AM / MONEYWATCH
- CEO compensation rose 940% from 1978 to 2018, compared with a 12% rise in pay for the average American worker during the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
- In 2018, average CEO pay at the 350 biggest U.S. companies was $17.2 million.
- Chief executives at large companies make roughly $278 for every $1 a typical worker earns -- that's up from a ratio of 20-to-1 back in 1965 and a ratio of 58-to-1 in 1989.
The chasm between what the country's corporate leaders and their workers earn is widening to Grand Canyon-like proportions, according to new research that shows CEO compensation surged 940% between 1978 to 2018 while the average worker saw a meager 12% pay hike over the same 40-year period.
"CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills," economist Lawrence Mishel and research assistant Julia Wolfe said in the report from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Depending on how it's calculated, the average pay of CEOs at the 350 biggest U.S. companies last year came to $17.2 million, the EPI research found. (Or, alternatively, about $14 million, with the smaller number valuing the stock options that make up a big chunk of CEO pay at the time they were granted rather than when they were cashed in at typically higher prices.)
Last year chief execs got $278 for every $1 a typical worker earned, according to Mishel and Wolfe. Back in 1965, top corporate chiefs earned $20 for every dollar a typical worker earned, with that ratio rising to 58-to-1 by 1989. The gap widened dramatically in the following decades, they noted, due to a shift in the 1990s and 2000s to compensate CEOs mostly with stock options, restricted shares and other incentive-based pay fueled a spike in their earnings.
Other factors that have driven income inequality in recent years: failure to raise the federal minimum wage, eroding union membership and globalization -- all of which reflect shifts in economic policy in ways that favor big corporations and the rich, Mishel said.
Pay for performance?
The EPI findings are in line with an analysis by Equilar for the Associated Press earlier this year that found that CEOs at S&P 500-listed companies made a median of $12 million last year, including salary, stock and other compensation.
Many CEOs who haul in massive stock awards aren't necessarily demonstrating their worth, EPI's Mishel told CBS MoneyWatch this week. Rather, the jump in executive compensation broadly reflects the runup in stocks in recent years.
"When every industry stock goes up, their stock goes up, and they're rewarded as though they hit a triple, Mishel said. "That's not for performance as they are sitting in the bleachers."
Excessive CEO pay is the result of a rigged system that creates the wrong incentives for top executives and is the same time terrible for company morale, observed Steven Cliffords, CEO of King Broadcasting for five years and National Mobile Television for nine.
"When people talk to me, they'll say, 'Yeah, but look at those baseball stars and all the money they make,' " Cliffords explained. "But there's a key difference: Baseball players make their money in what's essentially an auction market, where teams bid for their services. It's the same with movie stars. You know Mike Trout is going to improve any team he's on, that Meryl Streep is going to improve any movie she's in."
Conversely, a CEO is not going to improve just any company, as the knowledge it takes to perform well in the job is company-specific. That's why three-quarters of all new CEOs among S&P 500 companies involve internal promotions, said Cliffords, who has chaired numerous compensation committees for public and private companies. (He's also the author of "The CEO Pay Machine, How it Trashes America and How to Stop It.")
The pay gap between CEOs and rank-and-file workers had some members of Congress calling out bank CEOs on the pay disparity earlier this year. New York Democrat Nydia Velazquez told the heads of the nation's largest financial institutions appearing on Capitol Hill that the swelling pay gap "doesn't look good."
Disney heiress Abigail Disney has repeatedly criticized the compensation paid to public company CEOs, calling it "a moral issue" and one that leaves some low-wage earnings sleeping in their cars and rationing insulin. She and other activists contend that workers are often laid off without severance, while top executives line their own and investors' pockets through share buybacks and cash dividends.
"In the 1980s, it became all about creating money for shareholders," William Lazonick, an economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said of the practice of companies spending billions of dollars to repurchase their own stock and artificially driving the price higher.
In its report, EPI called for policies including reinstating higher marginal income tax rates at the very top and setting higher corporate tax rates on companies with higher ratios of CEO-to-worker compensation.
‘We won’t back down’: Over 50 catering workers arrested at American Airlines HQ in protest against poverty wages
August 13, 2019
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - Raw Story
More than 50 unionized catering workers were arrested at American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas on Tuesday as hundreds rallied to protest poverty wages and meager benefits.
“American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare.”
—Unite Here
“Bad insurance, lousy pay, this is how your food is made,” chanted the workers, who are employed by subcontractors LSG Sky Chefs and Gate Gourmet. American Airlines is Sky Chefs’ largest customer.
Unite Here, the union that represents the protesting workers, said in a report released ahead of the demonstration that “wages for catering workers at American’s most profitable hubs are among the lowest in the country.”
“Airline food workers serving American flights in Dallas make as little as $9.85,” the report found.
As Tuesday’s demonstration kicked off, Unite Here tweeted: “American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare. Airline catering workers are in Dallas this week to tell the airline one job should be enough!”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, applauded the catering workers for standing up and “challenging corporate greed” in a tweet on Tuesday.
“In recent years American Airlines has made billions in profits,” said Sanders. “It is unconscionable that their workers cannot afford good healthcare or get reliable raises.”
In an act of civil disobedience, workers sat down and blocked the road leading to American Airlines’ HQ:
The protest comes just weeks after thousands of airline catering workers voted to authorize a strike as they bargain for better wages and benefits.
Tane Stover, an LSG Sky Chef employee who was arrested during Tuesday’s protest, told the Dallas WBAP, “We don’t want to go on strike, but we will if that’s what it takes for American Airlines to know that one job should be enough.”
“American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare.”
—Unite Here
“Bad insurance, lousy pay, this is how your food is made,” chanted the workers, who are employed by subcontractors LSG Sky Chefs and Gate Gourmet. American Airlines is Sky Chefs’ largest customer.
Unite Here, the union that represents the protesting workers, said in a report released ahead of the demonstration that “wages for catering workers at American’s most profitable hubs are among the lowest in the country.”
“Airline food workers serving American flights in Dallas make as little as $9.85,” the report found.
As Tuesday’s demonstration kicked off, Unite Here tweeted: “American Airlines profits soar, but workers who generate its wealth by catering its planes struggle with poverty wages and unaffordable healthcare. Airline catering workers are in Dallas this week to tell the airline one job should be enough!”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, applauded the catering workers for standing up and “challenging corporate greed” in a tweet on Tuesday.
“In recent years American Airlines has made billions in profits,” said Sanders. “It is unconscionable that their workers cannot afford good healthcare or get reliable raises.”
In an act of civil disobedience, workers sat down and blocked the road leading to American Airlines’ HQ:
The protest comes just weeks after thousands of airline catering workers voted to authorize a strike as they bargain for better wages and benefits.
Tane Stover, an LSG Sky Chef employee who was arrested during Tuesday’s protest, told the Dallas WBAP, “We don’t want to go on strike, but we will if that’s what it takes for American Airlines to know that one job should be enough.”
CIRCA 1870: A CARTOON SATIRISING THE SWEATSHOPS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. ORIGINAL ARTIST: BY JOHN LEECH FROM PUNCH MAGAZINE. (PHOTO BY RISCHGITZ/GETTY IMAGES)
'Our paychecks bounced': US workers in limbo as coalmines suddenly close
Blackjewel files for chapter 11 in a move critics say is increasingly used to avoid paying workers what they are owed
Michael Sainato
The Guardian
Mon 22 Jul 2019 07.00 BST
On 1 July, Missy Cole was notified by her bank that her husband’s most recent paycheck had bounced, leaving their account more than $1,000 in the red. Her husband had worked as a coalminer for nearly three years at one of the eastern Kentucky mines operated by Revelation Energy affiliate Blackjewel mining.
But both companies had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a financial move that has implications far beyond just laying off staff as the ex-workers now wait for the bankruptcy proceedings to play out. Critics say the move is a ploy increasingly used in the struggling industry to avoid paying workers what they are owed.
“A layoff is always expected with miners. It’s always in the back of your mind and it’s no surprise when it happens in the coal industry. But, this is much more than a layoff,” Cole told the Guardian.
“We have absolutely no access to our bank accounts. Those accounts are still negative, and falling deeper into the negative daily. We cannot even touch his 401(k) to withdraw money to survive on without the signature of the Blackjewel mining CEO or his personnel.”
One of the largest coalmining operators in the United States, Blackjewel abruptly shut its mines after filing for bankruptcy, jeopardizing the jobs of about 1,700 workers in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming.
Workers are still unsure if they will be permitted to return to work and for how long, if they will be paid for bounced checks and what will happen to their health insurance and benefits.
“It’s been very hard, not knowing if your going to be able to put food on the table for your three kids,” said Mark Turner, a Kentucky miner at a Blackjewel-operated mine. He’s unsure how he is going to afford his upcoming house payment, electric bill or buy clothes and supplies for his children with the new school year approaching.
Jimmy Justus, 22, a mine worker for Blackjewel in Virginia, owes his bank more than $1,400 because his last paycheck bounced.
“Now my account has been closed,” he said. On 1 July, Justus was sent home under the impression work would restart the next day, but then heard from co-workers the company had filed for bankruptcy. “The day shift foreman had no intention of telling anyone anything”
Another coal worker in Virginia, Mark Atwell, was on vacation with his family at Dollywood when he discovered his last paycheck had bounced. “I had no money to feed my family or even gas to get back home on,” Atwell said, who has three children and a disabled wife.
According to the bankruptcy filing, Blackjewel mining has at least $500mowed in liabilities. A worker in Wyoming has filed a class action lawsuit against the company, which claims the company failed to give employees’ proper notice, and wages and benefits earned before and after the bankruptcy filing.
Blackjewel is the third large US coal company to declare bankruptcy since May 2019, despite promises from Donald Trump that he would save the coal industry and its jobs.
Since Trump took office, about 2,000 jobs have been added to the coal industry, which currently employs an estimated 53,000 workers. The industry has shed more than 30,000 jobs in the past decade, driven by automation, and changes in the energy industry as renewable energy production recently surpassed coal production for the first time ever in the US and natural gas production hit a record high in 2018.
Through filing bankruptcies, attorneys who have represented coalminers argue current laws allow operators to avoid obligations they have to workers.
“It is especially egregious where Blackjewel bounces paychecks to the employees. This compounds with the loss of health insurance and other benefits,” said Jack Jacobs, an Alabama-based attorney who has represented workers in black lung cases. “The miners work very hard and sacrifice a lot for these operators. Very frustrating to see how their loyalty is repaid.”
Attorney Shannon Anderson with the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming condemned the management of Blackjewel by its CEO, Jeff Hoops, who was recently forced to resign.
Hoops did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
“Hoops was buying up distressed assets from bankruptcies and companies trying to offload mines that were no longer economically viable, and basically created a coal company with those assets,” said Anderson. She noted several Blackjewel-operated mines in Appalachia racked up various environmental violations and citations as the company operated at a loss and tried to keep costs as low as possible.
“None of these mines were making money and he was paying himself before any of the lenders, and basically running these mines at very low cost,” she added.
Because Blackjewel LLC is privately owned, Anderson noted there is less public disclosure into what’s going on with the company, leaving many questions unanswered for workers, their communities and if Hoops will be held accountable.
“All the information we’re getting is more or less off of social media and other co-workers in other states,” said Joe Williamson, a Blackjewel coal worker in Virginia.
Hoops resigned as a condition for a $5m emergency loan, though his multimillion-dollar plans to build a resort in West Virginia will reportedly not be impacted by the bankruptcy. In a letter to workers, Hoops claimed “no one is hurting more than me” as a result of the bankruptcy.
Few workers agree.
“Our paychecks bounced,” said Jeffery Cochran, a coalminer in Kentucky who has worked at a Blackjewel-operated mine for nearly four years.
“Some people have been denied unemployment which is owed to us. He didn’t pay into it for some people, but yet he can build a $30m resort, and doesn’t have to pay us.”
A representative for Blackjewel shared a press release issued on 10 July that noted about 140 employees have returned to work, and they would be paid for prior and future work, but did not address bounced checks for employees outside of Wyoming or the fees workers are accruing due to bounced checks and late bill payments.
But both companies had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a financial move that has implications far beyond just laying off staff as the ex-workers now wait for the bankruptcy proceedings to play out. Critics say the move is a ploy increasingly used in the struggling industry to avoid paying workers what they are owed.
“A layoff is always expected with miners. It’s always in the back of your mind and it’s no surprise when it happens in the coal industry. But, this is much more than a layoff,” Cole told the Guardian.
“We have absolutely no access to our bank accounts. Those accounts are still negative, and falling deeper into the negative daily. We cannot even touch his 401(k) to withdraw money to survive on without the signature of the Blackjewel mining CEO or his personnel.”
One of the largest coalmining operators in the United States, Blackjewel abruptly shut its mines after filing for bankruptcy, jeopardizing the jobs of about 1,700 workers in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming.
Workers are still unsure if they will be permitted to return to work and for how long, if they will be paid for bounced checks and what will happen to their health insurance and benefits.
“It’s been very hard, not knowing if your going to be able to put food on the table for your three kids,” said Mark Turner, a Kentucky miner at a Blackjewel-operated mine. He’s unsure how he is going to afford his upcoming house payment, electric bill or buy clothes and supplies for his children with the new school year approaching.
Jimmy Justus, 22, a mine worker for Blackjewel in Virginia, owes his bank more than $1,400 because his last paycheck bounced.
“Now my account has been closed,” he said. On 1 July, Justus was sent home under the impression work would restart the next day, but then heard from co-workers the company had filed for bankruptcy. “The day shift foreman had no intention of telling anyone anything”
Another coal worker in Virginia, Mark Atwell, was on vacation with his family at Dollywood when he discovered his last paycheck had bounced. “I had no money to feed my family or even gas to get back home on,” Atwell said, who has three children and a disabled wife.
According to the bankruptcy filing, Blackjewel mining has at least $500mowed in liabilities. A worker in Wyoming has filed a class action lawsuit against the company, which claims the company failed to give employees’ proper notice, and wages and benefits earned before and after the bankruptcy filing.
Blackjewel is the third large US coal company to declare bankruptcy since May 2019, despite promises from Donald Trump that he would save the coal industry and its jobs.
Since Trump took office, about 2,000 jobs have been added to the coal industry, which currently employs an estimated 53,000 workers. The industry has shed more than 30,000 jobs in the past decade, driven by automation, and changes in the energy industry as renewable energy production recently surpassed coal production for the first time ever in the US and natural gas production hit a record high in 2018.
Through filing bankruptcies, attorneys who have represented coalminers argue current laws allow operators to avoid obligations they have to workers.
“It is especially egregious where Blackjewel bounces paychecks to the employees. This compounds with the loss of health insurance and other benefits,” said Jack Jacobs, an Alabama-based attorney who has represented workers in black lung cases. “The miners work very hard and sacrifice a lot for these operators. Very frustrating to see how their loyalty is repaid.”
Attorney Shannon Anderson with the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming condemned the management of Blackjewel by its CEO, Jeff Hoops, who was recently forced to resign.
Hoops did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
“Hoops was buying up distressed assets from bankruptcies and companies trying to offload mines that were no longer economically viable, and basically created a coal company with those assets,” said Anderson. She noted several Blackjewel-operated mines in Appalachia racked up various environmental violations and citations as the company operated at a loss and tried to keep costs as low as possible.
“None of these mines were making money and he was paying himself before any of the lenders, and basically running these mines at very low cost,” she added.
Because Blackjewel LLC is privately owned, Anderson noted there is less public disclosure into what’s going on with the company, leaving many questions unanswered for workers, their communities and if Hoops will be held accountable.
“All the information we’re getting is more or less off of social media and other co-workers in other states,” said Joe Williamson, a Blackjewel coal worker in Virginia.
Hoops resigned as a condition for a $5m emergency loan, though his multimillion-dollar plans to build a resort in West Virginia will reportedly not be impacted by the bankruptcy. In a letter to workers, Hoops claimed “no one is hurting more than me” as a result of the bankruptcy.
Few workers agree.
“Our paychecks bounced,” said Jeffery Cochran, a coalminer in Kentucky who has worked at a Blackjewel-operated mine for nearly four years.
“Some people have been denied unemployment which is owed to us. He didn’t pay into it for some people, but yet he can build a $30m resort, and doesn’t have to pay us.”
A representative for Blackjewel shared a press release issued on 10 July that noted about 140 employees have returned to work, and they would be paid for prior and future work, but did not address bounced checks for employees outside of Wyoming or the fees workers are accruing due to bounced checks and late bill payments.
Here’s the ugly racist history behind tipping — and how it still persists today
July 20, 2019
By Matthew Chapman - Raw Story
On Saturday, writing for Politico, minister and civil rights activist Rev. Dr. William Barber applauded House Democrats’ plans to not only raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024, but eliminate the much lower “tipped wage” of $2.13 an hour and require tipped workers to also be paid at least the minimum.
This is important, wrote Barber, because the roots of businesses forcing their workers to rely on tips for a proper wage is deeply rooted in America’s history of racial tension.
“You might not think of tipping as a legacy of slavery, but it has a far more racialized history than most Americans realize,” wrote Barber. “Tipping originated in feudal Europe and was imported back to the United States by American travelers eager to seem sophisticated. The practice spread throughout the country after the Civil War as U.S. employers, largely in the hospitality sector, looked for ways to avoid paying formerly enslaved workers.”
A particularly egregious example, Barber wrote, was the Pullman Company, which manufactured railroad cars around the turn of the 20th century, and which hired African Americans newly freed from slavery as porters — but paid them virtually nothing and forced them to rely on tips from white customers.
“Tipping further entrenched a unique and often racialized class structure in service jobs, in which workers must please both customer and employer to earn anything at all,” wrote Barber. “A journalist quoted in Kerry Segrave’s 2009 book, Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities, wrote in 1902 that he was embarrassed to offer a tip to a white man. ‘Negroes take tips, of course; one expects that of them — it is a token of their inferiority,’ he wrote. ‘Tips go with servility, and no man who is a voter in this country is in the least justified in being in service.'”
“Several states sought to end the practice in the early 1900s, often in recognition of its racist roots,” continued Barber. “But the restaurant industry fought back and was powerful enough to roll back local bans on tipping. And tipped workers — along with most others, as the act applied to industries that together made up only one-fifth of the labor force — were excluded from the first, limited federal minimum wage law passed in 1938.”
Eventually a tipped subminimum wage was created in the 1960s, noted Barber, but thanks to a bargain cut by the National Restaurant Association, it has been frozen at $2.13 since 1996. (That deal was cut by the association’s then-president Herman Cain, who went on to become a Republican presidential candidate and President Donald Trump’s failed pick for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.)
It is worth noting that even today, the racial disparities caused by tipping persist. According to one study, black waitstaff receive less in tips than white waitstaff, which might be why when Washington, D.C. held a referendum on eliminating the tipped minimum wage, black neighborhoods overwhelmingly voted for it and white neighborhoods overwhelmingly against. (That referendum passed but was swiftly repealed by the city council.) Furthermore, 38 percent of black workers would benefit from the House Democrats’ new law, compared with 23 percent of white workers.
“With a Republican Senate and president, the Raise the Wage Act might not become national law in the immediate future,” concluded Barber. “But a vote by the House to end the subminimum tipped wage would send an unmistakable signal to the several states considering similar legislation: The days of these racist tiered wage systems are coming to an end.”
RELATED: The Racist History of TippingBy REV. DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER II
This is important, wrote Barber, because the roots of businesses forcing their workers to rely on tips for a proper wage is deeply rooted in America’s history of racial tension.
“You might not think of tipping as a legacy of slavery, but it has a far more racialized history than most Americans realize,” wrote Barber. “Tipping originated in feudal Europe and was imported back to the United States by American travelers eager to seem sophisticated. The practice spread throughout the country after the Civil War as U.S. employers, largely in the hospitality sector, looked for ways to avoid paying formerly enslaved workers.”
A particularly egregious example, Barber wrote, was the Pullman Company, which manufactured railroad cars around the turn of the 20th century, and which hired African Americans newly freed from slavery as porters — but paid them virtually nothing and forced them to rely on tips from white customers.
“Tipping further entrenched a unique and often racialized class structure in service jobs, in which workers must please both customer and employer to earn anything at all,” wrote Barber. “A journalist quoted in Kerry Segrave’s 2009 book, Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities, wrote in 1902 that he was embarrassed to offer a tip to a white man. ‘Negroes take tips, of course; one expects that of them — it is a token of their inferiority,’ he wrote. ‘Tips go with servility, and no man who is a voter in this country is in the least justified in being in service.'”
“Several states sought to end the practice in the early 1900s, often in recognition of its racist roots,” continued Barber. “But the restaurant industry fought back and was powerful enough to roll back local bans on tipping. And tipped workers — along with most others, as the act applied to industries that together made up only one-fifth of the labor force — were excluded from the first, limited federal minimum wage law passed in 1938.”
Eventually a tipped subminimum wage was created in the 1960s, noted Barber, but thanks to a bargain cut by the National Restaurant Association, it has been frozen at $2.13 since 1996. (That deal was cut by the association’s then-president Herman Cain, who went on to become a Republican presidential candidate and President Donald Trump’s failed pick for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.)
It is worth noting that even today, the racial disparities caused by tipping persist. According to one study, black waitstaff receive less in tips than white waitstaff, which might be why when Washington, D.C. held a referendum on eliminating the tipped minimum wage, black neighborhoods overwhelmingly voted for it and white neighborhoods overwhelmingly against. (That referendum passed but was swiftly repealed by the city council.) Furthermore, 38 percent of black workers would benefit from the House Democrats’ new law, compared with 23 percent of white workers.
“With a Republican Senate and president, the Raise the Wage Act might not become national law in the immediate future,” concluded Barber. “But a vote by the House to end the subminimum tipped wage would send an unmistakable signal to the several states considering similar legislation: The days of these racist tiered wage systems are coming to an end.”
RELATED: The Racist History of TippingBy REV. DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER II
How Corporations Block Workers From Asserting Their Rights
Trump’s Packed Supreme Court Backs ‘Forced Arbitration’ that Bars Workers From Taking Abusive Bosses to Court
By Bill Schleicher - DC Report
7/18/19
Corporations are rapidly rendering sexual harassment, race and gender discrimination, life-threatening workplaces and wage theft immune to employee legal action.
They achieve this by forcing the vast majority of non-union private-sector workers to sign away their rights to go to court or use class or collective arbitration. Instead many millions of workers are being forced to forgo these efficient legal ways to resolve issues and to file individual arbitration claims.
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy says that by 2024 more than 80% of non-union private-sector workers will find courthouse doors chained shut by forced arbitration clauses that ban lawsuits and collective actions. (EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to press the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.)
Hardest hit will be women, African-Americans, immigrants and low-wage workers as bosses compel employees to sign forced arbitration clauses to keep their jobs. The dense legalese giving up these rights is often hidden deep in the fine print of job application forms and new-hire paperwork, says the report titled “Unchecked corporate power: Forced arbitration, the enforcement crisis and how workers are fighting back.”
Enforcement of these clauses was validated by the Supreme Court in the Epic Systems v. Lewis decision. Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch provided the decisive vote and wrote the majority opinion in the May 2018 decision.
The 5-4 Epicruling lets individual arbitration clauses and waivers of collective action trump the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. That New Deal law gives workers the right to “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”
The high court decision shows how Donald Trump, who campaigned as a champion of workers and whose inaugural address promised to always look out for the “Forgotten Man,” has used his powers to hurt workers. His campaign speeches, read carefully, show his concern for corporations and profits and his love of tariffs more than workers.
No Right to Sue
According to an earlier EPI study, 56% of workers had already lost their right to sue their employers when the Trump court’s Epic decision intensified the trend, kicking off “a surge in corporate use of forced arbitration.”
Lower courts had split on the issue. By nominating Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Trump swung the weight of the government toward management. Although the National Labor Relations Board had previously backed workers’ rights to collective action, Trump’s appointees gave it a new Republican majority.
The labor board also got a new, and anti-labor, general counsel, Peter Robb, a former partner at a Philadelphia union-busting law firm who promptly issued an amicus curiae brief supporting the employers’ position in the case. Robb has started a hunt for pro-labor rulings that can be overturned, Bloomberg reported in May.
The forced arbitration clauses backed by the Epic decision may let management select the arbitrators, crimp the amount of relief they can grant, and impose daunting fees and short filing periods on workers. No wonder businesses win the overwhelming majority of arbitration cases and when workers do win their awards are small. This individual arbitration process bears no resemblance to the voluntary bilateral arbitration used to resolve grievances, disputes under collective bargaining agreements and disciplinary issues in unionized workplaces.
At an Applebee’s in Bend, Ore., managers regularly forced Mike Swisher and his coworkers to work off the clock without pay. When he went to the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project for help, he discovered that among the paperwork required for the job they had signed an arbitration clause banning class actions. Thus the employees have been unable to recover any of the pay they are owed and Applebee’s has not been held accountable for the wage theft.
Mike is not alone: 93% of the workers who sign forced arbitration clauses don’t realize they are giving up their right to sue, the Center for Popular Democracy found.
Amy, an immigrant from Vietnam who does manicures and fingernails, was paid below the minimum wage for working 11 hours a day, seven days a week in suburban Seattle. She often saw a manager inappropriately touching her coworkers. Construction worker Carlos Jiménez suffered wage theft totaling $10,000 in Queens, N.Y.
Mike, Amy and Carlos are among the many workers whose stories of unremedied injustice were collected by the center.
60 Million Banned from Courts
Forced arbitration regimes already ban 60 million U.S. workers from protecting their employment rights through the judicial system. The practice is more prevalent in low-paid jobs, with an estimated two thirds of low-wage employers blocking the courthouse doors. The industries that use such tools to deny justice disproportionately employ women and African-Americans.
With the deck stacked against them, an estimated 98% of workers who would otherwise go to court give up the effort when their only option is forced individual arbitration, according to the report. In the banned class and collective actions, workers aggregate their claims and make litigation cost-effective, and under union contracts, management is often required to bear half the cost, but individual arbitration cases and lawsuits are unrealistic for most working people.
Corporate use of forced arbitration combines with cutbacks at enforcement agencies to severely erode workers’ rights. Budget cuts have left state and federal worker protection agencies that deal with race and gender discrimination, safety abuses and wage and hour violations underfunded and understaffed.
Enforcement divisions of the U.S. Labor Dept. lost $9.6 million in the last seven years alone during a time when the number of workers they are responsible for grew by 13 percent. The number of workers per federal wage and hour inspector has climbed to 175,000, more than double the ratio in the 1970s. Employees per safety and health compliance officer tripled.
Fightback legislation to override Epic Systems has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced a companion Senate bill.
The Restoring Justice for Workers Act would prohibit mandatory arbitration and class action waivers in labor disputes and the Forced Arbitration Repeal Act would eliminate the clauses in employment, consumer and civil rights cases. Neither bill is likely to pass the Senate, however, and even if it did the White House would be opposed.
State “whistleblower enforcement laws” introduced in Oregon, Washington, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine and modeled on California’s Private Attorney General Act would let workers sue law-breaking employers on behalf of the state and all injured employees, even if they are covered by forced arbitration clauses, with penalty proceeds split between workers and underfunded state enforcement agencies.
They achieve this by forcing the vast majority of non-union private-sector workers to sign away their rights to go to court or use class or collective arbitration. Instead many millions of workers are being forced to forgo these efficient legal ways to resolve issues and to file individual arbitration claims.
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy says that by 2024 more than 80% of non-union private-sector workers will find courthouse doors chained shut by forced arbitration clauses that ban lawsuits and collective actions. (EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to press the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.)
Hardest hit will be women, African-Americans, immigrants and low-wage workers as bosses compel employees to sign forced arbitration clauses to keep their jobs. The dense legalese giving up these rights is often hidden deep in the fine print of job application forms and new-hire paperwork, says the report titled “Unchecked corporate power: Forced arbitration, the enforcement crisis and how workers are fighting back.”
Enforcement of these clauses was validated by the Supreme Court in the Epic Systems v. Lewis decision. Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch provided the decisive vote and wrote the majority opinion in the May 2018 decision.
The 5-4 Epicruling lets individual arbitration clauses and waivers of collective action trump the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. That New Deal law gives workers the right to “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”
The high court decision shows how Donald Trump, who campaigned as a champion of workers and whose inaugural address promised to always look out for the “Forgotten Man,” has used his powers to hurt workers. His campaign speeches, read carefully, show his concern for corporations and profits and his love of tariffs more than workers.
No Right to Sue
According to an earlier EPI study, 56% of workers had already lost their right to sue their employers when the Trump court’s Epic decision intensified the trend, kicking off “a surge in corporate use of forced arbitration.”
Lower courts had split on the issue. By nominating Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Trump swung the weight of the government toward management. Although the National Labor Relations Board had previously backed workers’ rights to collective action, Trump’s appointees gave it a new Republican majority.
The labor board also got a new, and anti-labor, general counsel, Peter Robb, a former partner at a Philadelphia union-busting law firm who promptly issued an amicus curiae brief supporting the employers’ position in the case. Robb has started a hunt for pro-labor rulings that can be overturned, Bloomberg reported in May.
The forced arbitration clauses backed by the Epic decision may let management select the arbitrators, crimp the amount of relief they can grant, and impose daunting fees and short filing periods on workers. No wonder businesses win the overwhelming majority of arbitration cases and when workers do win their awards are small. This individual arbitration process bears no resemblance to the voluntary bilateral arbitration used to resolve grievances, disputes under collective bargaining agreements and disciplinary issues in unionized workplaces.
At an Applebee’s in Bend, Ore., managers regularly forced Mike Swisher and his coworkers to work off the clock without pay. When he went to the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project for help, he discovered that among the paperwork required for the job they had signed an arbitration clause banning class actions. Thus the employees have been unable to recover any of the pay they are owed and Applebee’s has not been held accountable for the wage theft.
Mike is not alone: 93% of the workers who sign forced arbitration clauses don’t realize they are giving up their right to sue, the Center for Popular Democracy found.
Amy, an immigrant from Vietnam who does manicures and fingernails, was paid below the minimum wage for working 11 hours a day, seven days a week in suburban Seattle. She often saw a manager inappropriately touching her coworkers. Construction worker Carlos Jiménez suffered wage theft totaling $10,000 in Queens, N.Y.
Mike, Amy and Carlos are among the many workers whose stories of unremedied injustice were collected by the center.
60 Million Banned from Courts
Forced arbitration regimes already ban 60 million U.S. workers from protecting their employment rights through the judicial system. The practice is more prevalent in low-paid jobs, with an estimated two thirds of low-wage employers blocking the courthouse doors. The industries that use such tools to deny justice disproportionately employ women and African-Americans.
With the deck stacked against them, an estimated 98% of workers who would otherwise go to court give up the effort when their only option is forced individual arbitration, according to the report. In the banned class and collective actions, workers aggregate their claims and make litigation cost-effective, and under union contracts, management is often required to bear half the cost, but individual arbitration cases and lawsuits are unrealistic for most working people.
Corporate use of forced arbitration combines with cutbacks at enforcement agencies to severely erode workers’ rights. Budget cuts have left state and federal worker protection agencies that deal with race and gender discrimination, safety abuses and wage and hour violations underfunded and understaffed.
Enforcement divisions of the U.S. Labor Dept. lost $9.6 million in the last seven years alone during a time when the number of workers they are responsible for grew by 13 percent. The number of workers per federal wage and hour inspector has climbed to 175,000, more than double the ratio in the 1970s. Employees per safety and health compliance officer tripled.
Fightback legislation to override Epic Systems has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced a companion Senate bill.
The Restoring Justice for Workers Act would prohibit mandatory arbitration and class action waivers in labor disputes and the Forced Arbitration Repeal Act would eliminate the clauses in employment, consumer and civil rights cases. Neither bill is likely to pass the Senate, however, and even if it did the White House would be opposed.
State “whistleblower enforcement laws” introduced in Oregon, Washington, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine and modeled on California’s Private Attorney General Act would let workers sue law-breaking employers on behalf of the state and all injured employees, even if they are covered by forced arbitration clauses, with penalty proceeds split between workers and underfunded state enforcement agencies.
Disney heiress 'livid' after going to one of her family's theme parks undercover
Nicole Lyn Pesce - Marketwatch - msn.com
7/15/19
So much for the “Happiest Place on Earth.” The heiress to the Disney fortune recently went to one of its theme parks undercover and says the visit made her livid.
Abigail Disney told the Yahoo News show “Through Her Eyes” that a worker sent her a Facebook message expressing how tragic being employed at the Magic Kingdom has become. So she went to Disneyland to see it for herself.
“Every single one of these people I talked to were saying, ‘I don’t know how I can maintain this face of joy and warmth when I have to go home and forage for food in other people’s garbage,’” Disney, 59, told Yahoo News host and human rights activist Zainab Salbi in an interview posted Monday.
Disney is the granddaughter of the late Roy Disney, who co-founded The Walt Disney Co. with his brother, Walt Disney. She does not have an active role in the company. Disney said that her grandfather would not approve of the current working conditions at the parks he helped create.
She added that “these people are much of the recipe for success. . . . When my grandfather worked there, he hired people there to have a job for life.”
This isn’t the first time that Abigail Disney has criticized how the Mickey Mouse company and its CEO, Bob Iger, are treating its lowest-paid employees. The Walt Disney Co. employs more than 200,000 people worldwide.
In April, she said that Iger’s $65 million pay package is insane at a Fast Company Impact Council discussion of human capitalism, noting his compensation is 1,424 times that of the median Disney employee. She also told CNBC that “Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay.”
A 2018 survey conducted by on behalf of a group of unions found that nearly three-quarters of full- and part-time employees (73%) said that they didn’t earn enough money working at Disneyland Resort to pay for basic expenses each month. More than half were worried about being evicted, and about one-tenth reported being homeless in the previous two years.
Disney, whose own net worth is $120 million, joined a group of 19 ultrawealthy Americans, including George Soros, who signed an open letter to the 2020 presidential candidates last month calling for a moderate wealth tax on the richest 1% to help reduce inequality. She recently told The Cut that she has donated $70 million to charity over the past 30 years.
She also told Yahoo in the new interview that she’d emailed Iger her concerns, telling him he was “a great CEO by any measure, perhaps even the greatest CEO in the country right now,” and urging him to “be known as the guy who led to a better place, because that is what you have the power to do.” She said she was referred to the HR department.
The Walt Disney Co. responded in an email statement to MarketWatch that the company offers a starting minimum wage of $15 an hour, as well as free education opportunities, and healthcare benefits for hourly workers starting at $6 a week.
“Our Disney Aspire initiative is the most comprehensive employee education program in the country, covering 100% of all tuition costs, books and fees so our hourly workers can pursue higher education free of charge, and graduate free of debt. Under Bob Iger’s leadership, Disney has made an initial commitment of $150 million to fund this program in the first five years, and will continue to make significant investments to make Disney Aspire available to as many employees as possible,” the statement continued. “Disney also provides flexible schedules and subsidized childcare to make it easier for employees to take advantage of this opportunity — and we’re proud that more than 40% of our 88,000-plus hourly employees have already signed up to participate.”
Abigail Disney told the Yahoo News show “Through Her Eyes” that a worker sent her a Facebook message expressing how tragic being employed at the Magic Kingdom has become. So she went to Disneyland to see it for herself.
“Every single one of these people I talked to were saying, ‘I don’t know how I can maintain this face of joy and warmth when I have to go home and forage for food in other people’s garbage,’” Disney, 59, told Yahoo News host and human rights activist Zainab Salbi in an interview posted Monday.
Disney is the granddaughter of the late Roy Disney, who co-founded The Walt Disney Co. with his brother, Walt Disney. She does not have an active role in the company. Disney said that her grandfather would not approve of the current working conditions at the parks he helped create.
She added that “these people are much of the recipe for success. . . . When my grandfather worked there, he hired people there to have a job for life.”
This isn’t the first time that Abigail Disney has criticized how the Mickey Mouse company and its CEO, Bob Iger, are treating its lowest-paid employees. The Walt Disney Co. employs more than 200,000 people worldwide.
In April, she said that Iger’s $65 million pay package is insane at a Fast Company Impact Council discussion of human capitalism, noting his compensation is 1,424 times that of the median Disney employee. She also told CNBC that “Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay.”
A 2018 survey conducted by on behalf of a group of unions found that nearly three-quarters of full- and part-time employees (73%) said that they didn’t earn enough money working at Disneyland Resort to pay for basic expenses each month. More than half were worried about being evicted, and about one-tenth reported being homeless in the previous two years.
Disney, whose own net worth is $120 million, joined a group of 19 ultrawealthy Americans, including George Soros, who signed an open letter to the 2020 presidential candidates last month calling for a moderate wealth tax on the richest 1% to help reduce inequality. She recently told The Cut that she has donated $70 million to charity over the past 30 years.
She also told Yahoo in the new interview that she’d emailed Iger her concerns, telling him he was “a great CEO by any measure, perhaps even the greatest CEO in the country right now,” and urging him to “be known as the guy who led to a better place, because that is what you have the power to do.” She said she was referred to the HR department.
The Walt Disney Co. responded in an email statement to MarketWatch that the company offers a starting minimum wage of $15 an hour, as well as free education opportunities, and healthcare benefits for hourly workers starting at $6 a week.
“Our Disney Aspire initiative is the most comprehensive employee education program in the country, covering 100% of all tuition costs, books and fees so our hourly workers can pursue higher education free of charge, and graduate free of debt. Under Bob Iger’s leadership, Disney has made an initial commitment of $150 million to fund this program in the first five years, and will continue to make significant investments to make Disney Aspire available to as many employees as possible,” the statement continued. “Disney also provides flexible schedules and subsidized childcare to make it easier for employees to take advantage of this opportunity — and we’re proud that more than 40% of our 88,000-plus hourly employees have already signed up to participate.”
Whole Foods workers say conditions declined after Amazon takeover
Employees described increasing pressure to push Amazon Prime deals and memberships, understaffing and increased workloads
Michael Sainato
The Guardian
Tue 16 Jul 2019 07.00 BST
Since being bought by Amazon two years ago, employees at Whole Foods say their working conditions have declined markedly amid pressure to push Amazon Prime deals and memberships, plus widespread understaffing, increased workloads and labor budget cuts.
Amazon announced in June 2017 it would buy Whole Foods. In interviews with 24 Whole Foods employees across the US, workers described an increasingly pressured environment and the erosion of Whole Foods’ corporate culture.
Workers interviewed were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation.
“Amazon has changed the company so much to the point where I can’t recognize Whole Foods any more,” said one Whole Foods worker in California. “It sends chills down my spine every day to see the store I love bombarded with everything and anything Amazon, from the Prime signs, Amazon lockers, Amazon meal kits and the Prime shoppers.”
In September 2018, a group of current and former Whole Foods workers organized Whole Worker, a group for workers to organize collectively to push for improved working conditions.
In a mass email sent to Whole Foods employees by over a dozen current and former workers with Whole Worker on 21 June, the group characterized Whole Foods’ relationship with Amazon as a subordinate to Amazon, where workers are primarily used to sell Amazon Prime memberships and deals.
A Whole Foods team member in the south-west US said: “Cashiers are currently trained to ask each customer if they have Prime. In the fall, they are rolling out signing up for it at the guest service desk. They are aiming for 35% of product purchases to be items on Amazon Prime sales, even if the guest doesn’t have Prime.”
A Whole Foods team leader who runs a meat department in the north-east US noted training for new employees now include sections about Prime benefits for customers. “It had nothing to do with customer service, expectations or requirements. Simply just the benefits of Prime, from everything to answering questions on Kindle, Amazon tablets, Amazon Fire Stick and Amazon music,” they said.
A Whole Foods worker in the Pacific north-west region claimed Amazon kiosks are replacing Prime lockers in Whole Foods stores throughout the region, where Prime customers can drop off and pick up Amazon orders.
“Whole Foods is not an independent company that has an investment or something from Amazon. It is a grocery retail outpost for Amazon, and it’s there to push online sales, Prime memberships and Prime devices,” they said.
A Whole Foods representative told the Guardian in an email: “Our Team Members are the heart of Whole Foods Market, and we are proud to continue to have one of the highest ratios of full-time/part-time employment and hourly starting wages in the industry. We have not cut labor hours as a result of increasing minimum starting wage to $15 per hour.”
However, numerous workers in different Whole Foods departments said they’re pushed to prioritize Amazon-related tasks over everything else.
“We must have large signs over our Prime deals, additional signs on the displays and samples or we get asked about it constantly,” said a Whole Foods team member who works in a specialty department in the Rocky Mountains region.
Several Whole Foods workers told how one of the Amazon-related changes is that understaffing has become the norm. Full-time workers said their hours have regularly been reduced from 40 a week to 35 to 37 in the wake of Amazon enacting a $15 minimum wage for all its employees – thus rendering any rises in pay almost non-existent.
“I have worked for the company for over a decade and have seen the most recent crunch of labor since the $15 hour minimum was implemented,” said a Whole Foods employee in the midwest.
The worker claimed their schedule was cut to 27 hours a week, despite being a full-time employee and working in an understaffed department. “They continue to give us more and more tasks and more checklists and things that need to be done, but our hours continue to be cut.”
A full-time Whole Foods team member in the mid-Atlantic region noted: “Now I’m usually scheduled 36 to 37 hours a week” since the Amazon minimum wage increase.
Another Whole Foods worker in California told the Guardian: “Our store has been labor deficient or compressed since the winter of 2018. We were successful, busy and a great environment. Then we stopped hiring, cut hours, moved people around to patch holes.”
A buyer and supervisor for Whole Foods on the west coast said: “We don’t have the manpower to get product on the shelves for customers, and we don’t have time for customer service because we are constantly playing catch-up.”
Amazon announced in June 2017 it would buy Whole Foods. In interviews with 24 Whole Foods employees across the US, workers described an increasingly pressured environment and the erosion of Whole Foods’ corporate culture.
Workers interviewed were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation.
“Amazon has changed the company so much to the point where I can’t recognize Whole Foods any more,” said one Whole Foods worker in California. “It sends chills down my spine every day to see the store I love bombarded with everything and anything Amazon, from the Prime signs, Amazon lockers, Amazon meal kits and the Prime shoppers.”
In September 2018, a group of current and former Whole Foods workers organized Whole Worker, a group for workers to organize collectively to push for improved working conditions.
In a mass email sent to Whole Foods employees by over a dozen current and former workers with Whole Worker on 21 June, the group characterized Whole Foods’ relationship with Amazon as a subordinate to Amazon, where workers are primarily used to sell Amazon Prime memberships and deals.
A Whole Foods team member in the south-west US said: “Cashiers are currently trained to ask each customer if they have Prime. In the fall, they are rolling out signing up for it at the guest service desk. They are aiming for 35% of product purchases to be items on Amazon Prime sales, even if the guest doesn’t have Prime.”
A Whole Foods team leader who runs a meat department in the north-east US noted training for new employees now include sections about Prime benefits for customers. “It had nothing to do with customer service, expectations or requirements. Simply just the benefits of Prime, from everything to answering questions on Kindle, Amazon tablets, Amazon Fire Stick and Amazon music,” they said.
A Whole Foods worker in the Pacific north-west region claimed Amazon kiosks are replacing Prime lockers in Whole Foods stores throughout the region, where Prime customers can drop off and pick up Amazon orders.
“Whole Foods is not an independent company that has an investment or something from Amazon. It is a grocery retail outpost for Amazon, and it’s there to push online sales, Prime memberships and Prime devices,” they said.
A Whole Foods representative told the Guardian in an email: “Our Team Members are the heart of Whole Foods Market, and we are proud to continue to have one of the highest ratios of full-time/part-time employment and hourly starting wages in the industry. We have not cut labor hours as a result of increasing minimum starting wage to $15 per hour.”
However, numerous workers in different Whole Foods departments said they’re pushed to prioritize Amazon-related tasks over everything else.
“We must have large signs over our Prime deals, additional signs on the displays and samples or we get asked about it constantly,” said a Whole Foods team member who works in a specialty department in the Rocky Mountains region.
Several Whole Foods workers told how one of the Amazon-related changes is that understaffing has become the norm. Full-time workers said their hours have regularly been reduced from 40 a week to 35 to 37 in the wake of Amazon enacting a $15 minimum wage for all its employees – thus rendering any rises in pay almost non-existent.
“I have worked for the company for over a decade and have seen the most recent crunch of labor since the $15 hour minimum was implemented,” said a Whole Foods employee in the midwest.
The worker claimed their schedule was cut to 27 hours a week, despite being a full-time employee and working in an understaffed department. “They continue to give us more and more tasks and more checklists and things that need to be done, but our hours continue to be cut.”
A full-time Whole Foods team member in the mid-Atlantic region noted: “Now I’m usually scheduled 36 to 37 hours a week” since the Amazon minimum wage increase.
Another Whole Foods worker in California told the Guardian: “Our store has been labor deficient or compressed since the winter of 2018. We were successful, busy and a great environment. Then we stopped hiring, cut hours, moved people around to patch holes.”
A buyer and supervisor for Whole Foods on the west coast said: “We don’t have the manpower to get product on the shelves for customers, and we don’t have time for customer service because we are constantly playing catch-up.”
‘It’s a sexist and racist attack’: Trump’s regulation to weaken home health care unions takes effect
A subtle, but important technical change.
AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ- Thinkprogress
JUL 5, 2019, 8:00 AM
Adarra Benjamin earns $13.48 an hour as a home health worker — a wage that includes a 48-cent-per hour raise thanks to her union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Illinois.
Benjamin, who’s 25 years old and lives in Chicago, also received $1,200 in backpay this year after Illinois agreed to the raises back in 2017. She was one of more than 49,000 employees statewide to receive this long-overdue backpay.
“After becoming a member… I truly understood what it meant,” said Benjamin, “We are the union — the workers in general are the union — and understanding that if we don’t come together, we don’t have a voice. If we don’t have a voice, no one understands where the hard work and the dedication is coming from… no one understands what it takes to take care of yourself and other people.”
When she’s isn’t caring for her great-grandmother — cooking and cleaning — Benjamin assists a client with cerebral palsy — brushing her teeth or physically putting her to bed. Her two jobs demand that she work roughly 52 hours per week.
But a regulation that takes effect on Friday would bar someone like Benjamin, whose work is paid directly by Medicaid, from having her union dues automatically deducted from her paycheck. It’s a subtle but important technical change, as it’ll likely load more administrative burden onto workers who assist older adults and people with disabilities in their homes.
“I don’t like it,” said Benjamin, of the regulation. “It’s a sexist and racist attack.”
The regulation makes life more difficult for a specific sect of public-sector workers, said Caitlin Connolly, of the workers’ rights advocacy group, National Employment Law Project.
“We can’t ignore the fact that this regulation — this attack — on these workers has racist implications,” Connolly told ThinkProgress. “This is a workforce that’s majority women of color and the fact that this administration thinks that they can take their rights away from them by creating a false scenario is blatantly racist.”
In the more typical arrangement, the deduction of union dues, much like similar deductions by which employees pay into their health insurance or retirement savings, are automatically taken out of a worker’s paycheck once they agree to participate. (The Supreme Court decision, Harris v. Quinn, requires workers to opt in and explicitly state they want to participate in a union before the organization can collect dues.) Other public sector workers who are part of a union, such as firefighters or police officers, pay their dues through payroll deductions of earnings.
But the Trump administration is banning this practice for some home health aides and is requiring them to pay dues separately, in some instances by mail. People of color make up 60% of all home care workers; over one-quarter are immigrants; and roughly half have completed no formal education beyond high school, according to research by the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI).
The Trump administration maintains that federal law does not permit Medicaid dollars to be diverted in this fashion. Groups like National Federation of Independent Businesses argue that this rule prevents unions from using taxpayer dollars to pay for lobbying.
“People don’t get to choose the source of their pay,” said Connolly. “And the fact that, as a society, we make investments through our Medicaid-funded programs to make sure that individuals with disabilities and older adults can remain in their homes — that should not and does not at all detract from these workers rights.”
The regulation is just the latest example of the administration undermining the efforts of organized labor. Last year, President Donald Trump issued executive orders that make it easier to fire federal employees and weaken their ability to collectively bargain. When a federal court struck down key provisions of those orders, the administration achieved similar goals through workarounds.
The benefits that have accrued to home health aides through unionizing are well-documented: home care workers helped create the nation’s first social insurance for long-term care in Washington state; workers negotiated a wage increase to $16.10 per hour by July 2021 in Massachusetts; and workers secured training programs for improved delivery of care in Washington state, Oregon, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, and some counties in California.
“If these policymakers were serious about making home care accessible and available to all people with disabilities and all older adults, they would be investing in this workforce right now not attacking them because turnover is a huge,” said Connolly.
The median annual income for home care workers is $15,100 in 2017, and the turnover rate ballooned to 82 percent in 2018. Over 2.1 million home care workers provide health care, and the demand will likely grow as the population of people 65 and older will double; the elderly population is projected to be 88 million in 2050.
States where workers are unionized are fighting back. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with attorneys general in four other states, are suing the administration in federal court to block the rule. The case is pending. It’s unclear if the changes to how fees are collected will impact union membership or finances, but workers remain optimistic.
“This is a way to break us, and to not only show us how little they truly care about us but show us how little they think we care about ourselves,” said Benjamin. “But I’m sure the union will come out strong and members understand how valuable it is to still come together.”
Benjamin, who’s 25 years old and lives in Chicago, also received $1,200 in backpay this year after Illinois agreed to the raises back in 2017. She was one of more than 49,000 employees statewide to receive this long-overdue backpay.
“After becoming a member… I truly understood what it meant,” said Benjamin, “We are the union — the workers in general are the union — and understanding that if we don’t come together, we don’t have a voice. If we don’t have a voice, no one understands where the hard work and the dedication is coming from… no one understands what it takes to take care of yourself and other people.”
When she’s isn’t caring for her great-grandmother — cooking and cleaning — Benjamin assists a client with cerebral palsy — brushing her teeth or physically putting her to bed. Her two jobs demand that she work roughly 52 hours per week.
But a regulation that takes effect on Friday would bar someone like Benjamin, whose work is paid directly by Medicaid, from having her union dues automatically deducted from her paycheck. It’s a subtle but important technical change, as it’ll likely load more administrative burden onto workers who assist older adults and people with disabilities in their homes.
“I don’t like it,” said Benjamin, of the regulation. “It’s a sexist and racist attack.”
The regulation makes life more difficult for a specific sect of public-sector workers, said Caitlin Connolly, of the workers’ rights advocacy group, National Employment Law Project.
“We can’t ignore the fact that this regulation — this attack — on these workers has racist implications,” Connolly told ThinkProgress. “This is a workforce that’s majority women of color and the fact that this administration thinks that they can take their rights away from them by creating a false scenario is blatantly racist.”
In the more typical arrangement, the deduction of union dues, much like similar deductions by which employees pay into their health insurance or retirement savings, are automatically taken out of a worker’s paycheck once they agree to participate. (The Supreme Court decision, Harris v. Quinn, requires workers to opt in and explicitly state they want to participate in a union before the organization can collect dues.) Other public sector workers who are part of a union, such as firefighters or police officers, pay their dues through payroll deductions of earnings.
But the Trump administration is banning this practice for some home health aides and is requiring them to pay dues separately, in some instances by mail. People of color make up 60% of all home care workers; over one-quarter are immigrants; and roughly half have completed no formal education beyond high school, according to research by the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI).
The Trump administration maintains that federal law does not permit Medicaid dollars to be diverted in this fashion. Groups like National Federation of Independent Businesses argue that this rule prevents unions from using taxpayer dollars to pay for lobbying.
“People don’t get to choose the source of their pay,” said Connolly. “And the fact that, as a society, we make investments through our Medicaid-funded programs to make sure that individuals with disabilities and older adults can remain in their homes — that should not and does not at all detract from these workers rights.”
The regulation is just the latest example of the administration undermining the efforts of organized labor. Last year, President Donald Trump issued executive orders that make it easier to fire federal employees and weaken their ability to collectively bargain. When a federal court struck down key provisions of those orders, the administration achieved similar goals through workarounds.
The benefits that have accrued to home health aides through unionizing are well-documented: home care workers helped create the nation’s first social insurance for long-term care in Washington state; workers negotiated a wage increase to $16.10 per hour by July 2021 in Massachusetts; and workers secured training programs for improved delivery of care in Washington state, Oregon, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, and some counties in California.
“If these policymakers were serious about making home care accessible and available to all people with disabilities and all older adults, they would be investing in this workforce right now not attacking them because turnover is a huge,” said Connolly.
The median annual income for home care workers is $15,100 in 2017, and the turnover rate ballooned to 82 percent in 2018. Over 2.1 million home care workers provide health care, and the demand will likely grow as the population of people 65 and older will double; the elderly population is projected to be 88 million in 2050.
States where workers are unionized are fighting back. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with attorneys general in four other states, are suing the administration in federal court to block the rule. The case is pending. It’s unclear if the changes to how fees are collected will impact union membership or finances, but workers remain optimistic.
“This is a way to break us, and to not only show us how little they truly care about us but show us how little they think we care about ourselves,” said Benjamin. “But I’m sure the union will come out strong and members understand how valuable it is to still come together.”
Social security workers call new Trump administration contract ‘union-busting’
New contract will reduce the time allotted to employees for union activity from 250,000 hours annually to 50,000
Michael Sainato
The Guardian
Wed 3 Jul 2019 02.03 EDT
Workers at the Social Security Administration (SSA) say that the Trump administration has imposed a new contract on their 45,000 workers that could effectively shut down their union and are warning that the same thing could be tried elsewhere in the federal government as part of a crackdown on the labor movement.
A federal panel, consisting mainly of Trump-appointed members, issued a decision in May to impose a new union contract for the 45,000 federal employees at the SSA. The move came despite a federal judge’s decision last year to strike down most provisions in similarly issued orders for violating collective bargaining rights for federal employees.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), says the new contract the panel decided to impose chronically hampers its work at the agency, which mainly pays out retirement and disability benefits. The SSA is the first major federal agency up for a union contract renewal since Donald Trump’s executive orders were issued last year, and it is the AFGE’s second-largest bargaining unit.
“If the agency is successful in implementing this panel order, it will decimate our ability to represent workers all over the country,” said Rich Couture, an agency employee for more than 30 years and the union’s chief negotiator.
The provisions in the new contract will reduce the time allotted to SSA employees for union activity from 250,000 hours annually to 50,000 hours and ban all workers from using government property to conduct union activities, such as office spaces and government emails and holding files on government computers or in offices. It will also grant management the discretion to eliminate remote work.
“It’s union-busting,” said Damion Barco, a SSA employee in Maryland. “The official time is what we need to have a successful and productive union. A union is only effective if you can supply it.”
The contract will also eliminate over 1,400 memorandums of understanding that were agreed upon in collective bargaining over the past decade.
According to AFGE, the union is currently evaluating all of their legal options and plans to take the matter to court.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said David Cann, director of bargaining for the AFGE. “As we’ve been in negotiation with the Trump administration, we’ve seen a level of hostility toward labor unions that is unique and more coordinated from what we’ve seen with other administrations, even Republican administrations that are philosophically opposed to the mission of labor and the empowerment of workers.”
Federal workers are not legally permitted to strike, but the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act mandates collective bargaining and union rights for federal employees. Federal employees at the SSA, who also conduct work as union representatives, explained they will no longer have the time or resources to continue exercising those rights.
“Once Trump signed those executive orders, all employees who were union representatives lost the right to hold files in their offices, lost the right to represent employees unless we used our own personal leave or leave without pay and even with that management wouldn’t approve leave to represent people,” said Sherry Jackson, a social security field office employee in Connecticut who also works as a union representative in her region.
SSA workers noted the new provisions in the union contract will further hurt working conditions at the agency, which they say is already suffering low morale.
Jackson said: “If the government is going to be a premier place to work, employees are going to have to be treated more than indentured servants and have working conditions comparable to private industry, where freedom is not going to be restricted by a few, or otherwise the government is not going to be able to hold and sustain employees.”
Judith Browning, a social security employee in West Virginia, said the provisions will prevent whistleblowers from coming forward, as they will no longer have union protection, provide management with authoritarian power over employees, and set a dangerous anti-union precedent for all federal employees. In 2013, workers at Browning’s office exposed the biggest social security disability fraud scheme in US history. She noted the only time she has now to assist workers with union representation is on the weekends at home, taking time away from her family.
“President Trump issued the executive orders targeting our union in order to target all federal employees,” Browning said. “Trump is going to allow management to basically fire us for no reason. We’re an at-will agency now. It gives the discretion to the supervisors to terminate employees without representation, without a reason.”
The SSA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A federal panel, consisting mainly of Trump-appointed members, issued a decision in May to impose a new union contract for the 45,000 federal employees at the SSA. The move came despite a federal judge’s decision last year to strike down most provisions in similarly issued orders for violating collective bargaining rights for federal employees.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), says the new contract the panel decided to impose chronically hampers its work at the agency, which mainly pays out retirement and disability benefits. The SSA is the first major federal agency up for a union contract renewal since Donald Trump’s executive orders were issued last year, and it is the AFGE’s second-largest bargaining unit.
“If the agency is successful in implementing this panel order, it will decimate our ability to represent workers all over the country,” said Rich Couture, an agency employee for more than 30 years and the union’s chief negotiator.
The provisions in the new contract will reduce the time allotted to SSA employees for union activity from 250,000 hours annually to 50,000 hours and ban all workers from using government property to conduct union activities, such as office spaces and government emails and holding files on government computers or in offices. It will also grant management the discretion to eliminate remote work.
“It’s union-busting,” said Damion Barco, a SSA employee in Maryland. “The official time is what we need to have a successful and productive union. A union is only effective if you can supply it.”
The contract will also eliminate over 1,400 memorandums of understanding that were agreed upon in collective bargaining over the past decade.
According to AFGE, the union is currently evaluating all of their legal options and plans to take the matter to court.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said David Cann, director of bargaining for the AFGE. “As we’ve been in negotiation with the Trump administration, we’ve seen a level of hostility toward labor unions that is unique and more coordinated from what we’ve seen with other administrations, even Republican administrations that are philosophically opposed to the mission of labor and the empowerment of workers.”
Federal workers are not legally permitted to strike, but the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act mandates collective bargaining and union rights for federal employees. Federal employees at the SSA, who also conduct work as union representatives, explained they will no longer have the time or resources to continue exercising those rights.
“Once Trump signed those executive orders, all employees who were union representatives lost the right to hold files in their offices, lost the right to represent employees unless we used our own personal leave or leave without pay and even with that management wouldn’t approve leave to represent people,” said Sherry Jackson, a social security field office employee in Connecticut who also works as a union representative in her region.
SSA workers noted the new provisions in the union contract will further hurt working conditions at the agency, which they say is already suffering low morale.
Jackson said: “If the government is going to be a premier place to work, employees are going to have to be treated more than indentured servants and have working conditions comparable to private industry, where freedom is not going to be restricted by a few, or otherwise the government is not going to be able to hold and sustain employees.”
Judith Browning, a social security employee in West Virginia, said the provisions will prevent whistleblowers from coming forward, as they will no longer have union protection, provide management with authoritarian power over employees, and set a dangerous anti-union precedent for all federal employees. In 2013, workers at Browning’s office exposed the biggest social security disability fraud scheme in US history. She noted the only time she has now to assist workers with union representation is on the weekends at home, taking time away from her family.
“President Trump issued the executive orders targeting our union in order to target all federal employees,” Browning said. “Trump is going to allow management to basically fire us for no reason. We’re an at-will agency now. It gives the discretion to the supervisors to terminate employees without representation, without a reason.”
The SSA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
while the slaves drive, the master resides in luxury!!!
Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages
Los Angeles sees a spike in the homelessness population while homes the size of football fields are selling for more than $100m
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
The Guardian
Tue 2 Jul 2019 18.12 EDT
This 56,500 sq ft Holmby Hills mansion, once belonging to television producer Aaron Spelling, has sold for $120m. Photograph: Mark Terrill/AP
Two massive luxury real estate deals in Los Angeles have shone a harsh light on the wealth gap in a region where tens of thousands of people live on the streets while mansions the size of football fields sell for more than $100m.
On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.
It wasn’t even the biggest Los Angeles luxury real estate deal reported this week. A 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills chateau, once home to television producer Aaron Spelling, sold for $120m, according to the Los Angeles Times, making it the highest home price in Los Angeles county history.
The extraordinary mega-mansion sales come at a time when Los Angeles is faced with widening inequality and escalating concerns about the housing crisis and a dramatic rise in homelessness, prompting intense debate about who gets to benefit from the growing economy.
The Holmby Hills property, known as the Manor, is 4.7 acres and is considered the largest single-family home in Los Angeles. It was built in 1991 for the television producer Aaron Spelling and now has 123 rooms, according to the LA Times’ report on the sale, which has not yet been made public. It’s the fourth sale of $100m or more in LA history, the paper reported.
The Beverly Hills mansion purchase by Camp was completed mere weeks after Uber’s IPO further enriched its wealthy investors and founders. Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $4.2bn, already owns a portfolio of luxury properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan.
Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
Moore, who is also an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, told the Guardian she works as a part-time driver in addition to a full-time job in healthcare because housing costs are so expensive in Los Angeles: “It’s an abomination. Income inequality has gone rampant.”
“This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy.
“It’s a slap in everyone’s face,” she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. “The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.”
Citing drivers’ ongoing fights for workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages and other rights, Dubal said that $72m could go along way: “This amount of money could change people’s lives.” She also noted that many Uber drivers rely on public benefits and government assistance since their wages are so low, meaning taxpayers in effect contribute to Camp’s exorbitant wealth.
“It’s our money that went into that house,” she said.
News of the $120m Holmby Hills sale came the same day that officials carried out another major sweep of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis of people living on the streets. Last month, authorities revealed that Los Angeles has experienced a 16% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with more than 36,000 people now homeless in the city.
The Rev Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles homeless organization, said $120m could be used to shelter thousands of people living on LA’s streets.
“Everyone just wants to sweep human beings away,” said Bales, noting that he encountered four homeless families desperate for shelter on Monday, including a pregnant mother with three young children. “It doesn’t do any good to sweep people, when there is nowhere to sweep them to. There are no shelters, no services where we can direct people.”
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a housing rights group, said it was painful to read articles glorifying the huge mansion sale: “There is definitely a crisis of values in Los Angeles.”
Camp’s Beverly Hills estate is now reportedly home to a 12,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and a new guesthouse. The Manor in Holmby Hills is said to include a large aquarium in a study, a nightclub in a basement level, a tanning room, a solarium, a spa, a tennis court, koi ponds, rose gardens and more.
On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.
It wasn’t even the biggest Los Angeles luxury real estate deal reported this week. A 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills chateau, once home to television producer Aaron Spelling, sold for $120m, according to the Los Angeles Times, making it the highest home price in Los Angeles county history.
The extraordinary mega-mansion sales come at a time when Los Angeles is faced with widening inequality and escalating concerns about the housing crisis and a dramatic rise in homelessness, prompting intense debate about who gets to benefit from the growing economy.
The Holmby Hills property, known as the Manor, is 4.7 acres and is considered the largest single-family home in Los Angeles. It was built in 1991 for the television producer Aaron Spelling and now has 123 rooms, according to the LA Times’ report on the sale, which has not yet been made public. It’s the fourth sale of $100m or more in LA history, the paper reported.
The Beverly Hills mansion purchase by Camp was completed mere weeks after Uber’s IPO further enriched its wealthy investors and founders. Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $4.2bn, already owns a portfolio of luxury properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan.
Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
Moore, who is also an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, told the Guardian she works as a part-time driver in addition to a full-time job in healthcare because housing costs are so expensive in Los Angeles: “It’s an abomination. Income inequality has gone rampant.”
“This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy.
“It’s a slap in everyone’s face,” she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. “The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.”
Citing drivers’ ongoing fights for workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages and other rights, Dubal said that $72m could go along way: “This amount of money could change people’s lives.” She also noted that many Uber drivers rely on public benefits and government assistance since their wages are so low, meaning taxpayers in effect contribute to Camp’s exorbitant wealth.
“It’s our money that went into that house,” she said.
News of the $120m Holmby Hills sale came the same day that officials carried out another major sweep of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis of people living on the streets. Last month, authorities revealed that Los Angeles has experienced a 16% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with more than 36,000 people now homeless in the city.
The Rev Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles homeless organization, said $120m could be used to shelter thousands of people living on LA’s streets.
“Everyone just wants to sweep human beings away,” said Bales, noting that he encountered four homeless families desperate for shelter on Monday, including a pregnant mother with three young children. “It doesn’t do any good to sweep people, when there is nowhere to sweep them to. There are no shelters, no services where we can direct people.”
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a housing rights group, said it was painful to read articles glorifying the huge mansion sale: “There is definitely a crisis of values in Los Angeles.”
Camp’s Beverly Hills estate is now reportedly home to a 12,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and a new guesthouse. The Manor in Holmby Hills is said to include a large aquarium in a study, a nightclub in a basement level, a tanning room, a solarium, a spa, a tennis court, koi ponds, rose gardens and more.
funnies
