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Slavery 21st Century
You thought it was over, think again
october 12, 2018
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.
headlines and issues
*Louisiana's undocumented seafood workers unite to fight workplace abuses
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*In a Blow to Labor, Teamsters Ratify UPS Contract Despite “No” Vote
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*As Midterms Approach, Fast-Food Workers Plan Strikes in Battleground States
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Amazon’s minimum wage hike is not what it seems
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The Not-So-Mysterious Solution to Wage Stagnation
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'They want us to be robots': Whole Foods workers fear Amazon's changes
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Leaked Video Reveals Amazon's Belligerent Anti-Worker Tactics
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Hotel Workers Register Anger With Marriott in Decisive Strike Vote
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'I feel like a slave': St Louis' workhouse denounced as a modern-day debtors' prison
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*In Crosshairs of Right-to-Work, Kentucky Bourbon Makers Go On Strike
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Striking Hotel Workers Say "Slow Season" Is No Excuse for Losing Health Care
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A year after Hurricane Harvey, some cleanup workers are still unpaid
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*McDonald’s Workers in 10 Cities Strike Over Sexual Harassment by Bosses
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Amazon’s ‘worker cage’ has been dropped, but its staff are not free
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Chicago hotel strike enters sixth day, as workers demand year-round health insurance
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Tesla workers speak out: 'Anything pro-union is shut down really fast
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*STRIKE AT AN IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTER STRENGTHENS THE NATIONAL PRISON STRIKE MOVEMENT
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A Labor Day tribute to restaurant workers, cooking and serving food they can’t afford to eat
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Low Wages And No Stability: How Amazon’s Use of Perma-Temps Is Hurting Workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
Louisiana's undocumented seafood workers unite to fight workplace abuses
Guest workers organize with others to push back against sexual harassment, poor conditions and other abuses
Mike Elk in Lafayette, Louisiana
the guardian
Fri 12 Oct 2018 06.00 EDT
In the bayous of Louisiana, fear is running high for the thousands of guest workers that staff the state’s $2bn a year seafood industry.
Seafood work is so dangerous that workers often lose fingers and suffer debilitating carpal tunnel injuries on the industry’s high-speed assembly lines. Many Latinas working in the industry endure sexual harassment at the hand of white southerners.
“They stay quiet about [the harassment] because they know that the owner won’t bring them back if they speak up,” says Julia, who wished to use only her first name.
Worse, many recently-arrived guest workers find themselves in rural isolated parts of Louisiana where fear of law enforcement is compounded by the belief that police brutality against undocumented workers is commonplace. In many rural municipalities, the owners of large seafood processing companies often know the police on a personal level and workers live with the fear of owners calling the police to have them deported if they cause trouble.
In 2012, when the National Guestworker Alliance tried to organize seafood workers, the owner of crawfish supplier CJ’s Seafood even threatened workers with violence if they spoke up about poor conditions including sometimes locking workers in the plant and forcing them to work 24 hours straight to meet demand.
Now seafood workers in Louisiana are beginning to lose that fear as they organize under the banner of the Seafood Workers Alliance. “The company has all the power, but with organizing, we are going to attack their power,” said Jesus Andres, president of the Seafood Workers Alliance.
At a recent meeting of workers, Andres quickly slathered a thick coat of mayonnaise on a tortilla with fried shrimp and habanero sauce as he rushed to take his seat at the head of a table where three dozen seafood worker gathered in the community room of the Lafayette public library.
All of a sudden, 34-year-old Danilo Balladares, an organizer with the Seafood Workers Alliance, stood in front of the room and began to clap. Soon, the rest of the room, black, white and brown alike, joined in the clapping. Gradually the clap got louder and more upbeat as cries of “rrrrrr” broke out. Balladares stopped the clapping and called the meeting to attention.
“All the people here could be fired,” said Balladares, pointing to Andres and the leaders of Seafood Workers Alliance seated at the front of the room. “They could be fired and sent back to their country if their employer knew they were here.”
Formed in 2017 as an offshoot of organizing being done by the National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice the Seafood Workers Alliance has hundreds of members in 15 different plants throughout Louisiana.
The organization has focused heavily on suing employers and building alliances with local communities so that workers can help push back when they face abuses in the workplace. They’ve built deep ties in particular with the African American community. Often, low wage employers have attempted to pit low wage African American workers against Latino workers, who many saw as coming to Louisiana to take their jobs.
Through combined struggle, the workers have learned that, while their struggles are different, their problems both with local employers and enforcement are similar.
“Look, we understand now that when they say deportation that’s incarceration for black people,” said Alfred Marshall, a middle-aged African American activist with Stand with Dignity, also a project of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice.
“When they say undocumented, we know that there are over 50,000-60,000 people in New Orleans who have outstanding warrants on them that can’t even go get a job because of the fear they have,” said Marshall.
“The language they use is different, but the problems are the same and now we understand that better than ever.”
As a result of the growing solidarity and power of the Seafood Workers Alliance, the workers have been able to win the reinstatement of over a dozen workers who feared they would be blacklisted; creating a sense of momentum. In March, the union successfully won the reinstatement of seven workers at D & G Frey Crawfish in Iota, Louisiana.
At the catfish plant in Guidry’s Catfish in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, many were fearful that Andres would not be allowed to come back for another season after he laid out a campaign to raise wages at the plant from $9 an hour to $12 an hour.
However, in March, Andres and his co-workers organized and forced their employer to agree to bring him back. This win, on the heels of winning other reinstatements, has given workers a new sense of power. Andres says that now he sees more and more of his co-workers overcoming their fears and putting pressure on the boss to improve their workplace.
“Through the Seafood Workers Alliance, we have learned how to assert our rights and take on the boss and its changed so much,” said Andres.
Seafood work is so dangerous that workers often lose fingers and suffer debilitating carpal tunnel injuries on the industry’s high-speed assembly lines. Many Latinas working in the industry endure sexual harassment at the hand of white southerners.
“They stay quiet about [the harassment] because they know that the owner won’t bring them back if they speak up,” says Julia, who wished to use only her first name.
Worse, many recently-arrived guest workers find themselves in rural isolated parts of Louisiana where fear of law enforcement is compounded by the belief that police brutality against undocumented workers is commonplace. In many rural municipalities, the owners of large seafood processing companies often know the police on a personal level and workers live with the fear of owners calling the police to have them deported if they cause trouble.
In 2012, when the National Guestworker Alliance tried to organize seafood workers, the owner of crawfish supplier CJ’s Seafood even threatened workers with violence if they spoke up about poor conditions including sometimes locking workers in the plant and forcing them to work 24 hours straight to meet demand.
Now seafood workers in Louisiana are beginning to lose that fear as they organize under the banner of the Seafood Workers Alliance. “The company has all the power, but with organizing, we are going to attack their power,” said Jesus Andres, president of the Seafood Workers Alliance.
At a recent meeting of workers, Andres quickly slathered a thick coat of mayonnaise on a tortilla with fried shrimp and habanero sauce as he rushed to take his seat at the head of a table where three dozen seafood worker gathered in the community room of the Lafayette public library.
All of a sudden, 34-year-old Danilo Balladares, an organizer with the Seafood Workers Alliance, stood in front of the room and began to clap. Soon, the rest of the room, black, white and brown alike, joined in the clapping. Gradually the clap got louder and more upbeat as cries of “rrrrrr” broke out. Balladares stopped the clapping and called the meeting to attention.
“All the people here could be fired,” said Balladares, pointing to Andres and the leaders of Seafood Workers Alliance seated at the front of the room. “They could be fired and sent back to their country if their employer knew they were here.”
Formed in 2017 as an offshoot of organizing being done by the National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice the Seafood Workers Alliance has hundreds of members in 15 different plants throughout Louisiana.
The organization has focused heavily on suing employers and building alliances with local communities so that workers can help push back when they face abuses in the workplace. They’ve built deep ties in particular with the African American community. Often, low wage employers have attempted to pit low wage African American workers against Latino workers, who many saw as coming to Louisiana to take their jobs.
Through combined struggle, the workers have learned that, while their struggles are different, their problems both with local employers and enforcement are similar.
“Look, we understand now that when they say deportation that’s incarceration for black people,” said Alfred Marshall, a middle-aged African American activist with Stand with Dignity, also a project of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice.
“When they say undocumented, we know that there are over 50,000-60,000 people in New Orleans who have outstanding warrants on them that can’t even go get a job because of the fear they have,” said Marshall.
“The language they use is different, but the problems are the same and now we understand that better than ever.”
As a result of the growing solidarity and power of the Seafood Workers Alliance, the workers have been able to win the reinstatement of over a dozen workers who feared they would be blacklisted; creating a sense of momentum. In March, the union successfully won the reinstatement of seven workers at D & G Frey Crawfish in Iota, Louisiana.
At the catfish plant in Guidry’s Catfish in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, many were fearful that Andres would not be allowed to come back for another season after he laid out a campaign to raise wages at the plant from $9 an hour to $12 an hour.
However, in March, Andres and his co-workers organized and forced their employer to agree to bring him back. This win, on the heels of winning other reinstatements, has given workers a new sense of power. Andres says that now he sees more and more of his co-workers overcoming their fears and putting pressure on the boss to improve their workplace.
“Through the Seafood Workers Alliance, we have learned how to assert our rights and take on the boss and its changed so much,” said Andres.
sellout??
In a Blow to Labor, Teamsters Ratify UPS Contract Despite “No” Vote
BY
Candice Bernd Truthout
PUBLISHED
October 11, 2018
While nonunion Amazon workers were celebrating the company’s pledge to hike their minimum wage pay to $15 an hour last week, unionized UPS workers were busy voting against a collectively bargained five-year contract with a starting pay of only $13 an hour.
By Friday, 54 percent of the 92,604 UPS workers had voted against the contract. Many were not only unsatisfied with a lower starting pay than nonunion Amazon, but also with the proposal’s creation of a new underclass of lesser-paid drivers who work weekends.
Despite this, their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), ratified the largest private-sector contract in the US – covering 243,000 UPS workers – over members’ wishes that they return to the bargaining table and hammer out a better deal.
A spokesperson for the Teamsters, the nation’s largest industrial union, said the union’s own constitution triggered the proposal’s ratification because less than half of eligible union members actually cast ballots. When turnout is under that threshold, at least two-thirds of members must vote against an agreement to reject a final offer. This is known as the “two-thirds rule.”
“Only 44.3 percent of members voted and 54.2 percent opposed the agreement – triggering the constitutional provision,” the union said. “Thus, the National Master Agreement has been ratified.”
A number of other, smaller contracts were also rejected, including an agreement representing 11,000 UPS Freight workers, who have prioritized the elimination of subcontracting. Negotiations are set to resume with those workers after 62.1 percent voted against the agreement. Teamsters face turmoil in other divisions too, including aircraft mechanics, who also recently rejected national agreements.
Even UPS itself was caught off-guard by the rapid ratification of the agreement. The company issued a revised statement over the weekend only hours after stating its disappointment with members’ decision to force negotiators back to the table.
The recently ratified contract enshrines “hybrid drivers” as a new job category. These drivers both start and cap out at lower hourly pay rates, but can be forced to work overtime unlike full-time drivers, who are protected. Longtime UPS drivers worry the company will, over time, shift the bulk of its work onto the backs of lower-paid, second tier part-timers who can be more easily exploited.
UPS argues these cheaper, part-time drivers will allow them to compete with nonunion online retail companies that pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits, like Amazon. Still, UPS workers point out that even Amazon’s independent contractors, who deliver from their own vehicles, will now be making a higher starting wage, at least initially. (The new UPS agreement does raise the starting pay rate over time, reaching $15 by 2021.)
“The fact that they’re moving to ratify the contract over a ‘no’ vote is a huge betrayal to the members, and I think it’s very damaging to the labor movement as a whole,” said David Levin, an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a reform caucus within the larger union, which has more than 10,000 members nationally. “There’s a lot of attacks against the labor movement, from right-to-work, etc., and it’s a terrible time to be sending workers the message that union leaders can just ignore and override the voices of the members.”
He worries ratification could weaken the IBT’s long-term viability in right-to-work states, where contracts between employers and unions are prohibited from making union dues a condition of employment. But if union leaders railroad the agreement over the will of the members, they may begin to wonder why they should pay dues in the first place.
Moreover, organizers with Teamsters United and TDU have long criticized President James P. Hoffa and his administration. According to TDU, this weekend’s contract debacle is the first time a national agreement has been ratified despite a majority “no” vote since 1987, when the union revised its two-thirds rule after member backlash.
Meanwhile, the union’s recent statement that the national negotiating committee “fully intends to demand that UPS return to the negotiating table to address a number of member concerns in the National Master Agreement” has baffled members.
“Their message is totally mixed. ‘It’s ratified, but we’re continuing to bargain.’ Well, if they’re continuing to bargain, then it’s not settled,” Levin said. TDU is pushing the Hoffa administration to remove Denis Taylor as lead negotiator and return to the table.
Moreover, several locals are pushing petitions calling for President Hoffa to convene a meeting of the general executive board and use a provision in the union’s constitution to overrule Taylor’s decision to ratify the UPS agreement. Specifically, they are calling for the executive board to use Article 12, Section 6, of the constitution to amend the two-thirds rule and allow negotiators to return to the bargaining table.
Sean O’Brien, who is president of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston, heads the IBT’s governing council in New England and is vice president of the union’s international body, told Truthout that he and others who sit on the executive board have written similar letters to President Hoffa. They have demanded the immediate convening of a board meeting to determine next steps, including the potential use of Article 12, Section 6 powers to amend the constitution.
O’Brien was let go as package director and lead contract negotiator last year, he says, after attempting to “unify the package division and the UPS locals so that we could secure a strong contract.” He called the idea that the union’s hands were tied by its own rules “outrageous.”
In 2013, he said, members voted down several regional supplements to a previous UPS national agreement, but the two-thirds rule wasn’t immediately imposed. “They did what they should be doing right now, … going back to the table and telling UPS the contract is not ratified and that our members have spoken, and we demand that you fix what’s broken,” he said.
The former agreement barely passed a member vote in 2013, and disputes over its regional supplements delayed progress on the proposal for nearly a year. Ultimately, though, President Hoffa imposed the supplements unilaterally. Last week, 10 of 28 local and regional supplements were likewise rejected, but the union still considers five of them ratified.
Union organizers’ opposition to Hoffa has been shaped in part by his abandoning of what they viewed as an effective model of membership mobilization and outreach that produced a successful strike against UPS in 1997 under former president Ron Carey’s leadership. “There hasn’t been a national strike in any industry [the IBT] represents since Jim Hoffa has taken over,” O’Brien said.
This longstanding sentiment, combined with fresh outrage over the national agreement’s ratification, is driving UPS workers who campaigned against the contract to run for office in their locals and nationally. The leader of Local 89, Fred Zuckerman, and a slate of no-voters are hoping to oust President Hoffa and his administration in the 2021 elections.
In the Dallas area, 29-year full-time UPS driver Brian Perrier is running for president of Local 767, where 57.5 percent of members voted against the contract. Perrier was active in campaigning against the agreement, and told Truthout he’s running because he and many other members are “fed up with the givebacks during the negotiations.”
In the run-up to last week’s vote, he went to every building in his local to campaign against the contract, including those in far-flung Texas cities like Palestine.
“We don’t feel like we’re being represented as true Teamsters. We feel like not only the IBT but at the local level too, is just too soft on management. We’re not getting good contract enforcement, and they’re way behind on grievances,” Perrier said. “They just blow all of their members off.”
While IBT heavily pushed for a “yes” vote on the contract, sending out more than a million pieces of mail in a national effort, at least two employees in Dallas “received disciplinary letters warning them that the ‘no solicitation at work’ policy barred verbal conversations about the contract,” according to Labor Notes.
Meanwhile, other rank-and-file Teamsters organizing against the contract around the country found themselves without parking spots or thrown out of parking lots for leafleting in Los Angeles and New York.
In the last four years, UPS has generated more than $16.2 billion in net profit and is forecasting another $6 billion this year. Republican lawmakers’ recent tax cut is expected to add to those windfalls, boosting the company’s bottom line by another $1 billion annually. Further, the company’s second-quarter income this fiscal year was reported as being up by 7.3 percent.
“There’s no rhyme or reason why we shouldn’t be obviously attempting to utilize leverage that we have,” O’Brien said. “We have a strong economy right now. E-commerce is basically driving the economy in some respects, and this is our largest employer making record profits.”
By Friday, 54 percent of the 92,604 UPS workers had voted against the contract. Many were not only unsatisfied with a lower starting pay than nonunion Amazon, but also with the proposal’s creation of a new underclass of lesser-paid drivers who work weekends.
Despite this, their union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), ratified the largest private-sector contract in the US – covering 243,000 UPS workers – over members’ wishes that they return to the bargaining table and hammer out a better deal.
A spokesperson for the Teamsters, the nation’s largest industrial union, said the union’s own constitution triggered the proposal’s ratification because less than half of eligible union members actually cast ballots. When turnout is under that threshold, at least two-thirds of members must vote against an agreement to reject a final offer. This is known as the “two-thirds rule.”
“Only 44.3 percent of members voted and 54.2 percent opposed the agreement – triggering the constitutional provision,” the union said. “Thus, the National Master Agreement has been ratified.”
A number of other, smaller contracts were also rejected, including an agreement representing 11,000 UPS Freight workers, who have prioritized the elimination of subcontracting. Negotiations are set to resume with those workers after 62.1 percent voted against the agreement. Teamsters face turmoil in other divisions too, including aircraft mechanics, who also recently rejected national agreements.
Even UPS itself was caught off-guard by the rapid ratification of the agreement. The company issued a revised statement over the weekend only hours after stating its disappointment with members’ decision to force negotiators back to the table.
The recently ratified contract enshrines “hybrid drivers” as a new job category. These drivers both start and cap out at lower hourly pay rates, but can be forced to work overtime unlike full-time drivers, who are protected. Longtime UPS drivers worry the company will, over time, shift the bulk of its work onto the backs of lower-paid, second tier part-timers who can be more easily exploited.
UPS argues these cheaper, part-time drivers will allow them to compete with nonunion online retail companies that pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits, like Amazon. Still, UPS workers point out that even Amazon’s independent contractors, who deliver from their own vehicles, will now be making a higher starting wage, at least initially. (The new UPS agreement does raise the starting pay rate over time, reaching $15 by 2021.)
“The fact that they’re moving to ratify the contract over a ‘no’ vote is a huge betrayal to the members, and I think it’s very damaging to the labor movement as a whole,” said David Levin, an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a reform caucus within the larger union, which has more than 10,000 members nationally. “There’s a lot of attacks against the labor movement, from right-to-work, etc., and it’s a terrible time to be sending workers the message that union leaders can just ignore and override the voices of the members.”
He worries ratification could weaken the IBT’s long-term viability in right-to-work states, where contracts between employers and unions are prohibited from making union dues a condition of employment. But if union leaders railroad the agreement over the will of the members, they may begin to wonder why they should pay dues in the first place.
Moreover, organizers with Teamsters United and TDU have long criticized President James P. Hoffa and his administration. According to TDU, this weekend’s contract debacle is the first time a national agreement has been ratified despite a majority “no” vote since 1987, when the union revised its two-thirds rule after member backlash.
Meanwhile, the union’s recent statement that the national negotiating committee “fully intends to demand that UPS return to the negotiating table to address a number of member concerns in the National Master Agreement” has baffled members.
“Their message is totally mixed. ‘It’s ratified, but we’re continuing to bargain.’ Well, if they’re continuing to bargain, then it’s not settled,” Levin said. TDU is pushing the Hoffa administration to remove Denis Taylor as lead negotiator and return to the table.
Moreover, several locals are pushing petitions calling for President Hoffa to convene a meeting of the general executive board and use a provision in the union’s constitution to overrule Taylor’s decision to ratify the UPS agreement. Specifically, they are calling for the executive board to use Article 12, Section 6, of the constitution to amend the two-thirds rule and allow negotiators to return to the bargaining table.
Sean O’Brien, who is president of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston, heads the IBT’s governing council in New England and is vice president of the union’s international body, told Truthout that he and others who sit on the executive board have written similar letters to President Hoffa. They have demanded the immediate convening of a board meeting to determine next steps, including the potential use of Article 12, Section 6 powers to amend the constitution.
O’Brien was let go as package director and lead contract negotiator last year, he says, after attempting to “unify the package division and the UPS locals so that we could secure a strong contract.” He called the idea that the union’s hands were tied by its own rules “outrageous.”
In 2013, he said, members voted down several regional supplements to a previous UPS national agreement, but the two-thirds rule wasn’t immediately imposed. “They did what they should be doing right now, … going back to the table and telling UPS the contract is not ratified and that our members have spoken, and we demand that you fix what’s broken,” he said.
The former agreement barely passed a member vote in 2013, and disputes over its regional supplements delayed progress on the proposal for nearly a year. Ultimately, though, President Hoffa imposed the supplements unilaterally. Last week, 10 of 28 local and regional supplements were likewise rejected, but the union still considers five of them ratified.
Union organizers’ opposition to Hoffa has been shaped in part by his abandoning of what they viewed as an effective model of membership mobilization and outreach that produced a successful strike against UPS in 1997 under former president Ron Carey’s leadership. “There hasn’t been a national strike in any industry [the IBT] represents since Jim Hoffa has taken over,” O’Brien said.
This longstanding sentiment, combined with fresh outrage over the national agreement’s ratification, is driving UPS workers who campaigned against the contract to run for office in their locals and nationally. The leader of Local 89, Fred Zuckerman, and a slate of no-voters are hoping to oust President Hoffa and his administration in the 2021 elections.
In the Dallas area, 29-year full-time UPS driver Brian Perrier is running for president of Local 767, where 57.5 percent of members voted against the contract. Perrier was active in campaigning against the agreement, and told Truthout he’s running because he and many other members are “fed up with the givebacks during the negotiations.”
In the run-up to last week’s vote, he went to every building in his local to campaign against the contract, including those in far-flung Texas cities like Palestine.
“We don’t feel like we’re being represented as true Teamsters. We feel like not only the IBT but at the local level too, is just too soft on management. We’re not getting good contract enforcement, and they’re way behind on grievances,” Perrier said. “They just blow all of their members off.”
While IBT heavily pushed for a “yes” vote on the contract, sending out more than a million pieces of mail in a national effort, at least two employees in Dallas “received disciplinary letters warning them that the ‘no solicitation at work’ policy barred verbal conversations about the contract,” according to Labor Notes.
Meanwhile, other rank-and-file Teamsters organizing against the contract around the country found themselves without parking spots or thrown out of parking lots for leafleting in Los Angeles and New York.
In the last four years, UPS has generated more than $16.2 billion in net profit and is forecasting another $6 billion this year. Republican lawmakers’ recent tax cut is expected to add to those windfalls, boosting the company’s bottom line by another $1 billion annually. Further, the company’s second-quarter income this fiscal year was reported as being up by 7.3 percent.
“There’s no rhyme or reason why we shouldn’t be obviously attempting to utilize leverage that we have,” O’Brien said. “We have a strong economy right now. E-commerce is basically driving the economy in some respects, and this is our largest employer making record profits.”
As Midterms Approach, Fast-Food Workers Plan Strikes in Battleground States
BY
Bryce Covert Truthout
PUBLISHED
October 10, 2018
To make sure she, her partner and her one-year-old daughter have what they need, Hannah Jones has had to take a second job on top of her work at a Wendy’s in Atlanta, Georgia. After more than two years, she’s still making just $7.50 an hour at Wendy’s, even though she knows how to do everything in the restaurant — run cash registers, work the drive-through, restock, wash dishes, prep and draw on the sandwich boards. Her pay “is not enough,” she told Truthout. “By the time the money comes, it’s gone by the next day.”
If she made $15 an hour, on the other hand, “It would change my life,” she said. She would be able to afford the necessities — rent, car payments, food, baby supplies for her daughter — and also save money. She wants to open an account for her daughter to pay for college, but she can’t do it on what she makes now.
Those are the reasons she decided to go on strike for the first time last week. “I really wanted to let everyone know my struggle,” she said. “It was really amazing, the feelings …” she added, emphasizing that we are “all in this together and all of us can make a difference.”
“If all of us come together in a strike, we get what we want,” she added.
The strike that Jones joined in Georgia was part of a series of increasingly large strikes that fast-food workers have staged nationwide since they first walked off the job six years ago in New York City. On October 3, more than 200 fast-food workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, went on strike at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and other chains as part of the Fight for 15 to demand they be paid at least $15 an hour and be allowed to unionize. During the strike, more than 25 workers were arrested alongside local politicians and community members, according to organizers from the Fight for 15.
The day before, hundreds of fast food workers in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, went on strike and nearly 20 were arrested, including congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib. Meanwhile, on October 4, hospital workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also walked off the job while higher education workers in Florida and child-care workers in California rallied.
More strikes are planned in the coming weeks in midterm election battleground states such as California, Connecticut, Florida and Georgia.
“Honestly, it’s 2018 and I can’t think of a job that shouldn’t start at $10 or more,” Wendy’s employee Solo Littlejohn told Truthout, explaining why he went on strike with fellow fast-food workers in Milwaukee. “I can’t think of a job that shouldn’t allow you to unionize.” He and his fellow strikers are demanding not just that they be paid at least $15 an hour but also that they be allowed to form unions. “The same rights that any other worker has,” he noted.
After the strike, he traveled to Chicago to protest in front of the McDonald’s headquarters, where more than 1,000 fast-food and other service workers protested. “Hopefully our demands are met,” he said. “It’s just so sad that we have to come out and protest like this for something I think we deserve.”
Fast-food workers were also on strike just a month ago, when McDonald’s employees walked off the job in 10 cities across the country to protest what they say is the company’s inaction in addressing sexual harassment.
But now workers are hoping to spread their influence beyond corporate headquarters. Organizers are going from strike lines to door knocking, planning to canvass across California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ahead of November’s elections.
Bleu Rainer’s first job after graduating high school 11 years ago was working at a McDonald’s. He immediately realized he couldn’t make ends meet on his pay, especially because he was trying to support his mother, who is a single parent. He moved from fast-food chain to fast-food chain, even moving states and eventually settling in Tampa, Florida, in search of better pay. And yet, he was still making less than $8 an hour. “That’s devastating,” he said. He wants to go to college and one day raise a family. But “there’s no way possible you can do that” on that kind of pay, he said.
Still, when a member of Fight for 15 first approached him while he was working at an Arby’s, he was skeptical. “I was like, ‘Y’all crazy,’” he recalled. “Fifteen dollars an hour? We barely make 8 dollars.” But the conversation stuck with him, and he remembered something his grandma had told him: “If you want something, you got to fight for it. Even if it sounds unreachable, if you feel like it’s worth a fight, it’s worth a fight.” So he signed up and started getting more and more involved.
He’s since left fast-food and is now using the skills he learned working with Fight for 15 to be a community organizer. “With the Fight for 15, we focus on issues,” he pointed out. “Fight for 15 has given a lot of folks hope. It gave me hope.” The same applies as he registers people to vote and educates people about the issues. “Fight for 15 has made me a leader,” he said. “It has taught me unity, it has taught me that if one person is being treated unjust we’re all being treated unjust.”
“We’re really mobilizing a community of folks around the whole of Florida to understand the importance of voting and actually get them out to vote,” he said. He noted that his organization has registered tens of thousands of people to vote in six counties across the state.
The Fight for 15 movement is going to deploy members to canvass door-to-door to get people out to vote for candidates that favor higher wages and better union rights. “We’re drawing a line in the sand…. If you want our votes, we want our union,” Littlejohn said. “If you support Fight for 15, then we support you. If you support union rights for all, we support you.”
“We are about one month away from going to the polls and casting our votes,” he pointed out. “We’re all trying to flex our voting power, trying to show people you do have voting power and you do have a say. We’re here to get rid of corrupt officials who are anti-worker and anti-union.”
The movement needs to get political to get what it wants, workers say. “There’s no way you can talk about raising wages for [millions of] folks through the whole nation without it being political,” Rainer said. “Politicians and these big corporations have been playing hand-in-hand for the longest.” Fight for 15 wants to be a counterweight to that corporate power. “All our Fight for 15 members are out hitting the streets.”
“We’re just getting out there and letting people know that you do have a say in the matter,” Littlejohn said. “Not just as a fast-food worker, but as a citizen. Not just as a union member, but as a member of this country.”
“Fight for 15 — we’re out there, we’re getting it done,” Rainer said.
If she made $15 an hour, on the other hand, “It would change my life,” she said. She would be able to afford the necessities — rent, car payments, food, baby supplies for her daughter — and also save money. She wants to open an account for her daughter to pay for college, but she can’t do it on what she makes now.
Those are the reasons she decided to go on strike for the first time last week. “I really wanted to let everyone know my struggle,” she said. “It was really amazing, the feelings …” she added, emphasizing that we are “all in this together and all of us can make a difference.”
“If all of us come together in a strike, we get what we want,” she added.
The strike that Jones joined in Georgia was part of a series of increasingly large strikes that fast-food workers have staged nationwide since they first walked off the job six years ago in New York City. On October 3, more than 200 fast-food workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, went on strike at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and other chains as part of the Fight for 15 to demand they be paid at least $15 an hour and be allowed to unionize. During the strike, more than 25 workers were arrested alongside local politicians and community members, according to organizers from the Fight for 15.
The day before, hundreds of fast food workers in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, went on strike and nearly 20 were arrested, including congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib. Meanwhile, on October 4, hospital workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also walked off the job while higher education workers in Florida and child-care workers in California rallied.
More strikes are planned in the coming weeks in midterm election battleground states such as California, Connecticut, Florida and Georgia.
“Honestly, it’s 2018 and I can’t think of a job that shouldn’t start at $10 or more,” Wendy’s employee Solo Littlejohn told Truthout, explaining why he went on strike with fellow fast-food workers in Milwaukee. “I can’t think of a job that shouldn’t allow you to unionize.” He and his fellow strikers are demanding not just that they be paid at least $15 an hour but also that they be allowed to form unions. “The same rights that any other worker has,” he noted.
After the strike, he traveled to Chicago to protest in front of the McDonald’s headquarters, where more than 1,000 fast-food and other service workers protested. “Hopefully our demands are met,” he said. “It’s just so sad that we have to come out and protest like this for something I think we deserve.”
Fast-food workers were also on strike just a month ago, when McDonald’s employees walked off the job in 10 cities across the country to protest what they say is the company’s inaction in addressing sexual harassment.
But now workers are hoping to spread their influence beyond corporate headquarters. Organizers are going from strike lines to door knocking, planning to canvass across California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ahead of November’s elections.
Bleu Rainer’s first job after graduating high school 11 years ago was working at a McDonald’s. He immediately realized he couldn’t make ends meet on his pay, especially because he was trying to support his mother, who is a single parent. He moved from fast-food chain to fast-food chain, even moving states and eventually settling in Tampa, Florida, in search of better pay. And yet, he was still making less than $8 an hour. “That’s devastating,” he said. He wants to go to college and one day raise a family. But “there’s no way possible you can do that” on that kind of pay, he said.
Still, when a member of Fight for 15 first approached him while he was working at an Arby’s, he was skeptical. “I was like, ‘Y’all crazy,’” he recalled. “Fifteen dollars an hour? We barely make 8 dollars.” But the conversation stuck with him, and he remembered something his grandma had told him: “If you want something, you got to fight for it. Even if it sounds unreachable, if you feel like it’s worth a fight, it’s worth a fight.” So he signed up and started getting more and more involved.
He’s since left fast-food and is now using the skills he learned working with Fight for 15 to be a community organizer. “With the Fight for 15, we focus on issues,” he pointed out. “Fight for 15 has given a lot of folks hope. It gave me hope.” The same applies as he registers people to vote and educates people about the issues. “Fight for 15 has made me a leader,” he said. “It has taught me unity, it has taught me that if one person is being treated unjust we’re all being treated unjust.”
“We’re really mobilizing a community of folks around the whole of Florida to understand the importance of voting and actually get them out to vote,” he said. He noted that his organization has registered tens of thousands of people to vote in six counties across the state.
The Fight for 15 movement is going to deploy members to canvass door-to-door to get people out to vote for candidates that favor higher wages and better union rights. “We’re drawing a line in the sand…. If you want our votes, we want our union,” Littlejohn said. “If you support Fight for 15, then we support you. If you support union rights for all, we support you.”
“We are about one month away from going to the polls and casting our votes,” he pointed out. “We’re all trying to flex our voting power, trying to show people you do have voting power and you do have a say. We’re here to get rid of corrupt officials who are anti-worker and anti-union.”
The movement needs to get political to get what it wants, workers say. “There’s no way you can talk about raising wages for [millions of] folks through the whole nation without it being political,” Rainer said. “Politicians and these big corporations have been playing hand-in-hand for the longest.” Fight for 15 wants to be a counterweight to that corporate power. “All our Fight for 15 members are out hitting the streets.”
“We’re just getting out there and letting people know that you do have a say in the matter,” Littlejohn said. “Not just as a fast-food worker, but as a citizen. Not just as a union member, but as a member of this country.”
“Fight for 15 — we’re out there, we’re getting it done,” Rainer said.
Amazon’s minimum wage hike is not what it seems
Some workers say that they will lose thousands of dollars as a result of stock programs being eliminated
NICOLE KARLIS -salon
OCTOBER 5, 2018 11:00PM (UTC)
Online retail behemoth Amazon has faced much scrutiny in recent months over the disparitybetween its CEO, Jeff Bezos — who is the richest man in the world — and the company’s low-wage warehouse workers, who toil in horrifying conditions and yet without whom the company would cease to function. Naturally, that disparity has been the subject of criticism from progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has been waging a PR war of sorts calling out Amazon over its worker abuses and low pay. Sanders, along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) recently proposed a bill, known as the "Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act" (or "Stop BEZOS Act") which would levy a tax on big corporations like Amazon.
When Amazon announced on Tuesday it was raising the minimum wage for its U.S. employees to $15 an hour, effective next month, many saw it as a huge victory for progressives and labor advocates — and Amazon's response to the criticism.
"Today I want to give credit where credit is due," Sanders said in a statement. "What Mr. Bezos has done today is not only enormously important for Amazon's hundreds of thousands of employees, it could well be, and I think it will be, a shot heard around the world.
Further, Mr. Bezos has indicated his support to raise the federal minimum wage. As the author of the $15 per hour minimum wage bill in the Senate, I look forward to working with him in this area,” he added.”
Amazon stated that their minimum wage increase to $15/hour will apply to all full-time, part-time, temporary (those hired by temp agencies are included), and seasonal employees across the United States. The $15/hour wage will go into effect on November 1. In a statement, Bezos made a point to acknowledge the wage increase is a result of listening to the company’s “critics.”
"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," Bezos said in a statement. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."
Jay Carney, Senior Vice President of Amazon Global Corporate Affairs, corroborated this and said the company plans to advocate for higher wage policies in the public sector — an issue that Sanders, too, has advocated for.
“We will be working to gain Congressional support for an increase in the federal minimum wage. The current rate of $7.25 was set nearly a decade ago,” Carney said. “We intend to advocate for a minimum wage increase that will have a profound impact on the lives of tens of millions of people and families across this country.”
Yet not too longer after Bezos's announcement, some Amazon warehouse workers began to allege that Amazon's minimum wage hike was little more than a publicity stunt. Multiple workers note that simultaneous to the minimum wage increase, the company dropped its bonus and stock incentives programs that were meant to award senior workers.
“It's a joke,” Amazon warehouse employee Vickie Shannon Allen told NBC News. “We get no more bonuses for not missing any work.”
Allen has become famous for posting YouTube videos about her experience as an Amazon fulfillment warehouse at Haslet, Texas. She became homeless after an accident left her unable to do her job.
A spokesperson for Amazon told NBC News the cessation to these programs is meant to make compensation “more immediate and predictable,” adding that the increased wage “more than compensates” for the incentive programs.
“We can confirm that all hourly Operations and Customer Service employees will see an increase in their total compensation as a result of this announcement,” the spokesperson told NBC News.
Yahoo Finance reported that workers they spoke to under the condition of anonymity said the wage increase might lower their wages.
The report says:
“Several Amazon warehouse workers in the U.S., who spoke to Yahoo Finance on the condition of anonymity fearing reprisals, talked about how the change will negatively affect them. After the removal of these perks, some workers said they will be making less. Most of the workers who voiced concerns have been working for the company for more than two years, and have been earning close to $15 an hour before the raise. While these workers’ hourly rates will rise modestly, they said they could lose thousands of dollars that they would have collected from the stock and monthly-bonus programs. Amazon said those who are already making $15 an hour will see an increase in pay but did not specify how much.”
In Amazon’s announcement, the company addressed that they will be phasing out its stock vesting program, in which they awarded some employees what are known as "Restricted Stock Units" or RSUs.
“Yes, we’ve heard from our hourly fulfillment and customer service employees that they prefer the predictability and immediacy of cash to [Restricted Stock Units],” the company stated. “We will be phasing out the RSU grant program for stock which would vest in 2020 and 2021 for this group of employees, replacing it with a direct stock purchase plan before the end of 2019. The net effect of this change and the new higher cash compensation is significantly more total compensation for employees, without any vesting requirements, and with more predictability.”
In an email statement to NBC News, Sanders said he hopes that long-time veteran workers aren’t hurt by the announcement.
“Our understanding is that the vast majority of Amazon workers are going to see wage increases, including some very significant increases as the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour,” Sanders said. “I would hope that as a result of Amazon’s new policy, no worker, especially long-time employees, sees a reduction in total compensation. Amazon can afford to make all workers whole and should do that.”
When Amazon announced on Tuesday it was raising the minimum wage for its U.S. employees to $15 an hour, effective next month, many saw it as a huge victory for progressives and labor advocates — and Amazon's response to the criticism.
"Today I want to give credit where credit is due," Sanders said in a statement. "What Mr. Bezos has done today is not only enormously important for Amazon's hundreds of thousands of employees, it could well be, and I think it will be, a shot heard around the world.
Further, Mr. Bezos has indicated his support to raise the federal minimum wage. As the author of the $15 per hour minimum wage bill in the Senate, I look forward to working with him in this area,” he added.”
Amazon stated that their minimum wage increase to $15/hour will apply to all full-time, part-time, temporary (those hired by temp agencies are included), and seasonal employees across the United States. The $15/hour wage will go into effect on November 1. In a statement, Bezos made a point to acknowledge the wage increase is a result of listening to the company’s “critics.”
"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," Bezos said in a statement. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."
Jay Carney, Senior Vice President of Amazon Global Corporate Affairs, corroborated this and said the company plans to advocate for higher wage policies in the public sector — an issue that Sanders, too, has advocated for.
“We will be working to gain Congressional support for an increase in the federal minimum wage. The current rate of $7.25 was set nearly a decade ago,” Carney said. “We intend to advocate for a minimum wage increase that will have a profound impact on the lives of tens of millions of people and families across this country.”
Yet not too longer after Bezos's announcement, some Amazon warehouse workers began to allege that Amazon's minimum wage hike was little more than a publicity stunt. Multiple workers note that simultaneous to the minimum wage increase, the company dropped its bonus and stock incentives programs that were meant to award senior workers.
“It's a joke,” Amazon warehouse employee Vickie Shannon Allen told NBC News. “We get no more bonuses for not missing any work.”
Allen has become famous for posting YouTube videos about her experience as an Amazon fulfillment warehouse at Haslet, Texas. She became homeless after an accident left her unable to do her job.
A spokesperson for Amazon told NBC News the cessation to these programs is meant to make compensation “more immediate and predictable,” adding that the increased wage “more than compensates” for the incentive programs.
“We can confirm that all hourly Operations and Customer Service employees will see an increase in their total compensation as a result of this announcement,” the spokesperson told NBC News.
Yahoo Finance reported that workers they spoke to under the condition of anonymity said the wage increase might lower their wages.
The report says:
“Several Amazon warehouse workers in the U.S., who spoke to Yahoo Finance on the condition of anonymity fearing reprisals, talked about how the change will negatively affect them. After the removal of these perks, some workers said they will be making less. Most of the workers who voiced concerns have been working for the company for more than two years, and have been earning close to $15 an hour before the raise. While these workers’ hourly rates will rise modestly, they said they could lose thousands of dollars that they would have collected from the stock and monthly-bonus programs. Amazon said those who are already making $15 an hour will see an increase in pay but did not specify how much.”
In Amazon’s announcement, the company addressed that they will be phasing out its stock vesting program, in which they awarded some employees what are known as "Restricted Stock Units" or RSUs.
“Yes, we’ve heard from our hourly fulfillment and customer service employees that they prefer the predictability and immediacy of cash to [Restricted Stock Units],” the company stated. “We will be phasing out the RSU grant program for stock which would vest in 2020 and 2021 for this group of employees, replacing it with a direct stock purchase plan before the end of 2019. The net effect of this change and the new higher cash compensation is significantly more total compensation for employees, without any vesting requirements, and with more predictability.”
In an email statement to NBC News, Sanders said he hopes that long-time veteran workers aren’t hurt by the announcement.
“Our understanding is that the vast majority of Amazon workers are going to see wage increases, including some very significant increases as the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour,” Sanders said. “I would hope that as a result of Amazon’s new policy, no worker, especially long-time employees, sees a reduction in total compensation. Amazon can afford to make all workers whole and should do that.”
The Not-So-Mysterious Solution to Wage Stagnation
October 4th, 2018
by Phil Mattera - dirt diggers digest
Many steelworkers thought they had hit the jackpot. Back in March, Donald Trump announced steep tariffs on metals imported from most of the world, and three months later he added close allies such as Canada and Mexico to the list. As with many of his other economic policies, Trump claimed that the move was designed to benefit U.S. workers, a few of whom were brought to the White House with their hardhats to serve as props when the measure was first announced.
Now months have passed, and steelworkers are still waiting for the payoff. As one of them recently told the Washington Post, “It’s been a little like watching the air going out of a balloon.” When it comes to steel company profits, the party is still in full swing as the industry reaps the benefits of soaring prices.
Yet the producers are resisting sharing the wealth with their workers. In fact, the big companies took such a hard line in their contract negotiations with the United Steelworkers that union members authorized strikes against United States Steel and ArcelorMittal. If a walkout were to occur, it would interrupt the labor peace that has prevailed in the industry for several decades.
It has been widely reported that Trump’s tariffs may be harming more workers than they are helping, as industries dependent on the affected imports lay people off or otherwise squeeze employees to deal with the increased costs. The situation in steel shows that even in the favored industries workers do not necessarily benefit when their employers experience a windfall. They have to fight for their share.
The same principle applies in sectors not directly affected by tariffs. Take Amazon, which has been basking in praise after setting a $15 an hour minimum wage for its growing workforce. This was not a case of corporate generosity.
The company, headed by the ridiculously wealthy Jeff Bezos, has been under increasing pressure over poor working conditions at its distribution centers. Amazon had replaced Walmart as the prime exemplar of the abusive employer. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently introduced legislation called the Stop Bezos Act to penalize large companies whose low-wage workers had to depend on government safety net programs. This, plus the Fight for $15 campaign and the community groups organizing around the company’s plans to build a massive second headquarters complex in a yet-to-be-chosen city, compelled Amazon to start to move away from the low road.
In a recent interview with the PBS Newshour, Fed chairman Jerome Powell was the latest economic analyst to call it a mystery that wages are not rising more in a tight labor market. Decades ago, when pay levels were rising rapidly, mainstream economists did not hesitate to cite unions as a key cause—and in fact blamed organized labor for being too aggressive.
Yet these same economists cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the weakening of unions, brought about by employer animus and government restrictions, is now a major reason for wage stagnation.
The good news is that collective action, both through unions and other labor organizations, seems to be making a comeback. That—and not the bogus labor-friendly trade and regulatory policies of the Trump Administration—will be what restores the living standards of the U.S. workforce.
Now months have passed, and steelworkers are still waiting for the payoff. As one of them recently told the Washington Post, “It’s been a little like watching the air going out of a balloon.” When it comes to steel company profits, the party is still in full swing as the industry reaps the benefits of soaring prices.
Yet the producers are resisting sharing the wealth with their workers. In fact, the big companies took such a hard line in their contract negotiations with the United Steelworkers that union members authorized strikes against United States Steel and ArcelorMittal. If a walkout were to occur, it would interrupt the labor peace that has prevailed in the industry for several decades.
It has been widely reported that Trump’s tariffs may be harming more workers than they are helping, as industries dependent on the affected imports lay people off or otherwise squeeze employees to deal with the increased costs. The situation in steel shows that even in the favored industries workers do not necessarily benefit when their employers experience a windfall. They have to fight for their share.
The same principle applies in sectors not directly affected by tariffs. Take Amazon, which has been basking in praise after setting a $15 an hour minimum wage for its growing workforce. This was not a case of corporate generosity.
The company, headed by the ridiculously wealthy Jeff Bezos, has been under increasing pressure over poor working conditions at its distribution centers. Amazon had replaced Walmart as the prime exemplar of the abusive employer. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently introduced legislation called the Stop Bezos Act to penalize large companies whose low-wage workers had to depend on government safety net programs. This, plus the Fight for $15 campaign and the community groups organizing around the company’s plans to build a massive second headquarters complex in a yet-to-be-chosen city, compelled Amazon to start to move away from the low road.
In a recent interview with the PBS Newshour, Fed chairman Jerome Powell was the latest economic analyst to call it a mystery that wages are not rising more in a tight labor market. Decades ago, when pay levels were rising rapidly, mainstream economists did not hesitate to cite unions as a key cause—and in fact blamed organized labor for being too aggressive.
Yet these same economists cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the weakening of unions, brought about by employer animus and government restrictions, is now a major reason for wage stagnation.
The good news is that collective action, both through unions and other labor organizations, seems to be making a comeback. That—and not the bogus labor-friendly trade and regulatory policies of the Trump Administration—will be what restores the living standards of the U.S. workforce.
'They want us to be robots': Whole Foods workers fear Amazon's changes
Employees have begun to organize in an attempt to push back on changes made since Amazon acquired the company in 2017
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Mon 1 Oct 2018 06.00 EDT
Whole Foods employees across the US are beginning to organize to push back against Amazon’s changes to the supermarket chain. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters
Whole Foods staff are worried that Amazon, the grocery chain’s new owner, is trying to turn them into “robots” and are seeking to set up a union to protect their jobs.
Workers at “America’s healthiest grocery store” say management is trying to cut jobs and reduce wages as they reshape the 38-year-old grocery chain in Amazon’s image.
“No one trusts Amazon and there are fears in upper management that Amazon will clean house if sales rates aren’t hit,” said one of the founders of the Whole Worker community in an interview. Staff are reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation and the company has recently started training managers to fight back against union organization.
“They’re squeezing all they can out of the workers. Amazon gives little notice whenever they make changes. When they rolled in the Amazon Prime discount, they only gave stores ten to fourteen days of notice and no extra labor to handle the extra work.”
Whole Foods workers across the United States are beginning to collectively organize in an attempt to push back on changes made to the supermarket chain operations since Amazon acquired the company in August 2017.
On 6 September, a group of workers sent out a letter to Whole Food stores across the country reaching out to fellow employees to discuss concerns with how Amazon has changed the company as part of the Whole Worker community.
They cited the “Order-To-Shelf system”, which began three years ago and has accelerated under Amazon, and mass layoffs of certain positions as some of the primary reasons Whole Foods workers are now coordinating efforts to unionize.
The Order-to-Shelf system is a strict set of procedures for employees to follow that uses scorecards to prescribe specific ways to store, display, purchase items on store shelves and in stock rooms.
“The OTS system really aligns with Amazon’s core practices. It’s to make everyone interchangeable,” said a Whole Foods employee in the New England area involved in labor organizing. “They want us to become robots. That’s where they are going, they want to set it up so they don’t have to pay someone $15 an hour who knows all about the food, they can pay someone $10 an hour to do these small tasks and timed duties.”
Whole Foods has a history of union busting even before Amazon acquired the company.
In May 2016, Whole Foods paid the union-busting consulting firm Kulture Consulting more than $100,000 days before a union election for a distribution center in Pompano Beach, Florida.
In 2017, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against Whole Foods for union busting tactics, as they amended the employee handbook to ban recording of all work related activities without management approval, an infringement on collective bargaining rights and labor law.
“We want a return to where we were a few years ago,” added the New England area based Whole Foods employee. “Store teams used to make more. We had much better pay and were taking more money on our paychecks than we were making from our hourly wage when the company was successful, when it wasn’t self cannibalizing, when everybody had the tools to do their job.”
The employee explained that under Amazon, Whole Foods workers are expected to do more with restricted labor budgets and often perform duties above their rank without being properly compensated. In addition, his region’s capital expenditure budget has been frozen. “We just got bought by the second trillion-dollar company in the world and we don’t have money to replace refrigeration units.” Amazon recently followed Apple to become the second company ever to be valued at over $1tn.
Another New England area based Whole Foods employee told the Guardian that despite drastic differences in store traffic and sales between August, when customers are on vacation, and September, when children go back to school, his labor budget only increased by $300 despite a projected increase in daily sales of $100,000. “We’re left to try to figure out how to do the impossible on shifts with not enough people to work,” the employee said. “It’s not the same place it was a year ago.”
A Whole Foods employee in Southern California said the culture at Whole Foods had changed as upper management has focused on maximizing profit and homogenizing stores. “Local and speciality products have been cut and replaced with more conventional mainstream ones, and regional marketing and sign making has been removed,” they said. “We are losing the shopper and team members who helped make us who we were.”
Under Amazon’s ownership, profit-sharing for employees – once a major perk of working for the company – has reportedly been eliminated. “Jeff Bezos should not have earned $150bn while the majority of his workers live paycheck to paycheck and do not receive profit sharing,” stated the letter sent out to Whole Foods employees by the Whole Worker Community. “The clandestine nature of Amazon offering stock options to store leadership without informing TMs (team members) is beyond problematic. It is insulting and unethical.”
Whole Foods has also gradually eliminated or drastically reduced classes of jobs, such as in-store graphic designers and payroll benefits specialists, and merged those duties into other positions without providing workers additional compensation. In a previous statement made in March 2018, Whole Foods said the cuts were made to support business needs.
“We work for the wealthiest man in the world and our stores can’t afford to hire. If you actually want to build sales and increase market share, you need to spend the money to get it done,” said a Whole Foods employee based in Illinois who helps coordinate the Whole Worker community. “Corporations keep getting tax incentives, but when you don’t raise wages and you need two jobs just to make a living, what’s the point? We’re not getting anywhere as a society.”
The employee added the short staffing and reduction in labor has fostered an environment at Whole Foods where employees are struggling to complete all their assigned duties, and unable to take the time required for customer service throughout the work day. “Even stopping to help somebody feels like a burden and it shouldn’t be that way.”
Whole Foods declined to comment for this story.
Workers at “America’s healthiest grocery store” say management is trying to cut jobs and reduce wages as they reshape the 38-year-old grocery chain in Amazon’s image.
“No one trusts Amazon and there are fears in upper management that Amazon will clean house if sales rates aren’t hit,” said one of the founders of the Whole Worker community in an interview. Staff are reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation and the company has recently started training managers to fight back against union organization.
“They’re squeezing all they can out of the workers. Amazon gives little notice whenever they make changes. When they rolled in the Amazon Prime discount, they only gave stores ten to fourteen days of notice and no extra labor to handle the extra work.”
Whole Foods workers across the United States are beginning to collectively organize in an attempt to push back on changes made to the supermarket chain operations since Amazon acquired the company in August 2017.
On 6 September, a group of workers sent out a letter to Whole Food stores across the country reaching out to fellow employees to discuss concerns with how Amazon has changed the company as part of the Whole Worker community.
They cited the “Order-To-Shelf system”, which began three years ago and has accelerated under Amazon, and mass layoffs of certain positions as some of the primary reasons Whole Foods workers are now coordinating efforts to unionize.
The Order-to-Shelf system is a strict set of procedures for employees to follow that uses scorecards to prescribe specific ways to store, display, purchase items on store shelves and in stock rooms.
“The OTS system really aligns with Amazon’s core practices. It’s to make everyone interchangeable,” said a Whole Foods employee in the New England area involved in labor organizing. “They want us to become robots. That’s where they are going, they want to set it up so they don’t have to pay someone $15 an hour who knows all about the food, they can pay someone $10 an hour to do these small tasks and timed duties.”
Whole Foods has a history of union busting even before Amazon acquired the company.
In May 2016, Whole Foods paid the union-busting consulting firm Kulture Consulting more than $100,000 days before a union election for a distribution center in Pompano Beach, Florida.
In 2017, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against Whole Foods for union busting tactics, as they amended the employee handbook to ban recording of all work related activities without management approval, an infringement on collective bargaining rights and labor law.
“We want a return to where we were a few years ago,” added the New England area based Whole Foods employee. “Store teams used to make more. We had much better pay and were taking more money on our paychecks than we were making from our hourly wage when the company was successful, when it wasn’t self cannibalizing, when everybody had the tools to do their job.”
The employee explained that under Amazon, Whole Foods workers are expected to do more with restricted labor budgets and often perform duties above their rank without being properly compensated. In addition, his region’s capital expenditure budget has been frozen. “We just got bought by the second trillion-dollar company in the world and we don’t have money to replace refrigeration units.” Amazon recently followed Apple to become the second company ever to be valued at over $1tn.
Another New England area based Whole Foods employee told the Guardian that despite drastic differences in store traffic and sales between August, when customers are on vacation, and September, when children go back to school, his labor budget only increased by $300 despite a projected increase in daily sales of $100,000. “We’re left to try to figure out how to do the impossible on shifts with not enough people to work,” the employee said. “It’s not the same place it was a year ago.”
A Whole Foods employee in Southern California said the culture at Whole Foods had changed as upper management has focused on maximizing profit and homogenizing stores. “Local and speciality products have been cut and replaced with more conventional mainstream ones, and regional marketing and sign making has been removed,” they said. “We are losing the shopper and team members who helped make us who we were.”
Under Amazon’s ownership, profit-sharing for employees – once a major perk of working for the company – has reportedly been eliminated. “Jeff Bezos should not have earned $150bn while the majority of his workers live paycheck to paycheck and do not receive profit sharing,” stated the letter sent out to Whole Foods employees by the Whole Worker Community. “The clandestine nature of Amazon offering stock options to store leadership without informing TMs (team members) is beyond problematic. It is insulting and unethical.”
Whole Foods has also gradually eliminated or drastically reduced classes of jobs, such as in-store graphic designers and payroll benefits specialists, and merged those duties into other positions without providing workers additional compensation. In a previous statement made in March 2018, Whole Foods said the cuts were made to support business needs.
“We work for the wealthiest man in the world and our stores can’t afford to hire. If you actually want to build sales and increase market share, you need to spend the money to get it done,” said a Whole Foods employee based in Illinois who helps coordinate the Whole Worker community. “Corporations keep getting tax incentives, but when you don’t raise wages and you need two jobs just to make a living, what’s the point? We’re not getting anywhere as a society.”
The employee added the short staffing and reduction in labor has fostered an environment at Whole Foods where employees are struggling to complete all their assigned duties, and unable to take the time required for customer service throughout the work day. “Even stopping to help somebody feels like a burden and it shouldn’t be that way.”
Whole Foods declined to comment for this story.
Leaked Video Reveals Amazon's Belligerent Anti-Worker Tactics
Jake Johnson / Common Dreams - truthdig
SEP 27, 2018
As Amazon works to combat its public image as a starvation-wage employer by doling out mere pennies in pay hikes and deploying an army of workers to sing the company’s praises on Twitter, a video leaked on Wednesday revealed that the trillion-dollar company is continuing to work feverishly behind the scenes to crush any attempts by workers to unionize and bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions.
The 45-minute training video—which, according to Gizmodo, was sent to managers of the Amazon-owned Whole Foods last week—instructs company leaders on how to detect “early warning signs of potential organizing,” which include workers “suddenly hanging out together” and using “union words” like “living wage.”
In a tweet responding to the video on Wednesday, the AFL-CIO—America’s largest federation of unions—wrote: “We like those ‘union words’ which gave us a middle class. Shame on Amazon.”
While warning managers not to openly threaten workers who they believe are engaged in organizing efforts, the video encourages company leaders to give their “opinions” on unionization.
“Opinions can be mild, like, ‘I’d rather work with associates directly,’ or strong: ‘Unions are lying, cheating rats.’ The law protects both!” the video says.
“We are not anti-union,” the video’s narrator goes on to say, “but we are not neutral either.”
Amazon’s aggressively anti-union video—which recommends tactics that one commentator said “should be illegal“—was sent to Whole Foods managers just weeks after employees of the grocery chain took initial steps toward unionizing in an effort to achieve a higher minimum wage and better benefits.
The training video emerged as Amazon and company CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—have faced intense scrutiny from progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who last month introduced the “Stop BEZOS Act,” which would impose a “100 percent tax on large employers equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers.”
“While Mr. Bezos is worth $155 billion and while his wealth has increased $260 million every single day this year, he continues to pay many Amazon employees wages that are so low that they are forced to depend on taxpayer-funded programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing just to get by,” Sanders said in a statement.
In what one Amazon employee described as a “damage control” effort, the company has reportedly begun handing out wage increases of 25 to 55 cents an hour to workers around the country following increased criticism from Sanders and other lawmakers.
Responding to these meager wage hikes in a tweet earlier this week, Sanders wrote: “Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in the world. It is not enough for him to offer 25 cents-an-hour wage increases to employees making grossly inadequate wages. There is no reason why Bezos and Amazon cannot pay workers $15 an hour plus decent benefits.”
“Jeff Bezos is a villain, plain and simple,” Splinter‘s Hamilton Nolan wrote in response to Amazon’s anti-union training video. “His insane fortune is the grotesque manifestation of workplace oppression.”
The 45-minute training video—which, according to Gizmodo, was sent to managers of the Amazon-owned Whole Foods last week—instructs company leaders on how to detect “early warning signs of potential organizing,” which include workers “suddenly hanging out together” and using “union words” like “living wage.”
In a tweet responding to the video on Wednesday, the AFL-CIO—America’s largest federation of unions—wrote: “We like those ‘union words’ which gave us a middle class. Shame on Amazon.”
While warning managers not to openly threaten workers who they believe are engaged in organizing efforts, the video encourages company leaders to give their “opinions” on unionization.
“Opinions can be mild, like, ‘I’d rather work with associates directly,’ or strong: ‘Unions are lying, cheating rats.’ The law protects both!” the video says.
“We are not anti-union,” the video’s narrator goes on to say, “but we are not neutral either.”
Amazon’s aggressively anti-union video—which recommends tactics that one commentator said “should be illegal“—was sent to Whole Foods managers just weeks after employees of the grocery chain took initial steps toward unionizing in an effort to achieve a higher minimum wage and better benefits.
The training video emerged as Amazon and company CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—have faced intense scrutiny from progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who last month introduced the “Stop BEZOS Act,” which would impose a “100 percent tax on large employers equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers.”
“While Mr. Bezos is worth $155 billion and while his wealth has increased $260 million every single day this year, he continues to pay many Amazon employees wages that are so low that they are forced to depend on taxpayer-funded programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing just to get by,” Sanders said in a statement.
In what one Amazon employee described as a “damage control” effort, the company has reportedly begun handing out wage increases of 25 to 55 cents an hour to workers around the country following increased criticism from Sanders and other lawmakers.
Responding to these meager wage hikes in a tweet earlier this week, Sanders wrote: “Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in the world. It is not enough for him to offer 25 cents-an-hour wage increases to employees making grossly inadequate wages. There is no reason why Bezos and Amazon cannot pay workers $15 an hour plus decent benefits.”
“Jeff Bezos is a villain, plain and simple,” Splinter‘s Hamilton Nolan wrote in response to Amazon’s anti-union training video. “His insane fortune is the grotesque manifestation of workplace oppression.”
Hotel Workers Register Anger With Marriott in Decisive Strike Vote
BY
David Bacon Truthout
PUBLISHED
September 25, 2018
Workers celebrate the 98.6 percent vote to strike.
© DAVID BACON
There are times when a vote is more than an expression of opinion about a political candidate. There are even times when it’s more important than deciding whether joining a union is a good idea. For hotel workers, last week was one of those times — a vote to go on strike or not.
Striking may cost a housekeeper her rent money for several weeks at least, and maybe longer. It may have a bellman walking sidewalks instead of the carpeted hotel lobby. Voting to strike is a choice with certain risk and sacrifice on one side. On the other, however, workers have to envision and weigh the future of their jobs. Would a bartender eventually lose her job to a new cocktail-mixing machine? Would the rising premium for a cook’s health care cut into his paychecks further and further every year?
Deciding to strike or not is a question with real and immediate consequences. It is a very democratic process. Everyone affected gets to choose. And everyone has to live by the result, regardless of how each individual votes. Once workers strike, those with families at risk will have no patience or tolerance for anyone who breaks ranks to go to work.
These photographs show what happened last week when the hotel workers in San Francisco and Oakland cast their votes. They reflect the great diversity of the hotel workforce — multiracial, young and old, men and women, immigrants and native born. And they show people’s determination. It’s no accident that more than nine out of 10 in every ballot chose to strike. In the photos you can see the anger they harbor against Marriott Corporation. You can see the relief when the votes were counted — relief that pretty much everyone agreed on what to do about it.
In San Francisco and Oakland the vote in favor was 98.6 percent. Hotel workers in these two cities are joining other Marriott workers in Hawaii, Boston, San Jose, Seattle, San Diego and Detroit, who all voted to strike by over 90 percent. Chicago hotel workers are already on strike at Marriott and other hotels.
More than 2,300 San Francisco hotel workers have been working without a contract since August 15 at the Marriott Union Square, the Palace Hotel, the W, Westin St. Francis Union Square, Marriott Marquis, Courtyard San Francisco Downtown and the luxurious St. Regis. They voted in a ballroom at the Parc 55, the scene of a Local 2 organizing drive that took four years to win. Oakland hotel workers voted at the Local 2850 office on Broadway, just across the street from the Downtown Marriott, where walking the picket line will be a first-time experience.
A Hawaii strike will hit some of the most famous tourist resorts on Oahu and Maui, where 3,500 people work at the Waikiki Beach Marriott, Sheraton Waikiki, the Royal Hawaiian, Westin Moana Surfrider, Sheraton Princess Kaiulani and Sheraton Maui. A Boston strike will include 1,800 workers at the W, Westin Copley, Westin Boston Waterfront, Renaissance, Ritz Carlton, Sheraton Boston, Aloft and Element.
Marriott has become a behemoth in the hotel industry, with 1.2 million rooms, far bigger than its closest competitor. It has more employees than Facebook, American Airlines, Microsoft or Boeing. Gobbling up other chains has made it the biggest hotel employer in San Francisco and the world’s richest hotel corporation. Company profits have increased 279 percent since the recession. The 1 percent per year increase workers have received in the same period has long been eaten up by inflation. No wonder they’re angry.
In San Francisco, the union collected some comments by workers as they cast their ballots. Larrilou Carumba, a housekeeper, said, “I voted ‘yes’ because my job at Marriott Hotels isn’t enough for me to take care of my kids. Many days, after working full-time at the Marquis, I have to work the night shift at a laundromat.”
The union’s demand in negotiations, which will be its rallying cry in the strike, is “One job should be enough!”
Kirk Paganelli, a server and bartender, told the union, “I voted to strike because I live in fear of losing my job. Marriott Hotels laid me off after 18 years at my last hotel, so I know I’m never safe. Now I see Marriott installing bartending machines that threaten my job.” Nix Guirre, a butler, said simply, “We’re fed up. One job should be enough.”
Anand Singh, Local 2 president, warned, “There will be disruptions if a strike happens.” He says the industry is booming for investors, but not for workers. “Our members have been left behind, so we’re fighting for a decent standard of living for ourselves and our families.”
Eric Gill, secretary treasurer of Hawaii’s Local 5, told his members that Marriott has grown so big that this is the last chance to force it to take their needs into account: “Our proposal is to make one job enough to live in Hawaii. Marriott’s proposal is to get another job.”
Striking may cost a housekeeper her rent money for several weeks at least, and maybe longer. It may have a bellman walking sidewalks instead of the carpeted hotel lobby. Voting to strike is a choice with certain risk and sacrifice on one side. On the other, however, workers have to envision and weigh the future of their jobs. Would a bartender eventually lose her job to a new cocktail-mixing machine? Would the rising premium for a cook’s health care cut into his paychecks further and further every year?
Deciding to strike or not is a question with real and immediate consequences. It is a very democratic process. Everyone affected gets to choose. And everyone has to live by the result, regardless of how each individual votes. Once workers strike, those with families at risk will have no patience or tolerance for anyone who breaks ranks to go to work.
These photographs show what happened last week when the hotel workers in San Francisco and Oakland cast their votes. They reflect the great diversity of the hotel workforce — multiracial, young and old, men and women, immigrants and native born. And they show people’s determination. It’s no accident that more than nine out of 10 in every ballot chose to strike. In the photos you can see the anger they harbor against Marriott Corporation. You can see the relief when the votes were counted — relief that pretty much everyone agreed on what to do about it.
In San Francisco and Oakland the vote in favor was 98.6 percent. Hotel workers in these two cities are joining other Marriott workers in Hawaii, Boston, San Jose, Seattle, San Diego and Detroit, who all voted to strike by over 90 percent. Chicago hotel workers are already on strike at Marriott and other hotels.
More than 2,300 San Francisco hotel workers have been working without a contract since August 15 at the Marriott Union Square, the Palace Hotel, the W, Westin St. Francis Union Square, Marriott Marquis, Courtyard San Francisco Downtown and the luxurious St. Regis. They voted in a ballroom at the Parc 55, the scene of a Local 2 organizing drive that took four years to win. Oakland hotel workers voted at the Local 2850 office on Broadway, just across the street from the Downtown Marriott, where walking the picket line will be a first-time experience.
A Hawaii strike will hit some of the most famous tourist resorts on Oahu and Maui, where 3,500 people work at the Waikiki Beach Marriott, Sheraton Waikiki, the Royal Hawaiian, Westin Moana Surfrider, Sheraton Princess Kaiulani and Sheraton Maui. A Boston strike will include 1,800 workers at the W, Westin Copley, Westin Boston Waterfront, Renaissance, Ritz Carlton, Sheraton Boston, Aloft and Element.
Marriott has become a behemoth in the hotel industry, with 1.2 million rooms, far bigger than its closest competitor. It has more employees than Facebook, American Airlines, Microsoft or Boeing. Gobbling up other chains has made it the biggest hotel employer in San Francisco and the world’s richest hotel corporation. Company profits have increased 279 percent since the recession. The 1 percent per year increase workers have received in the same period has long been eaten up by inflation. No wonder they’re angry.
In San Francisco, the union collected some comments by workers as they cast their ballots. Larrilou Carumba, a housekeeper, said, “I voted ‘yes’ because my job at Marriott Hotels isn’t enough for me to take care of my kids. Many days, after working full-time at the Marquis, I have to work the night shift at a laundromat.”
The union’s demand in negotiations, which will be its rallying cry in the strike, is “One job should be enough!”
Kirk Paganelli, a server and bartender, told the union, “I voted to strike because I live in fear of losing my job. Marriott Hotels laid me off after 18 years at my last hotel, so I know I’m never safe. Now I see Marriott installing bartending machines that threaten my job.” Nix Guirre, a butler, said simply, “We’re fed up. One job should be enough.”
Anand Singh, Local 2 president, warned, “There will be disruptions if a strike happens.” He says the industry is booming for investors, but not for workers. “Our members have been left behind, so we’re fighting for a decent standard of living for ourselves and our families.”
Eric Gill, secretary treasurer of Hawaii’s Local 5, told his members that Marriott has grown so big that this is the last chance to force it to take their needs into account: “Our proposal is to make one job enough to live in Hawaii. Marriott’s proposal is to get another job.”
'I feel like a slave': St Louis' workhouse denounced as a modern-day debtors' prison
Clark Randall in St Louis and Jamiles Lartey in New York
the guardian
Mon 24 Sep 2018 01.00 EDT
A campaign called #closetheworkhouse describes ‘unspeakably hellish conditions’, but officials defend it as a ‘kind-of rescue’
Inez Bordeaux was at times left broke, homeless, and living in a halfway house over the years of unpleasant interactions with the criminal justice system in St Louis, Missouri. But the only time she ever felt hopeless was during the month she was incarcerated in the city’s infamous “workhouse” jail in 2016.
“I might not come out on the other side of this,” Bordeaux recalled thinking to herself. Her first three days were spent in solitary confinement after staff witnessed her crying, and deemed her a suicide risk.
“They took all my clothes and gave me a suicide smock, I couldn’t call anyone, talk to anyone, or read anything,” Bordeaux said.
A registered nurse and mother of four, Bordeaux was being held in the workhouse on a technical probation violation. Like 98% of inmates there, she was legally innocent but Bordeaux was being detained pre-trial because she couldn’t afford her $25,000 bail.
She describes the rest of her month in the workhouse as full of black mold, rats and blocked toilets churning up fetid waste. She was denied any outdoors time and basic feminine hygiene products.
“I say all the time that the workhouse is a hopeless place,” Bordeaux said. “When you first walk in you can feel the hopelessness. You can feel the desperation.”
Bordeaux was lucky to get out after just a month: the average stay in the St Louis workhouse is more than 190 days.
Today, Bordeaux is part of a growing movement of organizers, lawyers and those formerly incarcerated at the workhouse calling for the building, formally known as Medium Security Institution, to be shuttered.
Earlier this month, the campaign #closetheworkhouse released a report demanding its closure, and calling the workhouse a site of “unspeakably hellish conditions” and an extension of a racist criminal justice system.
Of those incarcerated in the St Louis workhouse, 90% are black, despite the fact that less than 50% of the city is black.
The report follows a class action file by the not-for-profit civil rights law firm ArchCity Defenders in November alleging that the site routinely violates the constitutional rights of inmates.
“This report highlights the systemic disparities and structural racism which have plagued our region for decades,” said ACD’s executive director, Blake Strode. “The workhouse in many ways symbolizes these destructive forces.”
‘I feel like a slave’
The day-to-day operation of the workhouse falls under the control of the city’s public safety director, Jimmie Edwards, who said that such graphic depictions of workhouse conditions are overblown.
“The only reason the narrative about conditions in the workhouse persists is because people refuse to visit and see for themselves,” Edwards said, offering the Guardian a walk-through of the jail.
Once inside, Commissioner Dale Glass, Superintendent Jeffery Carson, and Tonya Harry, chief of security, led a half-hour tour of the workhouse. That day, about 575 people were being held inside. The first inmate to speak out said to a guard, “What’s going on? I haven’t changed these clothes in two weeks.” A nearby guard came to address him as we watched.
Down the hallway, people inside called to get our attention. “Hey! We need to shut this place down right now.” Another said, “I feel like a slave inside here.” As we turned the corner we heard, “I’ve been here months, man, just waiting for a trial.”
Glass ascribed the remarks to inmate theatrics. “We’ve had a lot of tours here recently,” he said, “so forgive me that some of the inmates want to entertain.”
The tour came about a year after a regional heatwave turned attention to the conditions of prisoners in the facility, which did not have air conditioning. In July, more than 150 protesters gathered outside the workhouse, where temperatures inside reportedly exceeded 120F (49C), only to be dispersed by pepper spray. Three days after the protest, Mayor Lyda Krewson moved to place temporary air conditioning units in the facility.
The building is old, the air circulation is poor, but signs of infestation and mold were not apparent within the guided tour. The Guardian was not permitted to sit down with detainees or enter areas where detainees were actually held, however.
Sima Atri, a staff attorney with ArchCity Defenders, said numerous inmates had told her that they were told to clean so as to make the best impression for outside visitors. “And they all said they feared retaliation for speaking with us,” Atri said.
‘This place has been a kind-of rescue’Organizers’ problem with the workhouse goes far beyond the the “hellish conditions” and deeper into the way the city uses incarceration – frequently as an answer to minor technical and fine-related violations.
The #closetheworkhouse campaign minces no words and calls the facility a debtors’ prison, noting that most inmates are presumed innocent and would be free to leave but for unaffordable bail amounts. The median bail in St Louis is $25,000, roughly the same as the city’s per-capita annual income – simply out of reach for most.
The organizers’ concerns run parallel with a broader movement in the US to end money-based bail practices, and likening pre-trial detention in jails to modern-day debtors’ prisons.
Back at the workhouse, even Glass and Edwards agree that too many people are incarcerated and that the bail system needs to be reformed.
But still, city officials try to spin the poverty angle back to their side in defense of the workhouse. “Honestly, this place has been a kind-of rescue for many people,” said Harry. Where else can you get three meals, healthcare, dental, AC in the summer, heating in the winter?
We give some of these people structure.”
“We don’t have an old school Rikers situation on our hands here,” Edwards said, referencing the notorious New York City jail complex which has been the target of dozens of lawsuits alleging brutality and inhumane conditions.
“I think myself and Director Edwards have different definitions of what brings about community wellness and therefore public safety,” said Michelle Higgins, a lead organizer in the #closetheworkhouse campaign. “There’s a difference, you know, between an abolitionist and a reformist.”
In the last five years there have been six documented deaths at the workhouse. Edwards maintains that blaming the city is “unfair”, and said, “More often than not, they have nothing to do with the [workhouse], its conditions, or its employees.”
A glitch in the system
Bordeaux told the Guardian she never met Commissioner Glass or Superintendent Carson during her stay, and the argument that it’s a kind of safety net for people left her flummoxed.
“I don’t know how they can say that with a straight face,” Bordeaux said. “It’s easy to say those things when you can come and go on your own volition. But what happens when you come in without the suit and tie and stay the night?”
Her story of how she wound up in the workhouse is typical. In 2011 Bordeaux was pulled over, as black drivers in Missouri frequently are, and informed that there was a warrant out for her arrest for a larceny. She was miffed: “I had no idea what I had stolen.”
Prosecutors later informed her that the charges stemmed from an overpayment of unemployment benefits. If she went to court and lost, Bordeaux might not only have been looking at prison time, she would have lost her job too. “I couldn’t still be a nurse and have a felony charge,” Bordeaux said, so she took a plea agreement for probation.
In 2012, a glitch in the system assigned Bordeaux a new probation officer who no longer worked at the agency. When she was pulled over again in 2016, she was arrested for a probation violation because she never reported to an officer – who was not available to report to in the first place.
Bordeaux, who had lost her nursing credentials for a year, is back working with patients but still reflects on all that the system and the workhouse have cost her. “The time with my kids, the educational opportunities, the jobs, the money.”
Today, she spends much of her free time committed to closing the workhouse. “Every time I get the microphone, I’m calling out all elected officials in the city: get on the right side of this issue or get voted out in 2020. It’s that simple.”
Inez Bordeaux was at times left broke, homeless, and living in a halfway house over the years of unpleasant interactions with the criminal justice system in St Louis, Missouri. But the only time she ever felt hopeless was during the month she was incarcerated in the city’s infamous “workhouse” jail in 2016.
“I might not come out on the other side of this,” Bordeaux recalled thinking to herself. Her first three days were spent in solitary confinement after staff witnessed her crying, and deemed her a suicide risk.
“They took all my clothes and gave me a suicide smock, I couldn’t call anyone, talk to anyone, or read anything,” Bordeaux said.
A registered nurse and mother of four, Bordeaux was being held in the workhouse on a technical probation violation. Like 98% of inmates there, she was legally innocent but Bordeaux was being detained pre-trial because she couldn’t afford her $25,000 bail.
She describes the rest of her month in the workhouse as full of black mold, rats and blocked toilets churning up fetid waste. She was denied any outdoors time and basic feminine hygiene products.
“I say all the time that the workhouse is a hopeless place,” Bordeaux said. “When you first walk in you can feel the hopelessness. You can feel the desperation.”
Bordeaux was lucky to get out after just a month: the average stay in the St Louis workhouse is more than 190 days.
Today, Bordeaux is part of a growing movement of organizers, lawyers and those formerly incarcerated at the workhouse calling for the building, formally known as Medium Security Institution, to be shuttered.
Earlier this month, the campaign #closetheworkhouse released a report demanding its closure, and calling the workhouse a site of “unspeakably hellish conditions” and an extension of a racist criminal justice system.
Of those incarcerated in the St Louis workhouse, 90% are black, despite the fact that less than 50% of the city is black.
The report follows a class action file by the not-for-profit civil rights law firm ArchCity Defenders in November alleging that the site routinely violates the constitutional rights of inmates.
“This report highlights the systemic disparities and structural racism which have plagued our region for decades,” said ACD’s executive director, Blake Strode. “The workhouse in many ways symbolizes these destructive forces.”
‘I feel like a slave’
The day-to-day operation of the workhouse falls under the control of the city’s public safety director, Jimmie Edwards, who said that such graphic depictions of workhouse conditions are overblown.
“The only reason the narrative about conditions in the workhouse persists is because people refuse to visit and see for themselves,” Edwards said, offering the Guardian a walk-through of the jail.
Once inside, Commissioner Dale Glass, Superintendent Jeffery Carson, and Tonya Harry, chief of security, led a half-hour tour of the workhouse. That day, about 575 people were being held inside. The first inmate to speak out said to a guard, “What’s going on? I haven’t changed these clothes in two weeks.” A nearby guard came to address him as we watched.
Down the hallway, people inside called to get our attention. “Hey! We need to shut this place down right now.” Another said, “I feel like a slave inside here.” As we turned the corner we heard, “I’ve been here months, man, just waiting for a trial.”
Glass ascribed the remarks to inmate theatrics. “We’ve had a lot of tours here recently,” he said, “so forgive me that some of the inmates want to entertain.”
The tour came about a year after a regional heatwave turned attention to the conditions of prisoners in the facility, which did not have air conditioning. In July, more than 150 protesters gathered outside the workhouse, where temperatures inside reportedly exceeded 120F (49C), only to be dispersed by pepper spray. Three days after the protest, Mayor Lyda Krewson moved to place temporary air conditioning units in the facility.
The building is old, the air circulation is poor, but signs of infestation and mold were not apparent within the guided tour. The Guardian was not permitted to sit down with detainees or enter areas where detainees were actually held, however.
Sima Atri, a staff attorney with ArchCity Defenders, said numerous inmates had told her that they were told to clean so as to make the best impression for outside visitors. “And they all said they feared retaliation for speaking with us,” Atri said.
‘This place has been a kind-of rescue’Organizers’ problem with the workhouse goes far beyond the the “hellish conditions” and deeper into the way the city uses incarceration – frequently as an answer to minor technical and fine-related violations.
The #closetheworkhouse campaign minces no words and calls the facility a debtors’ prison, noting that most inmates are presumed innocent and would be free to leave but for unaffordable bail amounts. The median bail in St Louis is $25,000, roughly the same as the city’s per-capita annual income – simply out of reach for most.
The organizers’ concerns run parallel with a broader movement in the US to end money-based bail practices, and likening pre-trial detention in jails to modern-day debtors’ prisons.
Back at the workhouse, even Glass and Edwards agree that too many people are incarcerated and that the bail system needs to be reformed.
But still, city officials try to spin the poverty angle back to their side in defense of the workhouse. “Honestly, this place has been a kind-of rescue for many people,” said Harry. Where else can you get three meals, healthcare, dental, AC in the summer, heating in the winter?
We give some of these people structure.”
“We don’t have an old school Rikers situation on our hands here,” Edwards said, referencing the notorious New York City jail complex which has been the target of dozens of lawsuits alleging brutality and inhumane conditions.
“I think myself and Director Edwards have different definitions of what brings about community wellness and therefore public safety,” said Michelle Higgins, a lead organizer in the #closetheworkhouse campaign. “There’s a difference, you know, between an abolitionist and a reformist.”
In the last five years there have been six documented deaths at the workhouse. Edwards maintains that blaming the city is “unfair”, and said, “More often than not, they have nothing to do with the [workhouse], its conditions, or its employees.”
A glitch in the system
Bordeaux told the Guardian she never met Commissioner Glass or Superintendent Carson during her stay, and the argument that it’s a kind of safety net for people left her flummoxed.
“I don’t know how they can say that with a straight face,” Bordeaux said. “It’s easy to say those things when you can come and go on your own volition. But what happens when you come in without the suit and tie and stay the night?”
Her story of how she wound up in the workhouse is typical. In 2011 Bordeaux was pulled over, as black drivers in Missouri frequently are, and informed that there was a warrant out for her arrest for a larceny. She was miffed: “I had no idea what I had stolen.”
Prosecutors later informed her that the charges stemmed from an overpayment of unemployment benefits. If she went to court and lost, Bordeaux might not only have been looking at prison time, she would have lost her job too. “I couldn’t still be a nurse and have a felony charge,” Bordeaux said, so she took a plea agreement for probation.
In 2012, a glitch in the system assigned Bordeaux a new probation officer who no longer worked at the agency. When she was pulled over again in 2016, she was arrested for a probation violation because she never reported to an officer – who was not available to report to in the first place.
Bordeaux, who had lost her nursing credentials for a year, is back working with patients but still reflects on all that the system and the workhouse have cost her. “The time with my kids, the educational opportunities, the jobs, the money.”
Today, she spends much of her free time committed to closing the workhouse. “Every time I get the microphone, I’m calling out all elected officials in the city: get on the right side of this issue or get voted out in 2020. It’s that simple.”
In Crosshairs of Right-to-Work, Kentucky Bourbon Makers Go On Strike
BY MICHAEL ARRIA - in these times
THURSDAY, SEP 20, 2018, 9:58 PM
More than 50 workers in Kentucky are on strike due to a contract dispute with Four Roses, a bourbon maker with a distillery in Lawrenceburg and a bottling plant in Cox's Creek. Workers say Four Roses is attempting to adopt a two-tier system that would reduce the benefits for new employees of the company. Members of three different unions walked off their jobs at these sites on September 7.
The move to establish a two-tier system is especially concerning to union leaders because Kentucky became a “right to work” state in 2017, which means that workers are no longer required to pay union dues. A reduction in benefits would presumably give new Four Roses employees less incentive to support the unions financially, potentially dealing an irreparable blow to the company’s organized labor. Since the law passed, 16,000 workers in Kentucky have opted out of paying their union dues.
The unions on strike are United Food and Commercial Workers 10D, United Food and Commercial Workers 23D and Service Employees International Union/National Conference of Firemen and Oilers.
Jeffrey Royalty is the president of the UFCW Local 10D. He told In These Times that the Four Roses’ two-tier proposal is designed to “short change the next generation.” According to Royalty, “For these corporations, ‘right to work’ really means ‘right to take.’ He added that this system will destroy any organization.”
Royalty’s position was echoed by Tim Morris, the political director of Greater Louisville Central Labor Council. Morris told In These Times that the “whole premise” of two-tier system was to “create a divide in the workforce … cause animosity, drive a wedge and make workers not want to stand up and fight when others are attacked.” Morris emphasized, “The people on strike know that to help future employees, they need to stand up for workers now.”
The strike is occurring at a time when tourists are flocking to the area for this week’s Kentucky Bourbon Festival, an annual gathering that features an event at Four Roses’ distillery. Royalty says support from the community has been “outstanding” and that many people have dropped off food and ponchos to the picketing workers.
Four Roses, which has existed since 1888 and was purchased by Japan’s Kirin Company in 2002, said in a statement regarding the strike, “A claim that we are proposing a ‘two-tier’ sick leave policy that discriminates against new hires is not true. We agree that the new hires would not receive the same sick leave benefits as current employees, but we believe the new hires’ program is better, not worse.”
Kentucky’s Supreme Court is currently considering a lawsuit launched by unions over the state’s “right to work” law. The unions are arguing that the law was passed in violation of the Kentucky Constitution. The “right to work” law was swiftly passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature and not put up for a popular vote.
“It’s really not ‘right to work,’ it’s a right for employees to not pay their fair share for the costs of union representation,” Irwin Cutler, the attorney arguing the lawsuit, has argued. “What we see here is an effort to destroy unions, to weaken unions.”
In June’s Janus v. AFSCME decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that unions violated the First Amendment when they took dues from unwilling workers to collectively bargain on their workers’ behalf.
Four Roses and the striking workers are slated to resume negotiations on September 21.
The move to establish a two-tier system is especially concerning to union leaders because Kentucky became a “right to work” state in 2017, which means that workers are no longer required to pay union dues. A reduction in benefits would presumably give new Four Roses employees less incentive to support the unions financially, potentially dealing an irreparable blow to the company’s organized labor. Since the law passed, 16,000 workers in Kentucky have opted out of paying their union dues.
The unions on strike are United Food and Commercial Workers 10D, United Food and Commercial Workers 23D and Service Employees International Union/National Conference of Firemen and Oilers.
Jeffrey Royalty is the president of the UFCW Local 10D. He told In These Times that the Four Roses’ two-tier proposal is designed to “short change the next generation.” According to Royalty, “For these corporations, ‘right to work’ really means ‘right to take.’ He added that this system will destroy any organization.”
Royalty’s position was echoed by Tim Morris, the political director of Greater Louisville Central Labor Council. Morris told In These Times that the “whole premise” of two-tier system was to “create a divide in the workforce … cause animosity, drive a wedge and make workers not want to stand up and fight when others are attacked.” Morris emphasized, “The people on strike know that to help future employees, they need to stand up for workers now.”
The strike is occurring at a time when tourists are flocking to the area for this week’s Kentucky Bourbon Festival, an annual gathering that features an event at Four Roses’ distillery. Royalty says support from the community has been “outstanding” and that many people have dropped off food and ponchos to the picketing workers.
Four Roses, which has existed since 1888 and was purchased by Japan’s Kirin Company in 2002, said in a statement regarding the strike, “A claim that we are proposing a ‘two-tier’ sick leave policy that discriminates against new hires is not true. We agree that the new hires would not receive the same sick leave benefits as current employees, but we believe the new hires’ program is better, not worse.”
Kentucky’s Supreme Court is currently considering a lawsuit launched by unions over the state’s “right to work” law. The unions are arguing that the law was passed in violation of the Kentucky Constitution. The “right to work” law was swiftly passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature and not put up for a popular vote.
“It’s really not ‘right to work,’ it’s a right for employees to not pay their fair share for the costs of union representation,” Irwin Cutler, the attorney arguing the lawsuit, has argued. “What we see here is an effort to destroy unions, to weaken unions.”
In June’s Janus v. AFSCME decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that unions violated the First Amendment when they took dues from unwilling workers to collectively bargain on their workers’ behalf.
Four Roses and the striking workers are slated to resume negotiations on September 21.
Striking Hotel Workers Say "Slow Season" Is No Excuse for Losing Health Care
BY
Bryce Covert Truthout
PUBLISHED
September 20, 2018
Tina Graham has worked for Chicago hotels for 11 years, and in the beginning, she faced a predicament every winter: As the tourism industry’s slow season approached she lost her health insurance, even as she dealt with the wear and tear that such physical work takes on her body. “When you’re working, you’re moving all of your body, your hands, your feet, your legs, your arms, and they get tired,” she told Truthout. “It’s really hard.”
Graham has had to have work done on her rotator cuff due to the repetitive nature of her tasks. She takes arthritis pills every morning and wears a medicated patch on her back throughout the day. “You don’t rest from the time you get there to the time you leave,” she said. “You’re on the move, pushing a big cart with your linens on it, chemicals on it, your vacuum on it, going from room to room.”
But without health insurance during the slow season, “I didn’t go to the doctor,” she said. “If something was wrong I just had to deal with it myself.”
Graham is now one of thousands of hotel workers who have been on strike across the city since September 7, in the first such action in over 100 years. The strike, which is now in its 14th day, started with employees of 25 hotels, and since it began workers from another hotel have joined. Employees walked off the job at 5 am on September 7 and have held 24-hour-a-day picket lines since.
Luis Cuevas, a shop steward for his union, showed up at the picket line at 4:30 am on September 7 to make sure everything was ready. “We had such a massive group in the morning, I never thought I would see so many people on strike at 5 am in the morning,” he said. He ended up staying out until 6:30 that evening, losing his voice in the process. “I just got swept up in the energy,” he said.
The main issue that prompted workers to strike is health care. In the winter slow season, with fewer tourists visiting Chicago, hotels often reduce their workers’ hours. Even though they remain full-time employees, many lose health insurance coverage until business picks back up again. “While business booms in the summer and people work incredibly hard … many are frankly kicked to the curb in the wintertime when business slows down,” said Sarah Lyons, a research analyst with UNITE HERE Local 1, the union representing the workers. “This is the year that we said, ‘No more, no more winter where people lose their health coverage….’ Folks are willing to do what it’ll take to achieve that.”
Cuevas has also been through the strain of losing his health care in the winter: He had his hours cut in his first year working in the industry. “Maybe six months into the year they were still telling me it was the slow season,” he recalled. “Eight months consecutively … isn’t a slow season anymore.” But because he was still expected to work for the hotel, he couldn’t go looking for a new job. “That’s when I knew something had to change.” It motivated him to become a shop steward with his union, which meant he was in the room negotiating with the companies and had to tell his coworkers that their employers weren’t meeting their demand for year-round health care. “People started getting angry,” he said.
“Hilton is responsible to keep [us] on health care throughout the year instead of taking us for granted,” Graham agreed.
Workers are also pressing for other improvements in their working conditions, including wages that keep up with the rising cost of living in Chicago, workloads that don’t overtax their bodies, and more sick days so they can visit doctors when the physical work takes its toll or they get sick. Graham noted that she and her coworkers are being asked to make up more and more rooms and work mandatory overtime. “It was time to stand up and take notice of what we go through,” she said. “The disrespect is outrageous.”
It’s not an easy step to take. “Going on strike, everybody was scared and nervous,” Graham said. It’s been hard on her family that she’s been gone for so many hours to be on the picket line; they’re drawing on savings while she’s on strike. But she and her coworkers feel it’s worth it. “People are tired of being pushed around and being disrespected,” she said.
The striking workers “are showing the company that they care,” Cuevas said. “People want to have an open, friendly, productive dialogue with [the hotels]; we want a contract to get signed for the benefit of both sides. And more than anything, everyone just wants to get back to work.”
The hotels “should know exactly what it would take to settle” the strike, Lyons said. “We’ve been meeting with them since the summer. This should come as no surprise.” Over 3,000 hotel employees voted to authorize an industry-wide strike on August 15. And then at midnight on August 31, employees’ contracts, which had been in effect for five years, expired.
The strike itself has been powerful for the workers involved. “We treat each other like we’re family now,” Graham said. She’s met people in departments where she never knew anyone before, such as room service and the banquet hall. “It’s like we came together as one family. It is so, so great.” She’s a picket captain, leading the chants and the noise-making. “It’s loud on the line,” she said with a laugh. “There’s crackers, there’s drums. It’s just great out there, it picks up your spirit.”
The strike comes after a huge victory that became reality just a few months ago. Unionized hotel workers staged a campaign dubbed “Hands Off, Pants On” to get the city to pass an ordinance requiring they be given panic buttons for when guests harass and assault them and requiring hotels to draft and comply with clear anti-harassment policies. It passed late last year and went into effect on July 1. “Those very same women … are now advocating for year-round health care to protect themselves, their families, and their bodies,” Lyons said.
Graham was one of the leaders of the anti-harassment campaign. “People don’t understand what goes on in the hotel with some guests…. Some guests can be very nasty, answering the door with nothing on,” she said. “It was time for us to have some kind of protection.”
The “Hands Off, Pants On” victory also helped workers feel empowered going into the strike. “That gave [my coworkers] a good boost, a good power boost,” she said. “Sure they was scared to go on strike, all of us was. But if we can win this, we can win anything.”
“We give [the hotels] a lot of our blood, sweat, and tears and they don’t appreciate it,” she added. “They need to wake up… They don’t realize we’re the ones that make them their money.”
Graham has had to have work done on her rotator cuff due to the repetitive nature of her tasks. She takes arthritis pills every morning and wears a medicated patch on her back throughout the day. “You don’t rest from the time you get there to the time you leave,” she said. “You’re on the move, pushing a big cart with your linens on it, chemicals on it, your vacuum on it, going from room to room.”
But without health insurance during the slow season, “I didn’t go to the doctor,” she said. “If something was wrong I just had to deal with it myself.”
Graham is now one of thousands of hotel workers who have been on strike across the city since September 7, in the first such action in over 100 years. The strike, which is now in its 14th day, started with employees of 25 hotels, and since it began workers from another hotel have joined. Employees walked off the job at 5 am on September 7 and have held 24-hour-a-day picket lines since.
Luis Cuevas, a shop steward for his union, showed up at the picket line at 4:30 am on September 7 to make sure everything was ready. “We had such a massive group in the morning, I never thought I would see so many people on strike at 5 am in the morning,” he said. He ended up staying out until 6:30 that evening, losing his voice in the process. “I just got swept up in the energy,” he said.
The main issue that prompted workers to strike is health care. In the winter slow season, with fewer tourists visiting Chicago, hotels often reduce their workers’ hours. Even though they remain full-time employees, many lose health insurance coverage until business picks back up again. “While business booms in the summer and people work incredibly hard … many are frankly kicked to the curb in the wintertime when business slows down,” said Sarah Lyons, a research analyst with UNITE HERE Local 1, the union representing the workers. “This is the year that we said, ‘No more, no more winter where people lose their health coverage….’ Folks are willing to do what it’ll take to achieve that.”
Cuevas has also been through the strain of losing his health care in the winter: He had his hours cut in his first year working in the industry. “Maybe six months into the year they were still telling me it was the slow season,” he recalled. “Eight months consecutively … isn’t a slow season anymore.” But because he was still expected to work for the hotel, he couldn’t go looking for a new job. “That’s when I knew something had to change.” It motivated him to become a shop steward with his union, which meant he was in the room negotiating with the companies and had to tell his coworkers that their employers weren’t meeting their demand for year-round health care. “People started getting angry,” he said.
“Hilton is responsible to keep [us] on health care throughout the year instead of taking us for granted,” Graham agreed.
Workers are also pressing for other improvements in their working conditions, including wages that keep up with the rising cost of living in Chicago, workloads that don’t overtax their bodies, and more sick days so they can visit doctors when the physical work takes its toll or they get sick. Graham noted that she and her coworkers are being asked to make up more and more rooms and work mandatory overtime. “It was time to stand up and take notice of what we go through,” she said. “The disrespect is outrageous.”
It’s not an easy step to take. “Going on strike, everybody was scared and nervous,” Graham said. It’s been hard on her family that she’s been gone for so many hours to be on the picket line; they’re drawing on savings while she’s on strike. But she and her coworkers feel it’s worth it. “People are tired of being pushed around and being disrespected,” she said.
The striking workers “are showing the company that they care,” Cuevas said. “People want to have an open, friendly, productive dialogue with [the hotels]; we want a contract to get signed for the benefit of both sides. And more than anything, everyone just wants to get back to work.”
The hotels “should know exactly what it would take to settle” the strike, Lyons said. “We’ve been meeting with them since the summer. This should come as no surprise.” Over 3,000 hotel employees voted to authorize an industry-wide strike on August 15. And then at midnight on August 31, employees’ contracts, which had been in effect for five years, expired.
The strike itself has been powerful for the workers involved. “We treat each other like we’re family now,” Graham said. She’s met people in departments where she never knew anyone before, such as room service and the banquet hall. “It’s like we came together as one family. It is so, so great.” She’s a picket captain, leading the chants and the noise-making. “It’s loud on the line,” she said with a laugh. “There’s crackers, there’s drums. It’s just great out there, it picks up your spirit.”
The strike comes after a huge victory that became reality just a few months ago. Unionized hotel workers staged a campaign dubbed “Hands Off, Pants On” to get the city to pass an ordinance requiring they be given panic buttons for when guests harass and assault them and requiring hotels to draft and comply with clear anti-harassment policies. It passed late last year and went into effect on July 1. “Those very same women … are now advocating for year-round health care to protect themselves, their families, and their bodies,” Lyons said.
Graham was one of the leaders of the anti-harassment campaign. “People don’t understand what goes on in the hotel with some guests…. Some guests can be very nasty, answering the door with nothing on,” she said. “It was time for us to have some kind of protection.”
The “Hands Off, Pants On” victory also helped workers feel empowered going into the strike. “That gave [my coworkers] a good boost, a good power boost,” she said. “Sure they was scared to go on strike, all of us was. But if we can win this, we can win anything.”
“We give [the hotels] a lot of our blood, sweat, and tears and they don’t appreciate it,” she added. “They need to wake up… They don’t realize we’re the ones that make them their money.”
a plantation mentality!!!
McDonald’s Workers in 10 Cities Strike Over Sexual Harassment by Bosses
Shocking complaints filed with the feds show why employees in 10 cities are walking out to protest how the company handles—or doesn’t—mistreatment of women.
Kelly Weill - daily beast
09.18.18 5:15 AM ET
A year after Hurricane Harvey, some cleanup workers are still unpaid
Amid a recovery marred by labor abuses, activists are trying to start a dialogue about the treatment of workers in Houston
Mike Elk in Houston
the guardian
Wed 19 Sep 2018 06.00 EDT
The McDonald’s cashier was 15 years old when an older colleague told her “you have a nice body,” according to a complaint she filed earlier this year.
“Have you ever had white chocolate inside you?” the man continued, according to the complaint.
The situation is all too familiar, McDonald’s employees say, and that’s why employees in 10 U.S. cities are planning a one-day strike on Tuesday to protest what they say is a culture of sexual harassment at the fast food giant.
McDonald's said it already had anti-harassment policies in place.
"We have strong policies, procedures and training in place specifically designed to prevent sexual harassment," a McDonald's spokesperson told The Daily Beast. "To ensure we are doing all that can be done, we have engaged experts in the areas of prevention and response, including RAINN, to evolve our policies so everyone who works at McDonald’s does so in a secure environment every day."
The strikes will see workers walk out of restaurants in Chicago, Durham, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Orlando, San Francisco, and St. Louis, the Associated Press reported. Many of those locations correspond with McDonald’s franchises named in a series of sexual harassment complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against McDonald’s in May.
Those complaints include that of the 15-year-old cashier, who worked in St. Louis. McDonald’s workers aren’t just subject to sexual harassment, the complaints allege. They also accuse the company of ignoring reports of sexual harassment, or even mocking workers who file complaints.
“You will never win that battle,” the 15-year-old’s manager allegedly told her when she reported her colleague’s comments. The teenager and nine other McDonald’s employees are represented in their complaints by the National Women’s Law Center.
“Sexual harassment is pervasive across the fast food industry, where over a million workers—especially women of color—face abuse as a routine part of their job,” Fatima Goss Graves, NWLC president said in a statement announcing the complaints in May. “This sort of harassment puts working people in a no win situation—forced to choose between a paycheck and speaking up about the abuse.”
A former McDonald’s employee at a Chicago restaurant says that choice was literal, after her manager offered to show her his penis and asked “how many penises she could take,” according to her complaint with the EEOC. She was fired after she reported her manager, she alleges.
Another employee who filed an EEOC complaint said when she reported a colleague for groping her, her manager suggested she take it to the “next level” with him. She gave up reporting incidents to management, and was too discouraged to file a complaint when a different employee tried to sexually assault her in a restaurant bathroom.
Several of the complainants have gone on to organize the Tuesday strike. One worker, 22-year-old Tanya Harrell, filed an EEOC complaint accusing her managers of mocking her when she reported a colleague for persistent harassment at her New Orleans restaurant.
She and fellow strikers will spend Tuesday demanding a more muscular response to sexual harassment at McDonald’s, including mandatory anti-harassment training. The strikers, who planned the action through committees of women employees, are also demanding a seat at the corporate table: they want a national committee of McDonald’s workers to meet and address the franchise’s sexual harassment problem.
The strike also comes with support from activists lobbying for a $15 minimum wage. When the NWLC represented McDonald’s employees in their sexual harassment complaints in May, the organization highlighted the difficulty low-income workers face in bringing legal challenges against massive corporations like McDonald’s.
When workers like Harrell go on strike on Tuesday, they’ll be slowing the gears of a multi-billion dollar company. Harrell makes $8.15 an hour.
Harrell told AP that McDonald’s public responses to sexual harassment were little more than damage control.
"They want people to think they care, but they don't care," she said.
“Have you ever had white chocolate inside you?” the man continued, according to the complaint.
The situation is all too familiar, McDonald’s employees say, and that’s why employees in 10 U.S. cities are planning a one-day strike on Tuesday to protest what they say is a culture of sexual harassment at the fast food giant.
McDonald's said it already had anti-harassment policies in place.
"We have strong policies, procedures and training in place specifically designed to prevent sexual harassment," a McDonald's spokesperson told The Daily Beast. "To ensure we are doing all that can be done, we have engaged experts in the areas of prevention and response, including RAINN, to evolve our policies so everyone who works at McDonald’s does so in a secure environment every day."
The strikes will see workers walk out of restaurants in Chicago, Durham, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Orlando, San Francisco, and St. Louis, the Associated Press reported. Many of those locations correspond with McDonald’s franchises named in a series of sexual harassment complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against McDonald’s in May.
Those complaints include that of the 15-year-old cashier, who worked in St. Louis. McDonald’s workers aren’t just subject to sexual harassment, the complaints allege. They also accuse the company of ignoring reports of sexual harassment, or even mocking workers who file complaints.
“You will never win that battle,” the 15-year-old’s manager allegedly told her when she reported her colleague’s comments. The teenager and nine other McDonald’s employees are represented in their complaints by the National Women’s Law Center.
“Sexual harassment is pervasive across the fast food industry, where over a million workers—especially women of color—face abuse as a routine part of their job,” Fatima Goss Graves, NWLC president said in a statement announcing the complaints in May. “This sort of harassment puts working people in a no win situation—forced to choose between a paycheck and speaking up about the abuse.”
A former McDonald’s employee at a Chicago restaurant says that choice was literal, after her manager offered to show her his penis and asked “how many penises she could take,” according to her complaint with the EEOC. She was fired after she reported her manager, she alleges.
Another employee who filed an EEOC complaint said when she reported a colleague for groping her, her manager suggested she take it to the “next level” with him. She gave up reporting incidents to management, and was too discouraged to file a complaint when a different employee tried to sexually assault her in a restaurant bathroom.
Several of the complainants have gone on to organize the Tuesday strike. One worker, 22-year-old Tanya Harrell, filed an EEOC complaint accusing her managers of mocking her when she reported a colleague for persistent harassment at her New Orleans restaurant.
She and fellow strikers will spend Tuesday demanding a more muscular response to sexual harassment at McDonald’s, including mandatory anti-harassment training. The strikers, who planned the action through committees of women employees, are also demanding a seat at the corporate table: they want a national committee of McDonald’s workers to meet and address the franchise’s sexual harassment problem.
The strike also comes with support from activists lobbying for a $15 minimum wage. When the NWLC represented McDonald’s employees in their sexual harassment complaints in May, the organization highlighted the difficulty low-income workers face in bringing legal challenges against massive corporations like McDonald’s.
When workers like Harrell go on strike on Tuesday, they’ll be slowing the gears of a multi-billion dollar company. Harrell makes $8.15 an hour.
Harrell told AP that McDonald’s public responses to sexual harassment were little more than damage control.
"They want people to think they care, but they don't care," she said.
One year on from Hurricane Harvey – and as the true scale of the mess left by Hurricane Florence emerges in the Carolinas – the cleanup work in Houston still continues. And workers still digging out from the mess are fearful that they may not get paid.
“As a community, we have stepped up. We have restored people’s homes and restored their lives,” the Houston mayor Sylvester Turner told a crowd at a barbecue marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey last month. Across town at the historically black Texas Southern University, activists paint a less rosy picture of recovery.
At a meeting convened under the title “The People’s Tribunal on Hurricane Harvey,” Claudia, a middle-aged undocumented immigrant from Colombia struggling to pay her children’s college tuitions back home, told the crowd of working for a contractor on a hurricane cleanup project for a week, only to find that the contractor had disappeared when it came time to get paid.
“It’s sad because we all count on our weekly pay to survive,” Claudia said as she struggled to hold back tears and described facing the threat of eviction because she couldn’t pay her rent. “I’ve seen it happen frequently. Many of my co-workers are fearful that another contractor will come and do the same thing to them.”
According to a survey conducted last year by the University of Illinois at Chicago, approximately 75% of all day laborers have reported wage theft. Even worse, 61% of day laborers said that they received no respiratory devices to protect themselves against the many molds and bacterias that workers face on the job, and 85% of day laborers say they received no health and safety training.
While the hurricane recovery has been marred by abuses of workers’ rights, activists hope that they can use the sense of solidarity created by the recovery to foster a dialogue about the treatment of workers in Houston.
“When any devastation happens, it’s a time to reevaluate how we are doing things,” said Sylvia Chicas, an organizer with the Fe y Justicia Worker Centerin Houston. “In a way, it’s an opportunity for our city to start thinking about are we rebuilding in an equitable way, to bring workers into this conversation in a way that they have traditionally been excluded.”
On a recent Thursday night after work, two dozen Latino laborers gathered for snacks and a health and safety training class on their rights as workers in a large converted dining room in the small brick duplex that houses the worker center.
Pointing to symbols on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) training cards printed in Spanish, Alejandro Zuniga, a 46-year-old organizer with the center, instructed workers how to determine which symbols stand for what chemicals.
Drawing on his own experiences, Zuniga told the group how he nearly died a decade ago after being exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning in a school. Zuniga spent months in the hospital afterward and was semi-homeless because of the ensuing medical debt.
Zuniga and the workers discussed the best methods to confront their bosses and how to call the authorities if their informal advocacy fails. Many immigrant workers are hesitant to do so, but Zuniga implores them to in order to avoid the financial crisis he faced after he got sick on his job.
“Each one of us has suffered or will suffer labor abuses in our lives,” said Zuniga. “Many of us stay quiet for a lack of immigration documentations and because [we] have no other options. It’s time for us to develop our consciousness because [workers’ rights] is everybody’s fight.”
Since the hurricane, Zuniga and the center have trained more than 1,400 day laborers in classes just like this, dramatically more workers than they had been able to reach in years past.
Not only has the center used the hurricane to dramatically increase their health and safety training, but it has also seen an uptick in the number of workers coming forward to report instances of wage theft.
Since February, when the center re-opened its legal clinic, it has received more than 170 complaints from workers for wages totaling in excess of $557,000. The training appears to be paying off as more workers are starting to come forward prepared to take action.
“It’s been really inspiring,” said Marianela Acuña-Arreaza, the 29-year-old executive director of Fe y Justicia Worker Center, who came to the US as an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela when she was 18 years old.
The organizing is also starting to have a serious effect on the way wage theft law is enforced in Houston.
Last week, for the first time, the Harris county district attorney office, working closely with the center, filed a criminal theft of services charge against a homeowner, Sonny D Nicholas, who refused to pay a group of workers more than $2,300 for work done on his home.
If convicted, Nicholas could face up to a year in jail.
“This is about treating people decently and obeying the law,” said the Harris county district attorney Kim Ogg. “We follow the evidence, and we are not going to let employers rip off contractors, just as we won’t let contractors steal from the public.”
Mayor Turner has pledged to use his legal authority to deny city contracts to those who violate workers’ contracts.
“We are saying to those who are taking people’s wages that you cannot do business with the city of Houston,” said Turner in an interview with the Guardian.
However, the center says that not enough is being done and that the city does not have the staff to properly enforce wage theft laws. An analysis done by the Dallas Morning News in conjunction with Reveal showed that the Texas Workforce Commission has only 19 investigators to handle an average of more than 13,000 cases a year, meaning that each investigator is assigned to close to roughly 684 complaints annually.
That analysis also found that workers only received their state-mandated awards half of the time.
Activists say that inaction by the Trump administration has allowed many contractors to get away with wage theft without fear of losing federal contracts.
“These federal agencies say they are helping us when in reality, when they use this system, the only thing they are doing is jeopardizing us, our communities and our families,” said Zuniga.
Houston activists know that they have an uphill battle to take on the scourge of workers rights abuses in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, but they also say that the storm unleashed something else: a mobilized mass of workers seeking change.
Hurricane Harvey created a workers’ rights crisis in Houston, but workers and advocates in Houston say they are taking advantage of this opportunity to build new power.
“Following Harvey, it seems that the infrastructure for workers justice has been growing exponentially,” said center executive director Acuña-Arreaza. “In many ways, this has been a turning point for us as movement in Houston.”
“We are building a network of people who are learning how to access workplace justice and that’s powerful,” she said.
“As a community, we have stepped up. We have restored people’s homes and restored their lives,” the Houston mayor Sylvester Turner told a crowd at a barbecue marking the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey last month. Across town at the historically black Texas Southern University, activists paint a less rosy picture of recovery.
At a meeting convened under the title “The People’s Tribunal on Hurricane Harvey,” Claudia, a middle-aged undocumented immigrant from Colombia struggling to pay her children’s college tuitions back home, told the crowd of working for a contractor on a hurricane cleanup project for a week, only to find that the contractor had disappeared when it came time to get paid.
“It’s sad because we all count on our weekly pay to survive,” Claudia said as she struggled to hold back tears and described facing the threat of eviction because she couldn’t pay her rent. “I’ve seen it happen frequently. Many of my co-workers are fearful that another contractor will come and do the same thing to them.”
According to a survey conducted last year by the University of Illinois at Chicago, approximately 75% of all day laborers have reported wage theft. Even worse, 61% of day laborers said that they received no respiratory devices to protect themselves against the many molds and bacterias that workers face on the job, and 85% of day laborers say they received no health and safety training.
While the hurricane recovery has been marred by abuses of workers’ rights, activists hope that they can use the sense of solidarity created by the recovery to foster a dialogue about the treatment of workers in Houston.
“When any devastation happens, it’s a time to reevaluate how we are doing things,” said Sylvia Chicas, an organizer with the Fe y Justicia Worker Centerin Houston. “In a way, it’s an opportunity for our city to start thinking about are we rebuilding in an equitable way, to bring workers into this conversation in a way that they have traditionally been excluded.”
On a recent Thursday night after work, two dozen Latino laborers gathered for snacks and a health and safety training class on their rights as workers in a large converted dining room in the small brick duplex that houses the worker center.
Pointing to symbols on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) training cards printed in Spanish, Alejandro Zuniga, a 46-year-old organizer with the center, instructed workers how to determine which symbols stand for what chemicals.
Drawing on his own experiences, Zuniga told the group how he nearly died a decade ago after being exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning in a school. Zuniga spent months in the hospital afterward and was semi-homeless because of the ensuing medical debt.
Zuniga and the workers discussed the best methods to confront their bosses and how to call the authorities if their informal advocacy fails. Many immigrant workers are hesitant to do so, but Zuniga implores them to in order to avoid the financial crisis he faced after he got sick on his job.
“Each one of us has suffered or will suffer labor abuses in our lives,” said Zuniga. “Many of us stay quiet for a lack of immigration documentations and because [we] have no other options. It’s time for us to develop our consciousness because [workers’ rights] is everybody’s fight.”
Since the hurricane, Zuniga and the center have trained more than 1,400 day laborers in classes just like this, dramatically more workers than they had been able to reach in years past.
Not only has the center used the hurricane to dramatically increase their health and safety training, but it has also seen an uptick in the number of workers coming forward to report instances of wage theft.
Since February, when the center re-opened its legal clinic, it has received more than 170 complaints from workers for wages totaling in excess of $557,000. The training appears to be paying off as more workers are starting to come forward prepared to take action.
“It’s been really inspiring,” said Marianela Acuña-Arreaza, the 29-year-old executive director of Fe y Justicia Worker Center, who came to the US as an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela when she was 18 years old.
The organizing is also starting to have a serious effect on the way wage theft law is enforced in Houston.
Last week, for the first time, the Harris county district attorney office, working closely with the center, filed a criminal theft of services charge against a homeowner, Sonny D Nicholas, who refused to pay a group of workers more than $2,300 for work done on his home.
If convicted, Nicholas could face up to a year in jail.
“This is about treating people decently and obeying the law,” said the Harris county district attorney Kim Ogg. “We follow the evidence, and we are not going to let employers rip off contractors, just as we won’t let contractors steal from the public.”
Mayor Turner has pledged to use his legal authority to deny city contracts to those who violate workers’ contracts.
“We are saying to those who are taking people’s wages that you cannot do business with the city of Houston,” said Turner in an interview with the Guardian.
However, the center says that not enough is being done and that the city does not have the staff to properly enforce wage theft laws. An analysis done by the Dallas Morning News in conjunction with Reveal showed that the Texas Workforce Commission has only 19 investigators to handle an average of more than 13,000 cases a year, meaning that each investigator is assigned to close to roughly 684 complaints annually.
That analysis also found that workers only received their state-mandated awards half of the time.
Activists say that inaction by the Trump administration has allowed many contractors to get away with wage theft without fear of losing federal contracts.
“These federal agencies say they are helping us when in reality, when they use this system, the only thing they are doing is jeopardizing us, our communities and our families,” said Zuniga.
Houston activists know that they have an uphill battle to take on the scourge of workers rights abuses in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, but they also say that the storm unleashed something else: a mobilized mass of workers seeking change.
Hurricane Harvey created a workers’ rights crisis in Houston, but workers and advocates in Houston say they are taking advantage of this opportunity to build new power.
“Following Harvey, it seems that the infrastructure for workers justice has been growing exponentially,” said center executive director Acuña-Arreaza. “In many ways, this has been a turning point for us as movement in Houston.”
“We are building a network of people who are learning how to access workplace justice and that’s powerful,” she said.
opinion: worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them
James Bloodworth - the guardian
Mon 17 Sep 2018 06.00 EDT
Amazon has become a ubiquitous feature of modern life. You can find almost anything on its website, and whatever it is you want – books, music, film – Amazon can get it to you the very next day or even sooner. We all know what Amazon does, but only now are we gaining a better understanding of how Amazon does it.
Lately Amazon has been on the receiving end of criticism over the way it treats its workers as well as how much it pays them. At the forefront of this campaign has been Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages. Amazon is one of the biggest employers of those who receive food stamps in the United States, with nearly one in three Amazon workers on food stamps in Arizona and one in 10 in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Sanders has also been highlighting some of the 19th-century working practices used by Amazon to control and discipline its workforce inside of its fulfilment centres. Sanders’ bill – the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, or the ‘Stop Bezos Act’ – would tax employers like Amazon when their employees require federal benefits.
The Senator is right to push Amazon on this. But he is also right to highlight the company treatment of its workers. I worked undercover as an order picker at one of the company’s warehouses for three weeks in 2016, in the small Staffordshire town of Rugeley in the United Kingdom. I took the job as part of the research for my book, Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain.
The warehouse employed about 1,200 people. Most of my co-workers were immigrants from eastern Europe, predominantly Romania. During shifts of 10 and a half hours, it was our job to march up and down the long narrow aisles picking customer orders from two-metre-high shelves. Over the course of a single day a picker could walk as far as 24 kilometres (representatives from Amazon would frequently boast that the warehouse was the size of “10 soccer pitches”). We were paid the minimum wage to do this, which at the time was £7 per hour.
Before I started the job I had a relatively positive view of Amazon - admittedly derived from my use of the company’s website as a consumer. When I set out to write my book I was simply looking at low-paid, precarious work. I ended up working at Amazon by accident: my search for a low-paid job merely coincided with a recruitment drive on Amazon’s part.
Yet what I found while working for Amazon shocked me. I had done warehouse work previously when I was younger, along with a range of other poorly paid, manual jobs. In other words, my shock at the way workers were treated by Amazon was not a product of some wet-behind-the-ears naivety: I fully expected warehouse work to be tough. Yet what I witnessed at Amazon went far beyond that. This was a workplace environment in which decency, respect and dignity were absent.
The warehouse had the atmosphere of what I imagine a low-security prison would feel like. You had to pass in and out of gigantic airport-style security gates at the end of every shift and each time you went on break or needed to use the toilet. It could take as long as 10 or 15 minutes to pass through these gigantic metal scanners. A corporate, Orwellian form of double-speak was pervasive. You were not called a worker but an “associate”. You weren’t fired but instead you were “released”. Near the entrance to the warehouse, a cardboard cut-out of a fictional Amazon worker proclaimed, via a speech bubble attached to her head, that “we love coming to work and we miss it when we’re not here”.
The contrast between this sickly corporate uplift and the reality of life as an order picker at Amazon was stark. Workers were regularly admonished by management for clocking up so-called “idle time”, which was usually no more than the time it took to go to the bathroom. A recent survey of Amazon warehouse workers in England by the group Organise found that 74% were afraid to go to the toilet during a shift out of fear of missing productivity targets. On one occasion I found a Coca-Cola bottle containing urine sitting incongruently on a warehouse shelf amid the assorted miscellany, evidently left there by a worker too scared to take a toilet break.
Amazon operated a draconian disciplinary points system, whereby points were given to workers for things like missed productivity targets, “idle time” and clocking in a few minutes after the start of a shift. We were warned that talking to co-workers could also result in the acquisition of a point. Should you receive six points you would lose your job. Illness was punished as a misdemeanour by the company. I took a day off sick and was given a point for it – despite notifying Amazon several hours before the start of my shift that I was ill and offering to provide a note from the doctor. When I returned to work I asked an Amazon manager how they could justify such a policy, which effectively punished people for being ill. “It’s what Amazon have always done,” he replied blandly.
In Amazon’s case, convenience evidently has a cost, and this cost is borne by those toiling away in Amazon’s warehouses, rarely heard from in the media and invisible to the millions of people who every day submit orders through Amazon’s website. It’s about time these people – the labour we rely upon for our every whim – were given a voice, and Bernie Sanders deserves credit for giving them one.
Lately Amazon has been on the receiving end of criticism over the way it treats its workers as well as how much it pays them. At the forefront of this campaign has been Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages. Amazon is one of the biggest employers of those who receive food stamps in the United States, with nearly one in three Amazon workers on food stamps in Arizona and one in 10 in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Sanders has also been highlighting some of the 19th-century working practices used by Amazon to control and discipline its workforce inside of its fulfilment centres. Sanders’ bill – the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, or the ‘Stop Bezos Act’ – would tax employers like Amazon when their employees require federal benefits.
The Senator is right to push Amazon on this. But he is also right to highlight the company treatment of its workers. I worked undercover as an order picker at one of the company’s warehouses for three weeks in 2016, in the small Staffordshire town of Rugeley in the United Kingdom. I took the job as part of the research for my book, Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain.
The warehouse employed about 1,200 people. Most of my co-workers were immigrants from eastern Europe, predominantly Romania. During shifts of 10 and a half hours, it was our job to march up and down the long narrow aisles picking customer orders from two-metre-high shelves. Over the course of a single day a picker could walk as far as 24 kilometres (representatives from Amazon would frequently boast that the warehouse was the size of “10 soccer pitches”). We were paid the minimum wage to do this, which at the time was £7 per hour.
Before I started the job I had a relatively positive view of Amazon - admittedly derived from my use of the company’s website as a consumer. When I set out to write my book I was simply looking at low-paid, precarious work. I ended up working at Amazon by accident: my search for a low-paid job merely coincided with a recruitment drive on Amazon’s part.
Yet what I found while working for Amazon shocked me. I had done warehouse work previously when I was younger, along with a range of other poorly paid, manual jobs. In other words, my shock at the way workers were treated by Amazon was not a product of some wet-behind-the-ears naivety: I fully expected warehouse work to be tough. Yet what I witnessed at Amazon went far beyond that. This was a workplace environment in which decency, respect and dignity were absent.
The warehouse had the atmosphere of what I imagine a low-security prison would feel like. You had to pass in and out of gigantic airport-style security gates at the end of every shift and each time you went on break or needed to use the toilet. It could take as long as 10 or 15 minutes to pass through these gigantic metal scanners. A corporate, Orwellian form of double-speak was pervasive. You were not called a worker but an “associate”. You weren’t fired but instead you were “released”. Near the entrance to the warehouse, a cardboard cut-out of a fictional Amazon worker proclaimed, via a speech bubble attached to her head, that “we love coming to work and we miss it when we’re not here”.
The contrast between this sickly corporate uplift and the reality of life as an order picker at Amazon was stark. Workers were regularly admonished by management for clocking up so-called “idle time”, which was usually no more than the time it took to go to the bathroom. A recent survey of Amazon warehouse workers in England by the group Organise found that 74% were afraid to go to the toilet during a shift out of fear of missing productivity targets. On one occasion I found a Coca-Cola bottle containing urine sitting incongruently on a warehouse shelf amid the assorted miscellany, evidently left there by a worker too scared to take a toilet break.
Amazon operated a draconian disciplinary points system, whereby points were given to workers for things like missed productivity targets, “idle time” and clocking in a few minutes after the start of a shift. We were warned that talking to co-workers could also result in the acquisition of a point. Should you receive six points you would lose your job. Illness was punished as a misdemeanour by the company. I took a day off sick and was given a point for it – despite notifying Amazon several hours before the start of my shift that I was ill and offering to provide a note from the doctor. When I returned to work I asked an Amazon manager how they could justify such a policy, which effectively punished people for being ill. “It’s what Amazon have always done,” he replied blandly.
In Amazon’s case, convenience evidently has a cost, and this cost is borne by those toiling away in Amazon’s warehouses, rarely heard from in the media and invisible to the millions of people who every day submit orders through Amazon’s website. It’s about time these people – the labour we rely upon for our every whim – were given a voice, and Bernie Sanders deserves credit for giving them one.
opinion: Amazon’s ‘worker cage’ has been dropped, but its staff are not free
André Spicer - the guardian
Fri 14 Sep 2018 08.49 EDT
A cage for workers on wheels. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction. It’s not. In 2016, Amazon filed a patent for a device described as a “system and method for transporting personnel within an active workplace”. It is actually a cage large enough to fit a worker. It’s mounted on top of an automated trolley device. A robotic arm faces outwards.
The worker cage was designed by Amazon’s robotic engineers. It was intended to protect workers in Amazon’s warehouses when they needed to venture into spaces where robot stock-pickers whizz around. Amazon’s worker cage was quietly patented and only came to global attention thanks to the diligent digging of two academics. When the workers’ cage started to appear in newspaper headlines, Amazon executives declared it a “bad idea”.
Amazon may have dropped the plans, but that should not come as a surprise. The company doesn’t need a robotic cage for workers – it already has one of the most all-pervasive control systems in history. In its huge warehouses, workers carry hand-held computers that control their movements. A wristband patented by the company (but which is not yet in use) can direct the movement of workers’ hands using “haptic feedback”. Stock pickers in Amazon warehouses are watched by cameras, and workers have reportedly been reduced to urinating in bottles in order to hit their targets, and they are constantly reminded of their productivity rates. Investigations by journalists have also exposed a worryingly high level of ambulance call-outs to Amazon warehouses in the UK.
Delivery drivers working on contract for the company are closely tracked and monitored by a system which sets extreme targets that workers must hit. In the US, Amazon drivers are suing, claiming that they often work many hours of unpaid overtime. The relentless targets have reportedly led to unsafe driving. Some say that to keep pace they were forced to defecate in bags which they kept in their delivery vans.
Workers in Amazon’s headquarters also face unrelenting control. An investigation by the New York Times found that executives were expected to be constantly available by email. Office workers were monitored by their co-workers as well as their bosses, by means of a special system that allowed employees to anonymously assess any other employee. This feedback was taken into account when the company decided who could keep their job and who they would let go. The result was a workforce constantly attached to the firm. One employee spent her entire vacation in a Starbucks just so she could deal with demands constantly coming in from headquarters. Another employee says was told she was “a problem” after taking time off to look after her dying father, and was blocked from moving to a less pressured job.
Amazon justifies this system of intense worker control on the basis that customers win. I recently sat through a fascinating seminar on the digital transformation of the economy. One panellist described how great it was that he could ask Alexa – Amazon’s virtual assistant – to order food for his dog and it would arrive the next day. While he (and his dog) may have been pleased with Alexa’s help, it ignores the fact that there are many others who are clearly harmed. There are the exhausted workers in warehouses, the speeding delivery drivers, the executives on the edge of a mental breakdown running the whole system.
But there are also companies in Amazon’s supply chain that are completely reliant on it for business. This means Amazon is able to dictate the terms for these companies. There are the many thousands of companies, small and large, that have been driven out of business by Amazon. And the US government supports companies such as Amazon by giving some of their employees food stamps to top up meagre wages. But I think the satisfied dog owner is also potentially harmed by the fact that his entire home life can be tracked and listened into by a corporation whose capacity for conducting surveillance operations far surpasses anything that the Stasi would ever have dared to dream of.
The problem with Amazon is not that it has considered patenting a wheeled cage for workers; the real issue is the company’s increasingly tight grip on entire sectors of the economy. Consumers might benefit, but many others are losing out. For that reason, some are calling for a radical rethink of how “platform companies” such as Amazon are regulated.
We would not just be asking whether they benefit their consumers who find it easier to order dog food. Instead, we would need to ask whether they benefit the broader public good. That would mean considering the impact they have on workers, suppliers, investors, competitors, national governments and much more. If we started to ask these questions, it is unlikely we would continue to see gigantic companies that dominate whole sectors of the economy as such a good idea.
The worker cage was designed by Amazon’s robotic engineers. It was intended to protect workers in Amazon’s warehouses when they needed to venture into spaces where robot stock-pickers whizz around. Amazon’s worker cage was quietly patented and only came to global attention thanks to the diligent digging of two academics. When the workers’ cage started to appear in newspaper headlines, Amazon executives declared it a “bad idea”.
Amazon may have dropped the plans, but that should not come as a surprise. The company doesn’t need a robotic cage for workers – it already has one of the most all-pervasive control systems in history. In its huge warehouses, workers carry hand-held computers that control their movements. A wristband patented by the company (but which is not yet in use) can direct the movement of workers’ hands using “haptic feedback”. Stock pickers in Amazon warehouses are watched by cameras, and workers have reportedly been reduced to urinating in bottles in order to hit their targets, and they are constantly reminded of their productivity rates. Investigations by journalists have also exposed a worryingly high level of ambulance call-outs to Amazon warehouses in the UK.
Delivery drivers working on contract for the company are closely tracked and monitored by a system which sets extreme targets that workers must hit. In the US, Amazon drivers are suing, claiming that they often work many hours of unpaid overtime. The relentless targets have reportedly led to unsafe driving. Some say that to keep pace they were forced to defecate in bags which they kept in their delivery vans.
Workers in Amazon’s headquarters also face unrelenting control. An investigation by the New York Times found that executives were expected to be constantly available by email. Office workers were monitored by their co-workers as well as their bosses, by means of a special system that allowed employees to anonymously assess any other employee. This feedback was taken into account when the company decided who could keep their job and who they would let go. The result was a workforce constantly attached to the firm. One employee spent her entire vacation in a Starbucks just so she could deal with demands constantly coming in from headquarters. Another employee says was told she was “a problem” after taking time off to look after her dying father, and was blocked from moving to a less pressured job.
Amazon justifies this system of intense worker control on the basis that customers win. I recently sat through a fascinating seminar on the digital transformation of the economy. One panellist described how great it was that he could ask Alexa – Amazon’s virtual assistant – to order food for his dog and it would arrive the next day. While he (and his dog) may have been pleased with Alexa’s help, it ignores the fact that there are many others who are clearly harmed. There are the exhausted workers in warehouses, the speeding delivery drivers, the executives on the edge of a mental breakdown running the whole system.
But there are also companies in Amazon’s supply chain that are completely reliant on it for business. This means Amazon is able to dictate the terms for these companies. There are the many thousands of companies, small and large, that have been driven out of business by Amazon. And the US government supports companies such as Amazon by giving some of their employees food stamps to top up meagre wages. But I think the satisfied dog owner is also potentially harmed by the fact that his entire home life can be tracked and listened into by a corporation whose capacity for conducting surveillance operations far surpasses anything that the Stasi would ever have dared to dream of.
The problem with Amazon is not that it has considered patenting a wheeled cage for workers; the real issue is the company’s increasingly tight grip on entire sectors of the economy. Consumers might benefit, but many others are losing out. For that reason, some are calling for a radical rethink of how “platform companies” such as Amazon are regulated.
We would not just be asking whether they benefit their consumers who find it easier to order dog food. Instead, we would need to ask whether they benefit the broader public good. That would mean considering the impact they have on workers, suppliers, investors, competitors, national governments and much more. If we started to ask these questions, it is unlikely we would continue to see gigantic companies that dominate whole sectors of the economy as such a good idea.
Chicago hotel strike enters sixth day, as workers demand year-round health insurance
Workers from 26 hotels have joined the fight.
CASEY QUINLAN - thinkprogress
SEP 12, 2018, 10:26 AM
CHICAGO, IL - SEPTEMBER 10: STRIKING WORKERS FROM THE PALMER HOUSE HILTON WALK A PICKET LINE IN FRONT OF THE HOTEL ON SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. THOUSANDS OF HOUSEKEEPERS, SERVERS, COOKS AND DOORMEN WALKED OFF THEIR JOBS AT 25 DOWNTOWN HOTELS ON FRIDAY AFTER FAILING TO REACH AN AGREEMENT ON A NEW LABOR CONTRACT. (PHOTO BY SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES)
Thousands of Chicago hotel workers continued their strike for the sixth day Wednesday, primarily to demand a year-round health insurance guarantee. The union said workers also want higher wages, more sick days, and more manageable workloads, the Associated Press reported. Their contracts, which covered 6,000 employees, expired on August 30.
The number of hotel workers involved in the strike has only increased since then. On Monday, workers at Cambria Chicago Magnificent Mile joined the strike, which brought the count of hotels affected by the strike to 26. Before the strike, more than 3,000 UNITE HERE Local 1’s members voted on the issue and 97 percent voted to authorize it.
The union told the Chicago Tribune that it is the most widespread and coordinated hotel worker strike ever held in Chicago. It’s the first strike in the city to include all hotel workers, whether they’re dishwashers or housekeepers, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
As the Tribune reported, there are only four hotels that have expired contracts where hotel workers are not on strike: Hotel Raffaelo, Tremont Chicago at Magnificent Mile, Park Hyatt Chicago, and Fairmont Chicago.
Some fine dining restaurants, including the Ritz-Carlton Chicago’s fine-dining restaurant and Torali Italian-Steak, are closed or offering limited menus. Inside the Palmer House Hilton, long lines await check-in, dirty towels have been piling up, and beds have been left unmade, according to ABC7. One guest, Matt Lissack, told ABC7 that the line for check-in was “literally around the building.”
In the central business, there are 174 hotels, which means travelers could stay somewhere that is not dealing with contract negotiations, but the hotels in the midst of a strike are some of the biggest ones in Chicago, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
It’s common for hotel workers to get laid off during the winter when business is slower, and workers end up losing their much-needed health coverage. Javier de La Rosa said to the Tribune that although he has seniority and health coverage all year, he wants to make sure his fellow hotel workers do, as well. Rosa added that he went on strike to protect the wages and benefits he currently has.
Q. Rivers, who works at Palmer House Hilton, said in a statement on the union website, “Hotels may slow down in the wintertime, but I still need my diabetes medication when I’m laid off. Nobody should lose their health benefits just because it’s cold out. Full-time jobs should have year-round benefits.”
Each hotel or hotel brand does its own negotiation with the union, so management at some hotels and brands could make agreements with the union before others. Hotel groups say it’s too early in the negotiation process for workers to go on strike, and say they have not yet reached an impasse with the union.
Thousands of workers have disagreed. A spokesperson for Hyatt sent a statementto ABC7 saying, “In fact, Hyatt has not received the union’s complete proposals. Colleague benefits and wages remain unchanged as we negotiate a new agreement … Many colleagues are working … “
A Hilton spokesperson told the outlet “More and more of our union Team Members are choosing to return to work and we welcome them to do so,” adding that “It is still early in the negotiations process and Hilton is committed to negotiating in good faith with UNITE HERE Local 1.”
UNITE HERE Local 1 recently helped workers by advocating for a Chicago ordinance that made the city the second in the country to require that hotels have panic buttons. These panic buttons allow hotel workers to request help if a guest is harassing or sexually assaulting them. In 2016, the union put out a survey that showed 58 percent of those surveyed were sexually harassed by guests.
The number of hotel workers involved in the strike has only increased since then. On Monday, workers at Cambria Chicago Magnificent Mile joined the strike, which brought the count of hotels affected by the strike to 26. Before the strike, more than 3,000 UNITE HERE Local 1’s members voted on the issue and 97 percent voted to authorize it.
The union told the Chicago Tribune that it is the most widespread and coordinated hotel worker strike ever held in Chicago. It’s the first strike in the city to include all hotel workers, whether they’re dishwashers or housekeepers, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
As the Tribune reported, there are only four hotels that have expired contracts where hotel workers are not on strike: Hotel Raffaelo, Tremont Chicago at Magnificent Mile, Park Hyatt Chicago, and Fairmont Chicago.
Some fine dining restaurants, including the Ritz-Carlton Chicago’s fine-dining restaurant and Torali Italian-Steak, are closed or offering limited menus. Inside the Palmer House Hilton, long lines await check-in, dirty towels have been piling up, and beds have been left unmade, according to ABC7. One guest, Matt Lissack, told ABC7 that the line for check-in was “literally around the building.”
In the central business, there are 174 hotels, which means travelers could stay somewhere that is not dealing with contract negotiations, but the hotels in the midst of a strike are some of the biggest ones in Chicago, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
It’s common for hotel workers to get laid off during the winter when business is slower, and workers end up losing their much-needed health coverage. Javier de La Rosa said to the Tribune that although he has seniority and health coverage all year, he wants to make sure his fellow hotel workers do, as well. Rosa added that he went on strike to protect the wages and benefits he currently has.
Q. Rivers, who works at Palmer House Hilton, said in a statement on the union website, “Hotels may slow down in the wintertime, but I still need my diabetes medication when I’m laid off. Nobody should lose their health benefits just because it’s cold out. Full-time jobs should have year-round benefits.”
Each hotel or hotel brand does its own negotiation with the union, so management at some hotels and brands could make agreements with the union before others. Hotel groups say it’s too early in the negotiation process for workers to go on strike, and say they have not yet reached an impasse with the union.
Thousands of workers have disagreed. A spokesperson for Hyatt sent a statementto ABC7 saying, “In fact, Hyatt has not received the union’s complete proposals. Colleague benefits and wages remain unchanged as we negotiate a new agreement … Many colleagues are working … “
A Hilton spokesperson told the outlet “More and more of our union Team Members are choosing to return to work and we welcome them to do so,” adding that “It is still early in the negotiations process and Hilton is committed to negotiating in good faith with UNITE HERE Local 1.”
UNITE HERE Local 1 recently helped workers by advocating for a Chicago ordinance that made the city the second in the country to require that hotels have panic buttons. These panic buttons allow hotel workers to request help if a guest is harassing or sexually assaulting them. In 2016, the union put out a survey that showed 58 percent of those surveyed were sexually harassed by guests.
elon musk, just a greedy billionaire!!!
Tesla workers speak out: 'Anything pro-union is shut down really fast'
Elon Musk has said he is ‘neutral’ about a union but former employees blame their firing on their efforts to organize while current workers say a ‘culture of fear’ persists
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Mon 10 Sep 2018 09.01 EDT
For two years Dezzimond Vaughn was a well-regarded worker at the Tesla factory in Lathrop, California. Then he became involved in trying to organize a union and suddenly his job was on the line.
“They started changing rules without any remorse,” Vaughn, a 31-year-old former Tesla computer-numeric-controlled (CNC) heavy machinery operator, told the Guardian. He cited a strict attendance policy Tesla implemented and backdated that deducted points from employees every time they clocked in late or were absent. “We started talking about forming a union, because they wouldn’t be able to do the things they’re doing, and they somehow found out I was having meetings at my house.”
Vaughn claims management began to try to push him out of employment once they found out he was helping to lead unionization efforts. “Throughout my last year, we kept bumping heads. I never stopped working, they never had a problem with me as far as the work, but I had a lot of complaints about me. My supervisor said they were trying to fire me.”
In October 2017, Vaughn received a phone call at home that he was being fired by Tesla due to two poor employee performance reviews in a row. He provided his separation agreement with Tesla, which cited “failure to meet performance expectations” as the sole reason for termination. Vaughn said his review scores were changed afterward to warrant his job termination, while the positive comments from his supervisor in the review remained.
Vaughn provided a copy of his employee file and his last two employee reviews. In the reviews, his supervisor calls Vaughn an employee who “does what’s right for the company as a whole” and “can always be counted on by team members to both show up (attendance) and get the job done”, yet his review scores are low rated. In previous employee reviews (January to June 2016, June 2015 to December 2015, and January 2015 to June 2015) before management discovered his role in unionization efforts, Vaughn received high scores, which resulted in promotions.
The supervisor who conducted Vaughn’s last two performance reviews (July to December 2016 and January to June 2017), Tarus Starks, confirmed the review scores were lowered by upper management. “When Dezz came to work under me, his performance was super positive,” Starks said. “I was about to train him for back-up lead.”
“At Tesla, we strive to be a fair and just company, the only kind worth being. Performance reviews result in promotions and occasionally in employee departures,” said a Tesla spokesperson in an email. “No one at Tesla has ever or will ever have any action taken against them based on their feelings on unionization.”
The spokesperson said: “It’s worth remembering that each year, roughly 20,000 ULPs [unfair labor practice complaints] are filed with the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] by unions like the UAW [United Auto Workers union] as an organizing tactic.”
Tesla and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, have earned a reputation for union-busting efforts over the past few years. In February 2017, Musk accused a factory worker who outlined several issues within Tesla in a Medium blogpost of being a “union plant”. In an email, Musk also promised workers free frozen yogurt in a letter to employees that framed unionization efforts as an effort against Tesla by big car companies. The same month, Tesla employee Michael Sanchez alleged he was asked to leave the Tesla factory by security for handing out pro-union flyers outside to fellow employees.
The NLRB filed a complaint currently on trial over Musk’s alleged promise to workers in a June 2017 meeting to fix safety standard concerns if they refrained from efforts to form a union. Several similar charges against Tesla are currently under consideration by the NLRB, including one alleging surveillance and intimidation against workers attempting to form a union.
Complaints from workers over being fired for engaging in efforts to unionize at Tesla have become common. “I was a union supporter. I wore a union shirt almost every day to work and my supervisor at the time asked me why I wore it,” said Jim Owen, who left the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, in March 2018 due to concerns for his safety after a robot almost severely injured him while working on car hoods. “He told me upper management wouldn’t appreciate me wearing it.”
Mark Vasquez, worked at Tesla from 2014 until he was placed on a medical leave of absence in July 2016 after spending several months on light duty after he permanently injured his back on the job. “Talking to other workers about unionizing was really frowned upon,” he told me. “When some of my supervisors heard me talking to other employees about it, they would come over and shut down the conversation.”
One current Tesla employee, who asked to remain anonymous, was placed on medical leave after sustaining a work injury in July 2016. “They are refusing to allow me to return to work,” the worker said. “For a brief period of time, when the movement was gaining traction, pro-union employees were given promotions to lessen their demands. It did not work, so they moved to removing pro-union employees. I am one of them that they do not want back, but I absolutely will be fighting for a union even harder if I am allowed to return to work.”
A Tesla spokesperson noted the company could not share personal medical information or any details of medical leave on employees who still have pending cases with workers’ compensation.
In August 2017 Crystal Guardado was fired from Tesla as she began participating in union organizing and speaking up about the unsafe working conditions. “Some of my most vivid memories are asking questions about the union to colleagues and being told to shut up or I’d get fired,” Guardado said. She started working at Tesla in April 2017 and began speaking up after she hurt her eyes from chemicals used on door handles and was told by a doctor it was due to allergies. “They retaliated against me, I believe, because I was speaking up about my safety and the conditions in the factory.”.
A Tesla spokesperson said Guardado was fired for failing the company’s substance abuse and testing policy, but Guardado argued she has possessed a medical marijuana card in California for the past five years due to panic anxiety issues and her efforts to provide human resources with the documentation leading up to the test were ignored.
Interviews with current Tesla employees suggest these alleged union busting and intimidation tactics are still being implemented by middle and upper management at Tesla factories.
“Elon Musk says he’s neutral toward the union,” another employee added. However, “They’ve been anything but neutral. Anything union or pro-union is shut down really fast.”
Another current employee in a Tesla factory who asked to remain anonymous expressed similar sentiments. “Pro-union people are generally fired for made-up reasons. There’s a culture of fear because if you don’t comply, you will be fired,” the employee told me. “We are told Tesla would go bankrupt if we unionize because we are not a profitable company yet.” He added that management quickly finds reasons to fire employees who tout their efforts to form a union and those who are fired are pushed to sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their last paycheck.
Despite the complaints expressed by current Tesla workers, they remain committed to pushing the company to allow workers to unionize and improve working conditions.
“Why should I go somewhere else when we can make this place a good place to work and the product is an awesome product?” added one of the current Tesla employees I spoke with. “I’m proud of that fact – it’s changing the world – but it shouldn’t start on the broken backs of workers.”
“They started changing rules without any remorse,” Vaughn, a 31-year-old former Tesla computer-numeric-controlled (CNC) heavy machinery operator, told the Guardian. He cited a strict attendance policy Tesla implemented and backdated that deducted points from employees every time they clocked in late or were absent. “We started talking about forming a union, because they wouldn’t be able to do the things they’re doing, and they somehow found out I was having meetings at my house.”
Vaughn claims management began to try to push him out of employment once they found out he was helping to lead unionization efforts. “Throughout my last year, we kept bumping heads. I never stopped working, they never had a problem with me as far as the work, but I had a lot of complaints about me. My supervisor said they were trying to fire me.”
In October 2017, Vaughn received a phone call at home that he was being fired by Tesla due to two poor employee performance reviews in a row. He provided his separation agreement with Tesla, which cited “failure to meet performance expectations” as the sole reason for termination. Vaughn said his review scores were changed afterward to warrant his job termination, while the positive comments from his supervisor in the review remained.
Vaughn provided a copy of his employee file and his last two employee reviews. In the reviews, his supervisor calls Vaughn an employee who “does what’s right for the company as a whole” and “can always be counted on by team members to both show up (attendance) and get the job done”, yet his review scores are low rated. In previous employee reviews (January to June 2016, June 2015 to December 2015, and January 2015 to June 2015) before management discovered his role in unionization efforts, Vaughn received high scores, which resulted in promotions.
The supervisor who conducted Vaughn’s last two performance reviews (July to December 2016 and January to June 2017), Tarus Starks, confirmed the review scores were lowered by upper management. “When Dezz came to work under me, his performance was super positive,” Starks said. “I was about to train him for back-up lead.”
“At Tesla, we strive to be a fair and just company, the only kind worth being. Performance reviews result in promotions and occasionally in employee departures,” said a Tesla spokesperson in an email. “No one at Tesla has ever or will ever have any action taken against them based on their feelings on unionization.”
The spokesperson said: “It’s worth remembering that each year, roughly 20,000 ULPs [unfair labor practice complaints] are filed with the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] by unions like the UAW [United Auto Workers union] as an organizing tactic.”
Tesla and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, have earned a reputation for union-busting efforts over the past few years. In February 2017, Musk accused a factory worker who outlined several issues within Tesla in a Medium blogpost of being a “union plant”. In an email, Musk also promised workers free frozen yogurt in a letter to employees that framed unionization efforts as an effort against Tesla by big car companies. The same month, Tesla employee Michael Sanchez alleged he was asked to leave the Tesla factory by security for handing out pro-union flyers outside to fellow employees.
The NLRB filed a complaint currently on trial over Musk’s alleged promise to workers in a June 2017 meeting to fix safety standard concerns if they refrained from efforts to form a union. Several similar charges against Tesla are currently under consideration by the NLRB, including one alleging surveillance and intimidation against workers attempting to form a union.
Complaints from workers over being fired for engaging in efforts to unionize at Tesla have become common. “I was a union supporter. I wore a union shirt almost every day to work and my supervisor at the time asked me why I wore it,” said Jim Owen, who left the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, in March 2018 due to concerns for his safety after a robot almost severely injured him while working on car hoods. “He told me upper management wouldn’t appreciate me wearing it.”
Mark Vasquez, worked at Tesla from 2014 until he was placed on a medical leave of absence in July 2016 after spending several months on light duty after he permanently injured his back on the job. “Talking to other workers about unionizing was really frowned upon,” he told me. “When some of my supervisors heard me talking to other employees about it, they would come over and shut down the conversation.”
One current Tesla employee, who asked to remain anonymous, was placed on medical leave after sustaining a work injury in July 2016. “They are refusing to allow me to return to work,” the worker said. “For a brief period of time, when the movement was gaining traction, pro-union employees were given promotions to lessen their demands. It did not work, so they moved to removing pro-union employees. I am one of them that they do not want back, but I absolutely will be fighting for a union even harder if I am allowed to return to work.”
A Tesla spokesperson noted the company could not share personal medical information or any details of medical leave on employees who still have pending cases with workers’ compensation.
In August 2017 Crystal Guardado was fired from Tesla as she began participating in union organizing and speaking up about the unsafe working conditions. “Some of my most vivid memories are asking questions about the union to colleagues and being told to shut up or I’d get fired,” Guardado said. She started working at Tesla in April 2017 and began speaking up after she hurt her eyes from chemicals used on door handles and was told by a doctor it was due to allergies. “They retaliated against me, I believe, because I was speaking up about my safety and the conditions in the factory.”.
A Tesla spokesperson said Guardado was fired for failing the company’s substance abuse and testing policy, but Guardado argued she has possessed a medical marijuana card in California for the past five years due to panic anxiety issues and her efforts to provide human resources with the documentation leading up to the test were ignored.
Interviews with current Tesla employees suggest these alleged union busting and intimidation tactics are still being implemented by middle and upper management at Tesla factories.
“Elon Musk says he’s neutral toward the union,” another employee added. However, “They’ve been anything but neutral. Anything union or pro-union is shut down really fast.”
Another current employee in a Tesla factory who asked to remain anonymous expressed similar sentiments. “Pro-union people are generally fired for made-up reasons. There’s a culture of fear because if you don’t comply, you will be fired,” the employee told me. “We are told Tesla would go bankrupt if we unionize because we are not a profitable company yet.” He added that management quickly finds reasons to fire employees who tout their efforts to form a union and those who are fired are pushed to sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their last paycheck.
Despite the complaints expressed by current Tesla workers, they remain committed to pushing the company to allow workers to unionize and improve working conditions.
“Why should I go somewhere else when we can make this place a good place to work and the product is an awesome product?” added one of the current Tesla employees I spoke with. “I’m proud of that fact – it’s changing the world – but it shouldn’t start on the broken backs of workers.”
Strike at an immigration detention center strengthens the national prison strike movement
"It's all slavery," an organizer said, comparing ICE detention centers and prison.
CASEY QUINLAN - thinkprogress
SEP 2, 2018, 10:10 AM
Across the United States, prisoners are going on strike, and so are undocumented immigrants being held in detention centers.
As of Friday, there were 62 people on strike at the Northwest Detention Center in Takoma, Washington, activists told ThinkProgress. On Saturday, organizers held a rally near the detention center, demanding an end to what they called retaliation by staff against the people held there.
The demonstrations, which began on August 21 and will continue until September 9, have been held in prisons in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, California, Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico, Florida, and Texas, according to the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
Some incarcerated people are refusing to work and others are refusing to eat. They have 10 national demands, including paying prisoners the prevailing wage in their state, better prison conditions, funding for more rehabilitation services, and rescinding the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which critics say made it harder for detained individuals to advocate for themselves.
Weeks before the strikes got underway last month, one of the organizers, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, released a statement of solidarity with people detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).
In an interview with ShadowProof, one individual who helped organize the protests likened the detention centers to “cages.”
As far as the connection with ICE and why we’re in solidarity, the biggest reason is because we understand those cages. And not only that, but it’s all the same system. And this is something that JLS has been promoting from day one. The entire system itself—the judicial system, the injustice system—it is a big ball of corruption …
The organizer, speaking anonymously, alleged that “human rights violations” are committed at detention centers and that it’s “all on the same chain.”
Kara Lynum, immigration attorney and owner of Lynum Law Office described appalling conditions at the Dilley, Texas detention center when she spoke to ThinkProgress in June.
“It’s hard to get a doctor’s attention and once you do, you get subpar medical care. You get told to drink water or are refused medical care altogether,” she said. “The food is bad. There is definitely an issue with safety in drinking water. And they’re being held in custody, so there are still children in jail but they happen to be be with their parents or their mom at least.”
The Northwest Detention Center facility is operated by the company GEO Group, the largest private prison company in the U.S. According to NPR, the company is paid $32 million a year by ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service to operate these detention facilities, and the Trump administration wants to expand them. GEO Group has been hit with multiple lawsuits alleging that there is forced detainee labor at these facilities. The private prison operator CoreCivic threateneddetainees with solitary confinement and deprivation of privacy, according to a class action lawsuit brought against the company in April.
On Monday, Maru Mora Villalpando, who as a leader of Northwest Detention Center Resistance, (NWDC Resistance) has participated in acts of civil disobedience to protest detention, said strike organizers have been in touch with immigration facilities across the U.S.
“This is the only one that they let us know in advance they were going on a strike for the prisoners strike,” she said. “The numbers started with about 200 people. We were very cautious with the number of people we were counting … The people who were hunger striking were moved immediately into solitary confinement.”
Mora Villalpando said there have been enough volunteers for NWDC Resistance to send people into the detention center and let them know that news outlets are covering the strike. She acknowledged that ICE has called the strikes “false rumors.”
“In the past, ICE says, ‘Well they haven’t reached a hunger strike until they refuse nine meals continuously’ and now they’re saying there is no hunger strike and now they say there are false rumors. So they just keep hiding, and we have to report [those statements] back to those detained.”
NWDC Resistance said that 20 people were sent to segregation on August 30, after joining the strike out of frustration over an order that they stand up every time the warden enters a pod, and the warden’s heavy-handed response to those who don’t cooperate.
Some folks detained at the center can’t get out of bed due to illness. One man who said he had back pain did not get up from his bed and was ordered to attend an administrative hearing as a result, activists said in a statement to ThinkProgress. An entire unit of people was punished by losing television access because some in their group did not comply with the rule, prompting most people in the unit to join the hunger strike. Subsequently, the strikers reported losing access to communication through their phones and said they were also threatened with deportation.
Mora Villalpando said it is uncertain how long hunger strikes will continue. “We know the national strike is going until September 9 and we don’t want people going on hunger strikes that long,” she said.
“We have been able to stop that from happening but under today’s regime, nothing is a guarantee. Some people did stop and in our experience when they stop they are likely to start again once they regroup especially if they have been sent to solitary and then back to general population.”
NWDC Resistance said in a statement to ThinkProgress that six men are on their ninth day of the hunger strike and most are in medical units. Six women also joined the hunger strike on Thursday night.
Mora Villalpando said organizers recounted an exchange with a man who reportedly said, “I’m going to go all the way because I’m going to get killed if I get deported. I’m sick anyway and they don’t want to give me medical care. So who cares anymore? I’d rather just die here.”
Mora Villalpando said it’s tragic that it takes such extreme action to call attention to detention center abuses.
“That’s horrible to think of someone thinking that way and sacrificing themselves because if maybe I don’t get out, they won’t do this to others. We have seen that again and again in hunger strikes, people who think I don’t know how long it will last but I will go as long as I can. It may not help in my case, but people need to know what is happening.”
“We have seen that again and again in hunger strikes, people who think I don’t know how long it will last but I will go as long as I can. It may not help in my case, but people need to know what is happening
There have been a number of hunger strikes since 2014 and there were two hunger strikes earlier this year, according to NWDC Resistance.
Activists say the recent outcry over detention center conditions has bolstered a movement that has long spoken out against ill treatment. In the spring of last year, then head of Homeland Security John Kelly confirmed that the administration was considering family separation at the border. In April 2017, Kelly said children would only be separated from parents if a child’s life was in danger. A year later, in April of this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy which led to family separation.
In June, the policy sparked national outrage, leading to greater media coverage of conditions at detention centers generally, and a wider examination of US immigration policies. But Mora Villalpando said that although increased scrutiny has helped bring more media attention to detention center conditions, immigrant rights activists should also be credited with helping bring this issue before the public.
“I think it’s because we have shown with so many facts why this agency needs to go.” she said. “I think we also have been successful at getting out the same voices of the people who have been detained — people who have said ‘This is a prison’.”
Mora Villalpando added: “People are now making the connection that ICE detention is nothing but an extension of a system that is already problematic in itself,” she said.
“When you’re talking about ICE as a toxic agency that tortures and people are saying ‘By the way, this is a prison,’ I think it makes it so much easier for everybody to pay attention to the prison strike in general — not only for people detained in ICE custody.”
As of Friday, there were 62 people on strike at the Northwest Detention Center in Takoma, Washington, activists told ThinkProgress. On Saturday, organizers held a rally near the detention center, demanding an end to what they called retaliation by staff against the people held there.
The demonstrations, which began on August 21 and will continue until September 9, have been held in prisons in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, California, Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico, Florida, and Texas, according to the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
Some incarcerated people are refusing to work and others are refusing to eat. They have 10 national demands, including paying prisoners the prevailing wage in their state, better prison conditions, funding for more rehabilitation services, and rescinding the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which critics say made it harder for detained individuals to advocate for themselves.
Weeks before the strikes got underway last month, one of the organizers, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, released a statement of solidarity with people detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).
In an interview with ShadowProof, one individual who helped organize the protests likened the detention centers to “cages.”
As far as the connection with ICE and why we’re in solidarity, the biggest reason is because we understand those cages. And not only that, but it’s all the same system. And this is something that JLS has been promoting from day one. The entire system itself—the judicial system, the injustice system—it is a big ball of corruption …
The organizer, speaking anonymously, alleged that “human rights violations” are committed at detention centers and that it’s “all on the same chain.”
Kara Lynum, immigration attorney and owner of Lynum Law Office described appalling conditions at the Dilley, Texas detention center when she spoke to ThinkProgress in June.
“It’s hard to get a doctor’s attention and once you do, you get subpar medical care. You get told to drink water or are refused medical care altogether,” she said. “The food is bad. There is definitely an issue with safety in drinking water. And they’re being held in custody, so there are still children in jail but they happen to be be with their parents or their mom at least.”
The Northwest Detention Center facility is operated by the company GEO Group, the largest private prison company in the U.S. According to NPR, the company is paid $32 million a year by ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service to operate these detention facilities, and the Trump administration wants to expand them. GEO Group has been hit with multiple lawsuits alleging that there is forced detainee labor at these facilities. The private prison operator CoreCivic threateneddetainees with solitary confinement and deprivation of privacy, according to a class action lawsuit brought against the company in April.
On Monday, Maru Mora Villalpando, who as a leader of Northwest Detention Center Resistance, (NWDC Resistance) has participated in acts of civil disobedience to protest detention, said strike organizers have been in touch with immigration facilities across the U.S.
“This is the only one that they let us know in advance they were going on a strike for the prisoners strike,” she said. “The numbers started with about 200 people. We were very cautious with the number of people we were counting … The people who were hunger striking were moved immediately into solitary confinement.”
Mora Villalpando said there have been enough volunteers for NWDC Resistance to send people into the detention center and let them know that news outlets are covering the strike. She acknowledged that ICE has called the strikes “false rumors.”
“In the past, ICE says, ‘Well they haven’t reached a hunger strike until they refuse nine meals continuously’ and now they’re saying there is no hunger strike and now they say there are false rumors. So they just keep hiding, and we have to report [those statements] back to those detained.”
NWDC Resistance said that 20 people were sent to segregation on August 30, after joining the strike out of frustration over an order that they stand up every time the warden enters a pod, and the warden’s heavy-handed response to those who don’t cooperate.
Some folks detained at the center can’t get out of bed due to illness. One man who said he had back pain did not get up from his bed and was ordered to attend an administrative hearing as a result, activists said in a statement to ThinkProgress. An entire unit of people was punished by losing television access because some in their group did not comply with the rule, prompting most people in the unit to join the hunger strike. Subsequently, the strikers reported losing access to communication through their phones and said they were also threatened with deportation.
Mora Villalpando said it is uncertain how long hunger strikes will continue. “We know the national strike is going until September 9 and we don’t want people going on hunger strikes that long,” she said.
“We have been able to stop that from happening but under today’s regime, nothing is a guarantee. Some people did stop and in our experience when they stop they are likely to start again once they regroup especially if they have been sent to solitary and then back to general population.”
NWDC Resistance said in a statement to ThinkProgress that six men are on their ninth day of the hunger strike and most are in medical units. Six women also joined the hunger strike on Thursday night.
Mora Villalpando said organizers recounted an exchange with a man who reportedly said, “I’m going to go all the way because I’m going to get killed if I get deported. I’m sick anyway and they don’t want to give me medical care. So who cares anymore? I’d rather just die here.”
Mora Villalpando said it’s tragic that it takes such extreme action to call attention to detention center abuses.
“That’s horrible to think of someone thinking that way and sacrificing themselves because if maybe I don’t get out, they won’t do this to others. We have seen that again and again in hunger strikes, people who think I don’t know how long it will last but I will go as long as I can. It may not help in my case, but people need to know what is happening.”
“We have seen that again and again in hunger strikes, people who think I don’t know how long it will last but I will go as long as I can. It may not help in my case, but people need to know what is happening
There have been a number of hunger strikes since 2014 and there were two hunger strikes earlier this year, according to NWDC Resistance.
Activists say the recent outcry over detention center conditions has bolstered a movement that has long spoken out against ill treatment. In the spring of last year, then head of Homeland Security John Kelly confirmed that the administration was considering family separation at the border. In April 2017, Kelly said children would only be separated from parents if a child’s life was in danger. A year later, in April of this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy which led to family separation.
In June, the policy sparked national outrage, leading to greater media coverage of conditions at detention centers generally, and a wider examination of US immigration policies. But Mora Villalpando said that although increased scrutiny has helped bring more media attention to detention center conditions, immigrant rights activists should also be credited with helping bring this issue before the public.
“I think it’s because we have shown with so many facts why this agency needs to go.” she said. “I think we also have been successful at getting out the same voices of the people who have been detained — people who have said ‘This is a prison’.”
Mora Villalpando added: “People are now making the connection that ICE detention is nothing but an extension of a system that is already problematic in itself,” she said.
“When you’re talking about ICE as a toxic agency that tortures and people are saying ‘By the way, this is a prison,’ I think it makes it so much easier for everybody to pay attention to the prison strike in general — not only for people detained in ICE custody.”
A Labor Day tribute to restaurant workers, cooking and serving food they can’t afford to eat
I made 12 bucks an hour in a place where the tasting menu cost $400. Capitalism at its worst, but I don’t regret it
HANNAH HOWARD - salon
SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 12:00PM (UTC)
It’s 2005. I’m a freshman in college in New York and I find my first of many restaurant jobs on Craigslist. I make $12 and change per hour as a hostess. We also get a tiny share of the tip pool, which bumps the hourly wage up to around $13.
The restaurant is the now-defunct Picholine, a stuffy yet incredible temple to fine dining. I fall in love with the clunky, magnificent cheese cart. There’s a safe in the office where the chef locks up his white truffles from Alba, which arrive via the back door in an unmarked box. When it’s slow in the dining room, I thumb through his cookbook collection or hang out near the cheese cart. Sometimes the cheese guy will cut me a sliver of something studded with crystals or scoop me a spoonful of an oozing stinker.
The chef’s tasting menu is $185. The wine pairings are $125. Math is not my strong suit, but I calculate that I will have to work about 24 hours to afford the whole shebang. (More like 30 hours with tax and tip.) I decide to major in anthropology. It hits me over the head: We are all cooking and serving food we cannot even almost afford to eat.
Because I’m an incredibly lucky college student and my parents are paying my tuition, room and board, my paychecks go toward buying middle-of-the-night ziti pizza at Pinnacle (which is also no longer) or making dubious fashion choices at Beacon’s Closet. But this is not the case for my co-workers — a wannabe model from South Carolina who has four roommates way out in Brooklyn, and an Albanian opera singer who lives with her in-laws in Queens. For many of us, staff meal means a meal that might not otherwise happen. We eat it at the bar, next to where we stuff the menus with the night’s dishes: smoked sturgeon panna cotta, foie gras rillette with mulberry gélée.
When I finally save up for dinner at Picholine, with another hostess, the chef sends us out so many dishes we both feel sick. We drink champagne and Sancerre. They only charge us $74 each, but we tip 100 percent, because these are our people.
Eighteen months and a few hostess gigs later, I get my first server job at Casellula, a cheese and wine bar in Hell’s Kitchen (it’s still going strong, more than a decade later). I’ve never worked so hard as on our opening night. I’m new at this, and the multitasking of keeping track of all my tables requires my whole brain. It’s also physically demanding — Casellula is a tiny place, but I must accumulate miles back and forth from bar to tables to cheese station. During that first service, I work until 2 a.m. My feet hurt; my brain hurts. When the last table leaves, we toast with Cremant. I’m so tired my vision starts to go wobbly.
We don’t have a POS system yet, so we add up our checks by hand with a big calculator. When the last chairs have been stacked on the tables, we count out a pile of cash from the night. The credit card machine whistles out a report. I want to say the cut is $350 for each of the three of us. The wad of cash feels heavy in my pocket. I’ve never gone home with so much money. I feel rich. I feel unstoppable.
On Sunday, I work the brunch shift. I’ve stayed up late with my Marx-Engels reader, but I’m happy to be here. The place smells faintly of cheese and lavender. The sky is candy blue out the window. I’m ready to work my ass off and make some money.
But unlike the other night, where a mass of bodies formed outside the door and the windows fogged up, brunch is slow. Nearly empty. I help the cook pit cherries for clafoutis. Finally, a table comes in. They order coffee, paninis, and mimosas. They tip $4. After four hours, the owner says I should go home. The $4 will cover my subway ride there and back exactly.
---
Our economy is very much a service economy. Restaurant jobs are growing fast, faster than health care, construction or manufacturing. According to the Atlantic, restaurant growth has outpaced the overall economy every month for the past seven years, yet pays only an average of $12.50 an hour, while the typical private-sector job pays about $22 an hour. Food service work is often grueling and rarely lucrative.
There were more $350 nights at Casellula, but more often there were $90 nights and $200 nights. It didn’t take the restaurant long to cancel brunch, so there were no more $4 days.
There’s a debate over the minimum wage for tipped workers. Right now, it’s set to rise from $8.70 to $10 this year in New York, which is still significantly less than the $15 per hour minimum wage for non-tipped workers. In much of the country, employers can pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 per hour.
And then there are the arguments for ending tipping altogether, including its effect on restaurant economics and the potentially heinous power dynamic it creates. Some restaurateurs like Danny Meyer have eliminated tipping altogether, but in the vast majority of restaurants, the practice remains. Casellula got rid of tipping for a time, then brought it back. The experiment failed.
In the back of the house, it’s usually worse. When line cooks, prep cooks and dishwashers make minimum wage, that doesn’t get padded with tips.
After graduation, I make my first salary as a restaurant manager for a corporate restaurant group in Los Angeles: $55,000 a year, with benefits. I work 70 hours a week, but it’s 2009, the middle of the recession, and I feel lucky to have a job. When I quit, I move to Philadelphia to manage a family-owned restaurant. I make $10,000 less, but I work way less grueling hours and my rent is two thirds of what it was in L.A. I walk to work, and I eat at the restaurant. I get out of bed at 3 a.m. when the walk-in refrigerator stops working to rescue the pricy proteins. I stay after the last table pays each night and run the numbers.
I haven’t worked in restaurant operations since 2011, when I left to move back to New York and work for Fairway. I’ve run restaurant social media, edited restaurant menus and planned press events, but that’s entirely different than night after night on my feet, cheese smell permanently infused in my clothing, sneaking into the walk-in for a deep breath and a moment of cold quiet. There is plenty about it I don’t miss at all -- and a few things I do, like a certain sore satisfaction and a pocketful of hard-earned cash at the end of a long night.
The restaurant is the now-defunct Picholine, a stuffy yet incredible temple to fine dining. I fall in love with the clunky, magnificent cheese cart. There’s a safe in the office where the chef locks up his white truffles from Alba, which arrive via the back door in an unmarked box. When it’s slow in the dining room, I thumb through his cookbook collection or hang out near the cheese cart. Sometimes the cheese guy will cut me a sliver of something studded with crystals or scoop me a spoonful of an oozing stinker.
The chef’s tasting menu is $185. The wine pairings are $125. Math is not my strong suit, but I calculate that I will have to work about 24 hours to afford the whole shebang. (More like 30 hours with tax and tip.) I decide to major in anthropology. It hits me over the head: We are all cooking and serving food we cannot even almost afford to eat.
Because I’m an incredibly lucky college student and my parents are paying my tuition, room and board, my paychecks go toward buying middle-of-the-night ziti pizza at Pinnacle (which is also no longer) or making dubious fashion choices at Beacon’s Closet. But this is not the case for my co-workers — a wannabe model from South Carolina who has four roommates way out in Brooklyn, and an Albanian opera singer who lives with her in-laws in Queens. For many of us, staff meal means a meal that might not otherwise happen. We eat it at the bar, next to where we stuff the menus with the night’s dishes: smoked sturgeon panna cotta, foie gras rillette with mulberry gélée.
When I finally save up for dinner at Picholine, with another hostess, the chef sends us out so many dishes we both feel sick. We drink champagne and Sancerre. They only charge us $74 each, but we tip 100 percent, because these are our people.
Eighteen months and a few hostess gigs later, I get my first server job at Casellula, a cheese and wine bar in Hell’s Kitchen (it’s still going strong, more than a decade later). I’ve never worked so hard as on our opening night. I’m new at this, and the multitasking of keeping track of all my tables requires my whole brain. It’s also physically demanding — Casellula is a tiny place, but I must accumulate miles back and forth from bar to tables to cheese station. During that first service, I work until 2 a.m. My feet hurt; my brain hurts. When the last table leaves, we toast with Cremant. I’m so tired my vision starts to go wobbly.
We don’t have a POS system yet, so we add up our checks by hand with a big calculator. When the last chairs have been stacked on the tables, we count out a pile of cash from the night. The credit card machine whistles out a report. I want to say the cut is $350 for each of the three of us. The wad of cash feels heavy in my pocket. I’ve never gone home with so much money. I feel rich. I feel unstoppable.
On Sunday, I work the brunch shift. I’ve stayed up late with my Marx-Engels reader, but I’m happy to be here. The place smells faintly of cheese and lavender. The sky is candy blue out the window. I’m ready to work my ass off and make some money.
But unlike the other night, where a mass of bodies formed outside the door and the windows fogged up, brunch is slow. Nearly empty. I help the cook pit cherries for clafoutis. Finally, a table comes in. They order coffee, paninis, and mimosas. They tip $4. After four hours, the owner says I should go home. The $4 will cover my subway ride there and back exactly.
---
Our economy is very much a service economy. Restaurant jobs are growing fast, faster than health care, construction or manufacturing. According to the Atlantic, restaurant growth has outpaced the overall economy every month for the past seven years, yet pays only an average of $12.50 an hour, while the typical private-sector job pays about $22 an hour. Food service work is often grueling and rarely lucrative.
There were more $350 nights at Casellula, but more often there were $90 nights and $200 nights. It didn’t take the restaurant long to cancel brunch, so there were no more $4 days.
There’s a debate over the minimum wage for tipped workers. Right now, it’s set to rise from $8.70 to $10 this year in New York, which is still significantly less than the $15 per hour minimum wage for non-tipped workers. In much of the country, employers can pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 per hour.
And then there are the arguments for ending tipping altogether, including its effect on restaurant economics and the potentially heinous power dynamic it creates. Some restaurateurs like Danny Meyer have eliminated tipping altogether, but in the vast majority of restaurants, the practice remains. Casellula got rid of tipping for a time, then brought it back. The experiment failed.
In the back of the house, it’s usually worse. When line cooks, prep cooks and dishwashers make minimum wage, that doesn’t get padded with tips.
After graduation, I make my first salary as a restaurant manager for a corporate restaurant group in Los Angeles: $55,000 a year, with benefits. I work 70 hours a week, but it’s 2009, the middle of the recession, and I feel lucky to have a job. When I quit, I move to Philadelphia to manage a family-owned restaurant. I make $10,000 less, but I work way less grueling hours and my rent is two thirds of what it was in L.A. I walk to work, and I eat at the restaurant. I get out of bed at 3 a.m. when the walk-in refrigerator stops working to rescue the pricy proteins. I stay after the last table pays each night and run the numbers.
I haven’t worked in restaurant operations since 2011, when I left to move back to New York and work for Fairway. I’ve run restaurant social media, edited restaurant menus and planned press events, but that’s entirely different than night after night on my feet, cheese smell permanently infused in my clothing, sneaking into the walk-in for a deep breath and a moment of cold quiet. There is plenty about it I don’t miss at all -- and a few things I do, like a certain sore satisfaction and a pocketful of hard-earned cash at the end of a long night.
CIRCA 1870: A CARTOON SATIRISING THE SWEATSHOPS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. ORIGINAL ARTIST: BY JOHN LEECH FROM PUNCH MAGAZINE. (PHOTO BY RISCHGITZ/GETTY IMAGES)
Low Wages And No Stability: How Amazon’s Use of Perma-Temps Is Hurting Workers
BY MAX PARROTT - IN THESE TIMES
Every day at 4:30 a.m., Dwayne Wilson, 25, wakes up to find out whether he’s going to be needed as a forklift driver at the warehouse he works at in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington. Sometimes he gets a call telling him not to come in. Sometimes he goes in to find out that he’s not needed that day. On average, he works just three eight-hour days per week, at $15 per hour.
“Even if I work every day and I have an amazing work ethic,” Wilson says, “I still could be sent home after waiting for so long because they fill the spot.”
The products that Wilson moves are destined for Amazon customers, but Wilson doesn’t work directly for the e-commerce giant. He works for California Cartage, a logistics company that has a contract to unpack shipping containers full of Amazon goods. Wilson says that the majority of the cargo moving through his warehouse is headed straight to Amazon fulfillment facilities.
The national unemployment rate hit 3.8 percent in May, the lowest level since 2000, and companies across the country are complaining about the difficulty of finding workers. Yet Amazon has been able to staff its warehouses with workers who frequently earn little more than the local minimum wage. Many of them are contingent workers like Wilson, who get none of the stability and benefits that often come with working for one of the country’s largest companies.
Amazon has been able to keep finding workers for its warehouses—and keeping wages low—in part by tapping into areas where the economic recovery has been weak. New Jersey and California contain two of the largest numbers of Amazon fulfillment facilities in the United States.
In 2012, Amazon opened a warehouse in San Bernardino, Calif., a city about 70 miles east of Wilmington. San Bernardino has a per capita income of $14,922 according to the latest American Community Survey in 2016, less than half the national average of $29,892.
San Bernardino didn’t regain the number of jobs it lost in the recession until 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Amazon, on the other hand, recently released figures showing profits of $2.5 billion for the last quarter, the third consecutive quarter the company produced a profit of more than $1 billion.
The 2016 per-capita income of Carteret, New Jersey, another port city where Amazon opened a warehouse, is $24,926. On the whole, New Jersey’s recovery has been slower than California’s. The state didn't gain back the number of the jobs it lost during the recession until 2016.
Wilson left a better-paying job in the warehouse of an animal pharmaceutical manufacturer in Omaha, Neb., to move in with his mother who was living on disability in Long Beach and needed his support. In California, the two live together in a two-bedroom apartment where they pay $1,400 per month. Wilson initially began working at California Cartage because it was the easiest job he could get with his background in warehouse work.
Wilson’s situation could improve if he gets a job working directly for Amazon. But he faces long odds, not to mention that Amazon workers don’t have it easy either. A report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance showed fulfillment centers often pay less than the industry average for comparable work.
Sheheryar Kaoosji, an organizer at the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, an Inland Empire-based worker center, says that the demand for Amazon jobs in the area is so high that it’s often a challenge for workers who are hired on a part-time basis to secure a regular full-time position. Those part-timers are often not told what time their shift begins until two hours before they’re expected to show up.
“Those workers have to hustle to try to take every opportunity they’re given,” Kaoosji says. “If they pass something up. If they say, hey, I can't make it this day, they're much less likely to actually get that permanent position.”
Even when workers do get hired by Amazon, those jobs don’t necessarily last.
“Often we have folks who stick around after the Christmas rush, and they get laid off because Amazon—especially compared to a lot of companies—they have a really, really exaggerated kind of seasonal hiring,” says Kaoosji.
Wilson’s job is characteristic of many workers in the lowest rung of the logistics industry, which is increasingly being propelled directly or indirectly by Amazon. Both in Amazon facilities, and even more so in warehousing centers that handle Amazon freight, a large part of the workforce is often part-time or contingently employed through staffing agencies.
Northern New Jersey exurbs like Newark and New Brunswick are logistics hubs with a high concentration of “perma-temp” positions—where a temp agency connects workers to the same job at warehouses on a consistent basis. Carmen Martino, a labor studies professor at Rutgers, says it’s common for temp agencies to pop up in neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrant workers where the per-capita income is low.
“Actually, some years back, we mapped wherever the staffing agencies were located in proximity to where the workers lived,” Martino says. “And you can see in places like New Brunswick where the agencies were like a picket fence, right around the highest concentration of immigrant workers.”
Martino says it’s cheaper for warehouses to use temp agencies because they don’t have the responsibilities of providing for injured workers or paying for state and federal taxes on employees. It’s also more efficient for the temp agencies because they have to spend less time on training.
Meanwhile, workers like Wilson, stuck under these conditions, continue to work with no benefits and unstable hours, while companies like Amazon see their profits increase with no end in sight.
“Even if I work every day and I have an amazing work ethic,” Wilson says, “I still could be sent home after waiting for so long because they fill the spot.”
The products that Wilson moves are destined for Amazon customers, but Wilson doesn’t work directly for the e-commerce giant. He works for California Cartage, a logistics company that has a contract to unpack shipping containers full of Amazon goods. Wilson says that the majority of the cargo moving through his warehouse is headed straight to Amazon fulfillment facilities.
The national unemployment rate hit 3.8 percent in May, the lowest level since 2000, and companies across the country are complaining about the difficulty of finding workers. Yet Amazon has been able to staff its warehouses with workers who frequently earn little more than the local minimum wage. Many of them are contingent workers like Wilson, who get none of the stability and benefits that often come with working for one of the country’s largest companies.
Amazon has been able to keep finding workers for its warehouses—and keeping wages low—in part by tapping into areas where the economic recovery has been weak. New Jersey and California contain two of the largest numbers of Amazon fulfillment facilities in the United States.
In 2012, Amazon opened a warehouse in San Bernardino, Calif., a city about 70 miles east of Wilmington. San Bernardino has a per capita income of $14,922 according to the latest American Community Survey in 2016, less than half the national average of $29,892.
San Bernardino didn’t regain the number of jobs it lost in the recession until 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Amazon, on the other hand, recently released figures showing profits of $2.5 billion for the last quarter, the third consecutive quarter the company produced a profit of more than $1 billion.
The 2016 per-capita income of Carteret, New Jersey, another port city where Amazon opened a warehouse, is $24,926. On the whole, New Jersey’s recovery has been slower than California’s. The state didn't gain back the number of the jobs it lost during the recession until 2016.
Wilson left a better-paying job in the warehouse of an animal pharmaceutical manufacturer in Omaha, Neb., to move in with his mother who was living on disability in Long Beach and needed his support. In California, the two live together in a two-bedroom apartment where they pay $1,400 per month. Wilson initially began working at California Cartage because it was the easiest job he could get with his background in warehouse work.
Wilson’s situation could improve if he gets a job working directly for Amazon. But he faces long odds, not to mention that Amazon workers don’t have it easy either. A report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance showed fulfillment centers often pay less than the industry average for comparable work.
Sheheryar Kaoosji, an organizer at the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, an Inland Empire-based worker center, says that the demand for Amazon jobs in the area is so high that it’s often a challenge for workers who are hired on a part-time basis to secure a regular full-time position. Those part-timers are often not told what time their shift begins until two hours before they’re expected to show up.
“Those workers have to hustle to try to take every opportunity they’re given,” Kaoosji says. “If they pass something up. If they say, hey, I can't make it this day, they're much less likely to actually get that permanent position.”
Even when workers do get hired by Amazon, those jobs don’t necessarily last.
“Often we have folks who stick around after the Christmas rush, and they get laid off because Amazon—especially compared to a lot of companies—they have a really, really exaggerated kind of seasonal hiring,” says Kaoosji.
Wilson’s job is characteristic of many workers in the lowest rung of the logistics industry, which is increasingly being propelled directly or indirectly by Amazon. Both in Amazon facilities, and even more so in warehousing centers that handle Amazon freight, a large part of the workforce is often part-time or contingently employed through staffing agencies.
Northern New Jersey exurbs like Newark and New Brunswick are logistics hubs with a high concentration of “perma-temp” positions—where a temp agency connects workers to the same job at warehouses on a consistent basis. Carmen Martino, a labor studies professor at Rutgers, says it’s common for temp agencies to pop up in neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrant workers where the per-capita income is low.
“Actually, some years back, we mapped wherever the staffing agencies were located in proximity to where the workers lived,” Martino says. “And you can see in places like New Brunswick where the agencies were like a picket fence, right around the highest concentration of immigrant workers.”
Martino says it’s cheaper for warehouses to use temp agencies because they don’t have the responsibilities of providing for injured workers or paying for state and federal taxes on employees. It’s also more efficient for the temp agencies because they have to spend less time on training.
Meanwhile, workers like Wilson, stuck under these conditions, continue to work with no benefits and unstable hours, while companies like Amazon see their profits increase with no end in sight.
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