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Slavery 21st Century
You thought it was over, think again
feb 25, 2020
Slavery did not end it was merely outsourced,
reconfigured, and made politically correct
The Global Slavery Index
published on Thursday by Walk Free Foundation, describes modern slavery as a complex and often hidden crime that crosses borders, sectors and jurisdictions. The US number, the study estimates, is almost one hundredth of the estimated 40.3 million global total number of people it defines as being enslaved.
labor history - recommended reading
*THE SILK STRIKE OF 1913
*AMERICAN LABOR VIOLENCE: ITS CAUSES, CHARACTER, AND OUTCOME
headlines and issues
*Starbucks worker says he was fired for union organizing and 'to create fear'
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*New York’s Salon Workers Are Fighting For Better Conditions—And Winning
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We can’t afford healthcare’: US hospital workers fight for higher wages
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Santa Cruz graduate students striking for a living wage are met with threats and batons(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber changing app to avoid reach of California's new gig workers law
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘I'm not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse
Amazon(ARTICLE BELOW)
*SEATTLE HOSPITAL GIANT THREATENS TO LOCK OUT THOUSANDS OF STRIKING NURSES AND CAREGIVERS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Instacart Is Fighting Back Against Organizing. That’s Because It’s Working.
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Chipotle fined $1.37M over thousands of child labor abuses
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*"Do I do research or pay rent?" Grad students in Santa Cruz start a wildcat strike
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CALIFORNIA’S NEW GIG ECONOMY LAW IS STRENGTHENING A STRIPPER-LED LABOR MOVEMENT
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*DoorDash drivers make an average of $1.45 an hour, analysis finds
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*PETE BUTTIGIEG’S CAMPAIGN USED GIG-WORK PLATFORM, NOTORIOUS FOR LOW PAY, FOR POLLING
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*FedEx mounts big-money push to head off unionization by US workers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. employment in the 2010s in five charts
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber is trying to trick its drivers into skirting California's new contractor law
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Silicon Valley is primed for a worker uprising
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Amazon warehouse workers doing “back-breaking” work walked off the job in protest(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Bosses Are Charged with Breaking the Law in Over 40% of Union Campaigns
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Disney Sued by Labor Union for Failing to Pay Living Wage: Employees Have to ‘Live in Their Cars’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. third-quarter labor costs revised down; productivity weak
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We were lied to’: bankruptcy leaves truckers stranded as holidays near
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
Starbucks
Starbucks worker says he was fired for union organizing and 'to create fear'
Worker at Orlando international airport fired shortly he emerged as a leading organizer to unionize his co-workers
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Tue 25 Feb 2020 08.00 EST
Gabriel Ocasio Mejias worked as a barista at Starbucks in Orlando international airport for two years before he was fired on 18 February, shortly after he emerged as one of the leading organizers to unionize his co-workers with labor union Unite Here.
“I was fired three hours after another union organizer was fired,” Mejias told the Guardian. “They took me to the back of the food court, in a dimly lit area, and a manager fired me over a third write-up for drinking water. That was their way to get rid of me, for drinking water, because they know I was one of the strongest organizers. They targeted me specifically to create fear for my co-workers of joining the union.”
Starbucks did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
Mejias’s comments come as a new report from Unite Here found significant issues for some Starbucks workers employed by HMS Host, an airport and highway food service company that has maintained exclusive rights to operate Starbucks stores in airports throughout North America until earlier this month, when both companies announced the exclusivity deal would end.
The Unite Here report found that pay for black Starbucks workers was $1.85 less than white Starbucks workers, based on data taken from HMS Host locations between February and December 2019. Though more than 8,000 US Starbucks locations closed in May 2018 for racial bias training following an incident at a Philadelphia based Starbucks location, none of the HMS Host-operated Starbucks participated, according to the report.
Among the Starbucks employees employed by HMS Host at 29 US airports surveyed, 32% of workers reported being unable to pay their rent in the past year and 17% of workers surveyed rely on food assistance. Workers also reported several cases of LGBTQ+ discrimination, and one in four immigrant workers reported being told not to speak their preferred language at work. A memo included in the report from HMS Host outlines company policy where workers are mandated to only speak English, including in communication with other associates or when using a business or personal phone within proximity of other associates or customers.
HMS Host denied firing workers for union activity, but declined to comment on specific personnel issues citing privacy concerns. HMS Host also denied the allegations of discrimination and findings of the report.
“Unite Here continues to spread false information about HMS Host with the sole objective of exerting pressure and gaining leverage,” said an HMS Host spokesperson in an email.
In the wake of releasing the report this week, Unite Here plans to distribute leaflets at over 700 Starbucks locations in 40 cities around the US, calling on Starbucks to address issues of discrimination and inequity at its locations managed by HMS Host.
Starbucks has a long history of opposing unionization at its stores, and Mejias explained that although Starbucks touts a legacy of LGBTQ+ inclusion, he became involved in the union organizing drive due to discrimination issues he experienced while working at Starbucks. These include being told by management he was not allowed to wear makeup, though female co-workers were allowed to do so, and that management frequently made homophobic comments.
“They made me feel like I had to go back into the closet while I’m at work,” Mejias added.
While working at Starbucks, Mejias made $10.25 an hour, and had to work a second job at an athletic club to make ends meet. Unable to afford the health insurance offered to him as an employee, his mother sent medication from Puerto Rico to him for his epilepsy. He moved to Orlando from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
Mejias and another co-worker, Jay Kelly, a trans man, have filed complaints with the City of Orlando under the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.
“As I changed my name and started to grow facial hair, managers would still call me by my deadname or refer to me as ‘she’,” said Kelly, a barista at Starbucks in Orlando international airport for three years. He said his deadname is still used in scheduling, and managers have continued to misgender him.
Kelly also explained the wages are too low to live on, at just a little over $10 an hour.
“If I don’t have enough money to pay bills, I have to go to payday loans to get money to feed my nieces and nephews, or sometimes I feed them and not feed myself and go without eating,” Kelly added.
Since the union organizing drive began, Kelly said management has held several mandatory meetings with workers to discourage union membership.
Grayson Landauer, a Starbucks lead barista at Denver international airport for nine months, is also union organizing with co-workers in response to discrimination they have experienced on the job.
“HMS Host has treated workers with so much disrespect, in their attitude and in pay and benefits,” said Landauer. “I’ve been union organizing here because I think it’s time for a change. The management in Denver has responded by trying to intimidate workers about the union, scaring them about dues, and trying to discourage us all.”
“I was fired three hours after another union organizer was fired,” Mejias told the Guardian. “They took me to the back of the food court, in a dimly lit area, and a manager fired me over a third write-up for drinking water. That was their way to get rid of me, for drinking water, because they know I was one of the strongest organizers. They targeted me specifically to create fear for my co-workers of joining the union.”
Starbucks did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
Mejias’s comments come as a new report from Unite Here found significant issues for some Starbucks workers employed by HMS Host, an airport and highway food service company that has maintained exclusive rights to operate Starbucks stores in airports throughout North America until earlier this month, when both companies announced the exclusivity deal would end.
The Unite Here report found that pay for black Starbucks workers was $1.85 less than white Starbucks workers, based on data taken from HMS Host locations between February and December 2019. Though more than 8,000 US Starbucks locations closed in May 2018 for racial bias training following an incident at a Philadelphia based Starbucks location, none of the HMS Host-operated Starbucks participated, according to the report.
Among the Starbucks employees employed by HMS Host at 29 US airports surveyed, 32% of workers reported being unable to pay their rent in the past year and 17% of workers surveyed rely on food assistance. Workers also reported several cases of LGBTQ+ discrimination, and one in four immigrant workers reported being told not to speak their preferred language at work. A memo included in the report from HMS Host outlines company policy where workers are mandated to only speak English, including in communication with other associates or when using a business or personal phone within proximity of other associates or customers.
HMS Host denied firing workers for union activity, but declined to comment on specific personnel issues citing privacy concerns. HMS Host also denied the allegations of discrimination and findings of the report.
“Unite Here continues to spread false information about HMS Host with the sole objective of exerting pressure and gaining leverage,” said an HMS Host spokesperson in an email.
In the wake of releasing the report this week, Unite Here plans to distribute leaflets at over 700 Starbucks locations in 40 cities around the US, calling on Starbucks to address issues of discrimination and inequity at its locations managed by HMS Host.
Starbucks has a long history of opposing unionization at its stores, and Mejias explained that although Starbucks touts a legacy of LGBTQ+ inclusion, he became involved in the union organizing drive due to discrimination issues he experienced while working at Starbucks. These include being told by management he was not allowed to wear makeup, though female co-workers were allowed to do so, and that management frequently made homophobic comments.
“They made me feel like I had to go back into the closet while I’m at work,” Mejias added.
While working at Starbucks, Mejias made $10.25 an hour, and had to work a second job at an athletic club to make ends meet. Unable to afford the health insurance offered to him as an employee, his mother sent medication from Puerto Rico to him for his epilepsy. He moved to Orlando from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
Mejias and another co-worker, Jay Kelly, a trans man, have filed complaints with the City of Orlando under the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance.
“As I changed my name and started to grow facial hair, managers would still call me by my deadname or refer to me as ‘she’,” said Kelly, a barista at Starbucks in Orlando international airport for three years. He said his deadname is still used in scheduling, and managers have continued to misgender him.
Kelly also explained the wages are too low to live on, at just a little over $10 an hour.
“If I don’t have enough money to pay bills, I have to go to payday loans to get money to feed my nieces and nephews, or sometimes I feed them and not feed myself and go without eating,” Kelly added.
Since the union organizing drive began, Kelly said management has held several mandatory meetings with workers to discourage union membership.
Grayson Landauer, a Starbucks lead barista at Denver international airport for nine months, is also union organizing with co-workers in response to discrimination they have experienced on the job.
“HMS Host has treated workers with so much disrespect, in their attitude and in pay and benefits,” said Landauer. “I’ve been union organizing here because I think it’s time for a change. The management in Denver has responded by trying to intimidate workers about the union, scaring them about dues, and trying to discourage us all.”
New York’s Salon Workers Are Fighting For Better Conditions—And Winning
February 21, 2020
Bryce Covert - talk poverty
Glenda Sefla got a job in a nail salon in New York City when she first arrived from her home country of Ecuador because it was the first option she could find to make some money. But from the very beginning she knew something was wrong. “The conditions were really bad,” she told me, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter. One of those conditions was wage theft. She was working 10-hour days but making just $30 a day. That amounted to a mere $3 an hour, even though her wages and tips were supposed to come to at least $8 an hour.
That small amount of money didn’t cover her bills and expenses. “So then I just ended up working more,” she explained. She would work six or even seven days a week just to try to make ends meet. “I would just go to sleep and then go to work and then go to sleep and go to work,” she said. She spent three years putting in those kinds of hours. “I felt totally exhausted, physically and mentally.”
She eventually started working in a different salon in Manhattan where she made slightly more: $50-60 a day for the same hours. It still wasn’t enough to cover her bills. She had to eat “the most basic things,” always at home because she couldn’t afford to eat a meal out. She couldn’t buy herself anything, not even new clothes. “I couldn’t take care of my physical and mental health,” she said.
“You’re working so hard, but at the end of the week you still don’t have enough,” she added. “It makes it impossible to imagine a dignified life.”
Meanwhile, the salon owners never gave her and her coworkers information about how to protect their health and safety when working with chemicals everyday. Salon workers are routinely exposed to the “toxic trio” of formaldehyde, toluene, and dibutyl phthalate, common nail polish ingredients, as well as disinfectants such as alcohol. Exposure can lead to skin irritation and chronic conditions, allergies, and even reproductive problems.
Sefla didn’t realize that she had the right to more pay and better protection until she found the New York Nail Salon Workers Association, which organizes nail salon workers in the state around wages and working conditions. She’s now an organizer there.
“This wasn’t just something that was just happening to me,” she noted. For all of her compañeras in the industry, “This is the reality that we’re living.”
A new report backs her up. In a survey of about 100 nail salon workers in New York City and surrounding counties, the New York Nail Salon Workers Association found that 82 percent experienced wage theft. Employers are failing to pay the state’s tipped minimum wage, aren’t making up the difference when employees’ base wages and tips don’t add up to the full minimum wage, and don’t pay extra for overtime work. The hours are long: nearly two-thirds of nail salon employees say they work shifts that are at least 10 hours. But many aren’t paid time and a half for the extra hours they put in.
That wage theft is costing them, on average, more than $180 a week, or over $9,000 a year—steep sums for the majority immigrant female workers who survive off of little pay to begin with. More than 10 percent of respondents were losing more than $400 a week.
One source of the problem, the report finds, can be traced back to how little it costs to get a manicure in New York. Workers at salons that charge the lowest prices—$9 or less for a manicure—reported experiencing higher rates of wage theft and losing more money, while those at salons that charged at least $16 for a manicure kept more of the money they were due. “Low prices translate into illegal poverty wages,” the report states. But “as service prices increase, wage theft decreases.”
On top of the inadequate pay, the report also found that 86 percent of nail salon workers in New York City aren’t being given paid sick days, as is the law.
In 2015, a New York Times expose shone a light on the rampant mistreatment of nail salon employees in the city, who are often forced to work extremely long hours in harsh conditions for little pay. In its wake, the state implemented health and safety standards dealing with ventilation and protective equipment. It also now requires owners to take financial steps to ensure that workers can recover wages if it’s found they’re being underpaid and created a voluntary recognition process for those deploying best practices. But workers argue that even with some protections in place, they need stronger enforcement to get what they’re due. “While the legislation provided new protections for workers and regulations for employers, workers continue to organize to make those protections a reality,” the report notes.
“We still aren’t really seeing changes,” Sefla said. “We have established better laws, but we’re seeing that a lot of the owners are not complying with the new laws. So we haven’t seen the change that we’re looking for.”
In December, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he would get phase out the tipped minimum wage for a group of workers that includes nail salon employees (although excluded restaurant and hospitality workers), meaning salon owners will be required to pay the full minimum wage regardless of how much customers tip. But as the report notes, many workers weren’t even being paid the lower tipped wage to begin with. So they’re demanding more legislative action.
“We need mechanisms for enforcing those established laws,” Sefla said. “There won’t be any change without consequences and accountability.”
The heart of their demand is that the state legislature pass the Nail Salon Accountability Act, which will be introduced later this month. The law would change the licensing process so that workers’ feedback would be incorporated into the renewal process and owners would have to get certification proving that they are complying with labor, health, and safety laws. It would also mandate training for owners and workers on those laws. “Compliance with the law must become part of the cost of doing business,” the report states.
There are other potential legislative fixes in the works as well. Members of the assembly are considering a bill that would criminalize wage theft. The New York City council is working on a bill that would give salon owners subsidies so they could add proper ventilation.
“Esos son básicos,” Sefla said: These are basic things. “Son derechos que tenemos aquí en este país.” These are rights we have here in this country.
That small amount of money didn’t cover her bills and expenses. “So then I just ended up working more,” she explained. She would work six or even seven days a week just to try to make ends meet. “I would just go to sleep and then go to work and then go to sleep and go to work,” she said. She spent three years putting in those kinds of hours. “I felt totally exhausted, physically and mentally.”
She eventually started working in a different salon in Manhattan where she made slightly more: $50-60 a day for the same hours. It still wasn’t enough to cover her bills. She had to eat “the most basic things,” always at home because she couldn’t afford to eat a meal out. She couldn’t buy herself anything, not even new clothes. “I couldn’t take care of my physical and mental health,” she said.
“You’re working so hard, but at the end of the week you still don’t have enough,” she added. “It makes it impossible to imagine a dignified life.”
Meanwhile, the salon owners never gave her and her coworkers information about how to protect their health and safety when working with chemicals everyday. Salon workers are routinely exposed to the “toxic trio” of formaldehyde, toluene, and dibutyl phthalate, common nail polish ingredients, as well as disinfectants such as alcohol. Exposure can lead to skin irritation and chronic conditions, allergies, and even reproductive problems.
Sefla didn’t realize that she had the right to more pay and better protection until she found the New York Nail Salon Workers Association, which organizes nail salon workers in the state around wages and working conditions. She’s now an organizer there.
“This wasn’t just something that was just happening to me,” she noted. For all of her compañeras in the industry, “This is the reality that we’re living.”
A new report backs her up. In a survey of about 100 nail salon workers in New York City and surrounding counties, the New York Nail Salon Workers Association found that 82 percent experienced wage theft. Employers are failing to pay the state’s tipped minimum wage, aren’t making up the difference when employees’ base wages and tips don’t add up to the full minimum wage, and don’t pay extra for overtime work. The hours are long: nearly two-thirds of nail salon employees say they work shifts that are at least 10 hours. But many aren’t paid time and a half for the extra hours they put in.
That wage theft is costing them, on average, more than $180 a week, or over $9,000 a year—steep sums for the majority immigrant female workers who survive off of little pay to begin with. More than 10 percent of respondents were losing more than $400 a week.
One source of the problem, the report finds, can be traced back to how little it costs to get a manicure in New York. Workers at salons that charge the lowest prices—$9 or less for a manicure—reported experiencing higher rates of wage theft and losing more money, while those at salons that charged at least $16 for a manicure kept more of the money they were due. “Low prices translate into illegal poverty wages,” the report states. But “as service prices increase, wage theft decreases.”
On top of the inadequate pay, the report also found that 86 percent of nail salon workers in New York City aren’t being given paid sick days, as is the law.
In 2015, a New York Times expose shone a light on the rampant mistreatment of nail salon employees in the city, who are often forced to work extremely long hours in harsh conditions for little pay. In its wake, the state implemented health and safety standards dealing with ventilation and protective equipment. It also now requires owners to take financial steps to ensure that workers can recover wages if it’s found they’re being underpaid and created a voluntary recognition process for those deploying best practices. But workers argue that even with some protections in place, they need stronger enforcement to get what they’re due. “While the legislation provided new protections for workers and regulations for employers, workers continue to organize to make those protections a reality,” the report notes.
“We still aren’t really seeing changes,” Sefla said. “We have established better laws, but we’re seeing that a lot of the owners are not complying with the new laws. So we haven’t seen the change that we’re looking for.”
In December, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he would get phase out the tipped minimum wage for a group of workers that includes nail salon employees (although excluded restaurant and hospitality workers), meaning salon owners will be required to pay the full minimum wage regardless of how much customers tip. But as the report notes, many workers weren’t even being paid the lower tipped wage to begin with. So they’re demanding more legislative action.
“We need mechanisms for enforcing those established laws,” Sefla said. “There won’t be any change without consequences and accountability.”
The heart of their demand is that the state legislature pass the Nail Salon Accountability Act, which will be introduced later this month. The law would change the licensing process so that workers’ feedback would be incorporated into the renewal process and owners would have to get certification proving that they are complying with labor, health, and safety laws. It would also mandate training for owners and workers on those laws. “Compliance with the law must become part of the cost of doing business,” the report states.
There are other potential legislative fixes in the works as well. Members of the assembly are considering a bill that would criminalize wage theft. The New York City council is working on a bill that would give salon owners subsidies so they could add proper ventilation.
“Esos son básicos,” Sefla said: These are basic things. “Son derechos que tenemos aquí en este país.” These are rights we have here in this country.
‘We can’t afford healthcare’: US hospital workers fight for higher wages
Healthcare workers are launching union drives and organizing protests across the US for better pay and working conditions
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Mon 17 Feb 2020 05.00 EST
Workers take part in a protest in Chicago. According to the SEIU, there are about 50,000 low-wage hospital workers throughout the Chicago metro area. Photograph: Aaron Cynic/Courtesy of SEIU Healthcare
Hospital and healthcare workers across the US are launching union drives and organizing protests in order to win higher wages and better working conditions, saying their industry exploits them and leaves them often unable to afford healthcare, despite working in the sector.
In Chicago, the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas (SEIU) is launching a campaign to organize hospital workers to ensure a $15 minimum wage extends to workers outside the city limits of Chicago, where the promise of such a rise has already been won.
According to the SEIU, there are about 50,000 low-wage hospital workers throughout the Chicago metro area and about 10,000 are currently represented by the union.
LeChrisha Pearson, a single mother and certified nursing assistant for eight years at Chicago’s Mount Sinai hospital, was one of about 400 workers at the hospital who organized a union in June 2019, and threatened to strike in November 2019 before winning a contract that would raise wages for all workers to $15 an hour.
She works two to three jobs, including as a delivery driver for Uber Eats, to make ends meet while working full-time at the hospital.
“We’re trying to make sure every hospital worker across the city has a voice when it comes to making decisions in the workplace,” added Pearson. “It’s just starting, but it’s a campaign that needs to expand throughout the healthcare system as a whole.”
As part of the campaign, four unionized hospitals in the Chicago area will be fighting for new union contracts to address issues rampant throughout the hospital industry, including low pay, poor working conditions, unaffordable healthcare and inequities in hospital funding.
“We work in the healthcare field, but we can’t afford the healthcare ourselves. It’s ridiculous. When we look at the staffing issues, they can work us, knowing we’re short-staffed, but they don’t care,” said Kimberly Smith, a patient care technician at Northwestern Memorial hospital, and a union chief steward.
She has recently received threats of a lawsuit due to an inability to pay for medical debt she accrued after an emergency room visit to the hospital where she has worked at for 16 years.
Northwestern did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
One of the union’s organizing targets are hospital workers at Aurora Healthcare, who are not yet unionized.
Bill Gentry has worked as an EMT and CNA for 23 years at Advocate Aurora Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois. Despite working at the hospital for over two decades and holding two certifications, he makes just $18 an hour with unaffordable health insurance, no retirement pension, and is forced to do work outside of his job scope.
“We’re answering phones and doing direct patient care as well. Our pay doesn’t reflect we do secretary work,” said Gentry. “We’re overworked and underpaid. You would think because we take care of people, our benefits would reflect that, but I’m currently on my wife’s insurance because I can’t afford the health insurance offered by the hospital.”
A spokesperson for Advocate Aurora Health did not address the additional job duties Gentry described, but cited in an email the company is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021.
“While we respect individuals’ rights to consider union membership, we honor and want to maintain the direct relationship we have with our team members, allowing us to create the best environment for them to pursue their passion and help us deliver safe, quality patient care,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile in Las Vegas, hospital workers are fighting against proposed cuts in their latest union contract with Valley Hospital Medical Center, owned by UHS, one of the largest hospital chains in the US.
Pat Porchia worked as an environmental services attendant at Valley Hospital Medical Center for 23 years before she was fired along with two other union stewards in November 2019.
“They fired three of us on the union committee in one week,” Porchia said. “I knew they were getting ready to fire me. They would trail us everyday, sometimes three managers would check our stations, turn over everything to find something to write me up that day, they would come back the next week, do the same thing.”
According to the Culinary Union Local 226, which represents workers at Valley Hospital Medical Center, the hospital is proposing to cut wages by $3 an hour, eliminate a guaranteed 40-hour work week and eliminate health and pension benefits. Unfair labor practice charges for the firings filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are currently under review.
A spokesperson for the Valley Health System declined to comment on Porchia’s termination or union contract negotiations.
In Pennsylvania workers have been trying to organize a union at Pittsburgh’s largest employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), for several years.
Alexandria Cutler, a food service attendant at UPMC Presbyterian and Western Psychiatric hospital for two years who makes $14.42 an hour, is trying to organize a union for herself and colleagues.
In early 2018, Cutler suffered a back injury on the job and is still struggling with about $2,000 in medical debt from UPMC due an emergency room visit. She criticized the slow rollout of UPMC’s plan to increase its minimum hourly wage to $15 an hour by 2021.
“Everything, bills and living costs, is going to go up by the time UPMC decides to pay $15 an hour,” said Cutler. “They say they take pride in giving dignity and respect to people, but they don’t give that to employees.”
Cutler explained she has been intimidated by managers for supporting unionization and cited she was forced to remove a union pin from her uniform.
UPMC has faced several unfair labor practice charges with the NLRBa with mixed results. In August 2018, the board ruled against UPMC, ordering several UPMC hospitals to reinstate three illegally fired employees and stop intimidation, threats and surveillance of workers.
A spokesperson for UPMC denied claims of union busting by its management. “We continue to believe that our employees have better experiences when they work directly with their management teams,” the spokesperson said in an email.
In Chicago, the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas (SEIU) is launching a campaign to organize hospital workers to ensure a $15 minimum wage extends to workers outside the city limits of Chicago, where the promise of such a rise has already been won.
According to the SEIU, there are about 50,000 low-wage hospital workers throughout the Chicago metro area and about 10,000 are currently represented by the union.
LeChrisha Pearson, a single mother and certified nursing assistant for eight years at Chicago’s Mount Sinai hospital, was one of about 400 workers at the hospital who organized a union in June 2019, and threatened to strike in November 2019 before winning a contract that would raise wages for all workers to $15 an hour.
She works two to three jobs, including as a delivery driver for Uber Eats, to make ends meet while working full-time at the hospital.
“We’re trying to make sure every hospital worker across the city has a voice when it comes to making decisions in the workplace,” added Pearson. “It’s just starting, but it’s a campaign that needs to expand throughout the healthcare system as a whole.”
As part of the campaign, four unionized hospitals in the Chicago area will be fighting for new union contracts to address issues rampant throughout the hospital industry, including low pay, poor working conditions, unaffordable healthcare and inequities in hospital funding.
“We work in the healthcare field, but we can’t afford the healthcare ourselves. It’s ridiculous. When we look at the staffing issues, they can work us, knowing we’re short-staffed, but they don’t care,” said Kimberly Smith, a patient care technician at Northwestern Memorial hospital, and a union chief steward.
She has recently received threats of a lawsuit due to an inability to pay for medical debt she accrued after an emergency room visit to the hospital where she has worked at for 16 years.
Northwestern did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
One of the union’s organizing targets are hospital workers at Aurora Healthcare, who are not yet unionized.
Bill Gentry has worked as an EMT and CNA for 23 years at Advocate Aurora Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois. Despite working at the hospital for over two decades and holding two certifications, he makes just $18 an hour with unaffordable health insurance, no retirement pension, and is forced to do work outside of his job scope.
“We’re answering phones and doing direct patient care as well. Our pay doesn’t reflect we do secretary work,” said Gentry. “We’re overworked and underpaid. You would think because we take care of people, our benefits would reflect that, but I’m currently on my wife’s insurance because I can’t afford the health insurance offered by the hospital.”
A spokesperson for Advocate Aurora Health did not address the additional job duties Gentry described, but cited in an email the company is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021.
“While we respect individuals’ rights to consider union membership, we honor and want to maintain the direct relationship we have with our team members, allowing us to create the best environment for them to pursue their passion and help us deliver safe, quality patient care,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile in Las Vegas, hospital workers are fighting against proposed cuts in their latest union contract with Valley Hospital Medical Center, owned by UHS, one of the largest hospital chains in the US.
Pat Porchia worked as an environmental services attendant at Valley Hospital Medical Center for 23 years before she was fired along with two other union stewards in November 2019.
“They fired three of us on the union committee in one week,” Porchia said. “I knew they were getting ready to fire me. They would trail us everyday, sometimes three managers would check our stations, turn over everything to find something to write me up that day, they would come back the next week, do the same thing.”
According to the Culinary Union Local 226, which represents workers at Valley Hospital Medical Center, the hospital is proposing to cut wages by $3 an hour, eliminate a guaranteed 40-hour work week and eliminate health and pension benefits. Unfair labor practice charges for the firings filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are currently under review.
A spokesperson for the Valley Health System declined to comment on Porchia’s termination or union contract negotiations.
In Pennsylvania workers have been trying to organize a union at Pittsburgh’s largest employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), for several years.
Alexandria Cutler, a food service attendant at UPMC Presbyterian and Western Psychiatric hospital for two years who makes $14.42 an hour, is trying to organize a union for herself and colleagues.
In early 2018, Cutler suffered a back injury on the job and is still struggling with about $2,000 in medical debt from UPMC due an emergency room visit. She criticized the slow rollout of UPMC’s plan to increase its minimum hourly wage to $15 an hour by 2021.
“Everything, bills and living costs, is going to go up by the time UPMC decides to pay $15 an hour,” said Cutler. “They say they take pride in giving dignity and respect to people, but they don’t give that to employees.”
Cutler explained she has been intimidated by managers for supporting unionization and cited she was forced to remove a union pin from her uniform.
UPMC has faced several unfair labor practice charges with the NLRBa with mixed results. In August 2018, the board ruled against UPMC, ordering several UPMC hospitals to reinstate three illegally fired employees and stop intimidation, threats and surveillance of workers.
A spokesperson for UPMC denied claims of union busting by its management. “We continue to believe that our employees have better experiences when they work directly with their management teams,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Santa Cruz graduate students striking for a living wage are met with threats and batons
Campus police crack down on the student strikers struggling to survive in a gentrified college town
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
FEBRUARY 11, 2020 11:58PM (UTC)
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, graduate students live and learn in one of the most expensive cities in the United States, subsisting on salaries that are often below $20,000.
"Since I've moved to Santa Cruz I've had to move four times until I've found a place I feel safe in," Yulia Gilichinskaya, a fourth-year PhD student in Film & Digital Media told Salon in an interview. "I pay over 70 percent of my paycheck in rent."
Though its teaching assistants and graders are well-represented by the United Auto Workers, in a union that covers all the teaching assistants at all of the University of California's nine campuses, Santa Cruz's affordability crisis is unique. Years of anxiety and stress over surviving as a graduate student led to an unprecedented wildcat strike, which tipped off at the beginning of the year.
Now, with their demands still unmet, the student strike is escalating — while police and campus officials are reacting with threats that seem out of proportion to the nonviolent labor action.
On Monday, graduate students went on a full wildcat teaching strike, meaning they are withholding teaching, grading, and office hours. This strike follows previous actions such as withholding 12,000 grades last quarter and taking one of their contractually protected sick days to attend the University of California Regents meeting in January. These efforts have yet to induce the university to meet their collective demand to include a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) to help alleviate the rent burden of living in an expensive California town.
As Salon previously reported, graduate student teaching assistants at UCSC make $2,434 a month before taxes, for only nine months of the year. The median monthly rent in Santa Cruz County is $1,685, according to data from the American Community Survey.
Jane Komori, a third-year PhD student in UCSC's History of Consciousness, explained to Salon previously: "Everything else is expensive too; these are dismal conditions to learn in and to work in as a teacher."
University of California's tutors, readers, graduate student instructors and teaching assistants across all campuses in the state are unionized with UAW Local 2865. Strikes or threats of strikes are common, but a wildcat strike is uncommon. UC Santa Cruz workers say they turned to a wildcat strike out of frustration: the current statewide UAW Local 2865 contract has language regarding 3 percent wage increases annually, and there is no language about housing subsidies. UC Santa Cruz workers were disappointed with leadership when the current contract was pushed through to approval in August 2018.
The full-on wildcat strike continued on Tuesday. According to several reports, it has been met with resistance and retaliation from university administrators, such as threats to terminate employment. There has also been at least one arrest, and two witnesses from the picket line told Salon they've seen the on-campus UC Santa Cruz Police use violence against protesters.
"The cops were very violent with the batons," Gilichinskaya told Salon. "I've seen people get pushed in their stomachs."
A video taken by a protester and posted to Facebook shows a crowd of on-campus police running into a non-violent crowd, batons waving.
Gilichinskaya added that there have been passive threats of deportation to international students like herself.
"I'm an international grad student, and that means fewer resources are available for me," Gilichinskaya, who grew up in Russia, told Salon. "I could not get another job like other grad students do to survive; my visa status doesn't allow me to be an employee outside the university; I don't qualify for financial aid or federal loan programs."
"For us, threats to our employment and student status basically mean a threat of deportation," Gilichinskaya added.
Lori Kletzer, Interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, has said in a statement that "participation in the strike will lead to consequences up to and including dismissal from employment" because it is "unauthorized and violates the terms of the collective bargaining agreement."
In an emailed statement to Salon, Scott Hernandez-Jason, the Director of News and Media Relations at UC Santa Cruz, told Salon the above threats weren't meant to be taken as one that would result in deportation.
"The email was well-intentioned and meant to provide fair notice of possible outcomes, though we recognize it may have inadvertently created unnecessarily anxiety in our community," Hernandez-Jason said. "That was not the purpose and we regret any fear it created."
He did confirm there was an arrest on Monday "on a suspicion of delaying and obstructing officers and for driving the wrong way on a roadway."
The arrested student was a fourth-year undergraduate who was delivering water to strikers on the picket line. Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs, was the passenger of the student who was arrested as part of an effort led by Food Not Bombs, a volunteer program that shares free vegan meals with the local community, delivering water to the strikers.
"I've never had a problem driving up and delivering food; I've been taking food up there for 7 years," he told Salon in an interview. McHenry said the "cops just grabbed" the student, starting "roughing the student up," and then arrested them. According to an update on Twitter, the student was then suspended by the administration.
Hernandez-Jason told Salon: "The UC Santa Cruz Police Department is working to get a statement from a student who reported being injured by police officers."
"The police department is committed to supporting the public's safety and protecting the rights of everyone in our campus community," Hernandez-Jason said. "Officers are held to a high standard and the department will conduct a thorough review."
As Salon previously reported, the strike has had some residual effects on graduate students on other UC campuses. University of California, Santa Barbara graduate students previously called in sick in solidarity with their Santa Cruz peers.
"Since I've moved to Santa Cruz I've had to move four times until I've found a place I feel safe in," Yulia Gilichinskaya, a fourth-year PhD student in Film & Digital Media told Salon in an interview. "I pay over 70 percent of my paycheck in rent."
Though its teaching assistants and graders are well-represented by the United Auto Workers, in a union that covers all the teaching assistants at all of the University of California's nine campuses, Santa Cruz's affordability crisis is unique. Years of anxiety and stress over surviving as a graduate student led to an unprecedented wildcat strike, which tipped off at the beginning of the year.
Now, with their demands still unmet, the student strike is escalating — while police and campus officials are reacting with threats that seem out of proportion to the nonviolent labor action.
On Monday, graduate students went on a full wildcat teaching strike, meaning they are withholding teaching, grading, and office hours. This strike follows previous actions such as withholding 12,000 grades last quarter and taking one of their contractually protected sick days to attend the University of California Regents meeting in January. These efforts have yet to induce the university to meet their collective demand to include a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) to help alleviate the rent burden of living in an expensive California town.
As Salon previously reported, graduate student teaching assistants at UCSC make $2,434 a month before taxes, for only nine months of the year. The median monthly rent in Santa Cruz County is $1,685, according to data from the American Community Survey.
Jane Komori, a third-year PhD student in UCSC's History of Consciousness, explained to Salon previously: "Everything else is expensive too; these are dismal conditions to learn in and to work in as a teacher."
University of California's tutors, readers, graduate student instructors and teaching assistants across all campuses in the state are unionized with UAW Local 2865. Strikes or threats of strikes are common, but a wildcat strike is uncommon. UC Santa Cruz workers say they turned to a wildcat strike out of frustration: the current statewide UAW Local 2865 contract has language regarding 3 percent wage increases annually, and there is no language about housing subsidies. UC Santa Cruz workers were disappointed with leadership when the current contract was pushed through to approval in August 2018.
The full-on wildcat strike continued on Tuesday. According to several reports, it has been met with resistance and retaliation from university administrators, such as threats to terminate employment. There has also been at least one arrest, and two witnesses from the picket line told Salon they've seen the on-campus UC Santa Cruz Police use violence against protesters.
"The cops were very violent with the batons," Gilichinskaya told Salon. "I've seen people get pushed in their stomachs."
A video taken by a protester and posted to Facebook shows a crowd of on-campus police running into a non-violent crowd, batons waving.
Gilichinskaya added that there have been passive threats of deportation to international students like herself.
"I'm an international grad student, and that means fewer resources are available for me," Gilichinskaya, who grew up in Russia, told Salon. "I could not get another job like other grad students do to survive; my visa status doesn't allow me to be an employee outside the university; I don't qualify for financial aid or federal loan programs."
"For us, threats to our employment and student status basically mean a threat of deportation," Gilichinskaya added.
Lori Kletzer, Interim Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, has said in a statement that "participation in the strike will lead to consequences up to and including dismissal from employment" because it is "unauthorized and violates the terms of the collective bargaining agreement."
In an emailed statement to Salon, Scott Hernandez-Jason, the Director of News and Media Relations at UC Santa Cruz, told Salon the above threats weren't meant to be taken as one that would result in deportation.
"The email was well-intentioned and meant to provide fair notice of possible outcomes, though we recognize it may have inadvertently created unnecessarily anxiety in our community," Hernandez-Jason said. "That was not the purpose and we regret any fear it created."
He did confirm there was an arrest on Monday "on a suspicion of delaying and obstructing officers and for driving the wrong way on a roadway."
The arrested student was a fourth-year undergraduate who was delivering water to strikers on the picket line. Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs, was the passenger of the student who was arrested as part of an effort led by Food Not Bombs, a volunteer program that shares free vegan meals with the local community, delivering water to the strikers.
"I've never had a problem driving up and delivering food; I've been taking food up there for 7 years," he told Salon in an interview. McHenry said the "cops just grabbed" the student, starting "roughing the student up," and then arrested them. According to an update on Twitter, the student was then suspended by the administration.
Hernandez-Jason told Salon: "The UC Santa Cruz Police Department is working to get a statement from a student who reported being injured by police officers."
"The police department is committed to supporting the public's safety and protecting the rights of everyone in our campus community," Hernandez-Jason said. "Officers are held to a high standard and the department will conduct a thorough review."
As Salon previously reported, the strike has had some residual effects on graduate students on other UC campuses. University of California, Santa Barbara graduate students previously called in sick in solidarity with their Santa Cruz peers.
Uber
Uber changing app to avoid reach of California's new gig workers law
The company is giving drivers more freedom, but critics say the move is a ‘smokescreen’ and that nothing has really changed
Kari Paul in San Francisco
the guardian
Fri 7 Feb 2020 06.00 EST
For the past month, the ride-hailing company Uber has been piloting new features in California, such as letting drivers set their own payment rates, in hopes it will avoid the reach of a new state law threatening to reclassify its contractors as full-time employees.
But workers – and legal experts – say they aren’t fooled.
“This is a smokescreen to make it look like we have more say than we do,” said Steve Gregg, a California driver who has completed more than 16,000 rides for Uber and Lyft over the past three years. “They are trying to manipulate their public image.”
On 1 January, California enacted a law known as AB5, which changes the way contract workers are classified. It implements a three-part standard for determining whether workers are properly classified as independent contractors, requiring that 1) they are free from the company’s control; 2) they are doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business; and 3) they have an independent business in that industry.
As a means of complying, Uber now allows drivers to get more trip information up front before accepting a rider’s request, including travel time, distance, destination and estimated fare. Drivers can now reject ride requests without penalty.
The change gives drivers the illusion of more autonomy, but “seems like a trick”, said Veena Dubal, an associate professor of labor law at University of California-Hastings. If a driver sets a fare too high, they may end up waiting longer for a passenger. If they set it too low, they won’t be able to cover their costs.
“This is incentivizing a race to the bottom”, Dubal said. “I am skeptical this is good for workers.”
Nor will it help Uber drivers to pass the three-part test at the center of AB5, Dubal said, as the core of Uber’s business will still be driving. Drivers will thus fail part two, which declares a worker must be “doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business” in order to be a contractor.
Instead, she suggested these changes may lead customers to believe drivers have more autonomy than they do, which is key ahead of the ballot measure Uber has pledged to introduce in 2020 to counteract AB5.
Uber drivers have long asked for more freedom to cancel rides, but the changes are too little too late, Gregg said.
“Nothing has really changed, but Uber makes it as convoluted as possible to make it seem like they have changed,” he said.
Since 21 January, Uber has been testing an additional feature in several cities that allows drivers to set their own payment rates, in an effort to prove its employees are contractors with freedom to set their own wages.
Under this new bidding system, Uber sets a base fare and drivers are then able to increase the rate in 10% increments, to reach up to five times the base price of the ride set by Uber. Uber then matches each rider with the driver who has set the lowest price. Drivers who have set higher fares will be matched as more rides are requested.
It is currently being tested only at airports in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Sacramento, a spokesman for the company said. He said these changes were meant to “enhance drivers’ control” over their earnings to address AB5.
“Since AB5 has gone into effect, we’ve made a number of product changes to preserve flexible work for tens of thousands of California drivers,” he said. “We’re now doing an initial test of additional changes which would give drivers more control over the rates they charge riders.”
Uber has also introduced measures on the rider side, showing them a range of prices based on distance and time when hailing a ride rather than the set rate provided in the past. They will also be able to select “favorite” drivers to be matched with again in the future.
“This has much more to do with public perception than whether it will actually have a legal impact on AB5,” Dubal said. “The intention is to create confusion among the riding public and among drivers.”
But workers – and legal experts – say they aren’t fooled.
“This is a smokescreen to make it look like we have more say than we do,” said Steve Gregg, a California driver who has completed more than 16,000 rides for Uber and Lyft over the past three years. “They are trying to manipulate their public image.”
On 1 January, California enacted a law known as AB5, which changes the way contract workers are classified. It implements a three-part standard for determining whether workers are properly classified as independent contractors, requiring that 1) they are free from the company’s control; 2) they are doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business; and 3) they have an independent business in that industry.
As a means of complying, Uber now allows drivers to get more trip information up front before accepting a rider’s request, including travel time, distance, destination and estimated fare. Drivers can now reject ride requests without penalty.
The change gives drivers the illusion of more autonomy, but “seems like a trick”, said Veena Dubal, an associate professor of labor law at University of California-Hastings. If a driver sets a fare too high, they may end up waiting longer for a passenger. If they set it too low, they won’t be able to cover their costs.
“This is incentivizing a race to the bottom”, Dubal said. “I am skeptical this is good for workers.”
Nor will it help Uber drivers to pass the three-part test at the center of AB5, Dubal said, as the core of Uber’s business will still be driving. Drivers will thus fail part two, which declares a worker must be “doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business” in order to be a contractor.
Instead, she suggested these changes may lead customers to believe drivers have more autonomy than they do, which is key ahead of the ballot measure Uber has pledged to introduce in 2020 to counteract AB5.
Uber drivers have long asked for more freedom to cancel rides, but the changes are too little too late, Gregg said.
“Nothing has really changed, but Uber makes it as convoluted as possible to make it seem like they have changed,” he said.
Since 21 January, Uber has been testing an additional feature in several cities that allows drivers to set their own payment rates, in an effort to prove its employees are contractors with freedom to set their own wages.
Under this new bidding system, Uber sets a base fare and drivers are then able to increase the rate in 10% increments, to reach up to five times the base price of the ride set by Uber. Uber then matches each rider with the driver who has set the lowest price. Drivers who have set higher fares will be matched as more rides are requested.
It is currently being tested only at airports in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Sacramento, a spokesman for the company said. He said these changes were meant to “enhance drivers’ control” over their earnings to address AB5.
“Since AB5 has gone into effect, we’ve made a number of product changes to preserve flexible work for tens of thousands of California drivers,” he said. “We’re now doing an initial test of additional changes which would give drivers more control over the rates they charge riders.”
Uber has also introduced measures on the rider side, showing them a range of prices based on distance and time when hailing a ride rather than the set rate provided in the past. They will also be able to select “favorite” drivers to be matched with again in the future.
“This has much more to do with public perception than whether it will actually have a legal impact on AB5,” Dubal said. “The intention is to create confusion among the riding public and among drivers.”
‘I'm not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse
Employees under pressure to work faster call on retail giant to improve conditions – and take their complaints seriously
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Wed 5 Feb 2020 03.01 EST
Rina Cummings has worked three 12-hour shifts every week at Amazon’s gargantuan New York City warehouse, called JFK8, on Staten Island since it first began operations in late 2018. As a sorter on the outbound ship dock, her job is to inspect and scan a mandated rate of 1,800 Amazon packages an hour – 30 per minute – that are sent through a chute and transported on a conveyor belt before leaving the facility for delivery.
Workers such as Cummings helped Amazon achieve its best ever Christmas this year. Faster shipping drove Amazon’s revenues to $87bn for fourth quarter of 2019, adding another $12.8bn to founder Jeff Bezos’s $128.9bn fortune. Amazon has just signed a deal to take another 450,000 sq ft of warehouse space on the island to speed delivery to its New York-area consumers.
But while New York customers, and Amazon’s shareholders, may be happy, some workers are not. In November, as the holiday rush got into full swing, Cummings was one of 600 workers at the Amazon warehouse who signed and delivered a petition to management calling on Amazon to improve working conditions.
The petition called on Amazon to consolidate workers’ two 15-minute breaks into a 30-minute one. Workers say it can take up to 15 minutes just to walk to and from the warehouse break room. Workers also called for Amazon to provide more reliable public transit services to the warehouse. They also called attention to reports of high injury rates at the facility there, which were found to be three times the national average for warehouses, based on the company’s injury reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Cummings first became involved with Amazon worker organizing efforts after witnessing several cases where, she claims, her colleagues were treated unfairly – and the safety concerns she works through during her own shifts at Amazon.
“There are days I say I’m just at the mercy of God,” said Cummings. She said the only changes Amazon implemented after the high injury report was published was to install video monitors around the warehouse that tell workers safety is the company’s number one priority.
“There has been no real change. There are still injuries. They were saying the report is not accurate, but it’s just a way for them to avoid responsibility,” she said.
Cummings said injuries are common among her colleagues, and she often experiences close calls. A few weeks ago, a pin sticking out of the conveyor belt tore off one of her work gloves, almost taking her hand with it. She also said some packages that drop on to her conveyor belt from the chute are either too large to be on it or improperly packaged, so the package’s contents burst open on the belt, which she said recently injured one of her colleagues.
When packages, especially envelopes with liquid, burst on the conveyor belt, Cummings often has to stop the belt to clean up the mess, but is still expected to hit her hourly rate. She’s been written up once for missing her rate because several of these incidents happened in the same week.
“People get fired regularly,” she said. “It just takes two or three write-ups, depending on the severity. You can get fired for anything.”
Cummings has impaired vision and is required by law to receive disability accommodations for her job. But she said new managers consistently try to place her in other departments she is unable to do the work in.
“I had a manager ask me: are you sure you can’t see?” said Cummings. Her mobility counselor sent Amazon a detailed email with suggestions on safety improvements, such as painting safety lines in the warehouse brighter colors and installing yellow safety strips on all stairs. But Cummings said all the suggestions were ignored.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company has a comprehensive medical accommodations process.
Raymond Velez worked as a packer at the Amazon JFK8 warehouse from October 2018 to November 2019. He was required to pack at a rate of 700 items per hour. He said workers are regularly fired for missing rates.
“That’s all they care about. They don’t care about their employees,” Velez added. “They care more about the robots than they care about the employees. I’ve been to Amcare [the company’s on-site medical unit] a couple times for not feeling well, and you’d get an aspirin and sent back to work.”
Juan Espinoza, who worked as a picker at the Amazon Staten Island warehouse, quit because of the grueling working conditions.
“I was a picker and we were expected to always pick 400 units within the hour in seven seconds of each item we picked,” said Espinoza. “I couldn’t handle it. I’m a human being, not a robot.”
Ilya Geller, who worked as a stower, told of the pressure workers face from being surveilled by computers to ensure productivity rates are met.
“You’re being tracked by a computer the entire time you’re there. You don’t get reported or written up by managers. You get written up by an algorithm,” said Geller. “You’re keenly aware there is an algorithm keeping track of you, making sure you keep going as fast as you can, because if there is too much time lapsed between items, the computer will know this, will write you up, and you will get fired.”
An Amazon spokesperson told the Guardian in an email: “Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazonian and we measure actual performance against those expectations.”
The spokesperson said coaching is provided to under-performing workers.
Jimpat Lacewell started working at Amazon in Staten Island in November as a sorter, but quit after three days because it reminded him of prison – not least because of the 20-minute wait to get through security in and out of the facility.
“I would rather go back to a state correctional facility and work for 18 cents an hour than do that job,” Lacewell said. “I’m sure Mr Bezos couldn’t do a full shift at that place as an undercover boss.”
Other Amazon workers at the New York City warehouse were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation, but also reported unaddressed safety concerns and frequent worker injuries.
“I’ve been out of work twice in the past year due to knee pain,” said an Amazon order picker. They explained their second injury was a result of their manager ignoring medical restrictions from surgery on his right foot.
Another order picker said they are constantly dealing with chronic lower back pain and knee pain due to the job.
“I take Tylenol or Aleve two to three times a week,” the worker said. “Almost every night when I wake up, I have really bad, sharp, needle-like lower back pain. I’ve had to use my paid time off a lot just to recover or work half days.”
An Amazon associate who transferred to the New York City warehouse to help train the new workers said they transferred to a different warehouse because their safety concerns and suggestions were repeatedly ignored by upper level managers.
“It has terrible safety for powered industrial truck (PIT) operators and pedestrian traffic, which is why I left,” said the worker.
“I reported several violations to safety there – only to get brushed off and pushed aside.”
They characterized the PIT lane as a highway for equipment such as forklifts and electric pallet jacks.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company recently installed guard rails across the dock at JFK8 to eliminate all pedestrian interaction with the PIT lane.
The spokesperson added: “It’s inaccurate to say that our FCs are unsafe and any effort to paint our workplaces as such based on the number of injury recordings is misleading given the size of our workforce. While many companies under-record safety incidents in order to keep their rates low, Amazon does the opposite – we take an aggressive stance on recording injuries no matter how big or small.
“We believe so strongly in the environment provided for fulfillment center employees, including our safety culture, that we offer public tours where anyone can come see for themselves one of our sites and its working conditions first-hand.”
Workers such as Cummings helped Amazon achieve its best ever Christmas this year. Faster shipping drove Amazon’s revenues to $87bn for fourth quarter of 2019, adding another $12.8bn to founder Jeff Bezos’s $128.9bn fortune. Amazon has just signed a deal to take another 450,000 sq ft of warehouse space on the island to speed delivery to its New York-area consumers.
But while New York customers, and Amazon’s shareholders, may be happy, some workers are not. In November, as the holiday rush got into full swing, Cummings was one of 600 workers at the Amazon warehouse who signed and delivered a petition to management calling on Amazon to improve working conditions.
The petition called on Amazon to consolidate workers’ two 15-minute breaks into a 30-minute one. Workers say it can take up to 15 minutes just to walk to and from the warehouse break room. Workers also called for Amazon to provide more reliable public transit services to the warehouse. They also called attention to reports of high injury rates at the facility there, which were found to be three times the national average for warehouses, based on the company’s injury reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Cummings first became involved with Amazon worker organizing efforts after witnessing several cases where, she claims, her colleagues were treated unfairly – and the safety concerns she works through during her own shifts at Amazon.
“There are days I say I’m just at the mercy of God,” said Cummings. She said the only changes Amazon implemented after the high injury report was published was to install video monitors around the warehouse that tell workers safety is the company’s number one priority.
“There has been no real change. There are still injuries. They were saying the report is not accurate, but it’s just a way for them to avoid responsibility,” she said.
Cummings said injuries are common among her colleagues, and she often experiences close calls. A few weeks ago, a pin sticking out of the conveyor belt tore off one of her work gloves, almost taking her hand with it. She also said some packages that drop on to her conveyor belt from the chute are either too large to be on it or improperly packaged, so the package’s contents burst open on the belt, which she said recently injured one of her colleagues.
When packages, especially envelopes with liquid, burst on the conveyor belt, Cummings often has to stop the belt to clean up the mess, but is still expected to hit her hourly rate. She’s been written up once for missing her rate because several of these incidents happened in the same week.
“People get fired regularly,” she said. “It just takes two or three write-ups, depending on the severity. You can get fired for anything.”
Cummings has impaired vision and is required by law to receive disability accommodations for her job. But she said new managers consistently try to place her in other departments she is unable to do the work in.
“I had a manager ask me: are you sure you can’t see?” said Cummings. Her mobility counselor sent Amazon a detailed email with suggestions on safety improvements, such as painting safety lines in the warehouse brighter colors and installing yellow safety strips on all stairs. But Cummings said all the suggestions were ignored.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company has a comprehensive medical accommodations process.
Raymond Velez worked as a packer at the Amazon JFK8 warehouse from October 2018 to November 2019. He was required to pack at a rate of 700 items per hour. He said workers are regularly fired for missing rates.
“That’s all they care about. They don’t care about their employees,” Velez added. “They care more about the robots than they care about the employees. I’ve been to Amcare [the company’s on-site medical unit] a couple times for not feeling well, and you’d get an aspirin and sent back to work.”
Juan Espinoza, who worked as a picker at the Amazon Staten Island warehouse, quit because of the grueling working conditions.
“I was a picker and we were expected to always pick 400 units within the hour in seven seconds of each item we picked,” said Espinoza. “I couldn’t handle it. I’m a human being, not a robot.”
Ilya Geller, who worked as a stower, told of the pressure workers face from being surveilled by computers to ensure productivity rates are met.
“You’re being tracked by a computer the entire time you’re there. You don’t get reported or written up by managers. You get written up by an algorithm,” said Geller. “You’re keenly aware there is an algorithm keeping track of you, making sure you keep going as fast as you can, because if there is too much time lapsed between items, the computer will know this, will write you up, and you will get fired.”
An Amazon spokesperson told the Guardian in an email: “Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazonian and we measure actual performance against those expectations.”
The spokesperson said coaching is provided to under-performing workers.
Jimpat Lacewell started working at Amazon in Staten Island in November as a sorter, but quit after three days because it reminded him of prison – not least because of the 20-minute wait to get through security in and out of the facility.
“I would rather go back to a state correctional facility and work for 18 cents an hour than do that job,” Lacewell said. “I’m sure Mr Bezos couldn’t do a full shift at that place as an undercover boss.”
Other Amazon workers at the New York City warehouse were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retaliation, but also reported unaddressed safety concerns and frequent worker injuries.
“I’ve been out of work twice in the past year due to knee pain,” said an Amazon order picker. They explained their second injury was a result of their manager ignoring medical restrictions from surgery on his right foot.
Another order picker said they are constantly dealing with chronic lower back pain and knee pain due to the job.
“I take Tylenol or Aleve two to three times a week,” the worker said. “Almost every night when I wake up, I have really bad, sharp, needle-like lower back pain. I’ve had to use my paid time off a lot just to recover or work half days.”
An Amazon associate who transferred to the New York City warehouse to help train the new workers said they transferred to a different warehouse because their safety concerns and suggestions were repeatedly ignored by upper level managers.
“It has terrible safety for powered industrial truck (PIT) operators and pedestrian traffic, which is why I left,” said the worker.
“I reported several violations to safety there – only to get brushed off and pushed aside.”
They characterized the PIT lane as a highway for equipment such as forklifts and electric pallet jacks.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company recently installed guard rails across the dock at JFK8 to eliminate all pedestrian interaction with the PIT lane.
The spokesperson added: “It’s inaccurate to say that our FCs are unsafe and any effort to paint our workplaces as such based on the number of injury recordings is misleading given the size of our workforce. While many companies under-record safety incidents in order to keep their rates low, Amazon does the opposite – we take an aggressive stance on recording injuries no matter how big or small.
“We believe so strongly in the environment provided for fulfillment center employees, including our safety culture, that we offer public tours where anyone can come see for themselves one of our sites and its working conditions first-hand.”
SEATTLE HOSPITAL GIANT THREATENS TO LOCK OUT THOUSANDS OF STRIKING NURSES AND CAREGIVERS
Rachel M. Cohen - the intercept
January 30 2020, 10:01 a.m
ON TUESDAY MORNING, nearly 8,000 nurses, nursing assistants, lab workers, environmental service technicians, dietary workers, clerks, and other hospital staff launched their first-ever strike — in a health care labor stoppage their union is hailing as the largest of its kind in the nation in at least five years. The workers, members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, have been protesting their region’s largest medical center, Swedish-Providence, which has resisted their demands for increased staffing levels and higher wages over nine months at the bargaining table.
While the workers have made clear since the start of their strike that they will return to work on Friday morning — in part because they could only afford to forego pay for three days — their employer has shelled out at least $11 million to fly replacement workers in from across the country, and suggested that many employees will be kept out of their jobs for an additional two days. During the strike, Swedish-Providence has closed two of its seven emergency departments, and one of its labor and delivery units.
The strike is unfolding with the backdrop of a national political battle over health care, soaring health insurance costs, and a growing shortage of nurses and other hospital workers across the country. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have tweeted in support of the strikers, and members of both the Warren and Sanders campaigns mobilized their Washington state supporters to join the picket line.
Also looming over the labor strike is the coronavirus: The first U.S. case was reported on January 21 in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle. “The virus is spreading, and we do not have the support to do real infection prevention,” said Editha Donovan, an environmental services technician at Swedish-Providence who has spent the last 17 years working to safely disinfect hospital rooms. According to KIRO-FM radio, a Seattle-Tacoma station, 43 people in Washington state had close contact with the patient before he received his diagnosis.
Tiffany Moss, a spokesperson for Swedish Medical Center, denied in an emailed statement to The Intercept that the health care conglomerate was considering a lockout, but noted their contracts with “replacement agencies call for a five-day replacement period” and said when the three-day strike ends on Friday morning, “We will call back caregivers who choose to strike as work becomes available.”
Labor advocates say that “becomes available” is the key phrase, since Swedish-Providence could say they won’t have work available until their contracts with the replacement workers end. Moss did not answer a follow-up question about whether all workers will be allowed to return to their regularly scheduled jobs on Friday.
In a letter sent to Swedish CEO Guy Hudson on Wednesday, Dow Constantine, the King County Executive, demanded answers about the potential lockout. “I have … learned that Swedish has not committed to returning all bargaining unit members to their positions at the end of the strike, January 31, at 7:30 a.m,” he wrote. “Instead, workers have been told that they may or may not be called back to work during a ‘replacement period,’ which continues until February 2, 2020. … Please immediately confirm that all striking workers will be returned to work at the end of the strike on their shift scheduled prior to the strike.”
In 2012, Providence, a large nonprofit Catholic health care system, took over Swedish, a smaller independent nonprofit. Longtime staff say ever since the acquisition, they’ve seen management prioritize profits, cut corners, and reduce standards of care. New research published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that among nearly 250 hospital mergers that took place across the U.S. between 2009 and 2013, health care quality did not improve as promised.
According to its most recent financial statement, Providence made $970 million in the first nine months of 2019, and has more than $11 billion on hand. The union is seeking raises of 23.25 percent over four years, while Swedish-Providence has offered a package totaling 11.25 percent over four years.
Another key sticking point in the negotiations is over safe staffing levels.
Lizette Vanunu started working for Swedish as a nurse in 1988. For more than 20 years, she has worked as a leader in a pediatric intensive care unit, and said over the last eight years, she’s seen standards decline dramatically.
“When I first worked at Swedish, it was known to be the best hospital in Seattle,” she told The Intercept. “Fast forward to 2012, and now experienced nurses leave because they can find better pay, benefits, and working conditions elsewhere.”
SEIU 1199NW says their employer struggles with recruitment and retention because wages are not keeping up with Seattle’s soaring cost of living, spurred largely by the region’s booming tech scene and its hostility to new housing. According to management’s data, 1,000 healthcare workers leave Swedish-Providence annually and of the 900 currently vacant staff positions, 600 of those are for registered nurses. Half of all vacancies, moreover, have gone unfilled for 60 days or more.
In her more than three decades of working as a nurse, Vanunu has never before been on strike. She also had never involved herself in her union before, until the Providence takeover. “I thought I needed to step up to the plate,” Vanunu explained, “to uphold the Swedish standard.”
“Safe staffing is what we’re really fighting for, so we can provide the highest quality care,” she continued. “The wage issue is secondary, but we need better wages so we can keep experienced people in our institution.”
Research suggests nurse-staffing ratios can help improve care, especially for low-income patients. Linda Aiken, the director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing told The Intercept in 2018 that their many studies “in the U.S. and around the world found for each additional patient that a nurse takes care of at one time, there’s a 7 percent increase in the patient’s likelihood of dying.”
Donovan, the environmental services technician, said she and her colleagues have far more difficulty doing their jobs than they used to, as her employer has cut positions and failed to fill vacancies.
“When I started working here, we had three people tasked to clean and disinfect each floor; now each floor just has one person,” she said. “When I started I was so proud, I was working at the best hospital people could go to, but our services are deteriorating. To get it all done in eight hours, you have to cut corners.”
Two other health care unions in the state — the Washington State Nurses Association and UFCW 21 — had their own monthslong battles with Providence, and only recently reached contract agreements earlier this month, after also threatening to go on strike. Their members have joined Swedish workers on the picket line this week.
Ruth Schubert, a spokesperson for the Washington State Nurses Association, told The Intercept the contract they won includes stronger language around staffing that Providence had initially resisted. “The threat of the strike is what moved them,” she said. “The strike threat was real and credible. We were ready to go.”
While the workers have made clear since the start of their strike that they will return to work on Friday morning — in part because they could only afford to forego pay for three days — their employer has shelled out at least $11 million to fly replacement workers in from across the country, and suggested that many employees will be kept out of their jobs for an additional two days. During the strike, Swedish-Providence has closed two of its seven emergency departments, and one of its labor and delivery units.
The strike is unfolding with the backdrop of a national political battle over health care, soaring health insurance costs, and a growing shortage of nurses and other hospital workers across the country. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have tweeted in support of the strikers, and members of both the Warren and Sanders campaigns mobilized their Washington state supporters to join the picket line.
Also looming over the labor strike is the coronavirus: The first U.S. case was reported on January 21 in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle. “The virus is spreading, and we do not have the support to do real infection prevention,” said Editha Donovan, an environmental services technician at Swedish-Providence who has spent the last 17 years working to safely disinfect hospital rooms. According to KIRO-FM radio, a Seattle-Tacoma station, 43 people in Washington state had close contact with the patient before he received his diagnosis.
Tiffany Moss, a spokesperson for Swedish Medical Center, denied in an emailed statement to The Intercept that the health care conglomerate was considering a lockout, but noted their contracts with “replacement agencies call for a five-day replacement period” and said when the three-day strike ends on Friday morning, “We will call back caregivers who choose to strike as work becomes available.”
Labor advocates say that “becomes available” is the key phrase, since Swedish-Providence could say they won’t have work available until their contracts with the replacement workers end. Moss did not answer a follow-up question about whether all workers will be allowed to return to their regularly scheduled jobs on Friday.
In a letter sent to Swedish CEO Guy Hudson on Wednesday, Dow Constantine, the King County Executive, demanded answers about the potential lockout. “I have … learned that Swedish has not committed to returning all bargaining unit members to their positions at the end of the strike, January 31, at 7:30 a.m,” he wrote. “Instead, workers have been told that they may or may not be called back to work during a ‘replacement period,’ which continues until February 2, 2020. … Please immediately confirm that all striking workers will be returned to work at the end of the strike on their shift scheduled prior to the strike.”
In 2012, Providence, a large nonprofit Catholic health care system, took over Swedish, a smaller independent nonprofit. Longtime staff say ever since the acquisition, they’ve seen management prioritize profits, cut corners, and reduce standards of care. New research published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that among nearly 250 hospital mergers that took place across the U.S. between 2009 and 2013, health care quality did not improve as promised.
According to its most recent financial statement, Providence made $970 million in the first nine months of 2019, and has more than $11 billion on hand. The union is seeking raises of 23.25 percent over four years, while Swedish-Providence has offered a package totaling 11.25 percent over four years.
Another key sticking point in the negotiations is over safe staffing levels.
Lizette Vanunu started working for Swedish as a nurse in 1988. For more than 20 years, she has worked as a leader in a pediatric intensive care unit, and said over the last eight years, she’s seen standards decline dramatically.
“When I first worked at Swedish, it was known to be the best hospital in Seattle,” she told The Intercept. “Fast forward to 2012, and now experienced nurses leave because they can find better pay, benefits, and working conditions elsewhere.”
SEIU 1199NW says their employer struggles with recruitment and retention because wages are not keeping up with Seattle’s soaring cost of living, spurred largely by the region’s booming tech scene and its hostility to new housing. According to management’s data, 1,000 healthcare workers leave Swedish-Providence annually and of the 900 currently vacant staff positions, 600 of those are for registered nurses. Half of all vacancies, moreover, have gone unfilled for 60 days or more.
In her more than three decades of working as a nurse, Vanunu has never before been on strike. She also had never involved herself in her union before, until the Providence takeover. “I thought I needed to step up to the plate,” Vanunu explained, “to uphold the Swedish standard.”
“Safe staffing is what we’re really fighting for, so we can provide the highest quality care,” she continued. “The wage issue is secondary, but we need better wages so we can keep experienced people in our institution.”
Research suggests nurse-staffing ratios can help improve care, especially for low-income patients. Linda Aiken, the director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing told The Intercept in 2018 that their many studies “in the U.S. and around the world found for each additional patient that a nurse takes care of at one time, there’s a 7 percent increase in the patient’s likelihood of dying.”
Donovan, the environmental services technician, said she and her colleagues have far more difficulty doing their jobs than they used to, as her employer has cut positions and failed to fill vacancies.
“When I started working here, we had three people tasked to clean and disinfect each floor; now each floor just has one person,” she said. “When I started I was so proud, I was working at the best hospital people could go to, but our services are deteriorating. To get it all done in eight hours, you have to cut corners.”
Two other health care unions in the state — the Washington State Nurses Association and UFCW 21 — had their own monthslong battles with Providence, and only recently reached contract agreements earlier this month, after also threatening to go on strike. Their members have joined Swedish workers on the picket line this week.
Ruth Schubert, a spokesperson for the Washington State Nurses Association, told The Intercept the contract they won includes stronger language around staffing that Providence had initially resisted. “The threat of the strike is what moved them,” she said. “The strike threat was real and credible. We were ready to go.”
Instacart Is Fighting Back Against Organizing. That’s Because It’s Working.
A report shows Instacart union-busting.
JACOB ROSENBERG - mother jones
1/29/2020
Instacart employees in a Chicago suburb are moving to unionize. The 15 employees who buy and pack groceries for delivery in Skokie will vote to approve the union February 1; if they do, it will be first for employees of the grocery delivery startup valued at nearly $8 billion.
In response, Instacart, as Vice reported, has been union-busting.
Unknown managers have come in, handing out literature to “vote ‘NO'” and pulling aside workers to advise them against supporting the union. Chris Nolan, a senior operations manager at the company, was responsible for a few memos, obtained by Vice, that say the unions would cause harm because of dues and lead to “less control” for workers. One yells at shoppers to “look at all of the FACTS.”
In a statement, Instacart said that it will honor any vote on the union. But the company has pushed back on workers’ rights in other ways, too.
As we previously reported, Instacart workers have been regularly striking and organizing to call out the app for everything from its opaque tipping policy to its regular misclassification of some workers as independent contractors. Retaliation has often followed:
On October 9, one worker, Vanessa Bain, wrote an open letter explaining why shoppers were planning to strike, laying out the company’s history of mistreating workers. In response, strikers claim, Instacart cut wages by ending a quality bonus that gave shoppers $3 each time they received a 5-star rating.
The shopper who organized with the union in Skokie, Joe Loftis, told Vice it wasn’t hard to find reasons to form a union. He was punished for missing work because of an injury; employees had similar complaints about the algorithm’s payout. “Workers are treated so badly,” he said. “[Unionizing] is going to be a cake walk.”
The company’s battle with workers goes beyond union-busting to millions poured into policy. The company has put $10 million towards a ballot measure that would significantly soften AB 5, the new California law that makes it harder for companies to misclassify employees as independent contractors.
If the anti-union and strike efforts show anything, it’s that worker organizing is working.
In Bain’s case, public outcry led to an ongoing movement to #DeleteInstacart. Instacart backed down on using tipping fees to help subsidize a mandatory $10 delivery fee, it raised the base pay (in an algorithmic model lacking transparency), it unveiled new benefits for contractors including for workplace injury. It helped get AB5 passed.
None of these have solved Instacart’s problems. But it makes Nolan’s claims to Skokie employees that a union will harm them because “DUES ARE EXPENSIVE” sound ridiculous. Organizing has made Instacart back down on a series of potential cuts to pay for shoppers and it’s terrified the company enough to spend millions to overturn a law. Why stop now?
In response, Instacart, as Vice reported, has been union-busting.
Unknown managers have come in, handing out literature to “vote ‘NO'” and pulling aside workers to advise them against supporting the union. Chris Nolan, a senior operations manager at the company, was responsible for a few memos, obtained by Vice, that say the unions would cause harm because of dues and lead to “less control” for workers. One yells at shoppers to “look at all of the FACTS.”
In a statement, Instacart said that it will honor any vote on the union. But the company has pushed back on workers’ rights in other ways, too.
As we previously reported, Instacart workers have been regularly striking and organizing to call out the app for everything from its opaque tipping policy to its regular misclassification of some workers as independent contractors. Retaliation has often followed:
On October 9, one worker, Vanessa Bain, wrote an open letter explaining why shoppers were planning to strike, laying out the company’s history of mistreating workers. In response, strikers claim, Instacart cut wages by ending a quality bonus that gave shoppers $3 each time they received a 5-star rating.
The shopper who organized with the union in Skokie, Joe Loftis, told Vice it wasn’t hard to find reasons to form a union. He was punished for missing work because of an injury; employees had similar complaints about the algorithm’s payout. “Workers are treated so badly,” he said. “[Unionizing] is going to be a cake walk.”
The company’s battle with workers goes beyond union-busting to millions poured into policy. The company has put $10 million towards a ballot measure that would significantly soften AB 5, the new California law that makes it harder for companies to misclassify employees as independent contractors.
If the anti-union and strike efforts show anything, it’s that worker organizing is working.
In Bain’s case, public outcry led to an ongoing movement to #DeleteInstacart. Instacart backed down on using tipping fees to help subsidize a mandatory $10 delivery fee, it raised the base pay (in an algorithmic model lacking transparency), it unveiled new benefits for contractors including for workplace injury. It helped get AB5 passed.
None of these have solved Instacart’s problems. But it makes Nolan’s claims to Skokie employees that a union will harm them because “DUES ARE EXPENSIVE” sound ridiculous. Organizing has made Instacart back down on a series of potential cuts to pay for shoppers and it’s terrified the company enough to spend millions to overturn a law. Why stop now?
Chipotle fined $1.37M over thousands of child labor abuses
ap - pbs
Jan 28, 2020
BOSTON (AP) — Chipotle was hit with a $1.37 million fine over more than 13,000 child labor violations at its Massachusetts restaurants, the state’s attorney general announced Monday.
Attorney General Maura Healey ordered the largest child labor penalty ever issued by the state against the Mexican restaurant chain after finding an estimated 13,253 child labor violations in its more than 50 locations.
“Chipotle is a major national restaurant chain that employs thousands of young people across the country and it has a duty to ensure minors are safe working in its restaurants,” Healey said in a statement. “We hope these citations send a message to other fast food chains and restaurants that they cannot violate our child labor laws and put young people at risk.”
The fine detailed that Chipotle had employees under the age of 18 working past midnight and for more than 48 hours a week. Teenagers told investigators their hours of work were so long that it was preventing them from keeping up with their schoolwork. The company also regularly hired minors without work permits.
The settlement total is closer to $2 million, including penalties for earned sick time violations in which managers granted employees paid time off only for certain illnesses. The violations also include failure to keep accurate records and pay timely wages. Lastly, the company was ordered a voluntary $500,000 payout to a state youth worker fund dedicated to education, enforcement and training.
Attorney General Maura Healey ordered the largest child labor penalty ever issued by the state against the Mexican restaurant chain after finding an estimated 13,253 child labor violations in its more than 50 locations.
“Chipotle is a major national restaurant chain that employs thousands of young people across the country and it has a duty to ensure minors are safe working in its restaurants,” Healey said in a statement. “We hope these citations send a message to other fast food chains and restaurants that they cannot violate our child labor laws and put young people at risk.”
The fine detailed that Chipotle had employees under the age of 18 working past midnight and for more than 48 hours a week. Teenagers told investigators their hours of work were so long that it was preventing them from keeping up with their schoolwork. The company also regularly hired minors without work permits.
The settlement total is closer to $2 million, including penalties for earned sick time violations in which managers granted employees paid time off only for certain illnesses. The violations also include failure to keep accurate records and pay timely wages. Lastly, the company was ordered a voluntary $500,000 payout to a state youth worker fund dedicated to education, enforcement and training.
"Do I do research or pay rent?" Grad students in Santa Cruz start a wildcat strike
The average one-bed in Santa Cruz rents for the same price as a teaching assistant's monthly salary
NICOLE KARLISm - salon
JANUARY 25, 2020 7:00PM (UTC)
Jack Davies, a 29-year-old PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, came to the United States excited to do research in the university's storied History of Consciousness program, but the high cost of living in Santa Cruz has kept him from his studies. On top of his dissertation research and teaching two 30-student undergraduate sections, Davies has the added burden of finding affordable housing in Santa Cruz — which is, by one measure, the most unaffordable housing market of any small metro area in the United States.
Davies has been forced to moved three times in the last two years. Graduate student teaching assistants at UCSC make $2,434 before taxes, for only nine months of the year. The average rental price of a one-bedroom apartment? $2,379 a month.
"My first house I was paying just under $1,000 each month and I was not permitted in the living room," Davies told Salon in an interview. "The I moved to another house where I was one of 200 applicants for the room. It had so many because it was really below market rate, $750."
He eventually had to move out because one of his roommate's partners was moving in. He currently is in a house sharing a room with someone, but is moving again in March.
"It's extremely difficult to do the exploratory research I'm supposed to do and to teach as well," Davies said. "It doesn't feel like the thing I came here for to have time to study."
Stories like these have caused UCSC graduate students to go on a wildcat strike, and withhold final grades for the fall quarter unless their demand for a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) is met. Specifically, they are demanding a $1,412 a month raise for all UCSC graduate students, to alleviate the rent burden.
Just within commuting distance of Silicon Valley, the beach town once known for the counterculture has become a symbol of the relentless gentrification of the once-Bohemian pockets of the Bay Area at the hands of the tech industry. University of California's tutors, readers, Graduate Student Instructors and teaching assistants across all campuses are unionized with UAW Local 2865, and strikes or threats of strikes are not uncommon; yet a wildcat strike is unusual. UC Santa Cruz workers say they turned to a wildcat strike out of frustration: the current statewide UAW Local 2865 contract has language regarding 3 percent wage increases annually, and there is no language about housing subsidies. UC Santa Cruz workers were disappointed with leadership when the current contract was pushed through to approval in August 2018.
Hence, starting in December, UCSC graduate students demanding the cost of living adjustment organized a series of events as part of the wildcat strike. Most recently, organizers led a sick-out day on Wednesday, Jan. 22, using one of their sick days to attend the Regents meeting in San Francisco.
In an email viewed by Salon, the Labor Relations UC Office of the President threatened that those participating in the sick-out would "forfeit pay," and said they could be subjected "to corrective action."
Jane Komori is a third-year PhD student in UCSC's History of Consciousness. Not only has the cost of living been a burden for her, but the cost of living in California.
"Everything else is expensive too," Komori told Salon. "These are dismal conditions to learn in and to work in as a teacher."
The strike is catching fire with graduate students on other UC campuses. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduate students called in sick to show solidarity with their Santa Cruz peers. Rammy Salem, who is in his third year of a program in Psychological and Brain Sciences, said Santa Barbara graduate students are under a lot of stress because of the cost of rent, too.
"We haven't formally submitted a list of demands, but again this first action was in solidarity to let the university and community know we stand in solidarity with this COLA and it's affecting many of us as well," Salem said. "It's symptomatic of the rising gap between the income and cost of living; the university should be a place of refuge against this inequality and labor exploitation not accomplice."
Salem said that he's heard of students having to skip meals to save money, not being able to travel home to see their families, and more because the cost of living is just too expensive.
"As graduate students, one thing we are encouraged to do from the department is to take opportunities to present research," Salem said. "Having to go to a conference to do that costs money though, so people have to decide, 'will I present the research which will potentially advance my career [...] or will I pay rent and groceries?'"
Davies has been forced to moved three times in the last two years. Graduate student teaching assistants at UCSC make $2,434 before taxes, for only nine months of the year. The average rental price of a one-bedroom apartment? $2,379 a month.
"My first house I was paying just under $1,000 each month and I was not permitted in the living room," Davies told Salon in an interview. "The I moved to another house where I was one of 200 applicants for the room. It had so many because it was really below market rate, $750."
He eventually had to move out because one of his roommate's partners was moving in. He currently is in a house sharing a room with someone, but is moving again in March.
"It's extremely difficult to do the exploratory research I'm supposed to do and to teach as well," Davies said. "It doesn't feel like the thing I came here for to have time to study."
Stories like these have caused UCSC graduate students to go on a wildcat strike, and withhold final grades for the fall quarter unless their demand for a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) is met. Specifically, they are demanding a $1,412 a month raise for all UCSC graduate students, to alleviate the rent burden.
Just within commuting distance of Silicon Valley, the beach town once known for the counterculture has become a symbol of the relentless gentrification of the once-Bohemian pockets of the Bay Area at the hands of the tech industry. University of California's tutors, readers, Graduate Student Instructors and teaching assistants across all campuses are unionized with UAW Local 2865, and strikes or threats of strikes are not uncommon; yet a wildcat strike is unusual. UC Santa Cruz workers say they turned to a wildcat strike out of frustration: the current statewide UAW Local 2865 contract has language regarding 3 percent wage increases annually, and there is no language about housing subsidies. UC Santa Cruz workers were disappointed with leadership when the current contract was pushed through to approval in August 2018.
Hence, starting in December, UCSC graduate students demanding the cost of living adjustment organized a series of events as part of the wildcat strike. Most recently, organizers led a sick-out day on Wednesday, Jan. 22, using one of their sick days to attend the Regents meeting in San Francisco.
In an email viewed by Salon, the Labor Relations UC Office of the President threatened that those participating in the sick-out would "forfeit pay," and said they could be subjected "to corrective action."
Jane Komori is a third-year PhD student in UCSC's History of Consciousness. Not only has the cost of living been a burden for her, but the cost of living in California.
"Everything else is expensive too," Komori told Salon. "These are dismal conditions to learn in and to work in as a teacher."
The strike is catching fire with graduate students on other UC campuses. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduate students called in sick to show solidarity with their Santa Cruz peers. Rammy Salem, who is in his third year of a program in Psychological and Brain Sciences, said Santa Barbara graduate students are under a lot of stress because of the cost of rent, too.
"We haven't formally submitted a list of demands, but again this first action was in solidarity to let the university and community know we stand in solidarity with this COLA and it's affecting many of us as well," Salem said. "It's symptomatic of the rising gap between the income and cost of living; the university should be a place of refuge against this inequality and labor exploitation not accomplice."
Salem said that he's heard of students having to skip meals to save money, not being able to travel home to see their families, and more because the cost of living is just too expensive.
"As graduate students, one thing we are encouraged to do from the department is to take opportunities to present research," Salem said. "Having to go to a conference to do that costs money though, so people have to decide, 'will I present the research which will potentially advance my career [...] or will I pay rent and groceries?'"
CALIFORNIA’S NEW GIG ECONOMY LAW IS STRENGTHENING A STRIPPER-LED LABOR MOVEMENT
Aída Chávez - THE INTERCEPT
January 24 2020, 4:00 a.m.
A SWEEPING and controversial new labor law in California is fighting worker misclassification, and forcing what are known as gig economy workers — independent contractors who work on a flexible basis, often for tech companies — to be recognized as employees and afforded the same rights. The law, which went into effect January 1, is experiencing heavy industry pushback for its broad classifications, prompting lawsuits from across the tech industry and promises from lawmakers to tweak the legislation.
While much of the focus has been on its effect on drivers for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft and on freelance journalists, the law is having wide-ranging ramifications in many industries. It’s even advancing the effort of at least one group of strip club employees trying to unionize dancers in the state.
The gig economy law, known as AB 5, was designed to expand basic legal protections to more than a million workers who had long been considered independent contractors, including the right to health care and the right to earn a minimum wage, and perhaps most notably, the ability to join unions for the first time. AB 5 codified Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, the landmark 2018 California Supreme Court decision that made it harder for companies to get away with circumventing basic labor protections.
Soldiers of Pole, a Los Angeles-based group of dancers who are working to unionize their colleagues statewide, told The Intercept that the reclassification of dancers as employees marks a positive shift in the industry. As employees, strippers will have the ability to bargain collectively, which they didn’t have as independent contractors.
But it’s also led to pushback from strip club owners. AM Davies, a board member of the group, said club owners have been “making dancers sign very illegal contracts under duress” and charging exorbitant house fees, which “in and of itself is a union busting tactic.” Davies cited a strip club in Orange County, the Library Gentleman’s Club, that tripled the amount they charge dancers to work, increasing the fee from $65 to $200 practically overnight. The Library didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“So it’s become more abusive which is why it makes it look like, to the dancers, that being an employee is worse — because the clubs are implementing even more illegal practices and continuing to go unchecked,” she said.
“And we have to educate the dancers on what their actual rights are. Because even for me, I was a stripper for 18 years, and I wasn’t aware until a year ago what my rights actually are, or were, so it’s an education process. We’ve just been dancing and making so much money that we’re not even questioning what our rights are because we were happy with making so much money, it didn’t matter. Now it does.”
Workers in other industries have also faced retaliation and layoffs due to AB 5. The sports blog SB Nation, owned by Vox Media, for example, blamed the law when it laid off about 200 freelance writers and editors last month. Before the passage of AB 5, Vox Media had faced lawsuits for allegedly using illegal employment practices.
Soldiers of Pole lobbied California Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, the lead author of the legislation, to include exotic dancers under the bill and even held a demonstration in support of it in April. They were counterprotesting strippers with the Independent Entertainer Coalition, a trade group that advocates “worker’s choice of deciding her employment status.”
Stormy Daniels, an adult film star and director, spoke out against the gig economy legislation in a Los Angeles Times op-ed last year on behalf of Déjà Vu, a company that owns clubs and has monopolies or near-monopolies in areas in California and across the country. Daniels, who was hired as a spokesperson for Déjà Vu, used a similar argument, claiming that AB 5 would hurt dancers because it would allow the employer to dictate the conditions of how and when they perform.
Déjà Vu Director of Operations Ryan Carlson called AB 5 the “least just thing” the government could do for the adult entertainment industry, saying that it negatively impacts business owners but hurts entertainers even more. Carlson said that the transition to classifying their dancers as employees has been so costly that four of their clubs have shut down. He added that Déjà Vu has been paying minimum wage since they converted their contractors to employees in December 2018, but their competitors “have chosen to ignore AB 5.”
“They have known since the beginning of time that they should be classifying their workers as employees,” Davies said in response. “That’s why they lose every single class-action lawsuit that comes up against them. So it’s up to them as business owners to determine how to maintain their bottom line and how to properly pay their employees. They have dropped the ball and relied on exploitation of dancers for the last three decades and now they’re unprepared.”
Davies was referring to a series of recent legal fights against Déjà Vu that have accelerated the unionization movement. In the 1990s, California saw some short-lived unionization efforts, including in San Francisco and San Diego, and in 1997, the Lusty Lady in San Francisco became the first unionized strip club in the country. But the movement stagnated until 2016, when a class of California dancers sued Déjà Vu, accusing them of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by intentionally misclassifying more than 28,000 dancers as independent contractors rather than employees. A Michigan judge approved a $6.5 million class action settlement in early 2017, which the company appealed.
In a separate class-action suit filed in San Diego last year, after Déjà Vu was forced to classify them as employees, dancers said the company engaged in “illegal retaliation” against them by drastically cutting their wages “far beyond any amount that would be arguably justified to offset their increased costs in classifying the dancers as employees.”
Soldiers of Pole aligns itself with the broader fight for sex workers’ rights, which galvanized in 2018 in reaction to the passage of legislation known as SESTA/FOSTA, one of the biggest political attacks on sex workers in recent times. For generations, sex workers have advocated for economic, racial, and gender justice. But the urgency of SESTA/FOSTA pushed activists to ramp up organizing on both the local and national level, which has resulted in some successes.
Passage of the bill, which purported to curb sex trafficking by holding online platforms legally liable for any content found to “knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking,” pushed the industry further underground. Last year, legislation to decriminalize sex work was introduced in both D.C. and New York state, and several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed support for at least some degree of decriminalization.
While much of the focus has been on its effect on drivers for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft and on freelance journalists, the law is having wide-ranging ramifications in many industries. It’s even advancing the effort of at least one group of strip club employees trying to unionize dancers in the state.
The gig economy law, known as AB 5, was designed to expand basic legal protections to more than a million workers who had long been considered independent contractors, including the right to health care and the right to earn a minimum wage, and perhaps most notably, the ability to join unions for the first time. AB 5 codified Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, the landmark 2018 California Supreme Court decision that made it harder for companies to get away with circumventing basic labor protections.
Soldiers of Pole, a Los Angeles-based group of dancers who are working to unionize their colleagues statewide, told The Intercept that the reclassification of dancers as employees marks a positive shift in the industry. As employees, strippers will have the ability to bargain collectively, which they didn’t have as independent contractors.
But it’s also led to pushback from strip club owners. AM Davies, a board member of the group, said club owners have been “making dancers sign very illegal contracts under duress” and charging exorbitant house fees, which “in and of itself is a union busting tactic.” Davies cited a strip club in Orange County, the Library Gentleman’s Club, that tripled the amount they charge dancers to work, increasing the fee from $65 to $200 practically overnight. The Library didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“So it’s become more abusive which is why it makes it look like, to the dancers, that being an employee is worse — because the clubs are implementing even more illegal practices and continuing to go unchecked,” she said.
“And we have to educate the dancers on what their actual rights are. Because even for me, I was a stripper for 18 years, and I wasn’t aware until a year ago what my rights actually are, or were, so it’s an education process. We’ve just been dancing and making so much money that we’re not even questioning what our rights are because we were happy with making so much money, it didn’t matter. Now it does.”
Workers in other industries have also faced retaliation and layoffs due to AB 5. The sports blog SB Nation, owned by Vox Media, for example, blamed the law when it laid off about 200 freelance writers and editors last month. Before the passage of AB 5, Vox Media had faced lawsuits for allegedly using illegal employment practices.
Soldiers of Pole lobbied California Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, the lead author of the legislation, to include exotic dancers under the bill and even held a demonstration in support of it in April. They were counterprotesting strippers with the Independent Entertainer Coalition, a trade group that advocates “worker’s choice of deciding her employment status.”
Stormy Daniels, an adult film star and director, spoke out against the gig economy legislation in a Los Angeles Times op-ed last year on behalf of Déjà Vu, a company that owns clubs and has monopolies or near-monopolies in areas in California and across the country. Daniels, who was hired as a spokesperson for Déjà Vu, used a similar argument, claiming that AB 5 would hurt dancers because it would allow the employer to dictate the conditions of how and when they perform.
Déjà Vu Director of Operations Ryan Carlson called AB 5 the “least just thing” the government could do for the adult entertainment industry, saying that it negatively impacts business owners but hurts entertainers even more. Carlson said that the transition to classifying their dancers as employees has been so costly that four of their clubs have shut down. He added that Déjà Vu has been paying minimum wage since they converted their contractors to employees in December 2018, but their competitors “have chosen to ignore AB 5.”
“They have known since the beginning of time that they should be classifying their workers as employees,” Davies said in response. “That’s why they lose every single class-action lawsuit that comes up against them. So it’s up to them as business owners to determine how to maintain their bottom line and how to properly pay their employees. They have dropped the ball and relied on exploitation of dancers for the last three decades and now they’re unprepared.”
Davies was referring to a series of recent legal fights against Déjà Vu that have accelerated the unionization movement. In the 1990s, California saw some short-lived unionization efforts, including in San Francisco and San Diego, and in 1997, the Lusty Lady in San Francisco became the first unionized strip club in the country. But the movement stagnated until 2016, when a class of California dancers sued Déjà Vu, accusing them of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by intentionally misclassifying more than 28,000 dancers as independent contractors rather than employees. A Michigan judge approved a $6.5 million class action settlement in early 2017, which the company appealed.
In a separate class-action suit filed in San Diego last year, after Déjà Vu was forced to classify them as employees, dancers said the company engaged in “illegal retaliation” against them by drastically cutting their wages “far beyond any amount that would be arguably justified to offset their increased costs in classifying the dancers as employees.”
Soldiers of Pole aligns itself with the broader fight for sex workers’ rights, which galvanized in 2018 in reaction to the passage of legislation known as SESTA/FOSTA, one of the biggest political attacks on sex workers in recent times. For generations, sex workers have advocated for economic, racial, and gender justice. But the urgency of SESTA/FOSTA pushed activists to ramp up organizing on both the local and national level, which has resulted in some successes.
Passage of the bill, which purported to curb sex trafficking by holding online platforms legally liable for any content found to “knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking,” pushed the industry further underground. Last year, legislation to decriminalize sex work was introduced in both D.C. and New York state, and several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed support for at least some degree of decriminalization.
DoorDash drivers make an average of $1.45 an hour, analysis finds
Worse, about a third of DoorDash jobs paid less than $0 after accounting for basic expenses
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
JANUARY 19, 2020 7:00PM (UTC)
The national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not changed in a decade, and there is widespread agreement that it is far below what constitutes a living wage anyway. As if the statistics on the federal minimum wage weren't dismal enough, leave it to Silicon Valley to figure out "innovative" ways to pay workers even less. A new, in-depth quantitative study released this week, as part of a worker campaign in collaboration with the worker rights non-profit Working Washington, found that contract delivery workers for food delivery company DoorDash earn $1.45 per hour on average, after other expenses are accounted for.
DoorDash is an on-demand prepared food delivery service. The basic premise is that the compay's contract delivery drivers, or "Dashers," deliver food to customers who order on the mobile app. Similar to Uber drivers or TaskRabbit workers, the company advertises that, by becoming a Dasher, you can "be your own boss" and "enjoy the flexibility of choosing when, where, and how much you earn."
Working Washington crunched pay data from 229 delivery jobs from Dashers around the United States, and found that the workers were making an average of $1.45 an hour, after taking into account the costs of mileage, additional payroll taxes that add up for independent contractors, and the lost work time as workers wait for the next job. All of the data was from November and December 2019, after the company implemented a new pay model. The estimates made in the study don't take into account the cost of paying for public insurance benefits. They only factor in work expenses beyond mileage and payroll taxes — which means the real wages may be even more depressing.
The report states:
Nearly a third of [DoorDash] jobs actually pay less than $0 after accounting for these basic expenses. Just 11% of jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, after expenses, and only 2% meet the standard of $15 + expenses. Further, jobs with higher tips still tend to include lower pay: the set of jobs with tips of less than $1 pay 1.8 times as much as those jobs with tips of more than $8, on a gross hourly pay basis.
In November 2019, DoorDash claimed its new pay model would result in gross hourly earnings of more than $18.
But as the report explains, it's unclear what qualifies as "gross" earnings:
The company has declined to disclose how much of that gross amount is tips, how much is pay from the company, how many miles workers drive (and thus much much mileage expense they incur), what periods of time they consider to be part of an 'active hour,' or other details and costs involved in achieving that reported level of gross earnings.
What it boils down to is that DoorDash has created a pay model in which workers appear to be making a decent wage on paper, but which, after expenses, is barely more than $0. Worse, only 11 percent of DoorDash jobs paid above the U.S.'s laughable federal minimum wage.
Yet DoorDash's manipulative exploitation of its workers is evidently great for its business model and its investors. According to CNBC, Doordash seized one-third of the digital food delivery sales in the U.S. market in 2019.
California's recently-passed Assembly Bill 5 is meant to protect gig workers such as these by defining the scope of when and where a contractor can be used and incentivizing companies to transition to salaried workers. Yet rather than accede, companies like DoorDash and Uber are ruthless fighting against the bill, taking measures to make clear that their gig workers are independent contractors.
Uber recently announced it would give drivers more control over their rides — a change that sounds freeing on paper, but which is designed to let drivers skirt the law so they can be more clearly defined as contractors.
In October 2019, the CEO of DoorDash slammed the California law.
"It would have disastrous results if it's implemented because it's trying to impose an imperfect solution into a very big problem," Tony Xu said. "The net impact of AB5 would be a lot of lost economic opportunity and income for the state of California."
DoorDash is an on-demand prepared food delivery service. The basic premise is that the compay's contract delivery drivers, or "Dashers," deliver food to customers who order on the mobile app. Similar to Uber drivers or TaskRabbit workers, the company advertises that, by becoming a Dasher, you can "be your own boss" and "enjoy the flexibility of choosing when, where, and how much you earn."
Working Washington crunched pay data from 229 delivery jobs from Dashers around the United States, and found that the workers were making an average of $1.45 an hour, after taking into account the costs of mileage, additional payroll taxes that add up for independent contractors, and the lost work time as workers wait for the next job. All of the data was from November and December 2019, after the company implemented a new pay model. The estimates made in the study don't take into account the cost of paying for public insurance benefits. They only factor in work expenses beyond mileage and payroll taxes — which means the real wages may be even more depressing.
The report states:
Nearly a third of [DoorDash] jobs actually pay less than $0 after accounting for these basic expenses. Just 11% of jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, after expenses, and only 2% meet the standard of $15 + expenses. Further, jobs with higher tips still tend to include lower pay: the set of jobs with tips of less than $1 pay 1.8 times as much as those jobs with tips of more than $8, on a gross hourly pay basis.
In November 2019, DoorDash claimed its new pay model would result in gross hourly earnings of more than $18.
But as the report explains, it's unclear what qualifies as "gross" earnings:
The company has declined to disclose how much of that gross amount is tips, how much is pay from the company, how many miles workers drive (and thus much much mileage expense they incur), what periods of time they consider to be part of an 'active hour,' or other details and costs involved in achieving that reported level of gross earnings.
What it boils down to is that DoorDash has created a pay model in which workers appear to be making a decent wage on paper, but which, after expenses, is barely more than $0. Worse, only 11 percent of DoorDash jobs paid above the U.S.'s laughable federal minimum wage.
Yet DoorDash's manipulative exploitation of its workers is evidently great for its business model and its investors. According to CNBC, Doordash seized one-third of the digital food delivery sales in the U.S. market in 2019.
California's recently-passed Assembly Bill 5 is meant to protect gig workers such as these by defining the scope of when and where a contractor can be used and incentivizing companies to transition to salaried workers. Yet rather than accede, companies like DoorDash and Uber are ruthless fighting against the bill, taking measures to make clear that their gig workers are independent contractors.
Uber recently announced it would give drivers more control over their rides — a change that sounds freeing on paper, but which is designed to let drivers skirt the law so they can be more clearly defined as contractors.
In October 2019, the CEO of DoorDash slammed the California law.
"It would have disastrous results if it's implemented because it's trying to impose an imperfect solution into a very big problem," Tony Xu said. "The net impact of AB5 would be a lot of lost economic opportunity and income for the state of California."
what he says are his policies are just bullshit!!!
PETE BUTTIGIEG’S CAMPAIGN USED GIG-WORK PLATFORM, NOTORIOUS FOR LOW PAY, FOR POLLING
Ryan Grim, Akela Lacy - the intercept
January 16 2020, 7:17 a.m.
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg spent $20,000 over the summer hiring gig workers through the platform Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, one of the most controversial actors in the gig-working space. Studies have found gig workers at the company are paid far below minimum wage, even though many on the platform work full-time.
The Buttigieg campaign contracted with MTurk for “polling” in August and September, according to Federal Election Commission records. MTurk allows a job requester to post the type of task they want completed and a price they’ll pay for it (the site allows payments as low as 1 cent). It is unclear from the FEC records how much the campaign paid per survey. A campaign spokesperson said they took steps to ensure participants were paid above the minimum wage for surveys that lasted 2-3 minutes, but would not specify how much the participants were paid.
The campaign’s use of an exploitative platform like MTurk is in sharp contrast with the way Buttigieg has cast himself as a pro-worker candidate. He has been outspoken about the need for labor protections for those in the gig economy, whom companies often misclassify as independent contractors rather than employees in order to skirt labor protections. He has proposed several measures that would achieve better labor standards for gig workers, including a $15 minimum wage, cracking down on payroll fraud that lists gig workers as independent contractors, and ending right-to-work laws.
This past weekend, at a culinary union’s town hall in Las Vegas, Buttigieg told the audience, “If you’re a gig worker, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing a gig, you’re working. And if you’re working, that makes you a worker, and if you’re a worker, you deserve protections. We are going to make sure gig workers have the chance to organize and unionize, too.” In August, Buttigieg joined gig workers to rally outside of Uber’s headquarters in support of a California law that aimed to crack down on exploitation.
But workers on MTurk are not considered employees by the company, which is owned by Amazon, and do not have any labor or wage protections, nor do they have the freedom to join a union. Workers there tried to form a union in 2014 and Amazon, which collects a 20 percent fee per “worker reward,” squashed the effort.
While exploitation is rampant in the gig economy, MTurk has been identified as one of the worst offenders by journalists and researchers. MTurk workers can perform “mind-numbing tasks for hours on end, sometimes earning just pennies per job,” Alana Semuels wrote last January in The Atlantic in a piece titled, “The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell.” Companies like MTurk, Semuels wrote, may inadvertently end up targeting vulnerable individuals because they provide quick, easy work that can be done remotely and without requesters on the site having to expend resources on vetting workers. “Requesters use Mechanical Turk because they can farm out menial work on the cheap and get that work done quickly,” Semuels wrote. “They may seem like one-off jobs, done for money on the side by people with a surplus of idle time. But a growing number of people are turning to platforms like Mechanical Turk for the bulk of their income, despite the fact that the work pays terribly. It’s emblematic of the state of the economy in certain regions of the country that some people consider this type of work to be their only choice.” Requesters can also reject work if it doesn’t meet their standards, a subjective decision that means workers risk not being paid even if they spend time on a task.
In several reviews of MTurk on Glassdoor, current and former employees confirm the minimal pay. Some tasks are paid “around 10 cents per minute or 6 dollars an hour if you know the tricks,” wrote one reviewer. “The pay sucks,” another reviewer wrote. “It’s way less than minimum wage.” Under “advice to management,” they wrote, “pay at least min wage in the US.”
The use of MTurk for polling, as the Buttigieg campaign did, has proven controversial among academics who rely on survey responses for their research. “Perhaps most problematic, is the ethical quandary of employed, tenured academics exploiting low-wage work by people at the opposite end of the pay and job security scale,” wrote technology writer and researcher Alexandra Samuel in JSTOR Daily, in an essay subtitled, “Online services like Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk’ have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
The Buttigieg campaign is not the first to take advantage of contemporary labor practices to the benefit of its campaign. Last month, The Intercept reported that Mike Bloomberg’s campaign was exploiting prison labor to make phone calls, a relationship the campaign ended following questions from The Intercept. The Intercept could find no evidence that any other campaign was using MTurk, though it’s not uncommon to find Uber or Lyft expenditures in FEC reports. Last year, some staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders complained that the campaign was using Airbnb for lodging and Amazon for office supplies.
The Buttigieg campaign contracted with MTurk for “polling” in August and September, according to Federal Election Commission records. MTurk allows a job requester to post the type of task they want completed and a price they’ll pay for it (the site allows payments as low as 1 cent). It is unclear from the FEC records how much the campaign paid per survey. A campaign spokesperson said they took steps to ensure participants were paid above the minimum wage for surveys that lasted 2-3 minutes, but would not specify how much the participants were paid.
The campaign’s use of an exploitative platform like MTurk is in sharp contrast with the way Buttigieg has cast himself as a pro-worker candidate. He has been outspoken about the need for labor protections for those in the gig economy, whom companies often misclassify as independent contractors rather than employees in order to skirt labor protections. He has proposed several measures that would achieve better labor standards for gig workers, including a $15 minimum wage, cracking down on payroll fraud that lists gig workers as independent contractors, and ending right-to-work laws.
This past weekend, at a culinary union’s town hall in Las Vegas, Buttigieg told the audience, “If you’re a gig worker, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing a gig, you’re working. And if you’re working, that makes you a worker, and if you’re a worker, you deserve protections. We are going to make sure gig workers have the chance to organize and unionize, too.” In August, Buttigieg joined gig workers to rally outside of Uber’s headquarters in support of a California law that aimed to crack down on exploitation.
But workers on MTurk are not considered employees by the company, which is owned by Amazon, and do not have any labor or wage protections, nor do they have the freedom to join a union. Workers there tried to form a union in 2014 and Amazon, which collects a 20 percent fee per “worker reward,” squashed the effort.
While exploitation is rampant in the gig economy, MTurk has been identified as one of the worst offenders by journalists and researchers. MTurk workers can perform “mind-numbing tasks for hours on end, sometimes earning just pennies per job,” Alana Semuels wrote last January in The Atlantic in a piece titled, “The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell.” Companies like MTurk, Semuels wrote, may inadvertently end up targeting vulnerable individuals because they provide quick, easy work that can be done remotely and without requesters on the site having to expend resources on vetting workers. “Requesters use Mechanical Turk because they can farm out menial work on the cheap and get that work done quickly,” Semuels wrote. “They may seem like one-off jobs, done for money on the side by people with a surplus of idle time. But a growing number of people are turning to platforms like Mechanical Turk for the bulk of their income, despite the fact that the work pays terribly. It’s emblematic of the state of the economy in certain regions of the country that some people consider this type of work to be their only choice.” Requesters can also reject work if it doesn’t meet their standards, a subjective decision that means workers risk not being paid even if they spend time on a task.
In several reviews of MTurk on Glassdoor, current and former employees confirm the minimal pay. Some tasks are paid “around 10 cents per minute or 6 dollars an hour if you know the tricks,” wrote one reviewer. “The pay sucks,” another reviewer wrote. “It’s way less than minimum wage.” Under “advice to management,” they wrote, “pay at least min wage in the US.”
The use of MTurk for polling, as the Buttigieg campaign did, has proven controversial among academics who rely on survey responses for their research. “Perhaps most problematic, is the ethical quandary of employed, tenured academics exploiting low-wage work by people at the opposite end of the pay and job security scale,” wrote technology writer and researcher Alexandra Samuel in JSTOR Daily, in an essay subtitled, “Online services like Amazon’s ‘Mechanical Turk’ have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?”
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
The Buttigieg campaign is not the first to take advantage of contemporary labor practices to the benefit of its campaign. Last month, The Intercept reported that Mike Bloomberg’s campaign was exploiting prison labor to make phone calls, a relationship the campaign ended following questions from The Intercept. The Intercept could find no evidence that any other campaign was using MTurk, though it’s not uncommon to find Uber or Lyft expenditures in FEC reports. Last year, some staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders complained that the campaign was using Airbnb for lodging and Amazon for office supplies.
CIRCA 1870: A CARTOON SATIRISING THE SWEATSHOPS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. ORIGINAL ARTIST: BY JOHN LEECH FROM PUNCH MAGAZINE. (PHOTO BY RISCHGITZ/GETTY IMAGES)
US unions
FedEx mounts big-money push to head off unionization by US workers
Teamsters bid to organize employees seeking better pay and benefits as company bombards them with anti-union messages
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Tue 14 Jan 2020 05.30 EST
FedEx workers hoping to unionize and get better pay and benefits have met with a well-financed barrage of opposition from the company, according to recordings obtained by the Guardian.
Workers who charge that their benefits are less than at rival UPS said the company has bombarded them with anti-union messages and forced them to attend anti-union meetings.
The Guardian obtained recordings of meetings that were mandatory and required workers to sign in, according to a FedEx employee, held at FedEx facilities in 2015 and 2016, where managers and union avoidance consultants lectured workers on unions as the Teamsters was attempting to organize FedEx drivers at several locations around the United States.
“It’s time to campaign. If you don’t want this third party coming in putting a wall between us, it’s time. Because when you campaign and tell them you don’t want them here, eventually it becomes loud and clear to them. You can do that,” said a FedEx human resources manager in a July 2016 captive audience meeting.
In the meetings, FedEx human resources managers often cited anecdotes to dismiss union organizing.
One, in the same July 2016 meeting, said: “Recently I had this question come up from an employee. Why is there a small group of employees at our company who seem to be very ungrateful at what the company has to offer them? Why do some employees give their allegiance to strangers and an organization like the Teamsters rather than this company that continues to provide for us, that has provided us with a long list of benefits and incredible pay, not to mention good equipment and facilities?
“I don’t have an answer, I don’t know. I feel your pain. I appreciate the company and what they offer. I have an attitude of gratitude.”
In another alleged anecdote, the same FedEx manager told workers a story about an unnamed 58-year-old employee for three years who supported unionizing because they wanted a better pension plan.
The manager told workers: “He’s getting closer to retirement. He tells the HR manager. The manager said: what have you done leading up in your career to prepare for retirement? You can’t hold FedEx Freight accountable for your own inability and failure to prepare for your retirement. He changed his whole attitude about it and started supporting the company because he took ownership of his own failure.”
In the meetings, FedEx managers and consultants claimed negotiations with labor unions are a gamble.
“It’s like going to Vegas and rolling the dice,” one said.
They also referred to union authorization cards as a “blank check”, and told workers “they need money, they’re running out of money. They want your money. They want our money.”
In a video used by FedEx to deter unionization, the Teamsters union was characterized as a plot to undermine FedEx by UPS, where about 250,000 employees are represented by the Teamsters.
“A package lost by FedEx equals a package gained by UPS,” said a narrator in the video.
FedEx, the second largest logistics company in the US, spent $837,000 between 2014 and 2018 on union avoidance consultants, according to a recent report published by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found by examining publicly available forms filed by consultants with the Department of Labor, US employers spend around $340m annually on union avoidance consultants, with FedEx as one of the top spenders.
FedEx’s anti-union campaign between 2014 to 2018 was largely a success. In April 2019, the only FedEx Freight workers unionized in the US voted against an effort to decertify the Teamsters union at a warehouse in Stockton, California, but prior decertification efforts were successful in 2017 in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The only other unionized FedEx employees are their pilots, who voted to form a union in 1993.
A FedEx location in New Jersey voted to unionize in 2014, only to voluntarily cede representation in 2017 after FedEx fought in court with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for years over which workers should be included in the bargaining unit. Several FedEx warehouses around the US voted against unionizing between 2014 and 2018, while other locations didn’t get that far in the union organizing process due to company pushback.
“They told me, ‘either you’re a team player, or you’re a problem and we will do everything to eliminate problems,’” said Greg Barfuss, a FedEx driver for seven years who was laid off in December 2015 after openly supporting unionization of his Gardena, California, based FedEx warehouse. “They first tried to intimidate me. When that didn’t work they fired me, and that scared other drivers from trying any more.”
He filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, and a settlement was reached with FedEx in May 2016 for one of the charges.
FedEx rejected Barfuss’s claim that he was fired for union organizing and noted the NLRB did not rule in favor of Barfuss on the charge of being fired in retaliation for union activity. “To avoid the time and expense of litigation, FedEx Freight chose to resolve one of the claims and did so without payment of money or admission of liability,” a spokesperson for FedEx told the Guardian in an email.
As FedEx heavily opposed unionization efforts among its employees, the company aggressively lobbied in favor of the 2017 Trump tax cut bill, which decreased FedEx’s taxes from over $1.5bn in 2017 to zero in 2018. Despite the significant tax savings, the New York Times reported in November 2019 that FedEx did not fulfill promises of using the tax windfall to reinvest in equipment and other assets, while spending about $3.6bn on stock buybacks in 2018 and 2019. FedEx’s CEO, Fred Smith, claimed the story was “distorted”, without citing specific examples, and challenged the New York Times publisher to a debate in response.
Workers at FedEx experienced cuts to bonuses in 2019 and a FedEx driver in Texas, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said this year workers essentially received a pay cut due to increases in healthcare costs.
“They decided for 2020 that if your spouse can get insurance at their employer and you keep them with Fedex’s insurer, they’re going to charge you $150 a month to keep your spouse on it. The pay raise amounted to $30 a week because we received $0.75 an hour raise so it doesn’t cover the spousal surcharge,” they said.
FedEx is also changing its pension plan in 2020, eliminating it for new hires who will be offered a 401k plan instead, while giving current employees the choice to keep their current plans or opt in to the 401k.
The FedEx driver explained the pension plan was one of the driving forces for union organizing at FedEx.
He said: “Our retirement is bad when you compare it to UPS. A UPS worker gets $100 a month for every year of service, somewhere around there. So 20 years in you’ll get a $2,000-per-month pension. I have 20 years here. If you project my pension, in another 10 years my projected income will be $300 a month with almost 30 years in. What am I going to do with $300 a month?”
A FedEx spokesperson said the company was changing retirement benefits program to ensure the benefits “remain competitive”.
The spokesperson added in an email to the Guardian: “While FedEx Freight respects the right of our team members to decide for themselves if they want to be part of a union, the law does not require us to remain neutral and protects our right to provide facts and opinions about unions so that our employees may make a fully informed decision.”
Workers who charge that their benefits are less than at rival UPS said the company has bombarded them with anti-union messages and forced them to attend anti-union meetings.
The Guardian obtained recordings of meetings that were mandatory and required workers to sign in, according to a FedEx employee, held at FedEx facilities in 2015 and 2016, where managers and union avoidance consultants lectured workers on unions as the Teamsters was attempting to organize FedEx drivers at several locations around the United States.
“It’s time to campaign. If you don’t want this third party coming in putting a wall between us, it’s time. Because when you campaign and tell them you don’t want them here, eventually it becomes loud and clear to them. You can do that,” said a FedEx human resources manager in a July 2016 captive audience meeting.
In the meetings, FedEx human resources managers often cited anecdotes to dismiss union organizing.
One, in the same July 2016 meeting, said: “Recently I had this question come up from an employee. Why is there a small group of employees at our company who seem to be very ungrateful at what the company has to offer them? Why do some employees give their allegiance to strangers and an organization like the Teamsters rather than this company that continues to provide for us, that has provided us with a long list of benefits and incredible pay, not to mention good equipment and facilities?
“I don’t have an answer, I don’t know. I feel your pain. I appreciate the company and what they offer. I have an attitude of gratitude.”
In another alleged anecdote, the same FedEx manager told workers a story about an unnamed 58-year-old employee for three years who supported unionizing because they wanted a better pension plan.
The manager told workers: “He’s getting closer to retirement. He tells the HR manager. The manager said: what have you done leading up in your career to prepare for retirement? You can’t hold FedEx Freight accountable for your own inability and failure to prepare for your retirement. He changed his whole attitude about it and started supporting the company because he took ownership of his own failure.”
In the meetings, FedEx managers and consultants claimed negotiations with labor unions are a gamble.
“It’s like going to Vegas and rolling the dice,” one said.
They also referred to union authorization cards as a “blank check”, and told workers “they need money, they’re running out of money. They want your money. They want our money.”
In a video used by FedEx to deter unionization, the Teamsters union was characterized as a plot to undermine FedEx by UPS, where about 250,000 employees are represented by the Teamsters.
“A package lost by FedEx equals a package gained by UPS,” said a narrator in the video.
FedEx, the second largest logistics company in the US, spent $837,000 between 2014 and 2018 on union avoidance consultants, according to a recent report published by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found by examining publicly available forms filed by consultants with the Department of Labor, US employers spend around $340m annually on union avoidance consultants, with FedEx as one of the top spenders.
FedEx’s anti-union campaign between 2014 to 2018 was largely a success. In April 2019, the only FedEx Freight workers unionized in the US voted against an effort to decertify the Teamsters union at a warehouse in Stockton, California, but prior decertification efforts were successful in 2017 in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The only other unionized FedEx employees are their pilots, who voted to form a union in 1993.
A FedEx location in New Jersey voted to unionize in 2014, only to voluntarily cede representation in 2017 after FedEx fought in court with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for years over which workers should be included in the bargaining unit. Several FedEx warehouses around the US voted against unionizing between 2014 and 2018, while other locations didn’t get that far in the union organizing process due to company pushback.
“They told me, ‘either you’re a team player, or you’re a problem and we will do everything to eliminate problems,’” said Greg Barfuss, a FedEx driver for seven years who was laid off in December 2015 after openly supporting unionization of his Gardena, California, based FedEx warehouse. “They first tried to intimidate me. When that didn’t work they fired me, and that scared other drivers from trying any more.”
He filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB, and a settlement was reached with FedEx in May 2016 for one of the charges.
FedEx rejected Barfuss’s claim that he was fired for union organizing and noted the NLRB did not rule in favor of Barfuss on the charge of being fired in retaliation for union activity. “To avoid the time and expense of litigation, FedEx Freight chose to resolve one of the claims and did so without payment of money or admission of liability,” a spokesperson for FedEx told the Guardian in an email.
As FedEx heavily opposed unionization efforts among its employees, the company aggressively lobbied in favor of the 2017 Trump tax cut bill, which decreased FedEx’s taxes from over $1.5bn in 2017 to zero in 2018. Despite the significant tax savings, the New York Times reported in November 2019 that FedEx did not fulfill promises of using the tax windfall to reinvest in equipment and other assets, while spending about $3.6bn on stock buybacks in 2018 and 2019. FedEx’s CEO, Fred Smith, claimed the story was “distorted”, without citing specific examples, and challenged the New York Times publisher to a debate in response.
Workers at FedEx experienced cuts to bonuses in 2019 and a FedEx driver in Texas, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said this year workers essentially received a pay cut due to increases in healthcare costs.
“They decided for 2020 that if your spouse can get insurance at their employer and you keep them with Fedex’s insurer, they’re going to charge you $150 a month to keep your spouse on it. The pay raise amounted to $30 a week because we received $0.75 an hour raise so it doesn’t cover the spousal surcharge,” they said.
FedEx is also changing its pension plan in 2020, eliminating it for new hires who will be offered a 401k plan instead, while giving current employees the choice to keep their current plans or opt in to the 401k.
The FedEx driver explained the pension plan was one of the driving forces for union organizing at FedEx.
He said: “Our retirement is bad when you compare it to UPS. A UPS worker gets $100 a month for every year of service, somewhere around there. So 20 years in you’ll get a $2,000-per-month pension. I have 20 years here. If you project my pension, in another 10 years my projected income will be $300 a month with almost 30 years in. What am I going to do with $300 a month?”
A FedEx spokesperson said the company was changing retirement benefits program to ensure the benefits “remain competitive”.
The spokesperson added in an email to the Guardian: “While FedEx Freight respects the right of our team members to decide for themselves if they want to be part of a union, the law does not require us to remain neutral and protects our right to provide facts and opinions about unions so that our employees may make a fully informed decision.”
U.S. employment in the 2010s in five charts
Dan Burns, Howard Schneider - reuters
1/10/20
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The last U.S. employment report of the 2010s out Friday had few surprises, but it wrapped up a decade that featured some notable milestones in a job market that has changed dramatically in the space of 10 years.
RECORD DECADE FOR JOB CREATION
The 2010s will go into the record books - for at least another 10 years - as the decade that saw the greatest number of jobs created in the United States: 22.6 million.
It was a welcome recovery from the 2000s, the only decade in the history of Bureau of Labor Statistics data to feature a net loss of jobs, thanks largely to the two recessions that bookended that era. December’s report was the 111th monthly scorecard in a row to show employment gains, and the U.S. economy ended the decade with a record 152.4 million people working.[...]
RECORD DECADE FOR JOB CREATION
The 2010s will go into the record books - for at least another 10 years - as the decade that saw the greatest number of jobs created in the United States: 22.6 million.
It was a welcome recovery from the 2000s, the only decade in the history of Bureau of Labor Statistics data to feature a net loss of jobs, thanks largely to the two recessions that bookended that era. December’s report was the 111th monthly scorecard in a row to show employment gains, and the U.S. economy ended the decade with a record 152.4 million people working.[...]
Uber is trying to trick its drivers into skirting California's new contractor law
A seemingly benign change in how the Uber app works in California is actually a plot to dodge regulation
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
JANUARY 10, 2020 12:20AM (UTC)
It’s 2020, which means California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), a law that passed last year which was designed to improve the livelihood of gig workers, has gone into effect — and Uber is taking its first steps to evade it.
On Wednesday morning, the rideshare behemoth emailed 150,000 California drivers, and millions of California passengers, to alert them of changes that will impact how the company operates in California.
In the email, the company said changes include replacing upfront pricing with an estimate for any rides except carpools with other paying passengers (known as Uber Pools).
Hence, rather than give rider a firm price upfront for rideshares, “the final price will be calculated at the end of your trip, based on the actual time and distance traveled,” Uber explains.
The law forces Uber, and other companies that rely on independent contractors, to make their drivers W-2 employees — thus requiring the companies to pay its driver-employees a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees make at least the California minimum wage. Of course, this doesn’t merely apply to exploited gig workers like Uber and Lyft drivers. It applies to all freelancers, including writers, artists and musicians, many of whom are reportedly experiencing unintended consequences of the law, some of them losing work as a result. Assorted independent workers have banded together to try to argue for exemptions from the law. Freelance journalists have yet to receive one, despite a request. However, a California judge ruled that truck drivers aren’t covered by the new law, and hence can retain their independent contractor status.
The changes that Uber made as a result of AB5 give drivers more control over their rides — a change which on the surface may seem benign. Yet the sinister purpose of such a change is to let drivers skirt the law and be more clearly defined as contractors. (A full-time employee, presumably, would not have a choice as to which riders they do and do not take.)
This is Uber’s attempt to keep their workers classified as independent contractors, and avoid paying them benefits or salaries.
According to the text of the bill, a worker is considered an employee unless the hiring entity could demonstrate they were free from the employer’s control. In December, Uber filed a lawsuit in federal court in California requesting to seek an injunction that would have blocked the law from applying to them.
As part of the changes, riders will be able to request their favorite drivers when scheduling a trip in advance. Overall, consumers in California might see more frequently rejected rides and higher prices.
Prior to the passage of the law, Uber and Lyft were threatening changes that would harm consumers in the event that the law passed. However, as Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, told Salon in September 2019, such changes aren’t written in the law; they were the companies' choice in an attempt to gain political will to avoid having to comply.
"They are saying how they might respond, actions they might take — but those are their decisions... [not] the requirement of the law,” Jacobs told Salon.
As reported by the Washington Post, Uber has been working away on a project known as Project Luigi since October to change Uber’s app for California drivers. According to the report, Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen said the company is “making a number of changes to the Uber marketplace, which tens of thousands of California drivers use to find flexible work. While we are confident that drivers are already correctly classified, these product changes will further strengthen drivers’ independence and preserve their ability to work when, where and how they want.”
John Costa, International President of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said in a media statement Uber’s response is “yet another indication that Uber has no intention of treating its drivers fairly and respectfully.”
“The Amalgamated Transit Union calls on California lawmakers to stand strong in the face of Uber’s scattershot attempts to avoid granting fair wages and basic benefits and protections to its drivers,” Costa said.
It doesn't come as a surprise that this is Uber's response. As Salon has previously reported, it's hard to say definitively one way or another if Uber and Lyft can survive these changes, as their business models were entirely reliant on exploiting workers and keeping them as contractors.
“What I can say is that the way the business model is currently structured is that it is very much based on drivers being independent contractors and not treating them as employees,” Saba Waheed, a research director at the UCLA Labor Center, told Salon. “This business model was built on pretty exploitative conditions for drivers.”
Even in the absence of AB5's passage, an increase in costs of Uber and Lyft was inevitable, as the company continues to subsidize costs in its price war with Lyft and attempt to win market share. Both companies continue to bleed investor money, and neither are profitable.
"The cheap fares aren’t because they are cheap rides, it’s because drivers aren’t paid well and they are subsidizing part of that fare,” Waheed said.
On Wednesday morning, the rideshare behemoth emailed 150,000 California drivers, and millions of California passengers, to alert them of changes that will impact how the company operates in California.
In the email, the company said changes include replacing upfront pricing with an estimate for any rides except carpools with other paying passengers (known as Uber Pools).
Hence, rather than give rider a firm price upfront for rideshares, “the final price will be calculated at the end of your trip, based on the actual time and distance traveled,” Uber explains.
The law forces Uber, and other companies that rely on independent contractors, to make their drivers W-2 employees — thus requiring the companies to pay its driver-employees a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees make at least the California minimum wage. Of course, this doesn’t merely apply to exploited gig workers like Uber and Lyft drivers. It applies to all freelancers, including writers, artists and musicians, many of whom are reportedly experiencing unintended consequences of the law, some of them losing work as a result. Assorted independent workers have banded together to try to argue for exemptions from the law. Freelance journalists have yet to receive one, despite a request. However, a California judge ruled that truck drivers aren’t covered by the new law, and hence can retain their independent contractor status.
The changes that Uber made as a result of AB5 give drivers more control over their rides — a change which on the surface may seem benign. Yet the sinister purpose of such a change is to let drivers skirt the law and be more clearly defined as contractors. (A full-time employee, presumably, would not have a choice as to which riders they do and do not take.)
This is Uber’s attempt to keep their workers classified as independent contractors, and avoid paying them benefits or salaries.
According to the text of the bill, a worker is considered an employee unless the hiring entity could demonstrate they were free from the employer’s control. In December, Uber filed a lawsuit in federal court in California requesting to seek an injunction that would have blocked the law from applying to them.
As part of the changes, riders will be able to request their favorite drivers when scheduling a trip in advance. Overall, consumers in California might see more frequently rejected rides and higher prices.
Prior to the passage of the law, Uber and Lyft were threatening changes that would harm consumers in the event that the law passed. However, as Ken Jacobs, the chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, told Salon in September 2019, such changes aren’t written in the law; they were the companies' choice in an attempt to gain political will to avoid having to comply.
"They are saying how they might respond, actions they might take — but those are their decisions... [not] the requirement of the law,” Jacobs told Salon.
As reported by the Washington Post, Uber has been working away on a project known as Project Luigi since October to change Uber’s app for California drivers. According to the report, Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen said the company is “making a number of changes to the Uber marketplace, which tens of thousands of California drivers use to find flexible work. While we are confident that drivers are already correctly classified, these product changes will further strengthen drivers’ independence and preserve their ability to work when, where and how they want.”
John Costa, International President of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said in a media statement Uber’s response is “yet another indication that Uber has no intention of treating its drivers fairly and respectfully.”
“The Amalgamated Transit Union calls on California lawmakers to stand strong in the face of Uber’s scattershot attempts to avoid granting fair wages and basic benefits and protections to its drivers,” Costa said.
It doesn't come as a surprise that this is Uber's response. As Salon has previously reported, it's hard to say definitively one way or another if Uber and Lyft can survive these changes, as their business models were entirely reliant on exploiting workers and keeping them as contractors.
“What I can say is that the way the business model is currently structured is that it is very much based on drivers being independent contractors and not treating them as employees,” Saba Waheed, a research director at the UCLA Labor Center, told Salon. “This business model was built on pretty exploitative conditions for drivers.”
Even in the absence of AB5's passage, an increase in costs of Uber and Lyft was inevitable, as the company continues to subsidize costs in its price war with Lyft and attempt to win market share. Both companies continue to bleed investor money, and neither are profitable.
"The cheap fares aren’t because they are cheap rides, it’s because drivers aren’t paid well and they are subsidizing part of that fare,” Waheed said.
bloodsuckers exposed!!!
Silicon Valley is primed for a worker uprising
The foundation was laid in the 2010s. Will the 2020s be defined by Tech's labor struggles?
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
JANUARY 6, 2020 12:30AM (UTC)
Only ten years ago, the public perception of Silicon Valley was far more optimistic. Time magazine named Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg their person of the year in 2010, after Aaron Sorkin’s film “The Social Network” became a blockbuster hit. In part due to the popularity of the iPhone 4, 2010 was also the beginning of the mobile app boom. App developers were becoming overnight millionaires. And Uber was then known as “UberCab,” a small San Francisco startup trying to get its rideshare app to stand out from the noise. Startups were still considered a desirable place to work, and the general public was enamored by quirky tech office perks like ball pits and office kegs.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Unless Zuckerberg repents and becomes a Luddite, it is unlikely he will ever be perceived as anything more than a robotic boy-CEO. Sorkin, who was once captivated by Zuckerberg’s story enough to make a movie out of it, has described Facebook’s policy on allowing politicians to lie on its platform as “assaulting the truth.” Uber is now a multi-billion company whose rise has been tainted by sexism scandals, sexual assaults, and obscene exploitation of their workers. Working at a startup is no longer as novel as it used to be. Rather, workers at Silicon Valley companies, big and small, white collar and blue collar, have started to feel less coddled and more exploited, an energy they have channeled into an uprising — and one that has only just begun.
“Major tech companies lost their positive sheen and tech workers found their voice” in the 2010s, Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute, told Salon in an email. “Tech workers discovered that their companies were engaged in business activities that conflicted with their expressed values.”
As my colleague Keith A. Spencer and I wrote in 2019, that shift in Silicon Valley really gained steam at the end of the decade. The industry, once a bastion of corporate-friendly libertarianism, has seen its politics change as tech workers become cognizant of the often subtle ways that their employers take advantage of them. Meanwhile, many tech companies took contracts from the defense industry and oil and gas, industries that most in the Valley see as irredeemable. In the case of Google parent company Alphabet, Jacobs notes that the company belied its motto, “do no evil," by "working on robotic military systems, assisting censorship in China and ignoring sexual harassment by executives — all of which became the focus of worker protests.”
In 2018, after the New York Times published a report claiming that Google paid out $90 million to one of its executives after he faced sexual assault allegations, workers organized a massive walkout. An estimated 20,000 Google employees walked off the job in protest in November 2018. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, tech workers helped organize for Proposition C which would raise the gross receipts tax by an average of 0.5 percent for businesses that earn more than $50 million a year. As a result, nearly $300 million would go toward homelessness initiatives. Many supporters of the proposition worked at companies whose top executives opposed the measure, signaling tensions between the average worker and the C-suite. At the time, one tech worker told Salon she was supporting the proposition despite working at a company that was advocating against it. “I’m being well compensated now, but how long will that last?” she said. “I have a sense I’m closer to homelessness than a jackpot liquidation.”
Jacobs added that wealth accumulated by a small number of investors and owners of tech companies contrasts sharply with growing homelessness in places like the Bay Area. Even well-heeled tech workers felt distanced from being part of such wealth, in part thanks to the high cost of living in the Bay Area.
“We also saw growing solidarity across the tech companies' workforce,” Jacobs said of the labor pains of the 2010s. “Highly paid engineers supported the successful efforts by contracted cafeteria workers, janitors and bus drivers to organize into unions and push the tech companies to agree to higher wages.”
The popularity of social media platform Facebook has declined in part due to its role in serving as unwitting propagandist in grave political and economic matters. To wit: Facebook ennobling far-right groups promoting violence; being complicit in spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre, which resulted in some parents of Sandy Hook victims receiving death threats; the platform's role in foreign manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election; and Myanmar military personnel who used the social network to incite genocide, to name a few. Many Facebook workers have felt ethically compromised by their company's wrongdoing, leading some to execute exit strategies.
“Social media went from democratizing information to become a major channel for disinformation from autocratic regimes, and the ‘sharing economy’ turned out to be a strategy to avoid labor rights and evade taxes,” Jacobs told Salon.
This is all to say the next decade is primed for a vast uprising among tech workers, nearly all of whom are not unionized and ripe for organizing. Many historic unionization efforts were just getting started at the end of the 2010s. In September 2019, a group of 73 contract tech workers for Google in Pittsburgh voted to join the United Steelworkers. That marked one of the few cases of white collar tech employees organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively. Employees at Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform, signed union cards but are still working toward reognition, an effort that has not been free of tension or retaliation from the company. Instacart workers ended the year with a series of actions and a strike to demand higher wages. California will be the first state to classify gig workers as full-time employees. And despite threats from Amazon, a coalition of their workers are speaking out publicly about the company’s role in climate change. Meanwhile, the regulation of Big Tech is a major talking point for presidential candidates.
At the dawn of the 2020s, the foundation has been laid.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Unless Zuckerberg repents and becomes a Luddite, it is unlikely he will ever be perceived as anything more than a robotic boy-CEO. Sorkin, who was once captivated by Zuckerberg’s story enough to make a movie out of it, has described Facebook’s policy on allowing politicians to lie on its platform as “assaulting the truth.” Uber is now a multi-billion company whose rise has been tainted by sexism scandals, sexual assaults, and obscene exploitation of their workers. Working at a startup is no longer as novel as it used to be. Rather, workers at Silicon Valley companies, big and small, white collar and blue collar, have started to feel less coddled and more exploited, an energy they have channeled into an uprising — and one that has only just begun.
“Major tech companies lost their positive sheen and tech workers found their voice” in the 2010s, Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute, told Salon in an email. “Tech workers discovered that their companies were engaged in business activities that conflicted with their expressed values.”
As my colleague Keith A. Spencer and I wrote in 2019, that shift in Silicon Valley really gained steam at the end of the decade. The industry, once a bastion of corporate-friendly libertarianism, has seen its politics change as tech workers become cognizant of the often subtle ways that their employers take advantage of them. Meanwhile, many tech companies took contracts from the defense industry and oil and gas, industries that most in the Valley see as irredeemable. In the case of Google parent company Alphabet, Jacobs notes that the company belied its motto, “do no evil," by "working on robotic military systems, assisting censorship in China and ignoring sexual harassment by executives — all of which became the focus of worker protests.”
In 2018, after the New York Times published a report claiming that Google paid out $90 million to one of its executives after he faced sexual assault allegations, workers organized a massive walkout. An estimated 20,000 Google employees walked off the job in protest in November 2018. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, tech workers helped organize for Proposition C which would raise the gross receipts tax by an average of 0.5 percent for businesses that earn more than $50 million a year. As a result, nearly $300 million would go toward homelessness initiatives. Many supporters of the proposition worked at companies whose top executives opposed the measure, signaling tensions between the average worker and the C-suite. At the time, one tech worker told Salon she was supporting the proposition despite working at a company that was advocating against it. “I’m being well compensated now, but how long will that last?” she said. “I have a sense I’m closer to homelessness than a jackpot liquidation.”
Jacobs added that wealth accumulated by a small number of investors and owners of tech companies contrasts sharply with growing homelessness in places like the Bay Area. Even well-heeled tech workers felt distanced from being part of such wealth, in part thanks to the high cost of living in the Bay Area.
“We also saw growing solidarity across the tech companies' workforce,” Jacobs said of the labor pains of the 2010s. “Highly paid engineers supported the successful efforts by contracted cafeteria workers, janitors and bus drivers to organize into unions and push the tech companies to agree to higher wages.”
The popularity of social media platform Facebook has declined in part due to its role in serving as unwitting propagandist in grave political and economic matters. To wit: Facebook ennobling far-right groups promoting violence; being complicit in spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre, which resulted in some parents of Sandy Hook victims receiving death threats; the platform's role in foreign manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election; and Myanmar military personnel who used the social network to incite genocide, to name a few. Many Facebook workers have felt ethically compromised by their company's wrongdoing, leading some to execute exit strategies.
“Social media went from democratizing information to become a major channel for disinformation from autocratic regimes, and the ‘sharing economy’ turned out to be a strategy to avoid labor rights and evade taxes,” Jacobs told Salon.
This is all to say the next decade is primed for a vast uprising among tech workers, nearly all of whom are not unionized and ripe for organizing. Many historic unionization efforts were just getting started at the end of the 2010s. In September 2019, a group of 73 contract tech workers for Google in Pittsburgh voted to join the United Steelworkers. That marked one of the few cases of white collar tech employees organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively. Employees at Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform, signed union cards but are still working toward reognition, an effort that has not been free of tension or retaliation from the company. Instacart workers ended the year with a series of actions and a strike to demand higher wages. California will be the first state to classify gig workers as full-time employees. And despite threats from Amazon, a coalition of their workers are speaking out publicly about the company’s role in climate change. Meanwhile, the regulation of Big Tech is a major talking point for presidential candidates.
At the dawn of the 2020s, the foundation has been laid.
Amazon warehouse workers doing “back-breaking” work walked off the job in protest
Workers lifting hundreds of boxes a day say they fear being fired for missing work, and are demanding time off like other part-time workers.
By Shirin Ghaffary - vox
Updated Dec 23, 2019, 2:34pm EST
More than 30 Amazon workers at a Sacramento warehouse walked off the job this morning, demanding they receive paid time off.
Around 2:45 am on Monday local time, 36 workers — out of around 100 in total on the shift— left work two hours early after they read a letter to management out loud stating their demands to be granted paid time off (PTO) and meet with management to discuss their concerns, according to a worker at the site.
These workers — who say they lift hundreds of packages a day in “back-breaking” labor —currently receive zero PTO days a year. The walkout comes weeks after workers say management has ignored their requests to meet with leaders of a group organizing around the issue. So far, workers have circulated an internal and public petition gaining over 4,000 signatures in total. The actions have been organized by a group of workers on site called Amazonians United Sacramento, which led a successful campaign in the past to get multiple colleagues reinstated who were fired for missing work, in one case while the colleague was suffering the loss of a family member.
The recent walkout is also an escalation of labor tension at Amazon’s growing network of last-mile delivery centers, which are smaller warehouses where workers prepare packages that are then sent out to customers’ doorsteps. Most workers at the Sacramento site — as with those at other delivery stations across the US — are prohibited from working more than 30 hours a week. They often work up to that maximum amount allotted and sometimes more than that during peak shopping times. Workers say their shifts are physically grueling, involving lifting boxes of up to 50 pounds at a rapid pace, especially right before the holidays when they see their workload increase.
But because they aren’t working full-time hours, most of these workers do not receive benefits such as employer-subsidized health insurance, and they can be fired for taking off more than 20 hours every quarter. Amazon publicly promises its part-time employees paid time off on its own website (notably, though, the policy differs for California employees), as well as in its employee handbook, according to documents Recode reviewed.
When workers in Sacramento pointed this out to management, they say they were told the rules don’t apply to them since they are a specific subcategory of “class q” and “class m” logistics workers — a distinction they had previously never heard of and were given no explanation for.
“The fact is that Amazon is a trillion dollar company run by the richest man in the world,” the Sacramento workers said in the public petition, “and they intentionally give all class q part-time workers less benefits than regular part-time workers so that they grow the company at our expense. We’ve had enough.”
An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged that the company has received workers’ petition but did not immediately respond to a question about how “class q” and “class m” workers are defined, and why these workers are not eligible for PTO like other part-time employees.
The spokesperson said in a statement to Recode: “Amazon maintains an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring their comments, questions, and concerns directly to their management team for discussion and resolution. ... Benefits vary based on a variety of factors but if someone wanted to move to a role that offered regular, full-time benefits we expect to have more than a thousand of those roles in Sacramento throughout the year.”
The workers’ public letter also calls for Amazon’s local management team to meet with representatives from Amazonians United Sacramento, which has turned into the de facto organizing group for workers at the warehouse. Currently, the group says it operates as an independent worker organization not affiliated with any union.
An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a follow up question about why, several weeks after the initial petition, management has still not met with organizers.
Amazonians United Sacramento is one of several worker-led groups that has organized in recent months at Amazon’s delivery stations, and it has had some recent successes in petitioning for better working conditions. In July, a group of workers in Chicago called Amazonians United DCH1 publicly came forward demanding rights for workers, including health care benefits and air conditioning on site. They had an early win when management agreed to send workers home with pay during a sweltering heat wave that they said made it unsafe to work.
Delivery station worker organizers in Eagan, Minnesota, walked out of work until their manager agreed to talk to his boss about demands related to time off. And Amazon workers in Sacramento successfully campaigned to get two colleagues rehired after they were fired for taking more unpaid time off than allowed, including one worker who says she was fired after taking off one more hour than permitted after her mother-in-law died.
“Any time you want to take time off to spend with your family, you have to hope an emergency doesn’t come up so that you don’t go over your limit of unpaid time off,” said one Sacramento DSM1 worker, who added that one of the most common reasons for people getting fired at the warehouse is for taking too much unpaid time off, often to take care of their loved ones.
While there have been reports of poor labor practices across Amazon’s supply chain — and incidents as severe as death on the warehouse floor — delivery station sites in particular have become a hotbed for worker activism. Unlike other larger fulfillment centers in suburban areas, these warehouses are largely in urban areas like Chicago, New York, Portland, and Sacramento. Workers are often the last ones moving around packages just before they’re put in trucks for final-mile delivery to a customer’s doorstep.
These workers say they’re arbitrarily classified as a subcategory of workers who don’t have the same benefits as their full-time colleagues at other facilities.
“We’re doing back-breaking warehouse work,” said a delivery station worker in Chicago. “So whether it’s someone working 40 hours a week who gets injured or somebody working 24 hours a week, it doesn’t matter. We just wanted to be treated equally as all of Amazon’s other part-time workers.”
As Amazon continues to grow an independent logistics network that will include more of these delivery stations rather than relying on contracted partners like FedEx, workers see a bigger fight ahead. Several workers said they were frustrated by Amazon’s statement that workers unhappy with their lack of benefits should acquire full-time jobs within the company, since many workers at delivery stations want to work more than 30 hours a week but are blocked by Amazon’s rules. Workers say the nearest Amazon fulfillment centers with full-time jobs can be hours away.
“This is what the economy is, part-time work is all we can get,” the Chicago worker said. “This is the reality of our economy, and we deserve paid time off.”
Around 2:45 am on Monday local time, 36 workers — out of around 100 in total on the shift— left work two hours early after they read a letter to management out loud stating their demands to be granted paid time off (PTO) and meet with management to discuss their concerns, according to a worker at the site.
These workers — who say they lift hundreds of packages a day in “back-breaking” labor —currently receive zero PTO days a year. The walkout comes weeks after workers say management has ignored their requests to meet with leaders of a group organizing around the issue. So far, workers have circulated an internal and public petition gaining over 4,000 signatures in total. The actions have been organized by a group of workers on site called Amazonians United Sacramento, which led a successful campaign in the past to get multiple colleagues reinstated who were fired for missing work, in one case while the colleague was suffering the loss of a family member.
The recent walkout is also an escalation of labor tension at Amazon’s growing network of last-mile delivery centers, which are smaller warehouses where workers prepare packages that are then sent out to customers’ doorsteps. Most workers at the Sacramento site — as with those at other delivery stations across the US — are prohibited from working more than 30 hours a week. They often work up to that maximum amount allotted and sometimes more than that during peak shopping times. Workers say their shifts are physically grueling, involving lifting boxes of up to 50 pounds at a rapid pace, especially right before the holidays when they see their workload increase.
But because they aren’t working full-time hours, most of these workers do not receive benefits such as employer-subsidized health insurance, and they can be fired for taking off more than 20 hours every quarter. Amazon publicly promises its part-time employees paid time off on its own website (notably, though, the policy differs for California employees), as well as in its employee handbook, according to documents Recode reviewed.
When workers in Sacramento pointed this out to management, they say they were told the rules don’t apply to them since they are a specific subcategory of “class q” and “class m” logistics workers — a distinction they had previously never heard of and were given no explanation for.
“The fact is that Amazon is a trillion dollar company run by the richest man in the world,” the Sacramento workers said in the public petition, “and they intentionally give all class q part-time workers less benefits than regular part-time workers so that they grow the company at our expense. We’ve had enough.”
An Amazon spokesperson acknowledged that the company has received workers’ petition but did not immediately respond to a question about how “class q” and “class m” workers are defined, and why these workers are not eligible for PTO like other part-time employees.
The spokesperson said in a statement to Recode: “Amazon maintains an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring their comments, questions, and concerns directly to their management team for discussion and resolution. ... Benefits vary based on a variety of factors but if someone wanted to move to a role that offered regular, full-time benefits we expect to have more than a thousand of those roles in Sacramento throughout the year.”
The workers’ public letter also calls for Amazon’s local management team to meet with representatives from Amazonians United Sacramento, which has turned into the de facto organizing group for workers at the warehouse. Currently, the group says it operates as an independent worker organization not affiliated with any union.
An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a follow up question about why, several weeks after the initial petition, management has still not met with organizers.
Amazonians United Sacramento is one of several worker-led groups that has organized in recent months at Amazon’s delivery stations, and it has had some recent successes in petitioning for better working conditions. In July, a group of workers in Chicago called Amazonians United DCH1 publicly came forward demanding rights for workers, including health care benefits and air conditioning on site. They had an early win when management agreed to send workers home with pay during a sweltering heat wave that they said made it unsafe to work.
Delivery station worker organizers in Eagan, Minnesota, walked out of work until their manager agreed to talk to his boss about demands related to time off. And Amazon workers in Sacramento successfully campaigned to get two colleagues rehired after they were fired for taking more unpaid time off than allowed, including one worker who says she was fired after taking off one more hour than permitted after her mother-in-law died.
“Any time you want to take time off to spend with your family, you have to hope an emergency doesn’t come up so that you don’t go over your limit of unpaid time off,” said one Sacramento DSM1 worker, who added that one of the most common reasons for people getting fired at the warehouse is for taking too much unpaid time off, often to take care of their loved ones.
While there have been reports of poor labor practices across Amazon’s supply chain — and incidents as severe as death on the warehouse floor — delivery station sites in particular have become a hotbed for worker activism. Unlike other larger fulfillment centers in suburban areas, these warehouses are largely in urban areas like Chicago, New York, Portland, and Sacramento. Workers are often the last ones moving around packages just before they’re put in trucks for final-mile delivery to a customer’s doorstep.
These workers say they’re arbitrarily classified as a subcategory of workers who don’t have the same benefits as their full-time colleagues at other facilities.
“We’re doing back-breaking warehouse work,” said a delivery station worker in Chicago. “So whether it’s someone working 40 hours a week who gets injured or somebody working 24 hours a week, it doesn’t matter. We just wanted to be treated equally as all of Amazon’s other part-time workers.”
As Amazon continues to grow an independent logistics network that will include more of these delivery stations rather than relying on contracted partners like FedEx, workers see a bigger fight ahead. Several workers said they were frustrated by Amazon’s statement that workers unhappy with their lack of benefits should acquire full-time jobs within the company, since many workers at delivery stations want to work more than 30 hours a week but are blocked by Amazon’s rules. Workers say the nearest Amazon fulfillment centers with full-time jobs can be hours away.
“This is what the economy is, part-time work is all we can get,” the Chicago worker said. “This is the reality of our economy, and we deserve paid time off.”
Bosses Are Charged with Breaking the Law in Over 40% of Union Campaigns
BY MICHELLE CHEN - in these times
THURSDAY, DEC 12, 2019, 6:14 PM
There is a shocking level of illegal interference in U.S. union drives. (Photo by Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Labor unions are more popular than they’ve been in over 15 years. Yet a record-low number of workers belong to them. The gap between the public perception of unions and their actual membership illustrates just how difficult it’s become for workers to organize.
In a new report, the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found evidence that employers are increasingly brazen in seeking to obstruct workers' attempts to unionize. Records of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees private-sector labor rights and union elections, reveal that in more than 40% of the 3,260 union elections during 2016 and 2017, employers have been charged with unfair labor practices aimed at undermining electoral procedures and retaliating against pro-union workers.
About 30% of unfair labor practice (ULP) charges analyzed by EPI involved allegations of threats, surveillance or harassment of workers. Another 30% involved allegations of illegal discipline, with one in five elections marred by the charges of illegally firing workers for supporting the union. Workforce size is a factor: the highest rate of ULP claims—more than 50%—was seen among firms with potential bargaining units of 61 workers or more. The anti-union actions occurred at a higher rate during the two-year period than during the early 2000s.
This pattern of union busting could help explain why private-sector unionization has dwindled to just 6.4% in 2018. Ben Zipperer, co-author of the report, told In These Times that the study suggests “the hostile atmosphere towards labor, or basically the employer aggression against workers trying to form unions, is the main obstacle.”
In one case of election-related ULP claims, workers at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, who sought to unionize with UNITE HERE in 2016, just ahead of Trump’s election, charged their employer with a number of retaliatory actions, including tightening supervision or increasing the workload of some employees, and “disparately enforc[ing] its new Grooming Policy” to coerce targeted workers into changing their hair color.
Although EPI does not cover the outcome of the cases (charges are often dropped and litigation might drag on for years), the prevalence of ULP charges is telling. It’s likely that the employees who file a formal legal charge represent only the fraction of workers who have the resources and wherewithal to wage a legal battle with their employer. After all, the most successful union-busting campaigns may be the ones that never come to light because the workers have been thoroughly suppressed—or ousted.
“Employers pursue a variety of tactics that would otherwise be illegal or unfair, that never make it to the charging stage,” says Zipperer, “because it's a very difficult and lengthy process with little reward for the worker at the end.”\
Filing an unfair labor practice charge is the basic tool that workers have to hold employers to account under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). To protect workers’ right to organize and maintain the integrity of union elections, under the law, employers cannot threaten to shut down a plant, or fire workers or take away their benefits if they seek to unionize. Bosses are barred from coercively interrogating workers about their union activities, or attempting to spy on them. The NLRA also broadly prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who support unionization—for example, by demoting or laying off workers who promote unionization to their coworkers.
While the NLRB should act as the central arbiter of labor relation, the agency has little leverage over employers that engage in union-busting. Typically, even if a company is proven to have acted illegally, the NLRB cannot force it to pay damages, beyond back wages and reinstatement. On top of those structural barriers, the current Republican majority on the NLRB ensures that whatever cases do go before the Board, there is a good chance they will result in an anti-worker ruling.
The overarching weakness of the NLRA is what it does not cover. Employers are free to deploy various anti-union tactics on their worksites, including broadcasting arguments against unionization and launching smear campaigns against the “third party” union organizers who threaten to undermine the workers’ relationship with their boss.
The market for anti-union tactics has given rise to a cottage industry of union-busting firms. Overall, EPI estimates that companies pour an estimated $340 million every year into “union-avoidance” consultants.
Among the top spenders are Nestle, Fedex, Mission Foods and Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The anti-union consultancies specialize in flooding workplaces with propaganda as well as orchestrating so-called “captive-audience” meetings, in which companies pressure workers to attend anti-union lectures.
Allegations of intimidation, retaliation and disinformation are at the center of recent clashes at Google, Housing Works and Johns Hopkins University Hospital—a purportedly progressive tech giant and two nonprofits—where workers have accused their employers of using dirty campaign tactics to crush union drives.
The current unionization drive by Hearst employees has prompted the company’s executives to set up a microsite featuring pointedly biased explanations of the consequences of unionizing, according to Vice. Workers were warned, “All terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions would be up for discussion. No one can guarantee in advance what that contract would include.”
Last April, Labor Notes reported that at a captive-audience meeting at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, workers were bombarded with pro-business messaging from Gov. Bill Lee, who sang the praises of Volkswagen for bringing jobs to the state and telling workers it was best to “have a direct relationship” with the automaker, free of union interference.
While some aggressive anti-union practices are perfectly legal, EPI notes that the NLRA’s protections for workers' organizing rights can be strengthened simply by giving the law real teeth. The recently introduced Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would create civil penalties for abusive employers, ban captive-audience meetings and allow workers to press unfair labor practice claims in civil courts, rather than just the NLRB.
"One of the simplest things that we can do,” Zipperer said, “is we can actually make labor law matter by attaching meaningful and significant penalties to employers when they violate that law.”
Under the current legal framework governing union elections, the fact that unions remain so popular in public opinion surveys shows that despite the hostile political climate, workers still believe in the power of collective action. Imagine what might be achieved if labor law stopped getting in the way.
In a new report, the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found evidence that employers are increasingly brazen in seeking to obstruct workers' attempts to unionize. Records of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees private-sector labor rights and union elections, reveal that in more than 40% of the 3,260 union elections during 2016 and 2017, employers have been charged with unfair labor practices aimed at undermining electoral procedures and retaliating against pro-union workers.
About 30% of unfair labor practice (ULP) charges analyzed by EPI involved allegations of threats, surveillance or harassment of workers. Another 30% involved allegations of illegal discipline, with one in five elections marred by the charges of illegally firing workers for supporting the union. Workforce size is a factor: the highest rate of ULP claims—more than 50%—was seen among firms with potential bargaining units of 61 workers or more. The anti-union actions occurred at a higher rate during the two-year period than during the early 2000s.
This pattern of union busting could help explain why private-sector unionization has dwindled to just 6.4% in 2018. Ben Zipperer, co-author of the report, told In These Times that the study suggests “the hostile atmosphere towards labor, or basically the employer aggression against workers trying to form unions, is the main obstacle.”
In one case of election-related ULP claims, workers at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, who sought to unionize with UNITE HERE in 2016, just ahead of Trump’s election, charged their employer with a number of retaliatory actions, including tightening supervision or increasing the workload of some employees, and “disparately enforc[ing] its new Grooming Policy” to coerce targeted workers into changing their hair color.
Although EPI does not cover the outcome of the cases (charges are often dropped and litigation might drag on for years), the prevalence of ULP charges is telling. It’s likely that the employees who file a formal legal charge represent only the fraction of workers who have the resources and wherewithal to wage a legal battle with their employer. After all, the most successful union-busting campaigns may be the ones that never come to light because the workers have been thoroughly suppressed—or ousted.
“Employers pursue a variety of tactics that would otherwise be illegal or unfair, that never make it to the charging stage,” says Zipperer, “because it's a very difficult and lengthy process with little reward for the worker at the end.”\
Filing an unfair labor practice charge is the basic tool that workers have to hold employers to account under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). To protect workers’ right to organize and maintain the integrity of union elections, under the law, employers cannot threaten to shut down a plant, or fire workers or take away their benefits if they seek to unionize. Bosses are barred from coercively interrogating workers about their union activities, or attempting to spy on them. The NLRA also broadly prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who support unionization—for example, by demoting or laying off workers who promote unionization to their coworkers.
While the NLRB should act as the central arbiter of labor relation, the agency has little leverage over employers that engage in union-busting. Typically, even if a company is proven to have acted illegally, the NLRB cannot force it to pay damages, beyond back wages and reinstatement. On top of those structural barriers, the current Republican majority on the NLRB ensures that whatever cases do go before the Board, there is a good chance they will result in an anti-worker ruling.
The overarching weakness of the NLRA is what it does not cover. Employers are free to deploy various anti-union tactics on their worksites, including broadcasting arguments against unionization and launching smear campaigns against the “third party” union organizers who threaten to undermine the workers’ relationship with their boss.
The market for anti-union tactics has given rise to a cottage industry of union-busting firms. Overall, EPI estimates that companies pour an estimated $340 million every year into “union-avoidance” consultants.
Among the top spenders are Nestle, Fedex, Mission Foods and Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The anti-union consultancies specialize in flooding workplaces with propaganda as well as orchestrating so-called “captive-audience” meetings, in which companies pressure workers to attend anti-union lectures.
Allegations of intimidation, retaliation and disinformation are at the center of recent clashes at Google, Housing Works and Johns Hopkins University Hospital—a purportedly progressive tech giant and two nonprofits—where workers have accused their employers of using dirty campaign tactics to crush union drives.
The current unionization drive by Hearst employees has prompted the company’s executives to set up a microsite featuring pointedly biased explanations of the consequences of unionizing, according to Vice. Workers were warned, “All terms of pay, benefits, and working conditions would be up for discussion. No one can guarantee in advance what that contract would include.”
Last April, Labor Notes reported that at a captive-audience meeting at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, workers were bombarded with pro-business messaging from Gov. Bill Lee, who sang the praises of Volkswagen for bringing jobs to the state and telling workers it was best to “have a direct relationship” with the automaker, free of union interference.
While some aggressive anti-union practices are perfectly legal, EPI notes that the NLRA’s protections for workers' organizing rights can be strengthened simply by giving the law real teeth. The recently introduced Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would create civil penalties for abusive employers, ban captive-audience meetings and allow workers to press unfair labor practice claims in civil courts, rather than just the NLRB.
"One of the simplest things that we can do,” Zipperer said, “is we can actually make labor law matter by attaching meaningful and significant penalties to employers when they violate that law.”
Under the current legal framework governing union elections, the fact that unions remain so popular in public opinion surveys shows that despite the hostile political climate, workers still believe in the power of collective action. Imagine what might be achieved if labor law stopped getting in the way.
Disney Sued by Labor Union for Failing to Pay Living Wage: Employees Have to ‘Live in Their Cars’
“A lot of [workers] have to live in their cars, on people’s couches, because they can’t afford the rent on that wage in the City of Anaheim.”
Tarpley Hitt - Reporter, daily beast
Published Dec. 11, 2019 4:42AM ET
There’s an old Walt Disney quote, a favorite of workplace morale posters and business self-help books, that goes: “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” These days, there are a lot of people making the Disney dream a reality—a study of the Disneyland Resorts last year found that 27.2 million people visited the California theme park in 2016 alone, thanks to the 30,000 workers who keep the place up and running.
But a new class action lawsuit, filed Friday in California Superior Court and announced in a press advisory Monday, argues that the Walt Disney Company, worth approximately $130 billion as of this year, failed to pay hundreds of those workers a living wage. The complaint was filed by five Disney employees on behalf of more than 400 hospitality workers, accusing the Walt Disney Company and several affiliates (Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc., Sodexo Inc., SodexoMagic, LLC, and 100 unnamed Does) of “unlawful conduct and unfair business practices.” The plaintiffs are asking for back wages, restitution, and damages, which their attorney, Randy Renick, said may be significant. “With the back pay,” Renick said, “we’re talking millions of dollars.”
“A lot of [workers] have to live in their cars, or on people’s couches, because they can’t afford the rent on that wage in the City of Anaheim,” said Kathleen Grace, a plaintiff in the case and a Starbucks barista employed by Sodexo, which Disney contracts to operate its backstage food and beverage services. “It’s really sad to see. A lot of times, they’re choosing to feed their families or put gas in their car to come to work.”
The case concerns an initiative called Measure L, which Anaheim voters passed in November of 2018. The ballot measure requires resort employers that received tax rebates from the city to pay their employees a $15 living wage. The new wage was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2019, and increase by one dollar each year until Jan. 1, 2022. By 2023, the code states, the wage increases would change to reflect rising costs of living. The ballot measure was backed by the Coalition of Resort Labor Unions, a group of 11 local unions representing 17,000 workers, or more than half of Disney employees. In a press advisory Monday, the CRLU came out in support of the workers’ class-action case.
The complaint argues that Disney and its contractors took “massive” subsidies from the City of Anaheim, but did not alter their wages or overtime pay to reflect the new law. Grace, who came out of retirement in August of 2016 to work for Sodexo, said she makes $14.25 an hour. Many of her co-workers, including food servers, banquet servers, bellhops, and doormen at the three Disney hotels, earn as little as $12 an hour. Other plaintiffs in the case include Thomas Bray, a bell person at the Disneyland Hotel, who earns $12.25 an hour; Regina Delgado, a cashier at the Plaza Inn restaurant inside the Disneyland theme park who made $12 an hour until October; Alicia Grijalva, a make-up stylist at the park who earned $12 an hour until July; and Javier Terrazas, a banquet event server who makes $12 an hour.
“We shouldn’t have to struggle living paycheck to paycheck,” Grace said. “We all are trying to pay our rent, feed our families, get gas to drive here and there. We shouldn’t have to make the choice between putting gas in our car to get to work and feeding our family.”
When Measure L was first drafted, Disneyland Resort fell squarely among the employers it would affect. At the time, Disney had two deals with the City of Anaheim which would have qualified them for the living wage law: a $267 million tax rebate to build an additional luxury hotel; and a 30-year entertainment tax break in exchange for investing $1 billion into their existing resorts. Just one month before the measure passed, however, Disney terminated both agreements, leaving their status under Measure L uncertain. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted that the last-minute pull-out effectively ensured the billion-dollar corporation would not have to pay workers a living wage.
But those weren’t the only deals Disney has made involving public money. A Los Angeles Times investigation from 2017 found that the company had secured rebates and other incentives from the city worth more than $1 billion (Disney disputed the estimate). In the lawsuit, the workers specifically point to a subsidy from 1996, when Disney received over $500 million in tax rebates from Anaheim to help build California Adventure, the second Disney-owned theme park after the original Disneyland. The bulk of that money came in the form of municipal bonds, borrowed from the Anaheim Finance Authority, which were used to construct a $108 million parking facility. Since its construction, Disney has kept all the revenue from the garage, which low estimates put at around $35 million annually, but leases the garage from the city for just one dollar a year. “Disney got a rebate of the best kind,” the complaint states. “It got its taxes back before it paid them.”
Still, the case hinges on the definition of “rebate.” In a report from October 2018, the Anaheim City Attorney argued that “rebate”—though not defined in Measure L or set at a fixed legal definition—meant “discount.” Under that definition, he wrote, the 1996 transaction did not qualify, rendering Disneyland exempt from paying a living wage. Disneyland spokesperson Liz Jaeger echoed the findings in a statement: “The union coalition is well aware that the City Attorney has previously looked at this issue,” Jaeger wrote, “and clearly stated that Measure L does not apply to the Disneyland Resort."
The theme park also alleged that all non-tipped workers already earn a minimum of $15 an hour and can get overtime pay. Grace and Renick disputed that claim, pointing out that two of the plaintiffs made just $12 an hour, and that many workers who make less than $15 an hour do not receive tips. “We are not tipped employees,” Grace said. “Sodexo doesn’t allow tips. I was told that was a Disney policy, but I’m not clear. We do not receive tips.”
“It’s important to know that the law doesn’t distinguish [between tipped or non-tipped employees],” Renick said. “You have to pay the minimum wage, or in this case the living wage, to all employees—whether tipped or not. California Constitution actually requires that… There are quite a number of folks in the class who are not tipped employees who are making less than $15 an hour.”
The 2018 survey of Disneyland Resort workers, or “cast members” as they’re called, found that 73 percent of employees “do not earn enough money to cover basic expenses every month.” Conducted by the Occidental College Urban & Environmental Policy Institute and underwritten by the CRLU, the report surveyed more than 5,000 Disney Resort employees. More than half reported concerns of being evicted from their homes or apartments; two-thirds said they were food insecure; and 11 percent said they had been homeless in the past two years. In the latter category, 13 percent were living with young children.
But a new class action lawsuit, filed Friday in California Superior Court and announced in a press advisory Monday, argues that the Walt Disney Company, worth approximately $130 billion as of this year, failed to pay hundreds of those workers a living wage. The complaint was filed by five Disney employees on behalf of more than 400 hospitality workers, accusing the Walt Disney Company and several affiliates (Walt Disney Parks and Resorts U.S. Inc., Sodexo Inc., SodexoMagic, LLC, and 100 unnamed Does) of “unlawful conduct and unfair business practices.” The plaintiffs are asking for back wages, restitution, and damages, which their attorney, Randy Renick, said may be significant. “With the back pay,” Renick said, “we’re talking millions of dollars.”
“A lot of [workers] have to live in their cars, or on people’s couches, because they can’t afford the rent on that wage in the City of Anaheim,” said Kathleen Grace, a plaintiff in the case and a Starbucks barista employed by Sodexo, which Disney contracts to operate its backstage food and beverage services. “It’s really sad to see. A lot of times, they’re choosing to feed their families or put gas in their car to come to work.”
The case concerns an initiative called Measure L, which Anaheim voters passed in November of 2018. The ballot measure requires resort employers that received tax rebates from the city to pay their employees a $15 living wage. The new wage was supposed to go into effect Jan. 1, 2019, and increase by one dollar each year until Jan. 1, 2022. By 2023, the code states, the wage increases would change to reflect rising costs of living. The ballot measure was backed by the Coalition of Resort Labor Unions, a group of 11 local unions representing 17,000 workers, or more than half of Disney employees. In a press advisory Monday, the CRLU came out in support of the workers’ class-action case.
The complaint argues that Disney and its contractors took “massive” subsidies from the City of Anaheim, but did not alter their wages or overtime pay to reflect the new law. Grace, who came out of retirement in August of 2016 to work for Sodexo, said she makes $14.25 an hour. Many of her co-workers, including food servers, banquet servers, bellhops, and doormen at the three Disney hotels, earn as little as $12 an hour. Other plaintiffs in the case include Thomas Bray, a bell person at the Disneyland Hotel, who earns $12.25 an hour; Regina Delgado, a cashier at the Plaza Inn restaurant inside the Disneyland theme park who made $12 an hour until October; Alicia Grijalva, a make-up stylist at the park who earned $12 an hour until July; and Javier Terrazas, a banquet event server who makes $12 an hour.
“We shouldn’t have to struggle living paycheck to paycheck,” Grace said. “We all are trying to pay our rent, feed our families, get gas to drive here and there. We shouldn’t have to make the choice between putting gas in our car to get to work and feeding our family.”
When Measure L was first drafted, Disneyland Resort fell squarely among the employers it would affect. At the time, Disney had two deals with the City of Anaheim which would have qualified them for the living wage law: a $267 million tax rebate to build an additional luxury hotel; and a 30-year entertainment tax break in exchange for investing $1 billion into their existing resorts. Just one month before the measure passed, however, Disney terminated both agreements, leaving their status under Measure L uncertain. At the time, the Los Angeles Times noted that the last-minute pull-out effectively ensured the billion-dollar corporation would not have to pay workers a living wage.
But those weren’t the only deals Disney has made involving public money. A Los Angeles Times investigation from 2017 found that the company had secured rebates and other incentives from the city worth more than $1 billion (Disney disputed the estimate). In the lawsuit, the workers specifically point to a subsidy from 1996, when Disney received over $500 million in tax rebates from Anaheim to help build California Adventure, the second Disney-owned theme park after the original Disneyland. The bulk of that money came in the form of municipal bonds, borrowed from the Anaheim Finance Authority, which were used to construct a $108 million parking facility. Since its construction, Disney has kept all the revenue from the garage, which low estimates put at around $35 million annually, but leases the garage from the city for just one dollar a year. “Disney got a rebate of the best kind,” the complaint states. “It got its taxes back before it paid them.”
Still, the case hinges on the definition of “rebate.” In a report from October 2018, the Anaheim City Attorney argued that “rebate”—though not defined in Measure L or set at a fixed legal definition—meant “discount.” Under that definition, he wrote, the 1996 transaction did not qualify, rendering Disneyland exempt from paying a living wage. Disneyland spokesperson Liz Jaeger echoed the findings in a statement: “The union coalition is well aware that the City Attorney has previously looked at this issue,” Jaeger wrote, “and clearly stated that Measure L does not apply to the Disneyland Resort."
The theme park also alleged that all non-tipped workers already earn a minimum of $15 an hour and can get overtime pay. Grace and Renick disputed that claim, pointing out that two of the plaintiffs made just $12 an hour, and that many workers who make less than $15 an hour do not receive tips. “We are not tipped employees,” Grace said. “Sodexo doesn’t allow tips. I was told that was a Disney policy, but I’m not clear. We do not receive tips.”
“It’s important to know that the law doesn’t distinguish [between tipped or non-tipped employees],” Renick said. “You have to pay the minimum wage, or in this case the living wage, to all employees—whether tipped or not. California Constitution actually requires that… There are quite a number of folks in the class who are not tipped employees who are making less than $15 an hour.”
The 2018 survey of Disneyland Resort workers, or “cast members” as they’re called, found that 73 percent of employees “do not earn enough money to cover basic expenses every month.” Conducted by the Occidental College Urban & Environmental Policy Institute and underwritten by the CRLU, the report surveyed more than 5,000 Disney Resort employees. More than half reported concerns of being evicted from their homes or apartments; two-thirds said they were food insecure; and 11 percent said they had been homeless in the past two years. In the latter category, 13 percent were living with young children.
labor costs drive inflation but corporate greed is okay!!!
U.S. third-quarter labor costs revised down; productivity weak
Lucia Mutikani - reuters
DECEMBER 10, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growth of U.S. labor costs was not as robust as initially thought in the third quarter, suggesting inflation could remain tame for a while.
The sharp downward revision to labor costs, reported by the Labor Department on Tuesday, could also ease economists’ concerns about further pressure on corporate profits.
Unit labor costs, the price of labor per single unit of output, increased at a 2.5% annualized rate in the third quarter. They were previously reported to have advanced at a 3.6% rate. Compared with the third quarter of 2018, labor costs grew at a 2.2% rate, rather than the previously estimated 3.1%. Growth in hourly compensation was also revised lower, to a 2.3% rate in the third quarter, down from the originally reported 3.3% pace.
Hourly compensation rose at a 3.7% rate compared with the third quarter of 2018. Last quarter’s gains in unit labor costs and compensation are in line with other measures showing moderate wage gains, indicating inflation will probably continue to run below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The U.S. central bank’s preferred inflation measure increased 1.6% in the 12 months through October, slowing from 1.7% in September. November data will be published later this month. Fed officials are scheduled to begin a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is not expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday after reducing borrowing costs in October for the third time this year.
The government reported last month that after-tax profits without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustment, which corresponds to S&P 500 profits, decreased $11.3 billion, or at a rate of 0.6% in the third quarter. Profits were down at a rate of 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2018.
U.S. financial markets were little moved by Tuesday’s revised data.
PRODUCTIVITY FALLS
The Commerce Department also confirmed that worker productivity fell by the most in nearly four years in the third quarter as a rebound in hours, driven by a surge in the volatile self-employed and unpaid family workers component, outpaced output in the third quarter.
Nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, decreased at a 0.2% rate in the last quarter, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2015. Productivity was previously reported to have decreased at a 0.3% pace in the July-September quarter.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter productivity would be revised up to show it falling at a 0.1% rate. Productivity grew at an unrevised 2.5% rate in the second quarter. The government last month revised up third-quarter gross domestic product growth to a 2.1% rate from a 1.9% pace.
Compared with the third quarter of 2018, productivity increased at a 1.5% rate, instead of the previously reported 1.4% pace. Tepid productivity suggests the economy is unlikely to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of 3% annual growth.
Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.3% from 2007 to 2018, below its long-term rate of 2.1% from 1947 to 2018, indicating that the speed at which the economy can grow over a long period without igniting inflation has slowed.
Some economists blame soft productivity on a shortage of workers as well as the impact of rampant drug addiction in some parts of the country. Others also argue that low capital expenditure, which they say has resulted in a sharp drop in the capital-to-labor ratio, is holding down productivity.
There is also a belief that productivity is being inaccurately measured, especially on the information technology side. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in October the U.S. central bank was “carefully assessing the implications of possibly mismeasured productivity gains.”
Hours worked rose at a revised 2.5% rate last quarter. That was up from the 2.4% pace estimated in November.
The sharp downward revision to labor costs, reported by the Labor Department on Tuesday, could also ease economists’ concerns about further pressure on corporate profits.
Unit labor costs, the price of labor per single unit of output, increased at a 2.5% annualized rate in the third quarter. They were previously reported to have advanced at a 3.6% rate. Compared with the third quarter of 2018, labor costs grew at a 2.2% rate, rather than the previously estimated 3.1%. Growth in hourly compensation was also revised lower, to a 2.3% rate in the third quarter, down from the originally reported 3.3% pace.
Hourly compensation rose at a 3.7% rate compared with the third quarter of 2018. Last quarter’s gains in unit labor costs and compensation are in line with other measures showing moderate wage gains, indicating inflation will probably continue to run below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The U.S. central bank’s preferred inflation measure increased 1.6% in the 12 months through October, slowing from 1.7% in September. November data will be published later this month. Fed officials are scheduled to begin a two-day policy meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is not expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday after reducing borrowing costs in October for the third time this year.
The government reported last month that after-tax profits without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustment, which corresponds to S&P 500 profits, decreased $11.3 billion, or at a rate of 0.6% in the third quarter. Profits were down at a rate of 0.4% compared with the third quarter of 2018.
U.S. financial markets were little moved by Tuesday’s revised data.
PRODUCTIVITY FALLS
The Commerce Department also confirmed that worker productivity fell by the most in nearly four years in the third quarter as a rebound in hours, driven by a surge in the volatile self-employed and unpaid family workers component, outpaced output in the third quarter.
Nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, decreased at a 0.2% rate in the last quarter, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2015. Productivity was previously reported to have decreased at a 0.3% pace in the July-September quarter.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected third-quarter productivity would be revised up to show it falling at a 0.1% rate. Productivity grew at an unrevised 2.5% rate in the second quarter. The government last month revised up third-quarter gross domestic product growth to a 2.1% rate from a 1.9% pace.
Compared with the third quarter of 2018, productivity increased at a 1.5% rate, instead of the previously reported 1.4% pace. Tepid productivity suggests the economy is unlikely to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of 3% annual growth.
Productivity increased at an average annual rate of 1.3% from 2007 to 2018, below its long-term rate of 2.1% from 1947 to 2018, indicating that the speed at which the economy can grow over a long period without igniting inflation has slowed.
Some economists blame soft productivity on a shortage of workers as well as the impact of rampant drug addiction in some parts of the country. Others also argue that low capital expenditure, which they say has resulted in a sharp drop in the capital-to-labor ratio, is holding down productivity.
There is also a belief that productivity is being inaccurately measured, especially on the information technology side. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in October the U.S. central bank was “carefully assessing the implications of possibly mismeasured productivity gains.”
Hours worked rose at a revised 2.5% rate last quarter. That was up from the 2.4% pace estimated in November.
‘We were lied to’: bankruptcy leaves truckers stranded as holidays near
Michael Sainato
the guardian
Tue 10 Dec 2019 05.03 EST
‘Rumor has it we will get our final paycheck Friday. They owe me over $1,000, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or not,’ said Scott Riley. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images
About 4,000 US truck drivers notified on Monday Celadon was ceasing operations, leaving them jobless and without benefits
Andrea Smith has a daughter who turns eight on 20 December, five days before Christmas. Now the trucker’s birthday and Christmas plans have been thrown into disarray by the largest trucking firm bankruptcy in history.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen or if I’ll get to be home if I’m able to find another job quickly. I’m crushed,” said Smith, a truck operator for Celadon, hours after the giant trucking firm declared it was going out of business.
Smith is one of about 4,000 truck drivers across the US who were notified on Monday that their employer was ceasing operations after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing makes it the largest bankruptcy in trucking history.
The logistics carrier, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, reported annual revenues more than $1bn as recently as 2015. But a federal fraud investigation, huge debts and the “enormous challenges” in the industry, according to the chief executive, Paul Svindland, have forced the trucking company off the road.
Many of the truck drivers were left stranded in the midst of making deliveries, as they await receiving bus tickets from the company to return home, now jobless and left without benefits two weeks before Christmas. Their fuel cards were shut off, and many were reported left without any directions on where or how to turn in their rigs.
“We were lied to for months,” said Smith, who has worked for Celadon for a year. “We’ve been ignored, some stranded for days. I’ve still yet to hear from anyone at Celadon besides the message after midnight last night that was fleet-wide.”
Smith received the news about 50 miles away from her home in Centreville, Alabama. She explained the company asked her to drive her truck and leave it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she would receive a bus ticket back home, but she plans on leaving her truck at the Celadon terminal in Gadsden, Alabama.
Celadon has its own issues. The bankruptcy comes just days after Celadon’s former chief financial officer Bobby Lee Peavler and former chief operating officer Eric Meek were arrested and indicted on nine federal charges each involving a $60m fraud scheme, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to the company’s accountants and falsify records. The company also has debts of $293m.
But Celadon’s collapse also comes at a difficult moment for the industry. Thousands of truckers have lost their job in 2019 as the freight market stalled and “spot” prices for shipping – those bought on the open market rather than as part of a contract – fell.
A slowdown in a variety of markets, including housing and autos, and the impact of the US’s ongoing trade wars have also contributed to the drop.
About 795 companies shutdown in the first three quarters of 2019, according to transportation industry data firm Broughton Capital, three times the total number of trucker failures for the same period in 2018.
The impact on workers is severe. Scott Riley of Anderson, Indiana, just started working for Celadon in August, and his health insurance coverage began 1 November. His $200-a-week health insurance plan left him with a $23 copay for the $1,400-a-month medication he needs to treat his diabetes. His wife’s $450-a-month medication was completely covered. Now, Riley and his wife, Jennifer, are left with no health insurance coverage, and unsure how they are going to afford their medication.
“I don’t know if I have enough medication to make it through for 90 days,” said Riley. “Rumor has it we will get our final paycheck Friday. They owe me over $1,000, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or not. Honestly it’s just going to be cross your fingers and hope.”
Riley returned his truck to Celadon’s Indianapolis terminal on the morning of 9 December, where he said dozens of other drivers were left stranded, waiting to receive bus tickets to return home.
“We had no clue what was going on. Celadon themselves didn’t even alert drivers. We had to find out from different driving companies what was going on,” said Stephanie Floyd of Denton, North Carolina, whose husband, Travis, drove for Celadon. “It’s a stressful time of year to be out of work and with three small children it makes it harder.”
They have been frustrated and left in the dark, as she said Celadon wasn’t responding to inquiries from workers.
“It’s heartbreaking, trying to find another job on the drop of a dime, hoping to find something in time so we don’t miss a paycheck for bills and still be able to afford to buy our children stuff for Christmas.”
Celadon referred comment to a press release. “Our intent is to ensure drivers deliver their last loads safely and will then be instructed on where to deliver their equipment. I have no further comments,” said Celadon’s CEO, Paul Svindland, in an email.
Andrea Smith has a daughter who turns eight on 20 December, five days before Christmas. Now the trucker’s birthday and Christmas plans have been thrown into disarray by the largest trucking firm bankruptcy in history.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen or if I’ll get to be home if I’m able to find another job quickly. I’m crushed,” said Smith, a truck operator for Celadon, hours after the giant trucking firm declared it was going out of business.
Smith is one of about 4,000 truck drivers across the US who were notified on Monday that their employer was ceasing operations after filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing makes it the largest bankruptcy in trucking history.
The logistics carrier, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, reported annual revenues more than $1bn as recently as 2015. But a federal fraud investigation, huge debts and the “enormous challenges” in the industry, according to the chief executive, Paul Svindland, have forced the trucking company off the road.
Many of the truck drivers were left stranded in the midst of making deliveries, as they await receiving bus tickets from the company to return home, now jobless and left without benefits two weeks before Christmas. Their fuel cards were shut off, and many were reported left without any directions on where or how to turn in their rigs.
“We were lied to for months,” said Smith, who has worked for Celadon for a year. “We’ve been ignored, some stranded for days. I’ve still yet to hear from anyone at Celadon besides the message after midnight last night that was fleet-wide.”
Smith received the news about 50 miles away from her home in Centreville, Alabama. She explained the company asked her to drive her truck and leave it in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she would receive a bus ticket back home, but she plans on leaving her truck at the Celadon terminal in Gadsden, Alabama.
Celadon has its own issues. The bankruptcy comes just days after Celadon’s former chief financial officer Bobby Lee Peavler and former chief operating officer Eric Meek were arrested and indicted on nine federal charges each involving a $60m fraud scheme, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to the company’s accountants and falsify records. The company also has debts of $293m.
But Celadon’s collapse also comes at a difficult moment for the industry. Thousands of truckers have lost their job in 2019 as the freight market stalled and “spot” prices for shipping – those bought on the open market rather than as part of a contract – fell.
A slowdown in a variety of markets, including housing and autos, and the impact of the US’s ongoing trade wars have also contributed to the drop.
About 795 companies shutdown in the first three quarters of 2019, according to transportation industry data firm Broughton Capital, three times the total number of trucker failures for the same period in 2018.
The impact on workers is severe. Scott Riley of Anderson, Indiana, just started working for Celadon in August, and his health insurance coverage began 1 November. His $200-a-week health insurance plan left him with a $23 copay for the $1,400-a-month medication he needs to treat his diabetes. His wife’s $450-a-month medication was completely covered. Now, Riley and his wife, Jennifer, are left with no health insurance coverage, and unsure how they are going to afford their medication.
“I don’t know if I have enough medication to make it through for 90 days,” said Riley. “Rumor has it we will get our final paycheck Friday. They owe me over $1,000, I don’t know if I’m going to get it or not. Honestly it’s just going to be cross your fingers and hope.”
Riley returned his truck to Celadon’s Indianapolis terminal on the morning of 9 December, where he said dozens of other drivers were left stranded, waiting to receive bus tickets to return home.
“We had no clue what was going on. Celadon themselves didn’t even alert drivers. We had to find out from different driving companies what was going on,” said Stephanie Floyd of Denton, North Carolina, whose husband, Travis, drove for Celadon. “It’s a stressful time of year to be out of work and with three small children it makes it harder.”
They have been frustrated and left in the dark, as she said Celadon wasn’t responding to inquiries from workers.
“It’s heartbreaking, trying to find another job on the drop of a dime, hoping to find something in time so we don’t miss a paycheck for bills and still be able to afford to buy our children stuff for Christmas.”
Celadon referred comment to a press release. “Our intent is to ensure drivers deliver their last loads safely and will then be instructed on where to deliver their equipment. I have no further comments,” said Celadon’s CEO, Paul Svindland, in an email.
Robert Reich: Here are the 5 biggest corporate lies about unions
Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog - salon
September 3, 2019
Wealthy corporations and their enablers have spread 5 big lies about unions in order to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom-lines. Know the truth and spread the truth.
Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.
Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income
inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.
Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.
Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.
Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.
Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.
Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income
inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.
Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70 million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6 billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.
Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.
Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.
while the slaves drive, the master resides in luxury!!!
Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages
Los Angeles sees a spike in the homelessness population while homes the size of football fields are selling for more than $100m
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
The Guardian
Tue 2 Jul 2019 18.12 EDT
This 56,500 sq ft Holmby Hills mansion, once belonging to television producer Aaron Spelling, has sold for $120m. Photograph: Mark Terrill/AP
Two massive luxury real estate deals in Los Angeles have shone a harsh light on the wealth gap in a region where tens of thousands of people live on the streets while mansions the size of football fields sell for more than $100m.
On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.
It wasn’t even the biggest Los Angeles luxury real estate deal reported this week. A 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills chateau, once home to television producer Aaron Spelling, sold for $120m, according to the Los Angeles Times, making it the highest home price in Los Angeles county history.
The extraordinary mega-mansion sales come at a time when Los Angeles is faced with widening inequality and escalating concerns about the housing crisis and a dramatic rise in homelessness, prompting intense debate about who gets to benefit from the growing economy.
The Holmby Hills property, known as the Manor, is 4.7 acres and is considered the largest single-family home in Los Angeles. It was built in 1991 for the television producer Aaron Spelling and now has 123 rooms, according to the LA Times’ report on the sale, which has not yet been made public. It’s the fourth sale of $100m or more in LA history, the paper reported.
The Beverly Hills mansion purchase by Camp was completed mere weeks after Uber’s IPO further enriched its wealthy investors and founders. Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $4.2bn, already owns a portfolio of luxury properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan.
Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
Moore, who is also an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, told the Guardian she works as a part-time driver in addition to a full-time job in healthcare because housing costs are so expensive in Los Angeles: “It’s an abomination. Income inequality has gone rampant.”
“This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy.
“It’s a slap in everyone’s face,” she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. “The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.”
Citing drivers’ ongoing fights for workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages and other rights, Dubal said that $72m could go along way: “This amount of money could change people’s lives.” She also noted that many Uber drivers rely on public benefits and government assistance since their wages are so low, meaning taxpayers in effect contribute to Camp’s exorbitant wealth.
“It’s our money that went into that house,” she said.
News of the $120m Holmby Hills sale came the same day that officials carried out another major sweep of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis of people living on the streets. Last month, authorities revealed that Los Angeles has experienced a 16% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with more than 36,000 people now homeless in the city.
The Rev Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles homeless organization, said $120m could be used to shelter thousands of people living on LA’s streets.
“Everyone just wants to sweep human beings away,” said Bales, noting that he encountered four homeless families desperate for shelter on Monday, including a pregnant mother with three young children. “It doesn’t do any good to sweep people, when there is nowhere to sweep them to. There are no shelters, no services where we can direct people.”
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a housing rights group, said it was painful to read articles glorifying the huge mansion sale: “There is definitely a crisis of values in Los Angeles.”
Camp’s Beverly Hills estate is now reportedly home to a 12,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and a new guesthouse. The Manor in Holmby Hills is said to include a large aquarium in a study, a nightclub in a basement level, a tanning room, a solarium, a spa, a tennis court, koi ponds, rose gardens and more.
On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.
It wasn’t even the biggest Los Angeles luxury real estate deal reported this week. A 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills chateau, once home to television producer Aaron Spelling, sold for $120m, according to the Los Angeles Times, making it the highest home price in Los Angeles county history.
The extraordinary mega-mansion sales come at a time when Los Angeles is faced with widening inequality and escalating concerns about the housing crisis and a dramatic rise in homelessness, prompting intense debate about who gets to benefit from the growing economy.
The Holmby Hills property, known as the Manor, is 4.7 acres and is considered the largest single-family home in Los Angeles. It was built in 1991 for the television producer Aaron Spelling and now has 123 rooms, according to the LA Times’ report on the sale, which has not yet been made public. It’s the fourth sale of $100m or more in LA history, the paper reported.
The Beverly Hills mansion purchase by Camp was completed mere weeks after Uber’s IPO further enriched its wealthy investors and founders. Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur with an estimated net worth of $4.2bn, already owns a portfolio of luxury properties in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Manhattan.
Camp’s purchase has drawn the ire of activists and drivers who have long been protesting about Uber’s labor practices and advocating for better working conditions
“This is a perfect example of the 1% stealing from the rest of us,” Nicole Moore, a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, said of Camp’s $72.5m purchase. “Drivers are living in their cars. We’re fighting for fair wages. At least share that wealth with the people who have actually built your company.”
Moore, who is also an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, told the Guardian she works as a part-time driver in addition to a full-time job in healthcare because housing costs are so expensive in Los Angeles: “It’s an abomination. Income inequality has gone rampant.”
“This guy is buying lavish houses with our money, our hard-earned money that they are unjustly taking from us,” added Karim Bayumi, another Los Angeles Uber driver and organizer. “It’s exploitation.”
The purchase by Camp is particularly eye-popping given that Uber continues to lose money and has also aggressively opposed drivers’ efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, said Veena Dubal, an associate law professor at the University of California, Hastings, who is an expert on labor rights in the gig economy.
“It’s a slap in everyone’s face,” she said, arguing that Uber was built on the idea of breaking labor laws and violating existing regulations. “The capitalist system we have has unduly rewarded him with extraordinary, in-your-face wealth.”
Citing drivers’ ongoing fights for workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, minimum wages and other rights, Dubal said that $72m could go along way: “This amount of money could change people’s lives.” She also noted that many Uber drivers rely on public benefits and government assistance since their wages are so low, meaning taxpayers in effect contribute to Camp’s exorbitant wealth.
“It’s our money that went into that house,” she said.
News of the $120m Holmby Hills sale came the same day that officials carried out another major sweep of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the epicenter of the humanitarian crisis of people living on the streets. Last month, authorities revealed that Los Angeles has experienced a 16% increase in the homeless population over the last year, with more than 36,000 people now homeless in the city.
The Rev Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles homeless organization, said $120m could be used to shelter thousands of people living on LA’s streets.
“Everyone just wants to sweep human beings away,” said Bales, noting that he encountered four homeless families desperate for shelter on Monday, including a pregnant mother with three young children. “It doesn’t do any good to sweep people, when there is nowhere to sweep them to. There are no shelters, no services where we can direct people.”
Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a housing rights group, said it was painful to read articles glorifying the huge mansion sale: “There is definitely a crisis of values in Los Angeles.”
Camp’s Beverly Hills estate is now reportedly home to a 12,000-square-foot residence with seven bedrooms and a new guesthouse. The Manor in Holmby Hills is said to include a large aquarium in a study, a nightclub in a basement level, a tanning room, a solarium, a spa, a tennis court, koi ponds, rose gardens and more.
funnies
