This story originally appeared in Workday on March 6, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
In January 2021, Khali Jama says she began working her second job at Amazon’s MSP1 fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minn., an outer suburb south of Minneapolis. As a single mother of two, she says she’s always had two jobs. While working as a mental health professional and as a nurse, it was important for Jama to find something that could accommodate her schedule, she explains. A friend told her about the Amazon warehouse’s supposedly flexible hours. However, she says, her friend did not disclose the grueling pace of work, opaque systems of management, or the toll the work takes on the physical health of employees. After one month on the job, Jama shares that she lost a troubling amount of weight.
Jama is not alone in expressing concerns about the company. In early January, Minnesota lawmakers introduced a Warehouse Worker Safety Bill that would require improved health and safety in warehouses. Amazon warehouse workers affiliated with the Awood Center, which organizes in Minnesota’s East African communities, threw their weight behind the bill, which calls for transparency regarding the inscrutable productivity quotas that place burdensome expectations on workers. Shortly after the bill was presented, Amazon announced the pending closure of its MSP5 sort center, also in Shakopee, by the end of March 2023. The company’s move prompted the Awood Center to make accusations of retaliation, and sent shock waves through other warehouses, like the one where Jama works.
Even before the closure of a neighboring warehouse, Jama already had concerns about company practices. She recalls that most of her jobs, especially those in the healthcare field, came with significant training—how to properly bend and lift, how to handle dangerous chemicals, and how to use safety equipment. But that training was inadequate at the Amazon warehouse, she says, where management is more concerned about checking boxes and protecting the company from liability, and less focused on hands-on training or delivering safety guidelines in non-English languages workers speak.
In response to a request for comment, Barbara Agrait, an Amazon spokesperson, told Workday Magazine over email, “Employees receive four full days of in-classroom and on-the-floor training upon hire, and 160 hours of continued coaching in their specific role.”
Justine Medina is a part-time worker at Amazon’s JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, which voted in April to become the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States. She shares Jama’s concerns that such trainings are insufficient. “When you first get there, everyone goes through a three-day training, basically,” explains Medina, who is on temporary leave from her job, but will return in March. “But then you’re just thrown into whatever, and the way you’re trained again for everything is basically watching videos. And this is true for even dangerous type jobs.”
Jama says she has had experiences at the warehouse that trouble her. Once, she says, a package containing chemicals was accidentally delivered to the warehouse, something that Jama explains does occasionally happen. While handling the package, she says, unidentified chemicals seeped through the gloves Amazon provided her. Jama says her hands felt “scratchy” for a few days, and the situation scared her and made her wonder about the safety procedures at the facility. She asks, “What was the reason I had that glove on if it was not going to protect my skin?”
Agrait says the company doesn’t have a record of the incident, but claimed that Amazon provides training on hazardous materials at the beginning of employment and once a year. However, Medina says this training is insufficient, and she has seen the same incident play out at the JFK8 facility. Once, a product was leaking, she says, and workers wore gloves to handle it, but the chemical just went right through them. “People were getting what seemed like mild chemical burns,” she says. “Their hands were inflamed and red, and when they went to Amcare [on-site medical care], they were basically given anti-itch cream and told to go back to work.”
According to Jama, these conditions are worsened by an untransparent quota system. The first few months working in the warehouse, Jama says, new workers are observed while management assesses their pace, work ethic, and productivity. Then, she says, workers are given a quota that they must reach, without transparency around how that quota was determined, and at times without communicating the quota to the worker at all.
Agrait says Jama’s characterization is “incorrect,” stating, “We assess performance based on safe and achievable expectations that consider time and tenure, peer performance, and adherence to safe work practices.”
But Amazon’s quota policies have drawn scrutiny across the country, from lawmakers far beyond Minnesota: New York and California have recently passed acts specifically aimed at imposing some restrictions and transparency on the quota systems of companies that operate certain warehouses, bills that were influenced by Amazon’s industry practices and dominance. And Washington and New Hampshire have introduced similar pieces of legislation. “Those quotas generally do not allow for workers to comply with safety guidelines or to recover from strenuous activity during productive work time, leaving warehouse and distribution center employees who work under them at high risk of injury and illness,” states New York’s enacted law.
The Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of unions, warns that “the company’s obsession with speed has come at a huge cost for Amazon’s workforce.” The coalition says this focus is largely to blame for why “Amazon’s injury rates were over double the injury rate in the notoriously hazardous general warehousing industry.”
Jama raised particular concern about the age discrimination inherent in such quotas: She says it is unfair for the company to give the same metrics to a 25-year-old worker as they will a 65-year-old worker, putting older workers at a disadvantage and additional risk. “This is so inhuman, you know,” says Jama. “Like, not everybody works at the same speed.”
In 2021, a proposed class action lawsuit charged that the company’s use of quotas in warehouses amounted to wage discrimination, since older employees are at greater risk of injury, but the company defeated the effort in the California court system.
In response to concerns about age discrimination, Agrait says that workers can request accommodations. But, according to Medina, “It’s an arduous process to submit an accommodation request. You would have to be really good at navigating systems and, because of that, there are a lot of people who have a hard time getting accommodations. Immigrant workers have a lot harder time getting accommodations. It’s not like Amazon goes out of their way to help them.”
Jama says this inscrutable system is worsened by a climate where basic health and safety concerns are dismissed. She says management places high barriers that make it difficult for workers to take the day off or get a break from the line, even if they are unable to walk or actively throwing up. Once, she says, she had the flu and was told that she could not leave because she had not accumulated enough hours, and she would need to visit a doctor and come back with a note. Jama asserts that such a policy was senseless, because, for a common case of the flu, she did not need to go see a doctor to make the case she was sick. “That’s when I was like, this place really doesn’t care. They see me coughing. This is someone sick. I would want to send that person home rather than get anybody else sick.”
Agrait disputes this characterization, claiming that workers are able to take paid personal time without advance notice or documentation. But Jama says this only applies to workers who have been there a certain threshold of time that she had not yet met. And Medina says that, in practice, when you’re at work and ask to leave, managers have discretion over whether to say yes or no. “The company is going to deny this,” Medina says, “but it’s true.”
Jama details another experience where she was feeling dizzy and wanted to lay down for a bit, but Amazon’s on-site medical care, provided by a company called Amcare, would not allow her to. As a health worker herself, Jama knew this was no way a medical provider should treat a person who was feeling unwell, and the mistreatment sparked her activism against Amazon’s inhumane treatment towards workers.
Agrait denied Jama’s characterization, claiming that Jama did not provide Amcare sufficient details of her condition, and claiming Jama was facing a personal issue, not a medical one. According to Agrait, Jama was informed she could use personal time to rest and could seek outside medical care.
Jama says the company’s denial is false: “That’s a lie, and I want to say that in front of them.”
There is reason to be concerned about the care that Amcare provides. A 2019 investigation by The Intercept and Type Media found that on-site medical units at Amazon warehouses have, in numerous instances, violated government regulations and Amazon’s own policy, and “Amcare employees nationwide were pressured to sweep injuries and medical issues under the rug at the expense of employee health.”
Jama wonders, “They have all these safety rules that they don’t follow. What is Amcare even for then?”
Minnesota Warehouse Worker Safety Bill moving forward
Organizers with the Awood Center (Awood means “power” in Somali) hope that the proposed safety bill can address some of these issues. The bill requires that warehouses above a certain size provide more clarity about quotas, using workers’ preferred language, with advance notice before the quota is enforced. It also stipulates that quotas cannot interfere with meal, restroom, or prayer breaks. The bill asks that warehouses provide records of an employee’s work speed, including under circumstances of disciplinary action against the worker.
The bill requires “the employer to hold monthly safety meetings for two years until incidence rates fall below 30 percent,” according to a bill summary. It also specifies enforcement procedures, including processes for citations and penalties if remedies are not addressed under a specified timeline. Impacted employees may also receive damages and costs, including reinstatement with back pay, at the district courts’ discretion.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found in a report published on January 9 that Minnesota Amazon warehouse workers have a 30% higher injury rate than the national average for Amazon warehouse workers.
This is especially concerning given the safety risks across the country. At the end of January, OSHA cited three Amazon warehouses—in Colorado, Idaho, and New York—for “failing to keep workers safe,” according to a press release from the Department of Labor. This follows the finding of violations at three other warehouses in Florida, Illinois, and New York in 2022. According to the press statement, violations at all of these facilities included “long hours required to complete assigned tasks” and “employees awkwardly twisting, bending and extending themselves to lift items.”
“Amazon’s operating methods are creating hazardous work conditions and processes, leading to serious worker injuries,” said Doug Parker, assistant secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, in the press release.
The Minnesota bill was approved by the House Labor and Industry Finance and Policy Committee and on March 1, the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the bill forward. There are three more committee hearings before the House and Senate floor votes.
While there is ample support from Democratic state representatives and labor unions, including the Teamsters, the bill also faces opposition. Republican Rep. Joe McDonald from Delano, Minn., testified that the bill was far-reaching and that laws were already on the books to hold Amazon accountable. He described the bill as a possible “sledgehammer” to all industries in order to specifically punish one bad actor.
An earlier iteration of the bill, presented in 2021, was passed with a bipartisan vote in the Minnesota House. But Minnesota Senate leadership refused to hold a hearing for it by the end of session, effectively killing the legislation. Despite this loss, the Awood Center has had some victories. In 2018, the worker center organized for and won accommodations for Muslim workers so they could observe Ramadan and successfully organized for additional prayer rooms in warehouses. In 2018, Amazon workers in Eagan, Minn. organized for improved climate control during hot summer months after workers complained of extreme heat and dehydration.
Nationally, Amazon faces a string of legal confrontations as high injury rates and safety concerns plague the warehouses. Frustrated and fed up with the lack of corporate accountability she faces at her facility, Jama stresses, “Amazon doesn’t care. Because the rich get richer, and the poor just stay poor. I just feel like the people who made this company special should be treated better than the people who are just sitting in the office doing absolutely nothing.”
“You don’t deal with people, you deal with apps.”
While the bill introduced significant measures in transparency surrounding safety, and provisions to address the high injury rates present in Amazon warehouses, there are still questionable company methods, including a thick layer of confusion and miscommunication between management and workers. Khali Jama emphasizes “You don’t deal with people, you deal with apps.”
The app Amazon uses for scheduling, pay stubs, news, and other communications with employees is titled A to Z. But Jama says that during training the company asked employees to download the app to their phones with insufficient explanation for how to use it. While the company claims the app is available in 20 different languages, Jama says it is not available in Somali, even though a significant portion of the workers there primarily speak this language. Many workers are not proficient in the use of technology and do not speak fluent English. Jama explains, “I don’t understand their system and I speak the language and understand my rights and I’m still confused. So imagine the people who don’t know their rights. Because the majority don’t even know how to use technology.”
The company claims that use of the app isn’t required. But, According to Medina, “A to Z is what you’re supposed to use to do everything. Your entire H.R. system is an app.”
Jama is more fluent in English than other workers at her facility, and she says she frequently must double as an interpreter in the warehouse for Somali-speaking workers. She is not compensated and alleges that Amazon does not do enough to provide interpretation for their overwhelmingly Somali worker base in the Shakopee warehouse. She wonders whether this gap in communication is intentional in order to sow confusion between the workers and management.
In response to these concerns, Agrait said that MSP1 employees are required to speak and understand English.
Along with the confusing layers of bureaucracy and lack of adequate language accessibility, workers allege many incoherent policies that make workers’ lives harder and lack common sense. When Jama calls into Amazon’s Employee Resource Center, she is frequently met with confusion and miscommunication, she says.
Jama explains that when workers call out sick through the A to Z app without sufficient paid sick time, Amazon asks that they either provide a doctor’s note or asks that they come into the warehouse and visit the Amazon medical facility in order to take the day off. (Medina says this is also the case at the JFK8 warehouse.) Jama, living in St. Paul, Minn., explains that her commute can take up to 40 minutes each way, and that when a worker is very sick this added barrier harms workers and does not allow them to truly take care of themselves when dealing with illness or injury.
With the high injury rates, lack of transparent management, and impractical sick-time policies, it’s no surprise that Amazon warehouses have some of the highest turnover rates in the industry. A New York Times investigation found that in Amazon warehouses turnover was approximately 150% annually, well over the industry average. Some reports question the sustainability of this model long-term.
At the end of January, Amazon announced the upcoming closure of MSP5, an Amazon sort center located at 5825 11th Ave. East in Shakopee, the smaller of the two warehouses in the suburb. The closure will result in 680 workers losing their jobs.
The closure comes as a setback while the Warehouse Worker Safety Bill inches closer towards possible victory in the Minnesota Legislature. In a statement from late January, the Awood Center says: “We believe that Amazon’s decision to close this facility is wrong & retaliatory based on the powerful efforts of workers who have been organizing with Awood Center and demanding better working conditions, particularly through their advocacy for the Warehouse Worker Safety Bill in the Minnesota Legislature.”
“Amazon strongly opposed the Warehouse Worker Safety Bill last session,” the organization notes, “and it is now on the verge of passing.”
On February 12, workers demonstrated outside MSP5 alongside local union members and politicians, including Minnesota Senator Erin Murphy, State Representative Emma Greenman, and State Representative and former mayor of Shakopee, Brad Tabke. Workers made speeches and held signs criticizing Amazon for the closure and the ways the company has handled rehiring workers at other facilities.
While the company states that all workers will have the opportunity to be rehired, workers aren’t as hopeful. Some have raised concerns that the company is requiring employees to pass an exam that is administered in English as a condition of transfer. And some are unable to access other warehouses due to lack of transportation. Workers say the company is hiring outside workers to replace the current workforce, a sign that it does not plan to make sure all of its MSP5 employees maintain employment. An organizer from the Awood Center told Workday Magazine that workers feel retaliated against, and some workers even said they were met with threats from managers that if they continue to organize, Amazon will “replace them with robots.”
Agrait claims that translation services are being provided for workers who have questions related to the transfer. And, she says, most workers transferring from MSP5 to MSP1 have already taken the Hazmat test required to work at the latter.
But Abdirahman Muse, executive director of the Awood Center, told Workday Magazine over email that “workers dispute that the vast majority of employees at MSP5 have already taken and passed the basic Hazmat test to work at MSP1. That is not true based on what the workers have told us. In any event, if passing the test is a prerequisite to transferring, Amazon saying that the vast majority of employees transferring from MSP5 to MSP1 have already passed the test doesn’t mean much.”
“Amazon still has not responded to the workers’ concerns about transportation to other warehouses,” he says. “For many it will be difficult to reach the other locations given that they use public transportation, which is not practical for traveling long distances, and many have relocated to be close to the MSP5 warehouse.”
“Based on our conversations with workers, it is clear that Amazon is not providing adequate translation services,” Muse adds. “In addition, Amazon is not answering workers’ questions or providing information or their commitments to the workers in writing in their native languages.”
Agrait says that “the decision to close the Shakopee Sort Center is due to changing business needs and an effort to improve the experience for our employees, customers, partners, and drivers. Any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect. Every employee is able to transfer to another facility around the Twin Cities and we’re working hard to accommodate their preferences during this process.”
She says, “retaliation of any kind isn’t tolerated.”
But, according to Muse, “It seems clear to the Awood Center that Amazon is knowingly maintaining barriers to transferring to other warehouses and hiring replacement workers because of the MSP5 workers’ outspoken organizing activity at MSP5, including conducting multiple strikes and walkouts, making public demands for better wages and working conditions, and the recent vocal support for a Warehouse Worker Safety Bill in the Minnesota legislature that Amazon has vigorously opposed and is likely to pass this session.”
The company does “not deny that they are hiring outside workers to replace the current workforce even though they are giving lip service to opposing retaliation,” he adds.
Medina found the assertion that the company doesn’t tolerate retaliation laughable. “All of us who were lead organizers got at least one write-up during the election period for our unionization activities,” she says. “They definitely retaliate.” The company has famously fired several union organizers, citing business reasons or alleged infractions. Among them was Christian Smalls, who went on to help organize the successful union drive at the JFK8 facility where Medina works.
Nationally, the closure of the warehouse in Shakopee is on trend with closures of Amazon warehouses and other facilities across the country. One report explains that the company is scaling back its operations after a boom in shipping and online shopping during the pandemic. At the same time, Amazon also hints at the possibility of opening Amazon Fresh stores, grocery stores chains, in the Twin Cities metro. However, Amazon grocery stores in Twin Cities suburbs including Eagan, Eden Prairie, Burnsville, Coon Rapids, and Arden Hills, all sit empty and seemed to have been halted mid-construction, indicating an uncertain future for the grocery chains in Minnesota.
While the closure certainly comes as a blow to an organized worker base, neither the Awood Center nor Khali Jama are allowing it to slow down their plans to make the existing warehouses safer for workers. Jama is hopeful and shares that her passion for justice stems from her ardent commitment to her Muslim faith. “In this life,” she says, “people are not going to remember you by what you had. People will remember you for what you did. If I do die at least I know I did something in my life. That’s why it’s so important for me to fight for safety.”
Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to overhaul the country’s pension system, his government on Thursday chose the “nuclear option,” opting to use a constitutional procedure to force through reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.
While the proposal passed the Senate, the upper chamber of Parliament, 193-114 Thursday morning, “reports indicated that the ruling party, which lost its overall majority in elections last year, was a handful of votes short” in the National Assembly, which led to an emergency Council of Ministers meeting about triggering the Article 49.3,
Le Mondeexplained.
After announcing the government was invoking executive privilege, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “faced scenes of anger and unrest in the National Assembly,”
reportedPolitico. “Far-left lawmakers belonging to the France Unbowed party booed and chanted the national hymn the Marseillaiseas far-right National Rally MPs shouted ‘Resign! Resign!’”
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Using the controversial procedure to push through the plan is risky for Macron—founder of the Renaissance party—because it allows members of Parliament “to submit motions of no-confidence within 24 hours,”
Politico added. “While the government has survived motions of no-confidence in recent months, the stakes are much higher this time around. If a majority of MPs vote in favor of a motion, Borne’s government would be forced to resign.”
While multiple opposition groups in Parliament may respond with no-confidence motions, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has already pledged to do so.
“It’s a total failure for the government,” Le Pen
told reporters of the Article 49.3 decision, calling for Borne’s resignation. “From the beginning, the government fooled itself into thinking it had a majority.”
Socialist Party chief Olivier Faure also criticized the approach, saying that “when a president has no majority in the country, no majority in the National Assembly, he must withdraw his bill.”
Fabien Roussel, head of the French Communist Party,
declared that “this government is not worthy of our Fifth Republic, of French democracy. Until the very end, Parliament has been ridiculed, humiliated.”
MP Rachel Keke of the leftist party La France Insoumise stressed that “what the government is doing makes people sick of politics. It should improve people’s lives, not destroy them.”
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Former French presidential candidate and MP Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who launched La France Insoumise, tweeted: “It is a spectacular failure and a collapse of the presidential minority. United unions call for continued action. This is what we are going to focus on.”
French trade unions have led national demonstrations and strikes against the overhaul since January. While protesters were oscillating “between rage and resignation” earlier this week, they filled the streets of Paris on Thursday, and “the leader of the CFDT labor union, Laurent Berger, announced there would be new protest dates,” according to Le Monde.
The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) said in a statement that “this reform is unfair, unjustified, and unjustifiable, this is what millions of people have been asserting forcefully for weeks in the demonstrations, with the strike, and in all the initiatives. These massive mobilizations are supported by a very large majority of the population and almost all workers.”
“The only response from the government and employers is repression: requisitions, police interventions on workplace occupations, arrests, intimidation, questioning of the right to strike,” the confederation added. “We won’t let it happen! What the CGT denounced as unfair yesterday is even more so today! This can only encourage us to step up mobilizations and strikes, the fight continues!”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
The historic union election victory at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse on Staten Island sent shockwaves throughout the US and beyond, but New York is not the only place Amazon workers are organizing. In Moreno Valley, California, workers at the ONT8 warehouse have been doing the painstaking work of organizing for years, and now they are attempting to unionize with the independent Amazon Labor Union, facing the same union-busting playbook from Amazon management that workers in Staten Island, Bessemer, Chicago, etc. have faced. We talk with Nannette Plascencia, who has worked at Amazon since 2015 and has led the unionization effort at ONT8, and Ivan Baez, a member of the union organizing committee and a former ONT8 employee who was recently fired in a suspected act of retaliation for his organizing activity.
FeaturedMusic(allsongssourcedfromtheFreeMusicArchive at freemusicarchive.org): Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song”
Transcript
Nannette Plascencia: Hi, my name is Nannette Plascencia. I work at an Amazon facility called ONT8 in Moreno Valley, California. I have worked there since 2015. A couple years ago, I started organizing my warehouse with some coworkers.
Ivan Baez: Hi, my name is Ivan Baez. I’m 28 years old. I was formerly employed with Amazon, but was recently terminated. I worked at Amazon in the past. I was there for a year, and I ended up leaving the company to go find a job at a school district. But I went back for a seasonal position, and that’s when I was terminated, in my opinion, for my union activity.
Maximillian Alvarez: All right. Well, welcome everyone to another episode of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor, and made possible by the support of listeners like you.
As y’all heard, we’ve got a really special and important mini cast for y’all today. I am honored to be joined by Nannette and Ivan, who are calling in from my home state of California. Obviously, as you guys know because of the conversations that we’ve had on this show, at The Real News Network, but also because of all the great coverage that we’ve been seeing around the country, there’s been a lot of really vital organizing happening at Amazon warehouses. We’ve been following the organizing efforts in Bessemer, Alabama, where workers were trying to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union two years ago. We have been there talking to folks on Staten Island in New York, who shocked the world by successfully voting to unionize the JFK8 warehouse last April. And earlier this year in January, the National Labor Relations Board finally, 10 months after that historic union victory, certified the election results.
Amazon, of course, the second-largest private employer in the United States, owned by one of the richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos, continues to thrash and whine and flip over the chess board and refuse to acknowledge the election results in the JFK8 union election. They have vowed to try to continue to challenge the election, to throw out the results, do anything and everything in their power except come to the bargaining table and hash out a first contract with those workers who won their union election fair and square and unionize with the Amazon Labor Union back in April of 2022.
But I say all that to say that it’s not just in Alabama and New York where this organizing is happening. Hopefully, you have heard about the valiant and vital efforts to organize at the ONT8 warehouse in California, but if you haven’t, that is our goal today, to get you up to speed on the organizing that’s happening there, how that organizing campaign has evolved over the years, including during the middle of a deadly pandemic, and ultimately what we all can do around the US and beyond to support workers like Nannette and Ivan in their fight for a union at ONT8 and beyond.
So I really, really appreciate you guys taking the time to sit down and chat with us today. I know you’ve got a lot going on. I know it’s a Saturday, so I’m just very, very grateful to you both, and I know we’ve got a lot to talk about here. And so I wanted to start by getting to know a bit more about you guys. As we talked about before we started recording, on the podcast, we really, really try to get to know everyone that we’re talking to, learn more about their backstory, how they came to be the people they are and do the work that they do.
And since we have a sort of shortened amount of time here, I wanted to do a condensed version of that, and ask if we could talk a bit about your paths to working at Amazon. If you could talk us through what it was like from maybe you saw a job opening, you applied, what were you expecting going into it? What was it like walking into that massive warehouse, and what sort of work do you do there? Nannette, why don’t we start with you.
Nannette Plascencia: Okay, so I started working there in 2015. Right before I put in a job application there, I heard from other people that I was working with at another job, a retail store, that there was an Amazon opening up soon not too far away from where I was working at the time. I went to apply, and I did it more because we heard rumors that working there was going to be really great. They talked a lot about how they heard it was a great facility to work for, Amazon cares about their workers, and they were going to pay well. And so I went and applied, and I got the job. They were hiring a lot of people at that time because they had barely opened up.
When I finally got in there for orientation, it was great. I mean, it was brand new. Everything there was brand new. The break rooms were nice, they had nice lockers. And we had three days of orientation, and they walked us around the whole facility. And they would always talk to us about the positives, you know, we are working here as a team. We care about each other. We help each other out. And so my first year working there actually wasn’t bad. It was pretty good the first year.
Then as time went on, I noticed things like being able to move up or move into a different work area became harder. I kept getting the runaround. A lot of people there would get the runaround. When you would go talk to a manager or your lead, they would be like, yeah, we’re going to get you in. We’re going to give you this class so you can move into this position. And it never happened. And so I went in a circle with them about trying to move up. And then if I went into another work department, it was similar to what I was already doing, and it was pretty boring.
And it had to do with always dealing with rate and TOT. Those two things go together for the position that I do there. It’s called prep. What I do is I prep the items from the vendor. The vendor, they drop a pallet to me, and then I start picking off the pallet. And what I do is I process those items within the box. And the vendor might want special things done to it first. Like they might want this item bubble bagged because it’s glass, or they might want it bagged because it might leak. So I deal with things like that. I have to prep the item, and then after that I send it on its way in a tote.
So you have to process so many [inaudible] per hour or else you could get written up. At the same time, we also deal with something called time off task, where your algorithm from the computer, if you’re idle, not doing anything and processing an item within a certain amount of time, then you also get hit with time off task. So those two things I have to deal with while I’m working. From there, I just stayed within that area, because then there’s another one that’s similar to it and it deals with the same things. I never got to actually go up higher or do something different, like being in another learning center, or just something different. I was never able to do that.
And so that’s where I’m actually at to this day. I’ve been in the same department called Prep now for about three years. That’s where I landed and that’s where I’m at. I basically just do that all day for 10 hours. Because of that, I had gotten… Here’s the thing, I’d never gotten written up for a final warning or anything like that on my record. All those years I’ve been there. I get a final written warning about time off task, and I was in shock because I have a high rate. I know what I’m doing, I’ve been there so long. And I got it and I felt helpless. There was no one there to help me through it to get this off my record, or I didn’t have a voice, I felt helpless. I did not think it was right at all for what they did to me.
From that moment, that’s what actually pushed me to say, enough is enough. I’m done with this. I played your games, I talked to management, I tried to make things better in my workplace, in my department, and no one hears me out. And then I get a write-up like this, and I feel I work so hard here, and all I get is a write-up for it? That’s what actually pushed me to start to try to unionize my facility, because of that write-up. Because I felt so helpless and I was so upset for what they did to me, I said, enough is enough. That’s when I started talking to my coworkers and I started looking into organizing my facility, because of that write-up.
Ivan Baez: I started working at Amazon the first time in 2018. My first day was May 15. Before that, I was living in Hawaii for a little bit for my dad’s job. I was there for two years and I moved back to California, and I lived with my aunt and I was just looking for a job. I had a lot of crappy jobs before that. I was working at a gas station overnight. I was a day porter at an apartment complex. I worked as a dishwasher at a pizza place. And then I worked at a warehouse where we manufactured water filtration systems. I ended up getting fired from there because it was like a staffing agency. They said my term was over, whatever. And then I got a job as a fry cook, prep cook at a sushi restaurant. And I got fired from there too, because the manager, my two coworkers were undocumented immigrants and they didn’t speak almost any English.
One of my coworkers, she… That’s a long story. But anyway, I defended them. He was making them come in on a Sunday, even though they… One of them was trying to have her doctor appointment that she had been canceling to cover for the position that I was covering, that I got hired for. She was covering it. And I said, hey man, she’s trying to go to the doctor. Well, they fired me for it. He didn’t like me for it. So I got fired. I was jobless for a little bit. And so a friend of mine told me they were hiring at Amazon. They were opening a new building in a place called Eastvale, California. It’s about 30 minutes from where we live, [Vernon] and I live. And I was like, well dude, I mean, we got to get a job, so let’s go.
So we go, we do our little drug test, a little orientation, all that stuff. And the building was, like I said, brand new. It had just opened a few months beforehand, I think it was in March. I was there, and at the time they told us that the building was the largest in the network. It was the biggest Amazon ever built. And it is a massive building. Just lengthwise, it’s ridiculously long. My department was four stories tall. There’s four floors in my department. The other half of the building is two floors. That’s like the packing department was the two floors, and my department of picking and counting and all that stuff, with STO, is four floors.
And like Nannette said, at first it was not too bad. I didn’t like it because I’m not a fan of Amazon. I don’t shop at Amazon and things like that. So I was already not feeling it, working for a place I don’t want to work at. But truth be told, it wasn’t the worst job ever. It was relatively chill. We still had five eights. We still had five days of eight hours. So that wasn’t too bad. I get out relatively early. It wasn’t too bad.
I got into the workers’ labor movement, stuff like that, just through having read a lot of famous thinkers like the anarchists and all that kind of stuff. So I was already always interested in wanting to do something like that, organize a union or whatever. I was part of the IWW for a little bit, and I was trying to organize a place with that. But many people were really, really scared to even say the word or even hear the word “union” at Amazon. I had a coworker, great guy. He was a really hard worker. He’d been with Amazon for four years. Really nice dude. One day I went up to him and I was like, hey man, what do you think about a union? And as soon as I said that, he said, let me stop you right there, buddy. I don’t don’t ever want you to say that word near me, or don’t even talk to me about it. Just go away.
I went and talked to him about it. He apologized, he was a little too stern with me, but he said, I’m not going to lie, dude. I’ve seen people be fired that same day they even mentioned the word. Don’t mess up my career, my job. I respect that. Never brought it up to him again. Other people were kind of similar. Like, hey man, I’m not interested, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
I was at that building for a year. I did peak season there. It was interesting. I still remember to this day standing on the fourth floor by the elevator, a little overlooking the second floor of the packing department, and all you see is this massive array of conveyors and lights and people running back and forth packing. It looked like a sweatshop, honestly. It was interesting to be in the belly of the beast, in the whale, seeing the whole thing.
After peak season, I had asked for a transfer – But right before that I asked for a transfer to a building that was closer to my house because the drive was too much. California traffic is ridiculous. So I got transferred to a building called LGB6. I should mention the other building is called LGB3. I transferred to LGB6, and that building was what’s called a non-sort. So it’s items that are really big: bicycles, refrigerators, patio umbrellas, you really name it. Bigger stuff that can’t be put in a tiny box. We would drive what are called order pickers, or OPs. It’s like a forklift where you wear a vest and a harness and you elevate up 50 feet, back down, or whatever. And that building was really different. It was really quiet. There’s not much noise going around. But there was some bullshit there. The day that I quit was because we were being harassed about TOT over and over. Everyone’s being harassed, oh, you got to be on TOT. Blah, blah, blah, this and that.
But a lot of my coworkers and I were really curious to know what exactly is the policy for TOT. When does it start accruing? How many minutes before we get in trouble? How does it work? They said it’s scanned the scan. But I’m like, we would say, well, when you scan an item and you put it in your bin, do you start accruing TOT then? Is there a grace period? Is there a four-minute grace period and then in accrues? And then you gather those four minutes? We just want to know the details. If you’re going to harass us about it, you might as well tell us the details. I think it’s only fair.
So one day at what we call standup – They’re just little pregame meetings before you go to work in the mornings and after lunch – I had a coworker who asked, I would argue, a really dumb question because it’s one that we all know the answer to. He asked us… We were all tired, we wanted to go home. And he was like, I have a question. Can we go home? And it’s like, well, yeah, buddy. We know the policy. If you got PTO and UPT, you can go and come as you please as long as you have the time. So yeah, you can. But the PA was like, oh, well that’s so funny. No, you can. You can leave if you want. Ha ha ha. And I said, well, if this guy’s going to ask this question, we all know the answer to it. Let me ask one that we all want to know the answer to. And I said, yeah, I have a question about TOT. What are the details? When does it start accruing? Blah, blah, blah.
And as I’m asking the question, the other PA shuts me down and says, okay, no. Sorry buddy. Go to work, everybody. I’m going to talk to you on the side, Ivan. And I was like, oh, wow. She took me to the side and she’s like, why do you want to know this? And I’m like, well, because you guys are harassing us, and I think we have the right to know what the details are. And she’s like, well, if you’re just doing your job, you shouldn’t have to worry about it. And I’m like, Well, I guess you’re kind of right. True. But don’t we have the right to know at least? And then if I want to neglect my duties as a worker, then that’s up to me, no?
So that day just really pissed me off, that this guy could ask a question that we all know the answer to. It’s clearly obvious. You can go and come and you can be late to work. And as long as you have the time, you can leave early. As long as you have the time. Why is he asking this? And it’s so funny. Ha-ha, funny, funny. But I’m asking a serious question, and all of us were genuinely wanting to know, and I’m being harassed about it, being pulled aside. I go back to work and my coworkers drive up to me like, oh, dude. What happened? What’d she tell you? And I’m like, hey, man. Well, she just told me, basically just shut up and get back to work basically. And I was really pissed.
And I said, you know what? I had no PTO and no UPT. So if I were one minute late, either clocking in or back from lunch, or I leave even a minute early, I would’ve been fired. It’s a terminable offense to go negative on UPT. So I said, you know what? I’m done. I don’t want to work here anymore. I got to find a job I actually care about that I feel good doing. So I put my OP away, took my harness off, walked to the clock out machine and beep. And then automatically made me go negative. So then I quit. On paper, I was fired because their system said I went negative, so they terminated me. But in reality, I just quit. I walked out, basically. That was 2019 in June that I quit. I got a job at a school district, really loved the job. It was phenomenal. I ended up losing that job for reasons that I don’t want to get into right now, but what I would argue are totally really whack, dumb reasons.
Then this is during the pandemic. So I’m working basically from home with the kids on Zoom. So I was privileged in that respect. Other people were basically putting their lives on the line to get people their packages on time, while I’m over here chilling at home in my PJs. So I was not really in the thick of it during the pandemic. And then I lost my job, so I had the money coming in. I was really privileged during the pandemic. After the pandemic, 2021, we go back in person and I just wanted to lose my job. 2022, I was unemployed, but I wanted to do something with my life. I couldn’t just be bumming it all day. So I said, well, let’s go back to school.
I go to school in the fall of 2022, but the money was running out. I had money saved up from the pandemic and just while working or whatever. So I needed a job. And Amazon pretty much hires you as long as you got a pulse. If you got a pulse and you’re breathing, you’re hired. So I got the job at ONTA, and I didn’t want to work there. But I got to eat and pay my bills. So I’m there.
And one day I was approached by a coworker. I don’t want to say her name, but I’m getting a scanner from the cage, it was called. And she’s like, are you interested in joining a union? And I was like, yes, of course. Of course I am. What do you mean? She’s like, oh, we’re having a union meeting this week, it’s Friday or Saturday if you want to come by. Yeah, definitely. So I show up, and that’s where I met Nannette and that’s where I met the other people, other members of the committee. And that day, I joined the committee and I’m here organizing with them.
From there, we had captive audience meetings that I pushed back at. We had a rally that I attended, I had a sign. I think I made it pretty obvious that I was pro-union, trying to get this going. Pretty obvious, you can’t really deny who I was. And so eventually I was terminated for… We’ll get to that later I guess, but for… Not dumb reasons, but really convenient reasons for Amazon. And so right now, we’re in 2023. I’m back in school, and here we are now.
Maximillian Alvarez: Man, it’s just so wild to hear this, and I hope that it’s really sinking in for folks listening. Because I feel like there’s a disconnect when everyone was excited when the ALU won their election on Staten Island. And I think that people just assumed, and it was like, oh, they won their union election, so all the horror stories we’ve been hearing about Amazon are going to change. And they haven’t. I want to impress upon people that even for the folks on Staten Island, if you watched our recent interview at The Real News Network, shit has not changed, and the fight is still very much ongoing. All the horror stories, and even the less horrific but still unacceptable stories that we’ve been hearing from folks for years working at Amazon: The time off task that you’ve been hearing Nanette and Ivan talk about. Just these shadowy, black boxed algorithms that are telling you whether or not you’re going to get fired based on how fast you’re going.
And I think workers have a right to know, well, what are these metrics based on? How much time are we being given to accomplish these tasks? Who is making the decisions of how much time it should take? We’re the ones who are actually doing it, so shouldn’t these metrics be calibrated to the work that we do? This is very similar to what we hear talking to gig workers, folks who were lured into the gig industry because it promised that we could be our own bosses, we could make our own hours, only to find out that essentially our boss is our phone and the algorithms that are owned by the companies that run them, whether that be Shipt, whether that be Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, these proprietary algorithms, they can change at the drop of a hat and workers can see their take home pay go down every week. And they are told they have no right to know what those changes were, how their ratings are being calculated. Just like the time off task issue, how long the algorithm is telling you it should take to carry out this order, yada, yada, yada. If something comes up that you don’t have control over; maybe there’s a long line in the grocery store and there’s only one cashier there. That’s not your fault, but you’re the one who has to bear the brunt of it.
So I hope that those connections are becoming apparent as y’all listen to Nannette and Ivan talk about this. And I also wanted to comment on one other thing, because this hits very close to home, both geographically, because I’m from Southern California, but also because 10 years ago I was working in warehouses much like the ones that y’all have been working at in Amazon. Although, I want to make it very clear that even the warehouses that I was working at are nothing compared to what y’all are describing. I feel like I was just on the cusp of the Amazon revolution. But I was working for one of those staffing agencies that you mentioned, Ivan, and I was being shuffled to different warehouses and factories around Orange County and LA County. And the one that I end up working at the longest was in the City of Industry.
And the thing that I think about even now is growing up in Southern California, you’re driving everywhere. You’re driving through the Inland Empire, you’re driving to the beach, yada, yada, yada. And you almost don’t notice how many of these giant beige buildings there are dotting the highway. Or like I said, driving through Corona, you’re driving through Ontario, it’s just this vast brown expanse with these giant hulking buildings that almost blend into the background. And so when you’re driving past them, you’re like, oh, that’s just… I don’t know, it’s a part of the landscape.
But if you’ve actually been in one of those things, you know how much pain and how much blood, sweat, and tears is extracted from human beings on a daily basis. And it becomes hard to sit with the fact that you now know what goes on inside those, but they look so nondescript from the outside. So for the average person, they don’t know what goes on in there. And so I think it’s really important y’all were describing, for people to understand that beyond those beige walls, those nondescript looking buildings, they’re just these incredibly complicated operations, vast arrays of moving machinery, and human bodies being broken down on a day-to-day basis to get you your packages, to get you all the stuff that ends up in big box stores. That’s what we did at my warehouse. I can still go into a Bed Bath & Beyond, or a JCPenney and see stuff that I know came from that warehouse in the city of industry.
And so, just stop and look around. Think about all the essential labor that’s going on around you, and how that labor is meant to become invisible by hiding it behind these walls, these buildings. It’s everywhere, all around us. And I hope that the more that we listen to folks like Nannette and Ivan, we can make that work visible, and we can know better how to support folks who are actually fighting to improve their workplaces.
And that’s where I wanted to come to now. We already started talking about this, but I was wondering if we could flesh out a bit more what the organizing has looked like in ONT8, how that has evolved. If the unionization efforts in Bessemer or Staten Island, if those have played any role in the work that y’all are doing. Could you give listeners more of a sense of what that day-to-day work of organizing looks like, and what the opposition from management looks like? So Nannette, why don’t we go back to you?
Nannette Plascencia: Okay. So I started talking to coworkers in my facility about unionizing after I had got my first and only write up for TOT. And it actually went to a final, which was I didn’t get a warning, I didn’t get a talking to, I didn’t get a first written, second written. They say with that TOT, they could take it straight to a final if they want to. And it stays on my record for one year. And if I get any other write up within the one year before that TOT final written gets knocked off, I will be fired. They take it very seriously, because they say I’m stealing company time for being time off task.
So with that, I started talking to people to try to see what their take on it was. Actually, what do they go through in their department or where they work on the other side of the warehouse? And so I started talking to people at break and at lunch. I would sit by somebody and I would introduce myself. And I would ask, so how long have you been here? And I would let them know how long I’ve been there. And I would just ask them, so how is it in your department? I’ve never worked in that area. And then they would start opening up and talk to me, and they would tell me some good things, and then they would go into the bad things.
And what I got, the feel from everybody that I talked to there, even though they were in different departments, it was the same thing all around. People were upset about the pace that we had to go at, and always getting talked to about it or getting a warning about it even though we were already going so fast. Because these algorithms they put us all on, it doesn’t count for what happens throughout a 10-and-a-half hour day that we’re there. Life happens.
We’re not a machine that keeps going every minute. We stop because we’re tired. We have a coworker that might talk to us and say, hey, how are you doing? Oh, I’m doing okay. Do you need any help? So we have conversations with people. Our managers come and talk to us. And there might be accidents that happen, like spillages and glass breaking, so we have to stop and clean it up. We run out of items that we need, so we have to go over to a certain area to pull those items out and stock it back in our workstation so we could use it. We have to use the restroom, we need to fill up our water bottle. There’s just a lot of things throughout the day that have us stop with the items. But it seems like those normal things get used against us.
And then at the end of the day, before we’re ready to clock out, a manager will come to you and say, hey, I need to talk to you really quick. You have TOT. Why? I need to know I have to write you up, and I have to take it to management to let them know. And that’s how it would work all the time. No matter how hard you work, it didn’t matter, because if that algorithm came in saying that you weren’t fast enough or you took too much time today, you were going to get in trouble. And it felt the same way through every department. People went through the same thing. They were hurting, they were in pain and it didn’t matter, and they felt that they didn’t have nobody really there to defend them, to help them.
So when I noticed that, I had said, well, why don’t we get together and try to unionize, and that’s going to help us make Amazon hear our voices. Because right now they don’t have to listen to us. It’s whatever they say. It’s whatever they say goes, and we don’t have a say in it, and it comes from the top down, and we have to take and do whatever they tell us. I said, but if we unionize, this is how it can benefit us. And I had written it down on a little card, and I had said, take a look at it. Read it. What do you think? And they would be like, this is great. We need something like this because I’m tired of the way they treat me in my department. That’s how everybody was: I’m tired of the way they treat me in my department. All around, most of all the departments, they felt the same way.
So that’s how I started it off. And then from there I invited some of them to my house if they wanted to come, more of close friend coworkers that I knew in my department. I started in my department first and said, come to my house. We can talk with somebody, and I could show you laws that help protect us to do what we want to do, unionizing. We have laws that can protect us. And so we started that way, and then I would try to tell other coworkers at work that these certain laws protect us that we’re allowed to talk about it. Because it is true what Ivan said, how people felt so scared that they couldn’t even say the word “union”. And if a manager heard it, they’ll get in trouble. Right away, that was the first thing out of people’s mouths when I would say union, they were really scared. Oh no, we can’t talk about that here. We will get in trouble. They’ll fire us. That’s how a lot of people felt.
So I would try to tell them, no, look, there’s these laws, the National Labor Board, these certain laws protect us. We can talk about it. But see the thing is it’s in certain areas during certain times. So I tried to tell them, we’re allowed to talk about it on the floor because we’re allowed to talk about anything on the work floor. I said, but if we want to give some coworkers literature and stuff, then we’ll do that at break and lunch where we can do it while we’re at the tables. I said, so those certain things are there to protect us, and we’re allowed to talk about it.
So that’s how I started it off there. And I just kept letting people know about laws that protect us and how we’re allowed to do this and how it was going to help us improve our working conditions there and our pay and our benefits. Because, yes, we get benefits, but it’s the bare minimum. Amazon likes to boast about how on day one that you’re hired you get medical benefits. But the thing is, those medical options they give us are very expensive, so expensive. I tell people that too, but if we could have a say in it, we could actually get better options. If we unionize, then they would have to hear us, and we actually get a say in those benefits. Because right now they are not good benefits. So I try to tell people that.
And the thing is now, since we reached a spot where we were starting to get signatures because we felt more confident that people understood more what a union was and how it was going to help us and protect us, we started signing cards, authorization cards. But the thing about that is the law states we have to get 30% of the people that work in our warehouse. But, there’s not a law that helps us workers get that number. We have no clue how many people work in our facility. So that’s what gets me upset is you make a law that says I have to get 30% of my coworkers to sign it, but you don’t make a law that makes it able for me to get those numbers so I know when I hit 30%, or how much I need to get for that 30%. So, we basically had to guesstimate how many workers actually worked there. We had to take our best guess. We had to try to research. We had to do everything we could to try to come up with a number.
So that’s what we did. And we just came up with a number and thought, yeah, this gots to be it. And so when we started signing cards, we felt that we had hit the correct guesstimation number there. So we turned them in to the National Labor Board in LA. And then Amazon told them that we have 2,600 people working there, which we were like, no way. No way. That is way too many. We do not have that amount. But the thing is, I guess, we don’t know what kind of proof they had to show to say that they had 2,600. So that’s when the National Labor Board said, okay, so Amazon saying you have 2,600, you don’t have 30% of their number. So what are you going to do? So I took the cards back out because if I left them there, I would lose them and I’d have to start all over. So I took them back so I can add more on top of that total till I get 30% of what Amazon is saying that we have there, of 2,600. And that’s why I took them back out. And that’s why we’ve still been working on getting those cards signed to hit that 30% mark so I could resubmit them.
But starting in October, they brought in a firm and more managers to come in and start to union bust against us. They’ve been there since October. They’re still in our facility to this day, all of them. Now what they’re doing is they have a group that comes around to every department, night shift and day shift, and they talk to us while we’re at our workstations, and they ask us questions and they call themselves the special engagement team. They engage the associates, that’s what they’re called. Yes.
So they come up to us, they ask us random questions, how do we like working there? What would we like changed? How do you feel about the atmosphere, they say, the atmosphere of your facility? And then do you have any questions about what’s been going on recently, this union thing? And then they give their advice – Or no, their opinion about what they think union is, and how they feel about it, and it’s negative stuff. So you have these people in here telling you negative stuff about the union, they’re allowed to give their opinion about it to us, and what they think about it.
And then they also have us around the clock going to the captive audience meetings. And they have groups of us go in, and they have a projection slide up, and they have these slides ready to go. And they talk bad, negative things about the ALU, how they’re brand new, how can they help you? They don’t have no experience in making a contract. And then they tell us we could lose benefits.
So they started scaring a lot of people by saying that. You could lose your benefits, that’s what they tell people. Yeah. You could get worse with a contract. We have an open door policy, so why do you need a union? Why do you have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to a union when we hear you out all the time? That’s what they tell us. And they have them on these slides, and they go through them, and they just talk all negative stuff about unions, negative about the ALU. And then after they end their slides, they say, okay, you can go back to work.
Then we go to our lunch tables in the break room. They have flyers all over the break room tables talking negatively about unions and the ALU on the flyers. So they’re all over our tables. We have a lot of TV screens in that facility. They have all the TV screens filled with what’s going to happen if you sign a authorization card, protect your information, don’t let nobody get it. The ALU could use your dues money to take care of themselves, like offices, and they’re not going to spend it on you. They don’t have a crystal ball. They’re a business. They’re just trying to tell you what you want to hear. They have stuff like that all over the TV screens. They send us text messages.
At the morning standups that Ivan had mentioned, the ones we get right before we start work and then the ones we get right after we come back from lunch, managers are also talking negatively about unions. So when we go to those before we start working, our own managers are telling us, be careful about unionizing. You could lose benefits. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get better things. So we’re hearing it all day from managers, from their firm they hired, and they even go around wearing manager vests even though they’re not managers there, and some of them are not managers at all.
And then I approached one and I said, who are you? You work here because you have a manager’s vest on. He said, oh no, I’m part of the special engagement team. I work at Whole Foods. And I said, what are you doing here? How are you going to help us? He’s like, well, I’m part of a special team. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to hear you out and to help your managers improve your work area. And I said, have you ever worked in a warehouse? He’s never even worked in a warehouse. He said, no, I work for Whole Foods.
And so we have all these different people in there all day just going around talking to us and telling us negative stuff about unionizing. And that’s what we’re going through on the inside.
Maximillian Alvarez: So I have many thoughts, but I want to toss it to Ivan, but I just wanted to make sure, ’cause I forgot to mention this up top, but y’all are working to organize with the Amazon Labor Union at ONTA, correct?
Nannette Plascencia: Yes, correct.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Cool. Just wanted to make sure listeners had that down pat. All right. Ivan, what do you got to add to that?
Ivan Baez: I got hired back again Nov. 4, 2022 as a seasonal white badge employee, and I was put on paid suspension on Dec. 30. So I was only there two months. But in those two months, even on my first day at orientation, I was already talking to people like, man, they could pay us way more, can’t they? Amazon made $200 billion in profits, buddy, like, come on, man. They got a contract with the CIA, for what? You know what I mean?
I was talking about, there’s a case where, maybe the listeners can go check it out, but the FTC alleged that Amazon… Well, I would say it was proven. Amazon stole $61.7 million worth of drivers’ tips and wages, and the FTC alleges that what Amazon was doing was they were telling their drivers and the customer that any tips given to the driver go straight to the driver. But what they were doing was lowering the drivers’ hourly wage and then using the tips to compensate. So I was telling people these things.
They made us wear these really ridiculous belts, I’m sure Nannette knows what I’m talking about. They’re on your waist so that when you bend over, they’ll vibrate to let you know, oh no, bend with your legs, that’s your back. I pushed back so hard on it. I started telling the people right there in front of everybody, this is like Taylorism, yo, this is scientific management. This is ridiculous. I feel like a trained monkey at the circus. What is this? And the guy was like, oh, but they only take some of your data. [Sarcastically] Oh, some of my data. Oh, that’s fine with me, I guess. So we wore them for one day, and the day after I pushed back super hard, we didn’t have him anymore.
I was just talking to people in my department like, so what do you think about Amazon? How long have you been here? Oh, I’ve been here for two years. I’ve been here for this many years. What do you think? Oh, it’s a job. It pays the bills, blah, blah, blah. I had people who were seasonal, obviously just for the season trying to make a little extra money. Some people had some serious complaints. There’s a guy who had worked for Amazon for I think he said four years. He was a PA. He was an ambassador, like people who train you. He did everything. He laid it out for me. He did everything. And then they just treated him like garbage at the end. His manager would not let him apply for the seasonal manager position because, “he wasn’t ready” and “you don’t do much anyway.” He’s like, really? He started naming off all the things: I did Gemba, I did this and that, morning reports, after work reports, blah, blah. So he felt really poorly treated, and he came back for flex and now he was just working. He’s like, I’m not going to do that much for them anymore. I’m going to work hard, but I’m not going to slave away for them.
For me, most of my activity was just talking to people, calling out the BS of Amazon, all the lies and the low wages. We live in California, one of the most expensive states to live, if not the most expensive, maybe behind New York, if anything. And I was making $17.50 an hour. My dude, that’s $700 a week. That’s $2,800 a month. Rent here is like, minimum in a studio apartment, is $1,200, that’s already half my money gone. And that’s before taxes. After taxes, when Uncle Sam gets his cut, I’m left with what, maybe $2,400? It’s not enough dude, I got to pay for food. I got bills. I got my car. I got gas. Gas was through the roof in California.
So I was doing that, talking to people in the break room, same thing, just with my coworkers chatting, having a good time, just mentioning these things. And what I found really interesting was how many people know that what I’m saying is true. They know that Amazon is garbage, this and that, but, hey man, it’s a job. I gotta do what I gotta do.
Max, earlier you mentioned the whole warehouse… I don’t even want to call it, the tumor that is growing here, everywhere. All of the IE is just one giant warehouse, in my opinion. Here in my hometown of Perris, we have warehouses that are literally the property line of the warehouse and then houses. And I’m like, well, if you’re going to come here to our community, you better pay up, buddy. You’re going to make our community filled with trucks and trailers and traffic and pollution and all this, but you’re going to pay me garbage? You’re going to have to pay out, buddy.
The other things I would do is right now I’m making flyers, we’re giving out some flyers that we put on the tables or whatever, calling out the lies. And who are these union busters? Who are they? What’s their history? You can check them out on LinkedIn. This is public information, I’m not hacking anybody. We had a rally. We had signs. On my part, whatever I did was what I could do, just talk to people mostly, and then making the signs.
I won’t get into details, like I said, but I can at least mention what more or less happened. So essentially Amazon has a mask policy, we have to wear masks. I want to be clear to everybody who’s listening, I am not denying that COVID happened. People died. People at our building died. People at many buildings died. It was real. People really did die. My aunt’s boyfriend died. My friend’s uncle died. I mean, people died. It’s been three years, though. We have the vaccine. We now know more about COVID. We know people have natural immunity. I don’t think it’s as needed. Also, the fact that California doesn’t require us to wear masks anywhere since April of 2022. I work at a school and I don’t have to wear it with children. I don’t have to wear it with kids. Why do I have to wear it at a warehouse with full-grown adults who can make their own choices? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
So again, not a COVID denier, but I am critical of the whole, well, why do we have to wear masks?` Okay, but why? California doesn’t make us wear them anywhere else except the hospitals and clinics, which is pretty reasonable. It’s a hospital, it’s the clinic, people are sick. However, what I noticed is that many people do not wear the mask properly. It’s either under their chin or under their nose. So I’m thinking, well, then obviously, the mask policy isn’t taken as seriously as they claim it needs to be taken.
There’s also a policy that you can’t wear headphones on the floor, which is pretty reasonable. You just got to be safe. I get it. But a lot of people do it anyway. So clearly, Amazon is not enforcing these rules that they’re claiming are so important for safety or whatever. We don’t have to wear the masks in the break room, even though, okay, but isn’t COVID serious, though? We didn’t have to socially distance, but I thought it was serious? One of the break rooms in –
Nannette Plascencia: Oh, I just wanted to add on real quick, because I know where you’re going to go with this. But real quick, in Ivan’s defense, too, and something a lot of people are getting upset about at work is, they took all the barriers down. There are all the plastic barriers between each other on the work floor and in the break room tables. They’re all gone. So there is no six feet apart, there are no barriers between us. All that is taken down. Everything’s taken away. We’re even closer to each other in the break room sitting next to each other than we are on the work floor working with each other. And in the break areas, you can have your mask off. So that doesn’t make sense either on top of that, that they took all the barriers away, we sit close to each other during lunch and break, and we don’t have to have our mask on, but as soon as we cross over to the work floor, you have to have your mask on.
Ivan Baez: Yeah. And exactly. So this is what I’m talking about. It’s obviously not that serious if they’re going to be doing all this, right? There’s a break room that I know Nannette frequents. It’s the open-air break room, like the fun zone. They got like Xbox and PlayStation, arcade machines. It’s inside the warehouse. It’s not like it’s a hallway behind the wall you got to walk into to get there. It’s in the warehouse. So if I can sit there with my friends and laugh and joke and I can be coughing and all these things all in the air in the warehouse, how does that make any sense? As soon as I cross the green piece of tape, now I gotta wear my mask? I mean, this doesn’t make any sense.
And again, many people do not wear the masks, including managers. Well, let me rephrase that. People don’t wear them properly. Everyone I’ve seen at least puts it on their face, but it’s not worn properly, which is literally the same thing as not wearing it. It’s the same thing. So one day, I was just like, you know what? I’m not going to wear it anymore. If you guys aren’t taking this seriously, why should I take it seriously? Doesn’t make sense to me. So I just didn’t wear it. I just didn’t put it on. I was approached by a manager and he’s like, hey, Ivan, can you put your mask on? And I was like, Darren, if you’re going to tell me to wear my mask, you better be wearing yours properly, buddy. It was under his nose. And he quickly got smart, put it on his face. And he said, well, you still got to wear it. I was like, well, no, Darren. Actually, I don’t. I’m not going to wear it. California does not require me.
They were telling me this is a Cal/OSHA policy. So their implication was kind of like, sorry, it’s Cal/OSHA. You know how Cal/OSHA can be, you know how pesky they can be. But then you Google it and there’s no such thing. They have what’s called the Emergency Temporary Standards, which is the law when the California Public Health issues an emergency, these laws are already in place so that when there is a COVID emergency, they’re already ready to go. We don’t have to debate what the rules are going to be. They’re already ready to go. We haven’t had an emergency of COVID in California since April of 2022. Again, I don’t have to wear it anywhere in a public space, nowhere, not in public transport, but I gotta wear it at a warehouse? It doesn’t make sense.
So I told them that, and long story short, they claimed that I was being insubordinate by refusing to wear the mask. And again, can’t get into the details, but I told them, well, you guys have to admit, there are many people who don’t wear the mask properly as it is, including you guys as management. So why am I being harassed? Of all the people who don’t do this, there are people who, again, wear headphones, which you’re not allowed to do. I don’t really care. I think it’s fine. What we do is not so dangerous to where headphones are going to cause a problem, but if that’s the rule, then you got to “follow the rules,” right?
Many people go to break really, really early. I mean, break is at 10:15, they’re leaving at 10:05. And the break ends at 10:30, they’re back at 10:45. They’re not being harassed. They do it every day. You can’t be on your phone on the work floor. I see people on Instagram and Facebook, tweeting, doing all this stuff on their phones, chilling, and they do it every day, and no one tells them anything. So clearly, Amazon’s not really following their own policies, which again, I don’t really care if you’re on your phone. I don’t care. But if the rules are the rules, then that’s the rules, guys. All the people who do these things in combination, not wear their mask properly, go on a break early, on their phones, sometimes don’t wear their safety shoes, and no one’s getting harassed, no one’s getting terminated, no one’s getting put on paid suspension, but suddenly, the one guy who is vocally pro-union is now being told, well, you got to go home. Sorry, but you’re being a subordinate, I think it’s a pretty clear case that this is just retaliation.
I think that’s the most I can say. I can’t get more into detail, but that’s pretty much what happened.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, no, I appreciate y’all laying that out for us, and just wanted to say, as a disclaimer for listeners, that wheels are in motion to try to hold Amazon accountable for this decision, this suspected act of retaliation. So that is an ongoing process. We will not ask Ivan, Nannette, or anyone to comment further on it and possibly jeopardize that process. So just wanted to let folks know that we’ll try to give updates when we can when there are updates to give, but that case is still working its way out. So I won’t ask y’all to say more, but I thank y’all for laying that out.
And I know that I got to let you both go. I could talk to you for hours, but I just wanted to circle back to one thing that you were saying, Nannette, because this never ceases to amaze me. And I think the only way that I haven’t jumped off a bridge because of it is because I’ve seen and heard more workers like yourselves fight against that union busting bullshit, and I’m like, thank God, because it’s just so patently ridiculous.
And I was thinking this even when I was down in Bessemer talking to the workers there who were trying to organize, or when I was talking to workers on Staten Island about these union busting consultants. And it was not lost on the workers, either, that these outside consultants who were not employed by Amazon but were being contracted by Amazon, in Bessemer, they were making like over $3,000 a day to tell workers who don’t make that in a month that, the union’s going to take all your pay for union dues, and that the union is like a third party that’s going to get in between you and management. I was like, motherfucker, what are you? You’re the definition of a third party, and Amazon is paying you more than I make in a month to tell me not to unionize. The cognitive dissonance there is just so intense that I almost don’t know what to do with myself.
And they change their story based on what they need the outcome to be. Well, the outcome they want is to dissuade workers by whatever means necessary from joining a union. But I’m already noticing, even from what you just told me, Nannette, compared to what workers in Bessemer told me, how they will change their story just to get that result. Because in Bessemer, of course, workers there reached out to the RWDSU, an established union that has unionized warehouses and other facilities around the greater Birmingham area. And so then, the Amazon-hired union busting consultants were saying, the union is a business. It’s a third party. They don’t really care about you, they just want to take union dues from you. And then they tried out all the same talking points that you were saying, like you could lose your benefits, yada, yada, yada.
But what I noticed is that when it was an established union, they were like, oh, this is like an outside bureaucracy that’s going to mess things up for you. But then when you guys are trying to organize with the independent Amazon Labor Union, they’re like, oh, that union isn’t established. They’re not going to be able to help you. It’s like, well, you can’t have it both ways, man. You’re just trying to tarnish the reputation of anyone that we’re trying to reach out to for help, or anyone that we’re trying to organize with, because they don’t ultimately give a shit about what a union will be for workers. They just want workers to not unionize. That’s their ultimate goal.
And it just really gives me a lot of hope to hear more from you all and from Amazon workers around the country who are firing back at them and taking apart their union busting bullshit because, yeah, these guys are getting paid way too much to try to scare workers out of exercising their democratic rights to organize in the workplace.
So keep it up, all right? Because that’s, I think, really important, and it’s really great. The more folks that I hear who hear about that, then they go into union-busting captive audience meetings and they start firing back the same stuff. So that’s what it’s going to take, is we need to keep educating ourselves, our coworkers, know our rights, and not let them scare us into forgetting that we have rights in the workplace, and it is not their place to take those away from us.
And so with that, before I let you go, I wanted to ask you guys like where things currently stand now at ONT8, and what folks around the country and around the world listening to this can do to show support for y’all as you continue to fight this fight to organize yourselves and your coworkers?
Nannette Plascencia: Well, right now, we are just working on getting the signatures. That’s our main goal. We work on that every day, trying to get people to sign the authorization cards. So from that, we have an Instagram page, and we try to put out as much union information as we can about what’s going on there, and that is @unionforamazon. That’s our Instagram name. And on there, we even have news articles, we have the link to a GoFundMe, if anybody would like to donate to it. And all those links are in the bio, on the Linktree that we made. So you can click on that and all that information will come up.
And we do rallies outside our warehouse on a little corner, on a sidewalk. We’ll set up tables, we try to give out food, union shirts, hats, beanies, buttons, and literature. So we try to get those in people’s hands as they’re walking by us when they get out of work, and even when the night shift is coming into work. So we try to get out there, and if anybody ever, if they see a post that we’re holding a rally, if anybody wants to come out and participate and help us out, that’d be great. The more people, the better, I feel. I think it also helps workers feel more relaxed and safe, that there are a lot of people who support us, and I think that that makes people less scared when they see a lot of people at the corner supporting the union drive. So that’s what we are currently working on right now.
Ivan Baez: Yeah, I think Nannette pretty much summed it up. I don’t really have much to add, except yeah, if you live in the area, if you live in Southern California and you can make the drive to Moreno Valley or Perris, California and you want to meet at the rally, be there. We can make some signs, you can help us hand out our literature, talk to people. That’s pretty much all I have to add, really. Thank you for having us.
As more states and districts around the country push for legalization, the cannabis industry has exploded in recent years, with researchers estimating that the industry could generate over $70 billion in sales by 2030. While investors and business owners have dollar signs in their eyes, though, it is the everyday employees, from growers and packers to bud tenders, who are making the industry run. But the vast vast majority of those workers are not reaping the benefits of these booming profits; in fact, many cannabis workers around the country report insufficient pay, overwork and burnout, disrespect and mistreatment from management, all while having to navigate changing customer needs, state and federal regulations, and top-down decisions from executives and company founders that are handed down with little to no input from the actual workers who know the industry best. That is why we are seeing a simultaneous explosion of organizing efforts by cannabis workers themselves.
TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with a panel of workers and organizers from the state of Illinois who have been fighting to unionize with the Teamsters and improve the cannabis industry for themselves, their coworkers, and their customers. Panelists include: Ami Schneider, a worker at Enlightened Dispensary in Schaumburg, Illinois, and a member of Teamsters Local 777; Ryan “Fro” Frohlich, a worker at Zen Leaf in Chicago, Illinois, and a member of Teamsters Local 777; Chris Smith, organizer and business agent for Teamsters Local 777; Jim Glimco, president and principal officer for Teamsters Local 777.
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. The Real News is an independent, viewer supported, nonprofit media network, which means we don’t do ads and we don’t take corporate cash and we don’t do paywalls. So we need each one of you to become a supporter of our work so we can keep bringing you important coverage of the voices and issues you care about most. So please head on over to therealnews.com/support and become a supporter of our work today, it really makes a difference.
As more states and districts around the country push for legalization, including here in our home state of Maryland, the cannabis industry has exploded in recent years, with researchers estimating that the industry could generate over $70 billion in sales by 2030.
But while investors and business owners have dollar signs in their eyes, it is the everyday employees from growers and packers to budtenders who are making the industry run. But the vast, vast majority of those workers are not reaping the benefits of these booming profits, with many cannabis workers around the country reporting low pay, overwork and burnout, disrespect and mistreatment from management, all while having to navigate changing customer needs, state and federal regulations, and top-down decisions from executives and company founders that are handed down with little to no input from the actual workers who know the industry best. That is why we are seeing a simultaneous explosion of organizing efforts by cannabis workers themselves.
And today, we’re going to take a deep dive into this burgeoning labor movement within the cannabis industry, and learn more about what is driving it and what we all can do to support it. And I couldn’t be more honored to be joined today by an incredible panel of workers and organizers from the state of Illinois who have been fighting to unionize with the Teamsters and improve the cannabis industry for themselves, their coworkers, and their customers. Ami, Fro, Christopher, Jim, thank you all so much for joining us today on The Real News Network.
Ami Schneider:
Thank you so much for having us.
Chris Smith:
Really. Thank you.
Jim Glimco:
Thank you.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, there’s so much I want to talk to you guys about, and I’m really, really grateful to you all for making time for this recording. And I wanted to start by going around the table and getting to know a bit more about you four and how you came to work in the cannabis industry or organize in the cannabis industry, and what that work looks like in your respective corners of the industry. Because I have to imagine that, like me, many folks don’t know exactly what that work looks like on a day-to-day basis. So Ami, why don’t we start with you.
Ami Schneider:
Hi, I’m Ami Schneider. I work at Enlightened Dispensary in Schaumburg, Illinois. I started working in the industry about two years ago. I actually started organizing around cannabis before I started working in the industry. So back before medical was even legalized, I was organizing with Illinois normal. My brother has epilepsy, so that was always an option for epilepsy. So I was definitely organizing in that medical sphere before I had even ever joined the industry. The first time I ever went to a dispensary was in Colorado after they legalized, and I was like, this would be cool to work in eventually, someday, maybe. And I had gone to college and couldn’t really get a job in my degree field, so cannabis was always kind of there. And I saw a job posting for a dispensary that was opening up in my town and I was like, this is a short commute. Why not try to get into the industry?
And I went into the interview, and they hired me the same day, which might have been a red flag in retrospect, but I was really excited. I really was like, this is something that I’m passionate about. I believe in the medicinal benefits of cannabis. I think that it’s definitely something that benefits a lot of people. It’s benefited me — I have a medical card. So it’s something that’s always been there in my life, that’s been something that I’ve been passionate about. So it made sense to join the industry.
And I really thought that it was going to be… I don’t even know what I thought. I thought it was going to be a magical weed job. And for the first couple months, I bought into everything that I thought the industry was going to be. I thought, we’re doing big things, we’re changing things. This is the progressive industry. It just felt almost kind of a pyramid scheme kind of a thing at first, the way that all of the cultivators would come in and talk up their products and everything. It really made you buy into this whole industry.
But after a couple of months, it turned around. I got a title change, so not even a promotion, just a title change. So I got a whole lot more work without having any additional compensation. I went from having a normal cannabis badging, a license to sell cannabis, to now having an agent in charge badge. So once that comes extra responsibilities. I’m able to do destruction at my store. I onboard deliveries, take in deliveries. I’m responsible for a lot more of the compliance aspects of the job, and I still make as much as people who are now coming in are making. I have gotten no raise for the past two years that I’ve been at this job, despite almost tripling, maybe even quadrupling my workload at this point.
And the reason we started organizing at my location was because I saw my coworkers being fired for very strange reasons. I saw one coworker, he had an earpiece that got stuck in his ear canal. So the little plastic bit of the earpiece for these walkie-talkies we have to use to communicate throughout the dispensary got stuck in his ear, and he had to go to immediate care because he couldn’t get it out. The company refused to reimburse him for that, and he ended up quitting because of that instance. So that was one of the things that started opening my eyes up.
We had another employee who had been paying for insurance through our company, and then when he actually went to go use that insurance, they told him that, oh, well we actually don’t have an insurance policy for you, even though he had been paying for it. And it was a lot of just situations like that, on top of the fact that I was now doing all of this extra work and not getting compensated. So a few of my coworkers started talking to each other about unionization, and I was totally on board. I had grown up in a union family. My mom is in the NALC, National Association of Letter Carriers. So I grew up going to union halls and seeing unions firsthand, and knowing what unions meant for my family, and how they provided us a good stability in life, and provided us insurance and things that not everybody has as benefits for a job.
So I was on board with the organizing and the unionizing, and it made sense. And when we went with the Teamsters, I felt very supported. They helped us figure out what our rights were. They helped us learn about how we could organize and not get in trouble for it, because there’s things you can and can’t do, technically, in the workplace. And there’s also things that the workplace will do with union busting that aren’t even legal. So you have to be really careful. But I think that with the support of having the union there with us and giving us our rights really helped to ease into that process and make it a little bit less scary. It was still very, very scary, but just knowing our rights helped a tremendous amount. And we did win our election last February, and I’m on the negotiating committee now for our bargaining unit. It’s a very slow process. It’s been very frustrating. But yeah, that’s where I’m at now.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. And we’re definitely going to talk about the unionization efforts, the organizing that goes into that, the pitfalls you got to navigate to get to that first contract. But Fro, why don’t you introduce yourself as well to the good Real News viewers and listeners. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into the cannabis industry, and what sort of work you do there.
Ryan Frohlich:
Yes. Okay. So my government name is Ryan Frohlich, but my friends call me Fro. There were three Ryans when I started working there, and they asked me what my name was. And without skipping a beat, I said Fro. So now I’m Fro. I do love that name, by the way. I had a similar story to Ami, actually. I started out as a budtender. I got hired working in a chiropractic office. I wasn’t getting paid there. My boss had fallen on hard times and just stopped paying his employees. I had a client that came in who happened to be the owner of a location, THC, The Herbal Care Center. It got sold to Verano Holdings and it became Zen Leaf eventually. But this client saw that I was struggling and he gave me a job. I don’t know if I can curse, but I worked my ass off at this place, and I eventually got promoted to AIC.
It’s now a Zen Leaf location. And while I still love my job, there’s just a lack of respect amongst my coworkers. A lot of people get bullied. A lot of people get shut down for things they say, for things they do. And it’s frustrating to witness, and it’s frustrating to hear it and say, I’m going to say something, and nothing happens. This is why we went to the Teamsters. I wasn’t the one who initiated my location, but my location did have multiple people that went in to do this. Two people ended up getting fired because of organizing, and they have since gotten their jobs back along with back pay, all because of the Teamsters’ efforts. And this is something we are trying to make everyone realize, that if you are treated unfairly, we will be able to help you.
So I am on the negotiating committee because unfortunately the two people who started organizing did end up getting fired. They’ve since got their jobs back. And basically we are all working together as a unit to make our Pilsen location the ideal working location. Thank you.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Beautiful. And yes, you can definitely curse. I cuss like a sailor on The Real News, so I can’t ask others to censor themselves. So perfect. So then I’ll hang back in the cut, Christopher, if you want to hop in and then whenever you’re done, Jim, go for it and then we’ll do the second round around the table.
Chris Smith:
Hello, I’m Christopher Smith. I work with Local 777. I’m the business agent with the Local, but I have been in the cannabis industry for going on five years now. I started when it was mom and pop and just medical. I am a medical cardholder as well. And then because corporate takeover started to happen in my state, a lot of the mom and pops started to sell off, which is what happened to my first location and the second location I worked for. And then the third, which is where I met the Teamsters, was Verano in Romeoville, Illinois, owned by PharmaCare. It was a five-location movement, so we ended up getting five storefronts in that period of time that all were able to negotiate for their first contract. I ended up getting elected onto the negotiation committee, so I was on the forefront of the beginning and getting that election so that we had representation.
Then Teamsters, my president, Jim Glimco, decided he wanted to pull me out to offer me a position as the business agent with the local because he’s seen leadership abilities in me, and through desire to have change in this industry. There’s a lot of workers like myself that have a lot of skill and knowledge and bring a lot of customer care and service to the industry.
Unfortunately, one of our main concerns and why we had to organize in my location and unionize was it is a cutthroat industry right now. Being an at-will employee means that you can be fired at any point in time, and with a union that changes, you are no longer based on your contract and a just cause county. And so with that, the turnaround rate was huge. So job security was the big focus for us, and long-term career opportunity.
The only way to make a career in this industry prior was if you got lucky enough to get up in management, and sometimes at the locations, it’s who you know, not how skilled you are, which that is the unfortunate reality. So we had to create an opportunity to where we would get guaranteed raises as deserved and have benefits such as a pension. And now what my job will entail as the business agent is enforcing the contracts as they get in to ensure that they are actually upheld, visiting the location. Any issue that the workers may have, they can reach out to me and their shop stewards, and we can work to resolve them and have the workers truly have a voice to the top, because this is the only way that they get a direct communication. And unfortunately in this industry, there’s so many moving compartments that corporate, nine times out of 10, does not know what’s going on at their own location.
And with that, we’re creating that change. And then also hoping to implement a pension, which is something that was a huge part of my organizing task, to gain that in our contracts, as well as a little bit more security in our industry. We had gotten moved down to one security guard that was unarmed, and it felt, at times, especially when he was on his lunch break, not very safe. And that being said, I think there needs to be a change, and so did a lot of the industry at all locations with how they’re handling security at the locations. So putting standards so they can’t take away with making us feel safe in our workplace. But yeah, that’s basically my background, so thank you.
Jim Glimco:
All right. Hello everybody. My name’s Jim Glimco. I’m president of Teamsters Local 777. Teamsters 777 is the cannabis local for the state of Illinois. And how we got there is Local 777 has a great history of always organizing, always about organizing new members. We did organize a couple dispensaries early on a couple of years ago, which was a Moca by Ascend in the city. We’ve negotiated, we’ve got contracts with them. The Teamsters since then, they have a new administration. Sean O’Brien is the general president, and he had me at the office headquarters at the IBT. And he has actually given us all the resources of our great international, which is a big, big organization, to help organize in this industry. So our goal for the industry is to raise the standards for the people working in the industry.
But I got to tell you, it’s a fun industry because you’re dealing with a lot of young people, and a lot of really nice people. I deal with other jobs and other things in the other part of the union. But with cannabis, what’s really unique about it is people want to be in this industry because it’s cannabis, because they have personal experiences with it, and they really want to do this. So it’s great, they get in there, they want to do it, but then they’re finding out that it’s not giving them all the things they need to stay in this industry.
So our goal is to raise the standards, to make sure that this industry pays proper wages, proper benefits, and people are treated properly so that the people who want to be here can stay here and make a career out of it. So that’s our goal.
And the other goal is that I have personally is with a lot of these people, I can see that there’s a lot of people that are getting in this, involved in this, and these are the future generation of the labor movement is in this industry I see, easily. So I’m excited to be part of this, and they’re really the stars of what’s going on in the labor movement today. So my hat’s off to the workers doing this.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. No, I think that’s beautifully put, and definitely one of the primary reasons that we wanted to have y’all on The Real News and make sure that our viewers and listeners know what’s going on, because this is all very important and very exciting, and I think has a lot to teach all of us who are invested in the labor movement or in workers anywhere, standing up for their rights, securing better working conditions for themselves and their coworkers, improving the industries that they want to make a career in. I really sympathize and empathize with what you just said, Jim, and what you all described in that first round around the table. Because yeah, I feel like cannabis fits into that category of industries where you can be exploited or taken advantage of because of how much you want to work in the industry or because of your personal investment in the service that’s being provided.
I’m recording from The Real News Network, which is a nonprofit news network. Anyone who’s worked at a nonprofit knows that you can take advantage of people and even overwork yourself because you’re so dedicated to the mission, but that’s no excuse for not getting the pay, benefits, treatment that you deserve, so on and so forth. But this happens in places like academia. So many adjunct professors or underpaid graduate students do so much vital labor that keeps higher education afloat, but they get paid like shit. They get treated like shit. And so much of it is justified because of the love that people have for learning, for their students, for their craft.
Take your pick, you could talk about minor league baseball players who just unionized last year — Shout out to the minor leaguers. But anyone who’s in that kind of industry where that vocational call to the work becomes, I think, a very complicated thing that can lead to very unfortunate consequences for the people working in those industries.
I want to build on that, because y’all started touching on this in that first round around the table, but I wanted to zero in on the unionization efforts happening across this industry in the states where marijuana is legal. So could you talk a bit more about the key issues and concerns that have been driving workers in this industry to organize, that maybe they’re more industry specific or maybe they’re the kinds of issues that workers in any service industry job or any retail job will face. And can you talk about what that organizing has looked like in your own stores? And say a little more about what it’s going to mean for you all and your coworkers to be unionized with the Teamsters. So Ami, we’ll start with you again.
Ami Schneider:
Hello. So at my location and just in the industry in general, the wages are pretty abysmal. My location especially, a lot of the other locations are starting out a little bit higher than us. So our location starts at $15 an hour, and we’re all making $15 an hour there. Like I touched on when I first introduced myself, I have additional badging, so I’ve got additional workloads that are piled on me because I’m an agent in charge. On top of that, at the second level of badging, there’s certain things that fall on you as an agent in charge that you wouldn’t have that would fall on you as just a registered agent able to sell cannabis. For instance, when inspections happen, we have to be able to go and do the inspections with the state. I’m the only one in the building at my location who does destruction.
So in the state of Illinois, part of the compliance is that any product that is expired, any product that’s damaged, anything like that has to be destroyed. And I’m the only one in the store that does that. When I initially started in this position, only managers did that duty. That’s the only people that filled that role. And then it started being what we call floor leads at our location, which is like, they’re part of our bargaining unit, but they make significantly more than I do, and they were the ones that were supposed to be doing the destruction of the product. The one person that did that ended up quitting, he rage quit because of all of the issues that we have at our store and within our company. He just couldn’t take it anymore.
And after he left, I was the only person that had even observed destruction happening. So I had to take on that duty because I was the only one that even had a passing understanding of destruction. I didn’t get trained, really, on how to do it. I had to kind of teach myself, which is completely bonkers, to have to teach yourself how to do something that’s a literal state compliance issue. And to my credit, I get complimented by the state when they come in. They’re like, you’re doing awesome at destruction. I do things that apparently other dispensaries tend to forget. So the state always comes in and tells my general manager, this is on. This is spot on, which feels good to hear from the state because I don’t hear it really from anybody at my company. I’m not getting any additional compensation for it. So I guess it’s nice that somebody’s recognizing that I’m not getting fines for our store for being good at my job.
On top of that, there’s a whole bunch of issues I touched on before with the way that they treat people at our location. I had mentioned the one employee that had the earpiece stuck in his ear. We also had another employee who clearly had some physical limitations happening and was in pain, clearly in pain on the sales floor. And they would not let him sit down, and they would give him grief about sitting down. And it was observably cruel to watch somebody having to be put through that. I mean, I feel like they were trying to do that so that he would quit. Eventually they did fire him, but the working conditions that they provided for him were unbearable. It was really hard to watch somebody being treated like that, regardless of what they thought his work ethic was, or whatever they held against him. No human being should be treated like that. There was no dignity in the way that they were treating him.
And yeah, we’ve had a lot of issues with being severely overworked. So our staff originally started, we had like 50 team members. We now have I think 25 staff members. And we are the only dispensary in our area, at least I’m not sure about the rest of the state, but we have all of our product on display. So every single morning we have to come to work, put everything out into these glass cabinets, and then we have to set it all up. We have what’s called cannabis guides. So a lot of dispensaries do either pre-orders, or you come to the store and you order at a counter. We have a full service thing going on at our dispensary. So you come in, you’re talking to a cannabis guide, you can ask all sorts of questions, you can see what product we have. We’re expected to have a very high level of knowledge at our store so that we can have these conversations with people face to face.
And we are getting paid the least out of anybody else in the industry for the most amount of service, which, again, feels very wrong. And the company I work for is Revolution. So they’re really riding this very esteemed reputation that they have in the industry. They won six first place cannabis cups in 2020. They are constantly placed in the cannabis cups. The team is being very prestigious as far as weed companies go in Illinois. They’re one of the top tier companies. People assume that if you work for Revolution, things must be great. I remember going to other dispensaries and people were like, oh my gosh, you work for Revolution. That’s so cool. At first I was like, yeah, this is awesome. And now I’m like, you have no idea. The difference between the public image that they have and how they treat their workers, from all of us who work at the stores, even management gets treated pretty crappy at this company, at the store level and our cultivation, they get treated abysmally.
In cultivation, they can’t even… They’re growing the product, they’re extracting the product, and they don’t even get samples down there. Not that we get samples, really, from our own company. Most of the samples we get are from other companies. Our company just doesn’t take care of us really at all. So there’s just so many issues. Then management, they can’t really do their jobs because corporate is micromanaging the hell out of our shop. So these people who don’t even understand the industry at all are determining what should go on in our store on a day-to-day basis. Our store doesn’t even have lighters to sell, which is a customer service point. How do you have a place that’s selling you cannabis and you don’t even have lighters to give to your customers? And then the customers are coming at us, the employees like, what the hell, and getting mad at us for things that corporate is dictating.
So not only are we getting BS from corporate coming down on us telling us, get your cart totals up. Sell more, sell more, even if the customers don’t need it, which feels to me ethically wrong. I don’t want to give somebody a product that’s not going to work for them, and it’s aggressive sales. So we get that from corporate and then we have customers who are getting mad at us about the aggressive sales tactics, or getting mad at us because we don’t have things like lighters, or because we don’t have things to actually consume their products all in one spot.
So we’re getting it from every end, which again, is why organizing has been so important, because the issues between corporate treating us terribly, having to put on a customer service face even when we’re being treated terribly at times, all of these factors that play into it, and to be compensated so little for the work is crazy.
You can go across the street at our location to McDonald’s and make $2 more an hour where we’re at. We’ve tried to bring this up to management. When I tried to negotiate before we even unionized like, hey, I’m doing all of this extra work, shouldn’t there be compensation?” I was pretty much essentially told, “If you don’t like it, you can quit. And I was like, qell, I really like this job though. I love my coworkers. It’s not that I hate the job. I hate the corporate atmosphere. I hate the micromanaging. I hate that the workers aren’t being listened to when we have good ideas for how to make things better, we understand our customers, we understand the industry, and we’re not listened to and we are overworked and completely underpaid. The amount of things that I’ve had to deal with are really just bonkers.
During our organization efforts, they hired a labor consultant, so a union buster, for $71,000, we found out, and they still can’t give us raises. So it’s like, you paid this guy $71,000 for an ineffective union busting campaign, but you’re going to give us grief over giving us a little bit of a raise. The employees who sit there and drive your business, create our customers who come back all of the time. We have regular customers who seek out certain people in our store because they trust them. But you’re going to pay $71,000 to this guy to tell us not to organize.
And that whole situation was also very odd. So this guy comes in, he’s a labor consultant, and I got accused of salting for the union, which at that time I had no idea what salting even was. So I was like, what does that even mean? But it was during a closed door meeting where they bring everybody in, and that it was half of the store was on the floor and then half was in the meeting and then they would switch us out.
And then our half of the meeting he said, yeah, we have suspicions of somebody’s salting. And I was like, what the hell even is that? And it turns out that he was accusing me of being some covert operative for the union, but that’s because I knew my rights because the Teamsters had taught me what my rights are, what this guy’s going to say. They really prepared us for this union busting drive so that we knew what this guy was going to say. We knew all of the BS he was going to spew at us, and we knew how to combat that in a way that made sense for us. We knew that all of the things he was saying against union dues and all of these ills and all of this, it was just BS because the company has interest in us not unionizing. If we unionize, we have a voice at a bargaining table. They can’t just fire us for any reason. They can’t just tell us they’re going to change policies on us.
And even though we don’t have a contract, we’ve seen the effects of being able to have the union because we’ve had people who have gotten brought in for disciplinary meetings where they’ve avoided getting the discipline because they have the union. They know their rights. They’re like, no, I’m not going to sign that. I want my union representative. I’ve been brought into meetings with people when we don’t have, obviously the local’s not going to come in because we are the union. So if one of my coworkers has had a problem with an issue, I’ve been brought into these meetings ,and I feel like that has helped to defuse the situation, just having somebody else in that room so that corporate and management can’t just say a bunch of stuff and have no record of anybody else seeing it. And they’ve also been unable to change certain policies that have been long-standing on us.
So there’s definitely, even without the contract yet, benefits that we’ve seen. But our negotiations are going very, very slowly. Our last negotiation after… We’ve been in negotiations since last year, last April. Our last negotiation two weeks ago was the first time that the person from corporate that represents our corporate actually showed up in person to our negotiations, which is insulting. And then the things that have happened in negotiations with the slowing of the process, it just seems very calculated.
We’ve been losing a lot of our original people who signed on for the union, and they’ve been hiring a lot of new people. So the union busting didn’t stop just because we got the contract. So it’s an ongoing thing with them that they keep trying to break us. I suspect, honestly, that they’re trying to draw out the process so that they can try to de-certify the union election because of how long it’s gone on now, and just because of the different tactics.
Another thing that I personally experienced was myself and another AIC, my good friend Zach, he’s on the bargaining committee with me. There were four agents in charge that could have been promoted for a floor lead position and a management position. The two agents in charge who were not vocally pro-union are the ones that got promoted. And then Zach and I, who had been on the union paperwork for the press release when we first unionized, we had both been quoted in the press release. We have not been promoted, and we’ve continually had more and more and more work thrown on us. It’s a mess. It’s just a continuation of union busting efforts that didn’t stop just because we unionized, which is why we need to fight to get this contract so they can stop and we have a grievance procedure and can really go after them.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Beautiful. So that was great. Ami, thank you so much. I’m hanging back. So Fro, Christopher, Jim, go for it.
Ryan Frohlich:
Yes. Okay, I got a few things. First of all, I can relate so heavily to you, Ami, being in the position of AIC as well. We have a cap. Unfortunately, we do have a bit of a higher pay rate over in Chicago, so we’re starting at $16, and AICs are getting $19. However, $19 is the cap, absolute cap. There is no promotion from there. There is no pay raise from there, and that’s completely ridiculous, especially when you have AICs working there, not me included, but other AICs that have been there two, three years-plus still making $19 in today’s climate. That’s not cost of living in the slightest bit. And these are people who used to work paramedic jobs, who used to be office managers at different hospitals, who understand how to run a medical facility. And my location is a medical location, but these people are not being compensated for that. They are their therapists, they are their friends, and at the same time they are their budtenders, and they’re not being respected in any way because of that.
In fact, they are readily reminded that they are replaceable in every single way. And that is something that is so frustrating. You can’t go into a job every single day and get reminded that you are just a cog in the machine. That is very annoying, it’s depressing. It makes people want to quit. And that is what corporate wants. They want people to quit so they can hire the people who will come in, do the job, get frustrated, quit again, do the job again. So they can keep pay benefits and everything else at the stagnated rate that it is. That’s something I’m not going to stand for anymore, because I’ll work all day, all night. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that my coworkers can go home and afford their rent, can afford their hospital bills, can afford their groceries. It’s just a common thing. A thing me and a few of my coworkers did.
So we had a vending machine that wasn’t getting regularly stocked, and there was a mom who worked with us. And she complained one day in a bit of frustration, honestly, that she can’t afford to go to the McDonald’s across the street every single day because she has to go home and help her kid, blah, blah, blah. So from that day on, me and three other coworkers decided like, ee’re going to buy mac and cheese, easy Mac from the microwave, ramen, bring that in. And that’s going to be food you can eat if you need and you’re a little bit broke and tips aren’t enough. Since then, my management has put in a little bit of a budget for that, but it took us doing that. And that is the big message we’re having here with unionizing. It’s when we get together, we can make changes.
Another thing I want to mention, and I wrote notes, excuse me for looking away, is about the compliance. You put on a really great point. Once you get promoted to AIC, it becomes a whole different game that a lot of people really do not understand. You are expected to understand every single rule the state has when it comes to compliance with cannabis, and those rules will change on a dime within 24 hours notice. It’s completely ridiculous, and the customers get extremely frustrated about it. But you are expected to explain in a calm way that this is the change, and this is how we need to do it moving forward. This causes for a lot of anger with our customers, and us as workers are expected to defuse that anger.
Yet these corporations — I work for Verano, Ami works for a Revolution. They have been cutting back on means like security guards. We used to have two to three at a given time. Currently, my location has one, only one, who is not allowed to leave the location for the entirety of their shift. There have been shootings, there have been deaths, there has been altercations. For me to be expected to do that at $19 an hour, or for someone else to be expected to do that at $16, whatever you’re getting paid, that is not acceptable. We are expected to be that face. But these people — I’m talking about the corporations here — These people also expect us to go above and beyond for how little they respect us. That makes no sense to me.
Another instance I want to bring up is the responsibilities, as Ami said previously as well, we are expected to do so much more. There was a time where there’s people that come that pick up our money from our safes. They came very late this day. So I was expected to give the money in our safe to them. I didn’t know the combination to the safe. I had to call my boss. This person, this other worker who is late, obviously, and has more drop-offs to pick up, is waiting for me to get the combination to this code. It took a while, but I got it. When I held this bag, I realized I would never hold this much money in my life. It was upwards of $100,000 in my hand. And I’m like, this is ridiculous. What am I doing? That is disheartening. I don’t expect $100,000 in my hand. What I do expect is to get compensated for doing something like that. Do you understand?
I would like to be respected. What I’m getting paid is starting pay. I’m 30 years old. I’ve been in the workforce for maybe 25 of those years, just doing odd jobs, even babysitting my nephews. It’s hard to sit there when, as Ami said, again, you have corporate coming in, and I don’t mean to be mean, but some of them are just people straight out of college who are like, yeah, let’s do this. And they expect you to do things in a way that their frat brothers would do. And then they talk to you in a way that is like you don’t understand business. And it’s like, no, I just do it differently than you, and I expect you to treat me a certain way, but you’re not. And I’m going to unionize, and I’m going to talk to my coworkers in a way that you don’t like, because at the end of the day I understand that you actually can’t do anything to me for doing that.
It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to have to deal with. Especially because, again, as Ami’s so astutely put, they drag these processes out. They make us feel as if little moments are stopping us. They are nails in the floorboard, but they’re not. They’re just you wasting time, and I’m going to show you that I am here to sit as long as I need to make this a reality.
Chris Smith:
Fro and Ami both covered great aspects, and I think hitting on both of them, one of the reasons that my location when I was still working in the industry as a budtender, we wanted to ensure that we had that voice and those raises. And with the Teamsters and the education they provided to us because we knew how we could keep the unit together as best as possible even though there was a lot of union busting done. And with that, it made me realize as our state keeps talking about these social equity movements and how the cannabis industry is supposed to be giving back to those disproportionately affected, unfortunately they’re not, because that is the workforce.
As you’ve just heard, we have a workforce that is underpaid and overworked. So this is where we hope as, not as the Teamsters do, not only set the standards in the industry, but truly bring the social equity movement to the country, and specifically right now to Illinois, and set the standards for the rest of the nation as, hopefully, federal legalization comes. There is a bigger push for hope of that to get cannabis more normalized in society and accepted as medicine. I believe that this whole movement will help solidify that as well.
Jim Glimco:
Yeah, let me talk about, with this industry, what I think is really amazing. So when you go to a dispensary, you just really see the people up front, but you don’t realize all the work that gets done in the dispensary. So in the back of the house, there’s an elaborate inventory system, elaborate computer systems. The inventory is in a vault, the state regulates the hell out of this business, so they’ve got to follow this, this, and this, and this, all these rules on everything.
There’s shipping and receiving jobs that is just like in any other company and all these type of jobs. You’ve also got the people at the front who are selling the product, and the knowledge they have to have. I mean, the company does give them samples and educates them on what goes on. I’m sure they have a lot of life, a lifelong learning in this industry, which I’m sure they enjoy. And then also there’s a lot of people who’ve had medical issues and they got into the cannabis industry because of their medical issues and because they know how the cannabis really helps people and what it does for people. And that’s kind of the passion that people have and why they want to do this business.
So if you compare all these skill sets that you have in this industry compared to the other jobs that are in Chicago and Illinois and what they pay, these guys are grossly underpaid for what they’re doing and for the skill level that is expected of them. What’s disheartening to the workers is, okay, they will sit at a register all day, and that register at the end of the day, they see that total. And there’s many days where the total that they ring up for that day is more than they make in a year. It’s just really mind-boggling.
In the state of Illinois, Chicagoland area, they’ve been publishing every month how much money cannabis is making because it is a newer industry, and it’s really taking in a ton of money. The workers see other jobs that don’t have the skillset that they have right next door paying more money than they’re being paid. We know that the money’s there. We know that this is an industry that is growing. It is a new industry. It’s different than any other new industry that’s ever been out there that I know about, because with this industry, when they started just a few years ago, they started with a built-in customer base. So it didn’t start from scratch. There were millions of people doing cannabis everywhere and who are their customers. So it’s financially very, very successful, but they’re not sharing that with their workers, and that’s with all the union, the workers that are unionizing we’ve got about 17 different dispensaries that have organized.
We do have a couple that are under contract, and we’re getting close to the finish line on many negotiations, but we’re trying to get them to where they have to be so that this is the kind of job that the people you see here can stay here for a long time, because people really want to work here for a long time. They want to make this a career, and they do want to move up into the industry, and they have the skillset to do that. And that’s what we’re trying to do. So we’re trying to really bring the standards in this industry, create a standard in all the contracts so that people can stay in this industry and enjoy it and have a job that they can say, hey, I really like my job. I like working in this industry, and I do get paid well too. Not that, I like the job, but I’m working for peanuts. They don’t want to be saying that. But we’re working on it, and it’s getting there.
Chris Smith:
I just wanted to add with the retirement benefits that we do want as workers and what we are pushing. So some of the dispensaries do have a 401K benefit currently, but unfortunately, due to the low wages, being able to put into that is very difficult. And then there are different parameters on if the employer will match you or not, and how long we’ve been there or how much you have to actually put in. So that being said, having the Teamster Western Conference attention for the workers in this industry will set a retirement standard that can change lives. And given the amount of money that we see, and as I brought up before the social equity movement, this is how we can help the next generation retire, and properly.
So I think that that pension is one of the ways that we can guarantee as workers a career and an actual benefit, because it is employer contributed. So it would be a way for us to retain a little bit more money, maybe still add into that 401k, but also have a guaranteed retirement for all of the hard work and knowledge that we will put in throughout the next however many years.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It’s so incredible to hear about everything that is going on in this industry. And of course, we urge everyone watching and listening to this to do what you can to learn about those organizing efforts. Maybe they’re happening in your areas, and maybe there’s something that you can do to help, because we all need to stand together. And just like we are urging folks to continue supporting the Amazon Labor Union in their fight to get a first contract for the workers at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, just like we are urging folks to not forget about Starbucks workers who have been unionizing around the country. but have yet to reach a first contract, and in fact have been facing vicious, relentless union busting: Worker organizers getting fired for the flimsiest excuses, unionized stores getting closed down at the drop of a hat like they did in Ithaca in Seattle.
We all have to stay vigilant, and we have to keep showing up for one another. And that includes our fellow workers in the cannabis industry like Ami, Fro, Christopher, folks who are still fighting to get to that first contract and improve the industry for themselves, their coworkers, and anyone who walks in the door and gets hired in a dispensary or anywhere else for years to come. This isn’t just about the folks working there now. This is about anyone who comes to work in this industry that, as we’ve all acknowledged, is booming right now, is raking in a lot of money.
And of course, I want to just acknowledge what is on all of our minds, I’m sure, it is the elephant in the room. We know that in the United States, the patently obvious injustice is the fact that so much money is being made from this industry while so many people continue to rot in prison for low-level drug offenses, primarily Black, Brown, and poor people. So there’s a whole lot to fix here. But I think that workers taking more control over that industry, having more of a say in that industry, is a very necessary step to attaining some level of justice in this fundamentally unjust arrangement. So we want to acknowledge that.
But we’ve covered so much important ground here, and I know I can’t keep you guys for much longer. So I just wanted to go around the table one more time and ask how you see yourselves and your organizing efforts in the cannabis industry, how you see that connected to the rest of the worker mobilizations that we’re seeing: Amazon, Starbucks — But also in healthcare, in retail, nonprofit spaces. I think there’s a lot to feel hopeless about in our world today, but this energy that’s coming from the rank and file in so many different industries, including ones that have been really traditionally hard to organize in, that is one source of hope that I think we can all latch onto and we can all do something to support.
And so I wanted to round out by asking A, how you see yourselves in the cannabis industry participating in a broader labor movement. And ultimately, I wanted to finish by asking what folks watching and listening can do to support you all, both in your local fights to get to that first contract, but also what we can do to support workers in the cannabis industry across the board.
Ami Schneider:
So I think that as far as where I see myself in the cannabis organizing sphere, I think securing the first contract is incredibly important for everybody that’s going to work after I stay or go or whatever the future holds. Having a groundwork for other people to be treated with dignity, I think is so important for the industry. I also think that the more of us that organize together through different bargaining units, that really gives us a collective power beyond just our local bargaining unit, beyond just what’s in our stores. It gives us the power of the Teamsters. We are organized with this big, larger umbrella of organization, and that gives us more political power so that we would as an industry have more say as a whole to change things for the better for workers.
Because there’s so many things out there regulations wise that should be challenged just because they don’t really make sense, they’re not beneficial. And organizing on this local level provides that framework for us to organize on a larger scale, to really make differences for our industry. And my hope is that we’ll continue to organize, that we’ll get these contracts, and we’ll show people that this should be a career. It’s hard to even move into another career after working in cannabis because other employees look at like, oh, you’re a pothead. We don’t want to hire you, without really understanding how smart the people who work in this industry really are, the skillset that goes into everything we do. We are doing customer service, we’re doing retail, we’re doing shipping, receiving, we’re doing compliance. There are so many things that go into it. I think a lot of people just see it as, oh, this is just this glamorous fun job.
It is fun for a lot of different reasons, like the industry events are cool, but the actual nitty-gritty down in the dirt or work that goes into it isn’t really as glamorous as people would think. It’s hard work. There’s days that I’m doing like 15,000 steps running from our fulfillment to our registers to get product to customers. There’s days that I am so sore from hauling boxes around. And people should be compensated for that. People should be compensated for the labor that they put in, especially when these corporations are making as much money as they are. A lot of these companies are just focused on expansion, rapid expansion rather than taking care of the people who are already building their companies and the people who are really the bread and butter of the company. You need to take care of what you have before you start expanding everywhere else, and really take care of your people. So my hope is that that will happen through more organization efforts.
Ryan Frohlich:
Ami, I have to say, you are hitting all the exact points. I’ve never met you before, but man, I relate to everything you say to a T. And again, we’re two different companies, Revolution versus Verano. I know they, on a corporate level, have been in wars with each other. They barely get your product into our store, and people want that.
So what I would say my place is in this industry is someone who is passionate about cannabis, about the benefits it has for you, about educating people about those said benefits, about telling people what will and won’t work for them. I want to do that. But you as a corporation don’t seem to value that. They want people who will just quit on a dime, and we’re trying to tell you that we want to make this work for you. Why can’t you work with us? That’s my question for all of the corporations. Why can’t you work with us? Because again, you’re rapidly expanding, and your workforce is not dwindling. Why can’t you help us out as the climate changes, as the cost of living increases? Why can you not help us out so we can get in our cars every day and sell the products you want us to sell?
It’s frustrating, but I won’t give up and they’ll try to make me give up, but it’s not going to happen. And I hope anyone out there who is fighting the same issues, who is trying to do the same thing at their location, be this cannabis, be this pizza cutting, I don’t know. I hope you know that we as a unit can always work together to make a work environment viable for you. You don’t have to give up.
I think too many people in this world right now, too many people in our generation are fearful to commit to something like that out of fear of moving up somewhere, but it does happen. You can move up, you can get promoted, you can do anything you want to do. Joining a union will not stop that, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise.
And the Teamsters have really paved that in for me, especially Local 777. I was scared to do this. I was not an initiator amongst my location. Once I saw it was going through, I made sure that I was involved. And I don’t regret that it’s given me purpose. It’s made me feel like I can do something in this world. And so can anyone else watching this right now. Thank you so much.
Chris Smith:
That was amazing, Fro, and I agree with that. I think that if you wanted to help this movement out and you are a cannabis worker, you unionize. Contact the local in your area. And if it’s in Illinois, please contact Local 777. We definitely want to get you guys as much information and help that we can.
But to touch on the bigger aspect of what we are accomplishing here. This is the fight against the separation of wealth in this country. This is one of the first movements in a new industry, but we’re joining the rest of the industries that are older than us, and we will not give up.
You have a huge body of people that have a very strong will and a need for change, to be able to provide for their families and to provide for themselves. I believe that that is the biggest takeaway that I’m gaining, is all of us are joining together to try to stop this separation of wealth before it is too late in our middle class is completely gone. And that is what I wanted to leave off with. So thank you for this opportunity to explain ourselves and our movement.
Jim Glimco:
Well, thank you, Max. I appreciate that, as you can see, the group around me is very sharp and very bright, and I’m very lucky. Local 777, some people think that’s a lucky number. So I think that I’m lucky to be surrounded by good people all the time, and people who go above and beyond what you would ever expect to help the movement.
When you compare what’s going on today in the labor movement, one of the big things is that there’s a lot of big campaigns: the Amazon campaign, the Starbucks campaign, the cannabis campaign, and these are all big campaigns predominantly with younger people. It’s really an exciting time to be in labor. I think that the cannabis campaign has an advantage over all the other campaigns. One of the big advantages is we’re organizing an industry at its infancy. So we’re not going against Goliath. The Goliath that is Amazon, the Goliath that is Starbucks. A lot of these are smaller ma and pop, they’re big corporations, but they’re not in the ballpark of an Amazon.
So because of that, I’m extremely confident that we’re going to be incredibly successful in this industry and organizing and getting it to where it needs to go. So I think we will have great success, and that success will spill over into other parts of labor.
But a part of it, when you look at the younger people today that are involved in this, I mean, I got to say, because I know how I was when I was their age. They’re a lot smarter than we ever were. They get it. When a union buster comes out there and tells all the stuff that they say and all the BS, and they can see through that BS so perfectly. So it doesn’t work at all on younger people. You can’t screw them on fake information. I mean, they’ll pull their phone out, they’ll look it up right away to see is this true or not. So the union busters really aren’t working in this industry.
And with what’s going on now is, younger people, they want careers. They don’t want just a job, they want a career. And that’s what we’re trying to build. I think we’re going to get there. With cannabis, a lot of people who are coming into it, there’s a culture to cannabis, and they just love this culture. And the culture they want to keep, but then with this industry there’s a lot of people who’ve bought into the industry that are big time investors, and they’re investing money to try to make money on this industry. And they don’t really always have the culture at heart. They just want to make money. And a lot of the workers that are coming here, they’re into the industry, and they want to save the culture, and they want to protect the industry. So there’s kind of a clash there.
And when you hear in the newspaper and you hear why cannabis was allowed to legalize and all that, the big thing was social equity and to create social equity jobs, social equity to the people who got screwed over the legalization of cannabis. So far, none of that’s really materialized. I was reading the paper the other day, there was a social equity license went out, and a couple of the partners, one’s an alderman, one is a guy who’s got a top job with the Chicago Public Schools. And this is a social equity license. That seems like a million miles away from social equity to me, personally.
So to me, social equity is this work, the workforce in cannabis in most of the locations we deal with is very diverse, incredibly diverse, and for the workers to get paid properly, that’s the social equity. That’s why it made sense to legalize cannabis is that wealth is being created, and with that wealth, people can profit off it by having good jobs, they can provide for their families, they can pay their rent, pay their car note on cannabis. So that’s the social equity we’re looking for, and I’m just excited to be part of this industry with these good people. So I really appreciate it Max, thanks for having us on the show.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. So that is our incredible panel of workers and organizers in the cannabis industry. Shout out to Teamsters Local 777 and to everyone out there who’s fighting to organize with their coworkers, to improve their lives, their workplaces, and ultimately help us all fight to make a better world together.
I want to thank Ami, Fro, Christopher, and Jim for joining us on The Real News. Guys, keep up the fight. Please let us know how things are going. And yeah, we’ll have you back on when you get that first contract. And we’re sending love and solidarity from Baltimore. Thank you for joining us today.
Ryan Frohlich:
Thank you.
Jim Glimco:
Thank you.
Ami Schneider:
Thank you so much.
Maximillian Alvarez:
For everyone watching, this is Maximillian Alvarez. Before you go, please head on over to therealnews.com/support. Become a monthly sustainer of our work so we can keep bringing you important coverage and conversations just like this. Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
Amazon’s business, and Jeff Bezos’s wealth, expanded at a dizzying pace over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic; meanwhile, Amazon workers continue to burn out from the relentless pace of work and are struggling to keep up with the cost of living. As the cost-of-living crisis deepens around the globe, workers across industries in the UK—from healthcare and railway workers to civil servants and university lecturers—have been resorting to industrial strike action to secure the increased pay they desperately need. Now, hundreds of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry have joined the wave of strikes and have made history as the first group of workers to strike at Amazon in the UK. In the latest installment of our Workers of the World series, Ross Domoney reports from the Amazon picket line in Coventry. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producer, Videographer, and Video Editor: Ross Domoney
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Protester: Strike. You can turn round if you want. This is a picket line.
Ross Domoney (narrator): Amazon workers have just blocked the road leading to their workplace.
Protesters: “The workers united!” “Will never be defeated!” “The workers united!” “The workers united!” “Will never be defeated!” “Bring your colleagues on the picket line and show strength!”
Ross Domoney (narrator): Their managers look on, as the strikers try to get more workers on their side.
Mike Ekiesesay (Amazon worker and GMB union representative): Are you a member ma’am as well? Are you a member?
Ross Domoney (narrator): Employees at this warehouse in Coventry are making history as they stage the first ever strike against Amazon in the UK.
Police officer: All I’d like, Okay, is for the traffic to flow so I can unblock the [traffic] island
Protester: You’ve got the right to go and talk to anyone who’s in the queue.
Mike Ekiesesay (Amazon worker and GMB union representative): The cars here in the long queue most of them want to be a member, but they don’t know [how]. They don’t have that right information. So we’re out here on this picket line just making them realize some of the information encouraging them to be part of the picket line. Yeah, do you want better pay? Everyone wants better pay. I work in Amazon, I know right. I worked through the pandemic in Amazon.
I started in 2020. It was a very depressing era with the COVID going on, with the social distancing.We were still coming to work, but we were not allowed to socially connect with each other due to the rules and regulations that was being put in place. Most importantly, it was one of the most busiest periods in Amazon, because Amazon was one of the companies that was still sending orders and deliveries outside because people didn’t have the chance to go out. So Amazon was sending deliveries outside so that means they have earned, they are one of the companies that have earned a lot during the pandemic and considering such a huge gain and then paying their workers who have put in that hard work, just 50p. It’s an insult, and I feel like Amazon can do more.
Ross Domoney (narrator): The GMB union, which has nearly 460,000 members across all industrial sectors, stepped in to support the Amazon workers after they were offered a pay rise of just 50 pence.
Stuart Richards (GMB union Senior organizer): This is an employer that isn’t exactly known for its good employment relations and certainly not its relationship with the trade unions. As we’ve seen in the ten years that we’ve been supporting Amazon workers, Amazon will not seek to engage with us at all. So the engagement we have with our members is primarily offsite on gate jobs. So this is a huge step forward.
Amazon spends a huge amount of time and money trying to keep us out of the warehouse. They think we are the union. Effectively they’ve got it very, very wrong in this instance. The union’s in there, the union’s actually this group of workers taking strike action. This is a huge step forward for us. This is a huge step forward for them. And hopefully the beginning of a move that we can take in supporting Amazon workers, not just in this warehouse, but others, to actually start to unionize, and get better pay and conditions.
Protester: “Stuart, can I have a cup of tea, two sugars?”
Amanda Gearing (GMB union Senior organizer): We’ve got all sorts of issues that are happening inside. But the bulk of the issues are around the way that they play one worker off against another worker with regards to their targets. So it’s a real pressured environment in there.
So you’ve got people that have got all sorts of injuries because they’re just not able to stop, take the right breaks, they are not able to do manual handling or anything like that because it’s a really difficult environment and if they don’t work as hard as they possibly can, they find themselves on a disciplinary.
Garfield Hylton (Amazon worker): The complaint that I would have is that when we then fail in our job, we need time off to recover, we may find ourselves being punished by Amazon’s health policy. When the robots break or don’t work, they have a team of expensive technicians to service them and they’re put back to right. Whereas if we go off because of it, burnout for want of a better word, we then will face a disciplinary procedure which will then kind of have an adverse effect on us. If we go off again we can find ourselves quickly being threatened with the loss of the job.
We all work making a company one of the billion dollar companies in the world, but we still don’t feel appreciated. So with the cost of living and everything going on right now that is really draining on a lot of people. It’s making a lot of people feel depressed because they have to drive from a very long way to get to work and then when they get to work, put in a lot of hours, instead of them getting paid properly, they just get a pay rise of 50p.
Rashvinder Saund (Amazon worker): In terms of inflation things have gone up so much that it’s led for us to actually make a stand. I mean, before I was sitting on the actual fence, I was just observing and thinking, should I, shan’t I, should I, shan’t I? And then I thought, hang on a minute. You know, there’s more and more people joining GMB and actually I think I need to support my colleagues. Hence why I came out and thought, why not? You know, every voice matters. So that’s one of the main reasons really, it’s just purely the fact of not being able to have enough money coming in to pay our bills. You know, it’s just basic needs.
Stuart Richards (GMB union Senior organizer): If we don’t get to a point where those bosses start to listen, engage, and actually resolve the issues that we have here, we’re going to see an escalation of what’s already happening. We’re going to see a continuation of those disputes until we drag those employers kicking and screaming to the point at which they start to resolve those issues.
Amanda Gearing (GMB union Senior organizer): I mean, it’s across the UK, but it’s also global as well, to be honest. I mean, Amazon workers across the globe are coming together. We had Chris Smalls that has been organizing in New York over this week and meeting with some of our workers. So, you know, it’s absolutely fantastic. We’ve got other fulfillment centers that are contacting us now and saying that they want to do the same thing. You know, the pay at the moment is just appalling and people can’t live on that pay. So, you know, they feel like they’ve got nowhere to go.
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The levels of wealth inequality we are currently witnessing in this country are unprecedented and alarming. The very richest among us have succeeded in grabbing ever more of the proverbial pie, and the trend is only worsening. Wealth inequality is proving disastrous for America. On both collective and individual levels, we are suffering because of the ever-growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny few. What is to be done? As we explain below, raise taxes on the topmost bracket of earners, and begin realizing the potential and promise of worker self-management, which has historically proven itself to be the indispensable foundation of genuine equality.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “Income and wealth inequality is higher in the United States than almost any other developed country, and it is rising.” In September 2022 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report entitled Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989-2019. The CBO found that the “growth of real wealth over the past three decades was not uniform… In 2019, families in the top 10 percent of the distribution held 72 percent of total wealth, and families in the top 1 percent of the distribution held more than one-third; families in the bottom half of the distribution held only 2 percent of total wealth.” In fact, families in the top 1 percent saw their share of the total wealth increase by at least 7.4 percentage points – from 26.6 percent in 1989 to 34.0 percent in 2019.
Since 1989 income gains have been heavily skewed toward the topmost bracket of high earners. This is strikingly evident in the growth of CEO compensation since 1965, when “a typical corporate CEO earned about twenty times that earned by a typical worker; by 2018, the ratio was 278:1.” As the Economic Policy Institute points out, from 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by over 940 percent. Wages for the typical worker on the other hand grew by less than 12 percent. CEOs are getting paid exorbitantly because of their power to set pay, “not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills,” according to the EPI.
This obscene source of inequality cannot even pretend to have any legitimate economic justification: it represents unchecked greed and self-aggrandizement at the expense of everyone else—especially ordinary workers. We could learn something from Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, undoubtedly the world’s largest and most successful cooperative enterprise. Mondragon employs over 80,000 workers across nearly one hundred businesses, but no manager or executive within the company can make over six times the pay than any worker. The excessive compensation of CEOs is only one contributing factor to the rise of wealth inequality in the United States, but it is a significant factor and one that “we could safely do away with.”
The intensifying concentration of wealth, and unjustifiable level of income inequality is proving disastrous in many ways. Here are just a few of them. First, less equal societies typically have more unstable economies, and this country is no exception. “The United States experienced two major economic crises over the past century—the Great Depression starting in 1929 and the Great Recession starting in 2007. Both were preceded by a sharp increase in income and wealth inequality…” It is also well-known that societies with greater economic equality generally also enjoy longer periods of sustained growth: simply put, “longer growth spells are robustly associated with more equality in the income distribution.”
Second, there is an incontrovertible link between economic inequality and violent crime. The fact is that rates of violence are higher in more unequal societies. Why is inequality associated with an increase in criminal activity? As equalitytrust.org observes, economic inequality “may curtail opportunities for some, giving rise to a sense of hopelessness which incites fear, violence and murder.” Certainly, inequality erodes social solidarity and trust, so much so that societies with “large income differences and low levels of trust may lack the social capacity to create safe communities.”
The erosion of perceived fairness and trust also explains the inverse relationship between economic inequality and happiness: a 2011 study, Income Inequality and Happiness, found that “the negative link between income inequality and the happiness of lower-income respondents was explained not by lower household income, but by perceived unfairness and lack of trust.”
Third, the undeniable fact is that the greater the economic inequality that exists, the worse it is for general health outcomes. What is sometimes overlooked is that income inequality is bad for health outcomes across economic strata, not just for those in poverty. To be sure, poor health and poverty are closely linked; but the epidemiological research shows that high levels of economic inequality “negatively affect the health of even the affluent, mainly because… inequality reduces social cohesion, a dynamic that leads to more stress, fear, and insecurity for everyone.” People live longer in countries with lower levels of inequality, as the World Bank reports. In the United States, for example, “average life expectancy is four years shorter than in some of the most equitable countries.”
The most obvious and readily available method for addressing wealth inequality is through taxation policy, subjecting those in the topmost economic echelon to a “high and rising marginal tax rates on earnings.” In 1944 the top marginal tax rate reached 94 percent, applying to income over $200,000, roughly equivalent to $2.8 million today, adjusted for inflation. With our collective amnesia Americans often forget that the top tax rate remained above 90 percent through the 1950s and did not dip below 70 percent until 1981. At no point during the decades that saw America’s greatest economic growth did the tax on the wealthy drop below 70 percent. Today it is somewhere around 37 percent.
There is another method, no less important, for addressing inequality, but one that gets little attention because it involves a fundamental reorganization of the relations of production: namely, worker self-management, workplace democracy – or, perhaps most accurately, worker self-directed enterprises, to use the wording of economist Richard Wolff. As Wolff points out, these enterprises “divide all the labors to be performed… determine what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, and where it is to be produced” and, perhaps most crucially, “decide on the use and distribution of the resulting output or revenues.” One essential way to appreciate a worker self-directed enterprise is to contrast it to a typical, hierarchically organized corporation where a small board of directors, selected by a tiny number of shareholders, appropriate and distribute the surplus produced by employees. (Surplus refers to the difference between the value added by workers and the value paid to workers). In a worker self-directed enterprise, the surplus-producing workers themselves make the basic decisions about production and distribution.
According to Democracy at Work Institute, worker cooperatives have grown in number by more than 30 percent since 2019. It is estimated that there are some 900-1000 worker cooperatives in the United States, comprising roughly 10,000 workers. What these non-capitalist firms have demonstrated, among other things, is first, that they can succeed and be competitive with respect to traditionally organized firms. And second, worker self-directed enterprises can serve to alleviate income inequality, as Mondragon Corporation does, for example, by establishing a minimum and maximum income level for all workers that is equitable, and reasonable. At US worker cooperatives, the “2:1 top-to-bottom pay ratio… points to the prioritization of reducing internal inequality over other compensation goals.”
Extricating ourselves from the quagmire of inequality will require a progressive taxation policy that includes closing corporate loopholes and tax havens. But taxation is not sufficient: genuine, meaningful equality demands economic democracy. Fortunately, there is ample historical evidence to show that worker self-management can be successfully implemented on a large scale. We also know that “investment funds can be generated by taxation instead of from private savings,” as the philosopher David Schweickart has observed.
Worker self-directed enterprises will not only facilitate economic equality but will also foster a participatory-democratic consciousness within the firm and society at large, and ultimately serve as an antidote to the alienation of labor under capitalism. This is because the members of democratized workplaces are arguably no longer estranged from the act of production: empowered to make decisions regarding the labor process, production is no longer an activity ‘alien’ to the worker. In conclusion, workers self-management is an essential component in the struggle against gross inequality, exploitation, and the alienation of labor, a process that truly begins with workers formulating their own rules.
Just over a decade after union members and labor advocates from across the United States rallied at the Michigan State Capitol to protest state Republicans’ passage of a so-called “right-to-work” law, many of the same people were present in Lansing on Tuesday as the Democratic-led state Senate voted to end what one lawmaker called “the failed experiment of gutting Michigan workers’ rights.”
Lawmakers voted along party lines, 20-17, in favor of a package of bills that will repeal the right-to-work law—which barred unions from requiring that all workers in unionized jobs pay dues—and restore a “prevailing wage” requirement that construction contractors pay union wages and and benefits on state-funded projects.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer indicated on Monday that she intends to sign the bills, which will make Michigan the first state to roll back right-to-work laws in nearly six decades.
Since Republicans pushed the passage of the right-to-work law in December 2012, union membership in Michigan has fallen by about 40,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
State Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-4), the lead sponsor of the bills to repeal the right-to-work law, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that the 2012 law “systematically made it harder for unions to do their job” and “created an environment where unions were put at a disadvantage when it came to negotiating for better pay and benefits across the board.”
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“People came to Michigan because of the promise of a union,” Camilleri tweeted after the bills passed. “My family included. Unions fought for good pay and benefits so that all workers get ahead. Today we restored that promise and said to all workers that Michigan has their back.”
Camilleri added that lawmakers could hear union members and supporters “loud and clear” as they cheered the passage of the bills.
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“This is what happens when we elect union members to halls of power,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S. “We fight and we WIN for working people. Right to work, hit the curb!”
According toThe Detroit News, two of the three bills passed on Tuesday will have to go back to the state House for approval before reaching Whitmer’s desk. The bills include $1 million in appropriations to “inform employers, employees, and labor organizations about changes to their rights and responsibilities.”
The appropriations made the legislation referendum-proof, and opponents would need to gather enough support to propose a constitutional amendment restoring right-to-work on the ballot in 2024. Under state law, they would need to collect more than 446,000 signatures to propose the amendment.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 26 other states have right-to-work policies in place.
“Michigan is now on its way to becoming the first state to repeal ‘right-to-work’ legislation in nearly 60 years,” said former Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker. “Let’s make sure they aren’t the last.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
In December of 2016, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), based out of Immokalee, Florida, received a phone call from two men who had just escaped captivity near the town of Pahokee by hiding in the trunk of a car. The two men were migrant farmworkers, working on H-2A visas, who had been harvesting watermelons for Bladimir Moreno, owner of the farm labor contracting business Los Villatoros Harvesting LLC—a business that, in reality, was little more than a modern-day slave camp. “They told of being held against their will on a labor camp surrounded by barbed wire,” the CIW notes, “working and living under constant surveillance, and earning extremely low pay.”
On Dec. 29, 2022, after a lengthy investigation and subsequent trial, a US District Court judge sentenced Moreno to 118 months in prison for leading a federal racketeering and forced labor conspiracy between 2015-2017, spanning multiple states. “According to court documents,” Kristin Leigh Lore reports,
Moreno owned, operated and managed LVH — a farm labor contracting company that brought large numbers of temporary, seasonal Mexican workers into the U.S. on H-2A agricultural visas — as a criminal enterprise. According to the Justice Department, Moreno compelled victims to work in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina, and he also engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity that included visa fraud and fraud in foreign labor contracting… Once the immigrants arrived in the U.S., Moreno and his co-conspirators coerced over a dozen of them into providing long hours of physically demanding agricultural labor, six to seven days a week, for unreasonably little pay, according to the Justice Department, which said Moreno and his co-conspirators used various forms of coercion, including tactics such as:
Imposing debts on the workers.
Confiscating their passports.
Subjecting them to crowded, unsanitary and degrading living conditions.
Harboring them in the U.S. after their visas had expired.
Threatening them with arrest and deportation if they failed to comply with demands.
For a variety of sordid and explicitly racist reasons, agricultural workers in the United States were deliberately exempted from the provisions circumscribed by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. To this day, workers in this industry remain some of the most exploited and underrepresented across the workforce.
The horrors uncovered at Moreno’s operation—horrors that involved the enslavement, abuse, and exploitation of flesh-and-blood human beings right here, in the United States, all around us—are not some remnant of a grim, bygone past. They are a stark reminder of the dual realities that exist side by side across the landscape of American labor: One world where working people are at least recognized as human beings with the bare minimum of rights, and another world, a submerged world, where workers who are no less human are treated as cattle, or worse.
It is out of this underworld that the farmworkers of the CIW emerged in the early ’90s—and, along with their committed team of organizers and community supporters, they have remained a force to be reckoned with. For a variety of sordid and explicitly racist reasons, agricultural workers in the United States were deliberately exempted from the provisions circumscribed by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. To this day, workers in this industry remain some of the most exploited and underrepresented across the workforce, with the majority of states still denying equal labor protections to farmworkers, including collective bargaining rights.
This is why—taken together with the harsh working conditions, the low pay, and workers’ vulnerability to extortion and harassment—the grassroots worker-to-worker organizing and national campaigns waged by the CIW are so vital, and so damn impressive. Perhaps the crowning achievement of the CIW so far is the Fair Food Program. Launched in 2011, the Fair Food Program promotes a model of worker-driven social responsibility that not only educates farmworkers about their rights but encourages—and, if necessary, applies pressure to—growers and retail buyers of their produce to commit to a system of humane business practices and mutual accountability. Participating buyers, for instance, agree to only source produce from growers who comply with the worker-developed code of conduct. As Derek Seidman writes,
“There are few human rights achievements that are so universally celebrated today as the farmworker-led Fair Food Program, a partnership between agricultural growers, sellers and workers with a proven record of ensuring an “ethical supply chain” from the farms where products are harvested, to the grocery stores where they’re sold, to the kitchen tables where they’re consumed.
The program has been lauded by the United Nations as an “international benchmark” in the fight against modern-day slavery and called one of “the most important social-impact success stories of the past century” by the Harvard Business Review. Major companies, from Walmart and Trader Joe’s to McDonald’s and Burger King — which otherwise have blemished records on everything from union-busting to sexual harassment to holding down the wage floor — have all laudably joined the Fair Food Program.
For the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the main group behind the Fair Food Program, this makes it all the more disappointing that holdouts like fast food chain Wendy’s and the supermarket chains Kroger and Publix still refuse to join.
Kroger, it should be noted, was one of the retail giants identified by the Department of Labor that purchased produce harvested by workers slaving away for Bladimir Moreno’s LVH operation.
To compel these corporate chains to commit to only sourcing produce from growers that abide by the code of conduct laid out in the Fair Food Program, and to combat the scourge of forced labor that still plagues the agricultural supply chain, the CIW is leading the “Build a New World” march, which will last five days and cross a 50-mile expanse through Southern Florida. The march begins on Tuesday, March 14, in the agricultural community of Pahokee, where Moreno’s captive migrant workers were discovered, and will end at the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach on March 18. For TRNN, I spoke with Lupe Gonzalo, a longtime farmworker who is now a staff member and organizer for CIW, about the importance of this march, the success of the Fair Food Program, and the ongoing fight for dignity and justice for farmworkers everywhere.
Interpretation by: Ileana Roque González
Translation by: Adriana Garriga-López
Lupe Gonzalo: My name is Lupe Gonzalo. I’m currently a staff member at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). I worked for about 12 years in the fields, mostly harvesting tomatoes, but I also used to do other types of work in the industry, as well.
When you arrive at these farms, the only tool they give you is a bucket—a bucket that you have to fill with tomatoes… We used to get paid 50 cents for each bucketful.
Lupe Gonzalo, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
As workers, we have faced situations of abuse for decades. One of the biggest problems that has affected women is sexual harassment on the part of their supervisors, contractors, or even their own co-workers. In the most extreme cases, workers have faced conditions akin to modern slavery—these are workers who have been deprived of their liberty, threatened, including receiving death threats. They have been violated.
This is why, around the 1990s, we started organizing workers here in Immokalee to demand justice and to see how we could eliminate these abuses. We conducted different actions, such as work stoppages, marches against violence, and a hunger strike that lasted 30 days. This was all taking place, more or less, in the 1990s, but we did not find a solution at that time. The violence against workers did decrease a bit, but other abuses continued.
So, then, in 2001, we began the Campaign for Fair Food, which we began to focus directly on the big corporations. Because corporations, when they buy their tomatoes, are looking for a good quality of product and fresh product, but they are not seeing the situations that workers are facing.
That’s why we began, as workers, to apply pressure more directly on the corporations, but also to educate consumers. The consumer should know where their products come from and what the labor conditions that workers endure to get those products on their tables are.
Maximillian Alvarez: Like you said, so many consumers don’t know (or don’t want to know) what workers like yourself go through to get their produce to the supermarket, to restaurants, etc. Can you say a little more about your own experience as a farmworker and what that work entails on a day-to-day basis? And who are the people primarily doing this kind of work?
Lupe Gonzalo: They are migrant workers who come here to Immokalee from different countries, specifically from Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, and several other countries.
A normal day for us workers means waking up at 3:30AM to begin your day and prepare some food to take to the fields. For me, as a mother, it meant getting my children ready at that early morning hour to take them to someone else, another woman. There is no school or daycare that opens before 8AM. Therefore, there are other people who take care of children. So, I would take them there and then go to work.
When you arrive at these farms, the only tool they give you is a bucket—a bucket that you have to fill with tomatoes. A bucket weighs about 32 pounds or more when it’s filled up to the brim. When they tell you to pile the fruit above the rim, though, it can weigh up to 37 pounds. We used to get paid 50 cents for each bucketful. We did not get paid by the hour, we were never guaranteed a minimum salary at the end of the week—we got paid for each bucketful that we harvested. So, in order to be able to make a decent income at the end of the week, one had to harvest between 100-150 buckets per day. But that always depends on the weather, it depends on how hot it is and also on the experience of the workers.
Also, if you reported some abuse, or if you complained about the working conditions, the contractor would say, “Here’s the pay I’m offering, if you want it. Take it or leave it.”
And, as I mentioned before, sexual harassment is a problem that oftentimes affects women in the fields. When I was working there, there were contractors or co-workers who would touch you. Many times, when you would say, “I don’t want you to touch me,” they would just laugh at you or simply ignore you, and continue doing these things.
When it comes to the cases of enslavement, what we in the CIW have seen involves workers who have been imprisoned under lock and key—there are even workers who were put in chains so they could not escape.
Lupe Gonzalo, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
On top of that, there would often be times when it was very hot and you needed to drink some water; instead of letting you take a drink, though, they would yell at you, “Hold on, it’s about to rain,” or, “Go drink water from that ditch!”
Or, to give another example, when we wanted to use the bathrooms, the bathrooms were located very far away from where we would be working. The bathrooms were never cleaned, either. Weeks would pass and those bathrooms would get so dirty. Because of this, people would go into the woods [translator’s note: monte literally means “hill,” but it’s often used as an expression to refer to wildlands, or land that is not being cultivated, but is growing wild] to use the bathroom, because the bathroom was basically inaccessible. But going out to the woods, you also ran the risk of running into animals that could hurt you, too.
When it comes to the cases of enslavement, what we in the CIW have seen involves workers who have been imprisoned under lock and key—there are even workers who were put in chains so they could not escape. Workers there are surveilled. There is armed surveillance surrounding where they are living. When they go to work, they are pushed to work until very late, and the pay they receive is nothing, or almost nothing.
These are the kinds of abuses that we faced day-to-day. Whenever you wanted to speak out, as I mentioned, they would threaten to fire you, or some other kind of retaliation would sometimes be used against us. You had to decide: If I make a report, I run the risk of losing my job. How am I going to feed my family if I get fired? I better keep quiet, keep working, and make sure my family has food to eat.
Maximillian Alvarez: My God… This really highlights the dire need for worker organizations like the CIW, and the human stakes of the work you do.
Lupe Gonzalo: For us in the community, CIW is an organization that protects the human rights of workers. Regardless of where we come from, regardless of the legal status of the worker, it doesn’t matter: Human rights are human rights.
The CIW is a home base in Immokalee where workers can come and feel free to talk about any problems that are happening. The Coalition itself is made up of several staff members who used to work in the fields and who now work at the CIW full time, and part of the Coalition is made up of allies like Ileana who supported us and who are now part of the staff, as well.
Maximillian Alvarez: Let’s talk about the Fair Food Program, what it is, and how it has changed the industry for workers like yourself over the past 10 years…
Lupe Gonzalo: Yes, the Fair Food Program came from the victories that we won with the Campaign for Fair Food that we previously discussed. When we began to pressure the big corporations, we, the workers, would urge them to sign legally binding agreements committing them to participating in the Fair Food Program.
One of the legally binding agreements we pursued was with Taco Bell—that’s where it started. Our demand was that they should pay one more cent for every pound of tomatoes, and that this money should be directly distributed to the workers as a bonus payment.
The goal was also for Taco Bell to sign a code of conduct that was created by us, the workers, in which we were asking for basic rights like having water, shade, clean bathrooms, and breaks. But the code of conduct also included zero tolerance for harassment and sexual assault, and zero tolerance for modern slavery [translator’s note: forced labor, indentured servitude, or human trafficking].
We also pushed for workers to be able to have a voice at their workplace, so they could make reports without being fired or threatened.
So, with Taco Bell, we signed that agreement, but it took four years and one boycott to get there. After Taco Bell, well, there came other corporations. At this point, we have 14 corporations that have signed this agreement.
I spent more than a decade working in the fields without knowing my rights. But the moment my comrades arrived at the ranch where I worked and started talking to us, educating us, it was a pretty big deal for me. It’s pretty much the same thing for other workers on farms that participate in the Fair Food Program—it’s like night and day.
Lupe Gonzalo, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
In 2010, 90% of the ranches that produce tomatoes in the state of Florida also reached an agreement with us. Then, in 2011, we started implementing the Fair Food Program.
With the Fair Food Program, we basically hold these worker-to-worker educational sessions on the ranches. We speak with the workers in a place where they have some shade. They also now have clean water to drink, clean bathrooms—basically, everything that we were demanding, we now have it on the ranches. Another thing is now people are paid for their time [translator’s note: instead of per bucket], dignifying the life of the workers
Maximillian Alvarez: It sounds like the changes have been pretty dramatic for workers on farms that participate in the Fair Food Program?
Lupe Gonzalo: Yes, it’s been very interesting. When I received this training for the first time, for me, it had a pretty big impact. I spent more than a decade working in the fields without knowing my rights. But the moment my comrades arrived at the ranch where I worked and started talking to us, educating us, it was a pretty big deal for me. It’s pretty much the same thing for other workers on farms that participate in the Fair Food Program—it’s like night and day.
It is a new day for us, as workers, to have protections, to be able to make reports. There is now a complaint hotline open 24/7 that is accessible in whatever language one wants to make the complaint in. And there are bosses or supervisors who have been fired for not wanting to follow this new rule, this new acknowledgement that we farmworkers have human rights. This is a rule, not an option. They have to do it.
And, as women, the difference now is feeling that no one is touching you and no one is going to be harassing you. That is a pretty big relief. After work, we can get home and have a nice dinner with our kids without having to be worried about the dangers we might have to face tomorrow.
Maximillian Alvarez: Tell us about the march that’s happening this week. Why are workers marching? And what do you hope to achieve?
Lupe Gonzalo: The march is going to start on Tuesday of this week, from March 14-18. We’re going to start in Pahokee and we are going to finish in Palm Beach, where one of the top Wendy’s executives, Nelson Peltz, lives. We’re also going to stop by Publix and Wendy’s to protest, but we’re going to go as a big group marching for justice. (If people want to support us, they can follow us on our social media and continue learning from the workers of Immokalee.)
We continue this fight because, on the farms that don’t participate in the Fair Food Program, the problems continue and the abuses continue. Thus, the program has expanded to other states, to other products, and has expanded to other industries, even internationally. What we want is for more corporations to join us, more farms to cover the cost of the Fair Food Program.
In 2015-16, unfortunately, as I predicted would happen, we discovered a case of enslaved workers in Pahokee, Florida, which is where we are going to start the march this year. Workers there, who had arrived on H-2A visas, fell into the hands of a contractor who had them living in conditions of modern slavery. This is a problem that continues to plague the agricultural industry, and the corporations [that purchase from these farms] are not taking responsibility to ensure that the workers are protected.
When you know that abuses this extreme are happening, you cannot just stay at home and do nothing. You have to stand up. And that is what we are doing now: We are continuing to march for justice, because we want corporations like Wendy’s, like Publix, like Kroger, to join the Fair Food Program. We have asked these corporations to join us for years now, but they have refused to be part of the Program.
This is also about raising the consciousness of consumers. I think that, as consumers, we have a pretty important role to play in this fight for human rights. Consumers should know where the things we consume come from—we need to think about where our food comes from, and about the conditions that the workers who harvest our food confront every day. And consuming a product that was harvested with justice—that is surely something we all want.
When you know that abuses this extreme are happening, you cannot just stay at home and do nothing. You have to stand up. And that is what we are doing now: We are continuing to march for justice, because we want corporations like Wendy’s, like Publix, like Kroger, to join the Fair Food Program.
Lupe Gonzalo, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
As my colleague says, we are not mathematicians or anything like that, but we have an equation here at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers: C + C = C (Consciousness + Commitment = Change). We make the consumer aware, then they commit to supporting us by marching, coming to our protests, and making donations. There are a lot of people committed to supporting our struggle and we, the workers, can see the resulting changes..
Maximillian Alvarez: Speaking of supporting that struggle, there is a lot of popular enthusiasm for the labor movement right now, but people can often leave farmworkers out of the discussion (they really shouldn’t, but they do). Do you have any final words you wanted to share with folks reading this about the importance of showing solidarity with CIW and farmworkers everywhere?
Lupe Gonzalo: I have always said that for the workers in this country, nothing that we have has been given to us for free. There has always been a struggle. Yes, it is hard, but it is not impossible to get justice.
People can learn a lot from the workers of Immokalee. It is always possible to build community in our struggle, as we have done and will continue to do moving forward, always demanding what is just. We are not asking for anything that is not owed to us, only that which is fair.
Five hundred food service workers in the New York Metropolitan area authorized strikes on Thursday, March 9, for livable wages and against subcontracting. The workers, who are represented by New York City’s largest food service union, UNITE HERE Local 100, are employed by food service and facilities management behemoth Sodexo in nine cafeterias in New York and New Jersey.
Strike authorizations at each of the Sodexo shops were announced at a rally outside the Bloomberg L.P. headquarters in Manhattan. The contracts of most of the Sodexo employees, who are cashiers, cooks, and other service workers in the swanky cafeterias of multiple Bloomberg locations, Colgate-Palmolive, and several other businesses and organizations, expired on Dec. 1, 2022. The company and the union have been unable to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.
While workers have been struggling to make ends meet during the inflationary crisis, companies like Sodexo, a French conglomerate with operations in 53 countries and over 420,000 employees, have been raking in massive profits.
Surrounded by the luxury retail of Lexington Avenue, clad in red UNITE HERE shirts thrown over winter jackets, workers from all nine locations attended the rally. Fired up, the potential strikers brandished signs that read, “Sodexo Workers Need a Raise,” and led various chants, including “Fight poverty, not the poor!”
“I want a contract and I want it now,” Valvin Nicholson, a Sodexo worker who has worked at the United Federation of Teachers near Wall Street for 25 years, told The Real News. “I don’t need it tomorrow. I don’t need it the next day. I want it now.”
Sodexo workers are demanding raises, a minimum wage of at least $20 an hour, and the maintenance of provisions in their contracts that bar subcontracting. Yet in some locations Sodexo’s proposal included minimum wages lower than $20, like at New Jersey’s East Orange School District, where over 100 school cafeteria workers are now threatening to strike.
At the rally, the crowd of dozens cheered as speeches began with a union staff organizer announcing that Sodexo and UNITE HERE Local 100 had agreed to return to the bargaining table on March 17. Pressured by the workers’ threat of job actions, Sodexo has dropped language it introduced in the contract that would have allowed subcontracting, and upped East Orange School District’s minimum wage proposal to $20 an hour, according to the union. For now, the local has agreed not to strike.
The union organizer also announced that Sodexo lifted a lockout of staff organizers from the shops. Neither UNITE HERE Local 100 nor Sodexo provided further details about the alleged lockout when asked for comment.
When reached for a statement, Sodexo referred The Real News to a joint statement by the company and UNITE HERE Local 100, which stated, “We are confident that we are on a path, with additional and continued good faith bargaining, to reach a full agreement on all issues soon that will be fair to our employees and union members.”
Food service is a historically low-wage sector, and is often staffed disproportionately by immigrant and Black and Brown workers. Despite serving as a Sodexo cook at Bloomberg for 23 years and living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, Ryllis Roberts, an Antiguan immigrant, makes less than $20 an hour. “I need more money,” she told TRNN at the rally. “My rent is going up. You’ve got to pay more for transportation. I can’t afford to live in New York.”
Around the country, workers like Roberts have been crushed by exorbitant costs of living, even before the price of energy, food, and other necessities surged in 2021. Some of the Sodexo workers provide services in the cafeteria of the Federal Reserve of New York, a powerful node of the US central banking system, in which government officials have been trying to tame rising inflation by hiking federal interest rates at a pace not seen in decades.
But it is a disturbing irony that while interest rate increases may bring down inflation, it will do so by forcing companies to fire or depress the wages of workers like those who are threatening to strike at the New York Fed over poverty pay. And while workers have been struggling to make ends meet during the inflationary crisis, companies like Sodexo, a French conglomerate with operations in 53 countries and over 420,000 employees, have been raking in massive profits.
“We are living in a time where corporations are making money hand over fist,” Alexa Avilés, a member of the New York City Council and Democratic Socialists of America, told The Real News at the rally. “We need these corporations to step up and pay their workers.”
The Economic Policy Institute has reported that corporations have taken advantage of supply chain disruptions and other factors that have contributed to rising prices — by raising prices. Indeed, as Branko Marcetic noted in Jacobin, while Sodexo’s revenues declined in 2021, they are bouncing back, with Chairwoman and CEO Sophie Bellon openly stating that “price increases…boosted revenue growth.” Sodexo is one of the top food servicers of K-12 schools in the United States — schools which have seen food price increases of 301.9% over the course of 2022.
“I think that it’s unfair that these rich corporations can get away with murder, and we are doing most of the work,” said Roberts, who will turn 56 years old this year but is often forced to work overtime. “I come to work at 7:30AM and I’m on my feet until 9:00. Because if you don’t do the overtime, you are only bringing home like $500 a week,” she continued. “Your body changes as you get older. I need more money so I can work less hours.”
Roberts stressed that the role of her union in improving her wages and working conditions is indispensable. “Before I worked with our union, I never got a raise,” she said. “The union is very important because they care.”
In the face of such dire working conditions, workers have been fighting back around the country. Thousands of Sodexo workers have unionized with UNITE HERE across various workplaces in 2022 alone, including 4,000 at Google’s cafeterias. Through their union they have won $3-4 wage increases — a significant hike for low-wage workers — in Oakland, Orlando, Williamsburg, Atlanta, and across North Carolina and Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, New York and New Jersey Sodexo workers aren’t the only ones who have voted to authorize strikes: members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 at the Las Vegas Convention Center greenlighted strike authority back in December 2022, but haven’t used it, as negotiations are still ongoing with Sodexo.
Roberts stressed that the role of her union in improving her wages and working conditions is indispensable. “Before I worked with our union, I never got a raise,” she said. “The union is very important because they care.”
As a single mother raising her child in New York, Roberts fought to pay for her son’s college education and to make sure he doesn’t struggle under low wages like those she’s earned at Sodexo. But she’s also fighting for her union family.
“This is not only about me,” Roberts said. “I am fighting for the generation coming after me.”
Millions of workers in Illinois are now guaranteed the right to take paid leave for any reason they choose, after Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law on Monday mandating paid time off for nearly all workers in the state. The law, passed by the Democratically-led state legislature in January, allows employees in Illinois to accrue time off based on hours worked, with workers gaining one hour…
So far, after weeks of targeted strikes by workers opposing President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the national retirement age and reform the country’s beloved pension system, the French government has refused to change course. That is why unions across different industries raised the ante last week, launching an indefinite strike until workers’ demands are met. As Eric Challal of the Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques (SUD) Railway Union put it, “We have no choice, we must make Macron back down, make the employers back down. There is no lack of money in this society… Wages are too low, prices are exploding, the high cost of living, the threat of war… We have this opportunity to fight, all the workers together.” TRNN contributor and video journalist Brandon Jourdan reports from the streets of Paris on the latest escalation of strike actions in France.
This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producer, Videographer, Editor: Brandon Jourdan Associate Producer, Translation: Nicolas Lee Additional Footage: Getty Images, Ruptly
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Brandon Jourdan (narrator): On March 7th, 2023, the ongoing French strike wave against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms entered a new phase of struggle. It was the largest single day of action in decades, with the unions estimating that 3.5 million people participated,
while the government claimed 1.28 million took part in strikes. With either estimate, the sixth day of national strikes within two months was the largest so far. Since the national strikes have thus far failed to prevent pension reforms from moving forward, tactics have escalated towards continuous strikes in many key sectors after the main day of action.
Eric Sellini, General Confederation of Labor (CGT), TotalEnergies: It is clear that the government continues to implement its plan. There was the presentation in the National Assembly, now it’s in the Senate. We feel that anyway, he’s [Macron] not ready to give up just like that. So, that’s why all the unions, and in particular the CGT, we decided to take the mobilization up a notch and today to mark the beginning of an important phase in terms of mobilization which is the beginning of the continuous strike in many companies across the country.
Brandon Jourdan (narrator): Before the main rally in Paris, railway workers at Gare du Nord held a general assembly to decide whether to continue their strike beyond March 7th.
Eric Challal, SUD Railway Union (speaking before assembly): It’s been a long time since we’ve seen the strength of workers on this scale. We also know, we have all seen it, what happened in Parliament, now in the Senate, we have seen all the parliamentary cinema, we have nothing to expect from it. This is the beginning of a new stage of the movement, the strike, the continuous strike.
What I propose, is therefore that we renew the strike. This is what we did by meeting here at 11:00 am for a general assembly. So tomorrow, the 8th, to continue the strike, until tomorrow 11:00 am and reconvene the general assembly.
Who votes yes?
One, two, three, four…
Comrades, the strike is unanimously renewed!
See you tomorrow at 11:00 am at the general assembly.
Eric Challal, SUD Railway Union (interview): It has been quite some time since we have seen so many people in the streets, millions of people in the provinces, in small and medium-sized cities. For the moment, they [the government] fear this mobilization. But the mobilization has not yet been strong enough to make them back down. That’s why we’re going on continuous strikes.
Brandon Jourdan (narrator): The railway workers joined others who decided to strike beyond a single day, including workers at oil refineries, fuel depots, waste management sites, public transit, ports, transport, and power plants.
Eric Sellini, General Confederation of Labor (CGT), TotalEnergies: Today, there are six refineries in France that refine oil. Three of them are TotalEnergies refineries. All three are at a standstill. There are two ExxonMobil refineries that are also shut down, who stopped their shipments. And there is a PetroChina refinery that has also stopped its shipments, which is in the south of France. So, all the refineries, that are still refining oil in France today, are at a standstill.
The objective is to last as long as possible to put sufficient pressure on the government to back down on this reform and so that we can put forward our solutions to positively reform our retirement system.
Brandon Jourdan (narrator): Electricity production was reduced and workers reportedly engaged in “Robin Hood” actions, pledging to provide free power to schools, universities, and low-income homes. The strikes have public support, with polls showing a broad majority opposing the reforms and 60% of the public supporting bringing France to a standstill.
The Paris march was the largest mobilization of the 2023 strike wave so far, with the union official stating 700,000 attended the protests. Police estimated 81,000 people.
Anne Chatain, President, French Confederation of Christian Workers, (CFTC) Media+: We are here in the street to try to influence the government that is trying to pass a very brutal pension reform law.
Awawou Yenou, Hotel Ibis Batignolle CGT: We don’t agree with the state. The citizens do not agree, employees, especially those working in the difficult jobs. So, we don’t agree in relation to the age decided for retirement.
Anne Jamet, CFDT Thales Metal Workers: The government does not react, for the moment, to the mobilizations. There have been several mobilizations with huge numbers of people. There is no answer. So today, a new day of mobilization. As the law is under review in the Senate, we still have to show that we are mobilized and that we do not want this unfair reform to pass.
Today, for the first time in my life, I am on strike. It’s still a strong commitment to go on strike, in support of all workers.
Student protesters chanting: We are here! We are here!
Even if Macron doesn’t like it, we are here!
For the honor of the workers, for a better world
Even if Macron doesn’t like it, we are here!
We are here! We are here!
Even if Macron doesn’t like it, we are here!
For the honor of the workers, for a better world
Even if Macron doesn’t like it, we are here!
Brandon Jourdan (narrator): There was a large black bloc, who clashed with police and engaged in targeted property destruction. In the melee, police made 22 arrests.
If the pension reforms are approved, popular anger could boil over again, as it did with the yellow vest movement a few years ago. Whatever happens, March 2023 will prove to be a historic month that can either resurrects the French trade union movement, which has seen its numbers in decline, or give Macron another bitterly contested victory.
Eric Challal, SUD Railway Union (interview): We have no choice, we must make Macron back down, make the employers back down. There is no lack of money in this society.
Record profits, they were announced not long ago, and the state’s coffers would be short 10 to 20 million to finance pensions?
No one believes it.
So, this battle against the pension reform, there are many things behind it. Wages are too low, prices are exploding, the high cost of living, the threat of war. We have this opportunity to fight, all the workers together, and to lead the arm wrestling with continuous strikes. We must seize this opportunity.
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Brad Greve has been a Scout leader for more than 20 years. The Davenport, Iowa retiree leads 50-mile canoe trips on Minnesota’s Boundary Waters that test teens’ mettle while teaching them essential skills. Greve told a story recently where two boys, despite being warned repeatedly, let their canoe drift perilously close to a section of stream that swept over rapids into a lake below.
Workers couldn’t wear a sticker or button, because what if it fell into the fruits and vegetables they packaged for the Anthony Marano Company, a major distributor of produce in Chicago and the greater Midwest for restaurants and grocery chains including Aldi’s, Sysco, and Pete’s Fresh Market? They couldn’t do a red T-shirt day; the temperatures are frigid in the warehouse, and workers must cover…
At long last, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is being held to account for his company’s union-busting tactics.
Union members with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) reacted with surprise, excitement, and a sense of vindication to the news that Schultz will be appearing under oath in front of a U.S. Senate committee on March 29. “[It’s] huge,” Boston-based barista Tyler Daguerre tells The Progressive. “We haven’t been able to get Howard to move like that.”
Under Schultz and other company leaders, Starbucks has engaged in anti-union attacks dating back to the 1980s, when they successfully pushed out a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union.
Since the current wave of unionization started roughly eighteen months ago, the company has retaliated through store closures, hours cuts, firings of pro-union workers, better benefits, raises for nonunion stores, and more.
In early March, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative judge for the Buffalo region found that Starbucks had engaged in “egregious and widespread misconduct demonstrating a general disregard for the employees’ fundamental rights.”
When asked what they wanted to hear from Schultz when he testifies before the Senate committee on March 29, several baristas expressed frustration about the union-busting that the $115 billion company has engaged in. “Is this union-busting campaign against your partners worth the damage it has done to the legacy you claim to have built?” asks Alydia Claypool, a barista in Overland Park, Kansas.
“I would ask why he chose to make an example out of me and my coworkers through the retaliatory shutdown of our College Avenue store,” says Evan Sunshine, an SBWU member based in Ithaca, New York.
At least one barista was skeptical that Schultz would answer truthfully, even when questioned under oath. “The company has been consistently dishonest throughout this process,” says James Greene, a barista in Wilkins Township, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. “I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, had been pressuring Schultz for weeks to testify at the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee that he chairs, having “invited” him to appear on Thursday, March 9.
When Schultz refused to appear, Sanders threatened to issue a subpoena. Finally, on March 7, with a vote on the issue looming the next day, Schultz gave in to the movement.
Just before he leaves the office of interim CEO, Schultz will finally be held to account for union-busting at the company under his tenure.
There are almost 300 unionized company-run Starbucks in the United States, and the company has yet to reach a contract with a single one, despite a legal requirement to bargain in good faith. “Starbucks strategy is quite clear; it is to stall, stall, stall,” said Sanders.
With Schultz agreeing to appear, Sanders and the HELP Committee abandoned their plan to vote on a subpoena on Wednesday. However, they did carry on with a hearing on the right to organize corporate union-busting.
At that session, Sanders and ranking Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana issued competing, clashing visions for what workers’ rights mean. As Sanders emphasized the right to organize without corporate anti-union attacks, Cassidy focused on opposition to the NLRB and argued for the so-called right to work—which allows non-union workers in union workplaces to opt out of paying costs of representation.
“There’s a class war going on whether we want to recognize it or not,” Sanders said.
Other major supporters of the Starbucks baristas and other workers also testified during the hearing.
“How many hundreds of thousands of baristas showed up for Starbucks in the middle of a pandemic?” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler asked. She argued that corporate spending on anti-union consultants should not be legal or a tax write-off.
“Corporations have rigged the rules of our economy against working people,” said Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Mary Kay Henry.
“It’s ridiculous that the future of tens of thousands of Starbucks workers is up to the whims of just one person, Howard Schultz,” Henry added. Starbucks Workers United’s parent union, Workers United, is an affiliate of SEIU.
“There are no meaningful consequences for [businessmen] like Howard Schultz when they break [the] law,” International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said at the hearing.
Though volumes of material in the past two weeks have confirmed extensive anti-union activities by Starbucks, some of the most poignant words about Schultz unsurprisingly came from a barista.
“It’s really disorienting to be shown you’re wrong and you’re actually hurting people and can bring up a lot of hard-to-deal-with stuff, internally,” said Bailey Fulton, an SBWU member in Worcester, Massachusetts.
“I hope that he can accept it enough to change his behaviors and views,” Fulton added, “because he’s just causing so many problems for so many people at this point and sabotaging everything he claims to uphold.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
After a decade on Seattle City Council, socialist Kshama Sawant is declining to seek reelection and will instead launch a new national coalition called Workers Strike Back this March in cities around the US. The goal of Workers Strike Back is to build an independent workers’ movement that fights for the interests of the working class, rather than the agenda of either corporate party. This coalition will organize for a $ 25 an hour minimum wage, build grassroots labor unions, fight for a clean energy transition, battle anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation, and more. Kshama Sawant joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the launch of Workers Strike Back.
Kshama Sawant has spent 10 years on the Seattle City Council, during which time she accepted only workers’ wages, increased the minimum wage to $15, and fought to increase taxes on Amazon. Sawant is a member of Socialist Alternative.
Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden, Adam Coley Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
Transcript
Chris Hedges: Kshama Sawant, a socialist who served for over a decade on the Seattle City Council, has announced she will not seek reelection. Instead, she will launch a national coalition called Workers Strike Back this March in cities around the country. This coalition will organize for a $25 an hour minimum wage, build grassroots labor unions in corporations such as Amazon, and advocate for a shorter work week without a cut in benefits and pay. It will also employ strikes when its demands are not met. It will work to build a massive green jobs program that can employ millions of workers in clean energy and prevent climate catastrophe, along with public ownership of the big energy corporations.
“Only the bosses profit from divisions among the working class,” she notes. Workers Strike Back will be a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people. It will battle anti-trans legislation, and stand against all right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ people. It will organize to win legal, safe, free abortions for all who need them. It will campaign to end racist policing, putting police under the control of democratically elected community boards with full power over department policy, hiring, and firing.
Her new labor organization calls for rent control, with no rent increases above inflation, as well as a massive expansion of publicly owned, high quality affordable housing, by taxing the rich. “We’re dying from unaffordable healthcare,” she notes, “As the pharma bosses and for-profit health insurance industry makes money from our sicknesses.” She and Workers Strike Back will call for free, state of the art Medicare for all, owned and democratically run by working people.
“The Democrats and Republicans both answer to the billionaire class. That’s why working people,” she writes, “keep getting screwed. Even so-called progressives in Congress,” she notes, “have completely failed to fight against the establishment, and offer no solutions.” The elected leadership of Workers Strike Back will accept only the average worker’s wage, as she did when she was a member of the city council.
Sawant, in her decade as a member of the Seattle City Council, has had an impressive track record. She helped win a $15 minimum wage for Seattle workers, pushed the council to tax Amazon, and championed renter protection as the chair of the Renters and Sustainability Committee. She joined the Socialist Alternative Party in 2006, and since then has helped organize demonstrations for marriage equality, participated in the movement to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was involved in the Occupy movement. She’s an active member in the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789, fighting against budget cuts and tuition hikes.
Joining me to discuss the launch of Workers Strike Back is Kshama Sawant. So let’s begin with your tenure at the city council. I listed some of the achievements you and Socialist Alternative managed against fierce opposition, including a recall attempt to remove you from the council. What you managed to achieve. Why this break with local politics? Why this shift?
Kshama Sawant: As you recounted yourself, Chris, we have, in the near decade that I’ve been on the City Council, we meaning Socialist Alternative and I, have demonstrated a phenomenal example of what can be achieved when you have an elected representative in office that is unflinchingly tied to building movements of working people, and the marginalized, and the oppressed, and understands that, as a representative of working people, your job is not to make deals with the Democratic or Republican establishments. Not to make friends with your supposed colleagues in the halls of power. But instead, your loyalty lies with the people who suffer under the system of capitalism and through the policies of the parties of big business.
We have won numerous victories, as you were also talking about. We feel that, at this point, after a decade on the city council, it is important for us to share the lessons of how we won this, and what it took to win these, what it took to overcome the dogged opposition of the ruling class, of the wealthy, of corporate landlords, of billionaires like Jeff Bezos. To take this message of a fighting strategy. How to build fighting movements to win victories for working people. We believe that it’s time to take this message national.
As you also importantly noted, we don’t have this kind of fighting politics virtually anywhere in the United States, and it’s unfortunate. Especially what’s striking is the absence of any fighting left politics in the US Congress. That’s happening in the midst of an historic cost of living crisis. Many young people have only known economic insecurity, and low wages, unaffordable housing that gets more unaffordable every time the landlord jacks up rent. The statistics are just damning. To see how the bottom has fallen from under working people’s lives.
Throughout the pandemic and its aftermath, working people have lost trillions of dollars worth of what was with them. Not only in terms of the recessionary effects of loss of jobs, but the overall cost that they’re going to pay. But it’s not happening in a neutral world. At the same time, billionaires have added trillions of dollars to their fortunes during that same period of the pandemic.
So it really reveals how capitalism is a zero sum game. The wealthy are becoming wealthier, not because they have high IQs or because they’re creative, but because they’re siphoning off wealth from the vast majority of workers. Workers, that’s why, are falling further and further behind. This has resulted in huge anger among workers.
At the same time, what is conspicuously missing by its absence is genuine left leadership, as I was saying before, and as you were saying as well. That’s why we are launching this nationwide movement, Workers Strike Back. Really it should be the labor leadership, leadership of the labor movement, that’s launching this, just like Enough Is Enough in the UK. However, that’s not happened, and we can’t hold our breath that they’re going to do it. That’s why Workers Strike Back is being launched.
As you correctly said, we are raising the demands of a real raise for workers, like $25 an hour. Good union jobs for all. We are also continuing to fight racism, sexism, and all oppression. Again, as you said, free healthcare for all, and quality affordable housing. Bottom line, this is very important, if we are to build a real force on the left for the working class whose leadership does not sell out, we need a new party for the working class where the rank and file of the party can hold its leadership accountable.
Chris Hedges: Is the idea to build a militant labor movement, and out of that build a political party?
Kshama Sawant: I think that that has to… I don’t know if we can lay out a blueprint schematic of the chronology of how it will happen. But absolutely, what you’re indicating is very true, which is that the two things are going to go together. In other words, we are not going to get a new party of a working class outside of building rank and file militancy in the labor movement as well. Those two things are going to go hand in hand.
At the same time, it’s not only about the labor movement as it is today. Because we also have to remember that the vast majority of young people, young workers, where there’s the strongest support for the politics we are bringing forward, most of them are not unionized. Workers Strike Back understands that. We obviously want to specifically and consciously orient towards the rank and file today, who are already within the labor movement. But at the same time, also begin helping to mobilize and organize the unorganized.
You mentioned Amazon. Absolutely, Amazon is a crucial, crucial battle. Right now, actually, Socialist Alternative, my organization, and also Workers Strike Back, the national movement we are launching, we’re already in solidarity with a campaign that Socialist Alternative is leading in Kentucky. The largest Air Hub of Amazon in the world, which is located in Kentucky near Cincinnati Airport, we are carrying out a union drive there. This is extremely important, because this is one of the choke points of the capitalist class. So all of this has to go hand in hand with building the efforts to build a new party.
One other thing I’ll add here is, and then the reason also why these two things are so deeply interconnected, is that one of the key obstacles to building a new party for the working class, to actually have fighting politics that represent the interests of the working class, as opposed to those of the billionaires, is that the majority of the labor leadership has been, and continues to be, tied at the hip to the Democratic establishment. That is not coincidentally existing on its own. That goes hand in hand with the primary strategy of the same labor leadership being business unionism, which is trying to make peace with the bosses.
Trying to make peace with the bosses goes hand in hand with trying to keep the peace with the Democratic and Republican establishment as well. So we need a real break from all of this towards rank and file militancy, whether it’s unionized or not.
Chris Hedges: When you look at the rise of the Swedish socialist state, which the capitalist class managed finally to dismantle, but it was built through strikes. A series of strikes. Very high, I think over 70% of the Swedish workforce was unionized. They used that power to paralyze the country and get what they wanted. I’m looking at your movement, essentially, as embracing that tactic. That understanding that the only real weapon we have is no longer at the ballot box, with the two-party corporate duopoly, which blocks – I worked for Nader, as you know – Blocks any attempt by third parties to build a viable movement. But by mobilizing the working class to cripple the billionaire class through strikes. Is that essentially where you would like us to go?
Kshama Sawant: Absolutely correct. I could not agree more with what you said. In fact, for Workers Strike Back and for building any kind of movement towards concrete victories for the working class, for any of that agenda, using the working class weapon of going on strike has to be an integral component. Without that, it’s not going to work. In fact, this very much goes into the heart of the problem with business unionism as well, and why these ideas are ultimately not only problematic, but actually rotten, in the sense that they negate a very basic reality under capitalism, which is that the interests of the billionaire class, the bosses, the major shareholders, the corporate executives, their interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of workers.
So when you have a majority of labor leadership that is married to the idea of business unionism, then you have a leadership that, for the most part, they consciously refuse to mobilize, activate their rank and file members, because the whole idea of business unionism is that the tops of the labor leadership will quietly negotiate contracts with the bosses. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the history. Often these are filled with defeats for workers, setbacks for workers, rather than what we feel should be class struggle unionism, which is actively organizing the rank and file. Not only organizing them in general, but organizing for powerful and successful strike actions.
Because class struggle unionism recognizes that the bosses will never concede anything unless they’re forced to, because their profits and their position of power and the system of capitalism itself, all of this is directly derived from underpaying workers. From stealing the value of the labor that workers produce.
One of the hallmarks of business unionism is preventing strike actions at all costs. Business unionists put their stress on the so-called bargaining process because they fear antagonizing management by any real mobilization of workers, much less going on strike. In fact, often what you see is the majority of the labor leadership even refusing to carry out militant protest actions, much less go on strike. In fact, not only is it going to be important in general, going on strike. But already, as The Guardian newspaper reported just this past Sunday, that the bosses at corporations like Amazon, it’s not like they’re asleep at the wheel. They know the anger in society. They know that unionizing drives are starting to pick up. They know that young workers are especially angry. So what they are doing is they’re beginning to counter all of that with fierce, old school anti-union or union busting measures.
So how will we push back against any of this successfully? It will not happen through business unionist strategy. It will require a class struggle approach, which is, as I said, rooted in the recognition that workers have to fight against the capitalist class’s interests, not engage in the futile idea of wanting to morally persuade the boss, because they’re not going to be persuaded.
The reason we want the Amazon tax, or the $15 minimum wage, or the series of renters’ rights that we want is not because we made moral arguments to the ruling class, the Chamber of Commerce, or Jeff Bezos. No, they fought tooth and nail against each such movement. Corporate landlords were absolutely against what we were calling for. But we won because we organized rank and file workers, renters, to go up against the might of the billionaire class.
Class struggle unionism recognizes that worker power does not reside in the bargaining room, but outside it. In the workplaces and on the streets. As you said, throughout history, not only Europe, obviously in Europe the labor movement trajectory was much stronger historically than in the United States. But even in the United States, there was a powerful American made worker tradition of militant strike action.
In fact, the New Deal and the creation of the measure of material standards of living that the middle class did get, that came not because of FDR’s beneficence, but because of militant strikes. General strikes, including in Minneapolis. These are historic, earth shattering events that changed the course of history. But that happened because there were Marxist socialists and other courageous leaders of the left who understood that we have to have this fighting strategy.
Today, concretely, we need this strategy to unionize Amazon and other prominent workplaces like that. Also coming up, the UPS contract is up for renewal. The contract of the longshore workers on the West Coast, all the way from Washington to Southern California, they are up for renewal. These are, alongside the Amazon Air Hub, these are strategic choke points for the capitalist class. So it is really crucial that we start educating. Have active discussions and debates inside the labor movement, and outside it, to discuss how do we shut down the corporate money making machine of capitalism, and win over the wider working class for the strike actions, and really win some real victories, and raise the consciousness, the political education of the working class?
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the Democratic Party. Biden calls himself a pro labor president. Maybe you can mention what happened to the freight rail workers. But the Democratic Party essentially works hand in glove with the corporate community to prevent labor unions, and most of all to prevent strikes. That’s what they did with the freight rail unions, which actually, that’s one of the few groups of workers that retained the right to collective bargaining. The Biden administration took it away.
Kshama Sawant: Yes, it was a deeply shameful moment for president Biden, and all the Democrats in Congress who went along with it to carry out, as you said, historically shameful strike breaking action by breaking the railroad worker strike. In fact, to keep in mind how it’s almost Dickensian, this situation they were facing. On the one hand, you have billionaires like Warren Buffett who are the main owners of the freight railroads. You’ve got the railroad bosses. On the other hand, you have railroad workers who are facing very dangerous working conditions. Even facing loss of life, injury, repeated cases of injury. What were they demanding? Just basic paid sick leave. Here, in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of humanity, these workers are having to fight for these basic needs. What you saw was the complete betrayal by this so-called pro labor president.
But we have to be clear. If we are going to be clear about the Democratic Party, then we also have to call out the role played by the so-called progressives. The Congressional Progressive Caucus – So-called progressive as I called them – The Congressional Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party in the US Congress is 100 strong. The chair of that caucus is Pramila Jayapal, again, another so-called progressive. Then you have all these members of the so-called Squad, who were elected with these high expectations that they will show courage in the face of Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, and all the power brokers on behalf of Wall Street. What you have seen again and again is repeated betrayals of working people. The betrayal of the railroad workers and the breaking of their strike, obviously, was one of the starkest moments, and I think really crystallized for millions of people.
Obviously I am aware that there are many well meaning people who still may have illusions. But it’s our duty to clarify to them that, “Look, this is what happened.” We cannot just keep thinking that at some point, somewhere, something is going to change, and finally the progressives in the Democratic Party will do something for working people, because they are not. We are seeing repeated betrayals from them.
Now we are seeing the brutal consequences from the Democrats siding with the railroad tycoons. We’re seeing this apocalyptic scenario unfolding in East Palestine, Ohio. So the only way we can come out of this really tragic situation, not only in East Palestine, but all the living standards that have stagnated and slipped back for the majority of the American working class. A non-starter for us to change anything is if we continue putting our faith in the Democratic Party.
That’s another very dangerous component for the left, failing to build a new party for the working class and the Democrats continuing to sell out working people, as the threat of the growth of right populism is still hanging in the air. Because workers are angry. They’re going to be looking for alternatives. In the absence of a genuine left alternative, they are going to end up getting scapegoated by right populism.
In fact, in the wake of the sellout by Biden, some railroad workers feel like, well you know what? I’m going to just maybe end up voting for Trump next time. Because what else is there for me to do? Trump came to power in the first place because there was such massive anger against the betrayals by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Unfortunately Trump ran, he was a con man through and through. He’s a member of the billionaire class. But he ran with this idea, the false idea that he was going to represent ordinary people. Obviously he didn’t. But the threat of Trumpism and right populism, far from gone, is actually growing.
Then the other thing I think to note is, when we were calling, when sections of the left, and Socialist Alternative, and you, and others were calling for Force the Vote, the Squad members like AOC said, you can’t do that. Now we are seeing the rightmost, and some of the most dangerous right-wing Republicans, like the Freedom Caucus, not to mention the MAGA squad within the Freedom Caucus, they showed that Force the Vote can be done, except they showed it from the right.
I have to say, it’s really just terrible that in response to the left asking, ordinary people asking, well the right wing showed how to do Force the Vote. What stopped you from doing Force the Vote for Medicare For All? Unfortunately, AOC’s response was, we can’t do that because it will cause relational harm. Actually, I think that was a rare moment of political honesty. Because what she really means – And this is true – What she means is that it is relational harm. Meaning if your priority is to keep cozy relationships with Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, then you’re not going to fight for working people, because that will cause conflict between you and people like Pelosi and Biden. You will become public enemy number one to them. But that is what is needed.
We need leaders on the left for working people who have the courage to become public enemy number one of the ruling class, and understand that, actually, that is necessary in order to fight for working people.
Chris Hedges: I just want to throw in that part of the contract negotiations for the freight railroad workers was addressing the lack of safety. They warned precisely that because they had downsized or fired so many workers and reduced crews to skeletal levels, and then were also not instituting even basic safety reforms, they completely predicted this horrific chemical spill we’ve seen in Ohio.
Kshama Sawant: Oh, absolutely. You’re totally right, Chris, that the demands of the railroad workers were connected with the actual conditions. This was a completely predictable and avoidable catastrophe that has happened in East Palestine, Ohio. In fact, many of your viewers might know already that these freight magnates, the billionaires, their agenda is to expand profits, obviously. So they introduced a concept that they call Precision Scheduled Railroading. It sounds like something sophisticated. But that’s just, Precision Scheduled Railroading, or PSR, is just corporate speak for, let’s make everything as crappy as we can get away with for railroad workers and working class people as a whole, and take the maximum loot for the billionaires, the major shareholders, and the top executives. Basically what it meant was making the trains longer, reducing the staff, scrapping safety inspections, and lobbying the government to whittle down regulations. This is what’s happening.
In fact, that’s why it’s important also to highlight how we want to use Workers Strike Back as a nationwide movement to raise the consciousness of working people and also start building an alternative to the corporate parties. We are now launching a new petition, hopefully in collaboration with left railroad union leaders and other progressive labor unions, which is a petition, where the demands are that we need to bring railroads into democratic public ownership. Because the East Palestine derailment, and also what happened with the strike breaking shows that we need to eliminate the profit motive from the railroads altogether. Because it’s only when it is owned publicly, by workers, that we will be able to ensure safety measures and stop these preventable tragedies, and not further enrich the billionaires through stock buy-backs.
This petition, in response to the railroad crisis, is also calling for free healthcare for all. Obviously this is an overall demand that rank and file Democrat and Republican voters agree with. But most immediately, obviously we know that East Palestine residents will likely suffer serious, and even deadly health conditions, from this toxic disaster. We know that the railroad tycoons are attempting to evade any liability. So we need, as you said before, free state of the art Medicare for all, publicly owned and democratically run by working people. Of course, again, fundamentally all of this is also still tied to the need for a new working class party.
Chris Hedges: Well let’s talk about strategy. Only about 11% of the US workforce is unionized. I think it’s about 6% are in the public sector. Like the freight railroad workers by law, essentially, can be blocked from carrying out strikes. The billionaire class itself has pushed through a series of measures going all the way back to the 1947 Taft-Hartley act that makes it difficult to strike. But right-to-work laws, very sophisticated union busting, units in large corporations like Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart. So let’s talk about where we’re starting from and what has to be done.
Kshama Sawant: Yes, your point is very well taken. If you look at the proportion of workers who are unionized, it’s abysmally small. These are both historical failures by labor leadership, and also the fact that there has been a real concerted attack against the labor movement in the last 50 years, starting from the neoliberal era. So the reality is that the majority of young people are not in unions. At the same time, the popularity of unions among young people is historically high.
We have to be very clear. If we are going to be building a national movement like Workers Strike Back, then it’s not only for people who are today members of the labor movement. It is also for young people and other workers who are trying to organize a union in the workplace, but they don’t have a union. It is for all working people who want to get organized to fight back. Not just on workplace issues. It’s also, whether it is a housing struggle for rent control,or it is a struggle against oppression.
You mentioned trans rights. In fact, just last week, actually last Tuesday, our office, alongside Socialist Alternative and many South Asian activists, and also union members, we were able to win the nation’s, and in fact, outside South Asia, the world’s first ban on caste discrimination. Caste oppression is one type of oppression. We have to tie the struggles of workers related to workplace issues to these other struggles as well, because the cost of living crisis and the crisis around discrimination and oppression affects all of us in the working class. So we need to build a united movement of that kind.
At the same time, we also want to keep in mind that the struggles inside the labor movement also, even though at this moment encompass a minority of workers, if we can build rank and file militancy within some crucial unions, sectors of unions and sectors of industry, and win some outsized victories through powerful strike action – And I don’t mean to in any way inadvertently suggest that it’s going to be easy. This is going to be a real struggle, and we’re going to have to go head to head against the rotten business unionist ideas inside the labor movement.
There will need to be very patient political education also being carried out. Because many workers are not familiar with labor history, so we have to have respectful debate and discussion inside labor. This is going to be a difficult process, but a necessary process.
But the point I’m getting at is that, if we can get to a point where we can build major strike action in some crucial sectors of industry and win outsized victories through that process, then that will have, again, as you would say, it will punch above its weight. The effect it will have will boomerang throughout the working class, and especially young people will pay attention to it. That is why it’s important for us to both keep in mind that there are non-workplace issues where struggles will break out, like Black Lives Matter. At the same time, there are very strategic workplace situations that we have to pay attention to. That’s why I was also mentioning UPS. I think that is upcoming. That’s the most urgent dialog that we need, with UPS rank and file.
Chris Hedges: So talk a little bit about how it’s going to work. Are you going to try and build chapters in various cities? What are you going to do?
Kshama Sawant: Yeah, we do want to build chapters in various cities. Undoubtedly, we’ll need to have people who are watching shows like this one to contact us and let us know that they would like to do it for the beginning process. In Socialist Alternative, we are launching Workers Strike Back in various cities. In Seattle for example, on Saturday, March 4 will be our official launch. You are going to be part of that obviously, Chris, and some other leaders, including leaders in left labor.
So the launch is going to be on, as I said, Saturday, March 4 at 12:00 Noon Pacific Time at the University of Washington. If you are watching this, and you are in Seattle, you should definitely join us. Regardless of where you are, if you find this message exciting, please look us up on workersstrikeback.org, and get in touch with us.
Just to give you a sense of what we’ve already done, as I said, we fought for this past legislation. We also are launching, as I said, this petition in solidarity with railroad workers and with the people in East Palestine. But aside from that, we are also helping build this union drive at the largest Amazon Air Hub, which I mentioned before. Then we are also helping to organize a network of undergraduate support for unionized graduate students at Temple University in Philadelphia, who are fighting for a living wage.
We picketed alongside American Airlines employees demanding a fair contract. We’ve stood with nurses calling for safe staffing. We joined over 200 union journalists in a walkout against retaliatory firings at NBC. So all of this shows, these early initiatives show that we can build real solidarity in action and class struggle. So I really hope that thousands, tens of thousands of workers and young people take up the mantle of Workers Strike Back, and build branches in various cities across the country.
Chris Hedges: That was Kshama Sawant on her new organization Workers Strike Back. I want to thank The Real News Network and its production team: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.
What are workers? Are they human beings? Do they have only a bundle of muscles but, no brains? How do they feel and how do they think? Do they think at all? What do they face in their life – in factories, in foundries and other shops, in assembly lines, in unions?
Workers’ answers to the questions above differ from the response the workers’ masters present. The factor that draws the delineating line is, in short, class position, which is often blurred while discussing issues of life and work, be it related to workplace or economic program, politics or social initiatives, charity, cooperative, ideology or culture.
Michael D. Yates, a labor organizer, discusses this issue in the chapter 1, “Take this job and …” of his recently released book Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle (Monthly Review Press, New York, 2022). The professor of labor economics begins the chapter with a statement, simple or complicated:
“It would be astonishing if the more than 150 million child laborers in the world were happily employed. Or if the 800 million farmworkers globally were content with their circumstances.”
The mainstream investigates: Child laborers’ happiness with employment? Isn’t it an invalid question? The system takes away happiness of childhood from millions of children, and then, searches whether or not the child workers are happy? The system shackles millions of farmworkers into bondage, and then, searches whether or not the farmworkers are happy? The system enslaves millions of workers into a life without humane condition, and then, surveys whether or not the workers are content with their life? Isn’t it a mockery by the system and its scholarship? Isn’t it a crude trick to hide the system’s cruelty and its scholarship’s identity – in the payroll of the system?
Michael Yates tells about two workers: his father and Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (Warner Books, New York, 1991): “Both spent good portions of their lives as factory workers, my father in a glassworks and Ben Hamper in an auto plant.”
The description goes further: “Both became factory workers because it was almost predetermined that they would. All their relatives and friends were factory hands.”
“Predetermined” – the powerful process or factor that determines the lives of millions of toilers in the world system of exploitation! Workers’ fate is sealed forever, and for perpetuity in the system, if the system doesn’t get overthrown. This is eulogized, philosophized, rationalized, ideologized. Who rationalizes this? The philosophers defending the system, the scholars serving the system, the interests thriving on exploitation do this job. How is this rationalized? With illogic, by imposing the formula – never question, by creating a premise that stands on void, by ignoring struggle between classes, by denouncing the role of force in society’s historical journey, and by condemning the use of force by the exploited, although the system has established and keeps on sustaining its interests by force.
The author cites Ben: “Right from the outset, when the call went out for shoprats, my ancestors responded in almost Pavlovian compliance.”
What a tragedy in human life – Pavlovian compliance! But this tragedy was not only of Ben’s ancestors; it’s of all tied to the system of exploitation: comply, always comply, never question, never even dream to question, never defy, never be disloyal and disobedient, never be critical, never think over the role of force in historical journey of humanity, and denounce whoever proposes to raise questions, whoever brings to notice class rule and the role of force in class rule. And, this tragedy was neither created nor called by these people. The system of exploitation creates this tragedy, and it imposes on humans, as Ben narrates: “Drudgery piled atop drudgery. Cigarette to cigarette. Decades rolling through the rafters, bones turning to dust, stubborn clocks gagging down flesh, […] wars blinking on and off, thunderstorms muttering the alphabet, crows on power lines asleep or dead, that mechanical octopus squirming against nothing, nothing, nothingness.”Yates’s father was “a glass examiner; he checked glass plates for flaws under high-intensity lights. Four cutters, working on incentives, depended on him for plates, and they were not happy if he was too slow. The boss was not happy if he was too careful. He coped with the stress by taking aspirin and smoking, several cigarettes burning simultaneously.” It’s the story of all workers – in different forms, in different places, with different speeds and stress.
What happens then? Yates writes: “[Y]ou can almost feel what it does to people. Some become zombies, […] or the man who answers ‘same old thing’ no matter what you say to him. Not a few crack up completely; […] A few workers become so habituated to the line that they hate to leave it, like the pensioners who sat in the park in my hometown wistfully staring at the plant gate across the street.” A dehumanizing upshot! Souls, irrespective of blue or white collar, reach at this point: they hate to leave the machine that exploited them, that made them part of the machine, that compelled them to think as the machine dictated, they deny to question the machine and the machine’s process, they deny to define life and issues of life in some other way than the definitions the machine defines. It’s “staring at plant gate”. The plant, the machine appears a mirror of joy and happiness. A triumph of the machine!
Do the brains, the muscles sold, compelled to sale, to the system turn satisfied? A sort of satisfaction reins in a part of the brains and muscles. What sort of satisfaction is that? The author of Work Work Work, who also taught union workers for years, writes: “[S]atisfied compared to what? The lack of a job? An unknown alternative?” These are issues: compared to something, lack of or a lower-paying job or an unknown uncertainty. A bonus, an increase in wages, a promotion, a capacity to buy better clothes or food for daughter or son once or twice annually, a loan to buy a refrigerator or a car – these drive the indicator of satisfaction high. Is it a slave’s satisfaction –lifelong allegiance and obedience to the master, remain slave, in exchange of a better food and less or no flogging?
A mostly ignored fact is told by Ben that Yates refers to: Gulag City –a “Japanese-style” plant.
The mainstream scholarship and propaganda machine doggedly ignore the following facts: 1) capitalist system, which at times turns Gulag; and 2) persistent brutality of the system, which ceaselessly murders many over a long period of time, in addition to keeping millions in cages. The murder at mass scale 1) isn’t visible all the time, 2) is explained in some other way, 3) is attributed to other phenomena, and 4) is defined in isolated way. This murder is not accidents during the production process, which puts extra weight to the business of the murdering-system. The propaganda also depicts a rosy picture of certain labor management systems by hiding the inner-working of the system that efficiently hides its fangs – keep the workforce tamed and intensify exploitation. Instead, stories on the Soviet-Gulag are persistently propagated.
Michael Yates, regularly representing unions at bargaining tables, writes a burning fact, which is overlooked or ignored by all the rightist ideologists, all the philanthropists, many union leaders, many NGOs involved with labor activism, and a good number of “radicals”: “[W]ork itself, no matter how oppressive, does not engender class consciousness and solidarity. It is more likely to lead to such poor health and mental stress that coherent thoughts and actions are difficult.”
First, the mechanism takes away the capacity to think – a dehumanizing process. Isn’t it murder, murder of existence as human? Whatever remains there is incoherence – tongue-tied thoughts, actions without meaningful connections, undisciplined actions. The exploiters like it and love it. It takes away that capacity, which is essential to make radical change of the dehumanizing system.
Yates, as an example, refers to historians David Montgomery and Jeremy Brecher, and his father.
Montgomery and Brecher wrote: “[W]orkers eagerly debated great questions during the many mass strikes before the Second World War. Who should run the factories? Who should lead the nation?”
His father told him: “[A]fter the war, his factory was alive with talk of politics.”
Today, what’s happening? Yates writes: “[M]eaningful discussions are far outnumbered by talk of booze, sex, sports, and hunting.”
It’s not a scene only from the Uncle Sam-economy. In other societies dominated by exploiters, it’s basically the same also: Difficult to find workers talking about their politics and democracy, and organizations for radical change, not the exploiters’ politics, democracy and organization. The problem is not with the workers.
The problem begins at two levels: at the work mechanism, and with those that have usurped leadership. A part of the leadership has been deployed by the system with this particular assignment – let the workers get confused and forget their essential issues – while the rest is unaware and incapable, which is also the system’s capacity to keep that part crippled in terms of idea and thought.
Aren’t the exploiters happy with this realty? They are.
With this reality, Yates tells the urgent and inescapable fact: “[T]here is more work to be done than radicals might think.”
No doubt, more elementary and basic work, which may appear small and insignificant to somebody, to be done. Re-raising and re-debating “old” questions, including workers’ politics and political power, are essential. Imperialist agencies are active in the area of the workers’ movement. It’s a comparatively new development. Collaborationist big unions from the global metropolis organize unions in the southern hemisphere and influence workers’ movement in countries in the South. A group of labor organizers are picked up and mobilized as bargaining chips by capitals abroad. “Labor” organizations are floated to further imperialist agenda, and to blunt workers’ class consciousness. These issues/practices/trends go un-discussed in the circles claiming to be radical, although these are to be exposed and nullified immediately.
There’s further bitter fact told by Yates:
[U]nions, as currently constituted, offer working people a very partial victory. [….] In the old plants, the union made it hard to fire workers and made it possible for them to resist and sometimes to defeat the worst management abuses. But since the radicals were expelled long ago, it has not stood for anything except higher pay and some job security, and today it cannot deliver these. In the newer plants,it is firmly in bed with the companies, pushing the labor-management cooperation schemes […]
This is not only a snapshot from a single land. A deeper and wider search in lands will find this: major unions in bed with companies – a capitulation to capital, a sellout of workers’ position, a giving up of proletarian interest. It’s a major problem being faced by unions upholding workers’ interests.
This brings back a few of the questions related to unions that Lenin raised while struggling to organize a radical workers’ movement in Russia. The Orthodox priest, Georgy Gapon (a supposed leader of workers later discovered to have been a police agent) was not the only problem in the workers’ movement in Russia. That was a particular problem at a particular time there. Even, prior to the employment of Gapon by the Tsarist police, Lenin had to resolve other union-related issues. Otherwise, it was difficult to move forward for building up the workers’ political power in Russia. Many union organizers mostly ignore these issues and deny learning lessons from this episode of revolutionary workers’ movement.
This chapter, a review of Ben Hamper’s book Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line, reminds us of the bitter parts of the reality with a tone of criticism of Ben: “[F]ailure, even unwillingness, to push his class consciousness forward”.
With a mild tone, Yates presents an answer: “Maybe it is too painful to do so. Maybe the unions have failed so utterly to create a working-class ideology that would force workers to ask the right questions and struggle toward […] a new world.”
Here, comes the question of class consciousness, which is brushed out by those in the service of capital, as class consciousness denies all authorities capital creates to carry on its rule.
The author has a more bitter tone: “No doubt radicals have failed workers too, either ignoring them for the pleasures of theoretical debate or trying to become one of them so hard that they forgot that work in this society destroys the human spirit.”
Pleasure of theoretical debate at the cost of abandoning workers! Undeniable fact overwhelmingly found around. It sounds spiritual, but it’s the reality: Work in this society destroys human spirit. This reality remains behind the eyes of a group of “emancipators” while they search saach, true, path to emancipation.
Yates proposes: “If we are ever to liberate ourselves, we must reinvent work.”
Liberation of ours is a fundamental question in the life of humanity, and reinventing work is a complicated task. Therefore, there comes the questions: How to reinvent work, and from where to begin the task of reinvention? Humanity’s journey is for liberation, liberation from all forms of bondage. It’s going on for ages, and it has to march forward.
The consequence of a failure to reinvent sounds like a dire warning from the author, as he writes: “Either we will convert the daily hell that is work today into something that connects us to other people and the world around us, or we will descend further into the alienation engulfing us.”
“But where is the way out?” With this question, Michael Yates concludes the chapter.
Probably, the author gives a space to readers to search for an answer to the question. Or, it’s a reflection of an overwhelmingly hostile reality, a capital-scape where exploiters’ standard flutters.
But, to dissect dialectically, there’s an opposite action moving on. It’s in the class struggle-scape. The way out begins with a scientific approach to find out the roots of failure, and the Vaporyod, forward. The way out is to begin by taking stock of the existing condition, immediately initiate work with a scientific approach, expose appeasements and sellouts, gain momentum, and be stubborn and defiant.
*****
Farooque Chowdhury thanks Michael D. Yates for editing of this piece.
A Senate Democrat introduced two bills on Thursday that would chip away at the major advantage that employers hold in union campaigns and disputes by tweaking tax laws. One bill, the No Tax Breaks for Union Busting Act, would bar companies from writing off union busting expenses as business expenses on their taxes, ending taxpayer subsidization of union busting, as a press release on the bill puts…
This week on CounterSpin: “I wanna see feisty disabled people change the world.” So declared disability rights activist Judy Heumann, who died last weekend at age 75. As a child with polio, Heumann was denied entry to kindergarten on grounds that her wheelchair was a fire hazard. Later, she was denied a teachers license for reasons no more elevated. She sued, won and became the first teacher in New York to use a wheelchair. Media love those kinds of breakthroughs, and they matter. Here’s hoping they’ll extend their interest into the barriers disabled people face in 2023, and how policy changes could address them. We’ll talk with Kim Knackstedt, senior fellow at the Century Foundation and director of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative.
CounterSpin230310Knackstedt.mp3
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963
And speaking of problems that aren’t actually behind us: You will have heard that the US is experiencing “blowout job growth,” and unemployment is at a “historic low,” with gains extending even to historically marginalized Black people. Algernon Austin from the Center for Economic Policy and Research will help us understand how employment data can obscure even as it reveals, and how—if our problem is joblessness—there are, in fact, time-tested responses.
The public university is at a tipping point, says Manasa Gopakumar, a fifth-year graduate worker in the Philosophy Department at Temple University in Philadelphia. Since last January, Gopakumar and other graduate workers in the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA) have organized around significant issues affecting them, including pay, health care, paid parental leave…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced a bill on Thursday that takes a crack at ending a crisis that has long plagued the U.S. education system: extremely low teacher pay. Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has proposed setting a nationwide minimum wage for teachers at $60,000 a year. This would raise the salaries of 43 percent of public school…
We hosted another Working People live show on Feb. 22 in New York City, in collaboration with the Action Builder / Action Network team and The People’s Forum. In this panel discussion, introduced by Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls, Max speaks with worker-organizers from around the country about why they and their coworkers decided not to quit their jobs but to commit to improving their workplaces, what the day-to-day work of organizing looks like, and how you—yes, you—can get involved and help grow the labor movement. Panelists include: Vince Quiles of Home Depot Workers United in Philadelphia; Tafadar Sourov of Laborers Local 79 in NYC; Sarah Beth Ryther of Trader Joe’s United in Minneapolis; and Riley Fell of Starbucks Workers United in Baltimore.
Studio: The People’s Forum Post-Production: David Hebden, Jules Taylor, Cameron Granadino
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mariah Brown:
Okay, cool. Hi everyone, my name is Mariah Brown. I am the Strategic Partnerships manager here at Action Network slash Action Builder. Thank you all for joining us for our second Build Power event. So, please give a round of applause to yourselves for coming out. Our Build Power events are highlighting organizing in the US right now. We have some amazing panelists that we would like to introduce you to. This event is made for you all to organize, get to know each other, hear some real stories, and inspire change. So I would like to introduce first our co-founder and executive director, Brian Young, and then he’ll kick us off after that. Thank you.
Brian Young:
All right, thanks Mariah and, again, thanks to everybody for coming. I’ll be very brief because I’m the last person that most of you want to talk to and if you want to talk to me, I’m around if you’re one of the few that do. Just a quick thing about what these events are and who we are. A lot of people know the Action Network Tool and Action Builder Tool and we build technology, but we build technology in cooperation with the people using it and with the movement. We’re always non-profit, and the ideas that the technology is just a tool, it’s a means to an end and the technology is not enough. That is why we built collectively with people using the tools, because the programs and the technology is when real power gets built. So building power is what this event is about and the technology makes certain things possible, but they don’t make them happen. We’re here today to talk about making things happen. We have some great panelists coming up that will get introduced in a moment.
Again, thanks to Mariah for MCing and Martha Grant around here for putting all this together, and thanks to the People’s Forum for hosting us here today.
I said I’d be brief, and I’m looking for my friend Chris. He is going to be out here a second, so I’m going to keep talking just a little bit more. Just a little bit of history about Action Builder. We started out with Action Network. The first thing Action Network was ever used for and built for was actually the Black Friday strikes and protests against Walmart, if everyone remembers that. The day of action where you can adopt an event and a thing that we all do as a movement now, that was sort of the beginning of that and we built that with the people working on the campaign.
They were trying to think, “What can we do on Black Friday that can really give workers and their supporters a chance to rally together in a way that they owned their event instead of all just subsuming themselves to this big collective.” So we built that tool, really partnered a lot with unions and others to extend the technology, but always with that core in mind of local power being built by the people locally. People are using the tool Action Network to organize and having a bad experience because it’s not an organizing tool, it’s a mobilization tool and technology does what it does and it doesn’t do other things. So we partnered with AFLCIO a little bit with People’s Action to really build Action Builder as an organizing tool. Mobilization is a lot about reach, a lot about activating people, but leadership development really fostering trusting relationships within communities.
The core of organizing is what Action Builder was built for, and as we’re rolling it out, just continuing to have events like this to get people together to talk about organizing, to build the capacity of all of us around organizing throughout the movement. So we’re here, we did a small event in DC about a month ago. In a couple of months we’ll be in Atlanta, and we’re just trying to build up organizing in any way we can. So again, thank you. I see my friend Chris is out now, I see ya. And he is next, so I’ll turn it over. Needs no introduction.
Chris Smalls founder of Amazon Labor Union, just here from London.
Chris Smalls:
What’s up everybody? Thank you all for having me. I’m sorry I’m a little lethargic, I’m in a different time zone, but I’m here now and I’m happy to see a lot of familiar faces, especially people that’s fighting a good fight. This is always good to come to this space, because we know this space is welcoming and we know this space brings a lot of energy. Actually, right before our election we had an event here, our first fundraiser for the ALU. So to have this surreal moment of being back up here with like-minded folks and people that is in the good battle with us is amazing. So, thank you for the support that we had from the beginning. Y’all know this is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. It’s going to be a long fight, and we all got to stay committed to the fight. I know everybody in this room is committed to the long haul. So, solidarity forever.
With that being said, we know solidarity is shared and expressed in different ways, but one thing about solidarity is showing up for one another and also expressing that solidarity doesn’t mean when you don’t agree with somebody you leave the fight, or you jump ship, or you stab somebody in the back, or you don’t want to organize anymore. Understand that solidarity means that you going to have to organize with people that may not have the same ideology of you, may not like the same politics, may not look alike, may not come from the same background, the same cloth, but understand when you’re talking about bringing people together, there’s only one enemy here. We know who that enemy is, right? It’s the 1% class. Jeff Bezos is definitely one, but there’s a whole bunch of them. There’s a whole bunch of them, and I can name all our CEOs. We know who they are, but they not the only ones.
There’s a system in place that’s been in there from the beginning of time, and that system’s not built for us. When I’m talking about us, I’m talking about workers in the working class. We’ve seen in this country for decades how unions and organized labor has been attacked, and we don’t have that money to counter that. We’re talking about companies that make trillions of dollars, are worth trillions of dollars,` and make billions of dollars a day off of our labor. So the only thing we can do, because really we’re the rich ones, is withhold our labor because, really, Jeff Bezos can’t come to the warehouse and pack a box. Howard Salt is not making no good coffee, I can tell you that. So understand who really has the power, who really is valuable and we haven’t been getting what we’ve been paid, our wages, our quality of life.
We’ve seen that in the pandemic. We’ve seen what this government’s been doing. We still continue to see that. When I left the White House, we saw what happened. Joe Biden gave 10 billion to Amazon and everybody was like, “Well Chris, why’d you go to the White House to shake his hand?” I’m like, “I wasn’t the only one there. I know there’s a lot of tension on me, but guess what? We all should be upset, because guess what? That was taxpayer dollars. That was everybody’s money, not just ours.” Understand that this fight is bigger than us. It’s about the community, and this starts at home.
The conversation’s going to be had with our family members, our loved ones, our neighbors. Let them know what they do when they support these companies. Tell them to stand in solidarity until they do better by us. Understand that this fight is bigger than us. It’s about our future, and the younger generation is definitely lead. What I mean by that is that this organizing that you have been seeing for the last year is unprecedented. You’ve never seen it before. It’s different, it’s unique, it’s new school, nut it’s necessary. When you’re talking about the 21st century and these tech companies, it’s different monsters, different animal. Once again, we don’t have the money to defeat that, but we do got one thing and that’s people’s power. Because when we fight back, we win. When we fight back.
Crowd:
We win.
Chris Smalls:
When we fight back.
Crowd:
We win.
Chris Smalls:
When we fight back.
Crowd:
We win.
Chris Smalls:
And if we don’t get it?
Crowd:
Shut it down.
Chris Smalls:
And if we don’t get it?
Crowd:
Shut it down.
Chris Smalls:
And if we don’t get it?
Crowd:
Shut it down.
Chris Smalls:
And if we. Don’t. Get. It.
Crowd:
Shut. It. Down.
Chris Smalls:
Every damn time. Remind them who has the power and remind them why y’all in this fight. We are here for the long haul, y’all. There’s going to be dark days, going to be days of defeat, going to be days of doubt, going to be days when nobody want to talk to you, days when nobody sign the card. But be there. Be there for that worker when management get on their ass. I promise you it’s going to be a powerful conversation.
So thank you for having me. Let’s keep up the good fight. I stand with you guys, I got your back. I know you guys got ours. Solidarity forever, y’all. Power to the people.
Mariah Brown:
Well, I don’t really have much to say after that. Thank you so much. Please get up for Chris Smalls again and our Executive Director, Brian Young.
So I would just like to give a brief bio of our host for this evening, Max Alvarez. Max is the Editor-in-chief of the Real News Network. He’s also the host of the Working People Podcast, which this will also be featured on, and the author of the new book, The Work of the Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and The Year The World Broke. So, please give it up for Max and the rest of our panelists.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. So who’s fired up after that? That’s what I’m talking about. Thank you so much, Mariah. Thank you Martha, thank you everyone at Action Builder. Thank you everyone at the People’s Forum. Absolutely love this space, please support them however you can. Thank you to Chris Smalls for jetting his ass in from London and doing this, we appreciate it. Our girl, Michelle [inaudible 00:11:33] from the ALU is here, too. Let’s give it up for the ALU one more time.
So, as Mariah said, we are going to be recording this as a Working People live show. So just a disclaimer to everyone, that will include the Q&A. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to, you can always come up to us afterwards if you’re more comfortable with that, but loving the energy so far. Let’s keep that going. I’m going to start with a little introduction in a sec, but just wanted to keep the energy going and let y’all know a little bit about our incredible panel. We got my man Vince from Home Depot Workers United in Philly, let’s give it up for Vince. We got Taf from Laborers’ Local 79 here in New York City. Give it up for Taf. We got Sarah Beth from Trader Joe’s United out in Minnesota, let’s give it up. And we got Riley from Starbucks Workers United from my hometown in Baltimore. Thank you, Riley.
So they’re going to introduce themselves to y’all in a second, and I think we are all set to go. Just wanted to finally ask if you could please silence your cell phones if you haven’t already. Again, we are recording this. So with all that in mind, let’s get to the good stuff.
All right, well welcome everyone to this special live show of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today, brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. I am truly honored to be here with all of you at The People’s Forum here in New York. Absolutely love The People’s Forum, incredible place. Y’all should come here, support their work. We are here in collaboration with our friends at Action Builder and the Action Network for our second live show.
Listeners may remember that we hosted our first live show together with the folks at Action Builder at Busboys and Poets in Washington DC back in December where I got to talk with Michelle and Harry Marino, Michelle from the Amazon Labor Union, Harry Marino from the minor league baseball players. That was an incredible conversation that we got to have about two incredible organizing victories that we witnessed last year. We want to keep these conversations going, we want to bring folks together who are fighting that fight, who are carrying on the struggle in different workplaces, different industries, different states all across the country, and even beyond. Like we said, Chris was in the UK. UK is popping off right now. There are the RMT rail workers on strike, the NHS healthcare workers are on strike, higher ed workers are on strike, ambulance drivers are on strike. France is shutting down right now as workers take to the streets to fight against Emmanuel Macron’s neoliberal bullshit, and their taking over of the country’s beloved pension system.
So workers everywhere are fighting the good fight, and we need to join that struggle however we can and support anyone who is fighting that fight. Every little bit helps, even if you’re just showing up to a picket line or donating to a strike fund. I was just down in Tribeca earlier today walking the picket line with the New York legal assistant group workers. They are a local of the UAW, they’ve been on strike for the past two days. Shout out to New York LAG, please support them however you can. Spread the word about that. I think, as Chris said, the really exciting thing about this moment, even though we know that the bosses, the 1%, the ruling class, the order givers in our society, they’re coming out of COVID 19 feeling like they’re the victims. Feeling like they have to take back what was stolen from them by having to give workers PPE, if they even did that.Or claiming that no one wants to work anymore because our government did the bare minimum of providing people with necessary assistance to survive a world shattering pandemic. Now the bosses are out there complaining that has made us lazy and we don’t want to work.
They’re really striking back, but I think what’s exciting is that the reinforcements are coming, and the people on this panel are living proof of that. The fire is burning all across this country and we have it within ourselves to keep that fire burning, and so that’s what we’re here to do today.
Normally on the show, I get to have one-on-one interviews with workers, we talk in depth about their lives, their jobs, their dreams, their struggles. In these live shows, we’re really going to focus in on the organizing side of people’s stories to give y’all more access to the folks on the front lines fighting that fight to learn about them, their coworkers, how they’re doing it, what they’re learning from their setbacks and failures and defeats, how we can replicate and build on their successes, how each of these struggles at Starbucks, Home Depot, in the construction industry, Trader Joe’s, how we can all learn from each other and how we can better come together as a labor movement to support one another.
So that’s what we’re really here to do. So with all that in mind, I’m going to shut up and I’m going to go around and ask our amazing panelists just to start off by quickly introducing yourself to the good audience, the good listeners, the good viewers, and then we’ll talk about some organizing.
So Vince, you’re up first.
Vince Quiles:
Hello everyone. Thanks for having me tonight. My name’s Vince Quiles. I was a Home Depot employee, just got fired today.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Boo.!
Vince Quiles:
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s all good though. It’s all good, the fight just evolves.
Lead organizer down in Philly, I guess also the interim President for Home Depot Workers United, the more national movement. Really, really, really great experience. It’s really awesome to be here inspired by some of the people, Michelle, Chris, as well as people from Starbucks Workers United. Very, very inspired by that.
What I would say, looking at our campaign, there’s definitely a lot that I want to speak tonight about what we learned from how things went down, where we fell short, but also to where to be inspired to continue fighting. I can at least say on the Home Depot front, they spend tens of millions of dollars trying to indoctrinate people to not vote for a union, and literally a handful of people with chips on their shoulder just going and talking shit every day, talking to people and just getting them riled up. We spent $0 on our campaign and we had the first union election at a Home Depot store ever. Shout out to the guys over n San Jose, the drivers that got their union election, but that wasn’t a store.
Just with that desire, with that passion, we were able to achieve as much as we were. So it’s really exciting to be in a room with people that match that energy, that helped to push that, to be with other people fighting that good fight and just saying, “Hey, let’s keep it going. Let’s keep banging.” That’s what we’re here for. We want all that smoke.
Tafadar Sourov:
Hello everybody, thank you all for being here tonight. My name is Tafadar, you can call me Taf. And I am representing Laborers Local 79. So if you’re looking up here and you’re thinking “one thing is not like the others”, it’s not just because I have my laptop out, but it’s also because we happen to be an established union. I’m going to be talking to you guys a little bit about what we do. When it comes to construction, deadliest industry, it’s the cash cow for New York City. Whether you’re talking about the revenue that the city gets, the profits that Wall Street makes, the power that revenue has, et cetera, et cetera. It’s one of the most core strategic sectors of the economy, and the labor relations in it, that’s what we specialize in. We make sure that workers that are working in construction can go home at the end of the day, because it is a deadly industry like I mentioned.We make sure that people are making good wages and benefits to be able to sustain families and therefore sustain communities.
The exciting thing about Local 79 is when people think about construction unions, usually the first thing that comes to mind is pale, male, and stale. But we are actually one of the most diverse construction unions in the country. We’re 70% black and brown, we have the most women of any construction Local in New York City I believe. Our members live and work in the five boroughs for the most part. That makes us really unique, because in this city, if you grew up in this city and you went to its public schools, you kind of had a couple of walks in life ahead of you. If you had the opportunity, you could make it into college and maybe get out the hood that way and build a life for yourself, your family.
If not, you could work a blue collar job, you could do that with a high school degree, and construction is one of those fields that people do that. Our apprenticeship program is second to none in both its quality and the street cred that we have amongst the people in New York City, of low income communities. In between that, there’s a horrible gray area of poverty, and violence, and criminalization and mass incarceration. I really want to dig into the nitty-gritty of that, and what my union does to uplift workers that are somewhere in between being enfranchised through union membership and being caught in the trap of economic racism and the deadly jungle that is non-union construction in New York City. So, thank you again for being here.
Sarah Beth Ryther:
Hi guys. My name is Sarah Beth Ryther, and I’m an Employee Organizer at the Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis. Around this time last year, I would say that most of the folks that I work with in the Minneapolis store didn’t know what a union was or had a very shaky idea of what a union was or what a union could offer us as a collective and could offer all of us individually. In this past year, we have together grown to win our first union election. Yeah. Super, super excited. And become the second Trader Joe’s in the country to do that.
We’ve formed a union with the Hadley Massachusetts store and the Louisville Kentucky store, and we are just really, really, really stoked to be organizing across the country, very slowly and surely, and using our strategies to learn and also to teach other folks. I’m just so excited to be here and hear what everybody has to say about their campaigns and to learn more about the history of labor in general. Thanks.
Riley Fell:
Hi everybody, I’m Riley. I am an organizer with Starbucks Workers United. I’ve been with Starbucks for about a year and a half. I helped organize my store in Baltimore. We are one of the 170, and counting, union Starbucks stores. I’m currently based in Manhattan working around the financial district with different stores, trying to get people excited about the union. I’m really excited to be here to talk about everyone’s strategies and how we have achieved the amazing things that we have achieved. I want to share all of our tricks of the trade of how we organize. So thank you for having me.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right. So as you guys can see, we’ve got a real kick-ass panel of folks here with a lot of amazing important stories to dig into. As I said at the top, there’s so much that we’re not going to be able to cover, but I imagine if you’re here you’ve been following along with a lot of these stories. I would say you can also check out other great coverage, Vince and I have actually done a Working People episode together, so if you want to know more about his backstory, go check that out. Did a Real News segment at the beginning of this year with Laborers Local 79, so you can check that out and hear more about the incredible organizing work they’re doing. Same with Starbucks Workers United. I was in the room when the first Starbucks store in Maryland voted to unionize the Charles Street store.
We all know about the incredible organizing there, and we all know about Howard Schultz and the corporations vicious illegal union busting, so we need to know what we can do to help fight back and to support everyone here. Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, Home Depot, in the construction industry and beyond. Now, as I said, we want to kind of zero in on the organizing side of things. Since we can’t go in depth about your all’s like origin stories and long back stories, I want to just focus on a key moment for all of you, because this is something
Maximillian Alvarez:
Key moment for all of you, because this is something Vince and I were talking about in Philly a couple weeks ago when we were doing a video interview for the Real News. I feel like it’s the same for most of you, but for most of my life, when I was working low wage jobs, whether that was warehouses, whether I was a pizza delivery guy, I was working in retail, working as a waiter, when things got bad at work, there were essentially to my mind, and the common wisdom was there are two options. You quit or you stay and take it. I didn’t know there was a secret third thing. It just never really occurred to me or my coworkers to stay and fight to change things. And I feel like when a person makes that mental shift, that is when they become an organizer.
And I wanted to ask you guys, what was that moment for you? And also, it’s important to remind people why people organize. What were the issues, I guess, that were coming up in your own work or the conversations you were hearing with folks, the common concerns, issues with management, so on and so forth? What were the things that really galvanized y’all to come together collectively, but also take us back to that moment when you felt like you weren’t going to quit, you weren’t going to just take it on the chin, but you were going to do something about it.
Vince Quiles:
So I could say so in the receiving end, when I was a receiving supervisor, then when I step back to being an associate, I always joke around and say I was a glorified trash man. Essentially, I just threw out the storage trash throughout the entire day. And I’m a person with a very active brain. I think a lot. Throwing out trash does not really occupy your mind much. And so, I kind of just reflected on my journey at Home Depot. I was very gung-ho at the time, trying to go corporate. It was the opportunity I had. That was something that they were pushing me for, but the more I analyzed how the place operated, the more it just didn’t really sit with me. You would hear things like, so for instance, we live in a heavily Spanish speaking neighborhood, and we’re not paid to translate.
And it used to be really, really frustrating because it’s like, yo, 30 to 40% of your business is just straight Latinos that speak no English. You have no trouble going to the people that speak Spanish, asking them to speak Spanish. But then when we say, “Hey, can we get a raise for that? Other industries pay for that.” It’s, “Oh, well no. Well, we don’t really have money in the budget.” So there’s no way to really corroborate it. They share their sales plan, but they don’t actually share how things break down. So you don’t know what the profit margins are and stuff like that. Enter being groomed to be one of those corporate people, right? They start sitting you through, running through the P&L report and everything. And you see in 2020, 20.6 million dollars in profit. 2021, 30.1 million dollars in profit. 2022, 28.7 million in profit. And you’re like, “Wait, I’m supposed to believe that there’s no money for this?”
So I ran through my mind on these things. I used to listen to a lot of podcasts, would listen to Max a lot with Working People. I’d listen to Breaking Points with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. Hear a lot of things about, again, Starbucks campaign, hearing about the ALU, John Deere strike. And so, you kind of start to set the seeds for, “Hey, there is actually something that can be done.” And so, I’m running through. I’m doing a bunch of investigating, looking into large shareholders and stuff. And the particular moment, it was a conversation that I had with one of our associates out in our garden department who’s a gentleman who’d been working in the company for about 25 years. And I remember talking to him and I’m, “No, can you believe we made this much? And can you believe that this… Arthur Blank on a quarterly dividend cleared like 28 and a half million dollars just in…” Right?
And in hindsight, it’s actually kind of cruel to just complain about those things because it’s like you’re just agitating people. And so, I could tell he’s getting and he goes like, “All right, dude. What are you going to do about it?” And I just immediately shut up. And I was like, “Damn, that’s a really good question. What am I going to do about that?” And I guess that’s where everything kind of clicked into place.
Again, you see these campaigns that are going on across the country and you recognize… “Look, what is your obstacle?” Right? At the end of the day, nobody knows their coworkers better than their coworkers. Surely the executives don’t. Shit, half of your managers don’t. Some of them do. I can say honestly, we did have some managers that were decent in our store and they got no support. They got told, “Hey, you guys got to suck this shit up and deal with it.” And so, then the question becomes, “All right, well what can we do about this?” And the answer became organizing. It became educating people. It became having conversations and just taking the time to give a shit about each other.
Lo and behold, 106 signatures later, we scared the absolute out of Home Depot. Thank you. They sent out the cavalry, they sent out all of their executives. They sent so many people and that was just a great example. And that’s in a way, you’re so happy to see that, because I would see the victory up here in New York with Amazon. Again, you’d see all these Starbucks victories going on across the country and the moments that were so important were just those points of connection between the people. And you realize, look, you lean into that, you can overcome a lot. Like I said, Home Depot’s a 300 billion company, they spend a shit ton of money. And we were able to push it to that point, just caring about each other, so… Yeah, shouts out to Eddie over in Garden. If you would’ve never checked me on that and said, “What are you going to do about it?” I don’t know if I would’ve done anything.
Maximillian Alvarez:
We’re getting a little feedback, so I think we’re okay. We’ll just try… Whoever’s talking, everyone point your mics the other way. And [inaudible 00:30:53], obviously this… Different for you, but I’m curious, in that vein, was there a moment when you felt like Vince, that you wanted to commit yourself to the business of doing something about what was wrong? Being an organizer, was there something that really kind of changed for you? But also as an established union, what does Local 79 say to folks, non-union workers, undocumented workers, returning citizens? I guess how do you guys talk to folks about why they should band together and unionize or do something about the issues at their work?
Tafadar Sourov:
Make more money when you’re union?
Maximillian Alvarez:
That’s a good one.
Tafadar Sourov:
So my journey actually starts a long time before I got into construction. I got a friend in the crowd there that when we were high school students told me he was involved in something and that there were pizza at the meetings. So naturally, I had to be there. Organizer tricks, right? So I started going to these meetings and they’re about public schools and working class communities of color being shut down under Mayor Bloomberg’s mayorship, whatever the word for that is. And the way that it taught me to rethink my own experience as a public school student in the context of something much larger and bigger than myself and my family and my community, that was happening to all of our communities of people that I went to school with and grew up with and people like us in our socioeconomic status. I grew up in the Bronx.
It showed me that there was something going on and I would learn later that the term for something like that is class struggle and oppression and exploitation, but it made me want to get involved. And the most acute thing in the beginning was they tried to take away our green metro cards. So if you grew up in New York City, you have a green metro card that lets you have three rides a day, two and from school, they wanted to take away that metro card and I think that was around 2010. So there was a big rally. Thousands of us walked out across the city from our schools and we went to city hall. And when I got there, my friend sitting in the crowd was on the stage with these other high school students. I’m like, “Wow, I know that guy.” So we got to talking after that and I wanted to be involved in something like that, because I saw it making a real difference.
They wanted to take away our means of transport, which would’ve had to force our families to pay thousands of dollars per child every year in transportation costs while they’re trying to shut down our schools. And it showed the character of this war that was going on against Black and Brown working class communities. And I knew that I could sit home and I don’t know, play PlayStation or whatever, or I could go and be involved in something bigger than myself. And it kind of sent me on a lifelong journey. Years later, I would become a Local 79 apprentice. Great money. I wanted to make money and I wanted to be involved in a union, because I thought unions were cool before they became very cool. And also, I applied around the time that Bernie Sanders was having his first run at the presidency and there’s that whole wave of our generation thinking that way.
And when I joined the union, I was able to plug into things that were happening everywhere because my union is deeply committed to organizing, not just in job sites, but also in our communities that we come from, for a holistic, comprehensive approach to economic justice that uplifts the whole working class and not just workers for one company or workers at one job site or another. And when I joined the union, we were fighting for real affordable housing and good labor standards on housing developments in the Bronx. And I grew up my whole life hearing terms like gentrification and stuff like that and the need to fight against the stuff, but here, I saw an institution that could actually do the other side of it, not just fight the problem, but actually propose a real solution. We can build the housing and we can make it affordable and we can do it with real labor standards and real local hire standards and I was really vibing with all of that. And if that wasn’t good enough for me, we had a couple of years long battle at the Hudson Yards with one of the largest developers in the world, Steve Ross. So throw him right up there with Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz and all of them. So we had a picket line out there, multi trades, and we were fighting for years.
I don’t really want to talk about the way that it ended, but that experience of seeing thousands of construction workers coming together every week and fighting and being willing to put it all on the line to fight for our livelihoods, it made me realize like, “No, this is it right here.” Because we talk about neoliberal New York City, right? This is the neoliberal center of the world that grounds global systems of capitalism and imperialism and white supremacy and whatever else. The real estate industry in New York City is one of the major anchors of that and the entire class structure of the city was built upon a decades and decades long process that’s tied into centuries long historical processes of the immiseration and disenfranchisement and just punishment and disciplining of Black and Brown working class communities here and I could see that my union was really a north star in all of that, really pointing the needle in a way that we could organize our way out of this hole, for not just ourselves as workers on these construction sites, but in our communities.
So now, all these years later, my job as an organizer now for the union is to bring that passion and that vision to other workers, not just non-union workers, but also workers in the union, but when it comes to talking to non-union workers, they already know the problems for the most part. If you’re working for non-union construction employers, typically, these are predatory employers that are trying to take advantage of the most vulnerable parts of the working class, formerly incarcerated workers, immigrants, women, public housing residents, people generally living in poverty, and they hold things like your immigration status or your parole status, above you coercively in order to exploit workers for cheap labor. So they’re already being made to work in unsafe conditions for low wages and fucked up environments where the boss… It’s not uncommon to hear stories from the non-union side where the boss says, “I’m going to tell you to do whatever the hell I want you to do, and I know you can’t do any differently because if you lose this job, you’re going right back to prison.” So that’s the reality. And when we approach these workers, it’s… Being a good organizer is about listening.
So it’s really about getting people comfortable to tell you their story and then honing in on what it is that they’re facing and showing them what our union can do to stand with them in order to fight and help them build up their own fighting capacity when it comes to their employers. And the more and more that we do that, and I have a few other segments that I could get into a little later, it really paints this view where… In the mind of the worker, the problem isn’t just them and their employer, but it’s a structural thing, affecting thousands and thousands of us that do the same work in different job sites on different construction projects facing the same conditions.
Then it becomes a working class matter. The non-union workers that we’ve organized into the union have become some of the greatest activists that I’ve met in my life. Max interviewed a couple of them who worked for one of the worst construction companies, Alba Demolition, that we were going at for years and we were helping organize some of their workers that were standing up against a bounty that the company put out to intimidate workers to stay away from filing worker’s comp claims if they were injured on the job. They said they would give $5,000 to any coworker that would step up and say that their worker’s comp claims are fraudulent. So these workers stood up against that. They said, “No, this is unfair.” They joined our rallies and they were retaliated against for it. We stood up with these workers, the National Labor Board, we took it there. They had to be hired back. They’re now Local 79 members. They’re great activists. And as of last month, the owner of Alba was in handcuffs, arraigned for a construction kickback scheme that was now being cracked down on by the Manhattan District Attorney.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh, yeah.
Okay. [inaudible 00:39:41]
Sarah Beth Ryther:
Yeah, so before I started working at Trader Joe’s, I thought it was a really awesome place. It’s very imaginative. You go into a store and it’s really colorful. There’s art everywhere. There are products that are very inventive and everyone seems really happy to talk to you and to see you. I was interested in that energy and when I started at Trader Joe’s, it became clear very quickly that that was a narrative the company has been pushing for years and years and years and it is very, very different from the truth. And it is really interesting to hear folks’ stories over a long period of time and just see and understand how different from the truth that is. Personally, there were several instances last winter, November and December, that were really, really scary. There were safety issues with folks inside and outside of the store that management handled very poorly.
At one of those incidences, I was on worker’s comp, and I remember just sitting in my living room and thinking, “This is absolutely unacceptable. It is unacceptable that folks are afraid every single day when they’re coming to work and they’re afraid because the people who are supposed to protect them are not doing their job.” And so, that led us to a lot of questions that led us to try to really together get to the source. Why are these safety issues happening? Is this local? Is it just us? Is it larger than us? Do you feel unsafe at your workplace? Do you feel good at your workplace? Every single shade and variation of those questions we asked over and over and over and over. And I think that it became, over the course of months, just a situation where we decided together that we were not going to abandon each other. That we were going to stay together and stick together and the easy choice would have been to quit. The easy choice would’ve been to move to another retail job with similar pay, with maybe benefits that are slightly lower and to give up. And instead, we said, we are really, really awesome together. We feel like a community. And so we want to, again, collectively ask these questions of ourselves and see if we can make a difference.
And so, that really led to the beginnings of our campaign and the base of our campaign was that every single person, every individual is more important than the union and is more important than Trader Joe’s. And that has meant that when… And I keep using the word community and I’ll continue to use the word community, because that is what we are trying to build and we are trying to build it not only in our store, not only in Massachusetts, but across the country, with the understanding that folks who are really entrenched in a community that cares for them can fight the fight better because they know each other. They go to picnics together, they hang out after work, they watch each other’s kids. They know when an illness happens, they know what bus route somebody rides. And all of this information influences and informs the really real changes that we’re looking for in our workplace and will continue to inform those changes.
Riley Fell:
I started at Starbucks when I was 17 and in high school, so the only thing I knew about a union was that my parents were in one when they were teachers in Baltimore County, and they were in their own labor union. So when my now good friend and fellow organizer texted me, “What are three things you want to change about your job?” I really sat back and thought. I was like, “I mean, I guess I could get paid a little more or I would like to have a fair schedule where I’m getting scheduled consistent hours.” So since then, me and my coworkers started communicating more about the issues going on in our store. And before this, I didn’t even realize that these were issues that I was having, because I thought that’s just the way it is. You don’t get these rights, you don’t get these benefits. It’s just you’re here to do a job, you get paid minimum wage and then you go home.
Where things really started to click for me is when we got into issues of health and safety regarding COVID. I tested positive for COVID, alerted my boss, and I wasn’t aware until after I tested positive that two coworkers that I had worked closely with were already positive and I was not made aware that I was put in that risk. So that, I just couldn’t fathom that they would not tell me that I was in contact with this virus that is killing people and they wouldn’t tell me and I showed up to work. So that’s when it clicked that this isn’t right. Starbucks and my management is not treating me like a human being. [inaudible 00:45:29]
So, that’s really where that clicked for me. So since then, me and my coworkers would continue to talk and talk to people who we wouldn’t see as often. And like you said, we built a community and that’s where my passion for organization came, was in that community that we built together and I’m so grateful for being able to do that and being able to bring people together over their united concerns.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. So thank you all so much for sharing that. And I hope, one of the things that I’m hearing, which I imagine everyone else is hearing, anyone who’s listening to this, days, weeks, months after we’re all here in New York, is hearing the same thing, that this isn’t stuff that’s happening in some far away land, right? Being done by some people that are just wholly different from you. This is happening all around you. This is happening next door. These are your neighbors, these are your coworkers, these are your fellow parishioners, right? You are part of this movement. You just don’t know it yet, right? I mean, because I think every one of us has a story like that, that we can relate to. But again, it’s that shift because we live in this society that just from birth beats into our heads that if you don’t like it, your one option is to quit, right?
Your other options are, I don’t know, be grateful, stop complaining, stop expecting to be treated like a human being, you piece of shit. Right? That’s basically what our society has on offer. And so, it’s just really incredible to hear how you all, regular working people who look like us, sound like us, people who have families, lives, backstories like us, made that brave step with your coworkers to say, “No, there’s another option.” And I want to keep that momentum going, because I feel like, obviously, the term organizer, organizing gets thrown around a lot these days. And I imagine, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me that the term organizer, when they hear it, they assume that it’s referring to some different kind of person, someone who’s not them, and mainly because they don’t know what organizing actually looks like.
So let’s demystify that process a little bit and talk about what organizing for you all looks like on a day-to-day basis. So what sorts of conversations do you get in? I guess what sorts of infrastructure building or just like… Yeah, what does the work of organizing actually look like in your respective corners of the world? And what in your experience works in doing that organizing and what doesn’t? Any sort of stories or tips that you can share? We’ll finish off by talking about more of the lessons we can learn, but I guess, let’s start back with you, Vince.
Vince Quiles:
I mean, as I stated earlier, and I feel like we’ve all kind of touched on it in the answers that we’ve given. I mean, look, organizing in its most core component is just talking to people, right? It’s the organization of people. It’s funny, right? Sometimes when I refer to myself as an organizer, because I’m going through imposter syndrome. “Am I really an organizer?” It feels like, like Max said, this bigger thing, but in actuality, it’s again, just having conversations. When I reflect on it, I didn’t really get the idea to organize at Home Depot until the summertime, but when I look at my history at Home Depot, the six years I worked there, the seeds were set there the whole time. Organizing is, “Hey, how are you today? How’s your family doing? What are you doing this weekend?” Right? It’s those connections that pull you together, because I remember when everybody ran down on the store and you have all these corporate people and “Hey, how are you? How are you doing?”
And I remember everybody always coming back to receiving and being like, “Yo, these people are so full of shit. It’s insane.” And it’s like that’s what organizing ultimately gets to, is just… It’s having conversations every day, talking to people. And then, again, shout out to Eddie. Not just talking about the problems, but presenting solutions and breaking down the barriers of what you think is inconceivable. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. When you can connect with people through so many different ways, that’s what gives you the leg up. Like Chris was saying up here…
Vince Quiles:
… different ways. That’s what gives you the leg up. Like Chris was saying up here earlier. The power’s in the people. All the financial engineering that’s done by mega corporations, all the money that they think they make, workers produce the base capital. And that’s why they get so scared when people talk to each other, when they form those bonds, because they’re like, “Holy shit. These motherfuckers go and figure that out, there goes our second house, there goes our third Mercedes.” And again, it’s keeping up at it every single day. You know what I mean? For our organizing drive for instance, there was only one week where I didn’t get signatures and it was to kind of try and cool things down. But there are those times where in the beginning you get 20 signatures in a day and then you may have a day where you only get one or two and most of the people are like, “Oh, here comes this fucking guy again talking about organizing. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of this place.”
It’s that battle of attrition. One of the things that I’m really into that helped a lot with it is boxing. You’re an inside fighter. You’re in it for that battle of attrition. You’re duking it out. You’re like, “Yo, we’re here. We’re with it.” And again, that’s organizing, that’s showing up every day, and that’s understanding what your goal is, what your vision is and trying to share that with others, because it’s like, look, there is a better world out there. There is something better. And it starts again just by taking the time to give a shit. And that’s I guess probably one of the best things to say to kind of break down the complexity of it.
That is the difference between Ted Decker, the CEO of Home Depot, Tim Horgan, the executive vice president, our regional vice president who walks around thinking that he gives a shit about people, trying to act like it, work and people. That’s the difference between the people on this stage, the people in this room and those individuals, is that when we say that we give a shit about people, I can go and I can tell you about Garmenia Torres’ three kids and how she moved here from DR. I can tell you about my boy, Ray, who grew up in Baltimore, moved up here, my homie, George, who came from San Jose, my work grandpa. Everybody up here has got those people that they can connect with and that’s what it’s about at the end of the day, is it’s developing those relationships that are naturally going to occur within the workplace and then continuing to build on that and helping people to see within themselves what you see in them, what they may not see in themselves and what the executive sure as shit don’t want people to see in themselves. So…
Tafadar Sourov:
When it comes to Local 79 or a construction trades organizing, our organizing doesn’t really look like traditional union organizing, and there’s several reasons for that. Construction is just such a unique industry in terms of our work. Our work tends to be project to project on a job to job basis. We work to complete the projects that we’re working on, so that means we’re working to put ourselves out of a job. Some other industries might be able to relate. And we have a very transient workforce. Workers are moving around from site to site, might be split up into different crews, geographically dispersed. So the NLRB vote strategy doesn’t really land the same way that it does in other industries and workplaces.
So if you’ve ever gone around the city and you’ve seen the big inflatable rat on a pickup truck and some people wearing hard hats or union gear outside, that’s probably Local 79 or another union, but it’s probably mostly Local 79. That’s us. We’re out there. Those are called our informational lines, also called job site actions, where we’re out educating workers and the public about… Well, we’re educating the workers about their rights. We’re educating them about the laws that exist to help them, to keep them safe, that nobody teaches us about and that their bosses are invested in them not knowing about. We’re educating the public about the risks that non-union construction projects can pose to themselves, their communities. It’s not unheard of to be walking down a sidewalk in Manhattan and a sidewalk shed or a scaffold collapses and hurts someone. These are things that are in the news every now and then. And they really catch your attention.
I’m trying to think of more examples. So I’m going to jump to the most extreme example. Last year in New York City, 22 construction workers died and 17 were on non-union job sites. And that’s something… If we’re not out there doing what we’re doing, that’s a dynamic that’s only going to grow. So we have to deal with that, but we can’t just do it on a job site to job site basis. We can’t have a rat up at every single construction site in New York City. So that’s where we need to think structurally, and that’s where we do think structurally. So what we do as Local 79, we fight to feed in our street game, our ground game, our organizing campaigns on the job sites into bigger picture battles that really create the changes that we need to impact our industry.
So for example, we’re fighting alongside the Fund Excluded Workers Coalition, which includes immigrant organizations, workers centers like New Immigrant Community Empowerment, Make the Road and many others in order to fight for what’s now being called the Unemployment Bridge Program to create a permanent system of unemployment benefits for excluded workers who could be formerly incarcerated people coming out, immigrants that can’t receive unemployment benefits, because we believe that if there’s a safety net for these workers, it’ll be easier for them to be able to stand up to their bosses and organize and organize with their coworkers versus if you have to choose between, “Shit, do I talk to my coworkers about possibly we get together and address these unsafe conditions or the wages that we’re making? Do I choose between that or hunger?” If we take that out of the equation equation through something like the Unemployment Benefits Program, then we’ve significantly changed the game.
Some other things that we’ve done, a couple of years ago in 2021, we passed this thing called the Body Shop Bill in city council. Body shops are a notorious thing in New York City in our construction industry. Think of a plantation packed into an LLC. Body shops are where when developers and contractors not only don’t want to hire union workers, when they want to exploit the shit out of workers to put up their projects and make a killing off of it economically, they go to body shop labor brokers who provide them with vulnerable workers from vulnerable communities, formerly incarcerated people, immigrants, just like I mentioned before and everybody in that pecking order is making a profit from the labor of these workers who are making poverty wages, don’t have benefits and have things being held over their head like the possibility of deportation or returning to prison.
So we passed a bill that forces these companies to license, to register and get licensed by the city and come out of the shadows, so to speak, as well as provide information about the wages that they’re paying their workers. And that’s a huge step towards not only getting more information on them so we can go after them as organizers and our organizing departments, but also to show the non-union workers, “Hey. Look. It’s possible to build power. We just made your boss have to come out of the shadows. You can go on the city website and I can show you how to look up the wages that they’re paying you.” It’s an empowering thing to be able to show workers tangible results.
Other tangible results that we got were passing some criminal justice reforms in 2021 at the state level. So because of the legislation that we passed then, it’s now no longer a parole violation to work overtime in New York. Think about how crazy it is that before a couple of years ago, if you’re on parole and you’re trying to work overtime, that’s a parole violation or attending a labor demonstration, that’s a parole violation. So if you need to make a few extra hours a week in order to keep a roof over your head, you got to choose between that and being thrown back into prison.
I have a union brother sitting in the crowd who worked on a job once, a union job site, where an apprentice who was on parole had to bring their probation officer in in order to try and convince them to let them work overtime. And when that fellow came to the job site, the entire crew, which I believe was 50 people, they mobbed up on him and said, “What are you doing? Let him work overtime, blah, blah, blah.” They convinced him on the spot when he saw the shop steward, the coworkers, the foreman, everybody vouching for this person. And that’s what Union Solidarity is about. And the man was allowed to work overtime after that.
So we took that solidarity, that strength that we display on our job sites that keeps us strong in the industry and we raised it to the level of law in order to change at a widespread scale people’s lives that work in this industry. So when we’re going after companies like Alba, when we’re going after body shops and organizing the workers, the workers that get organized in through our union apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, they become some of the fiercest advocates and activists you’ve ever seen. And their stories that they bring to the table and the facts that they bring to the light are really able to move things at the level of politicians and policy makers, elected officials who have the power to either allocate or don’t the resources to these companies that are getting significant public subsidies in order to exploit workers all over New York City.
So our organizing, there’s a macro level to it. There’s a micro level to it. But every step of the way, at every rung of the ladder, the most important thing is the stories of the workers, their lives, their communities, their history, how they got to where they were and how the union changed their lives, because there is an endless amount of stories. And if you want to look them up, you can actually follow Laborers Fight Back on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And we have so many graphics with so many workers who talk about the experience of becoming union workers and how that changed their lives but also the darkness that they had to face in the non-union side of the field. And this is what’s generating massive profits for developers and banks and hedge funds all over down in Wall Street. And it shouldn’t be that the rich just keep on getting richer while sucking all of the wealth out of our communities and while workers are literally falling out of buildings and dying.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell, yeah. And yeah. Sarah Beth, Riley, what does the organizing look like in your respective corners of the world?
Sarah Beth Ryther:
Similarly. It’s a lot about stories. It’s a lot about meeting people where they’re at, hearing what their concerns are, hearing what their worries are, talking about their families, talking about what it feels like to have a sick kid and to have to yourself call in and then get scolded for it or written up, face disciplinary action, et cetera, et cetera. I would say that most of our conversations have to do with either fear or possibility or a combination of both. And so having really honest conversations about people’s fears, about, “What am I afraid of if we walk out? What am I afraid of if we go to the bargaining table and we’re sitting across from somebody who has complete control over our collective future? What does that fear feel like? And how can we move through that with a sense of possibility?”
And I think that’s where it becomes really, really, really essential to talk to folks and ask them, when they’re afraid, where that fear is coming from, what evidence they have for that fear and then having a conversation about what evidence we may or may not have to counteract that fear and sometimes just telling folks that, “You have to sit with the fear and it will be fine if we do it together,” and over and over and over having those conversations. Before we had a walkout on New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis, and before that walkout, we were on the phone for hours with people talking about what they were afraid of. Were they afraid of a relationship with a manager being damaged? Were they afraid for their job security? And how can we together move through that?
And so I think that is ultimately fear, possibility and then again what you guys are saying, just collecting stories, talking to folks, building community, building relationships with people, because we spend so much time together. If you’re working 40 hours a week, that’s most of your hours. These are micro communities that are just your whole life. And so they have to feel safe. They have to feel protected. They have to feel like you can invest in them and that the people around you have your back.
Riley Fell:
So I’m sure many of you have heard about the anti-union propaganda coming from Starbucks corporate. So if I’m simplifying organizing in a Starbucks cafe environment, it’s kind of a two-step process. The first being defacing the rhetoric coming from corporate, because we are faced all the time with false information about Workers United. Personally, when I was organizing my store in Baltimore and getting ready to transfer here to New York for school, I was told, “Well, Riley, if you unionize, you’re not going to be able to get that transfer. You’re not going to be able to go to work in a store in New York.” Not true. So, so many things like that that first have to be… People need to know that they don’t have your best interest at heart. They want money.
So my first step is to make that clear to my coworkers, that this propaganda coming from your bosses is false. They don’t have your best interest. And then the second step being, of course, pretty similar to what everyone has said here, human connection. Like you said, we spend so much time together. Our coworkers build this connection and care for one another that is so valuable when organizing, because sympathy and anger are the two most important emotions when it comes to organization. I always say this to people, to fellow partners, when they talk to me about organization, “Get your coworkers angry. Start thinking about scheduling. Start thinking about your hour cuts,” which are ridiculous. “Start thinking about all of these things that you were not treated fairly and get mad, because it’s not fair.” And that anger is so motivating to bring people together. So you get angry and then you connect with each other and sympathize with one another. And that is the best way to build a sense of community and start building your union.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell, yeah. So we’re going to get to Q&A in a sec, but I want to just kind of do a quick final round here. And I’m just warning you guys that we’re going to go in reverse snake order. So in a second I’m going to throw it back to you all and then we’ll come back this way. But I guess before we open up to Q&A, I want to build on this incredible conversation, which I’m truly honored to have with you all. And think about what sorts of actionable lessons we can give people from the incredible struggles that you all have been involved in, that Starbucks workers around the country have been involved in, and also our other brothers, sisters, and siblings fighting the fight across the country and beyond.
What can we learn from the past one, two, three years that can make us better organizers, that can help us build more robust power with longer staying power? What lessons have you learned that you find now you’re applying to organizing that you’re cutting down a lot of the lag time that maybe you faced in the beginning? Anything like that. It could be social media strategy, conversational strategy. Could be using great tools like Action Builder to cut down on keeping track of all the workers you’ve talked to in your shop instead of using a fucking Google spreadsheet or something like that.
And I just wanted to sort of give an example from the media side, from the supporter side. Folks who are listening to this can’t see it, but I am wearing my UMWA shirt, which was given to me by the great Braxton Wright, who himself has been on strike in Alabama at Warrior Met Coal for 23 months, nearly two years. I think it’s now the longest strike in Alabama State history. Who here has heard of it? Okay. The lesson that I think we all need to sit with this week, because if folks haven’t heard the news, the UMWA has sent a letter to Warrior Met after 23 months of strike unconditionally saying workers are going to go back to work or offering workers go back to work while negotiations can continue, but obviously, we know this is not the way we wanted the strike to end. And Warrior Met is already saying that there are 41 workers that they’re not going to let get their jobs back because of their, quote, unquote, conduct during the strike, which is horse shit.
But what I think we need to learn from this struggle is we can’t forget about each other. These workers were holding the line for nearly two years while national media ignored them, while politicians on the Democratic side and the Republican side abandoned them. And while we, I think, with the best of intentions would support these workers down in Alabama when we could, when we remembered to, when we saw a post on social media, but what happened in the long stretches in between that? The weeks? The months? When the holidays were around? That’s the stuff that chips away at you. That’s what makes it harder to hold the line when that’s what we need workers to do. That’s what they need to do for themselves and their families.
We can’t just get excited when we see a new Starbucks store has filed to unionize and forget about the workers who just unionized and are now having their hours cut below 20 hours a week and they’re losing their goddamn healthcare, or when Starbucks just closes unionized stores like in Seattle or Ithaca or anywhere. Where are we when that happens? I think one of the lessons that… What I’m trying to say is that we all also have a role to play here. We can keep that fire burning. We can show up for each other in our respective locales if there’s a strike going on, in your area. Get your ass to that picket line. Donate to that strike fund. Or if you can’t, share it with people who can’t. Just keep that story alive. Keep the struggle alive however you can.
As we say all the time on this podcast and at The Real News, no one can do everything but everyone can do something. And so I hope that we are all send… I know we’re all sending our love and solidarity to everyone down in Brookwood right now. After nearly two years of intense struggle at Warrior Met Coal, we can’t forget about them. We can’t forget about any of our siblings out there who are still fighting that good fight. So with that in mind, let’s kind of do a sort of quick round around the table starting with Riley and coming back here. I guess what other sorts of lessons from the past year or so of struggle do you want folks to leave this conversation with?
Riley Fell:
What I want people to leave this conversation with is that we are people. The people who make your coffee in the morning are people. We have feelings. We have emotions. We have lives. We have families. Because every day that I clock into work, I have 100s of customers not treating us like human beings. So the best way you can show solidarity to your baristas is a smile. “How are you? How’s your family doing?” Any kind of connection. Even asking about how we’re doing in our union fight. Just a little bit of humanity is all we need to really feel that support from people.
And as for my fellow partners, what I suggest during these times in between actions is, one, keep these conversations with your coworkers going about, especially right now with Starbucks, we are facing aggressive hour cuts, specifically in New York City that is extremely illegal because of the Fair Work Week Act. Fair Week Work Week Act states that you cannot have over a 15% cut in hours without just cause. I know people who are cut 50% of their hours. So keep these conversations going, keep that anger flowing, because that’s how the momentum is going to keep going.
Sarah Beth Ryther:
I think, again, going back to possibility, you can do it. I didn’t know what a union was and we figured it out and we figured it out together. And so for those folks who are feeling just incredibly frustrated, feeling worn down and feeling like their workplace is just an awful place to be and to exist in, you can do it and you can figure it out using the resources that are widely available. Social media is amazing in connecting us and bringing us together and people in your community. The communities that were in the Minneapolis labor community has been absolutely instrumental in helping us out and giving us advice and just talking to us again when we were at the very beginning and knew absolutely nothing. And so again, I would say you can do it.
Tafadar Sourov:
So the point that I’ve been trying to drive home, and I hope I’ve been doing an okay job of it, is that the relationships between labor and capital, between employers and employees in the construction industry reflect the relationships between our communities and the people in power and wealth and power. And it’s an exploitative and impressive relationship. And the powers-that-be depend on that setup remaining that way in order to have a pool of cheap labor to draw from to put up these buildings that construction workers build every day.
So one of the things happening in New York City right now is that there’s a severe housing crisis. Nobody is happy with the rents. If you are, God bless you. But there’s a housing shortage and other dynamics that are driving the rents up. So the government is really being compelled to act. And what they want to do is pump out as many apartments as possible over the next decade to the tune of 500,000 apartments. Now, those don’t just fall out of the sky and drop into the ground. They have to be built. These are large residential developments. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of construction work. So the way that we’re looking at it is that this is where a lot of the investment and the construction boom is moving towards to solve the housing crisis and alleviating the pressure on the housing supply constraints right now. That-
Tafadar Sourov:
… the housing supply constraints right now. That development boom can either increase and deepen generational poverty and disenfranchisement and criminalization for working-class Black and brown communities. Or, it can be a means of building generational wealth and uplifting people and creating means of economic mobility. And the way to do that, in our view, is what we’re calling the fight for construction justice.
The fight for construction justice is a fight for strong, local-hire policies to actually create pathways for people from our communities who have traditionally been excluded from the construction industry, and even unions at one point, to gain these careers. But not just to have a job, but to have a good job.
We’re also fighting for a wage floor, a wage standard with these local-hire policies. We believe that construction workers working on city-financed housing developments, which like I just said, they’re planning on 500,000 over a decade. It’s a lot of work. If you go and see a big residential building, chances are it’s a thousand apartments or less. So 500,000, way bigger number.
If our taxpayer dollars are going into funding this, then we should be able to pay construction workers at least $40 an hour, with medical and retirement benefits added into that.
So that’s our vision right now. It’s a campaign that we’re launching. What I would ask in terms of actionable items, go and help us with this. Spread the message, follow Laborers Fight Back. Follow laborers79. We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all that good stuff. TikTok, I think we’re still figuring out. But spread our message. Help us get it out there.
If you are an organization in New York City, we’d love to have co-sponsors on the construction justice movement. Join our coalition and help us spread the movement. Local 79 is known as a union that goes out and fights alongside everybody.
We’ve been out there with Amazon, we’ve marched with Starbucks, so many different causes, so many different people. And now we’re putting out the call: we need help to fight for our communities, to fight for our industry, and make sure that workers’ justice and workers’ power means something real in the construction industry. So Laborers Fight Back, everybody.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I was going to say, if you need help with TikTok, you should talk to this guy real quick.
Vince Quiles:
I’m still getting that figured out. But if you guys ever want to check out a long-winded 10-minute monologue, you can go check it out.
All right, so I want to hit this question from two points. The first one is just more the nuts and bolts of organizing. Firstly, I’ll say, look: our organizing campaign did not end the way that we wanted. It ended actually very poorly. It was down 165 to 51. It was a heavy burden to carry. We also lost the World Series that night. So that was not a good night.
But something that I learned in that: be careful being really gung-ho. I was very determined. I was very driven, and I ended up taking on a lot of the work. It was about myself and three other organizers, and I was doing the vast majority of it.
And right in the time that you’re going through it, you’re animated. You’re, “Yeah, we’re going to do this, we’re going to take this, we’re going to beat these motherfuckers up. Yeah, come on, let’s go, let’s do this.”
But the problem is over time, it’s tiring. You’re working a 40-hour job, you’re doing all this shit, trying to organize, trying to do interviews. I got a two-year-old at home. It’s trying to balance all that stuff out. It’s very, very difficult.
So what I tell myself now; not that we want to take stuff back, because you either win or you learn. It’s like my quarterback, Jalen Hurts said; I got to shout out the Eagles; but you either win or you learn.
And something that I learned from that was the importance of again, to the previous answer we gave on connection: making sure that that connection is established, and sharing that burden. Definitely being organized where you can bring in Action Builder. I wish that that was something that I had familiarized myself more with, because it would’ve made things a lot easier.
But the second part of it that I want to get into is, I think of it like this. If I were to talk to myself before I got into organizing, I was really frustrated in life. I felt like I had a lot of things going for me, yet the opportunities that I wanted just weren’t presenting themselves.
I would look around at my coworkers, and I would feel angry and I would feel frustrated. Why are things not changing? And in that, what I would encourage people to do; people who are considering organizing; one of the first things you want to work on is what you can within yourself. To rectify, to correct those things. And it’s difficult. That’s an ambiguous answer.
Because the thing is, you really have to know yourself. You really have to know who you are. You have to understand your position in life, understand what the world needs from you. And if you feel that calling, if you feel that in your belly, act on it. Something Max and I talked about in the interview that we just recently did; and look, I’m going to sound like a complete fucking dork, but I don’t really care.
I watched The Matrix a thousand times. I watched Batman a bunch of times. I watched Spider-Man a bunch of times. Because in all honesty, when you look at it, right now I’m sitting next to real-world fucking superheroes.
There’s not a spider that’s going to fucking bite you. You’re not going to be the orphan of billionaire parents. But there are these concepts that we love in these movies of overcoming obstacles, of fighting for your fellow man; things that are so powerful.
And if there was ever an opportunity that I saw to do that … That’s why I love when Eddie challenged me. ‘Cause I fucking went home that night, I watched The Matrix, and I’m like, “Bitch, I’ma be Neo.” You know what?
And it’s a great opportunity to live those values, to live those things. And you never know what’s going to happen if you don’t take that step. You can find 1,001 reasons to not do something. Or conversely, you can find 1,001 reasons to do something.
And in the end, that’s what organizing is. That’s what these people on the panel have been talking about: is not just sitting there frustrated, but doing something. So what I would tell people in those times where they’re frustrated at work, where there’s some long-haired asshole that was sitting back and receiving in a Home Depot in Philadelphia who’s mad all the time; this is your opportunity to be great.
Greatness doesn’t always come about in the ways that we think, but greatness is greatness. And what people in this room are doing, what the people I’m sitting next to are doing, it’s greatness. And it’s your opportunity to be great and leave an impact on the world around you, on your community. And if that’s not inspiration enough to get off your ass and do something, I don’t know what is, man.
Look, let’s all go out there. Let’s be Batman. Let’s be Wonder Woman. Let’s be Superman. Let’s be Neo. Let’s be the heroes in our community who can make things better. Because it’s through people like the ones in this room, and the things that we do, that can help us to make that difference. Ain’t nobody coming to save us. So it’s time to save ourselves.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Let’s give it up for our great panel, everyone. All right, I’m fired up and we ran a little long, but I apologize. I didn’t want to stop that conversation, ever.
But I know that folks have some questions. So I wanted to see with the time we have left, if folks had any questions they wanted to ask our amazing panelists; the great Mariah over there has a microphone. Again, we are recording this, so please speak into the mic so we can get you on the recording.
Brian:
Hello. Thank you so much. My name is Brian. I work with Amnesty International. I just want to say thank you so much. Y’all are really real-life superheroes. I mean, you guys are powerful. The gentleman from Local 79 said that the unions out there saving lives and changing lives, and I could not agree more.
My question is: is there a story or an instance in your organizing work where you’ve been struggling, going through it? You come home, you’re exhausted, and you just encounter a situation at the workplace that a colleague … that really anchored yourself in this work?
Where you’re like, “Okay, I can’t give up because other people depend on me to do this work.” And I’m wondering if one of you or all of you could speak to that. Thank you.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And we can load up; is there another question folks wanted to throw in there? Then the panel can jump in with whichever one they want to address.
Riley Fell:
Hi y’all. My name’s Megan. I’m with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. It’s been really awesome. I have two questions that are interconnected, so hope you bear with me.
My first question is just: how do you guys start having an organizing conversation with someone that you don’t know where they stand yet? What does that conversation look like? And how do you start to feel someone out who you don’t yet know?
And then the second part of that is: how do you bring people in who you know are down with the union to help you have those sorts of conversations? Thanks.
Mariah Brown:
I just want to make sure on this side, did anyone have a question? Just wanted to make sure I didn’t neglect that side. Okay. And then here’s our last one.
Robert:
I’m Robert. I’m an 1199 organizer. In terms of Starbucks, I hear a lot that we should go and say, “Union Yes is our name.” And that feels to me like a really great way to just blow up a campaign, if I don’t know that people are already organizing and have been inoculated against management. And so is that something you absolutely want people to do, or to not do, if they haven’t sussed out the landscape already?
Riley Fell:
I’m just going to go ahead and answer that question super quickly. Personally, I don’t think it’s the best thing to do. Yeah, you’re showing your solidarity. But in the long run, you’re not really doing anything to help the campaign by mobile ordering with the name “Union Yes.”
It was nice when we won our union election, that we had a bunch of people congratulating us via their mobile orders. But if you aren’t sure of where a store stands in their organization process, I wouldn’t. But thank you for that question. It’s really important.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And as far as the other ones, whoever wants to jump in, if you got that fire in your belly, like Vince said, you got a response, hop in.
Vince Quiles:
Oh yeah. So to the first gentleman’s question: actually, I have a little inspiration folder at home. And one of the things that I have in there is very special, to the point that he was talking about.
So I think a really, really hard day, a lot of people tell me “No.” It was a rainy day. I go out to my car, I’m getting ready to leave, and I see something on my car. Normally, people like to walk through the parking lot and leave shit on there. So I’m over here thinking, “What? Some fucking asshole left me some shit that I don’t want to buy.”
So I go, and for whatever reason, I was just compelled to look at it. I look, and it’s a fucking note that says, “Pro-union. You go, brother.”
And I’m like, “Holy fuck! Somebody took the time to figure out my fucking car and go and put this shit on there.”
And I tell you: when my mood was like that, it just shot straight up. I was like, “Man, that was such an amazing feeling.” Just because again, it’s the smallest thing, somebody leaving a note on your car.
Yo, like I said, right next to the 165 to 51 paper, I have a tattered paper that says “Pro-union. You go, brother.” And when somebody talks to me in 60 years, I’ll probably still have that shit. Because that shit was a cool reminder of how awesome people can be.
And then just real quick to Megan’s question; I kind of forget the second half, but at least wanted to answer the first half. Honestly, I think just engaging with people is like, “Yo, how do you feel about your work environment?” A lot of people at first would be like, “What’s this dude getting at?”
And it’s like, “Look, I think the pay sucks. I think the scheduling sucks.” And then, that kind of open people up more.
Then she said, “How do you bring people into having that conversation?” You’re going to have your peoples who, you guys are on the same page, everything is just rolling. And so from there, you just build off of it. You really just approach it with an open mind.
I talk to people who I knew weren’t pro-union. But I was like, “Yo, look: there’s a benefit to talking to people to get them on the same side. But there’s also a benefit to figuring out why people don’t want to unionize.”
And at the end of the day, if you approach it with that mindset, you’re already better than the company you’re fighting against, because you’re just actually trying to understand the landscape, as opposed to trying to force feed your perspective.
Riley Fell:
To build onto that, one of my favorite methods of talking to my coworkers is if someone’s complaining about something, jump in there and be like, “So you think that you’re having a hard time because we’re understaffed? Well, the union is actually working to fix that.”
It’s just when people are upset, that’s a really great time to insert yourself. But if you’re not getting to that point, the best way is to just start bringing up issues, in my opinion.
Start bringing up issues you’re having, see if other people are having those issues. And then … It’s best to start slow when you’re talking about unionization, especially when you don’t know someone’s opinion at first.
Start talking about issues like, “Oh, what do you think about the new schedule coming out? Your hours have been cut. That’s crazy.” And then start slowly mentioning your union, Workers United, whatever you’re working with. And it’s a great way to facilitate that conversation.
Tafadar Sourov:
On my end, when you’re having a conversation with construction workers; and this is a lesson that I have to relearn over and over again; or any workers, really: patience is the most important thing.
Like I keep saying, you have to be able to really listen. You have to be able to pay attention to details, what people are saying. Sometimes people are telling you things without even knowing they’re telling you things. And a skilled organizer has to be able to pick up on all of that.
The other side of it is: when you’re talking to people or trying to get them to act, you have to walk people through the contradictions in their own head. And you have to walk them through certain things so that they come to realize it on their own. And that just requires such a level of patience.
But once you get people there, once you’ve taken them to a place where they’ve never been before, you got them. And then they got themselves, and they can get other people into that space of freedom in their mind. And that only builds on itself.
I think when it comes to strategic methods and stuff for when you’re dealing with people in any job site there, there’s an OG Organizer that might be in some of the bookshelves here. But there’s a saying that I’ve gone by since I was a organizer in my younger days. Wherever you go, you got to find people, and understand that people generally will fall into three categories.
The more advanced: the people that might be more aware, or more inclined to action already. The intermediate: the people in the middle that might not ever get involved, but might not stand in your way. And then the people that are waiting to be won over. That’s where most people will fall.
And then the backwards, the stubborn reactionary types that will try to obstruct you. They might be the snitch on the job, be the ones to go running to the boss, be the rat, whatever. You have to be able to identify where people fall.
And the way I’ve always thought about it is, you got to unite the advanced to win over the intermediate and isolate the backwards. In all my years of organizing, that’s never failed.
As for what I think was the first question: when it comes to how hard organizing can be, because nothing ever goes right, nothing ever goes according to plan. You have to improvise every day. I wake up, I don’t know what my day is going to look like. Whatever I had planned for the week, those plans are gone by the end of the day. It’s that kind of lifestyle, at least in construction. I don’t wish that on anyone in any other industry.
But that really is where camaraderie and solidarity, those things really do matter. My people are sitting in the crowd right over here and a small fraction of my union family; shout out to Local 79.
But those things really do matter, and that’s where you constantly have to be building a sense of community in what you’re doing. And that involves a lot of things. That involves accountability, that involves principles, being principled, all the things that it takes to hold groups together.
And the larger that groups get, the more complex they get, the more that divisions grow. So I want to bring it back to what Chris said in the beginning up here: you have to be able to work with people that don’t see things the way that you do, that have different beliefs, that have opposite beliefs.
You can only imagine: I work in construction. There’s a lot of conservative folks I work with that vote for Trump or whatever, and have those worldviews. These are the people that I have to be able to reliably be able to fight side by side against some of the richest people on this planet.
And there are people that I’ve met who I’ve completely opposite worldviews from, who I would rather get into battle with than some people that I have the same exact worldviews on. When you’re able to hit that balance, that’s the crucial thing that a working-class organizer needs to be able to do.
Because there’s no universe, no timeline where a working-class organizer is able to successfully organize labor movements with homogeneousness. You have to be able to work with people who see things differently.
Sarah Beth Ryther:
To answer Megan’s question, I think that looking at your conversations with your coworkers as just mostly about life, and then a little bit about the union, feels very, very, very helpful; especially in the beginning.
But, continuing on: some of those questions are that you can ask about somebody’s life really relate to how they feel about organized labor, how they feel about their workplace.
What do you think about this manager?
What do you think about that manager?
Where did you work before?
What was that like?
What are the things you liked about that environment?
Tell me a crazy story about …
Did you work in the restaurant industry?
Was it bonkers?
How did that feel?
And asking about people’s families. A lot of people have parents who were in unions, have relatives who are union stewards or presidents of a local. So really mapping, trying to create a 360 view, very gently, over hopefully a longer period of time, if you want to do some deep organizing. But again, trying to understand the whole picture, versus just a little part of it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, gang. Well, it is eight o’clock. I want to ask everyone to give our panel one more round of applause.
I want to thank you all once again for coming out, especially with the crappy weather; we really appreciate it. This was a really special conversation, and I would encourage y’all to keep the conversation going.
After this: come up and meet our incredible panel of superheroes. Tell us about the work that you’re doing in your community. Let’s do more of these events. Reach out to us at The Real News. We will cover as much as we possibly can.
The point, again, is that we all have a role to play in this. We can all help change the world. So let’s go out there and do it. Thank you to the People’s Forum. Thank you to Action Builder. Thank you to all of you. Goodnight. Thank you to Chris Smalls.
Mariah Brown:
Hi everyone. Just really quick, thank you all for coming out to our Build Power event. I do want to shout out the Action Network Action Builder team.
And then, just a couple quick announcements. If you haven’t got a chance to sign in and check in and let us know that you’re here: there’s QR codes on the wall. Just scan it, just check in so that we know that you’ve been here.
If you have a drink ticket, we did not forget about you. There’s still drinks available. Please go get those. And if you haven’t received one, Valeria right here, in a really cool green jumpsuit, can provide you with a ticket. Thank you all for coming.
Progressives celebrated Thursday after Michigan’s Democratic-led House approved legislation that would rescind anti-union “right-to-work” laws imposed by Republican lawmakers in 2012 and restore prevailing wage requirements eliminated by the GOP in 2018.
“Everyone deserves fairness and respect when they’re on the job, so seeing House Democrats vote to repeal the anti-union legislation and reinstate prevailing wage is incredible news for Michigan’s working families,” Progress Michigan executive director Lonnie Scott said in a statement.
“The Legislature stood up yesterday and rejected the harmful pro-corporate, anti-worker policies of the past,” said Scott. “It’s a great example of what can happen when voters come together to elect a progressive majority.”
State Rep. Jim Haadsma (D-44), chair of the House Labor Committee, made the same point Wednesday, saying that “exactly 120 days ago, Michiganders chose new leadership in the Michigan Legislature, and today demonstrates they chose leaders who will stand up for workers.”
In party-line 56-53 votes, Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday night passed H.B. 4004 and H.B. 4005. The bills seek to nullify the state’s Republican-authored “right-to-work” laws affecting public and private sector workers.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus vs. AFSCME barring public sector unions from collecting “fair share” fees “renders H.B. 4004 unenforceable,” Detroit Free Pressreported. “But proponents of the bill want to change Michigan’s labor laws for public employees in the event the court overturns the decision.”
Contrary to what the misleading name suggests, “right-to-work” laws do not guarantee employment to job-seekers. Instead, they prohibit employers and unions from entering into agreements that require every worker covered by a contract to pay union dues—making it harder for organized labor groups to sustain themselves financially, undermining workers’ collective bargaining power, and lowering wages by an average of $11,000 per year.
The GOP’s so-called “right-to-work” agenda “has done nothing but hurt hardworking Michiganders,” said recently elected state Rep. Regina Weiss (D-27), the lead sponsor of both bills. “It has allowed people who don’t pay union dues to take advantage of union benefits.”
“House Democrats will always stand in solidarity with working families, and the bills that were passed today restore the power of Michigan workers, give them the freedom to expand their rights, and deliver on our promise to put Michigan workers first,” Weiss added. “We are proud to stand with workers across our state and ensure that they have a seat at the bargaining table and their rights are restored.”
“The bills passed last night are the first step in restoring the power of working people and unions after a decade of attacks by the DeVos family and Michigan Republicans.”
Democrats also approved H.B. 4007 by a margin of 56-53. The bill aims to bring back the prevailing wage law that Republicans axed five years ago. It would require contractors hired for public construction projects to pay workers union-level wages.
“House Democrats promised we would restore prevailing wage, and we have kept our promise. Michigan workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and that starts by ensuring fair wages,” said state Rep. Brenda Carter (D-53), the bill’s lead sponsor. “We must ensure our hardworking residents receive pay that’s in line with the value of their skills and services. We must also offer competitive wages in order to attract and retain a highly trained workforce because we do not want to see critical infrastructure projects built by contractors that cut corners.”
Also on Wednesday, the lower chamber approved legislation that would codify LGBTQ+ protections and strengthen background checks for gun purchases. To become law, the bills must be passed by the Democratic-led state Senate and signed by Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
In a statement, Whitmer applauded the House Labor Committee, which led the effort to reverse Republicans’ anti-union legislation, for prioritizing Michigan’s working class. “Working people,” the governor said, “should always have basic freedoms in the workplace without interference from the government.”
To date, GOP lawmakers in 28 states have enacted so-called “right-to-work” laws, but Michigan Democrats are now on the verge of reducing that number to 27.
State Rep. Matt Hall (R-63) has attempted to throw a wrench into the works by attaching a $1 million appropriation to H.B. 4004 and H.B. 4005.
“The appropriation means that the legislation is not subject to a public referendum in which voters could reject the law,” Detroit Free Press explained. “Whitmer in her first term issued an executive directive promising to veto any legislation ‘that circumvents the right to a referendum.’”
Scott, meanwhile, argued Thursday that “Republicans passing right-to-work in 2012 and repealing prevailing wage in 2018 had one goal: to undermine unions and workers’ ability to organize in the workplace.”
“Those two actions were part of a generational fight by greedy corporate interests to eliminate unions so they can control the workplace and political institutions,” he added. “The bills passed last night are the first step in restoring the power of working people and unions after a decade of attacks by the DeVos family and Michigan Republicans.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
For nearly 40 years, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) has been fighting the concentration of landownership among the country’s elite through the direct occupation and settlement of fallow lands. Founded at the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the MST now has settlements and occupations throughout the nation. TRNN contributor Michael Fox reports from an MST settlement in the state of Paraná, where landless workers have built their own homes, schools, and cooperative farms.
Transcript
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, or MST; the largest social movement in the Americas, one and a half million members. Their goal: upend the huge concentration of land in the Brazilian countryside by pushing the government to carry out agrarian reform, putting land in the hands of the poor and working class, and growing healthy food for Brazilians, not for export. And it has been a huge success.
But… it has not been easy. Across Brazil, roughly 450,000 small farming and working-class families have won land through the MST over the last 40 years. Here in the countryside of Parana state, MST land stretches for miles.
Wellington Leno, MST: If you go 14 miles in any direction, you’ll still be on an MST agrarian reform settlement. Areas that were occupied in 1996, from a big company named Araupel. So you have settlements on both sides. And it’s one of the largest complexes of settlements in Latin America. As far as you can see are settlements.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Just two MST settlements here produce 80,000 gallons of milk a day for the surrounding communities. Local MST farmers have created associations and cooperatives.
Elena de Amorim, Coperjunho bakery coop: Here’s the bread that’s going to the market. Traditional bread. Whole grain bread. Cornbread. And french bread, which we sell by order. The coop has been around for 16 years. I’ve worked here for 10 years. One of our dreams from when we were camped was to form a cooperative to have a little extra income. For the women. Yes, for the women.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Theirs is one of roughly 2000 producers’ associations and coops that the MST has founded up and down the country. A cooperative of MST farmers in Southern Brazil is the largest producer of organic rice in all of Latin America. But it has been a long road.
The movement was founded in 1984, in the final days of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship. The goal was to turn the tide on the country’s immense concentration of land in the hands of the powerful and the elite. By 1996, three percent of the population still owned two-thirds of all arable land. The MST’s strategy has remained similar from the beginning. Occupy fallow land to pressure the Brazilian government into carrying out agrarian reform. The land the government hands over turns into what the MST calls, “settlements,” with each MST family receiving roughly 50 acres of land. The lands lived on by families before receiving their parcels are called land occupations or encampments. Like this one… one of the largest in Southern Brazil. The Dom Tomás Balduíno encampment.
Wellington Leno, MST: This was public land. But it had been stolen by the company Araupel, which produces pine and eucalyptus trees for export. And all of this wealth is sent out of the country. It doesn’t even stay in Brazil. So this occupation is important because families have come here to produce healthy food without the use of pesticides. But also, because people have come here to have the opportunity and the right to have a dignified life.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: I visited Thomas Balduino in 2019, five years after they broke ground. Usually, encampments like this aren’t as developed. In the beginning stages, every encampment starts out the same way: tent cities of black plastic tarp, where residents brave the elements. Roseangela Antonis has been here since the beginning.
Rosangela Antonis, encampment resident: We suffered with the heat and the rains. It’s hard, but there isn’t anything you can’t overcome and improve. Now, we have our little homes and things are good.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Roseangela has been with the MST since 1999. She grew up on another land occupation. Her parents won land, but she wasn’t old enough to receive a parcel herself. Today, she lives here with her three girls.
Rosangela Antonis, encampment resident: In the beginning, it was really hard. But the most important thing in a struggle is the organization. That’s how we were able to create housing. Our homes and our land to plant. Everything that we built is through our organization. Because we are organized. Out there they call us riff raff. But we are really organized. And we are able to achieve much more than people out there believe.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Decisions about the occupation are made collectively by those residing in the encampment. They organize in local groups of 20 people. Everyone has a job. And they are already farming.
Rosangela Antonis, encampment resident: We plant and grow our food. We have lettuce, parsley, tomato, kale, cucumber.. We have a little bit of everything. Garlic. We have a lot of vegetables. We plant a little bit of everything. Salad.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Food is often cooked and served communally.
Encampment resident [singing]: We had no direction. Carrying what we had on our backs.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: The camp has frequent meetings, concerts and what MST members call místicas, or mystical performances, because they are deeply symbolic, and connected to the movement’s history and struggle. Above all else, there is a huge focus on education. Roseangela’s daughter Kethlyn walks to school hand-in-hand with her best friend. At class, they are learning to read and write.
Kethelyn Vitória, Student: When I was in 1st grade, I didn’t know how to read or write. But now, in 2nd grade, I’ve started to read and write.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: The classrooms are barebones. Their teacher says they make up for it with experiential learning.
Adriana Monteiro, Teacher:We spend a lot of time outside of this little square box. We have the fields with the crops right here, when we want to show them a crop, or how to plant and harvest. We have the organic crops here, too. There are families that plant both conventional and organic crops. And we are constantly going to the fields to learn.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: 400 kids study at this school that the camp members built with their own hands.
Rosangela Antonis, encampment resident: The school is important in our encampment, because it’s different from schools elsewhere. Our kids have a better education, that doesn’t just talk about the world out there, but the reality that we are living here. Of our reality. Being more in solidarity. More understanding. Our kids learn and they also learn about our struggle.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: This is not the only school on MST land. Every land occupation has its daycare and preschools, staffed by members of the camp.
Teacher: I’m going to tell you a really cool story. It’s about the drum. Have you heard of the drum?
Students: No. Yes!
Michael Fox [Narrator]: The movement says that over the last four decades, they’ve built more than 2000 public schools on encampments and settlements up and down the country. Here in rural Parana, high schools and even a college campus have been created on MST land settlements that were handed over to landless farmers roughly twenty years ago. Jackson Correio Madeiros dos Santos is a 17-year-old student studying to teach.
Jackson Correio Madeiros dos Santos, Student: It’s a very welcoming school. And this Teacher Training course is showing us many new sides of education. We’re taking three extra classes about education. As well as the internships in schools and daycare centers. Where you observe in the classroom how the teacher works. How he treats the students. How the students act. That’s what this Teacher Training course is showing us.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Down the road, a campus of Brazil’s Federal University of the Southern Border is located on an MST settlement.
Lilian Aline Candida da Silva, Agroecology Masters Student: I decided to study here, because of this. Because it’s a university with a focus on agroecology. And because it’s located on an MST settlement. And also because the MST is a great defender of agroecology.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Agroecology is the science of sustainable farming, developing agricultural practices that co-exist with nature and the local ecosystem.
Wellington Leno, MST: What we have here are family members, children, elderly, women, men. They are here to produce food. Good food. Here to produce education and culture. Here to live a dignified life. And to fight for their rights.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: The movement’s accomplishments are inspiring. But there has been pushback. Constant threats of raids and evictions.
Encampment resident: It’s like scenes from a war. Scenes from a war. Scenes from a war here at Campo do Meio. The governor is trying to violently evict the families.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Former president Jair Bolsonaro was backed by large landowners and the country’s Big Ag caucus. He called them terrorists and threatened to close their schools.
Jair Bolsonaro, Former President: People of the MST. Your time is coming to an end. Your activity is criminal and it terrorizes, too.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: There have been attacks by police, private security forces and local landowners who accuse them of stealing land and attacking the private property of the elite and powerful.
Encampment resident: The police have just attacked us. They threw a bunch of tear gas grenades. Fire. And we need urgent help.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: And there have been killings. Even here at the Tomas Balduíno camp
Encampment Resident: The police started firing. Those who could run, did. But some people were hit. And, unfortunately, two of our companions died. It was terrible. Everyone in panic. Women and children in panic, because they were afraid the police would come in here and start shooting children and families. It was horrible. And we still feel sorry for them. Because they left behind families. They died in the struggle. They died fighting here with us.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: Attacks against the MST are not uncommon. Back in 2018, even Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s presidential campaign came under fire just down the road from Dom Thomas Balduino.
News reporter: Two buses participating in the caravan of former president Lula were hit by gunshots yesterday afternoon in Paraná. Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin says they received threats.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: The gunshots were traced to a farm belonging to an elite landowner who is accused of previously threatening MST members. But these raids, threats, attacks and killings have not silenced the movement or its members. The MST has continued to be one of the most active voices of protest across Brazil. Members have held marches up and down the country. They’ve protested large agribusiness firms like Monsanto.
Protestor: Bayer-Monsanto continues to sell its product to many countries, including Brazil, which today is the largest consumer of pesticides in the world.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: When Lula was jailed in 2018, blocking him from running in that year’s presidential election, the MST helped to hold down the on-going vigil that demanded his release from prison throughout the 580 days he was jailed. The MST was also instrumental in organizing for Lula’s successful presidential campaign in 2022.The same year, seven members of the MST won local and national seats in office. It was the first time the movement had ever fielded candidates.
Rosa Amorim, MST member, Pernambuco: For us, it was not only an electoral victory, but a giant political victory, because the MST is the biggest resistance movement in Brazil. Today, I’m the youngest representative elected to the Pernambuco state legislature. And this also represents a renewal of politics and the left. And we have a lot of challenges.
Michael Fox [Narrator]: The goal of the MST is nothing less than to transform Brazilian society. By growing healthy food for Brazilians, not for export. By providing land to families in need. By educating their children about solidarity, about how to share. How to work together. How to build a more just world. And that is what the MST is doing. One encampment. One settlement. One community at a time.
Congressional staffers have formed the first-ever labor union in the U.S. Senate after Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) granted his staff voluntary recognition of their union on Wednesday, the same day the group announced its organizing drive. On Wednesday morning, the Congressional Workers Union (CWU) announced that Markey’s staff were filing a petition for their union to be voluntarily…
As the corporate propaganda outlet par excellence, it is no surprise that The Wall Street Journal recently decided to weigh in on the viral phenomenon known as “quiet quitting” with a much-discussed article, coauthored by Kathryn Dill and Angela Yang, entitled “The Backlash Against Quiet Quitting Is Getting Loud.” While it seems to pair well with the COVID-era phenomenon known as the Great Resignation, quiet quitting is a term of less recent vintage. The phrase was coined in 2009 by economist Mark Boldger in the wake of the Great Recession, long before the pandemic completely transformed the world of work. However, only recently has the term been picked up by media pundits to describe workers who have opted to labor only to the letter of what their job description entails.
From the outset, The Wall Street Journal betrays its bias toward white-collar workers and professionals—describing the so-called quiet quitting phenomenon as a movement that originated in the offices of America. If the WSJ thinks that office employees are the only ones who have found reason to do the bare minimum of what is required of them at work, they are sadly mistaken. As someone who has worked on both sides of the collar line over the course of the pandemic, I can confidently say that it was not just “office workers looking to draw firmer work-life boundaries” who have decided to cope with burnout by working-to-rule.
If [The Wall Street Journal] thinks that office employees are the only ones who have found reason to do the bare minimum of what is required of them at work, they are sadly mistaken. As someone who has worked on both sides of the collar line over the course of the pandemic, I can confidently say that it was not just “office workers looking to draw firmer work-life boundaries” who have decided to cope with burnout by working-to-rule.
More importantly, by characterizing professional slackers as individuals who are risking their own careers—individuals who, like Bartleby before them, have preferred shirking extra work to staying in the exhausting, ultra-competitive rat race—the authors fail to see how and why quiet quitting is a collective phenomenon. When I worked stocking shelves at a grocery store during the pandemic, our main job was to make sure that goods got on the shelf as soon as we could get them there. Whenever we completed our primary objective, management always made sure to make extra work for us—often it was the most unpleasant jobs in the store that nobody else wanted to do. One Saturday morning, I not only removed and scrubbed our bulk bins, but also cleaned all of the old—and, in some cases, rotting—refuse that falls behind the bins as customers clumsily scoop food into their bags.
It was this dirty work that pushed us hourly workers to plan the flow of work together so as to limit, as much as possible, the amount of time management could find new tasks for us to do. While it is not unheard of for stockers to move their way up to middle management, most who attempt to climb the corporate ladder don’t reach such heights, and many more don’t even make it off the ground. Given the lack of upward mobility in those kinds of dead-end service jobs, going above and beyond isn’t really a question of “achieving success,” as Kevin O’Leary (aka “Mr. Wonderful”) of Shark Tank fame argues in the WSJ piece. It is, instead, a question of being able to go in and do the same thing over and over again every shift without going insane. Working-to-rule not only protects your sanity, it brings you closer to your coworkers; it fosters a kind of collective resistance that can get far bigger results than just aiding the dereliction of the worst workplace duties.
Another millionaire quoted in the WSJ piece, Ariana Huffington, follows O’Leary’s supposedly sage career advice with some of her own. She contends that “coasting” on the job is a recipe for mediocrity in “today’s hot job market,” which has, according to Huffington, opened so many opportunities for workers to find “meaningful work.” It’s interesting that Huffington gives counsel for workers who are unfulfilled in their current jobs to leave their job now, especially as the Federal Reserve acts to douse the hot job market in the cold water of rising interest rates. For those who remain in their jobs, rather than doing what is minimally required for the job, she recommends that workers should instead set boundaries. How and when to draw those lines is not clear, and since Huffington departed the news outlet that is her namesake long before its employees ratified their first union contract, we don’t know whether she sees unionizing as a viable method for setting such boundaries, though somehow I doubt it.
While the WSJ authors do air the opinions of a few people in favor of the practice, most of the piece concerns itself with making justifications for the current culture of work and its focus on grit and hustle. One particularly jarring example comes when they pick up the cudgel of systemic racism to try to beat back capitalism’s critics by arguing that the consequences of quiet quitting will fall the hardest on people of color. Since workers of color already have to contend with negative stereotypes, they would bear the brunt of the “backlash” if they choose to do the bare minimum. While there is no doubt a certain amount of truth to that, it again shows the shortcomings of “quiet quitting” as a concept, especially given how that concept is understood by professionals. Most obviously, this kind of logic prescribes acquiescence to the status quo and acceptance of the notion that there is no moving beyond it; however, on a less abstract level, this condescending interpretation of working-to-rule misses the fundamental possibility that this kind of resistance can start individually and become collective over time. An endless grind aimed at individual advancement is not the only answer, solidarity is possible (if the recent uptick in union activity is any indicator).
Moreover, not only do the authors fail to acknowledge collective forms of quiet quitting, they highlight voices that seek to frame the current anti-work moment in such a way that makes that solidarity less likely. They point out that it is the workers who do not opt to “quiet quit” who will end up picking up the slack of those who do. However, this makes more than a few faulty assumptions. First among them is the assumption that a worker cannot do what they need to do within the confines of the workday. Many people bring their work home for whatever reason and so they assume that if someone is not doing the same they are not doing what they are supposed to.
This assumes that, if their burnt out coworkers stepped up and went above and beyond what is required of them, there would not be extra work for them. This fundamentally misunderstands the current structure and culture of work, in which the ultimate directive is to squeeze as much productivity from a worker as possible (for as little compensation as possible). Even before the pandemic, companies purposefully short staffed themselves to save on labor costs—just look at the situation on the railroads, in healthcare, in education, etc. That is to say, pushing people to the brink is a feature of our economic system, not a bug. (This is particularly true in the retail and service sector where labor tends to be one of the highest costs for an employer.)
While it is not unheard of for stockers to move their way up to middle management, most who attempt to climb the corporate ladder don’t reach such heights, and many more don’t even make it off the ground. Given the lack of upward mobility in those kinds of dead-end service jobs, going above and beyond isn’t really a question of “achieving success,” as Kevin O’Leary (aka “Mr. Wonderful”) of Shark Tank fame argues in the WSJ piece.
At the same time, much of that work is not easily automated. Unlike on an assembly line, work in a warehouse or grocery store is a series of often simple but contingent tasks—meaning they are dictated by the needs of the moment and are not easily routinized. For example, you never know when your stocking is going to be interrupted by a bewildered mother with child in tow looking for the dairy aisle, or by a clumsy customer knocking over a display of cheap wine. It is for all these reasons that employers in that sector are incentivized to squeeze workers. They do this by purposefully scheduling a skeleton crew during times they believe will be less busy while keeping other employees on call. In addition, they save on their labor budget by having part-time workers scheduled enough to fill the bare minimum of the business’s needs, but not enough for said workers to be eligible for healthcare benefits. My former employer, Whole Foods, infamously raised the threshold for their part-time employees to receive any benefits in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These cost-cutting measures are most evident in retail and service sectors, but squeezing employees by piling more work and responsibilities onto fewer people by no means stops there. This is just as true for white-collar workers in an office setting. For instance, a salary might ensure more security if a worker gets sick; however, it is often simultaneously a guarantee that they will work much longer than 40 hours per week with no overtime pay or any other kind of additional compensation for their labor. And as convenient as working from home can be, it has also meant that many workers are perpetually at the beck and call of their boss—the barrier between work and home has completely broken down. With all of this added pressure on American workers, it should be no surprise that they are opting to shirk the extra duties they never asked for in the first place.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed a bill into law on Tuesday that would roll back child labor protections in the state as Republicans across the country wage a campaign to make it easier for employers to violate child labor laws. The law eliminates the requirement for children under 16 to show documentation of their age in order to work. Before this, employers seeking to employ a 14…
A New South Wales Labor government would overhaul state procurement to give more consideration of the domestic supply chains and flow on benefits local suppliers create, while also introducing more transparency and small business support through a new independent oversight body. The election commitments come after the current government missed targets for increasing the use…
In 2011, workers at the Vio.Me factory in Thessaloniki, Greece, stopped receiving wages. Management and owners abandoned the facility shortly afterward. Instead of dispersing, the workers of Vio.Me held an assembly and voted to take over management of the factory themselves. Over the past decade, they’ve kept the factory running, jointly determining production decisions through democratic procedures, and sharing in the profits. Although their former bosses and the Greek state have attempted to auction off the land and evict them, the workers have held on with the power of solidarity from their community, and workers across Greece and the wider world. TRNN speaks directly to the worker-managers of Vio.Me about their ongoing struggle and the powerful example they’ve set for workers around the world. This video is part of a special Workers of the World series on the cost of living crisis in Europe.
Producer: Christos Avramidis Videography: Calliope Panagiotidou Terzopoulou Video editor: Leo Erhardt Translation: Danai Maltezou
This story, with the support of the Bertha Foundation, is part of The Real News Network’s Workers of the World series, telling the stories of workers around the globe building collective power and redefining the future of work on their own terms.
Transcript
Reporter: This is the only occupied factory in Europe to still produce. In February 2013, more than 70 factory workers occupied the construction materials factory of VIOME in Thessaloniki, Greece and took the wealth they produced for themselves.
Dimitris Koumatsioulis: The bosses chose to leave. To leave us alone. Τhey took the money and they left. It’s very simple when they saw that they didn’t earn anything anymore, they gave up and left the workers unpaid.
Makis Anagnostou: In the general assembly, it was proposed that VIOME should continue to operate, whether the boss wanted it or not. And by an overwhelming 97.5% of votes, the workers agreed on it.
Dimitris Koumatsioulis: We are in a factory in Greece, which is the only one operating without bosses.
Reporter: Τhe workers changed the production from construction materials to ecological cleaning products.
Dimitris Koumatsioulis: Once the bosses left, we were given this opportunity, which was a gift for us at that time, to take advantage of the situation and do something different from what we were doing. That is, we would come in, get the production, clock out and leave. We took the work in our own hands and made what we made. A natural, ecological product. For us and to offer to the people.
Makis Anagnostou: Initially we were basically ecological in a sense, today we have reached the point where we don’t let anything from the packaging of raw materials go to waste, everything gets recycled and we even gain a small income from this process. Of course, as for the organic waste, we make sure to compost them, to also ensure that our vegetable garden is as effective as possible.
Reporter: In 2013 Greece had the highest unemployment rate in the EU. It was more than 27%. 4 million Greeks were below the poverty limit. Within three years, the GDP had fallen more than 21%, because of the neoliberal memorandum agreements’ measures implemented by the IMF and the EU. Suicide rates in 2013 were 40% more than in 2010, mainly due to unemployment.
Makis Anagnostou: The memorandum agreements were coming and going. There were too many problems, too many people jumping off balconies. Suicide rates had increased drastically.
Dimitris Koumatsioulis: Things were terrible. A lot of people were sitting in their homes, not wanting to go out, as they were ashamed because they didn’t have any money, while we were trying to persuade them to come out together, because that’s the only way we can fight, to show that we are here and we can change the world and do something different.
Reporter: For 10 years now, the workers have not been obeying the orders of the employer and managers. They organize everything through their daily general assembly and there is no inequality between blue- and white-collar workers.
Dimitris Koumatsioulis: Every day in the morning we come in, we discuss what we are going to produce, what problems we can solve in the factory, where we work. Then we start the production. We don’t have a boss, we all discuss our problems together and we all solve them together.
Makis Anagnostou: There are even bigger assemblies, consisting of us, colleagues from Athens and members of the society, the Initiative of Solidarity where we discuss greater issues, such as strategic issues, such as how we will go on and how we will resist.
Reporter: Α great movement of solidarity developed along with the workers, both inside and outside Greece. International media, even all the way to Japan, have broadcasted extensive reports and well-known writers and activists have expressed their support. A solidarity assembly has been taking place for 10 consecutive years through which hundreds of people have participated. 60% of the income comes from trade unions and political organizations all over the word.
Naomi Klein: This intertwining of resistances and alternatives is something that I think, all of our movements need to learn from.
Reporter: VIOME workers have even received a message of support from the Zapatistas. We also received a message of solidarity from the Zapatistas, which was the best thing to happen.
Makis Anagnostou: People who fight hard overseas because in their case, you don’t just go on strikes, your life is at stake every day, there. They sent us a message of solidarity, they are by our side and they support us.
Reporter: However, the factory is not just about production. People associated with social movements use the factory’s space often, while theatre performances, concerts, political debates, bazaars without middlemen, book presentations and film shootings by self-organized productions take place in the factory’s premises.
Makis Anagnostou: Through this process, we have changed as people. What we tried to do is to open it up to society. For example, when the migrants and the refugees were facing problems, the factory was filled with products and clothing to meet the needs of these people. In 2016 there was a global conference on the labor economy, where innumerable people came, from the other side of the world, from Argentina or Chile and from everywhere. From Mexico and from all over Europe of course. Other actions that we have taken to open it up even more and to open ourselves so that the LGBT community can get in here and take action.
Reporter: They created various events and they even started the self-managed-Pride here. In these 10 years of occupying the factory, the workers of VIOME, have been attacked many times. The company had been attempting to auction the property for 8 years.
Makis Anagnostou: Next time, there will be even more of us and we’ll be shouting, so that they will not be able to do anything.
Chanting: Cops, judges listen well, VIOME will remain in workers’ hands.
Makis Anagnostou: Most of the repression occurred during the auctions, in the courts when we were trying to enter the courts and it was forbidden to do so. On the spur of the moment, we managed to get some people in. So, if anything, we were ready to react. The state did not allow them to get a license and did even cut off their electricity. We resisted and we stopped them. However, early in the morning, during the COVID pandemic curfew, to bring the special police force [MAT] at 5 o’clock in the morning, and they made it. From that point onwards, we had our own solutions to keep producing, even after they cut the electricity after three years.
Reporter: The VIOME workers resisted the police violence and they organized a caravan to the Ministry of Labor to demand their legalization.
Makis Anagnostou: What they did was to delay time to tire us out. Then we said we would answer, even for a short period of time, that we are patient and we will wait. We tried to set up tents so that we could stay there for as many days as possible to get the answer. That’s when the police reacted, they tried to take the tents away. There was a beating, we did get hit, but we resisted. There was a beating, we did get hit, but we resisted. And we managed to impose our will and set up the tents.
Reporter: But even there, in Athens in the middle of a hot summer, they were not alone.
Makis Anagnostou: We were supported by many people passing by, there were many events Spyros Grammenos came by, Manu Chao came by and sang. These things gave us the courage to stay and even to heal the wounds that had caused us pain in the previous days. Because you take courage, you become a different person.
Reporter: Of course the Greek state has never let them alone either.
Makis Anagnostou: They let various accusations hang over the workers’ heads. Τhey came here one or two times to hand out documents about an interrogation or a trial which was imminent in the future, so that we would go to the police department and “have a discussion”. It’s intimidation in essence.
Reporter: In February, after many years of disrupted auctions, the state and the corporation managed to auction the property that the biggest part of VIOME belongs to. A foreign fund acquired the property. The workers held a general assembly to organize their resistance and the factory got full of people.
Participant of the General Assembly: It belongs to the workers that have given their soul here, it belongs to the workers that remained without a wage for many years, who were on work stoppage and we won’t give our lives away to any investor.
Reporter: The assembly decided to call for action by organizing a big demonstration in the center of the city.
Melina Azoudi: VIOME is not a utopia. VIOME is a self-managed factory that has been functioning for many, many years. The only self-managed factory in the country. We have formed struggle committees, we will defend the factory, until the end, until victory. We will not give in to the threats of the capitalists, we will not give in to the filthy methods of the state. We will defend the workers of VIOME, we will defend the symbol of VIOME. We will defend it because VIOME belongs to its workers. VIOME belongs to all the people, belongs to us who live there, to us who take action there.
Reporter: A question is raised for the workers again and again. Will they survive? Will they manage to keep being alone in producing without capitalists inside a capitalist world? But are they really alone?
Makis Anagnostou: Our message to the worldwide proletariat is clear. We are shouting: “Workers, you can do without bosses.” We do not only shout it. We put it into practice. Every day we are here and we put it into practice.
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Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has agreed to testify before the Senate labor committee after committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) threatened to subpoena the executive to appear in a hearing on the company’s rampant union busting later this month. Sanders announced the company’s decision on Tuesday after weeks of demurring from the company, thanking members in the committee for being…
Hundreds of thousands of French workers walked off the job Tuesday and marched against the government’s effort, led by neoliberal President Emmanuel Macron, to raise the nation’s retirement age from 62 to 64.
For the sixth time this year, French unions organized strikes and rallies to protest Macron and his legislative allies’ deeply unpopular attack on pension benefits. Police anticipated between 1.1 million and 1.4 million participants at more than 260 demonstrations nationwide. Laurent Berger, secretary-general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, estimated, based on initial figures, that Tuesday’s protests were the biggest since mobilizations started in mid-January.
“The strike has begun everywhere,” said Eric Sellini of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which urged people to “bring France to a halt.”
“If Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want France to come to a standstill and a dark week for the energy industry, it would be better for him to withdraw his reforms.”
Energy workers impeded fuel deliveries, transit workers shut down most services, teacher walkouts prompted the closure of many schools, and garbage collectors’ ongoing work stoppage has led to a build-up of trash. Meanwhile, BBC Newsreported that “there will be calls to extend the strikes to include power generation” in the coming days.
Thirty-eight-year-old activist Sarah Durieux, part of a massive, largely family-friendly crowd in Paris, toldThe Associated Press, “To see so many people today gives me hope.”
“The movement has spread because to defend workers’ rights means defending a social model based on solidarity,” she added.
\u201cUnions in France are holding a nationwide day of strikes and demonstrations for the sixth time this year over controversial plans by Macron to raise the pension age from 62 to 64.\n\nTeachers, gas and electricity workers, rail workers and others on strike.\n\nhttps://t.co/VR5Ysof2hR\u201d
Unionized workers blocked the exits to all eight oil refineries in mainland France on Tuesday, striking fear in Thierry Cotillard, president of Les Mousquetaires retail chain, who warned that “if the refineries are blocked we could run out of petrol by the end of the week.”
It is unclear how long the blockades will last. But Emmanuel Lépine, leader of a trade union representing refinery workers, said last week that the aim is to “bring the French economy to its knees.”
Prior to Tuesday’s actions, labor leader Sébastien Ménesplier declared that “if Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want France to come to a standstill and a dark week for the energy industry, it would be better for him to withdraw his reforms.”
As BBC News noted Tuesday, the campaign so far “has caused little damage to the economy, and the bill is proceeding through parliament.”
The legislation, discussed last month in the National Assembly—where members of the New Ecological and Social People’s Union, a leftist opposition coalition, tried to derail debate by proposing thousands of amendments—is being considered in the Senate this week. A vote on the final version is expected later this month.
“Unions and the left know time is running out before the reform becomes a reality—which is all the more reason for them to up the pressure now,” BBC News observed.
Macron and his supporters have called the proposed changes “essential,” citing projected budget deficits. But union leaders and left-wing lawmakers have stressed that parliament could bolster France’s pension system—without raising the retirement age or increasing the number of years workers must contribute before qualifying for full benefits—by hiking taxes on the wealthy.
“The mobilizations will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”
“The job of a garbage collector is painful. We usually work very early or late… 365 days per year,” Regis Viecili, a 56-year-old garbage worker, told AP. “We usually have to carry heavy weight or stand up for hours to sweep.”
Trash collectors’ early retirement age would be raised from 57 to 59 if the reform proposal is enacted.
“A lot of garbage workers die before the retirement age,” said Viecili.
A record 1.3 million people took part in mass demonstrations against the legislation on January 31. At subsequent protests, the number of people hitting the streets—while still in the hundreds of thousands—began to decrease.
According to BBC News, “Union leaders now believe rolling strikes are their best hope of success.”
Citing CGT secretary-general Philippe Martinez, AP reported that unionized workers “will decide locally” on Tuesday night whether to engage in open-ended strikes.
A majority of French citizens support the ongoing strikes. According to an opinion poll conducted recently by the French survey group Elabe, two-thirds of the public supports the movement against the government’s planned pension changes in general, 59% back efforts to bring the country “to a standstill,” and 56% support rolling strikes.
Martinez said in an interview Sunday that unions “are moving up a gear.”
“The mobilizations,” he predicted, “will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”
Xavier Bregail, a 40-year-old train driver in northern Paris, told AP on Tuesday that “the government will step back only if we block the economy.”
“The subject behind this is inflation, soaring food and energy prices,” he added. “I just want to live decently from my work.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
