Salon.com > Labor

Beanie Baby manufacturer’s corrupt labor practices

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:56:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Ty Inc. became one of the world's largest manufacturers of stuffed animals thanks to the Beanie Babies craze in the 1990s.

But it has stayed on top partly by using an underworld of labor brokers known as raiteros, who pick up workers from Chicago's street corners and shuttle them to Ty's warehouse on behalf of one of the nation's largest temp agencies.

How will the Boston shutdown affect workers?

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000

As Boston became a ghost town Friday, most of the city's residents stayed home from work and got a unexpected day off. Most, but not all. While Starbucks and Subways shuttered, select Dunkin’ Donuts stayed open at the requests of law enforcement, earning deserved praise for the Boston-based chain. But while the chain was "encouraging our guests to stay home today," somebody had to come in to make the Dunkaccinos for the police officers, namely the low-wage workers who staff the stores.

And while they may have been happy to do come in despite the potential danger, eager to play whatever small part they could in the manhunt for someone who terrorized Boston, labor leaders say the case highlights how the bombing and its aftermath has affected workers in the Boston area this week.

"Most low wage workers can't afford to lose a day's pay, and there's no doubt this lockdown will adversely impact the city's working poor," said Jessica Kutch, a labor activist who co-founded the organizing site coworker.org, in an email to Salon. "I'd really like to see employers state on the record that their hourly workers will be paid for the time they were scheduled to work today -- but I suspect that most employers will place the burden of this shutdown squarely on the backs of people who can least afford it."

Fixing Obama’s “fix it first” infrastructure plan

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:15:00 +0000

Seventy thousand bridges in America are structurally deficient. Fixing this and other critical problems with our national infrastructure is a policy no-brainer.

In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama unveiled his “fix it first” plan, a $50 billion program for repairing the nation’s roads, highways, bridges and transit systems. Although this is a step in the right direction, the plan should also meet the concerns of the newly emerging transportation-justice movement, about which we have heard nothing from the president so far.

The Obama administration last directed major funds toward infrastructure as a part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The government spent more than $31 billion, with a focus on “shovel-ready” projects.

`Target the underemployed, not just the unemployed

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:45:00 +0000

If we wanted to target the persistent slack in the labor market, though I can’t see any signs that we do, we shouldn’t just target the unemployment rate; we should also go after the underemployment rate. Since it captures the important dimension of not just do you have a job, but are you getting the hours of work you want, it’s a more comprehensive measure of the extent to which workers are underutilized – i.e., slack – in the labor market.

The difference is pretty well known by now: the underemployment rate includes various groups of underutilized workers or job seekers who are left out of the official rate. The largest difference is the inclusion of part-time workers who would rather have full-time jobs. Most recently, there were about 8 million such folks, elevating this measure of underutilization to around 14 percent compared to about 8 percent for unemployment (2013Q1). Other components of this rate include discouraged workers who’ve recently looked for work but given up, and some other smaller groups that are neither working nor looking for work but remain marginally attached to the job market.

Liberals should fear Chris Christie

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:23:00 +0000

Two years ago, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin introduced his falsely named "budget repair bill." In doing so, he transformed himself from an obscure Midwestern governor to the personification of a nationally orchestrated, well-funded right-wing movement that was more – much more -- than just an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of public service workers. His plan, concocted in quite public collaboration with the Koch brothers, was to gut public sector collective bargaining rights altogether.

The right had a new champion. Having weakened and nearly destroyed the private sector union movement in America over the last 30 years, it was time to home in on a new target: public sector unions and, in fact, the very idea that a fair society requires a robust public sphere. (Hint: This is true for the non-wealthy, less so for people who can buy their way into private schools, private beaches, private jets and so on.)

NCAA tournament highlights America’s inequities

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Big-time sports are mirrors -- we blast our hopes, dreams, aspirations and fears at them knowing that part of their appeal is in how they metaphorically reflect back dramatized versions of real life. The Olympics becomes a proxy battle between our nation and the international boogeymen of the day. Professional leagues provide a safe forum for cities to express their all-too-real resentments against one another. The underdog players competing against better-equipped rivals embody our culture's populist David-versus-Goliath mythology.

This latter metaphor, with its impossible-to-predict outcomes and upsets, is supposed to define the NCAA's March basketball tournament. So obsessed are we by the "madness" of possible upsets and Cinderella stories that bracketology is now a national gambling ritual conducted in most workplaces, from the White House on down.

But what if March Madness is celebrating something that shouldn't be celebrated? What if the rags-to-riches, up-from-the-bootstraps metaphor that makes the tournament so appealing is the wrong one? What if, instead, the NCAA tournament is really a metaphor for something darker, more sinister and more disturbing about our society?

Fast food workers plan surprise strike

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Updated, 12:11 p.m.: The Fast Food Forward campaign says hundreds of workers are now out on strike, and that they are on track to have 400 strikers, from about 70 stores, by the end of the day. At least one store was unable to open for lack of employees this morning. Local politicians, including at least three mayoral candidates - City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Comptroller John Liu, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio - are expected to rally with the fast food workers. Striking workers are currently converging at a Wendy's in Midtown Manhattan, a Wendy's in Brooklyn, and a Burger King in Harlem. At 5:30 PM, strikers and supporters will gather in Harlem's Marcus Garvey Park and march to a McDonald's store for the day's largest event.

Asked for comment on the strike, spokespeople for McDonald's and the National Restaurant Association referred Salon to their statements from yesterday. In an e-mailed statement, de Blasio said, "Fast Food Forward is fighting for solutions for working people right here and now, and it deserves the support of all New Yorkers."

Can immigration reform save the American workforce?

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:39:00 +0000

Their agreement on is very preliminary and hasn’t yet even been blessed by the so-called Gang of Eight Senators working on immigration reform, but the mere fact that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue agreed on anything is remarkable.

The question is whether it’s a good deal for American workers. It is, and I’ll explain why in a moment.

Under the agreement (arrived at last weekend) a limited number of temporary visas would be issued to foreign workers in low-skilled occupations, who could thereafter petition to become American citizens.

The agreement is an important step toward a comprehensive immigration reform package to be introduced in the Senate later this month. Disagreement over allowing in low-skilled workers helped derail immigration reform in 2007.

The unions don’t want foreign workers to take jobs away from Americans or depress American wages, while business groups obviously want the lowest-priced workers they can get their hands on.

So they’ve compromised on a maximum (no more than 20,000 visas in the first year, gradually increasing to no more than 200,000 in the fifth and subsequent years), with the actual number in any year depending on labor market conditions, as determined by the government. Priority would be given to occupations where American workers were in short supply.

Paid sick leave: The next liberal litmus test?

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:33:00 +0000

There's a new must-support issue for ambitious Democrats across the nation: paid sick leave. And if you want to see how important it has become, just look to the current race for New York City mayor.

Before Thursday, City Council speaker Christine Quinn (generally an ally of Mayor Michael Bloomberg) hemmed and hawed for three years over whether to put forth a paid sick leave bill, despite the fact that eight in 10 New Yorkers support it. The issue placed her in an uncomfortable bind, trapped between Bloomberg and the business community (all of whom oppose it) -- and workers and unions on the other side.

But after previously using her power to block the bill (despite the majority of the City Council supporting it), Quinn realized her situation had become politically untenable. And on Thursday, a compromise was reached that requires companies with 15 or more workers to offer employees at least five paid sick days. As the New York Times noted, the deal represents a "raw display of political muscle by a coalition of labor unions and liberal activists.

The art of labor

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

The video is brought to you by the AFL-CIO. To read the other stories in this series, click here.

Despite the common stereotype that unions only serve workers in manufacturing, construction and service industries, organized labor has a long history protecting the livelihoods of artists and performers. Jennifer Mondie, a veteran violist with the National Symphony Orchestra, puts it succintly: "There's no way I could be half the artist I am without the support of the union."

In the video above, Mondie explains how being a member of the American Federation of Musicians allows her to excel at her craft -- and she shares some beautiful music, as well.

Defeating useless rich people

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

In two previous columns, I argued that left and right alike are confused by a failure to distinguish productive businesses that sell innovative goods and services from “rentier” interests — landlords, lenders, copyright holders and others — which use their natural or artificial monopoly power to extract excessive tolls, fees and other recurrent payments from the rest of society, including productive businesses. The fees or rents extracted by these interests constitute a kind of “private taxation” which — rather than public taxation — is the greatest threat facing America’s productive economy.

Today America’s powerful rentier interests, particularly those in the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector, are mobilizing campaign contributions and paid propaganda to promote what I called the Rentier Agenda: low taxes on those whose income is derived from capital gains; the privatization of public infrastructure and the deregulation of regulated private utilities, to generate windfall profits for investors in privatized or deregulated agencies; and a macroeconomic policy that serves the interests of creditors, at the expense of slow growth and mass unemployment, rather than productive businesses and workers. Similar observations have been made by many on the left and some mavericks on the right.

Apple kills a sweatshop app

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:26:00 +0000

Imagine you are the modern equivalent of Upton Sinclair, shopping your great muckracking novel about the working conditions of immigrants in a Chicago slaughterhouse, "The Jungle," around to publishers.

Except that unlike 1906, when there were multiple publishing houses, there's only one or two left in the entire world. And the biggest, most prestigious, most popular publisher in the world happens to have an editorial policy against "offensive" content. You can't get much more yucky than the turn-of-the-century Chicago meatpacking industry, so, Upton Sinclair, you are out of luck. Try writing a romance novel, next time.

Crazy, huh? But that scenario came immediately to mind when I read about Apple's decision to reject a sweatshop game from its App Store, on the grounds of similar "offensiveness."

Pocket Gamer's Mark Brown has the story (which I found out about via Slashdot).

Google’s worker paradise

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:11:00 +0000

I have been to Google's headquarters in California, so the notion that the New York offices boast incredible employee perks does not surprise me.

But still:

And the perks, she added, are “amazing.” In the course of our brief conversation, she mentioned subsidized massages (with massage rooms on nearly every floor); free once-a-week eyebrow shaping; free yoga and Pilates classes; a course she took called “Unwind: the art and science of stress management”; a course in advanced negotiation taught by a Wharton professor; a health consultation and follow-up with a personal health counselor; an author series and an appearance by the novelist Toni Morrison; and a live interview of Justin Bieber by Jimmy Fallon in the Google office.

In what universe do Toni Morrison and Justin Bieber get name-checked in the same sentence? And is that really a perk? What happens when you try to concentrate on "Beloved" but the lyrics of Bieber's "Baby" keep running through your head? Seems to me productivity would fall, directly.

Leaning in won’t help your career

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:02:00 +0000

OK, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg didn’t say “join a union.” But that’s the message the vast majority of working women should be considering this Women’s History Month. The best way for the most women to improve their working lives is through a union.

The new PBS documentary Makers: Women Who Make America shows how the women's movement changed the workplace for women, men and families. Two of the young Makers highlighted in the film, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, now dominate the news. Here's what neither of them tell you: union women earn more than non-union women and have better benefits and working conditions.

Women at Facebook and Yahoo should consider spending their time organizing to have a say in their workplace.

Karl Marx and the semantics of a “post-work left”

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Last Sunday, the unthinkable happened: Ross Douthat wrote something halfway sensible.

To be sure, his column “A World Without Work” is no "Communist Manifesto." But I read Douthat, in this deeply conflicted piece, as a metaphorical three-year-old attempting to put together a jigsaw puzzle: He finally has all the pieces, but he just can’t get them to fit together. He admits that work in today’s world is “grinding,” meaningless, alienated, coercive. He argues that government should play an active role in promoting human flourishing. And he seriously considers the position that “the right to not have a boss is actually the hardest won of modern freedoms.”

These are the building blocks of a left politics for the 21st century — but Douthat tries instead to jam them into his conservative lens.

Living in a “post-work” society

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:31:00 +0000

In Sunday’s New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat invokes the utopian dream of “a society rich enough that fewer and fewer people need to work—a society where leisure becomes universally accessible, where part-time jobs replace the regimented workweek, and where living standards keep rising even though more people have left the work force altogether.” This “post-work” politics may be unfamiliar to many readers of the Times, but it won’t be new to readers of Jacobin.

Southern poverty pimps

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:59:00 +0000

Contemporary American politics cannot be understood apart from the North-South divide in the U.S., as I and others have argued. Neither can contemporary American economic debates. The real choice facing America in the 21st century is the same one that faced it in the 19th and 20th centuries — Northernomics or Southernomics?

Northernomics is the high-road strategy of building a flourishing national economy by means of government-business cooperation and government investment in R&D, infrastructure and education. Although this program of Hamiltonianism (named after Washington’s first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton) has been championed by maverick Southerners as prominent as George Washington, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln (born in Kentucky to a Southern family), the building of a modern, high-tech, high-wage economy has been supported chiefly by political parties based in New England and the Midwest, from the Federalists and the Whigs through the Lincoln Republicans and today’s Northern Democrats.

Work becomes more like prison

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:34:00 +0000

The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity!

The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.

I’m sick of working for free

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

I'm loving these letters about creative problems. Keep 'em comin'!

Dear Cary,

I'm an art director/graphic designer and have more than quite a few years experience behind me, as well as a BFA. I am capable and qualified to do what I do. I have active memberships in national professional organizations, and work on staying current in my constantly changing-by-the-minute field.

Over these many years I have always donated my time and talents when asked by various nonprofits, schools, communities and churches. I enjoy seeing something succeed because of my efforts and having that going to the greater good (posters, fliers, logos, ad campaigns, banners, T-shirts, teaching, promotional efforts of all kinds, you name it and they've asked for it).

As of January I decided to put a moratorium on my professional services for anything that does not involve pay.

Let me say this: The people who sincerely appreciate what I can contribute through these volunteer efforts are the only reason that I have continued to this point. On the other hand, the bevy of comments that I have heard of late is flabbergasting. They are irrelevant, off-base and sometimes just mean.

Will “alt-labor” replace unions?

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:45:00 +0000

On a warm evening in July, the Chrysler Center Capital Grille in Midtown Manhattan had more than customers to contend with. Inside, diners feasted on a $35 prix fixe dinner as part of the city’s Restaurant Week promotion. Outside, protesters handed out mock “menus”: “First course: Wage Theft. Second course: Racial discrimination.” Some passersby rolled their eyes; others pumped their fists. Dishwasher Ignacio Villegas yelled: “No more exploitation of workers!” His fellow demonstrators—a few co-workers and a couple of dozen staffers and activists from the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC)—picked up the chant, Occupy-style.