GELFAND’S WORLD-The evidence that American big box stores and fast food employers continue to abuse their workers mounts. Now the New York Times has joined the fray by pointing out that part time workers are jerked around in terms of which days they work, what times of day, and what total hours they get. The NYT followed up with a second article, quoting reader comments.
Among people who do part time work for a living, it's no secret that they typically don't know from one week to the next whether they will get 26 hours or 10 hours, whether they will work the 6:45 Am shift or the midnight shift, and which days they will get. It's not uncommon for part timers to get the closing shift one night only to have the opening shift the next morning. The fact that part time workers have effectively no rights or control over their jobs is an American scandal.
The story was formerly presented at length in the Gawker website and in previous articles here at City Watch.
The NYT article refers to legislative attempts to remedy some, if not all, of these problems. The chance of federal legislation remains gloomy due to the Republican control of the House of Representatives, so it's left to cities and states to try to get something passed.
The NYT article cites efforts to develop some legislative stopgaps:
A national campaign — the Fair Workweek Initiative — is pushing for legislation to restrict these practices in places including Milwaukee, New York and Santa Clara, Calif. The effort includes the National Women’s Law Center, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the Retail Action Project, a New York workers’ group.
“Too many workers are working either too many or too few hours in an economy that expects us to be available 24/7,” said Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative and an organizer at the Center for Popular Democracy, a national advocacy group. “It’s gotten to the point where workers, especially women workers, are saying, ‘We need a voice in how much and when we work.”
It's depressing to think that only a few places -- maybe Seattle, NYC, and Vermont, will eventually come through, and in such limited fashion. There is a better way.
But it's even more depressing to think that so many Americans -- and the number runs into the tens of millions -- are accepting of their own abuse because they can't seem to figure out that political organizing is their way to the promised land. It's strange when I get to quote Jay Leno on a serious political subject, but he once commented on some upstart political movement that sought to change the country by marching and leafletting. His remark was, "How about voting?"
Maybe we should print up a bumper sticker with Leno's picture on it, and the caption, "How about voting!"
We would need to go a little further though. I hate to keep bringing this up, but the American white collar worker and his blue collar colleague need to understand that there is only one way that they can have somebody speak up for their interests. They have to own the organization that represents them.
I know it's a little out of fashion to point this out, but the best way for workers at all levels to gain some fairness is to have a union.
There are legal impediments such as the Taft Hartley Act, which gives the government (and therefore the courts) the right to interfere with union actions. The effects of Taft-Hartley have been evil, in spite of the occasional benefits it bestows. The net result, I would like to suggest, is the upward flow of money to the richest one percent and the stagnation of the middle class and working class.
I don't think that it had to be this way, but let's revisit an ugly moment in our history that obviously helped to turn the tide against union power.
Not long after Ronald Reagan was elected president, Patco, the Aircraft Controller's union, was arguing for better working conditions and higher wages, which ultimately involved the safety of the entire system. Controllers were trying to manage large fleets of planes without adequate support, which included equipment, ground staff, and even their own numbers. The arguing and negotiating went on for quite a while.
Eventually, on August 5, 1981, Patco declared a strike.
President Reagan made the argument that there is no right to strike against the public safety. He fired the entire union.
I can remember the short-lived strike, the Reagan firing, and its aftermath. I must confess that I was shocked and appalled at what did not happen. I mean, for one person, no matter how exalted, to abolish an entire union -- and a well respected, important union at that -- was unthinkable. Yet it happened.
So I patiently waited for other unions to help.
It wouldn't have been so difficult for the airline pilots union (ALPA) to refuse to fly. That would have been within their prerogative, since pilots are individually responsible for the safety of their planes and machinery. The Teamsters should have refused to deliver to airports and to pick up from airports. The longshoremen on both coasts should have immediately begun work slowdowns or outright strikes. If all these unions had acted together, they had it within their power to force the Reagan administration to come to the negotiating table.
A settlement would have been reached. Even at the time, I figured it would have taken maybe 48 hours.
I also suspect that Reagan himself expected something of that sort, and was only waiting to see some compromise. After all, Reagan (in spite of modern Republican hagiography) was used to compromising when he had to. Reagan must have been the most surprised person in America when the rest of the national unions lay down and died for him.
We've never been quite the same since. A moment which was perfectly set up to challenge the ugly reality of Taft-Hartley was missed, giving the worst aspects of American labor law even more power.
The lesson from the aircraft controllers' strike is somber and a bit depressing. The national unions such as the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and the ILWU had a chance to assert leadership, and they had the discipline, if anyone did, to make that claim.
White collar workers, big box clerks, fast food workers, and the countless other low paid part time workers have no such organizations to act for them. Yes, there are some retail and warehouse workers organizations, but how about if the International Longshore and Warehouse Union were to organize the Amazon warehouses or the Target stores? How about if the Teamsters were to organize Walmart?
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We have to concede that any such attempt would run into some serious resistance from the owners and from the courts. But the current national administration seems to be more pro-labor than the previous one, so there is some hope that the top ranks of the federal government would at least stay fairly neutral in the face of serious public organizing.
The main problem is that people who try to do union organizing generally get fired, even though this is technically considered to be against the law. The problem, over the past several decades, is that enforcement of this rule has been lacking, and where it has happened, it has been slow.
The fix is the secondary boycott by other unions and by the public. It is illegal for unions to engage in such activities for the most part, and generally results in injunctions. But there is nothing illegal about a consumer boycott. I can remember when the local Vons grocery store, subject to a regional strike, was nearly empty for the better part of a year. That strike was eventually solved through a negotiated settlement, because the grocery chains couldn't ignore it.
It's no big secret that the vast mass of American workers are at the mercy of their employers. Any questioning of the status quo results in the infamous "write up" which is often for totally fatuous reasons. As the NYT and Gawker stories have illustrated (even if they don't quite say so), it's become clear that the big box stores, non-unionized grocery chains, and many of the fast food empires are little more than military dictatorships in disguise. They have arbitrary power to fire people, and the workers have little redress.
In a system in which unions represent the workers, there is at least the right of appeal. The best way for workers to assert their rights is for them to own the organizations that represent them. Those organizations have traditionally had names like the AFL-CIO, as opposed to the government of Vermont or the City Council of Portland.
One final point. As Americans, we should admit that the biggest problem is within our own ranks. The right wing noise machine has done its best to convince the poor and the working class that unions are a bad thing for them. Corporations subject employees to huge doses of anti-union propaganda. If Americans begin to realize that our steady loss of buying power and the accumulating loss of our right to justice in the workplace are related to our loss of representation, then we can do something about it.
It's not a new idea. What would be new is for the American people to recognize that we have a problem and to do something real about it.
Here's a wild idea. Suppose that the group that started as the Obama campaign, now known as Organizing for Action were to take up the creation of white collar unions as its big project. That would go well beyond its current push for an increase in the minimum wage. The bigger need is to empower millions of working class Americans, not just to engage in futile battles over legislation that is unlikely to pass anytime soon.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 60
Pub: Jul 25, 2014