Tag: Labor

Home Health Care Workers – The Difference a Union Makes

Their work days are largely similar. Both mother and daughter rise early and make a lengthy commute — up to one hour by car for Danielle and up to two hours by bus for Brittany. They make their clients’ meals. They shop for groceries and clothes, pick up medicine, run to the post office. They care for pets. They dress and undress, change diapers and give baths. They assist with medication. They dust, vacuum and do the laundry. They talk and listen to the stories of their clients’ lives, often for hours.

But the similarities end there. Brittany makes nearly $20 an hour, usually working five days a week. But without child care for her 8-year-old son during the pandemic, she’s been working no more than four. She has paid time off, medical and dental insurance, a retirement plan and many other benefits. Danielle works seven days a week making half Brittany’s wage. She has no benefits through her job, qualifies for Medicaid and is barely able to survive.

These differences come down to where Brittany and Danielle live. Brittany lives in Washington State and belongs to a union of long-term-care workers, S.E.I.U. Local 775, that has worked with the state for better pay and working conditions. Danielle lives in Arkansas, where she has none of that.

Mother and Daughter Do the Same Job. Why Does One Make $9 More an Hour?
By Brigid Schulte and Cassandra Robertson
Ms. Schulte is the director of the Better Life Lab at New America, a progressive think tank, and the author of “Overwhelmed.” Dr. Robertson is a senior policy and research manager at New America.
NYTIMES

Google Worker Disillusioned

I used to be a Google engineer. That often feels like the defining fact about my life. When I joined the company after college in 2015, it was at the start of a multiyear reign atop Forbes’s list of best workplaces.

I bought into the Google dream completely. In high school, I spent time homeless and in foster care, and was often ostracized for being nerdy. I longed for the prestige of a blue-chip job, the security it would bring and a collegial environment where I would work alongside people as driven as I was.

After Working at Google, I’ll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again
I learned the hard way that no publicly traded company is a family.
Emi Nietfeld
Ms. Nietfeld is a software engineer. She worked at Google from 2015 to 2019.
NYTIMES

The comments section for this article is especially interesting.

Living on Low Wages

Joyce Barnes sometimes pauses, leaving the grocery store. A crowd shifts past, loaded up with goodies. Barnes pictures herself, walking out with big steaks and pork chops, some crabmeat.

“But I’m not the one,” she says. Inside her bags are bread, butter, coffee, a bit of meat and canned tuna — a weekly grocery budget of $25.

The shopping has to fit between her two jobs. Barnes, 62, is a home care worker near Richmond, Va. In the mornings, she takes care of a man who lost both his legs, then hustles off to help someone who’s lost use of one side of his body in a stroke. The jobs pay $9.87 and $8.50 an hour. Barnes gets home around 9 p.m., then wakes at 5 a.m. to do it all over again.

She Works 2 Jobs. Her Grocery Budget Is $25. This Is Life Near Minimum Wage
Alina Selyukh
All Things Considered

Amazon Unionization, Bessemer Alabama

In making the case against a union at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., Amazon has touted its compensation package. The company notes that base pay at the facility, around $15.50 an hour for most rank-and-file workers, is more than twice the local minimum wage, and that it offers comprehensive health insurance and retirement benefits.

But to many of Amazon’s Bessemer employees, who are voting this month on whether to unionize, the claims to generosity can ring hollow alongside the demands of the job and local wage rates. The most recent figure for the median wage in greater Birmingham, a metropolitan area of roughly one million people that includes Bessemer, was nearly $3 above Amazon’s pay there, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Amazon Says It Pays Alabama Workers Well; Other Local Employers Pay More
Recent organizing campaigns in the South suggest the company’s wage scale may have left it vulnerable to a union.
Noam Scheiber
NYTIMES

Amazon Unionization Vote in Alabama

The retail workers union has a long history of organizing Black workers in the poultry and food production industries, helping them gain basic benefits like paid time off and safety protections and a means to economic security. The union is portraying its efforts in Bessemer as part of that legacy.

“This is an organizing campaign in the right-to-work South during the pandemic at one of the largest companies in the world,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School. “The significance of a union victory there really couldn’t be overstated.”

The warehouse workers began voting by mail on Feb. 8 and the ballots are due at the end of this month. A union can form if a majority of the votes cast favor such a move.

Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama
A vote on whether to form a union at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., has become a labor showdown, drawing the attention of N.F.L. players, and the White House.
Michael Corkery and Karen Weise
NYTIMES

Hard Times – Eviction and Unemployment

CYNTHIA: About the end of February, close to March, they laid us off because of the pandemic. And during…

CAMP: She was surviving. And then this pandemic, by no fault of her own, took her job away, took away her ability to pay her rent.

CYNTHIA: They laid us off. They sent the letters, saying, sign up for employment.

CAMP: She struggled to apply for unemployment benefits.

CYNTHIA: So I signed up for unemployment. I didn’t get unemployment till four for five months.

CAMP: And in fact, through the better part of last summer, she did not even receive unemployment.

CYNTHIA: I’m trying to find a place to live. I can’t find nothing. I can’t find another job. I’ve been looking and looking. It’s been a whole year now – you know, going on a year. I still can’t find anything.

SHAPIRO: We’re not using Cynthia’s last name because she doesn’t want this story to affect her future ability to find a place to live. She’s 52 and lives in the St. Louis area with her two adult kids, who’ve also struggled to find work, and her 8-year-old grandson. They’re all in a house where she owes about a year of back rent. There is sewage backing up in the pipes, and the landlord wants them to leave.

CYNTHIA: And I know these people want us out of this house. I want to be out of here just as bad they want us out ’cause I’m not like that, not paying my bills and don’t want to pay. I want to pay.

NPR

Minimum Wage Used to be Enough to Keep a Family of Three Out of Poverty

Amid protests across the country over retail and service jobs that pay little better than the minimum wage, it’s easy to forget that this income benchmark once meant something slightly different. In the past, a minimum-wage job was actually one that could keep a single parent out of poverty.

Since the 1980s, the federal minimum wage has kept pace with neither inflation, nor the rise of the average worker’s paycheck. That means that while a federal minimum wage in 1968 could have lifted a family of three above the poverty line, now it can’t even do that for a parent with one child, working full-time, 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year (yes, this calculation assumes that the parent takes no time off).

Emily Badger, Bloomberg
December 4, 2013

Hunts Point Market Strike – Success

The union representing 1,400 workers at the Hunts Point Produce Market popped open champagne bottles as they celebrated the end of a nearly weeklong strike for increased pay in their next three-year contract.

The warehouse workers and drivers that collectively make up Teamsters Local 202 hailed the ratification of the contract on Saturday. This came after the vote was taken at 10 a.m. at a so-called neutral zone within the distribution hub’s property. The contract was approved by 97% of the union’s members.

David Cruz, Gothamist

Hunts Point Market Strike

Hundreds of workers at The Bronx’s Hunts Point Produce Market are still on strike after negotiations broke down over a $1 an hour raise.

But for many workers, who earn between $18 and $21 an hour on average, they’re seeking more than a pay hike.

“Just say ‘Thank you.’ Don’t say we should be lucky to have a job,” said Hiram Montalvo, a “box man” who unloads trucks. “Say thank you that we’re actually coming to work and risking our lives so that they can take care of their families as well.”

The workers, who are members of Teamsters Local 202, voted to go on strike on midnight Sunday after talks over an hourly raise disintegrated last week. Management offered a 32-cents-an-hour boost.

‘We’re Not Asking For Very Much’: Hunts Point Market Workers Strike For a $1 Raise — and Respect
The first strike in 35 years at the Bronx-based food hub has hundreds of workers on the picket line — buoyed by political candidates and besieged by the NYPD.
CLAUDIA IRIZARRY APONTE

http://www.thecity.nyc

So You’re an X? Can you help me Y?


"Oh, you’re a programmer? I have a problem with my printer…". What’s the equivalent of this in your job? from AskReddit

Funke-munke
Oh you’re an Occupational Therapist- Can you help me find a job

CarbineFox
“Oh you’re a geologist? What kind of rock is this?” Just kidding, we love that shit and will tell you a long story of the history of that rock and how we saw examples in the field in the middle of nowhere.

geckospots
ahaha yes we will!!

Other common questions include:

Is this a meteorite? (no, it’s industrial slag)
Is this a diamond? (no, it’s quartz)
How much is this rock/mineral/fossil worth? (probably $0)
Is this a dinosaur bone? (no it is not)
Is this gold? (no it’s pyrite/fools gold)

keithwaits
So you’re a statistician? …..

I never get to help friends and family with my professional skills 🙁

MHRolley
“oh you’re a mechanical engineer, can you fix my car?”

International__
Yes but it’s going to cost 20 milion dollars in R&D. And another 2000$ for your psycholpgist

Absolute_Predator
“Oh, you’re a chemical analyst? You must know how to make drugs”

Conscious_Tea
Oh, you’re a therapist? tells me about their family member who really needs to see a therapist

DJRonin 9
“Oh you’re a Graphic Designer? Can you make a logo for me really quick? It’s for my cousin’s birthday. I don’t have any money to pay but I’ll have multiple revisions that will cut into your actual paying work time, but then get upset when you ask for payment”

Noblesseux
Fuckin this. Same with cinematography and photography. I had a guy walk up to me the other day while doing street photography and ask me if I do music videos. I’m like ??? no, and even if I did I wouldn’t take a job from some random who walked up to me on the street and tried to make a verbal contract with no discussion of pay.

Noped Out – Examples of

What was your “Fuck this shit I’m out” moment? from r/AskReddit

greenburg
Some young woman and an old lady were arguing about stolen underwear in our communal laundry room. Young woman called for her cracked out boyfriend who came running in with a gun drawn screaming bloody murder.

Noped right out. Then moved out that weekend.

Therewasab34m
I was a shift lead at a fast food joint located inside of a gas station. Our manager was worthless at hiring people, so we were perpetually understaffed for months. I was working 50-60 hours a week. Absolutely ridiculous. However, company policy was that there HAD to be two people working at all times.

This particular day, someone called out. Nobody would come in to cover the shift, so the manager was forced to stay and work a double. She decided that since the only reason she was there was because we would have to close otherwise, she was just going to hang out in the office and chat with the gas station employees. 3 hours into my shift, and I have been single handedly running the front counter, the drivethru, making all the food, doing prep and doing dishes. The dinner rush hit, I had like 4 cars in the drive thru, 8-9 people inside, and then I ran out of onions. (Because I couldn’t get the prep done) My mind just quit. Brain turned off, emotions went cold. I ripped off my headset, told the people inside that they weren’t getting their food, walked into the office and tossed my name tag, manager card, and hat at my boss. When she turned around in shock all I said was good luck and walked out the back.

Edit: Yoooo my fast food homies got my back. I can only wish I did something more badass.

LCBlevins
A while back I was getting my food at a McDonald’s drive thru after school. This McDonalds shared half the building with a gas station. Around the edge of the gas station there were large bushes. I glanced between two pumps near the road outside and see a sketchy dude loading an AR while frantically glancing in random directions. He looked like he was on something and let’s just say I got the hell out of there. I don’t think he ever shot anybody, but it was still scary

thunderclouds1997
I was a temp worker in a factory that made mayonnaise, during my break I get a call from my mom’s work. She’s had 5-6 strokes at the same time. I went to my supervisor and told him what happened. When he replied with “can’t you wait until your shift is over?” I took of my uniform and left the building without another word.

Ehrre 459
My first job was at a grocery store and my department manager was a fucking asshole.

One day he was throwing a fit in the back room and threw a box of red wine vinaigrette dressing to the ground as I was walking past. Broken glass and nasty smelling dressing all over the place. He just turned, named me and said “clean this shit up” to which I was like nah. I’m out.