Retailers' Goal of Challenging Amazon Hindered by Labor Woes
Retailers' Goal of Challenging Amazon Hindered by Labor Woes
Brick-and-mortar retailers hoping to fend off Amazon.com Inc. need to deploy the one weapon that could set them apart:...
Brick-and-mortar retailers hoping to fend off Amazon.com Inc. need to deploy the one weapon that could set them apart: top-notch customer service, provided by actual humans.
But making that goal a reality relies on something they’ve not really invested in -- well-trained employees with the kinds of wages and regular hours that make them want to stick around.
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I Love Working at Starbucks—But Conditions Have to Change
Caitlin O’Reilly-Green is a member of Rise Up Georgia, a partner of Center for Popular Democracy. Too many employees...
Caitlin O’Reilly-Green is a member of Rise Up Georgia, a partner of Center for Popular Democracy.
Too many employees have to deal with inconsistent work schedulesOver the past 18 months, I have been working as a barista at Starbucks–and I love it here. I love making coffee, and I love chatting with customers. Despite the love I have for my work, I have to speak up on behalf of my co-workers: Something has to change in the way Starbucks is treating us.
This became clear to me when I met other Starbucks workers through Rise Up Georgia, a racial and economic justice organization based in Atlanta that is a partner of Center for Popular Democracy, the union-supported group that released a report Wednesday criticizing Starbuck’s labor practices. Through talking with my co-workers, I realized that I wasn’t the only one having a hard time planning my life around my work.
I have seen many co-workers quit on short notice because they couldn’t earn enough to make ends meet or their work schedule was too erratic to plan important things like child care. Though I faced some of the same issues, the hardest part of the job for me was without a doubt the so-called “skeleton-shifts”–severely understaffed shifts that left me stressed, exhausted, and, as a result, sick.
Earlier this year, I worked four days in a row with only my shift supervisor in the back to support me. A co-worker called in sick each day, so I was alone serving the entire store. My store has a drive-through, two registers in the front and a coffee bar–and I was the only one tending all of them.
The work was so grueling that I eventually developed a muscle spasm in my back and was forced to stop working for three months in order to recover from my injury.
When I took my struggles to Starbucks, the company listened and showed me that it cared about my problems. I was offered the opportunity to transfer to a store closer to my home so that I could have a shorter commute, and I now know how to indicate my preferred availability for shifts, so that I have a better chance of planning my life outside of work.
I’m so happy that Starbucks heard me, but I’m just one person. Unfortunately many Starbucks workers don’t speak up and voice their struggles.
My co-workers silently work “clopen” shifts, where they shut down the store at night and come back the next morning to open it. They silently deal with inconsistent work schedules. They silently cope with not knowing how much work they’re going to get each week, making it impossible for them to budget—and budgeting is already hard on $8.25 an hour.
The solution should be obvious for Starbucks. Instead of relying on every worker to bravely speak up about their struggles, Starbucks should change a system that is fundamentally broken.
I’m grateful for the improvements in my schedule, but I strongly believe that all of us deserve hours we can count on. I am speaking up and writing this op-ed in the hope that Howard Schultz, the CEO, will listen to the workers of his company and see that store-level problems don’t happen because of individual managers. It’s the company-wide structure that is failing us.
I think Starbucks is a great company, and I still believe that it wants its employees to be happy. But to get there Starbucks workers need a seat at the table.
Source: Time
ermonters to join national protest to 'Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us'
ermonters to join national protest to 'Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us'
Following the direct actions of June 28 and July 10, in which 140 Americans, including many with serious health...
Following the direct actions of June 28 and July 10, in which 140 Americans, including many with serious health conditions, were arrested in their senator’s DC offices for civil disobedience, still more constituents plan to flood Capitol Hill Wednesday to stop the repeal of the ACA. Organizers say Vermont residents will also participate in this latest oppostion to "repeal and replace" Obamacare.
People with disabilities and life-threatening chronic illnesses, cancer survivors, Medicaid recipients, Affordable Care Act (ACA) policyholders, registered nurses, doctors, and others directly impacted by the Senate healthcare bill will be traveling from all states represented by Republican senators to descend upon Capitol Hill on Wednesday, July 19, with a strong message: “Kill the bill—don’t kill us!”
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Developing Progress: Ensuring that public resources contribute to New York’s equity, resilience, and dynamic democracy
Progressive development policies that ensure consideration of economic, social, and environmental impacts will grow a...
Progressive development policies that ensure consideration of economic, social, and environmental impacts will grow a city that is equitable, resilient, and democratic. While stimulating new revenues for the city, progressive development policies will also promote the economic and environmental sustainability of our communities and provide good jobs to both construction and permanent employees.
Download the report.
Each year New York City invests $2 billion to encourage private development, but it does not require progressive development practices, transparency about job creation or other contributions to community well-being, or accountability to benchmarks that could demonstrate the return on this investment.
Starwood Capital Group’s track record for development in New York City provides a good example of the problems with the current approach to the public’s investment. While some Starwood developments meet responsible development standards, others endanger workers and other community members. Notably, on its publicly subsidized project at Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Starwood has partnered with a general contractor with a history of safety violations and alleged illegal behavior.
Examples like the Pier 1 project highlight the need for higher standards with stronger enforcement on projects the public invests in. Brooklyn Bridge Park – particularly, the development of Pier 6 there – offers the city an opportunity to develop principles, institute policies, and enforce standards to ensure that public resources contribute to New York’s equity, resilience, and dynamic democracy.
We recommend that immediate steps be taken as a broader set of progressive development policies takes shape:
The request for proposals for development of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6 should include strong, clear criteria to promote the economic and environmental sustainability. Starwood Capital should use only responsible contractors and subcontractors on the Pier 1 project. Pension funds should withhold future investments with Starwood Capital until the group meets the pension funds’ Responsible Contractor standards. Developers should be legally accountable and culpable for the safety, health, and environmental conditions on their worksites. Penalties for violations of safety, health, building, and environmental standards, as well as for violations of community benefits and other agreements in public contracts should be raised.Download the full report here.
Local leaders ask Obama to pardon criminal immigrants before Trump takes office
Local leaders ask Obama to pardon criminal immigrants before Trump takes office
Two San Diego elected officials have joined colleagues across the country calling for President Barack Obama to issue a...
Two San Diego elected officials have joined colleagues across the country calling for President Barack Obama to issue a blanket pardon of immigrants with green cards who have committed minor crimes.
San Diego Councilman David Alvarez and San Diego Unified School District Board President Richard Barrera, along with 57 others, signed a letter organized by Local Progress, a network of progressive municipal elected officials, that was sent to Obama this week.
The group wants to undercut President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to deport individuals who, without their minor criminal histories, would not be deportable. Between 100,000 and 200,000 families could be affected by such a pardon, according to the letter.
“From literally the day after the election, we started hearing concerns from teachers that students were worried and were afraid that they were going to be deported, that their parents were going to be deported, just based on the rhetoric from the campaign,” Barrera said by telephone. “What we’re trying to do is look for every avenue that’s available to us as elected officials to protect our young people and their families.”
The letter suggests that it would be within Obama’s power to make such a blanket pardon because of former President Jimmy Carter’s pardon of draft evaders in 1977 on his first day in office.
“We must protect the legal permanent residents of our city,” Alvarez said via email. “President-elect Trump proposed a deportation plan modeled after Operation Wetback from the 1950s. Dividing families by recklessly deporting hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents would be morally wrong and economically destructive.”
Since 2014, the Obama administration has not prioritized minor convictions for immigration enforcement, as a matter of policy not any change in law. By law, green card holders can be deported for committing offenses that would not incur jail time in today’s criminal court system, like low-level drug offenses.
Trump campaigned on the idea of deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants, particularly criminals. His transition team has yet to set forth details about which immigrants and which criminals.
By Kate Morrissey
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Congressional Briefing Coming on the ‘Walmart Economy’
24/7 Wall ST - November 27, 2014, by Paul Ausick - U.S....
24/7 Wall ST - November 27, 2014, by Paul Ausick - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Congressman George Miller (D-CA) are scheduled to appear as speakers at a congressional briefing on Tuesday, November 18, to discuss a business model that some are calling the “Walmart Economy.”
The term refers to a business model “where a few profit significantly on the backs of the working poor and a diminishing middle class.”
Also appearing at the hearing are employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) who are members of the OUR Walmart group, as well as Carol Joyner, Director of the Labor Project for Working Families; Amy Traub of research firm Demos; and Carrie Gleason, an organizer at The Center for Popular Democracy.
According to a press release from OUR Walmart, “The briefing will highlight Walmart’s low pay, manipulation of scheduling and illegal threats to workers who are standing up for Walmart to publicly commit to $15 an hour and full-time, consistent hours.”
Senator Warren was recently named to the Democratic leadership team that will be put in place next January. She becomes the strategic policy adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, a newly created position that the Democratic leadership probably thinks will serve as a bridge to the more liberal elements of the party. She was the driving force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau following the financial crisis and has been a thorn in the side of the big banks ever since.
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Coalition Calls for Fed Focus on Full Employment, Higher Wages
The Dallas Morning News - March 4, 2015, by Sheryl Jean - A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling...
The Dallas Morning News - March 4, 2015, by Sheryl Jean - A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling for the Federal Reserve to focus on full employment and higher wages for blacks and others in poor neighborhoods who have been left behind in the economic recovery.
The group also wants the board of the Fed’s regional bank in Dallas to keep that in mind as it searches for a replacement for Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher, who will retire March 19.
Liberal activists across the country on Thursday plan to protest outside seven Fed regional banks, including New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis, to highlight high unemployment among minority groups and to urge officials not to raise interest rates yet and instead focus on full employment and higher wages. A demonstration also was planned at the Dallas Fed’s office on the edge of downtown, but was canceled due to a forecast for bad weather.
Still, activists in Dallas plan to call attention to a new report showing that the nation’s economic recovery hasn’t reached many minority communities. Falling jobless rates maskhigh black and long-term unemployment and racial inequality in wages in Texas and across the country.
The 84-page report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute shows that Texas’ average jobless rate was 5 percent in 2014, but it was 9.5 percent for blacks. In the Dallas metro area, the average rate was 5.1 percent last year, but it was 9.6 percent for blacks. Nationally, the black jobless rate was 10.3 percent, compared with a national average of 6.2 percent.
Wages also lagged. Texas’ median wage grew 3.9 percent from 2000 to 2014, but it rose 8 percent for whites and declined 0.8 percent for blacks, according to the report. Nationally, wages have been stagnant for most workers since 2000.
“If the Fed raises [interest] rates to banks, then our rates go up, but wages aren’t going up,” said Danny Cendejas, senior organizer in Dallas for the Texas Organizing Project, one of the groups in the coalition. “It’s something that is very concerning for most of our community. In the black and brown communities, where we know the unemployment rates are higher, how do we expect those people to pay their loans back?”
The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since 2008 to help spur business lending to create jobs and boost the economy.
Coalition members in Texas want a more open search process for Fisher’s replacement with more involvement by the community. Fisher, who was in El Paso on Wednesday, has been one of the most vocal advocates of raising interest rates sooner than later.
“Look around at all the construction cranes in Dallas,” said Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO. “I think the lower interest rates are spurring businesses to do work and then they’re hiring people. We just don’t want an interest rate policy that isn’t good for workers in the state.”
Moeller was among a group of 10 community leaders who met with three Fed representatives — general counsel John Buchanan; Alfreda Norman, head of community development and public affairs; and spokesman James Hoard — for about 90 minutes in January to discuss the search process for a new president, the timeline and the qualifications sought.
“We had a good conversation and thought we answered their questions,” Hoard said. The Dallas Fed put the name of the search firm and its email address on its website for anyone interested in nominating a candidate, he added.
Moeller has a different view of the meeting.
“We don’t have a candidate, but we felt like we had some input we wanted to share,” she said. “We don’t want it to be someone who wouldn’t be good for jobs in the future. We wanted to make sure they were looking at the economic factors that relate to real people in Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. We have low-wage workers who can’t get their head above water. We have folks who are long-term unemployed.”
In addition to the Texas AFL-CIO, the groups that met with the Dallas Fed were the American Federation of Teachers, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Harris County Central Labor Council, Jobs With Justice, Texas Organizing Project and Workers Defense Project.
Coalition members last summer protested the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., forum and met with Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen in November.
Yellen and three other Fed officials met with about 30 workers and activists, including some from Texas, for an hour to hear their plights of being long-term unemployed and struggling to make a living. As a result, the Fed created the Community Advisory Council in January to provide different perspectives on the economy, especially the needs of low- to moderate-income families.
“She listened very carefully and was very engaged and was grateful to us for requesting the meeting,” said Ady Barkan, staff lawyer for the Center for Popular Democracy, who was at the meeting. “It’s the kind of response we would like to see from others.”
Source
Anti-Racism March Passes Through Falls Church
Anti-Racism March Passes Through Falls Church
The March to Confront White Supremacy trekked 118 miles over 10 days to reach it’s final destination at the Martin...
The March to Confront White Supremacy trekked 118 miles over 10 days to reach it’s final destination at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. earlier today, but not before making a detour through Falls Church’s Washington St. where they were greeted with water and support from citizens, including members of the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation.
Read the full article here.
Behind the Business Attire, Many Bank Workers Earn Poverty Wages
The Committee for Better Banks (CBB), a Communications Workers of America (CWA)-affiliated community and labor...
The Committee for Better Banks (CBB), a Communications Workers of America (CWA)-affiliated community and labor coalition, was created in 2013 to put an end to that. Cassaundra Plummer, a Maryland-based CBB member currently employed as a bank teller at TD Bank, told In These Times, “A lot of the issues within the banks are not discussed, they’re kept really quiet. As a young woman, I always thought that working at a bank was more of a prestigious job than retail. Once I actually got into banking, I realized that it’s not a whole lot different.”
The CBB, which has grown from eight lead members in April to approximately 60 in six different states today, with thousands more either engaged through petition signing or attending rallies. CBB is hoping to expand and create a critical mass of organized workers by bringing these issues out in the open.
A study released by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) early this month shored up CBB claims, finding that 30.4% of the 1.7 million retail banking employees across the country—more than 500,000 workers—are paid less than $15 an hour. Nearly three-quarters of low-wage bank workers are bank tellers, 84.3% of which are women.
Another report, published by the UC Berkeley Labor Center last year, found that these low-wages led 31% of bank teller families toward enrolling in public assistance programs (compared to 25 percent of the entire workforce). “The cost of public benefits to families of bank tellers is nearly $900 million per year,” says the report.
Though it was labeled an “occupational winner” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for its 84% throughout its growth in the 1970s, the introduction and proliferation of automated teller machines helped put the brakes on that, leading to a projected 1% growth over the next decade. As Timothy Noah noted for Slate in 2010, banks tellers earn “slightly less than [they] did in 1970,” putting the job at the center of wage stagnation that has become common-place throughout the middle class, especially within the context of expectations of higher productivity.
CEO compensation and executive pay indeed remain at worrying heights. The NELP report found that CEOs of Wells Fargo and Bank of America made amounts equal to more than 500 times the annual earnings of an average bank teller. Stephen Lerner, the architect of SEIU’s famed Justice for Janitors campaign, summed up the wealth disparity among bankers at the top and bottom of the pay brackets in a 2010 New Labor Forum article, writing, “We could increase pay by $2.00 per hour and provide employer-paid health insurance for over 550,000 tellers with just 3.6 percent of the bonuses paid out to executives.”
“The constant focus on making more forces the people working in the bank to take on more work, but we’re being paid the same amount,” says Plummer. “We’re not expecting to become wealthy off of entry-level positions. But the corporations make a lot of money off of the things that we do—the sales goals, and all that we have to do to create wealth for the bank. It should be reciprocated back to the employees.”
By shifting traditional banking services toward automation, low-wage bank workers such as bank tellers and personal bankers have also become the frontline for pushing financial products on to customers in an effort to increase profits. The pressure of sales quotas imposed by management and executives at the top keeps low-wage bank workers under more scrutiny than ever before. Customer service employees in retail banks must not only attempt to hook patrons onto core retail banking services like checking and savings accounts, but must also resort to hawking mortgages and credit cards in ways CBB organizers say can be predatory. Tellers risk termination if they fail to meet quotas for such products.
“Wells Fargo creates an environment of hostility and humiliation. Multiple times I witnessed management behaving in a condescending fashion to those who did not meet ‘goals’ even though their customer service was excellent. Wells no longer cares about customer service or the best interest of their customers; they are only looking to push products and most of the time they are unnecessary products,” one bank employee told the Committee of Better Banks when they surveyed 5,000 workers for the aforementioned study at the group’s conception.
According an April 2015 report by the Center for Popular Democracy, since 2011, 17 different lawsuits across the top five banks in the country (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and US Bank) have been settled for nearly $46 billion, “highlighting a range of alleged illegal and unethical business practices.”
A 2013 Los Angeles Times investigation reported that the pressure of sales goals, which increase U.S retail banks’ profits, has led some bank workers to commit fraud, forging signatures, opening secret checking accounts with fees attached, or even credit lines for customers in order to keep up with their sales goals. This has led to lawsuits from customers and even cities decrying the rigid and unfair sales culture fostered by the banking industry. When these practices become public, banks fire employees and managers in alleged attempts to uphold ethical finance.
But as Khalid Taha, one of the first Committee members in California, currently employed at Wells Fargo in San Diego, describes it, the “impossible” sales goals come from the top and workers ultimately have no other option. “They fire the entry level employees which is us, but if you think about it, yes we are responsible for it, but we are also victims,” says Taha. “We have to keep our jobs, pay our rent. We have no way but to go a little bit shady when we deal with our customers because the company wants to meet their quota. They don’t care how.”
Beyond low pay, CBB has been working to connect these pressurized work environments to their detrimental effects on the economy caused by the bank’s business practices.
The top four retail banks in the country (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo), part of the too-big-to-fail banking institutions that some, like presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, have called to be broken up, now collectively possess assets equivalent to 45% of the U.S economy, a slight increase than what it was in 2008 before that year’s financial crisis.
Lerner, who is currently advising CBB as a fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, told In These Times, “This campaign is different from many union campaigns that say ‘our sole goal is winning better conditions for workers.’ Those campaigns are important, [but] in this case we’re saying that you can’t win better conditions for workers unless you reform the industry—and you can’t reform the industry unless workers are helping reform it.”
At an April 2015 rally in Minnesota where they delivered 11,000 signatures on a petition calling for an end to sales goals, the Committee for Better Banks released a proposed bill of rights for bank workers. One of the planks of the bill addresses what they say is community suffering at the hands of banks: “We must eliminate unreasonable sales goals or performance metrics that force us to push unnecessary products on our customers. We are here for our neighbors—for the child who opens his first savings account, for the newlywed couple planning ahead to retirement, for the senior citizen opening a credit card. We want to be honest brokers of your financial security, and that means an end to pressure tactics that only serve to line shareholders’ pockets.”
“We’re at the very beginning of a baby-steps campaign to build working support for the idea that we need to do two things, and that come simultaneously: We need to address how bank workers unfairly—low pay, etc., but we need to connect with how the finance industry behaves is bad for the overall economy,” Lerner says.
In 2010, Lerner was launching SEIU’s new plan to organize bank workers. Mike Elk described that effort as emanating from his realization that banks influenced the rest of labor organizing through its close connections to the pensions and investment banks that intertwined with financial decisions made not only by workers but their communities, as well.
At the time, fellow journalist Steve Early told Elk, “[Successful organizing] require[s] a long-term commitment that few unions are willing to make, even when dealing with a strategic multinational target that’s not going away.” Lerner left SEIU later that year under disputed circumstances, and his work organizing bank employees was abandoned by the union.
CEO and President of union-owned Amalgamated Bank, Keith Mestrich announced in early August that the bank’s employees would be making at least $15 an hour under their new collective bargaining agreement. He told Buzzfeed, “We think it’s the right thing for our bank to do, and frankly we think it’s the right thing for all banks to do. … If any industry in this country can afford to set a new minimum for its workers, it’s the banking industry.”
But in the rest of the nonunionized retail banking industry, CBB, like the Fight for 15 and OUR Walmart, will be agitating for improvements.
“It was a little bit scary at the beginning, but we have to do it. If we don’t talk then the banks will do whatever they want to do,” says Taha.
Source: In These Times
JPMorgan's Dimon defends Trump advisory role, deregulation
JPMorgan's Dimon defends Trump advisory role, deregulation
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon on Tuesday responded to criticism from angry shareholders...
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon on Tuesday responded to criticism from angry shareholders of his role advising President Donald Trump on economic matters, saying he would help "any president" in office.
At the bank's annual meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, several attendees demanded answers from Dimon about his role on a White House business council and JPMorgan's involvement with financial deregulation efforts in Washington.
Read the full article here.
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