fast-food workers
kkrisberg | January 17, 2017At The New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Jennifer Medina report on Trump’s pick to head up the U.S. Department of Labor, fast food CEO Andrew Puzder, an outspoken critic of labor laws that benefit hourly workers.
Puzder is expected to face tough questioning during his confirmation hearings, especially as his company’s restaurants have been accused of multiple labor law violations. The article explores Puzder’s entry into the fast food world, his work as a lawyer, and interviews current and former workers at one of the chains that Puzder runs, Carl’s Jr. Kantor and Medina write:
In interviews…
kkrisberg | March 16, 2016At Vox, Sarah Kliff writes about the side of medical errors we rarely hear about — the doctors and nurses who make such errors and the mental health toll of living with that responsibility. In an article that explores whether health care workers are getting the support they need to deal with such experiences, Kliff begins with the story of nurse Kim Hiatt:
Kim Hiatt had worked as a nurse for 24 years when she made her first medical error: She gave a frail infant 10 times the recommended dosage of a medication. The baby died five days later.
Hiatt's mistake was an unnecessary tragedy. But what…
kkrisberg | October 9, 2015Earlier this week, the White House hosted a Summit on Worker Voice, welcoming organizers from more traditional labor groups, such as unions, as well as voices from new worker movements, such as Fight for $15. At the summit, President Obama spoke about wages, the power of collective action and the growing “gig” economy.
Many of the summit remarks weren’t necessarily groundbreaking or even entirely surprising. But as the right to organize is increasingly under fire in Congress and in state legislatures — while at the same time, low-wage workers are finding new ways to band together and demand…
kkrisberg | June 16, 2015A recent agreement between striking farmworkers and big agribusiness in Baja California could be the “most significant achievement by a farm labor movement in recent Mexican history,” reports Richard Marosi in the Los Angeles Times.
Among the settlement details, daily wages for workers will go up by as much as 50 percent and workers will receive the required government benefits often denied by their employers. Marosi reports:
“This is a watershed moment,” said Sara Lara, a farm labor researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In decades of studying farm issues, Lara said she…
kkrisberg | April 21, 2015Last November, a roof section larger than a football field collapsed at the Woodgrain Millwork in Prineville, Oregon. Luckily, no one was harmed. However, mill workers, who spoke of a variety of workplace hazards, say they had alerted management to the leaky roof long before the collapse, reported Amanda Peacher for Oregon Public Broadcasting.
In 2004, Woodgrain, a global company with manufacturing facilities across the U.S., bought the 14-acre Prineville mill. Noting that each of the 23 former mill workers interviewed for the story described a “roof riddled with leaks,” Peacher writes:
Peggy…
kkrisberg | April 7, 2015Americans increasingly want to know that their steaks were humanely raised or their produce was organically grown, but what about the people who picked that produce or cared for those cows? Where’s the concern for the workers behind our food? Reporter Stephen Lurie explored that question in an article published last week in Vox. He writes:
Organic and environmentally sustainable certifications lead consumers to supposedly wholesome products, but they hold no guarantees about the wholesomeness of the companies that produce those goods. Sitting down to a farm-to-table meal at a chic restaurant…
kkrisberg | March 25, 2015In a joint investigation from the Texas Tribune and Houston Chronicle, reporters looked into workplace safety at oil refineries 10 years after an explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas, left 15 workers dead and injured another 180. Unfortunately, reporters found that “though no single incident has matched the 2005 devastation, a two-month investigation finds the industry’s overall death toll barely slowed.”
In the four-part series, reporters chronicle what went wrong at the Texas City refinery, explore the aftermath and talk with survivors, and analyze data showing where and how…
cmonforton | March 19, 2015Employees of the fast-food giant McDonald’s recently filed 28 complaints with federal OSHA about health and safety problems at their workplaces. The complaints involved McDonald’s locations in 19 cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Kansas City. The complaints were announced on Monday in a press event organized by the Fight for $15 and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.
I wondered, how often does OSHA get safety complaints for or on behalf of fast food workers? Looking at data for 2014, here’s some of what I found:
Federal OSHA and the States that run their…
kkrisberg | March 6, 2015In Boston, you’re never too far away from a Dunkin’ Donuts. In fact, the Massachusetts-based company inspires a fiery sense of loyalty in many Bostonians. It’s kind of hard to give up the city's ubiquitous fast food staple, but Paul Drake is committed.
“As somebody who’s pretty poor at fasting, it’s been hard,” said Drake, executive director and lead organizer at Massachusetts Interfaith Worker Justice. “Here in Boston, there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts on every corner…it’s easy to see the convenience that is fast food. But it’s actually been a really good teaching moment for me — I do this work every…
kkrisberg | December 30, 2014With the new year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to celebrate worker victories of 2014. At In These Times, reporter Amien Essif gathered a list of the nine most important victories of 2014, writing:
Much has been made of the incredibly hostile climate for labor over the past few decades. Yet this past year, workers still organized on shop floors, went out on strike, marched in the street and shuffled into courthouses to hold their employers accountable, and campaigned hard for those who earned (or, often enough, didn’t earn) their vote. Legislators, meanwhile, tarried on with…
kkrisberg | September 9, 2014Across the country, roughly 10 million construction workers spend each day in a dangerous and fickle industry. They hang drywall, lay carpet, shingle roofs. Yet in the eyes of their bosses, they aren't employees due the benefits the government requires.
That’s the intro to an extensive series of articles that McClatchy DC recently published called “Contract to Cheat,” which chronicles a year-long investigation into the consequences of misclassifying workers as independent contractors and how government regulators are doing nothing to stop it. The in-depth series offers investigations from…
kkrisberg | August 27, 2014As Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes moves toward a 2016 presidential run, it seems he can’t talk enough about the so-called “Texas Miracle." But upon closer inspection, it seems clear that a “miracle” based on small government, big business tax breaks and laissez-faire regulations is hardly a blessed event for Texas workers.
In an in-depth article on workplace deaths published in the Dallas Morning News, reporter James Gordon writes that Texas workers face the highest workplace death rates in the nation. In fact, Gordon notes that a Texas worker is 12 percent more likely to be killed on the job…
kkrisberg | August 12, 2014It didn’t make a lot of headlines, but a new presidential executive order could be a big deal for workers' rights and safety. On July 31, President Obama signed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which requires federal contractors to disclose prior labor violations and prohibits contractors from forcing workers into arbitration to settle workplace discrimination cases.
The National Law Review explains the order in detail. According to writers Dwight Armstrong and Nisha Verma, the order applies to federal contracts valued at more than $500,000 and could affect a substantial…
kkrisberg | July 30, 2014Fast food workers may have just received a huge boost, thanks to a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board.
Steven Greenhouse reports in The New York Times that the board’s general counsel has ruled that McDonald’s is jointly responsible for labor violations at its franchises — “a decision that if upheld would disrupt longtime practices in the fast-food industry and ease the way for unionizing nationwide,” Greenhouse writes. The article reports that of the 181 unfair labor practice complaints filed against McDonald’s and its franchises in the last 20 months, the board’s counsel decided…
lborkowski | December 17, 2013On December 5, fast-food workers mounted one-day strikes in dozens of cities (between 100 and 130 cities, depending which tally you consult) to demand higher wages and the right to unionize without reprisal. The strikes follow walkouts that started in New York City in November 2012, and a series of multi-city actions this past spring and summer. The Nation's Allison Kilkenny shares the story of Mary Coleman, a worker who has participated in several of these actions:
Mary Coleman, known to her co-workers as Ms. Mary, works at a Popeye’s in Milwaukee for $7.25 an hour. Coleman, 59, lives with…
kkrisberg | October 25, 2013Wages in the highly profitable fast food industry are so low that more than half of families of front-line fast food workers are enrolled in and depend on public assistance programs to make ends meet. In other words, that seemingly inexpensive burger and fries not only comes with a secret sauce, but a secret cost.
According to "Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast Food Industry," which was released last week, the cost of such public assistance is nearly $7 billion every year, with Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program costs accounting for more than…
lborkowski | August 5, 2013Fast-food workers in several Midwestern cities and New York held one-day strikes last week to protest poverty wages. Jeff Schuhrke reports for In These Times, with a focus on the Chicago protests:
Hundreds of fast-food and retail workers in Chicago are on strike today and tomorrow, joining thousands of other workers walking off the job this week in at least seven cities across the country, including New York, Detroit and St. Louis. For most of these cities, this is the second time in recent months that low-wage employees—primarily in the fast-food industry—have staged single-day walkouts…
kkrisberg | June 28, 2013Sharon Thomas-Ellison works hard for her paychecks at Jimmy John's. On occasion when no one else is available, the 19-year-old has worked from 11 in the morning until 1 a.m. at night with just a 30-minute break — and it's okay, she says, she needs the extra income.
After a long day's work on her feet, often working split shifts, the St. Louis resident goes home to the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her brother, who also works for Jimmy John's, a fast food sandwich chain that's become a billion-dollar a year enterprise with more than 1,500 stores nationwide. It's a struggle to pay the…
lborkowski | May 13, 2013While the official death toll from the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh was still rising (it has now passed 1,100), a fire at another garment factory in Dhaka killed eight people. (If you haven't yet seen Elizabeth Grossman's post from Friday, she explores the reaction from the Asian Network for the Rigths of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV).) In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Magnier notes that although this latest disaster has spurred additional calls for reform, change will be a challenge:
The Bangladesh garment industry, a national golden goose, is…