worker's rights

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EVERY TIME I fly into Ontario, Calif., I see neat blocks of gleaming, low-rise warehouses surrounded by well-manicured trees and shrubbery. I now know that what goes on inside those buildings is not nearly so pretty.

As a board member of People of Faith United for Worker Justice, a local faith-rooted worker justice organization, I have seen the dismal working conditions inside several of these warehouses and have heard the testimonies of workers who have been seriously injured on the job. Eighty-five percent of the warehouse workers in Southern California earn minimum wage and receive no health benefits, even though their jobs entail unloading and reloading heavy boxes.

Since many of these workers are hired through temp agencies, which are often located inside the warehouses, workers’ rights are routinely abused. When someone is injured, instead of being cared for, he or she is simply not called back to work the next day. When workers complain about poor working conditions—such as a lack of breaks, access to bathrooms, or having to lift heavy boxes into freight trucks in 108-degree temperatures—the managers tell them it’s not their responsibility because the workers are employed by the temp agency. The temp agencies in turn claim they are not responsible for conditions in the warehouses because the agencies are separate companies.

Danny Duncan Collum 11-27-2012

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THE MEDIA UNIVERSE has been dominated for months by election coverage. Meanwhile, out there in America, something has been happening that could, in the long run, be much more significant than any election. The Age of Walmart may be coming to the beginning of its end.

Cracks in the big blue hegemony have been showing up here and there for the past few years. The bribery scandal involving Walmart's Mexican subsidiary did some damage. So have the grassroots campaigns against new Walmart stores in Denver, Miami, New York, and even the college town of Athens, Ga. In Athens, the anti-Walmart banner has been hoisted by the local alt- rock community. Check out "After It's Gone," a music video attributed to Patterson Hood (front man of the legendary Drive-By Truckers) and the Downtown 13.

But all that was just foreshadowing. In October, here and there around the country, the Walmart workforce began to publicly rattle its chains. The movement started in September in the Walmart supply chain, first with strikes by seafood workers in Louisiana, then warehouse workers in Southern California and Elwood, Ill., all of whom went out because of unsafe or inhumane working conditions. Within a month Walmart "associates" had walked out of stores in Dallas, Southern California, the Bay Area, Sacramento, Seattle, Miami, the Washington, D.C. area, and Chicago. Two hundred of these striking workers demonstrated at corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., during the annual meeting of Walmart investors.