Virtual Know your Rights Workshop on Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace11/23/2020
In partnership with attorneys David Fish and Thalia Pacheco, WWJ put on a virtual workshop on sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. You can watch the recording here. If you have any questions or concerns about sexual harassment in the workplace, please contact us!
On October 27th, WWJ stood with workers at the Mars Wrigley warehouse in Joliet, IL. After signing a petition for better pay and more safety precautions during COVID-19, several workers were fired in retaliation. WWJ promoted a petition to Mars Wrigley global president Andrew Clarke demanding justice for the workers and COVID-19 protections inside the warehouse. Business Insider covered the action and the context here.
June 19th, 2019
Greg Foran President and CEO Walmart U.S. Dear Mr. Foran, This Juneteenth, community leaders, elected officials, religious leaders and labor leaders are urging you to rehire hundreds of predominantly Black warehouse workers who were formerly employed by Schneider Logistics at your largest warehouse in the country in Elwood, Illinois. Many of the workers at your warehouse worked for years at your facility, loading and unloading trucks, moving your merchandize, keeping track of your products and making sure customers always got their products in time. Your workforce was hard working, loyal and took pride in their jobs. After you “in-sourced” your workforce you told predominantly black workers they would not be hired because of criminal backgrounds. Not only did these hundreds of workers lose their jobs, they lost out on raises and benefits you were giving to employees. According to the Bureau of Justice’s statistics, 2.2 million people were in jail in the United States in 2018, making the country the largest jailer in the world, both in total size and per population. While 8% of the total population has had a felony, 33% of black males have some form of felony. These kind of criminal records create barriers for all with criminal record, but disproportionately hurt black workers. Whether it’s the intent or not, your decision hurt the black community. Further, your decision happened during a time when Illinois recently legalized marijuana. This was done partially to alleviate the problem of criminalization of the black community. Throughout our society, there are deep conversations about race and criminalization and whether our justice system has been too punitive towards citizens, especially people of color. That’s why it’s so disappointing that you took actions that cost hundreds of worker their jobs. However, it’s not too late and you can do the following to address workers issues. We Demand the Following:
Sincerely, Warehouse Workers for Justice Walmart Workers for Justice Mark Balentine, Former Walmart/Schneider Employee, 3 years Laseant Sardin, Former Walmart/Schneider Employee, 2 years Doane Amerson, Former Walmart/Schneider Employee, 2 years Gerome Waller, Former Walmart/Schneider Employee, 8 months Matthew Metts, Former Walmart/Schneider Employee, 2 years Robert Jackson, Former Walmart/Schneider Employee, 2 ½ years Robert Peters, Illinois State Senator, 13th District Aaron Ortiz, Illinois State Representative, 1st District Alma Anaya, Cook County Commissioner, 7th District Jackie Traynere, Will County Board, 4th District Rachel Ventura, Will County Board, 9th District Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd Ward Dr. Robert C Jones Jr., Pastor, Mt Carmel Missionary Baptist Church Melissa Brice, Founder 350 Chicago Larry Coble, Vice President, Board of Directors, 350 Chicago 350 Chicago About Face: Veterans Against War Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 ARISE Chicago Centro De Trabajadores Unidos (CTU) Chicago Community and Workers Rights Chicago Jobs With Justice Chicago Workers Collaborative Farmworker Association of Florida Fair World Project Federation Du Commerce Food Chain Workers Alliance Food and Water Watch Grassroots Collaborative Greater Chicago Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) International Labor Rights Forum Just Say No To Northpoint Justice is Global Laundry Workers Center New York City/New Jersey Latino Union Migrant Justice Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church- Chicago Our Revolution National Organizations United for Respect (OUR) Partnership for Working Families Pioneer Valley Workers Center Raise The Floor Alliance Restaurant Opportunities Center- Chicago Sierra Club Illinois Shriver Center on Poverty Law Street Vendors Project Unite25 United Electrical Workers (UE) Western Region United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881 (UFCW) United Working Families (UWF) Vietnam Veterans Against the War Workers Rights Board-Chicago By Karen Lewis, Greg Kelley and Mark Meinster
While Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner compete to see who can give Amazon a bigger tax break to bring its headquarters to Illinois, they’ve both ignored a critical detail: These types of deals don’t work. In 2011, Sears was promised $150 million over 10 years in state subsidies to keep jobs at its Hoffman Estates headquarters, but the company has eliminated hundreds of the jobs it agreed to retain and is now openly talking about going out of business. Also in 2011, Illinois taxpayers gave Motorola Mobility $118 million to keep 3,000 jobs in Illinois. After repeated cuts, only a fraction remain. Two years after Illinois gave Mitsubishi $3.66 million in state Economic Development for a Growing Economy tax credits, the company closed its Normal plant and laid off 1,200 workers. These giveaways shortchange taxpayers and go to companies that don’t often need them. For example, Amazon recently started delivering its own packages to shorten delivery times and lower shipping costs. The Chicago metropolitan area is one of the nation’s premier transportation hubs, so Amazon would have inevitably built multiple facilities here, yet Illinois still gave Amazon $112 million to build its local warehouse network. To add insult to injury, Amazon’s local warehouse jobs pay poverty wages. Amazon’s McKinley Park workers are limited to four-hour shifts, which keeps salaries low, while schedules make it difficult for employees to find a second job to supplement income. Delivery drivers compete for two-hour shifts using Amazon’s proprietary Flex mobile platform and deliver packages in their personal vehicles. Drivers earn far less than the UPS or FedEx drivers they’ve replaced after paying for expenses such as gas, insurance and maintenance. If Amazon is going to be invited to Chicago, we need quality, full-time jobs that support working families. Amazon’s business plan will instead likely displace thousands of Chicagoans who currently earn a living wage, intensify the exploitation of low-wage workers and hurt thousands of struggling families just as it did in Seattle. Amazon’s Seattle campus and its massive workforce have displaced thousands of area residents, as home prices have risen faster than in any other U.S. city. Seattle’s median home price is now $729,000, more than double that of Chicago. An Amazon HQ2 in Chicago would supercharge gentrification in our neighborhoods, just as in Seattle. Real estate experts predict that pressure on low-income residents in Chicago’s gentrification hot spots will intensify, and even residents in previously nongentrified neighborhoods would face displacement. An Amazon deal would likely exacerbate those gentrification trends and represent a massive transfer of resources to a wealthy corporation — resources that should instead be invested into communities besieged by unemployment, school closings and the violence produced by disinvestment and despair. Meanwhile, Mayor Emanuel sits on hundreds of millions of dollars in Chicago Housing Authority funds that could reverse the greatest forced exodus of African-American families in Chicago’s history. As with previous efforts to entice high-profile companies to the region, some are demanding that Chicago pay whatever it costs to land Amazon’s new headquarters. But how much will it really cost? Wisconsin’s recent $3 billion giveaway to Foxconn has set a new — and spectacularly high — benchmark. This scale of expenditure in Chicago would further undermine state and local funding for our schools, neighborhoods, health care system and most-vulnerable residents. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has an opportunity to create a new paradigm for corporate citizenship. As a condition of any proposed subsidies, Amazon should agree to enter into a binding community benefits agreement designed to offset the company’s impact on schools, housing, job quality and state and local budgets. A CBA would include specific targets for investment in minority and low-income public schools, create affordable housing units to offset those that will otherwise be lost, support affordable health care for workers and their families, and ensure that all Amazon workers earn at least $15 an hour and have the right to form a union. Our elected officials have historically opened their checkbooks in return for flowery promises and fancy photo opportunities, but little else. The rest of us should oppose any deal until we get Mr. Bezos’ signature on a binding CBA — one that has the full support of Mayor Emanuel and is built on genuine commitments to ensure that this city works for all of our residents. Karen Lewis is president of the Chicago Teachers Union; Greg Kelley is president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana; Mark Meinster is executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice.  By Jeff Schrurke In These Times Beginning next summer, a sweeping new law will take effect in Illinois, ending many of the routine injustices suffered by the state’s nearly 850,000 temp employees who often work under miserable conditions. The Responsible Job Creation Act, or HB690, represents the most ambitious attempt to date by any state to regulate the growing temporary staffing industry. Introduced in January, the bill gained bipartisan support in the Illinois General Assembly and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in late September. The law will take effect June 1, 2018. The legislation, which addresses job insecurity, hiring discrimination and workplace safety, was championed by the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative (CWC) and Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ), as well as the Illinois AFL-CIO and Raise the Floor Alliance, a coalition of eight Chicago worker centers. The law will require staffing agencies to make an effort to place temp workers into permanent positions as they become available—a step forward in the fight to end “perma-temping.” To address racial bias in hiring, the new law requires temporary staffing agencies record and report the race and gender of all job applicants to the Illinois Department of Labor. And in an effort to reduce the workplace injuries that temps frequently suffer, agencies will also now have to notify workers about the kinds of equipment, training and protective clothing required to perform a job. Read More Here
A new report exposes how companies breed fear among low-wage workers through illegal retaliation and make violating workers’ rights a standard business practice. These degraded working conditions are now further fueled by the Trump Administration’s threats and rhetoric attacking all workers, but especially undocumented working communities.
Read more at Raise The Floor By Daisy Contreras Isaura Martinez was working at a Bolingbrook factory when she felt a pull in her left wrist as she was attaching a metal hook to the back of a Christmas card holder. Four years have passed, but the Cicero woman still feels pain, after surgery to correct the issue.  She was a temporary worker hired out by a staffing agency at the time of the injury. Every worker, she says, was required to do a variety of tasks, such as packaging coffee and tobacco and assembling cardboard boxes for toothpaste. Because she was employed through a staffing agency, it was unclear to her who was responsible for overseeing training and other working conditions.
Read more and listen to the story at NPR Illinois Illinois Black Legislative Caucus
SPRINGFIELD, IL – “Today, we showed that the power of the people can reform the pervasive systemic problem with temp agencies and their client companies. Today is a victory,” exclaimed Representative Carol Ammons of the 103rd District, the Chief Sponsor of the Responsible Job Creation Act. Just earlier today at 12:30PM, dozens of temp workers, allies, and experts successfully testified before the Labor & Commerce Committee in Springfield advocating for the passage of the Responsible Job Creation Act. Read More Here |
