Alice Puerala: A Woman Of Steel
“They’re telling workers they’ve got to step back and do with less. What does that mean? Not having a car? Not being able to make the payments on their house? Not being able to send their kids to college? Not having any money for recreation? I thought that what’s it all about–to make the life of the worker decent and with dignity and the ability to enjoy the things of society like culture and recreation. Now they’re saying we’ve taken too much from the corporations.” —Alice Puerala 1928-1986.
The fires of steelmaking burned all along the southern shores of Lake Michigan when Alice Peurala entered US Steel’s South Works in 1953. Today most of those fires have gone out and with them the thousands of jobs that were once the economic support system for the Southeast Chicago-Gary region, a region that has still not recovered in 2012. Read more
Hard Work Deserves More Respect
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, Society & Economy, Unions, Workplace
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB—- from the song ”Respect” by Otis Redding
If you drive down I-55 or I-80 out of Chicago toward Joliet, they are hard to miss. Sprawling boxy-looking buildings, often windowless, but with constant activity as semi’s pull up to disgorge their contents. These are the warehouses of Will County, where goods meant mostly for North America’s big box stores are routed to their ultimate destinations. They employ thousands of people, mostly people of color, many of them immigrants. It is one of the largest and fasting growing USA centers for product distribution by truck and rail.
It was among those warehouses that Uylonda Dickerson, a single mom, found a job. What she did not find was respect. Not only was the pay rock-bottom, but when she reported for work, she was often sent home instead, because there was not enough to do. This is in direct violation of Illinois law, making it a case of wage theft. If workers are scheduled to work, but are sent home, the company must pay them at least 4 hours of wages.
Uylonda Dickerson sometimes did not receive hourly pay, but was paid by piecework, the hated system used by the sweatshops of the early 20th century. Piecework meant being paid according to the many trailers that she unloaded, a race against time to empty them, resulting in higher stress levels and a greater possibility of injury. Despite the mental and physical hazards of piecework, she received no health benefits, sick days or vacation time.
A Will County warehouse
Occupy Woolworth’s: A Labor Story from the Great Depression
Filed under: CEO's, Global Economy & Politics, Society & Economy, Unions, Workplace
“Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up: don’t give up the fight!”—-Bob Marley
The legendary reggae artist Bob Marley gave us some good advice. There are times when people do have to stand up for their rights. But there are also other times when it pays to sit down for your rights. In 1937, during one of the worst years of the Great Depression, sitting down for one’s rights was on the agenda for people across the nation.
One of those places was a Detroit Woolworth’s on a typical 1937 Saturday morning shopping day. Woolworth’s went out of business in the USA in 1996. But in 1937, it had an empire of over 2000 stores in the USA and Canada plus more in Cuba, the UK and Germany. At precisely 11 am that February 27th, a union organizer named Fred Loew blew a loud whistle and began yelling “STRIKE! STRIKE!” Shouts and cheers could be heard as department by department the 150 “sales girls” stopped working and stood proudly with their arms folded. The sit-down strike against the USA’s most unpopular chain store had begun.
Occupy Wall Street and the Civilizing of the USA: A Talk Given to the Third Unitarian Church Sunday Forum Nov 13, 2011
Filed under: Global Economy & Politics, U.S. Politics, Unions, Workplace
Portions of this were derived from a blog posting on the Daily Kos
“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”–Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor- 1915
Samuel Gompers wrote those words 1915, because he knew the labor movement was a civilizing force in the USA. The Occupy Movement is also at its heart a labor movement, different than the one Samuel Gompers knew, but with a similar civilizing function. It’s working class people demanding to be treated with dignity and respect.
Occupy Chicago 10-7
The greed and brutality of our present economic system has become intolerable to many Americans as it undermines living standards and our democracy itself. The lives of our young people have become filled with uncertainty and dread. Young people feel left out of our political system and yearn for a voice. Read more
The Working Class Gets A Wake Up Call—-With Side Effects
Greg Jones has a job that is critical to human survival. He feeds us. Not literally of course. This New Jersey truck driver goes to work at 8 pm and driving by night until 4 am, brings us the food we eat. He has become a nocturnal (nighttime) mammal with a diurnal (daytime) body. He knows what this means. Many of his co-workers have persistent health issues that indicate body deterioration. He has a daily discipline of 2 hours of exercise that he hopes will keep his body going without constant pain and grim trips to the hospital.
Because you see, trying to be a nocturnal mammal in a diurnal body can mean a weakened immune system with a tendency toward diabetes, heart disease and perhaps even cancer. Humans are social mammals. Shift work means one’s family and social life are impaired. If they are parents, shift workers may drag themselves to important milestones in their children’s lives in a mist of fatigue, all the time pushing themselves to show enthusiasm in a way that a stage actor might. Read more