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Councilman Dorris: Pay warehouse workers living wages
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010January 20, 2010
By BOB OKON, The Joliet Herald-News
JOLIET — The city will take a close look at its warehouses and what it is paying workers.
Councilman Warren Dorris on Tuesday said the city should push distribution centers to pay a “living wage” to employees.
Dorris’ comments at a city council meeting came a day after a boycott was initiated in Joliet to protest working conditions at one area distribution center.
Dorris pointed to the city’s long-standing policy of requiring union labor in the construction of major projects, including warehouses, and said it was time to apply similar standards to the people who work at those facilities.
“They build these warehouses with union labor and then they fill them with nonunion workers who aren’t even making living wages,” he said.
“We should start requiring that they pay a living wage,” Dorris said.
Legalities of matter
City Manager Thomas Thanas said the city could do the survey of local distribution centers that Dorris wanted. But he said it was too soon to discuss whether the city could force companies to increase wages.
“I’m not sure we’re ready to start talking about the legalities of it,” he told the council.”
On Monday, a group of warehouse workers, community leaders and local clergy gathered at Sacred Heart Church in Joliet to call for a boycott of Bissell products.
The action was taken in response to the firing of 70 workers who had joined a union last year and complained about working conditions at a Bissell Homecare Inc. warehouse in Elwood.
This isn’t the first time Dorris has questioned employment practices at local warehouses.
Management of the Dollar Tree distribution center in Joliet were called to the city council two years ago to discuss hiring practices after Dorris and some local workers said employees regularly were terminated just before they could work long enough to qualify for health benefits.
Management persuaded the council then that the company tried to retain its workers.
From: The Joliet Herald-News
Joliet Herald-News: In Dr. King’s footsteps
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010Group of 100 organizes a boycott to peacefully protest a company they say mistreated and fired local workers
January 19, 2010
By CINDY WOJDYLA CAIN
JOLIET — On a day set aside to honor civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a group of warehouse workers, community leaders and local clergy gathered at Sacred Heart Church to launch a peaceful protest of their own: a boycott of Bissell products.
The boycott stems from the termination of 70 employees who joined a union last year and complained about working conditions at the Bissell Homecare Inc. warehouse in Elwood.
Former warehouse employees allege they were paid below minimum wage, women were paid less than men, a pregnant worker was assigned heavy lifting and employees who complained were threatened with retaliation.
“How can we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King without addressing the injustice that exists in our backyard,” asked the Rev. Craig Purchase, of Mount Zion Tabernacle Church, who is president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s Joliet chapter.
Betty Washington, first vice president for the Joliet chapter of the NAACP, said she thinks King would have been pleased with Monday’s event, which drew about 100 people to the church at 337 S. Ottawa St.
“I believe Will County has become a place where warehouses come and use our citizens without paying them a living wage, and it adds to the poverty level here in Will County,” she said. “Yes they’re bringing jobs into the community, but for the most part people work 90 days and then they’re let go.”
Stacy Moskowitz, a Bissell spokeswoman, said the workers lost their jobs when Roadlink Workforce Solutions, a temp agency, decided to end its staffing contract with Maersk Distribution Services, the company hired by Bissell to manage the facility.
The termination of that pact, not worker complaints, appears to be “the root of the dispute,” she said.
“We have no information that Maersk has done anything wrong in the way that it has operated the facility,” Moskowitz said in a press release.
Both Maersk and Roadlink also have issued statements in the past denying any worker mistreatment at the warehouse that opened a year ago at Route 53 and Ira Morgan Road.
Boycott list
The Rev. Herbert Brooks Jr., who serves on the Will County Board, said he was happy with the “fantastic” turnout at Monday’s event.
“The 100 people told us, ‘We’re not going to take it anymore.’ And that’s what I loved best about it,” he said.
The Rev. Raymond Lescher, pastor at Sacred Heart, said the hearing was just the first step.
“We have to keep the pressure on and we have to stay focused.”
Leaders from Chicago-based Warehouse Workers for Justice, who helped organize the Joliet event, say they hope the boycott spreads from church to church and town to town. They distributed a list of Bissell products — including vacuum cleaners, mops, brooms, brushes, cleaning formulas and sweepers — that they urged the group to boycott.
Michael Meinster, a Warehouse Workers for Justice board member, said Bissell — not Maersk — is the target of the boycott because the company has the ultimate power to fix conditions at the warehouse and rehire the workers.
“They hold the strings,” he said. “Maersk works for them.”
‘Un-American’ acts
Scott Marshall, a mass communications professor at University of St. Francis, said he plans to go into area stores to tell managers that he is boycotting Bissell products to drive the point home.
“It’s un-American to treat workers that way,” he said of the alleged abuses.
Orland Rivera, of Wilmington, said his salary at the Bissell warehouse was cut from $12 to $10.50 with no warning. Rivera, 50, said he was laid off three times from warehouse jobs in 2008 and three more times in 2009. He remains unemployed after being fired from the Bissell job with 69 co-workers Nov. 6. He’s looked for other warehouse jobs, but they’re all staffed by temp agencies, he said.
After the Bissell workers were terminated, Warehouse Workers for Justice filed complaints against Maersk and Roadlink with the Illinois and U.S. labor departments and the National Labor Relations Board. In December, the group filed a class action lawsuit against the temp agency that staffs the Walmart warehouse in Joliet for allegedly not paying employees for all the hours they worked and for overtime. All of the cases are pending.
Stick Together As People
Monday, January 18th, 2010Celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. at Joliet’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church
January 18, 2010
By JOE HOSEY, The Joliet Herald-News
JOLIET–Martin Luther King Jr. was killed when he went to Memphis, to support striking sanitation workers. At the ecumenical celebration of King’s birth on Sunday, pastors and activists called attention to a present day labor struggle.
“We can’t really celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King if there are injustices occurring less than five miles away from us,” said Abraham Mwaura, a representative of Warehouse Workers for Justice.
Mwaura spoke during the celebration held at Mt. Zion Baptist Church and told of the conditions warehouse workers are subjected, including those right here in Joliet.
Mwaura imparted the story of a pregnant worker whose job in a frozen pizza warehouse had her bending over a conveyor belt for the duration of her shift. Her doctor told her she had to make an adjustment for the sake of her unborn baby, Mwaura said, but management “refused to move her, refused to give her a stool, refused to do anything to make her work lighter.”
Management stood fast even in the face of an organized protest by the workers, he said, and the woman ultimately lost her baby.
“What is that frozen pizza worth to us now?” Mwaura asked. “What is that economic development worth to us now?”
He also introduced a former warehouse worker identified only as Cindy, who was fired from the Bissell facility in Elwood after she and 69 of her co-workers protested such practices as mistreating the pregnant and paying below the minimum wage.
The Warehouse Workers for Justice are meeting at Sacred Heart Church on Ottawa Street today and will call for a boycott of Bissell products, Mwaura said.
The Rev. Isaac Singleton also addressed the crowd in Mt. Zion Baptist Church and spoke of the progress made by the black community, and of the struggle ahead.
“I remember when we couldn’t go downtown and buy nothing,” Singleton said. He also recalled “sitting on the back of the bus in Joliet.”
“I think about how far God brought us,” Singleton said, later adding,” We are really not that much better off than we were years ago.
“We’re not where we ought to be, and we’re not where we should be,” the reverend said. “But you have come along way.”
Most importantly, Singleton said, men and women of all races need to “stick together as people.”
“As people of the United States of America,” he said, “and more specifically, Joliet, Illinois, because we can make a difference.”
The Shipping Point
Saturday, December 19th, 2009Between China and big box stores, minimum wage ‘temp’ workers take a stand.
By ROGER BYBEE
Chicago has long been an important center for both manufacturing and shipping goods. But now that the City of Big Shoulders has been stripped of much of its industrial base, state and local officials—along with corporate developers—hope to capitalize on its evermore important role as a transportation hub in the global supply chain.
Chicago is a critical juncture for distribution of goods throughout the nation, and by locating just outside the city, the “goods movement industry” can shave two days off of distribution time by avoiding the congestion that plagues the city’s railways according to Mark Meinster, international representative for the United Electrical Workers of America (UE).
More than ever, corporations need a complex distribution network to get the goods they produce in Mexico and China to market. Stepping into this role have been intermodal transportation complexes like the gigantic Centerpoint hub built in 2002 in Elwood, Ill., 75 minutes south of Chicago. Meinster said that the warehouses employ about 1,500 to 2,000 workers at warehouses owned by dozens of major firms, and helps make Chicago the third largest container port after Hong Kong and Singapore, and the largest intermodal facility in the U.S.
The company has received $160 million in state and local subsidies from public officials desperate to find a substitute for the loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs. And Centerpoint claims that, when at full capacity, the hub in Elwood will have cost $1 billion total and will provide 8,000 jobs in the area.
However, the public subsidies have failed to produce a harvest of quality jobs at Centerpoint, as well as three other Chicago-area hubs already built or under construction. Most of the warehouse work is done by temporary workers paid minimum-wage, which is currently $8 per hour in Illinois.
The lack of public awareness about the warehouse workers’ plight began to change when 70 workers were fired at a warehouse owned by Michigan-based Bissell Corp.—best known for its vacuum cleaners, now all produced overseas—and managed by Danish logistics firm Maersk. The Maersk/Bissell workers’ mistake: seeking help from the UE, the union behind the Republic Windows and Doors sit-down strike one year ago.
Read the rest at In These Times…
Chicago Tribune: Temp agency shorted workers’ wages, lawsuit says
Friday, December 11th, 2009|
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Last September, Miguel Deniz, a laborer at a southwest suburban warehouse, wandered into a Joliet church looking for help.
Worker-rights organizers were holding an information session, and Deniz, who was with about 20 other employees, was pretty sure something was wrong. He was working an awful lot of hours that his paycheck didn’t seem to reflect.
On Thursday Deniz and seven other workers filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that SelectRemedy, the temp agency contracted to staff the warehouse that handles shipping for Wal-Mart, has been shorting wages over the past several years.
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, also alleged that the company didn’t pay time-and-a-half for overtime work.
Only SelectRemedy was sued, not Wal-Mart. The accusers worked at the warehouse in Elwood as well as for Pampered Chef and other companies that contracted with SelectRemedy, according to the lawsuit.
But workers’ advocates said the majority of the alleged violations center on the warehouse. On Thursday, the employees stood in frigid weather outside the company’s West Side store to talk about the lost wages.
“I worked 57 hours and I only got paid for 35,” said Deniz, 62, holding a handful of pay stubs. “I think it’s unjust that we’re not getting paid complete hours and for overtime. We’re being defrauded.”
Another company, Schneider Logistics, operates part of the Elwood warehouse and contracts with SelectRemedy, said Mark Meinster, a board member of the Illinois-based Warehouse Workers for Justice.
Michelle Bradford, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said the retailer tries to comply “with all labor laws and regulations.”
“And we rely on our third-party vendors to do the same,” she said.
SelectRemedy did not return calls seeking comment on the lawsuit. Schneider had no immediate comment.
In a written statement, Pampered Chef said it was unaware of the temp workers’ concerns, but it met its contractual obligations “to pay its workers regular and overtime rates for all hours worked.”
The workers at the warehouse near Joliet unload containers with goods including flat-screen TVs, cell phones, and PlayStations. The items are sent to stores across the Midwest.
As Christmas season rolls in and the packaging and shipping increases, the complaints have increased, Meinster said.
“They’ll do whatever it takes to drive labor costs down,” said Chris Williams, an attorney representing the workers. “They’re only working to make profits.”
–Daarel Burnette II and Annie Sweeney