Work Makes Free?

Americans don’t just work more than they have in the past, they work more than most of the industrialized world. American workers spend more hours at the office — or on the assembly line or behind the coffee counter — than Europeans. A 2004 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found Americans work “50 percent more than do the Germans, French, and Italians.” More recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that in 2014, Americans outworked several expected other countries, among them Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and Austria, all countries that rank higher than us on the most recent World Happiness survey.

The most surprising discovery of the poll, though, is that we have surpassed Japan, long stereotyped by Americans as a society far more workaholic than our own, in annual hours worked by a tally of 1789 to 1729. That means Americans now collectively putting in more work hours each year than the country where necessity led to the invention of the term karōshi (“death from overwork"). Japan, at the very least, demands a legal minimum of 10 paid vacation days (though many employers provide more) along with 14 weeks of maternity leave. (The country has also undertaken a more aggressive effort to get new fathers to take advantage of paid paternity leave.)

France goes even further, offering 30 days of vacation and 16 weeks of parental leave, while Scandinavian countries and Australia and New Zealand top even the French. Yet in the United States workers have no legal guarantee to any amount of vacation at all — or sick days, for that matter, despite a report finding all those sick people at work ultimately cost the country $160 billion in lost productivity each year. The U.S. has the distinction of being the world’s only industrialized nation with no national legislation demanding employers offer maternity leave. And paternity leave? That is not even on the far horizon. With mainstream presidential candidates suggesting Americans should just work a little harder, efforts to curb the culture of overwork seem unlikely anytime soon,

Without any legal right to vacation, sick days or maternity leave, nearly a quarter of Americans work jobs that offer no paid time off, per a 2013 study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The study found that part-time workers are “far less likely to have paid vacations (35 percent) than are full-timers (91 percent).” Women are disproportionately affected, since studies find they outnumber men among part-timers, 61 to 56 percent.

In the white-collar “professional” fields, technology, changing cultural expectations around work, and for the last few years, recessionary belt tightening now require they do more with less, a series of factors that has given rise to what the New York Times calls a “24/7 work culture.” The Times notes that “the pressure of a round-the-clock work culture — in which people are expected to answer emails at 11pm and take cellphone calls on Sunday morning — is particularly acute in highly skilled, highly paid professional services jobs like law, finance, consulting and accounting…These 24/7 work cultures lock gender inequality in place, because the work-family balance problem is recognized as primarily a woman’s problem. The very well-intentioned answer is to give women benefits, but it actually derails women’s careers. The culture of overwork affects everybody.”

Across the board both men and women workers are sleeping less and working more than in recent decades which, incidentally, means our work isn’t nearly as good as it could be. Tired brains, which science tells us inevitably result from working without reprieve for longer and longer, are less creative and inventive, and more mistake-prone. The Harvard Business Review notes that recent studies have found downtime helps us reboot, so we can actually put our work goals in perspective. As the researchers explain, “when you work on a task continuously, it’s easy to lose focus and get lost in the weeds. In contrast, following a brief intermission, picking up where you left off forces you to take a few seconds to think globally about what you’re ultimately trying to achieve.”

Study after study shows that interrupting the work day for brief intervals of “me time,” taking vacations and getting a full night’s sleep are all key to maximizing productivity. For instance, air traffic controllers' work schedules often lead to chronic fatigue, making them less alert and endangering the safety of the national air traffic system, according to a study the government.

Peonage under capitalism is all part of the ruling class plan for America's “greatness”. The oligarchs and plutocrats don’t care about people, just profits. Their objectives arr productivity and returns rather than quality of life.

From here

Turkey's Wildcat Strikes Pre-Elections

With all the attention here in Turkey being focused on the upcoming June 7th parliamentary elections, the strike by thousands of workers in Turkey's automobile production sector, concentrated in the northwest provinces of Bursa and Kocaeli, caught everyone by surprise. For those of our readers who did not know, Turkey has a significant vehicle manufacturing industry. In 2014, 1.17 million cars and commercial vehicles were produced. In fact, it is the backbone of Turkey's export sector with a yearly value of nearly 23 billion dollars. So when auto production is virtually shut down, as it was for the past week or two, this is big news.

We spent most of our working lives in the U.S. working union jobs, as steelworkers and railroad workers, although we did our time in non-union workplaces as well. We are well aware of the sorry plight of unions in the U.S. but, believe us when we say that we were privileged to work under union contracts. In spite of how bad our union leadership might have been, and it was about as bad as it could be, workplace safety, wages, benefits and job security was better than for the overwhelming majority of workers without union representation.

Previously, we have written about the long hours, low pay and dismal working conditions of the Turkish working class. The deaths of workers in the mines and on construction sites are some of the highest in the world. The 301 coal miners who died in a mining disaster in the town of Soma a year ago have become a national symbol of the life-and-death issues that workers here face every day they go to work. The unexpected downing of tools by thousands of autoworkers here in the midst of the election campaign has again brought the issue of workers' wages and working conditions forcefully back onto the national agenda. More than that, it has highlighted the demand of the workers to be represented by unions of their choice, free from company or government control.

The strikes in auto here have been wildcat strikes, organized by the rank-and-file without notice and without the approval of their union leaders. Workers at Oyak Renault (a joint venture with the Turkish military's pension fund) and Tofaş (a joint Fiat/Koç Holding venture), Ford Otosan as well as major parts suppliers and Türk Traktör stopped production for more than a week. Oyak Renault and Tofaş produce some 40% of Turkey's export vehicles. While most have now gone back to work having negotiated concessions from the companies in wages and working conditions, Renault workers at Turkey's biggest car factory have rejected the company's offer and remain on strike. Thousands of workers have resigned from their company 'union', frustrated and angry that it did not represent their interests. Forty-seven strike leaders have been summoned to court by a prosecutor, accused of organizing an illegal work-stoppage. To be able to understand these developments, readers should be aware that most unions in Turkey were effectively smashed in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup. The unions that were allowed to exist were company and military-approved 'unions'. Their purpose was to ride herd on the workers, put a damper on militancy, keep production running and ensure that company profits were protected. In addition to these company unions, the military-written constitution of 1982 severely curtailed workers' rights. The result is that today only 8% of Turkey's workers are union members, only about 4.5% are covered by union contracts, and most of the major unions defend the company's interests more than they do the workers'. It is in this context that the wildcat strike of autoworkers can best be understood.

These wildcat strikes have been a wake-up call to both workers and their bosses. The speed with which the strike spread and the resolve shown by the workers shows an incredible courage that has been an inspiration to the downtrodden Turkish working class and a message to Turkey's powerful business class. No matter the results of the June 7th election, we can expect that those who work to create Turkey's wealth will be flexing their muscles and demanding that their voices be heard.

from here

Solidarity with workers worldwide!

What Price an Arm or a Leg?

Taken from here 

In 19th century capitalism, if a worker got hurt, he lost his job, had to rely on charity from friends, neighbors, family, the church, while the owner of the business went right on making a profit. It is now becoming the same today. We're all commodities and once we're injured, we're damaged goods and have no value.

Over the past decade, US states have slashed workers’ compensation benefits, denying injured workers help when they need it most. State after state has been dismantling America’s workers’ compensation system with disastrous consequences for many of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer serious injuries at work each year. The cutbacks have been so drastic in some places that they virtually guarantee injured workers will plummet into poverty. Workers often battle insurance companies for years to get the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend. The cuts have gone so deep in some states that judges who hear workers’ comp cases, top defense attorneys for companies and even the father of the modern workers’ compensation scheme say they are inhumane. Recently, some judges have questioned whether states have cut too deeply in the name of saving employers money.

In August 2014, a Florida circuit court judge ruled that the state’s workers’ comp law was unconstitutional, saying benefits had been “decimated” and the law “fails miserably” as to safety, health, welfare and morals. If the ruling is upheld, workers in Florida would be able to sue their employers, and the legislature would have to rewrite the law.

 “The only interest that’s being protected here is industry,” said Judge John C. Gutierrez, a Californianworkers’ comp jurist for 22 years, “I feel that their financial influence has had an impact on how this legislation came out.” Workers, he said, “are losing their voice.”

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Going beyond capitalism

Many liberal and progressive people on the left promote the idea of local-food production and certainly within a socialist world communities will try to be self-sustaining if it is ecologically sound to do so. However, within present day society not even well meaning ideals are immune to the logic of capitalist exploitation. An article on the Alternet website tries to explain some of the problems with what is termed the Locavore Movement which is worth quoting. The article is based on a newly published book called ‘Labor and the Locavore’ by Dr. Margaret Gray who is a professor of political science at Adelphi University in Garden City on Long Island.

When it comes to factory farms, the public hasn’t “been reluctant to recognize the exploitation” of workers. But now being “overlooked” is “the role of hired labor in smaller scale agrifood production.” “Food advocates and their organizations display a tendency,” she goes on, “to conflate local, alternative, sustainable, and fair as a compendium of virtues against the factory farm that they so vigorously demonize. Yet this equation discourages close scrutiny of the labor dynamics by which small farms maintain their operations.”

“Food movement advocates and consumers, driven to forge alternatives to industrial agribusiness, have neglected the labor economy that underpins ‘local’ food production. Thus, the call “to ‘buy local’ promotes public health at the expense of protecting the well-being of the farmworkers who grow and harvest the much-coveted produce on regional farms.” writes Margaret Gray. “Small farms,” she writes in her book, “like their factory farm counterparts, are largely staffed by noncitizens, immigrant workers.” But “the prevailing mentality within the alternative food movement has not absorbed this reality.”

“The Hudson Valley, the fabled agricultural region that lies to the north of New York City, is a particularly opposite setting for examining the absence of worker justice within the alternative food movement, as well as the many obstacles that lie in the path of workers’ inclusion in the new food ethic,” she writes. Gray, commented about the notion “that local farms are wholesome and industrial factory farms are evil.” The situation, the said, is that generally in all kinds of agriculture, farmworkers are “marginalized, excluded from labor laws and work in paternalistic settings” and thus are “afraid to complain.”

Farmworkers remain without “the right to organize” unions—“a very significant exclusion,” said Emma Kreyche, organizing and advocacy coordinator for the Worker Justice Center of New York where farmworkers “are not entitled to a day of rest, they have no right to have a day off” and do not get overtime pay. Moreover, many of the laws on the books that do cover farmworkers are “poorly enforced.”

Dr. Gray’s  book concludes: “Buy local!” Yes, “support local farms,” she writes, but at the same time “build a food movement that incorporates workers.” People, she says, should nicely explain to farmers “your food ethic and how it demands fair labor standards to be observed.”

SOYMB suggests that the only real solution is not merely a reactive defensive response but to change the actual economic system where food standards, animal welfare and workers conditions are in harmony and that is socialism.

Workers Of The World - 20

 Producers of Mexico

Farm exports to the U.S. from Mexico have tripled to $7.6 billion in the last decade, enriching agribusinesses, distributors and retailers.

American consumers get all the salsa, squash and melons they can eat at affordable prices. And top U.S. brands — Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Subway and Safeway, among many others — profit from produce they have come to depend on.
These corporations say their Mexican suppliers have committed to decent treatment and living conditions for workers.
But a Los Angeles Times investigation found that for thousands of farm laborers south of the border, the export boom is a story of exploitation and extreme hardship.

The Times found:

• Many farm laborers are essentially trapped for months at a time in rat-infested camps, often without beds and sometimes without functioning toilets or a reliable water supply.
• Some camp bosses illegally withhold wages to prevent workers from leaving during peak harvest periods.
• Laborers often go deep in debt paying inflated prices for necessities at company stores. Some are reduced to scavenging for food when their credit is cut off. It's common for laborers to head home penniless at the end of a harvest.
• Those who seek to escape their debts and miserable living conditions have to contend with guards, barbed-wire fences and sometimes threats of violence from camp supervisors.
• Major U.S. companies have done little to enforce social responsibility guidelines that call for basic worker protections such as clean housing and fair pay practices.

---

The farm laborers are mostly indigenous people from Mexico's poorest regions. Bused hundreds of miles to vast agricultural complexes, they work six days a week for the equivalent of $8 to $12 a day. The squalid camps where they live, sometimes sleeping on scraps of cardboard on concrete floors, are operated by the same agribusinesses that employ advanced growing techniques and sanitary measures in their fields and greenhouses.

The contrast between the treatment of produce and of people is stark.

In immaculate greenhouses, laborers are ordered to use hand sanitizers and schooled in how to pamper the produce. They're required to keep their fingernails carefully trimmed so the fruit will arrive unblemished in U.S. supermarkets.
"They want us to take such great care of the tomatoes, but they don't take care of us," said Japolina Jaimez, a field hand at Rene Produce, a grower of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. "Look at how we live."
He pointed to co-workers and their children, bathing in an irrigation canal because the camp's showers had no water that day.

At the mega-farms that supply major American retailers, child labor has been largely eradicated. But on many small and mid-sized farms, children still work the fields, picking chiles, tomatillos and other produce, some of which makes its way to the U.S. through middlemen. About 100,000 children younger than 14 pick crops for pay, according to the Mexican government's most recent estimate.

During The Times' 18-month investigation, a reporter and a photographer traveled across nine Mexican states, observing conditions at farm labor camps and interviewing hundreds of workers.
At half the 30 camps they visited, laborers were in effect prevented from leaving because their wages were being withheld or they owed money to the company store, or both.

Some of the worst camps were linked to companies that have been lauded by government and industry groups. Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto presented at least two of them with "exporter of the year" honors.

The Times traced produce from fields to U.S. supermarket shelves using Mexican government export data, food safety reports from independent auditors, California pesticide surveys that identify the origin of imported produce, and numerous interviews with company officials and industry experts.
The practice of withholding wages, although barred by Mexican law, persists, especially for workers recruited from indigenous areas, according to government officials and a 2010 report by the federal Secretariat of Social Development. These laborers typically work under three-month contracts and are not paid until the end. The law says they must be paid weekly.
The Times visited five big export farms where wages were being withheld. Each employed hundreds of workers.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, bought produce directly or through middlemen from at least three of those farms, The Times found.
Bosses at one of Mexico's biggest growers, Bioparques de Occidente in the state of Jalisco, not only withheld wages but kept hundreds of workers in a labor camp against their will and beat some who tried to escape, according to laborers and Mexican authorities.


 Agricola San Emilio is a Mexican agribusiness where workers endured abusive conditions. Using public records, private market data and interviews, The Times traced produce from San Emilio to the United States.

 

Growers, distributors and importers of Mexican farm produce got "sample talking points" from an industry trade group that learned The Times was preparing this series.











taken from this lengthy article with many photos

Stealing time is legal

Stories of the horrid conditions for workers in Amazon warehouses have been trickling out for years: The temperatures at the warehouses vary wildly, with some workers having to work in sub-zero conditions, others passing out from days where the temperature soared above 100 degrees, workers crying from not being able to keep up the brutal pace demanded, and then being threatened with termination for crying. And we can now add another indignity to the list, coming yesterday at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in a 9-0 decision that it is legal for Amazon warehouse workers not to be paid for a portion of their workday.

At the end of long, taxing shifts at warehouses, Amazon requires workers to go through security screenings to ensure that no one has stolen anything from the warehouse. Because Amazon does not hire enough security guards or stagger the quitting times of the workers, these screenings add an additional 25 minutes to each employee’s shift. These workers sued, arguing that under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the staffing company that hired them to work in Amazon warehouses was required to pay them for the time spent in these security checks.

Justice Thomas explains that the workers are not eligible for pay for the time they spend in the security screenings. The screenings are not the principal activity of Amazon because they were not hired to go through screenings, and they are not integral and indispensable because Amazon could have easily eliminated the screenings. The Court’s argument, then, is that because it is unnecessary for Amazon to execute long security screenings to conduct its business, it need not pay these workers for the required time they spend in these screenings.

There is now nothing stopping Amazon and any other retailer from trying to save more money by laying off security staff that conduct screenings and make the workers wait longer. Now, after a long day of back-breaking toil, these workers could now wait in hour-long lines for a security screening.

Workers Of The World - 10

CHINA - Apple and Other Big Companies


Working conditions at a Chinese factory supplying parts for Apple Inc iPads and MacBooks are dangerous and have even deteriorated since they were highlighted a year ago, two labor watchdogs said on Thursday.
Apple, however, said many of the problems were corrected after an inspection last week. U.S.-based China Labor Watch and Green America said in a joint statement that an investigation last month at Catcher Technology Co Ltd (Suqian), part of Taiwan-based Catcher Technology Co Ltd, had found hazardous working conditions, with flammable aluminum-magnesium alloy filings scattered on the factory floor, and fire exits and windows locked.
Workers did not receive proper safety training and were exposed to toxic chemicals as they were not provided with protective equipment "in a timely manner or at all," the groups said.

A 25-page report on the factory investigation, the latest of several to criticize Apple suppliers over recent years, came just before the launch of the new iPhone 6. Apple has also come under fire for lax security systems after photos of celebrities stored in individual iCloud accounts were leaked online.

China Labor Watch investigated the same factory in 2013 and found multiple labor rights and safety violations. It said Apple had then promised reforms by Catcher to improve conditions, but the companies had not delivered.
    "In fact, the investigator going into the factory in 2014 discovered numerous additional violations that weren't found in 2013, as well as repeat violations from year to year, suggesting that conditions may actually be getting worse in the factory," the groups said in their report.
In a brief emailed statement, Catcher said: "We are deeply concerned about the claims made by China Labor Watch, and we take the report very seriously. We are committed to following Apple's supplier code of conduct and will investigate thoroughly."

Apple said its annual audit in May had found "some concrete areas for improvement" at the factory, and it worked with Catcher on a plan to correct them.
"We had scheduled a follow-up visit next month to review their progress but have dispatched a team there immediately to investigate this report," Apple said.

In previous reports on Apple's China-based supply chain, factories owned by Taiwan's Foxconn, the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry, were accused of mistreating workers, particularly after a string of employee suicides. In 2011, three people died in a combustible dust explosion at a Foxconn facility in Chengdu, China.
Factory safety has come under close scrutiny in China following an explosion that killed 75 people at an auto parts plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu last month. The blast, which also injured 185 people, occurred when a flame was lit in a room filled with metal dust at the factory, which supplied parts for General Motors Co and other automakers.
After the explosion, China suspended work at more than 200 factories in Jiangsu province, home to Catcher Technology's Suqian facility, for safety checks as part of a nationwide review.
The watchdogs' report said that after last month's Jiangsu explosion, supervisors at Catcher had specifically mentioned the high flammability of the plant's aluminum-magnesium alloy and the need to take precautions to prevent fires.
"But, after this announcement, no new measures were taken to improve fire prevention or worker safety," the report said.

from here

Vacationless in the USA

Many workers in America—especially lower income workers—don't get paid vacation time, and can't afford to take time off. Americans put the most time at work than any other developed country. In 1979, our working hours were comparable to most other other developed countries, with Japan out-working us. Today, we lead the pack, putting in more hours than all of them. Our 40-hour work-week is now 47 hours long on average.

A recent survey revealed the following:

1. More than half of Americans haven't taken a single day of vacation so far this year.

2. Another 18 percent have taken fewer than five vacation days.

3. The rest is split between those who took fewer than 5, and those who took between 5-10 vacation days this year.

4. More than a quarter of American workers don't get any vacation days off.

5. The lower the income of Americans, the fewer vacation days they have taken this year.

6. Around half of those in the bottom three income groups say they haven’t taken a day off.

7. A quarter of those making $75,000 to $149,000 say the same.

8. No one making more than $150,000 says they’ve gone without a day off.

9. Women take less vacation time than men. More women report having taken zero days off while more men have taken more than 10 vacation days.

10. More than 40 percent of Americans who get paid vacation don’t plan to use it all this year.

11. 15 percent say they haven’t taken paid time off for something other than an illness or emergency in over a year.

Most, if not virtually all waiters, busboys, chefs and cleaning staff at restaurants in the US do not get paid sick days–with the exception of those few who have union contracts and have managed to negotiate sick days in their contracts. If they feel like they are getting sick workers with no paid sick leave must do their best to hide their symptoms and go to work. Ditto for the maids and housekeepers who tend to the homes of the wealthy. And the same is true for the majority of the low-paid staff at privately run day-care centers.

Many of these people, should they start to get sick , are likely to try and hide those early symptoms, hoping they prove to be nothing. With food to buy, evictions to avoid, and no money for a doctor, such service workers will have to go to work, and the people they serve — restaurant customers, shoppers, and wealthy homeowners — will inevitably become sick.

Besides the confidence many Europeans have in their universal health care systems, is that they know that waiters, maids and housekeepers have a right to paid sick leave, so they are not going to be on the job infecting others.

In the US there is a Darwinian business philosophy that argues that the poor do not deserve “handouts” like paid vacations or sick leave.

A large part of the problem is that the media have convinced too many people that unions are evil who present the viewpoint that paid vacation leave, paid sick leave, minimum wages and unions are some sort of giant evil that will destroy the economy and society in general. Unions were the ones responsible for workplace safety regulations, the 40 hour work week, vacations, holidays off, over time pay, etc, things that corporate America hates. With unemployment still at record high levels, people are afraid to rock the boat because they can be easily replaced.

It is  puzzling why so many Americans will not speak up for their own quality of life. Many Americans have become an overwhelmingly individualistic that people seem unable to muster the gumption to organize around a common cause. Also the pro-business establishment on the Federal and most state levels is way too powerful and would stifle any pro-worker legislation and prevent it from passage. What seems obvious is that there is an extra dose of tension as the insecurities of the times lead to feelings of vulnerability and defensive reactions. The reluctance to take vacation time ties into this.

 One reason why the corporate wage-slavers are trying to get out of providing health care. They don't want to pay for the health problems their workers are now suffering from, due to overwork. Look at how the life spans of low-wage workers has declined over the past few decades. Older workers, who were used to a sane workload, are basically being worked to death so they don't use as much retirement money from the programs still not stolen by the vulture capitalists. This is the real face of corporate America. Our forefathers shed their blood for an end to these sort of practices yet so far we have put up with it. Now that people have discarded unions as a viable protection for this kind of abuse, there is nothing stopping Big Business.

Adapted from here

Workers Of The World - 3

The Real Cost Of Low Paid Jobs

A New Jersey woman died earlier this week trying to catch a few hours of sleep between jobs, a chilling reminder of the struggle low-wage workers, particularly women, face making ends meet.
Police found Maria Fernandes dead in her car on Monday night, parked in a convenience-store parking lot in Elizabeth, N.J., according to a police press release. Fernandes, 32, was wearing a Dunkin’ Donuts uniform when she was found. A friend and fellow employees told officials she worked as many as four jobs, said Lt. Daniel Saulnier, a spokesman for the Elizabeth police department.
Authorities are waiting on a toxicology report to determine the exact cause of death, but Hazmat investigators found that fumes in Fernandes’ car were caused by a gasoline can that had spilled in the back, according to the release. Friends told police that Fernandes kept gas in her car to avoid running out of gas when traveling between jobs. And she often slept in parking lots to get a few hours of rest between jobs, authorities said.

 

“It is a very sad story and really tragic,and it shines a light on what is a real problem, particularly for low-wage workers, today,” said Elizabeth Watson, senior counsel and director of workplace justice for women at the National Women’s Law Center.

Fernandes’ death is one of many recent examples of the extreme lengths to which low-income women must go to make a living these days. Shanesha Taylor was charged with felony child abuse in March after she left her two children in the car while she went on a job interview. Debra Harrell was arrested in July after leaving her 9-year-old daughter to play in a park alone while she worked at McDonald’s. Jannette Navarro told The New York Times of the difficulty of her erratic schedule at her $9-per-hour job at Starbucks, which prompted the company to change its scheduling policy.

Low-wage and part-time work has proliferated in the post-recession economy. While jobs in fast food and retail are booming, the middle-wage jobs that disappeared during the recession have been slower to return. Meanwhile, the costs of child care, health care, education and other services have kept rising, adding to the burden on low-wage workers.
These trends have hit women particularly hard, contributing to an “ongoing and growing problem” of women being concentrated in low-wage work, Watson said. Women make up about two-thirds of low-wage workers. Between 2009 and 2013, 35 percent of women's job gains were in low-wage sectors compared to just 18 percent of men's, according to data from the NWLC. Even in these low-wage jobs, women make 90.4 cents to every man's dollar, on average.

 Fernandes worked at multiple Dunkin’ Donuts, including one at Newark Penn Station. Though she wore the same uniform for each, these were technically separate jobs. Dunkin’ Donuts confirmed that the outlets where she worked were owned by different franchisees and that the different owners didn't know she was working at multiple restaurants. Fernandes worked as little as 10 hours a week at one franchise and as many as 40 hours a week at another.

from here

The Soma Mine Tragedy, Turkey

This is just the latest tragedy that is the daily life of Turkish workers. And to understand this, all you have to do is open your eyes and look around you. At no work site are the basics of safety equipment like hard hats, safety glasses, or safety shoes. Workers routinely climb up on scaffolding with no thought of 'tying off' with a safety belt. It is normal for workers to work 10-12 hours per days, with a half day on Saturday. Others work seven days a week, when they can find work. Workers are forced to work in unsafe conditions by fat cat bosses who care nothing for them or their families.

Just in 2013, 1,235 workers were killed on the job in Turkey, almost 4 every single day. Turkey holds the worst workplace safety record of any country in Europe. Of the approximately 5,000 occupational accidents that happened in the Soma district where the accident happened, 90% of them were in the mines. This particular accident occurred because an electrical transformer blew up, causing a fire and disabling ventilators and elevators which could have evacuated workers. The ruling AK Party had recently voted down a proposal in parliament for an official investigation into the high number of occupational accidents in the mines of Soma district.

Soma Mine is one of the largest mines in Turkey with over 3000 workers. The mine's owner is Soma Kömür Işletmeleri, one of Turkey's largest mining corporations. After this mine was privatized some years ago, according to CEO Ali Gürkan in a 2012 interview, the company was able to reduce the price of producing coal from $130 per ton to $24 per ton by manufacturing their own electrical transformers rather than importing them and adopting the business model of employing non-union sub-contractors to do the heavy work at lower pay than members of the miners' union, Maden-İş. This weakening of the union has naturally led to speed-up and lower standards of workplace safety.

Çetin Uygur, former head of the union, said "The mining accident that we have seen at this private facility today is truly a work-related murder of the highest degree. We are currently facing the worst work-related murder in the country's history."

Child Labour and Death in the US

People think of child labor as being a thing of the past in the United States, and to work most jobs kids do have to be at least 16. But from the start, the Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, treated farmwork differently. In agriculture, kids as young as 12 can work legally. Provisions governing dangerous work are different in agriculture, too. The Labor Department has a list of “hazardous occupations” that kids can’t do until they turn 18; in agriculture, they can do them at 16, even though federal officials have found that farmworker youth are at “high risk” for fatal injuries. And that hazards list hasn’t been updated since 1970.

Last year, that was about to change. In late 2011, the Labor Department, based on research by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), had proposed an updated list of hazardous occupations in agriculture that would be off limits to kids under 16. These included working near manure pits or inside grain silos (the latter had trapped at least fifty-one workers in 2010, more than half of whom died), using power machinery, working outdoors in dangerously hot weather, climbing tall ladders, working with certain livestock, harvesting tobacco, and driving large farm vehicles or trucks on certain roads.

The cost of that reversal may never be officially tallied. But after carefully piecing together available data, I discovered that, along with Michael, (details and the story of his death here ) at least twelve other young farmworkers under the age of 16 have died since those protections were scuttled a year and a half ago. At least four of them died doing the hazardous tasks those rules would have prohibited them from performing.

Take from a lengthy article here

Revealing Levels of Poverty in Capitalism's Developed World

'The Old “Story” Of Poverty' by Farooque Chowdury reveals the levels of poverty in a range of 'developed' countries, from US to Japan, from Germany to Sweden and shows how conditions are continuing to worsen for increasing numbers of workers - no matter what economists might be saying.

Poverty in the poor part of the world is not an exclusive case. It’s globe-encompassing. Societies touting as rich and prosperous are failing to escape the devastating “aroha”-touch of poverty.An exclusive Associated Press report by Hope Yen once again presents the fact. It’s an old fact with new data that reaffirms capitalism’s incapacity to eradicate poverty. The July 28, 2013, Washington datelined report said:

“Four out of 5 US adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives …” And, “[m]easured in terms of a person’s lifetime risk … 4 in 10 adults falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.”

After presenting the grim fact the report observed: This joblessness, near-poverty, etc. are “a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.”

In the US, the report said, “the count of America’s poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population …”

According to the report, the share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more — has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school in the US.

The capitalist economy is failing to cease school drop out. A comparison of the fact with post-revolutionary societies in central and eastern Europe, before their demise, help evaluate the two systems.Marriage rates, the AP report said, are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones in the US. 

Poverty, an incapacity of capitalism to eradicate, or, it can be said, a product of the economy, is influencing family, an institution capitalism proudly claims that it upholds and defends. But, fact tells, capitalism is devouring one of its sanctum sanctorum although it accuses socialism of plotting the sinful job. 

Citing census data the report mentions “race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s… Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60…” Since 2000, the poverty rate among the working-class whites has grown faster than among the working-class nonwhites, rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains higher, at 23 percent. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, the report added, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white: more than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the US’ destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks. “The invisible poor”, lower-income whites, are dispersed in suburbs and small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white, said the report. 

Capitalism doesn’t make any division among Blacks and Whites although there are persons claiming to be progressives and anti-capitalists still draw a White-Black line among the working people. For the first time since 1975, according to the report, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade in the US. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Race disparities, the report said, in health and education have narrowed generally since the 1960s. 

Capitalism doesn’t spare mothers. Based on survey data the AP report said: The data “points to an increasingly globalized US economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend” cited above. The report refers to US president Barack Obama’s highest priority: Reverse income inequality. 

Two fundamental issues emerge from the above mentioned information: (1) loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs, and (2) reverse income inequality. What’s the cause of loss of manufacturing jobs and income inequality? Why capitalism is failing to provide good-paying manufacturing jobs? Is reversing income inequality possible, even if micro-enterprises are floated, micro-finance net is spread, while the causes that create the inequality are kept intact? The marketers of micro-finance and micro enterprise never answer the question.

As normal consequence, the economy presents hardship, pessimism, etc. “Hardship”, as the report said, “is particularly growing among whites …Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987” in the country.

The economy bears no ingredient of optimism. Along with alienation it saps human qualities and spreads pessimism.

Renee Adams, 28, a jobless single mother with two children, the AP report cites, relies on her boyfriend’s disability checks to get by. Adams expresses a wish that employers will look past her conviction a few years ago for distributing prescription painkillers, so she can get a job and have money to “buy the kids everything they need.” “It’s pretty hard”, she said. “Once the bills are paid, we might have $10 to our name.”
Does it echo early-English industrial labor? Is it far away and a lot different from the poor in today’s poor societies? It’s the universal face of the poor under capitalism. 

“The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality” in the US, said the AP report. In the age group 35-45, it was a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; it has increased to 23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. In the age group 45-55, the risk has jumped to 17.7 percent from 11.8 percent.

The numbers for the AP report come from Rank’s analysis. This is supplemented with interviews and figures provided by Tom Hirschl, professor at Cornell University, John Iceland, sociology professor at Penn State University, the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, the Census Bureau and the Population Reference Bureau. So, the data cited are difficult to deny.

The report quotes William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor specializing in race and poverty: “It’s time that America comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position.”

Denying the class division, whether one likes it or not, is not possible. The reality reaffirms it. None, other than stupids and persons in the pay roll of capitalism, deny class position although poverty-fighting mechanisms are “innovated” without taking into account the class question.

What does the advanced capitalist economy convey to posterity? An answer is there in the AP report. It cites a citizen of the US: Children have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”

Dispossession-reality in the Orient is not different from that of the Occident.

A report in The Asahi Shimbun on June 23, 2013 presents a poverty-picture in Japan, an economic model to a section of mainstream economists in poor countries. The report “Young people struggle to emerge from poverty” by Masaki Hashida mentioned a middle-aged person. To save money, the person’s only meal is breakfast, and the breakfast is with rice, miso soup, fermented beans and broiled fish. The person has lost 30 kilograms in two years.

Caption of a photo along with the report said: A man saves money by not turning on the lights. Is it, not turning on lights, symbolic, a symbol of the economy?

The man, according to the report, is a victim of a “black company”, an employer that harasses employees, forces them to work long hours often without pay, and presses them to resign. The monthly pay from these companies appears limited to 200,000 yen ($2,104).

Hence, it comes out: Big entrepreneurs irrespective of poor and rich societies are the same while they compete in market. They harass, they force to work long hours, and often they don’t pay, and these give them competitive edge. How much value, after the above fact, sermons from rich societies carry?

According to the country’s National Tax Agency, 10.69 million people working in the private sector in Japan earned 2 million yen or less a year in 2011.

The person mentioned in the AS report is not alone or he is not a stray case.

The AS report cited Haruki Kono, head of nonprofit organization POSSE: The black companies “exploit employees by forcing them to work for the same job as stated in manuals to such an extent that they get sick and eventually quit.”

Does it sound Marx, as he detailed back-breaking work of industrial labor in capitalist economy in Europe?

Statements of two political leaders were mentioned in the AS report. One of the leaders decried the income gap. The leader said: “Young people cannot become regular employees even after graduating from university. Non-regular workers are paid much less.”

Doesn’t it reflect labor’s bargaining (in)capacity and its precarious position? And, what does labor’s bargaining incapacity signify? Mainstream economists know the answer well.

Narration of the AS report includes:

The middle-aged man showed a letter from his employer that was handed to employees: “If someone wants to sacrifice him- or herself to work, recommend that the person work 15 hours and 40 minutes a day, or 4,200 hours a year.”

The person worked at least 250 hours each month for a monthly wage of 200,000 yen. But his pay slip only showed 70 percent of the hours he actually worked, and he was paid only half the promised amount.

Capitalism in this millennium, joyfully invented as so and so by a section of proud mainstream economists determined to prove Marx’s depiction of capitalism now wrong, has not forgotten the thieving. “Dignified” capitalism is not dervish, it’s thievish. Should anyone dream of fighting out poverty by keeping intact the thievish system? Still there are enlightened persons with the “mission”, today with this name and yesterday with that name, banking on and business-ing with the system.

The middle-aged man, the press report from Japan said, graduated from an elite high school and entered a national university in the Tohoku region. The man in his 30s living in a one-room apartment in Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward has taken on a variety of jobs, including work at a construction company, an adult-entertainment business and a waste-disposal facility. All of those were black companies. The person took out consumers loans, and poverty forced him to sleep in buses and trains for a couple of years. Neither adult-entertainment nor waste nor turning a debtor brought his emancipation from poverty. But despite the fact poor-“friend” “monks” in the service of banks shall not stop delivering their commandments to “fight” out poverty.

Although, the report said, the person was supposed to work “inside Tokyo’s 23 wards,” he was frequently dispatched to remote areas. On a typical day, he woke up at 7 a.m. and worked until 1 a.m. His monthly salary, 200,000 yen, did not include overtime. He eventually became ill and quit the company. He now lives on welfare. “Many jobs become difficult if one gets older,” the man said. “It’s not that I am lazy, but there are no decent jobs. Only ‘black’ jobs are available.” A company he was employed with asked him to cut his hair and warned, “You can be fired at any time.” “I cannot tell if or when the company will fire me,” he said. “In order to stay mobile, I do not buy extra home appliances, including a refrigerator.”

Isn’t commanding hair cutting, how much petty that may appear, a form of regimentation? And, doesn’t uncertainty with job take away freedom and sense of security, much cherished goals of capitalism? An all encompassing regimentation is imposed with such petty regimentation implemented with the demonic tool of ever-uncertainty at all levels of life in capitalist society.

The man, at the time of the press report, was on medical leave due to physical and mental illness.

The AS report quotes Makoto Kawazoe, an official at the General Union of Young Workers in Tokyo: “The largest segment of the poor is actually working. In addition to low wages and short-term employment, they lack sufficient unemployment benefits, which make it difficult for them to move out from the impoverished class.” Isn’t it a chain that binds down human being? Doesn’t it happen elsewhere? It happens in the entire domain of capitalism. 

It’s not only an Oriental “tale”. Germany, today’s mighty economy, faces similar reality.

“Poverty afflicts Germany’s older ‘guest workers’”, a Deutsche Welle report by Günther Birkenstock (11.07.2013) presents a few poverty-facts: Older foreigners living in Germany, who have worked there for many years are more commonly affected by poverty than German citizens. It’s a divide within labor – “privileged” and non-privileged, a requirement to have a favorable bargain by capital.

Thousands from southern and eastern Europe, the report said, migrated to Germany in the 1960s and 70s. Most were fleeing poverty in their countries while a booming Germany was in need of a labor force. The need led the economy to allure the migrant labor, “lovingly” naming them “guest workers”. With a hope for a better life, the migrant labor worked in steel factories, mines, automobile manufacturing plants and cafeterias.

But, alas, prosperity remained a mirage for most of the migrant labor.

Citing a recent study by the economic and social sciences institute of the Hans Böckler Foundation the report said: Today, more than 40 percent of migrants in retirement age are affected by poverty, which is more than triple the poverty rate among German citizens.

According to Eric Seils, co-author of the study report, poor payment is one of the three main reasons for the high poverty rates among older migrants. Other two main reasons are: Many of the migrant labor were left out, lost jobs, in the 1980s when the industrial sector slumped and the service industry grew, and they were excluded from becoming government employee, a large and prosperous sector not at all affected by poverty. In the face of problem, the “guests” were ignored, left out as the variable capital would not then help increase profit.

In 2006, a German Institute for Economic Research study on elderly poverty brought the issue to light. “The number of foreigners in old-age poverty has increased from 170,000 in 2006 to around 270,000 today”, Seils told DW in an interview. And that number is likely to climb further, he added.

Further north, poverty doesn’t spare capitalism. The reality in Sweden, the Nordic country that prides itself with prosperity, is not a happy one. The suburbs of Stockholm, one of Europe’s richest capitals, experienced riots last May, and the riots were fired by unemployment and immigrant poverty. The riots, at least for three days, found mob attack on a police station. Cars and an arts and crafts centre were set ablaze and two schools were damaged.

The economy produces inequality, and the increase in inequality in the economy is fastest among the advanced OECD economies. The Nordic country has failed to substantially reduce long-term youth unemployment and poverty although average living standards in the economy are still among the highest in Europe. The poor within the society don’t enjoy the highest living standard. According to OECD, unemployment among the Swedes is 6 percent while it’s 16 percent among the immigrants in the country.

The face of poverty in Greece and Nigeria and Myanmar and Colombia and Egypt and Albania and Russia and Cambodia is the same. Everywhere, all the worm gears of capitalism have the same technique: long work-day, threat with uncertainty, appropriation of surplus labor, dehumanized life. It’s like a sump: fruits of all labor are collected for a few. These “stories” are as old as labor, as old as appropriation of surplus value, as old as getting rich by a few. These “stories” have been told many a times. Still these need to be told as mainstream, advocatus diaboli, the devil’s advocate, doesn’t cease its propaganda of this business and that business but don’t look into source of the riches for a few.

from Countercurrents here

Race to the Bottom for US Workers

Last week, in collaboration with Time magazine, was published an in-depth investigation into the booming temp industry, as it replaces a growing number of blue-collar jobs across the country. Roughly 2.7 million temp workers are currently employed in the U.S—a sector that’s “roaring back 10 times faster than private-sector employment as a whole,” wrote reporter Michael Grabell.
Many of those 2.7 million workers struggle to make ends meet, without a steady wage or employee benefits. And they can be working in “ghastly” work environments, as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration director described them, with little protection from injury.

What’s behind this economic shift? And how does it impact the workers staffing “the supply chain of America’s largest companies”? On Friday at 2 pm ET, reporter Michael Grabell joined Leone Bicchieri, executive director of the Chicago Workers’ Collective, to answer your questions. Here are some highlights:

Many workers get stuck as "permatemps." "Many enter with the promise of full time work after a 3 month or a 6 month probationary period - only to find their times extended to the point where they can be at the same worksite for years, but as an employee of the temp agency with no benefits, vacation or raises," Grabell said. According to Industrial Staffing Analysts, only 30 percent of industrial temp jobs become full-time positions.

It's not just warehouses and factories turning to temp agencies. More and more companies are turning to temp labor to avoid the insurance costs and other obligations of a full-time staff. "Now, we see nurses and cooks and professors and others being 'temped out.' This is what a friend of mine back in my farmworker organizing days referred to as 'the farmworker-ization of all of us,'" Bicchieri said. Reader RedFreckle8 also mentioned Microsoft and Amazon as major tech companies trying to cut back their full-time staff.

It's even harder for temp workers to prove they were harrassed, injured, or wrongfully fired. "The client company blames the staffing agency--while the staffing agency blames the client company!" Bicchieri said of the finger-pointing over worker abuse. As Grabell documented in his investigation, workers rarely report injuries or harassment for fear of retaliation. "Workers often choose paying the rent, buying food, and getting clothes for their children over reporting a workplace accident,"  Bicchieri said.

from here where can be found more discussion

The class struggle on the job

In 49 of the America’s 50 states there is no law requiring a just or reasonable cause for employee termination. Most Americans can be legally fired for almost any reason. Private sector workplace relationships tend to operate under the standard of employment-at-will, which means you can be fired for the color of your shirt, your political views, supporting your favorite sports team or for refusing to fetch your boss a cup of coffee. The Bill of Rights does not apply to your office. Any union contract worthy of the name will include a just-cause clause, protecting workers from arbitrary termination while leaving room for management to act in case of economic necessity or poor job performance. But 93.4% of private sector workers don’t have a union, and serve at the whim of their employers.


Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits “employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.” (But not sexual orientation: Only 21 states have anti-discrimination laws on their books, and it is still legal under federal law to be fired for your sexual preferences or gender identity.) The National Labor Relations Act theoretically protects workers trying to form a union or engage in “other concerted activities for the purpose of…mutual aid or protection,” but the law is notoriously weak and its sanctions rarely deter employers. In 1987 the legislature passed the Montana Wrongful Discharge Act, which states that (after a six-month probationary period) a worker can only be fired for a good reason, like “failure to satisfactorily perform job duties, disruption of the employer's operation, or other legitimate business reason.”

Roughly 150 Americans die on a daily basis as a result of their jobs, a new study from the AFL-CIO has discovered.
In addition to the 50,000 workers that the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates die a year from work-related disease, the union found that about 4,700 workers were killed on the job in 2011. Those numbers combined produce the 150 deaths per day tally. 3.8 million Americans suffer work-related injuries and diseases each year. Experts cited by the AFL-CIO estimate that underreporting may put that number closer to 11 million. At current staffing levels, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration could check the country’s 8 million workplaces once every 113 years.
Workers are a commodity to be had at the lowest price and to be discarded at will. The sustained war on workers has left unions trying to prevent rights from being weakened rather than setting the agenda.

Now they want to take away the 8-hour day and 40-hour week. Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is the law that brought us the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek. Workers literally fought and died to secure these concessions from employers. This law does not prohibit employers from requiring workers to work over 40 hours but obliges employers to pay overtime at an enhanced rate. H.R. 1406, The Working Families Flexibility Act, which lets employers offer "comp[ensation] time", time off, instead of overtime pay which of course reduces the amount workers can earn. You can't use comp time when you want to, only at your employer’s discretion.

Capitalism always, always, always puts downward pressure on wages. The less they pay us to do the work, the more they get to keep. It's simple as that. The capitalist will never give up until unions are abolished and workers have to take whatever work they can get underwhatever working conditions the greedy employer decides to impose.

Tesco's digital slavery chains

Our earlier blog about Amazon revealed the intensity of management control imposed upon them. Workers at the Tesco distribution centre in Dublin are now wearing digital arm-band devices that constantly monitor their performance. Known as arm-mounted terminals (AMTs), workers said that the Motorola devices were used to monitor the performance of 'order pickers', who load supplies, and forklift drivers. They are not used by managers or administrative workers.

The device instructs employees how to pick their orders by scanning barcodes and stacking goods on a trolley. It also has an in-built performance monitor, which grades them every time they collect goods in the warehouse and bring them to a dispatch area. They said they got percentage scores for collection assignments, like loading beer or toilet rolls. The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast.

Workers claim they got lower scores on the rating system if they keyed in that they went to the toilet or took a break but spokesman said there was a 'break' function used to log stoppages for genuine reasons, including going on breaks. "An average of 25 minutes a day has been factored into the system for genuine breaks," he said. "This has been in place since the system was introduced and means that break times do not impact on productivity scores in any way."

One former picker, who did not want to be named, said staff were under huge pressure due to the devices. "You might get 80pc because you took a break, and would have to get 120pc later on to make it up. Some guys were amazing and got averages of 110pc all the time. The guys who made the scores were sweating buckets and throwing stuff around the place."

And you thought that electronic tagging was only for criminals!

Slaves and Robots

Hundreds of people in orange vests are pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle – the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time. They might each walk between seven and 15 miles today. It is almost Christmas and the people working in this building, together with those in seven others like it across the country, are dispatching a truck filled with parcels every three minutes or so. Before they can go home at the end of their eight-hour shift, or go to the canteen for their 30-minute break, they must walk through a set of airport-style security scanners to prove they are not stealing anything. For the local people of Rugeley, Yorkshire any sort of work is better than no work at all, but many have been taken aback by the conditions and bitterly disappointed by the insecurity of much of the employment on offer when Amazon opened a distribution warehouse there.  Glenn Watson, manager of economic development at the district council, is dismayed. “They’re not seen as a good employer. It’s not helpful to our economy; it’s not helpful to the individuals.”  Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, said “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,”

 Inside the warehouse, Amazon employees wear blue badges and the workers supplied by the agencies wear green badges. In the most basic roles they perform the same tasks as each other for the same pay of £6.20 an hour or so (the minimum adult wage is £6.19), but the Amazon workers also receive a pension and shares. A former agency worker said the prospect of winning a blue badge, “like a carrot, was dangled constantly in front of us by management in return for meeting shift targets”. Amazon’s  culture comes from the top. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, told Forbes magazine last year (when it named him “number one CEO in America”): “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove, we’ll settle for intense.”

Amazon recruitment process includes drug and alcohol tests. A global employment agency called Randstad, which had handled the recruitment process for Amazon, arrange his shifts and manage him on the warehouse floor and pay near-minimum wage to new recruits. After three months, if a person has performed well, they could apply to be an Amazon employee, though there was no guarantee they will succeed. Randstad calls this sort of system “Inhouse Services” and describes it as a “flexible work solution designed exclusively for each client to optimise the work force and drive cost effectiveness”. One of the benefits for clients, it says on its website, is the “removal of the administrative burden of recruiting and managing large numbers of staff”. Chris Forde, a professor of employment studies at Leeds university, says arrangements such as Randstad’s with Amazon are becoming increasingly common in Britain. He has encountered situations in which workers on these sorts of contracts make up 90 per cent of a company’s workforce in sectors such as car manufacturing, food processing, hotels and restaurants. “The message [from the agencies] is we are a key intermediary and we can help people back into work, but I think the danger with these big contracts, which are now the bread and butter of most big agencies, is that people just get stuck in these jobs.” Across Britain, the number of people in temporary jobs has swelled 20 per cent since the financial crisis hit in 2008, and the proportion of that group who say they cannot find permanent jobs has increased from 26 per cent to 40 per cent.  Ransdtad said it supplied a number of clients with “onsite-flexible workforce solutions”. It added: “The number of workers required by these clients fluctuates in response to supply and demand. When demand for clients’ products or services is high (for example during the Christmas period) the Randstad partnership allows local people to benefit from short-term work on a temporary contract, to help supplement our clients’ permanent workforce and deliver against order requirements.”

Workers in Amazon’s warehouses – or “associates in Amazon’s fulfilment centres” as the company would put it – are divided into four main groups. There are the people on the “receive lines” and the “pack lines”: they either unpack, check and scan every product arriving from around the world, or they pack up customers’ orders at the other end of the process. Another group stows away suppliers’ products somewhere in the warehouse. Only Amazon’s vast computer brain knows where everything is, because the workers use their handheld computers to scan both the item they are stowing away and a barcode on the spot on the shelf where they put it.  The last group, the “pickers”, push trolleys around and pick out customers’ orders from the aisles. Amazon’s software calculates the most efficient walking route to collect all the items to fill a trolley, and then simply directs the worker from one shelf space to the next via instructions on the screen of the handheld satnav device. Even with these efficient routes, there’s a lot of walking. One of the new Rugeley “pickers” lost almost half a stone in his first three shifts. Employees get blisters from the safety boots some were given to wear, which workers said were either too cheap or the wrong sizes. One former shop-floor manager, who did not want to be named, said he always told new workers to smear their bare feet with Vaseline. “Then put your socks on and your boots on, because I know for a fact these boots are going to rub and cause blisters and sores.”

The efficiency of these warehouses is what enables Amazon to put parcels on customers’ doorsteps so quickly, even when it is receiving 35 orders a second. Every warehouse has its own “continuous improvement manager” who uses “kaizen” techniques pioneered by Japanese car company Toyota to improve prod­uctivity. Marc Onetto, the senior vice-president of worldwide operations, told a business school class at the University of Virginia a few years ago: “We use a bunch of Japanese guys, they are not consultants, they are insultants, they are really not nice … They’re samurais, the real last samurais, the guys from the Toyota plants.” In Rugeley, the person with the kaizen job is a friendly, bald man called Matt Pedersen, who has a “black belt” in “Six Sigma”, the Motorola-developed method of operational improvement, most famously embraced by Jack Welch at General Electric. Every day, the managers in Rugeley take a “genba walk”, which roughly means “go to the place” in Japanese. “We go to the associates and find out what’s stopping them from performing today, how we can make their day better.” Some people also patrol the warehouse pushing tall little desks on wheels with laptops on them – they are “mobile problem solvers” looking for any hitches that could be slowing down the operation. The pressure is intense. Several former workers said the handheld computers, which look like clunky scientific calculators with handles and big screens, gave them a real-time indication of whether they were running behind or ahead of their target and by how much. Managers could also send text messages to these devices to tell workers to speed up, they said. “People were constantly warned about talking to one another by the management, who were keen to eliminate any form of time-wasting,” one former worker added.

Amazon said: “Some of the positions in our fulfilment centres are indeed physically demanding, and some associates may log between seven and 15 miles walking per shift. We are clear about this in our job postings and during the screening process and, in fact, many associates seek these positions as they enjoy the active nature of the work. Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazon employee – managers, software developers, site merchandisers and fulfilment centre associates – and we measure actual performance against those expectations.”

The former shop-floor manager and another worker described a strict “three strikes and release” discipline system – “release” being a euphemism for getting sacked. In the early days, people were “released” frequently and with little warning or explanation, workers said. A very large number were laid off after the first busy Christmas period, some of whom had assumed their jobs would be permanent. It is this job insecurity that has most disappointed Glenn Watson at the district council. “Our definition of a good employer is someone who takes on people and provides them with sustainable employment week in week out, not somebody who takes on workers one week and gets rid of them the next,” he said. The council had understood Amazon would use the first 12 months to gradually build up its own workforce, transferring agency staff on to its payroll, but by last autumn Watson thought there were still only about 200 Amazon employees, with the rest of the workers supplied by Randstad and two smaller agencies. Amazon was supposed to send the council employment data every six months, but it had not done so. “We had no idea Amazon were going to be as indifferent to these issues as they have been, it’s come as a shock to us how intransigent they are.”

“You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form,” said the Amazon manager. “It’s human automation, if you like.” Amazon recently bought a robot company, but says it still expects to keep plenty of humans around because they are so much better at coping with the vast array of differently shaped products the company sells.


Adapted from here

Starbuck's Taxes - Who's paying for them?

So out of the goodness of their hearts (and out of their non-existent profits) Starbucks announce they will voluntarily pay £10 million extrra in tax having previously just paid £8.6m in UK tax over the past 13 years on sales of £3.1bn.  But who really is paying it?

Starbucks staff at their 750 outlets, "baristas",  have been told to sign revised employment terms, which include the removal of paid 30-minute lunch breaks and paid sick leave for the first day of illness. Some will also see pay increases frozen. It also include the removal of cash incentives for becoming manager or partner of the year in favour of the award of a plaque and the removal of a bonus scheme for women returning after they have had a baby because "it is not considered a valued benefit". Even minor perks are being ended such as hampers to new mothers whi instead get a "a card and Starbucks baby grow and bib" while birthday cards are stopped as are congratulations cards on the anniversary of the first four years of service. Starbucks managers have reportedly told staff they must not discuss the new terms, and staff are afraid they could be dismissed if they do so. Other benefits are unchanged. Staff who complete five years of service will continue to receive a pen and the right to take four weeks off without pay.

So who is bearing the cost of the company's increased tax bill?

Unhappy workers

A report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development published today, examines working life in 1952 – and what it is like for workers in this country 60 years later.

Dr John Philpott, the report’s author and chief economic adviser to the institute, said: "People do not seem much happier about their working lives. Many exhibit the symptoms of work-related stress...even though work has changed in ways that could not be imagined in 1952, the UK still shows no sign of becoming the kind of leisure society predicted by the 'end of work' futurologists of yester-year....Whatever the future of work, the lesson of the past six decades is that increased productivity and prosperity isn't enough to enhance the common good in the workplace or society in general."

The report accepted that workers have become more productive over the last 60 years. Despite the same number of hours being worked the value of the goods and services produced by the economy has quadrupled.

Meanwhile in America if a worker has one piece of bad luck, one major financial blow, it means lasting trouble. 43 percent of households in America -- some 127.5 million people -- are liquid-asset poor.

Jennifer Brooks, director of state and local policy at the Corporation for Enterprise Development explained "They're living off their savings. They're at the end of their rope." and don't have enough money saved to weather a significant emergency. If one of these households experiences a sudden loss of income, caused, for example, by a layoff or a medical emergency, it will fall below the poverty line within three months. People in these households simply don't have enough cash to make it for very long in a crisis. "A family that loses its job, that was maybe solidly middle class, in a state where they have restrictive asset tests, is going to have to liquidate all their assets, all their savings for the future" in order to qualify for benefits.

"They don't necessarily realize how close people can be to one interruption to income or one interruption to health benefits," said David Rothstein, the project director for asset building at the non-profit Policy Matters Ohio. "They're one paycheck away from being in debt."

Spending a penny is stealing a penny from the bosses?

Managers are alerted by flashing lights if an employee is away from their desk for a toilet break or other "personal activities" beyond the allotted time. It is the latest example of lavatory rules in Norwegian companies. Last year the country's workplace ombudsman said one firm was reported for making women workers wear a red bracelet when they were having their period to justify more frequent trips to the loo. Another company made staff sign a lavatory "visitors book" while a third issued employees with an electronic key card to gain access to the lavatories so they could monitor breaks.

But unions and workplace inspectors have branded the practice at insurance company DNB as "highly intrusive" and a potential breach of their human rights. Norway's privacy regulator called Datatilsynet has now written to DNB telling them the monitoring system is "a major violation of privacy". It said: "Each individual worker has different needs and these kinds of strict controls deprive the employees of all freedoms over the course of their working day."
The employees union Finansforbundet described the rules as unacceptable. A spokesman added: "Surveying staff to limit lavatory visits, cigarette breaks, personal phone calls and other personal needs to a total of eight minutes per day is highly restrictive and intrusive and must be stopped."

Child-care in capitalism

A third of parents turn down jobs because they cannot afford childcare, according to a study, reported in the Guardian. 40% are considering leaving work because they cannot afford to pay for someone to look after their children Nearly half of people in severe poverty are cutting back on food to afford childcare.

Britain's poorest families are getting into debt because of the high cost of childcare. Parents spend almost a third of their incomes on childcare – more than anywhere else in the world, according to Save the Children and the Daycare Trust. Parents, regardless of income, cannot afford not to work but struggle to pay for childcare, and despite many parents cutting back their spending almost a quarter are in debt because of childcare costs. A quarter of parents in severe poverty have given up work and a third have turned down a job mainly because of high childcare costs.