American Sweatshop

Yes, Amazon.com is really convenient and you can buy just about anything there and the Kindle is really cool. But can good progressives continue to buy from them after reading this:

Elmer Goris spent a year working in Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where books, CDs and various other products are packed and shipped to customers who order from the world's largest online retailer.

The 34-year-old Allentown resident, who has worked in warehouses for more than 10 years, said he quit in July because he was frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime. Working conditions at the warehouse got worse earlier this year, especially during summer heat waves when heat in the warehouse soared above 100 degrees, he said.

He got light-headed, he said, and his legs cramped, symptoms he never experienced in previous warehouse jobs. One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers.

[snip]

Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it's like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.

Only one of the employees interviewed described it as a good place to work.

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse sounds like a Republican dream facility -- low-paid workers in unhealthy conditions. Just like the women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, before those pesky unions and "job-killing workplace safety regulations" were adopted. And yet this is what the American workplace is becoming once again -- a place where desperate people go to be mistreated day after day after day, with no hope of advancement, no hope of ever achieving the American Dream, living lives that are nasty, brutal, and short as they try desperately to survive....because if they don't, other equally desperate people will line up to do it.

You want to talk about class warfare? This is where it is -- in places like Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where the Thirty Years War against the middle class and the working poor is coming to fruition.

It's not called "Labor Day" to commemorate the work of hedge fund managers and cost-cutting CEOs

A musical interlude for LABOR day:



















Ten things for which you can thank organized labor:

1. The creation of the middle class in America



2. Employer sponsored health insurance



3. Your pension



4. Forty hour work weeks



5. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)



6. Paid sick leave



7. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)



8. Workers’ Compensation



9. Vacation leave



10. Child labor laws

Enjoy your Labor Day. And let's tip our hat to the people who actually create value in this country (hint: It's not stockbrokers).



UPDATE: Want to know why I didn't feel inspired to write today? Because what else is there to say after Driftglass has spoken?

This is working America under corporate and bankster greed

From David Frum, of all people:

Any questions?

Of course the Republican candidates would answer his questions with more tax cuts to "unleash freedom" for corporations. Yesterday I read a column by the hacktacular Dana Milbank which contained the following piece of idiocy:

The private sector has stabilized, profits have returned, productivity is high, American competitiveness has improved, and large sums of money have accumulated on corporate balance sheets.

The most efficient way to produce jobs, then, is to give the private sector incentives to spend its big pile of cash on new hires. That’s why Obama, last week, was at a community college in Northern Virginia touting little-known policies such as “Skills for America’s Future” and the “Workforce Investment Act.”

Corporations are profitable again. Banks are ridiculously profitable again. All are sitting on what Milbank calls "piles of cash." Milbank makes the mistake of thinking that our nation's employment problem is that we lack the skills corporatins are looking for.

Two anecdotes:

1) Mr. Brilliant recently beat out dozens of other candidates for a job. That's the good news. The bad news is that the company for which he interviewed subsequently laid off a good chunk of its workforce so no offer was made. Back to square one.

2) The husband of a colleague of mine was let go from his job six months before he was supposed to fully vest in the retirement plan. He is in his late forties.

Both of these men are highly skilled people. Mr. B has been out of work for nearly six months. There have been interviews, but no offers. Sometimes it's been that they love him over the phone and the minute they take a look at his over-50 self, his candidacy for the job is over.

Don't tell me that there aren't skilled people in this country. Don't tell me there aren't people who can learn on the job. I got my current job right before the economy went into the crapper. My department was being rebuilt from scratch, and I don't delude myself for one minute that it's because of my great skills in the area in which my department focuses. At that point, I had a pulse and could put two sentences together and I think at that point it was enough. Six months later I was thrown into a coordinating role for the most difficult projects in the division, and nearly three years later I know an awful lot about cancer. I learned everything on the job. Hire smart people, and give them a bit of breathing room to grow, and they will work their guts out for you (which is why you don't see me blog lately -- I am trying to figure out how I will be able to stay awake for 48 hours straight to get my project to testing on time this Monday).

It's not about "incentives" or tax cuts. It's about greed and the destruction of the middle class The people running businesses in the government and in the chattering classes simply do not understand, or understand full well and don't give a rat's ass, that it is not stockpiles of cash that create jobs, nor is it the goodness of company owners and executives. Demand creates jobs. When people can afford to buy your products, or products that contain what you make, or require your service to be created, demand increases and so does hiring. I don't know why this concept is such a difficult one for our political and chattering classes to understand.

Are we at a tipping point?

A stimulus that seems to finally be showing signs of breaking up the job drought logjam just a wee, tiny bit. A health care reform bill that isn't great, but ought to be a start towards more affordable health care for all. These are things that were labeled "liberal overreach" by conservatives and other reactionaries, and the media.

So what, then, do you say about investigating women who have miscarriages, or forcing them to listen to rants by Christofascist zombies before they can get an abortion, or about threatening to strip opposition state Senators of their seats so you can stack it with members of your own party and elmininate even the ILLUSION of choice that we currently have? What do you say about the gutting of education, or health care programs for the poor, of cuts in funding for meals for housebound seniors? If what we're seeing from the Republicans isn't overreach, what is?

In Wisconsin, it seems to be regarded as overreach, because there is the biggest case of buyer's remorse up there since the first unfortunate sap in the late 1960's bought the first Chevy Vega off the assembly line:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to strip public employee unions of most of their collective bargaining rights appears to be so unpopular, that a Rasmussen poll now finds that almost 60% of likely Wisconsin voters disapprove of his job performance.

That finding shows just how quickly Walker -- who was elected to his first term last November with 52% of the vote -- has sunk just in his first two months in office. And it comes one day after Rasmussen released results from the same poll, all of which showed public opinion firmly on the side of the unions in the labor rights battle that has deadlocked the state capitol for the past few weeks.

In the poll, 57% of respondents said they disapprove of Walker's job performance -- including 48% who say they strongly disapprove. Meanwhile, only 43% said they approve of the job Walker is doing.

Not surprisingly, respondents who said they belong to a public union sided heavily against Walker, with roughly eight in ten giving him negative marks on job performance. Yet not only were public sector union members opposed to Walker, but a majority of private sector union members also disapproved of the governor by a 53% to 43% margin.

Also interesting to note -- the overwhelming opposition from people with children in Wisconsin public schools. Sixty-seven percent of people in that demographic disapprove of Walker, including 54% who strongly disapprove.

Could it possibly that people are looking up from beating people just like themselves to a pulp and are stopping to look up the ladder at the guy lifting the twenties out of their back pockets? Ratings for cable news indicate that this just might be so:

Yesterday, another milestone was reached. The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC drew 39,000 more viewers in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. Beck did manage to draw more total viewers, but even that statistic is revealing. It shows that Beck’s audience is comprised of only 21% of the young demo. That compares to Maddow’s 31%.

This is further evidence of Beck’s accelerating collapse. Last week it was reported that Beck declined 32% (25-54) and 26% (total viewers) year-to-year for the month of February. And that’s on top of a January year-to-year drop of 50% (25-54) and 40% (total viewers).

The public is obviously tiring of this manic-paranoid’s freak show. As a result, many staunch conservatives are becoming bolder with regard to their criticisms of Beck. And some are even recognizing that Beck may be just the tip of the iceberg and that anyone who hitches their wagon to Beck is equally deserving of ridicule and revulsion. That applies particularly to Beck’s primary benefactors, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, but also to those who work with and/or defend Beck. They will all learn that this stench is unremitting.

As for Maddow, this is just one day, so it will take some time to see if her strength continues. Pessimists will whine that Maddow’s primetime scheduling gives her an advantage, but the fact is that this is the first time she has outdrawn Beck and that makes it significant. For now she deserves to celebrate and I congratulate her.

Me too.

Some music to go with the pizza

For the state workers of Wisconsin:

Billy Bragg's version of this always reminds me of the OLD "Majority Report" show:

The Greatest Pizzeria in the History of Pizza

For the edification of those not from New Jersey: Here in the Garden State, we take our pizza seriously. This state, which IS the home of The Sopranos, may be the pizza capital of the world. I don't know how we do it, but this state manages to have a pizzeria on practically every corner. My town is an exception, but that's only because our "downtown" consists of a 1/3-empty strip mall where the local pizza guy packed up and left to go to upstate New York only because the rent was too damn high.

Just an example: In Westwood, New Jersey, within a two-block radius, you have Lisa's Pizza, Pompilio's, and Tony D's. A new pizzeria just opened nearby. For a while last summer, you could have started with a thin-crust pie at the Mountain House (now closed), crossed the street for ta cheesy slice at Tony D's, then crossed a parking lot to Banchetto Feast for an individual gourmet pie. And that's without even going to that 2-block radius. Go up the main drag to Hillsdale, and you have even more.

It's fun to poke fun at places real and imagined that think they know how to make pizza, which here in New Jersey means any place outside the New York metropolitan area. I've had Chapel Hill pizza, for example, and while it's passable pizza, it lacks the chewiness of crust that gives real Sopranos-country pizza its, well, pizza-ness.

But today I'm announcing that the greatest pizzeria in the history of pizza is located in Madison, Wisconsin (via Yellow Dog):

People have been calling in pizza orders to Ian's on State St all week from the around the country to have them delivered to protesters in the the Capitol rotunda. Today, it reached critical mass. I read this from a local Facebook friend (who I also saw today at the Square):

"Ian's Pizza on State has shut down operations to the public and is now only taking donation orders for pizza's for the protesters. They have received pizza order donations from across the US, Eygpt, Europe - all around the world - to support the protesters. Unbelievable!"

They apparently already have enough orders to deliver to the Rotunda to keep them busy all night. Keep in mind that this is a Saturday night, already one of their busiest.

Via, via, via a bunch of people here in Madison.

If you want to support the efforts of Ian's Pizza to keep those fighting for workers fed, read here, then pick up addresses for sending checks here follow the instructions here.

Seriously, dude...Mac and cheese pizza? Really?

UPDATE: More....

And the Facebook page...

A sleeping giant awakens in Wisconsin

Here in New Jersey, where property taxes on even a modest house often run upwards of $8,000 a year, Chris Christie's jihad against public sector workers has been met with either applause or crickets. If my own community is any indication, New Jerseyans care only about youth sports and nothing else. They don't put together than when the snow is plowed, it's a public worker who does it. Or when the potholes are fixed, it's a public worker who does it. They support their community's schools and praise THEIR children's teachers, but want OTHER communities' teachers to get screwed. Perhaps it's that there are so many Wall Street workers in the state, or the reality that so many governors have been stiffing the public pension fund for so many years that the problem may well be intractable. But where I live, these workers are silently taking it. And as a result, Chris Christie is touted more as the GOP Flavor-of-the-Month for 2012:

...despite that most of his budget-cutting is so far just bluster, as the state's bond rating has just been cut.

Not so in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of state workers, perhaps inspired by the sight of large numbers of people amassing to force change, have gathered in front of, and in many cases, even IN, the state house, to protest the radical move by Wisconsin's teabagger governor Scott Walker to summarily remove the state workers' right to collective bargaining.

Unions make convenient punching bags. My own experiences with being a union member have hardly been edifying. I spent an entire summer after high school on a picket line in front of the Elm Street A&P (now a Trader Joe's) in order to preserve my ability to work summers there while in college. When my job at Standard & Poor's was a Newspaper Guild job, and my boss wanted to promote me to a non-union job, the shop steward blocked the promotion, despite the fact that I would be replaced by someone in the union. There are unions, and there are unions. In some cases, like mine, you are simply working for another level of management just trying to protect its own interests and not caring one whit for yours. But when you see things like Republican state senators trying to gut child labor laws and a Republican outgoing president rushing through a rule to make it more difficult for the government to regulate toxic substances that adversely affect workers on the job, you know what ultimately all this demonization of public workers is about. It's not ultimately about saving taxpayer money, it's about making sure that not one worker anywhere in the country has any say against an onslaught of corporate exploitation and greed. If workers have to develop life-threatening illnesses so people have microwave popcorn to eat while watching streaming movies, so be it.

Rachel Maddow talked with Russ Feingold last night about the demonization of public sector workers:

If you're lucky enough to still have a job; if you're paid well, maybe you just got promoted, you feel pretty secure -- if you think that you aren't expendable and jettisoning you onto the scrap heap of 99-ers isn't something that can happen if it means getting the company through the giant maw of Wall Street greed through another quarter, guess again. And the next time you demonize a public sector worker, go read about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then come back and tell me that unions have been an unmitigated evil.