> City Limits MONTHLY
> http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/articleView.cfm?articlenumber=128
>
> Date: May/ June 2005
>
> MORE IN STORE
>
> When Wal-Mart wants to open new stores, it doesn't give up. What can New
> York do about it? By Liza Featherstone
Excellent article. (And while you're there, tell them not to abandon ship. I just subscribed a month ago. I couldn't believe that story a couple of days ago that they were on the verge of a right wing veer.)
> Wal-Mart is not kind to those who work. In the last several years, it has
> faced large-scale legal actions for sex discrimination, overtime and
> child-labor violations. Even worse, the company pays poverty wages--$8 to
> $10 per hour
One question. Do you know where I can get data on union wages in New York for the UFCW and the RWDSU?
The reason I ask is that I was talking to a guy at a local fruit stand that is unionized by Local 338 of the RWDSU. I was shocked to learn they had a union at all; I'd heard so many stories about arbitrariness and seen such long hours I'd always just assumed there was none.
Anyway, he says he worked there 13 years, the first 10 without a union (which was brought in when a 16 year old Mexican boy died in a conveyor belt accident in 2001.) His conditions before the union were pure sweatshop: 60 hours a week, no time and half for overtime, no paid days off, and wages that were between 9 and 10 dollars an hour at the end of 10 years.
But he said that when the RWDSU came in, his hourly wage actually fell to their minimum of $7.75 an hour. There were 50 cent raises every 6 months, but 3 years later, he said his wages still hadn't risen to his original level.
I wouldn't be surprised if his math is fuzzy here, and that he's going back and forth between per hour and per week. (He said that in his case, the result of time and a half was simply to erase 20 hours -- which was, of course, its original purpose.) And things might look at lot different in a couple years if the raises are steady. But still, it made me really want to get some hard figures on pay scales and actual pay. Because on the surface, this didn't look a lot different than Wal-Mart. And I'd feel much better if I could prove definatively that wasn't true. Does anyone know of a good source for solid data?
Michael