Protesters to Best Buy: ‘Get out of the way so we can have justice’

June 9, 2015 by
Protesters demonstrate outside Best Buy's annual shareholder meeting.

Protesters demonstrate outside Best Buy’s annual shareholder meeting.

 

RICHFIELD – Inside and outside of Best Buy’s annual shareholders meeting today, Minnesotans called on the corporation to stop using its political clout to block policies that improve working families’ lives.

That includes proposed legislation in Minnesota that would provide workers and their families with the stability and security they need to ensure a healthy work-life balance – policies opposed by lobbying groups Best Buy helps fund.

Best Buy plays “an important role in the Chamber of Commerce and other business associations that have been opposing legislation that supports workers’ rights to take care of their families,” Veronica Mendez Moore, an organizer with the Twin Cities worker Center CTUL, told about 100 demonstrators at a rally outside the shareholders meeting.

CTUL, which has been supporting janitors’ campaign to improve wages and working conditions maintained by cleaning contractors that service big-box retailers, organized the protest with faith groups, labor unions and progressive organizations working to build support at the Capitol for basic worker benefits and protections.

The Working Parents Act, introduced by House DFLers last session and backed by labor, stalled after drawing swift opposition from the Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota Retailer’s Association, another Best Buy-led lobbying outfit. The bill pulled together initiatives seeking to crack down on employers who commit wage theft, require fairness in employee scheduling and guarantee workers access to earned sick time and paid family leave.

Leticia Zuniga describes what happened as a delegation of workers and their supporters met with Best Buy executives during the shareholder meeting.

Leticia Zuniga describes what happened as a delegation of workers and their supporters met with Best Buy executives during the shareholder meeting.

Too many of the jobs created during the current economic recovery don’t provide those benefits, janitor Hilario DeLeon told the crowd through a translator.

“Where I work we have no benefits at all,” DeLeon said. “We want to be able to have vacation. We want to be able to have paid sick days.”

DeLeon has cleaned the Target in downtown Minneapolis for seven years, and he said conditions deteriorate as contractors, looking to offer big-box retailers the lowest bid, seek new ways to cut costs. If Best Buy won’t agree to hold contractors to higher standards, he said, the company should at least stop using its clout at the Capitol to oppose raising the floor for everyone.

“We know that Best Buy has been getting in the way of our efforts,” DeLeon said. “We want Best Buy to get out of the way so we … can have justice.”

As protesters rallied outside, a delegation of activists gained access to Best Buy’s shareholder meeting by holding stock in the company or acting as a supportive shareholder’s proxy. Leticia Zuniga, a janitor and CTUL member who cleans Herberger’s, said a three Best Buy executives met with the delegation privately as well.

“We talked a lot about the problems there are in this industry: the rampant wage theft, workers not getting paid on time or with pay stubs, not knowing what hours they’re getting paid for,” Zuniga said. “We asked Best Buy to sign a responsible contractor policy, and they said they’d get back to us in a month.”

Ironically, the janitors who will clean up after today’s shareholders meeting are union members who enjoy many of the benefits workers inside Best Buy’s stores are fighting to win.

Ricardo Chavez, a member of the Service Employees International Union who works inside the corporate headquarters, joined the protest. He earns a fair wage with good benefits, predictable scheduling and access to paid sick days.

“But I know my brothers and sisters that work cleaning Best Buy’s stores right next door don’t have access to any of these benefits,” Chavez said. “Thousands of workers all over the state do not have access to these benefits, and all of us deserve them.”

Indeed, about 1 million workers in Minnesota do not have access to paid sick and safe time to care for themselves or their family members, TakeAction Minnesota Director Dan McGrath said, yet policies requiring employers to provide sick days are generally popular among voters.

“These corporations are created for people to make money,” Pastor Doug Mork of Cross of Glory Lutheran Church said. “They shouldn’t be cutting back our democratic voice.”

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AFSCME members defend public service during Council 5’s Day on Hill rally

March 25, 2015 by
David Ruth, a mental health worker in Cambridge, calls for safe staffing levels at the state's hospitals and group homes during AFSCME Council 5's Day on the Hill rally.

David Ruth, a mental health worker in Cambridge, calls for safe staffing levels at the state’s hospitals and group homes during AFSCME Council 5’s Day on the Hill rally.

 

“Everyone in this room is an expert in public service,” AFSCME Council 5 Executive Director Eliot Seide told nearly 1,000 members of the union during its Day on the Hill rally yesterday. “You’ve forgotten more than (politicians) will ever know.”

After the rally, held at a downtown St. Paul hotel, union members bused to the Capitol, where they met with their legislators to pitch the union’s priorities this session, including:

• New revenue for a long-term, comprehensive investment in the state’s roads, bridges and transit options.

AFSCME members, MnDOT worker John Gaither said, see the disrepair of the state’s infrastructure every day. “We’re here to tell you the need is urgent,” Gaither said.

• Staffing up for safety at state-run prisons and mental health facilities.

David Ruth, who works at a state facility in Cambridge, listed the injuries AFSCME members have suffered on the job, from sexual assault to being stabbed in the eye with a pen. “We as staff expect some level of danger at our jobs, but we are not willing to risk our lives,” Gaither said.

AFSCME members get fired up during Council 5's Day on the Hill rally.

AFSCME members get fired up during Council 5’s Day on the Hill rally.

Other priorities include reinvesting in public services to support Minnesota’s quality of life, protecting retirement security and defined-benefit pensions and passing the Working Parents Act.

The rally’s theme – “Minnesota Rising!” – played to the difference between Minnesota, where Gov. Mark Dayton and DFL legislators have expanded collective bargaining rights and raised taxes on the wealthiest to protect public services, and other Midwestern states. Any mention of Wisconsin, where Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker recently signed Right to Work into law, drew jeers from the crowd.

AFSCME Local 8 President Angela Marlow, a child support agent, told members she used to work in Wisconsin; now she works for Ramsey County.

“Remember that bumper sticker that read ‘Escape to Wisconsin?'” Marlow asked. “Well I escaped from Wisconsin to work in Minnesota.”

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Workers: Fair scheduling measure would restore work-life balance

February 20, 2015 by
Hourly workers listen as Rep. Rena Moran (second from left) describes her bill to bring balance to the state's work scheduling laws.

Hourly workers listen as Rep. Rena Moran (second from left) explains her bill to bring balance to the state’s work scheduling laws.

Pushing back against an upswing in reports of Minnesota workers struggling to meet their employers’ increasingly irregular scheduling demands, a coalition of worker-advocacy groups today unveiled legislation to bring fairness to the state’s workplace scheduling laws.

The House bill, authored by DFL Rep. Rena Moran of St. Paul, would require employers to provide hourly employees with their work schedules 21 days in advance, compensate workers whose shifts are cancelled within a 24-hour window and guarantee workers have access to adequate rest between shifts.

“This bill would make sure that employees who are forced to make themselves available to an employer’s scheduling needs are compensated accordingly and able to count on at least a minimum income every payday,” Moran said at a press conference in St. Paul earlier this week.

[Click here to take action in support the fair scheduling bill by e-mailing your state lawmaker.]

Several low-wage, hourly workers who stand to benefit from the legislation joined Moran, including members of the Twin Cities-based worker center CTUL, Minneapolis-based Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and Working America, the AFL-CIO’s outreach initiative to non-union workers with more than 280,000 members in Minnesota.

Andy Barno-Iversen, a member of Working America, explains the toll "clopening" – working consecutive closing and opening shifts – takes on workers and their families.

Andy Barno-Iversen describes the toll “clopening” – working consecutive closing and opening shifts – takes on workers and their families.

Scrambling to get hours

Workers took turns at the podium venting their frustrations with practices gaining popularity among fast-food, retail and other service-sector employers, from “just-in-time” scheduling that allows managers to call in staff on a moment’s notice to “clopening,” Andy Barno-Iversen’s term for back-to-back shifts that ended late and began early the next morning.

Barno-Iversen described working full-time at a Minneapolis co-op grocery while also studying at the University of Minnesota. Twice each week, he would get home from work at 10 p.m. after closing the store, then go back to work by 4:30 a.m. the next day to open.

“I was exhausted,” the Working America member said. “I ended up dropping out of class because my academic performance suffered so badly. My work performance suffered.”

His department has since eliminated “clopening,” Barno-Iversen said, “but thousands of Minnesota retail workers, students and families do have to deal with those scheduling issues… To amend that is just a simple act of consideration.”

Other hourly workers recalled watching their paychecks shrink after their employers switched from conventional scheduling to on-call, “flex,” or “just-in-time” scheduling.

CTUL member Bobby Brown said his hours at a McDonald’s in Bloomington have dried up to the point where his last paycheck was $14. Ronda Jama, a wheelchair agent at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, used to work four days per week; now she works two – and waits “on call” in case AirServ, her employer, makes more hours available.

“It changed the cycle of our life,” Jama said. “It’s hard because we are on call right now. They call you whenever they want you.”

Bobby Brown's last paycheck from McDonald's amounted to $14.

Bobby Brown’s last paycheck from McDonald’s amounted to $14.

Both Jama and Brown earn minimum wage, $8 per hour. The employers most likely to utilize aggressive scheduling practices, Working America State Director Bree Halverson said, are also most likely to pay low wages.

“Unpredictable hours make economic mobility and achieving the American Dream even harder, especially if you’re already struggling to get by,” Halverson said. “Minnesota families need 21st-century scheduling policies that keep up with the changing nature of today’s workplace.”

‘Freedom and stability’

Moran’s proposal to bring fairness to workers’ schedules is another variation on an encouraging theme at the Capitol this session, with lawmakers looking to provide workers – and their families – with the stability and security they need to ensure a healthy work-life balance.

The day after advocates unveiled the scheduling bill, House DFLers rolled out their Working Parents Act, pulling together earned sick and safe time, wage theft, paid family leave and scheduling bills into an all-inclusive measure.

Moran called scheduling fairness “one brick in a road to a better life.”

“This bill is an important first step toward bringing more freedom and stability to employees who work hard, who want to receive hourly wages and who need to plan for their future and the future of (their) families,” Moran said.

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