Image by Rick Reinhard
We’re currently in a job climate that’s become increasingly fractured. Well paid, full-time employment is declining. Alternatively, low skill, low paying temp work, part time jobs, and independent contracting work is increasing. That means workers are having a tougher time trying to survive economically. It also exacerbates the power imbalance between employers and employees.
When good jobs are hard to find, and wages are depressed, employers can more easily get away with poor treatment of their employees. Workers are also less likely to seek remedies, fearing for their jobs if they speak up. Jobs With Justice, a grassroots organization founded in 1987, fights to level the playing field for workers whose rights are often trampled on by those with more economic power.
Jobs With Justice campaigns for fair wages, a safe work environment, the right to organize, and other workplace rights. The organization recently lead battles for improved labor laws, racial and economic justice, and a higher minimum wage. Their work has had a positive impact on millions of workers through their tireless efforts.
We had a chance to talk to Mackenzie Baris, a Senior Organizer from Jobs With Justice. We asked him about the organization’s hopes, toughest battles, and the most most appalling case of worker mistreatment the organization has taken on recently. He answered those, and other questions in a wide- ranging interview.
The Underemployed Life: What would you say are the core principles of Jobs With Justice?
Mackenzie Baris: At Jobs With Justice, we believe that change comes when working people organize and negotiate together to have greater power in our economy. We also believe in solidarity, and the value of people being there for each others’ struggles.
TUL: Are you contacted often by workers looking for assistance in their battles against management? How does the organization decide which specific issues to fight?
MB: At a local level, our affiliates are sometimes contacted by individuals, and we try to refer them to the right places for support. We focus our efforts on supporting groups who are coming together on the job or trying to make deeper changes in their sector or community. Our affiliates are all coalitions of unions and community, faith and student groups. The members of each coalition decide together what struggles to prioritize, and what strategies to use at the local level. Sometimes, that means supporting a group of employees in organizing or bargaining a contract, or in reclaiming stolen wages from their boss. Sometimes, it means engaging in a policy fight to change standards across an industry or a whole city or state. Wherever working people need us, we’ll be there.
“Rights on the job, safe and dignified working conditions and fair pay are not privileges or rewards or bonuses—they are the basics of what Americans need to thrive.”
TUL: Do you think workers in the country are gaining or losing ground in the workplace, when it comes to their rights?
MB: Our economy is changing fast, and working people are facing challenges like never before. Between difficulty enforcing our hard-won rights at work, union busting, the rise of part-time and contingent work, or not even being able to figure out who your actual boss is, it is a scary climate for working people right now.
In spite of all this, we see real progress and victories when people come together to change their workplaces, and demand a fair return on the work they do. Just in the past few years, multiple cities have agreed to increase their minimum wage to $15 an hour; the administration expanded overtime protections to include more working people; and in-home care providers gained access to Fair Labor Standards Act protections. Multiple states have passed Domestic Workers’ Bills of Rights, and San Francisco enacted a groundbreaking rule granting 40,000 people better work schedules and hours.
TUL: What kind of pushback have you received from corporations you’ve had disagreements with or gone up against?
MB: It’s the same as what working people receive every day on the job. Some corporations will use any means available to try to prevent individuals from coming together in the workplace, to roll back benefits like health care and pensions, or to resist progressive legislation.
Image by Rick Reinhard
TUL: What’s the toughest battle Jobs With Justice is fighting currently, and why?
MB: The biggest challenge I think everyone is wrestling with, is how precarious and unstable so much of the work in our economy is right now: Whether temp work and sub-contracted work, part-time or casual work, off-the-books work, or the so-called gig economy. Employers who are utilizing these arrangements think it’s acceptable to avoid providing the people who work for them with benefits, advance notice of schedules, job security, or full-time work.
TUL: What do you say to people who think fighting for worker’s rights is unimportant or who take the attitude towards workers that- “At least you have a job- it could be worse, you could be unemployed?”
MB: I’d say that employers need the people who manufacture, ship and sell their products, who clean their offices or hotels or homes, and who keep hospitals, schools, airports and governments operating each day.
Without the employees who do these things, businesses would not be able to function. So why should working people not get a fair return on their labor? Rights on the job, safe and dignified working conditions and fair pay are not privileges or rewards or bonuses—they are the basics of what Americans need to thrive.
TUL: What’s the most appalling case of worker mistreatment the organization has taken on recently?
MB: In every campaign, we meet people whose situations are appalling, but I want to lift up one story that I think is both shocking, but unfortunately very common.
For the past few years, we have supported a group of men and women at a company in the D.C. area called Tito’s Contractors who have been coming together in union. Aracely Ramos was employed there for almost three years sorting recyclable plastics from trash. Most weeks, she reported working unpaid overtime, and she and other employees suffered under cruel supervisors
Aracely explained that plant supervisors humiliated employees, and created an unsafe working environment. Supervisors denied working people at the plant, water breaks, bathroom breaks, and the proper equipment to do their jobs. She reported that supervisors threw missed trash at employees, and even suggested that those who request bathroom breaks should wear diapers as they worked. Aracely reported that she and her co-workers were not always given proper safety equipment to do their jobs, and experienced dizziness and nausea as a result. One day in 2011, one of Aracely’s supervisors forced her to do heavy-lifting despite health concerns with her pregnancy. When she protested, she said the supervisor responded that the child was not his or the company’s owner’s, so he had no reason to be concerned.
As the conditions became unbearable, Aracely and others at the plant decided to join together and blow the whistle on these injustices. In September 2013, they reached out to International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) to seek help in improving conditions at the recycling plant. In October 2013, Aracely was fired, along several others. According to Aracely, the company threatened to call immigration authorities on existing employees – a tactic they had used on previous occasions. After hearing these threats, Aracely said that others were then afraid to speak out about their terrible working conditions, because they were told that they could lose their jobs or be deported.
Immigrants are often silenced by the thought of immigration authorities storming into the workplace. They also fear being detained at a facility, and eventually deported away from their families. Yet, they are also afraid to leave the particular job because finding work elsewhere can be daunting as an immigrant.
Image by Rick Reinhard
TUL: To date, what campaign does Jobs With Justice consider its greatest success?
MB: What we consider success is when we have an economy that works for everyone, where everyone has a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, and everyone can come to the table to negotiate a fair deal with their employer. Every victory is deeply meaningful for the working people who are part of it.
TUL: What does Jobs With Justice hope to see more of, and less of, as the struggle for worker’s rights moves forward?
MB: We hope to see less division between economic and racial justice work, and more recognition in the workers’ rights movement of the necessity of working for racial and gender justice. Systemic racism has shaped and continues to shape our economy, and we can’t win an economy that works for everyone without dismantling it.
For more information on Jobs With Justice, you can visit their website by clicking here.