In the name of beer sales and taco Tuesday nights, Cinco de Mayo has morphed from a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle into a lucrative marketing opportunity for corporate America. Cinco de Mayo’s fight night—a stage for high-profile fights and staggering paydays, with renowned headliners like Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., generating millions in revenue—has, too, become a cash grab for the boxing industry.

This Cinco de Mayo weekend, Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez, this era’s top earner, is scheduled to take on Jaime Munguía and defend his super middleweight world titles. Canelo, who is heavily favored to win, will earn a guaranteed purse of an estimated $35 million. Munguía will come away with a pretty payday, too.

But another class of boxers goes unnoticed: opponents, the unsung heroes of the boxing world whose job it is to battle it out to prop up superstar fighters.

Boxing employs opponents to build up the winning records of the fighters known as prospects, who sit below contenders and world champions within the hierarchy of the sport. The industry considers prospects, who have promising futures, investments to protect. Prospects often enjoy support from major promoters, including safeguards such as careful placement in matches meant to assure their success.

Opponents, in contrast, are used as fodder, expected to lose while receiving very little pay—all to facilitate the ascent of the very tiny sliver of fighters who hit it big. There are 24,612 male and 2,192 female registered professional boxers worldwide. With 17 weight classes, each with four world championship titles, there are only 136 world championship slots. Less than 1% of males and only about 3% of females reach these lofty heights.

People toil for little pay with success unlikely in many pursuits: acting, music, electoral politics. But the sting is especially harsh for boxers, who face constant physical peril in a business uniquely primed to exploit. In this winner-take-all industry, fighters lose through literal defeats in the ring and through material setbacks in the economy. As one boxer described it to me, opponents are workhorses sent to the slaughterhouse.

Weigh-in for a 2023 Osaka event, at the offices of the Japan Boxing Commission. Courtesy of author.

California usually regulates the most boxing matches of any U.S. state and has made strides to protect fighters, but pay disparity for opponents persists. In a forthcoming report from UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute, Abel Valenzuela Jr., José Hernández, and I analyzed compensation data from the California State Athletic Commission.

In 2021, over half of the 526 regulated boxing matches in California were four- and six-rounders, the prospect-developing bouts in which opponents are most likely to fight. The California State Athletic Commission requires a minimum compensation of $100 per round for professional boxers, who might train four to eight weeks for a bout. A minimum wage worker in California, earning $16 per hour, grosses around $2,773 for a month of work. But in 2021, the median compensation for a four-round fight was just $1,500.

Opponents face further precarity due to their classification as independent contractors, which makes them ineligible for work benefits, and the protections of federal, state, and local labor standards. What’s more, fighters are expected to pay their managers between a tenth and a third of their gross earnings, and their trainers a tenth as well. A four- to eight-week training camp can cost fighters anywhere from $200 to $2,000. Some opponents actually lose money on a fight.

Though they are expected to lose, boxing opponents have their reasons for fighting. Some are driven by a passion and love for the sport, and their sense of belonging within the boxing community. For others, being a boxer brings them status, visibility, and recognition. Opponents supplement their income with other jobs. One boxer told me it’s better to be a McDonald’s worker and be a boxer than to just work at McDonald’s. The status of being a prizefighter, regardless of their success in the ring, affords opponents with dignity, pride, and purpose.

In 2022, I interviewed Derrick*, an opponent from northern California with a winning percentage of 19%, in 26 fights. Derrick recounted fighting three times in a single year, earning just under $5,000. In the third of those bouts, he fought with an injured eye, resulting in a detached retina that sidelined him for over a year.

Despite the limitations of his peripheral vision after eye surgery, Derrick continues to fight. Knowing that he’s expected to lose only fuels his determination to fight harder, and aim for unexpected victories. “I’m not just going to stand there and just get hit,” he told me. “I’m someone who will go out there and give it to you. Someone who will go out there and fight you and not just take an easy loss.” This mindset embodies resilience and a refusal to be defeated easily.

The pursuit of dignity, pride, and purpose is inspirational. But it should not get in the way of recognizing the exploitation that persists in the brutal world of boxing.

This weekend’s cash cow, Canelo, became a world champion by beating underpaid opponents in his early career—foes carefully chosen because they were fighters he could easily beat, and thus build up his experience and record. In his first eight fights, Canelo won seven matches and tied another; collectively, the eight fighters he faced had a losing record of nine wins, 16 losses, and one draw. (Miguel Vazquez, whom Canelo defeated twice, is the exception; he eventually became a world champion.) Canelo’s career was built on their labor.

I don’t single out Canelo to place blame, but rather to illuminate systemic issues within boxing. Most boxing fans are content with knowing only a handful of celebrity boxers like Canelo, Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, and Ryan Garcia. But it takes tens of thousands of underpaid fighters to maintain the ecosystem that allows the stars to thrive, and the rest of us to enjoy mega-fight spectacles. As consumers of the sport, we must remember them on big match weekends and work to improve their working conditions.  

The post The Unsung Heroes of the Boxing World appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In the U.S., there is a chasm between what the labor laws say and what workers experience as their everyday realities. That’s because employment here is based on private contractual law, or agreements between two parties—and the deeply misguided assumption that those two parties have equal bargaining power.

We need to bridge that chasm. Doing so will require stronger unions; more aggressive legislation by Congress; more resources for, and enforcement by, local and federal agencies; and changes in our courts, which have been hostile to labor enforcement and unions.

Until all that happens, the best model we have for enforcing labor laws is in California.

You could call it the California Model of Co-Enforcement. Or you might call it the San Francisco Model, because that’s where it started. Whatever you call it, the idea is this: Since governments lack the capacity to enforce the laws by themselves, they must work in tandem with entities that have long histories of efforts to empower workers, like S.F.’s Chinese Progressive Association and Filipino Community Center.

Through co-enforcement, government agencies enable the worker centers to pursue the pay, rights, and fair treatment workers are entitled to under the law, but that they don’t always get in employer-friendly legal systems.

The co-enforcement model did not appear overnight. It took years of workers organizing, building, and winning to create it. Co-enforcement supplemented the state’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), passed in 2003, that “gives workers a fighting chance in court” to confront their employers’ wrongdoing, according to a UCLA Labor Center report.

Now, the model is threatened. Business groups have bankrolled a ballot initiative that would all but eliminate workers’ rights under PAGA. If the initiative were to pass, it would deaden the state labor agency’s ability to contract with non-governmental entities or attorneys to enforce worker protections against violating employers. And that would not only threaten the progress workers have made under PAGA—it would threaten the co-enforcement model itself.

The story of the California Model starts at the turn of the 21st century, with the closure of San Francisco garment factories. Community organizations that had focused on organizing these factories, especially the Chinese Progressive Association, began reaching out to workers in other low-wage job sectors. Realizing the common struggles across trades, the city’s worker centers banded together and fomented a movement that led San Francisco voters to approve a local minimum wage law in 2003.

The minimum wage catalyzed San Francisco’s development into the site of the broadest range of worker protection laws of any municipality in the United States. Among the city’s worker mandates are paid sick days, a health care coverage mandate, protections for formerly incarcerated workers, secure scheduling, paid parental leave, pay equity, and time and space for lactation.

To enforce these new laws, San Francisco extended investigative and enforcement powers to its Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, known as OLSE. But even with a staff that had grown to two dozen, OLSE couldn’t investigate and enforce every violation of these labor standards. So, in 2006, the city established its novel model of co-enforcement, a series of formal collaborations with community partners that had a history of supporting workers, such as the Chinese Progressive Association.

The idea behind co-enforcement was simple. Community partners already served as important anchors for marginalized workers. Now, they could build on that past work and train those workers to identify, report, and fight back against wage theft and other violations. OLSE had a particular interest in empowering low-wage, immigrant, and limited-English-proficiency workers to target their efforts in communities where wage theft is most likely to occur.

As OLSE created and boosted funding for these contracts with community partners, the initiative became known as the “community collaborative.” I was once involved in overseeing these contracts and the network of partnerships. The partners included the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Dolores Street Community Services (which had a long history of assisting refugees, homeless people, AIDS patients and LGBT people), Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, Young Workers United, La Raza Centro Legal (a half-century old advocate for the Bay Area’s Latinos), and the Filipino Community Center, which had been founded in 2004 to support Filipino airport screeners who had been laid off.

One of the victories that emerged from San Francisco’s co-enforcement model was a $4.25 million settlement with the popular dim sum restaurant Yank Sing, which was forcing workers to work 10-plus hour days without breaks, stealing tips from workers, and belittling an otherwise vulnerable workforce almost every day. With help from the Chinese Progressive Association, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, and UNITE HERE Local 2, which assisted with strategic research, the workers not only won unpaid wages but also achieved a workplace transformation for the restaurant’s nearly 300 employees.

The changes included meal and rest breaks, paid sick days, wages higher than the local minimum (including a 5% raise for non-tipped workers), non-mandated holiday pay and vacation pay, full health coverage with no deductibles, and the right to take up to four weeks of approved time off without risking their jobs—something many workers needed in order to visit families in China. The settlement even included an apology.

Since then, San Francisco’s co-enforcement approach has spawned imitators. Beginning in 2013, several other cities (among them New York City, Seattle, Oakland, San Jose, and Emeryville) developed offices similar to OLSE, and seeded co-enforcement partnerships with local community organizations.

In 2016, the state got in on the co-enforcement action. The California Labor Commissioner’s Office—then led by the pioneering labor lawyer Julie Su, who is today the acting U.S. labor secretary—formed the California Strategic Enforcement Partnership. Rather than wait for the long and often futile process of filing complaints, and conducting hearings and trying to collect judgments for unpaid wages, the state began using co-enforcement to target wage theft in six low-wage industries: agriculture, car washes, construction, janitorial, residential home care, and restaurants.

The state partnered with the National Employment Law Project and 14 workers’ rights and legal advocacy organizations. Among the initiative’s most publicized successes were enforcement actions for harsh treatment and illegally low pay at the Los Angeles-area car washes.

This new model of workers’ rights enforcement has made California a labor enforcement laboratory, and at the right time. As other major California cities have followed San Francisco’s lead—passing minimum wage laws and other worker protections and supporting enforcement—they have empowered workers, influenced industry practices, and found ways to build a more sustainable enforcement system throughout the state.

Co-enforcement is necessary because of weak federal labor laws, and dangerously low rates of unionization. (One study by the Economic Policy Institute concluded that less than 2% of the nearly $50 billion in wages stolen annually is ever recovered by workers.) The co-enforcement models have inspired other vehicles for worker empowerment.

When the pandemic hit, it was the S.F. co-enforcement model that inspired the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) to partner with 61 community organizations throughout the state and create the COVID-19 Workplace Outreach Project (CWOP). This government-community partnership deployed “trusted messengers” to those frontline workers, to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all citizens. Similarly, the Domestic Worker Rights Education and Outreach Program (DWEOP) ensures that housekeepers and nannies—workers who unfortunately do not enjoy the right to unionize—nevertheless can be educated about and trained in their labor rights and their employers’ responsibilities.

The co-enforcement model has some challenges. Building relationships between workers and the officials of government agencies—both of whom are busy working, and not in the same places—can be hard. Government procedures that require confidentiality can be difficult to square with the community’s desire for transparency. But the deeper the co-enforcement model has taken root, the better the outcomes that have emerged—for business, consumers, the agency, and for workers themselves.

There have been many promising lessons. One is that such collaborations render government officials more knowledgeable about labor violations, and sophisticated in their approach to enforcement. The second is that the state agency can only fulfill its mission with the support of community partners (which is why the November 2024 ballot initiative to gut the Private Attorneys General Act is such a threat). The most important aspect of a co-enforcement model is that it enables an organized and informed workforce to demand and attain compliance with the labor standards to which they are entitled under law.

Co-enforcement provides direct connection, funding, and legitimacy that can be game-changing for empowering workers. It also provides enforcement agencies with a trove of new education and connections to the underground economy. Co-enforcement is a win-win-win for workers, for community organizations, and for government agencies seeking effective and efficient ways to enforce laws in the low-wage sectors.

We need this California model of win-win-win to go national.

The post How San Francisco Became a Labor Enforcement Laboratory appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Rideshare driving can be the right job for the right person, but you should also know the drawbacks.

On and off for nearly 10 years I have been a rideshare driver for both Uber and Lyft here in Hollywood. I’ve worked early mornings, late nights, and around concert venues. I’ve even driven passengers around Coachella a couple of times.

I have seen many changes from both companies in that time, along with new laws that have drastically changed what picking up passengers in one’s personal vehicle is all about.

For example, it wasn’t long ago that drivers had no idea where the trip was going until the passenger was in the car and we started the ride on our app. Not only that, but canceling rides and declining rides frequently could get you tossed off the platform.

Today, the driver has more control. You can see where the trip is headed before you even accept a ride, and you can decline as many as you want with no blowback.

This is not because the companies took drivers’ needs into consideration. It’s because, in their quest to prove to regulators that drivers are not their employees, they were forced to stop acting like employers. If we’re independent contractors, that means they can’t punish us for when or where we work.

Never think for a minute that the giants care all that much about drivers, our safety, or our financial well-being. As drivers’ earnings continue to decline while earnings for the companies go up—as noted in a recent Forbes article—neither of the rideshare giants have shown much concern for drivers. Keep in mind that both companies have aggressively and publicly been working on ways to use robot cars to replace humans.

Most drivers last 90 days or fewer. It has been like that for years, and neither company seems interested in improving that churn because every day new drivers sign up. But that shouldn’t deter you.

One of the top reasons drivers love the gig is because you have the freedom to work when you want, and the ability to drive where you want to go.

Let’s say you’re a driver and you want to go up to Santa Barbara this weekend. Conceivably you could only accept trips heading north and get paid for the journey. Obviously, it will take longer to get to Santa Barbara than if you were driving just yourself. But the rides will more than cover the gas you’ll use, and you might even have some good conversations. Usually, passengers are wonderful.

Of the numerous tips I have for driver colleagues, the first is to be prepared. Have water and snacks for yourself. Have a phone charger that works on multiple devices—not just iPhones—for passengers. Have $20 in ones and fives in case someone wants to tip you in cash because you’re incredible and won them over.

Store a towel, barf bags, and a warm jacket in your clean trunk. Keep your gas tank at least half full, because you never know when someone might want to go far, quickly, in an offer you can’t refuse.

In over 8,000 trips I’ve driven, I’ve only had to stop for gas once. It wasn’t just embarrassing because it made me look unprofessional in front of the passenger. I learned that if you stop the car for more than a few minutes, Uber will call and text both you and your passenger to make sure neither of you are being assaulted. That’s well-intentioned, but annoying for everyone.

Avoid picking up people at bars or big parties. One of the worst things that can happen is that a drunk passenger gets sick. There are plenty of folks who need rides in your city and more than enough drivers. Choose wisely. If they come stumbling down the driveway needing assistance to stand upright, do not feel guilty jetting off before they get too close to the car.

Have a dash cam. Sometimes driving is wonderful and funny, but sometimes it’s scary and unsafe. Yes, these companies know where you and your passenger are, but in the heat of the moment you are nevertheless alone. Even if the dash cam only has a minute of video and audio, it will help if you need evidence that you did nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, you don’t really know the identity of that person in the back seat. Neither Uber nor Lyft require passengers to use their real names as their display names on the app, and “J” or “Baby” or “Junior” won’t be much help if you need to talk to the authorities after an altercation and they ask you the passenger’s name.

Watch informative YouTube channels like “The Rideshare Guy” and be sure to check out “Show Me The Money Club” videos where two experts discuss strategies and changes each week.

Take notes at the end of each day, and take a photo of your odometer/trip meter so at the end of the month you can write down how many miles you drove in a little journal for your taxes. You can write off a lot of things while driving (like your cellphone, music streaming subscriptions you play for the passengers, and water you might provide) but you definitely want proof, especially for mileage.

Another important tip is, ironically, to forget about tips. Passengers do not tip often, well, reliably, or in a predictable manner. Over the years, Uber has gone from encouraging passengers not to tip and pretending the tip was included to reluctantly adding a tip button to the screen.

It is so clear that if they are not getting a cut of something, they have zero desire to encourage it even if it means rewarding their best drivers. Uber and Lyft arrange billions of trips a year, but they have yet to show they care about the quality of those trips.

But you can still care. Have a clean car: Go to a car wash frequently and take a vacuum to the carpets, seats, and trunk. Have hand sanitizer for both you and your passengers.

Another thing to do is confirm with the passenger where the trip is going. You can do it casually as part of the conversation, but you need this info because it also confirms that the correct person is in your car. Yours might not be the only white Prius outside the Hollywood Bowl, and you don’t want the wrong person to put in their ear pods and fall asleep, only to leave you both very sad when you discover a half-hour later that you are far from where they wanted to be.

Final tip: I don’t talk about politics, sex, religion, tips, or drugs. Most trips are less than 30 minutes long. If they want to talk, let them do most of it. Talking about oneself is most people’s favorite thing to do. You’ll be shocked and delighted by what these strangers will tell you if you let them.

No matter where you are driving, you have a great opportunity to get paid to see parts of your city that you’ve never seen and to hear stories from the mouths of beautiful human beings who, collectively, have traveled the globe and have ended up with you. Let them sing their songs.

Which has been known to happen—literally—on some of the best rides I’ve had.

The post Tips and Tricks From an Uber Driver appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

What’s a good job for formerly incarcerated people?

When people in the corrections field are asked that question, you often hear this mantra: Get a job, any job. The idea is that work will reduce your risk of going back behind bars. As a result, people coming out of prison feel pushed to take crappy jobs that have difficult schedules, low pay, no benefits, or poor working conditions.

That’s bad advice. In my research with other scholars, we’ve found that formerly incarcerated people just churn through jobs like that. Indeed, taking a bad job doesn’t protect you from recidivism or the other struggles too often faced by the formerly incarcerated. In one study, looking at formerly incarcerated young men in Michigan, over one-quarter of people coming out of prison experienced persistent desperation and struggle, including periods of homelessness; another one-third had intermittent periods of desperation, and struggle for survival.

Instead, we need to think of work for the formerly incarcerated the same way that we think of jobs for anyone without a lot of recent work experience or education. That means formerly incarcerated people need the same things from jobs that everyone does: a living wage, a job ladder to allow for the acquisition of skills and promotion, and stability, especially in scheduling.

When you understand this, you can see why we’ve made only slow progress in employment for formerly incarcerated people.

There have been some gains. Largely due to a tight labor market, we’re getting more incarcerated people in the door. Employers need more workers, so some businesses have been more open to hiring people with criminal records. Also, governments and nonprofits are offering more reintegration programs that include job training.

Changes in laws may have helped, too—like “ban the box” laws that prevent employers from asking job applicants on their applications whether they’ve ever been convicted of a felony. These laws were a response to a surge in harsh sentencing laws and mass incarceration during the 1980s and 1990s.

But “banning the box” isn’t enough. First, employers can still conduct background checks—they just need to wait to do so until later in the hiring process, usually once a provisional hiring decision has been made. Second, when formerly incarcerated people do get jobs, they can have trouble holding onto them. This is partly because formerly incarcerated people often end up in the least desirable jobs, which experience considerable turnover among all employees, not just those with criminal records. The formerly incarcerated often face other barriers to stable employment, too, like housing insecurity, health problems, and parole supervision by a punitive justice system.

And even when formerly incarcerated employees manage to settle in and succeed in their jobs, moving up is tricky. Going up a job ladder is difficult for people with criminal records. Indeed, even moving laterally or diagonally can be challenging within a company, with different bosses having different attitudes. It’s even harder when getting ahead means changing firms. The standards and scrutiny of a candidate with a record are different for entry-level jobs than for supervisory positions. Sometimes, skills training or licensing programs, which people must complete to advance, maintain prohibitions on those with criminal records.

Changes in corporate structure also make upward mobility difficult. It used to be more common for people to rise from the entry-level to upper management of a company. Today’s most profitable and dynamic companies often rely on high-skill or high-education workers. Formerly incarcerated people who work at such companies might well start out working for contractors, as janitors or cafeteria workers. What is their path to becoming employees and rising?

Companies need to do more to support formerly incarcerated workers and create internal job ladders. There are also many ways public policy can assist formerly incarcerated people in their job paths and career trajectories. California’s openness in this area makes it an important laboratory.

I’ve seen possibilities in the research I’ve done with other scholars, based on huge data sets on thousands of young men in the state of Michigan during the 2000s. We tracked these young men for many years after they left prison.

Our findings suggest that California, and other states open to reform, can help in many ways: through greater housing supports (to prevent residential stability), through mental health and substance abuse supports, and through changes to harmful parole systems that often prioritize surveillance and punishment over reintegration. Indeed, my research suggests that people who do best after leaving prison combine multiple sources of support—including employment, public benefits, and support from their social networks and families.

States can make parole less intrusive and more flexible, to meet the needs of workers. Too often, parole involves surveillance and mandatory check-ins that can disrupt job schedules. It also can impose short-term custodial sanctions—like being sent back to jail temporarily—that cost the formerly incarcerated their jobs, housing, and income.

California and other states also could do more to integrate formerly incarcerated people into higher education. Formerly incarcerated people understand the importance of education for success in the labor market. In our Michigan study, we found that more than one-quarter of the young men enrolled in college sometime after leaving prison.

Higher education doesn’t just help with employment. It provides intellectual development, opportunities to establish pro-social peer groups, new social identities, and a sense of belonging and purpose. Research shows it also reduces the likelihood of recidivism.

Changes being made within prisons provide new reasons to be optimistic. Incarcerated students are now eligible for Pell grants from the federal government, making it possible for community colleges and other post-secondary institutions to create new college and training programs in prison. And organizations like the Petey Greene Program, where I serve on the board, are pioneering new educational programs to help those serving time in prisons and jails prepare for college-level study.

When they come home from prison, formerly incarcerated students need more support services, such as academic and financial counseling to succeed, just like other low-income and first-generation students. Colleges should also open eligibility for campus housing or work-study programs, which sometimes bar students with records. Community colleges could help by incorporating more job skills into classes and integrating paid internships since formerly incarcerated students often have to support themselves and their families while they go to school. Also, parole should treat college attendance like employment, making parole less onerous and shorter for people who complete degrees or certificates.

Making such commitments will enrich colleges and universities. At UC Berkeley, where I teach, the Berkeley Underground Scholars, an organization of students incarcerated or impacted by the justice system, have excelled in academics and leadership. More universities have begun similar programs for formerly incarcerated students.

The goal of all such policies is to help formerly incarcerated people find the right job, and not have to settle for just any job.

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California workers’ rights are bolstered by some of the country’s strongest labor legislation, mandating higher minimum wages in many sectors, increased sick days, and other protections. But around the state, “you see quite a bit of suffering” among low-wage workers, Zócalo California columnist and democracy editor Joe Mathews noted Wednesday night.

Mathews was moderating an event on the Capitol steps in Sacramento for the statewide Zócalo Public Square series supported by The James Irvine Foundation, “What Is a Good Job Now?” Many seemingly well-protected workers, he said, deal with wage theft, unpaid overtime, dangerous working conditions, discrimination, and rising employer retaliation.

What has to happen for laws to work on the ground, and why do they fail? The problems are complex, but the solution is usually communication and collaboration, said a panel of three speakers who focus on fairness in the workplace.

Mathews opened the discussion by asking, “What’s the gap between our legislation—our intentions, the policies we put in place—and the realities on the ground?”

Sara Fee, a founding member of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United and a warehouse worker at the Amazon air hub at the San Bernardino International Airport, said, “The gap is enforcement.” Worker power and organizing can help close that gap, and laws give organizers a place to start—but laws are difficult for workers themselves to enforce. For one thing, it’s not clear where complaints should go; human resources, she noted, works to limit company liability. Fee was lucky enough, she said, to have the help of the nonprofit Warehouse Worker Resource Center when she took action against Amazon.

California Labor Commissioner assistant chief Daniel Yu said that there are not enough investigators to cover every single violation in California, so his office focuses on making “each enforcement action more than the specific action itself.” For example, recovering wages for one group of workers gets them the money they are owed while simultaneously putting the employer—and other employers in the same sector—on notice, and offering worker education and outreach.

Mathews asked California State Senator Maria Elena Durazo if the state government is having conversations about the need to allocate more funds to enforcement.

Illustration by Soobin Kim.

Durazo said that unfortunately, budget conversations are typically one-sided: Lawmakers discuss how much something is going to cost, but “we don’t talk about how it’s going to save us from having to provide food or rental vouchers or all those other things” that the government pays for.

Bringing the discussion back to the ground level, Mathews asked where workers who feel they are being treated unfairly can start—what kind of complaint do you file, where do you go, and how do you get educated?

Yu, who acknowledged his answer might seem self-serving, recommended the California Labor Commissioner’s Office. The first step does involve filling out a very long form, he said, but added that he and his colleagues can also help by phone and redirect workers as needed to other government agencies.

Fee said that if she’d seen the form alone, she would probably have said, “Forget it.” But she had the help of a worker center, which does education and outreach at workplaces—including finding out if violations are taking place—and connects workers and enforcement agencies. Ultimately, the center helped build a bridge between workers and government, and helped her learn about her rights and stand up for them.

“Organizing is always the answer. Worker power is always the answer,” said Fee. “When you have people who have your back in your workplace, you can change things, and I know that you can because we’ve done it.”

Durazo added that it’s not a complicated form that keeps people from standing up for their rights but rather the fear of retaliation, job loss, or worse. “Entire industries rely on violations of workplace rights” to operate, she said. And employees in those industries “know that when they assert their rights they’re going to be fired and/or risk deportation, and/or risk other things.”

Mathews asked what more can be done to prevent these violations—could agencies utilize technology, like surveillance or algorithms that predict problems, rather than waiting for the problems to come to them.

“I won’t reveal all of our trade secrets in this conversation,” said Yu. But “we don’t abide by a strict complaint-based model. We are increasingly trying to be proactive.”

Durazo added that the state budget has included funding—which began during rampant COVID lockdown-era labor violations—for worker centers and on-the-ground organizations to do more outreach to help workers connect and build collective strength.

Fee said that putting these many pieces together is changing lives and making workplaces safer. “It’s a little bit slower than a worker on the ground would like it to be,” she said, and wages still aren’t high enough—but she is seeing effective cooperation among government agencies, workers, and organizations.

Yu offered one example of a “highly effective” partnership that led to a significant enforcement action. A janitorial subcontractor that supplied workers for various Cheesecake Factory locations was paying workers below minimum wage, making them work unpaid overtime, and not giving them enough breaks. Yu’s office typically would have gone after the subcontractor, but that business couldn’t afford the backpay, so the office also found the Cheesecake Factory liable. Such actions have a ripple effect. Subcontractors around the state began letting clients know they were following the law“This was impactful not only for the workers, but for the industry as well,” said Yu, adding that some employers have thanked the Labor Commissioner’s Office, “which is rare.”

Before turning to audience questions, Mathews asked the panelists for actionable advice—what are red flags to look for in a new employer, and what do you do when things start to go south?

Yu said getting paid late or not having an accurate pay stub are big red flags, and advised workers to start documenting patterns of violations or abuses.

Fee said to beware, after your honeymoon phase at any new job, if early promises—about future opportunities or a higher salary—seem false. And as soon as possible, organize.

The question-and-answer session came from the livestream audience, who dove into specifics of the panelists’ experiences.

The first question was for Yu: Is there a sector of the California economy that sees the most workplace complaints?

Yu said there are several industries, and named just a few: restaurants, agriculture, warehouse, garment, janitorial, residential care facilities, and construction.

Next up was Fee. What has been the hardest part of your organizing experience?

The retaliation, she said, including getting put “in unfavorable positions.” Retaliation “affects your mental health when you’re not allowed to express yourself or speak to other people in your workplace.” Ultimately, however, standing up is worth it, she emphasized.

The post All’s Not Yet Fair in California Workplaces appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I found out about the restaurant from my brother, who was supposed to work there but had another job. It was only going to be for one day but the owner asked if I could work all week. After that, she hired me and I started working with her regularly as a prep cook in her San Francisco restaurant.

At first, the owner was kind, and there weren’t any issues. But, after about a year of working with her, I noticed things changing. She would yell at me for nothing. There were times when I didn’t receive my breaks and I had been working all day.

Then, she stopped paying us.

That was hard. But trying to get wages that are stolen from you turns out to be even harder.

Initially, the owner started delaying our checks. Supposedly, she was going to give them to us on Mondays, then she changed it to Wednesdays and then to Fridays. Then she started saying, “I’ll pay you the next week,” but it didn’t happen. Still, she kept saying that until it accumulated.

My co-workers and I—there were four of us in the kitchen—kept asking her for our payments and she kept saying she would pay us but she never did.

I thought about leaving but it was the pandemic and there wasn’t much work available, so I stayed. But the whole situation was very stressful. I was very frustrated because, if I already worked for the money, why was I not getting paid?

In October 2021 all of us workers decided we’d had enough. We joined together and told the owner that if the checks did not arrive that day, we would not show up for work. She still did not respond. At this point she stopped coming to the restaurant. At one point, she promised to send the checks with someone else, but we never received them.

We called her and her husband and they didn’t answer us. At one point, the owner’s husband offered to pay a portion of what was owed to us but we declined. We wanted to be paid in full and we were not willing to negotiate that. The owner owes me $12,157.90 in wages, plus penalties for not paying me when I was working for her.

That was when she closed the location, without notice, in December 2021. We kept trying to contact her but neither she nor her husband responded.

It affected me greatly because it was the last few months of the year. I got depressed, I got frustrated, my blood pressure went up, I couldn’t sleep. I was very angry with the owner.

That year was the saddest Christmas I ever had. Christmas without money is very sad. It’s a time of year when you try to send a little extra money back home. I’m 34 years old now. And, in my 10 years of living in the United States, that was the first time I was not able to send a dollar back home to Guatemala.

I send money to my sisters and grandparents, who raised me. I fully support them and the money I send is for everything they need—but in 2021, I couldn’t. My good friend had to lend me money just to be able to settle my bills. I couldn’t do anything and I felt tied by the hands.

My co-workers and I kept looking for someone to help us. We didn’t know what to do. We went to local organizations that can help workers, but they were closed due to COVID-19. Eventually, I came across a church and that’s where someone gave me the phone number for Trabajadores Unidos Workers United.

TUWU, as it’s known, is a worker center, funded by grants and grassroots donations. It finds itself at the intersection of economic justice and immigrant rights—all while holding companies and bosses accountable.

A TUWU organizer talked to me that same day I first called. My co-workers and I were able to share our situation. In time, TUWU helped teach us how to organize.

TUWU helped me prepare a case seeking the wages stolen from me. I filed the case with the San Francisco office of the state’s Labor Commission in February 2022. I wish I could tell you that my case was quickly processed and that I got the money I was owed.

But that’s not how things work.

The Labor Commission, at least its office in San Francisco, has huge backlogs of cases. So, the only thing I’ve received since my filing is the news that the commission has approved my case for a hearing.

That’s right—all I know is that I’ll have a hearing, someday. I haven’t received a date for the hearing. I haven’t been informed if the commission will investigate my claim. This is not uncommon. It typically takes years to receive the money lost in wage theft cases in California.

So, I don’t know if I’ll ever be paid the money I’m owed. But I do know that I’m not going to sit and wait in line for my case to be heard.

I’m continuing to fight for the restaurant owner to pay me back. It’s not easy. She continues to hide from us, even though she still owns a pop-up restaurant in San Francisco, and sometimes appears on TV cooking shows.

Since I became a member of TUWU, we’ve had many meetings and tried many different strategies on how to make the owner accountable. I’m hopeful that some of those will work.

I also learned the word “organize” at TUWU. Along with the word, I’ve learned that, since getting justice takes years, it’s important to organize other workers so that they are aware of their rights and how to move quickly when an employer doesn’t honor those rights.

Now, I know how to advocate and organize with my co-workers. I also feel like a part of the community now and I am able to support other workers experiencing the same situation.

It’s still very discouraging. But I hear from other workers who have had cases with the Labor Commissioner’s Office and eventually had their stolen wages paid.

If I get paid, or I should say when I get paid, I’m going to send money to my grandparents and sisters. I will also save the rest for emergencies because you have to be able to cover any situation that may occur. There are times I worry it could happen to me again.

Early in this process, when I thought of what had happened to me at the restaurant, I would feel like crying. Now, I say that it’s like a mountain and I’m going to keep climbing as high as I can. Why would I not try to reach the peak and get my reward? Now, I share my experience with other workers.

The post My Boss Owes Me Over $12,000 appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Like many frontline workers across the country, Denise Kohr saw her pay at Amazon increase over the past year; as for her say, not so much.

“They don’t want to hear from me,” complained Kohr, who has picked and packed products at a fulfillment center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, since 2018.

Kohr—who after a 25-cent bump last fall, along with a shift change that boosted her wage, now makes $22.95 an hour—still wishes she earned more money. But her bigger frustration is this: Whenever she makes a suggestion about how work should get done, she is invariably dismissed by management. “It can’t possibly be a good idea,” she said, if it’s coming from an entry-level employee.

As America celebrates Labor Day 2023, a tight job market and smart public policy have translated into wage gains for many lower-income workers. Though it’s unclear how long the trend will last, and there is still a long way to go for tens of millions to reach a true living wage, those at the lower end of the pay distribution have made up a ton of ground since the COVID-19 pandemic.

But while the pay gap has narrowed, what scholars call the “voice gap” doesn’t seem to have budged.

New research reveals that a majority of workers—young and old alike—don’t believe they have the right amount of say when it comes to compensation and paths to promotion. A sizable voice gap also exists on issues such as training and scheduling. This is consistent with earlier findings published in 2019.

“There certainly hasn’t been a dramatic shift in a positive direction,” said John Ahlquist, a professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, who co-authored the most recent study.

Meanwhile, Gallup polling shows that only 30% of U.S. employees feel their opinions at work count.

This lack of voice comes against the backdrop of a “hot labor summer,” with Southern California hotel workers, as well as Hollywood writers and actors, going on strike, and UPS drivers threatening to do so before the Teamsters union was able to win what it termed a “historic” contract in July. The United Auto Workers, whose contract is up in September, are the latest to consider taking to the picket lines.

At least some of the agitation can be interpreted as a blowback to constant stifling by corporate America. “All we want is . . . to have a little more dignity, and to have more of a say in what we have to do on a day-to-day basis,” Jaysin Saxton, a worker and union organizer at a Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia, told a Senate committee in March.

Speaking up at work can be risky. Kohr maintains that she has been “targeted and bullied” by supervisors at Amazon after raising safety concerns and fighting for those with health challenges to receive proper accommodations. “When you buck the system, you become a problem child,” she said.

Kohr, who is a member of the workers’ rights organization United for Respect, has been planning with co-workers to put together “an employee advocacy group” to improve communication with their facility manager. But when they informed him about it, she said, “he encouraged us to put our efforts elsewhere.”

Amazon disputes Kohr’s take, stressing that it offers channels through which employees can relay thoughts and concerns to management, including 13 affinity groups, and that Kohr’s warehouse recently adopted one of her ideas to enhance safety.

Perhaps the most curious thing about companies not listening more to their workers is that it’s bad for business. Gallup estimates that if six in 10 employees had faith that their opinions matter, rather than just three in 10, organizations could realize a 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% drop in safety-related incidents, and a 12% uptick in productivity. When workers use their voice, it can also spur innovation—an indication that many employees are eager to contribute, not just carp.

So why, then, don’t more companies seek employee input?

For one thing, C-suite execs tend to be confident they have a pulse on their employees’ thinking, thanks to HR surveys, on-site visits, and “open-door” policies that, at least in theory, allow workers to contact upper management without fear of retaliation. The problem is that these mechanisms are prescribed by the company itself. “Those are not substitutes for real worker voice,” said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Indeed, the real deal requires executives to provide workers with something that many find even tougher to part with than pay: a bit of their power.

In addition, managers worry that allowing workers free voice might lead to unionization—something most employers are determined to defy at all costs. “They will bring in all the armor to defeat that,” Kochan said.

Still, the specter of collective bargaining explains only part of management’s unwillingness to heed workers’ recommendations. “It’s deeper than that,” said Bianca Agustin, the co-executive director of United for Respect, which has its roots in the United Food and Commercial Workers but is not a labor union. “It’s just a disrespect for working people and what management thinks they can bring to the table.”

As an example, Agustin pointed to a shareholder resolution at Walmart submitted by an hourly worker and United for Respect member named Cynthia Murray. Her proposal sought an independent review of company policies and practices on workplace safety and violence, including gun violence. “As a 22-year Walmart associate,” Murray declared, “I am personally invested in keeping myself and my fellow associates safe at work.”

At Walmart’s annual meeting in May, Murray’s resolution received nearly 24% of the vote—well above the 20% threshold that proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis says should lead the board of directors to “engage with shareholders . . . and demonstrate some initial level of responsiveness.” Yet Walmart won’t meet with Murray, telling her in a letter that it already regularly reviews its protocols to “ensure a safe and healthy work environment.”

“If she were any other shareholder—not a worker—the vote would have triggered a dialogue,” Agustin said. “It’s very discouraging.”

Walmart declined to comment.

All sorts of notions have been put forth to bolster worker voice: placing rank-and-file employees on corporate boards, creating European-style works councils, expanding employee ownership, and more.

But the most straightforward approach is to make it easier for workers to unionize—something that has proven a very tall order despite a flurry of activity over the past few years by organized labor and soaring popularity for unions. In 2022, a mere 10.1% of American workers were unionized, the lowest rate on record.

As the hot labor summer fades to fall, it’s hard to be sure what will become of all of the high-profile union drives currently underway. But some are uneasy that even where labor organizers have made inroads, like at Starbucks, companies will take advantage of toothless labor laws and delay negotiating—and that worker excitement for a union will wither away. If that happens, “it’s going to be devastating,” said Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

Not only would that mark another setback for worker voice on the job, but it would imperil something much greater: a chance to elevate the voice of the working class in national affairs.

A rich body of scholarship has established a clear connection between union strength on the one hand and political stability and economic and social justice on the other. With unions diminished, “you create the room for demagogues to grow,” said Ray Marshall, who served as secretary of labor under President Jimmy Carter.

By contrast, when unions had a more robust presence in the United States, representing a third or so of all workers in the 1950s and ’60s, organized labor played a key role in civil rights and other movements pushing for equality. “People want to know how to get involved,” said Ahlquist, the UC San Diego professor. “You get a very different answer if it’s coming from the Proud Boys than if it’s coming from a union.”

Dorian Warren, a political scientist and co-president of the nonprofit Community Change, echoed those sentiments. “If union density had stayed at 30%,” he said, “there would have never been a Trump. The weakening of worker voice leads to authoritarianism.”

As you dig into that Labor Day hot dog, it is a good time to remember: When employees’ voices are ignored or squelched, it is terrible for workplace democracy. It may be even worse for American democracy.

The post Why Corporate America Needs to Listen to Workers’ Voices appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.