WORKERS PROTEST MISERY AT SUBWAY, AND GET FIRED
By David Bacon
Working In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13660/workers_try_to_organize_airport_subway_get_fired/
OAKLAND, CA (8/9/12) -- Oakland is suppossed to be a union
town, but out at the Oakland airport, workers say they're getting
fired for trying to join one. The airport is administered by the
Oakland Port Commission, whose members, appointed by the Mayor, are
mostly viewed as progressives. The commission has passed a living
wage ordinance that not only sets a level much higher than state or
national minimum wage laws, but also requires companies who rent
space to respect the labor rights of their workers.
One of the workers fired in recent weeks is Hakima Arhab, who
says she lost her job at the Subway concession after she complained
about violations of the ordinance, and because she and her coworkers
are trying to join UNITE HERE Local 2850.
She told her story to journalist David Bacon.
Hakima Arhab, fired Subway worker.
I worked at Subway for a year and a half. When I got the job
there I thought that I would have a better life. It should be a good
job. I thought I'd have more money, and be able to afford a few more
things for myself, and be able to send money to my home country,
because I have family there. When I started at the airport I was
getting $12.82 an hour, and then it went up to $13.05.
Most people go through the airport and see us from one side
of the counter, but from our side it feels really different. It
turned out to be like working in hell. When the airport was busy,
there were huge long lines - sometimes it seemed like a hundred
people. We had to wait on them, and make the orders up at the same
time. Sometimes I thought I'd fall down from being so tired, but I'd
eat something sweet and go back to my job.
The schedule was always changing, and it turned out to be
just a part time job. They kept cutting peoples' schedules.
Whenever we would hear that they were going to hire someone, everyone
would get scared because we were afraid our hours would be cut.
They'd hire people and give them our hours.
Then they told us that if we worked two days in the airport,
we should work outside too. The owners have many other Subway
stores, so they'd pressure me to work for them outside the airport.
And it was a hard job too. But I did it because I was scared that if
I didn't they would fire me from the airport job.
They expected me to work outside the airport if I wanted a
full time set of hours, but the work outside was at a different wage.
That work only paid minimum wage -- $8 an hour. They'd send me
around to all their stores. Sometimes I'd open one store, and then
go close at another one. I worked overtime, but they didn't pay me
overtime pay. They'd give you separate checks, so you'd never get
overtime pay.
I was very angry about that, but they refused to give me a
full schedule at the airport. They even wanted me to work seven days
a week, but since they wouldn't pay overtime, at first I said no -
that was too much. Many of my coworkers did, though, because they
couldn't afford to say no. If you said no, then the owners would cut
your whole schedule.
So I also just shut up and worked too. And the worst part
was that sometimes when I'd work fifty or sixty hours, they wouldn't
pay for all those hours. They'd be short an hour or an hour and a
half.
I knew some other workers who work at HMS Host concessions
right next to us, and I knew they had a union. Last spring I got
very sick, but I still had to work, because otherwise, how was I
going to pay for my rent or my food? I was so, so angry. One of
them asked me, "Hakima, do you want to speak to the union?" I told
her, "Yes, I want to do it." So I set up an appointment with the
union, and asked them to help us - myself, my coworkers and all the
workers who work hard in the airport without benefits or sick days.
That's how it happened.
Finally I filed a complaint with the government, with the
Port of Oakland. But they didn't take it seriously. It was like
they were just playing around, and told us it would take months to
investigate. And I needed my job, especially after I was fired.
On May 29 I took unpaid vacation, for twenty days. The owner
agreed that I could do that when I told her four months before. But
I filed the complaint before I took the time off. She found out,
because the Port gave her the names of the people who complained.
So when I came back on the 19th, she gave me a check for the
days I worked before the vacation. She told me, "Hakima, you know,
I'm very very slow right now. I don't have any more hours for you."
I told her, "No, no, no. Don't play with me. I know you just took
in $5500 - you're making the highest amount ever here in the airport.
How can you tell me that?"
And just two days later, she hired another worker at the
airport. She just wanted to kick me out because I'd gotten involved
in the union, and I stood up and filed a complaint. Because I was
demanding my rights. That's why she fired me.
Last week we had a rally out at the airport, to support me
and the other workers who have been fired. We even had a chant in
Berber. That's the home language of North Africa, and I'm from a
little Berber town in Algeria. And the meaning is "We are Berber, we
are people who would rather fight and be fired than work without
rights."
The union says several other workers have faced retaliation
as well. Isaac Kos-Read, director of external affairs for the Port
of Oakland, told KPFA's Brian Edwards-Tiekert that the port takes the
complaints very seriously, but called it "an open ended thing. It
could take as little as a month or as many as three months. We don't
know." By now the port is investigating 15 complaints. Meanwhile
workers are written up by Port security if they use their badges to
go into the airport to meet with employers or other workers.
Nevertheless, "the port prides itself on providing jobs, and
union jobs. Over 70% of the jobs at the port are union jobs,"
Kos-Read says. "We assiduously enforce the living wage ordinance."
KPFA interview on UpFront:
<http://pacificaeveningnews.blogspot.com/2012/08/fired-oakland-airport-workers-speak-out.html>http://pacificaeveningnews.blogspot.com/2012/08/fired-oakland-airport-workers-speak-out.html
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and
Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
(University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefE&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvg&feature=related
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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