Join us on Thursday, Sept 11 at 6pm at SEIU 32BJ (25 W. 18th St, Manhattan) for a public forum on sweat shop labor, global supply chains, and what we can do to improve the lives of garment workers in Bangladesh and Cambodia.

The panel will feature New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Bangladeshi labor leader Kalpona Akter, SEIU global strategies director Jeff Hermanson, and Judy Gearhart of the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF). Anna Burger, former SEIU Secretary Treasurer, will moderate the panel. 

This event is sponsored by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, Balcony NY, and the ILRF. 

Space is limited. RSVP to alex(at)hillmanfoundation(dot)org

Unpredictable hours create chaos in the lives of low-wage workers. Today, Jodi Kantor of the New York Times shines a spotlight on the tyranny of unpredictable hours, which affects countless working people, but which typically receives scant attention from the elite media.

Jannette Navarro is a 22-year-old Starbucks barista raising a son on her own and working towards a college degree, but her unpredictable hours are wreaking havoc on her ability to build a stable life and advance in her career:

But Ms. Navarro’s fluctuating hours, combined with her limited resources, had also turned their lives into a chronic crisis over the clock. She rarely learned her schedule more than three days before the start of a workweek, plunging her into urgent logistical puzzles over who would watch the boy. Months after starting the job she moved out of her aunt’s home, in part because of mounting friction over the erratic schedule, which the aunt felt was also holding her family captive. Ms. Navarro’s degree was on indefinite pause because her shifting hours left her unable to commit to classes. She needed to work all she could, sometimes counting on dimes from the tip jar to make the bus fare home. If she dared ask for more stable hours, she feared, she would get fewer work hours over all.

Companies use high-tech computer scheduling to wring extra profit out of their operations by minimizing downtime, at the expense of the freedom and quality of life of their workforce. Workers are often expected to be available with little or no notice. These expectations make it difficult to schedule childcare and transportation, get an education, or plan any activity more than three days in advance.

Low-wage workers are gaining unprecedented visibility thanks to the efforts of groups like Fast Food Forward. As low-wage workers gain a stronger voice in the workplace, scheduling is sure to be a major issue.

Update: Starbucks has resolved to reform its scheduling policies in the wake of the New York Times story.  

[Photo credit: Bernard Polet, Creative Commons.]

Morgue workers in Baghdad told independent journalist Rania Abouzeid that, this year, religious militias have repeatedly massacred people at sites allegedly linked to the sex trade. The largest of these killings occured last month. On July 13, thirty-two people were murdered in two apartment buildings in the Zayouna district of Baghdad:

Early on the morning of July 13th, the shot-up bodies of twenty-eight women and five men were retrieved from two apartments in a building complex Zayouna, a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. Both apartments were said to be sites of prostitution. By 10 A.M., the police had delivered the bodies to a city morgue, where they were strewn over the dirty, blood-streaked floor, one woman’s outstretched arms abutting another woman’s head, someone’s splayed legs near someone else’s torso. This is the third time this year that a group of women suspected of being prostitutes has been killed; this group was the largest to date, according to morgue workers. [New Yorker]

A shopkeeper told NBC that the shootings happened after a group of suspected militiamen in uniform entered Zayouna. The Baghdad Police say the killers left notes saying that the killings were “punishment.” 

Why is Kathryn Slater-Carter, the owner of a McDonald’s franchise in California, joining forces with SEIU to advocate for the rights for franchisees in California? The short answer is that McDonald’s is forcing franchisees to practically give food away and demanding that they take the difference out of their workers’ wages, and franchisees can’t refuse because McDonald’s has all the legal power. SEIU and some small franchisees are backing a bill before the state legislature that could help small business owners stand up to the corporate behemoth. 

[Photo: Allen, Creative Commons.]