Warehouse sweatshops, no!

There are 150,000 workers toiling 365 days a year in sweatshop warehouses in the Chicago region. With dockworkers and truck drivers, they load and distribute most of the products we wear, eat or use. The gigantic, concrete, windowless warehouses hide the brutal and unsafe conditions inside.

Warehouse Workers for Justice are exposing this and fighting back.

In the warehouse or “logistics” industry, high-tech restructuring has meant fewer workers move mountains of goods to megafirms like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Target. This has created super-profits for them.

With unemployment high in Illinois, corporations are using this to drive down wages. While manufacturing plants with good union wages are closed, the warehouse industry is expanding; it pays minimum wage and denies benefits like sick or vacation pay to workers.

WWJ says 63 percent of warehouse workers are hired through temporary agencies, which often pay piece rates. A worker might make 90 cents a piece for each refrigerator loaded off a truck; sometimes that 90 cents is split between two workers doing the job together.

“It’s all based on economics, so employees can be cut when business is slow or added when it’s busy,” said Angelo Ippolito, who runs Pridestaff temping.

Tory Moore, a WWJ leader, worked at Del Monte’s warehouse, hired by temp agency Select Remedy. He told Workers World, “I worked six years, 52 weeks a year because I had no vacation pay. I worked when I was sick because there was no sick pay, and I could not afford to go to a doctor. ... I was in charge of packing, and I trained the first and third shifts as well.”

Temporary agencies hide their real income. Moore worked 12,480 hours over six years. Select Remedy made $50,000 to $60,000 from his labor. With this type of windfall, temporary agencies have sprung up, competing with each other by worsening workers’ conditions.

Moore was fired when he asked for a raise. “I don’t want other workers to be temps like me. People need to have a permanent job and a living wage with benefits. We should not have to get food stamps while working at a multimillion-dollar warehouse, so I joined Warehouse Workers for Justice.”

Wal-Mart owners, the Walton family, are rolling in dough, but they want more. Rather than hiring workers directly, they contract with Maersk, a world shipping and logistics giant, to run their warehouse. Maersk then contracts Select Remedy for warehouse workers. They make huge profits, while the workers get poverty.

Many agencies short workers on wages and overtime pay by paying less than minimum wage and not contributing to workers’ compensation or disability funds. Twenty percent of warehouse workers are injured on the job, and they’re often disciplined for reporting their injuries to management. Racist and sexist discrimination are common. Agencies routinely violate state and federal laws.

Wal-Mart and Maersk claim they never violate any laws. However, they contract temporary agencies, which act as their agents and impose illegal, inhumane conditions on the workers — the very reason they’re contracted. These corporations, which profit from law-breaking agencies, should be held accountable.

Boycott anti-union Bissell

The corporate barons, who are exploiting these workers, fear they will organize and fight back.

Bissell Homecare, Inc. illegally used unregistered temporary agencies, which paid some workers as little as $2 an hour. Women warehouse workers at Bissell made $2.50 per hour less than men. Pregnant women were assigned the heaviest jobs because the company wanted to force them out.

After WWJ ran a “Know Your Rights” seminar, Bissell workers organized and voted to join the United Electrical union. When 70 workers were fired, Bissell hid behind the temporary agency, which claims the workers were just laid off.

UE and WWJ are fighting back with lawsuits and a national campaign to boycott Bissell.

Referring to the use of public funds for building “intermodal centers” for warehouses, Abraham Mwaura, WWJ coordinator and UE organizer, said, “Local politicians are giving subsidies to the logistics industry,” which says “it is okay that 63 percent of warehouse workers are temps and permatemps without basic benefits and that one in four [workers] receive government assistance. So they bail out the temp industry with our tax dollars. ... [To] sweeten the deal, it’s the workers who will pay the money back to the state.

“WWJ is rallying Oct. 30 in Joliet to demand that those tax dollars provide good living-wage, direct-hire jobs.”

Moore appeals to workers, unions and activists to support WWJ. “If we workers don’t step up, we will all make minimum wage.” To learn how you can help, go to www.warehouseworker.org.