Freelance Employees

There’s been lots of cracking down on employers who misclassify employees as ‘independent contractors.’ An independent contractor, legally speaking, is a worker who can meet the following: you 1) work without regular direction; 2) are free to provide similar services to other clients; 3) work on a temporary basis; 4) are involved in an independent business, profession or occupation. An independent contractor must pay their own contributions to Social Security and other governmental taxes and programs AND pay the employer’s portion of those contributions as well. Sometimes employers try to call a worker ‘independent’ for those very reason.

But there are many people who provide services or skills who are genuinely independent contractors. And the Department of Labor offers very little, if any, protection for those workers. If a client does not pay you (and this happens too many times) or withholds your check for many months, the DOL is not going to help you: you must resort to Small Claims Court.

There are a couple of organizations I’ve learned about recently that can actually help freelance artists, writers and other traditionally independent contractor workers. The first is the National Writers Union. The NWU says ‘the Union offers its members – including grievance assistance, contract advice, a job hotline, health and professional liability insurance, and much more – and actively contribute to a growing movement of professional freelancers who have banded together to assert their collective power.’ There is a sizable population of writers, photographers, artists and other affiliated professions that can be greatly helped by the NWU. Take a moment to check them out here.

Another, more nontraditional, union, the Freelancers Union, offers a different kind of assistance. Freelancers has group rates for insurance plans, for instance, something that many freelancers cannot access on their own. They also have online forums where freelancers share support for each other and discuss topics of interest to freelancers. Tomorrow and next week, the Freelancers Union is offering a workshop entitled Unpaid Wages Organizing Event. The topic covered — close to every freelancer’s heart — is how to collect money owed to you. 77% of all freelancers report that they have been cheated out of payment by at least one client.

Pass the word about these valuable organizations.

Immigration Reform: the March in DC

The following post was written by Samantha Wolfe, a junior sociology major at Ithaca College and an intern at the Workers Center:

Sunday March 21 I traveled to and from D.C. with 30 other Ithacans in the span of 24 hours. We were mobilized by the leaders of the Immigrant Rights Coalition, an organization that TCWC helped co-found, to march on Washington demanding Comprehensive Immigration Reform. I thought that we’d join up with a few thousand other people, but when we got on the bus at 4 a.m. we were told that the National Campaign for Immigration Reform expected 100,000 people to be there! Wow, I thought. I attended my first rally only a few weeks ago to speak out against Regis Corporation and stand up with workers from Cost Cutters (specifically Amber Little) and Workers Center members. (See more details on that story here: http://www.tclivingwage.org/news.php?articleid=100&source=index.php.) At that rally there were at most 50 people there while I was there. After a 7 hour bus ride during which we made calls to our representatives, signed petitions, filled out commitment cards and studied the map of the march, we arrived at RFK stadium.

I’d also never been to DC before- what a beautiful city. The weather was perfect for the event- 78 degrees and sunny with a light breeze. The cherry blossom trees were in bloom and the marble architecture shone in the sun. In the hours before the march at 5pm we saw thousands of marchers carrying flags and posters (and even puppets) of all kinds that read, “I’m already home,” “Workers, Taxpayers, Voters”, “Queremos Familias Unidads”, and “Rights For All.” A friend and I walked right up to the Washington Monument, which allowed us to step back and witness how big the crowd really was. Thousands of people covered the national mall. My friend had a good insight. She said, “Wow, now I can start to imagine what the Poor People’s Campaign and tent city were like.” The Poor People’s Campaign  was “a historic effort by the poor to unite across racial, gender, ethnic, religious and geographic lines…and a fight by capable, hard workers against dehumanization, discrimination and poverty wages in the richest country in the world,” (taken from A New and Unsettling Force by The Poverty Initiative, see http://poorpeoplescampaignppc.org/ for more info). The power of this demonstration on Sunday made history come alive for my friend, for myself, and (I imagine) for thousands of people there. The final count on the number of people there reached 500,000! Half a million! Even when the count was at 200,000 it was announced that this was the largest mobilization of people since Obama took office.

The speakers that afternoon were inspirational and moving. One told the story of an undocumented immigrant father and his US –born son. They were pulled over by the police and as the cop approached the window, the 7-year old boy jumped out of the back seat pleading, “My dad is not a criminal! He didn’t do anything wrong! Leave him alone!” Clearly, this little boy was aware of the threat of his dad’s deportation. This is something that Comprehensive Immigration Reform aims to change: the splitting up of families.

It was also pretty incredible to hear from the Dreamers. They are a group of undocumented students demanding that the Dream Act be passed. Currently, undocumented immigrant students (even if they have lived here their entire life) who have worked hard throughout high school are not legally allowed to attend college since they are not legal citizens. There are 65,000 undocumented immigrant students each year that are held back from getting a college education and contributing to the betterment of this country because of this law. The Dreamers are working to change this. These students marched 1,500 miles from Miami to D.C. since January 1^st to make their voices heard at the risk of deportation.

The speakers, the Dreamers, and the hundreds of thousands of protestors in D.C. that day made it clear to me that the working people of this country have a whole lot of potential power. How incredible that so many immigrants came to march for their rights at the risk of their livelihoods and that so many U.S. citizens stood in solidarity with them and their struggle. The struggle of any group that is being denied their human rights is connected to all of our struggles- for jobs that makes us enough money to live and feed our families, for affordable health care that ensures we won’t go into debt if we or a family member gets sick, for a world in which ordinary people (not corporations) have power over our own governments. The march on Sunday and the movement for social and economic justice being built across the country gives me hope for the work we’re doing here at the Workers Center.

Thanks, Samantha, for giving those of us who were unable to travel to DC a taste of this important rally. If any other readers would like to share their insights please submit it to LindaWorkersCenter@gmail.com

Community Conversation Series Continues at Cinemapolis

Cinemapolis continues its excellent series this Sunday, March 28. Bringing to Ithaca critically acclaimed films that
tap into timely political and economic topics, Community Conversations is part of a renewed focus by the theater to stimulate socially relevant discussion  in our community through thought-provoking films. These Community Conversations are open to the public with discounted admission for Cinemapolis members and, for this film, members of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center.

Sunday’s film is The Corporation which explores the role of the corporation as an institution in our society, and which is particularly relevant given the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Citizens United case.  Many observers have warned that Citizens United will open the floodgates of corporate influence on our elections.

The Film is the winner of 26 international awards and 10 Audience
Choice Awards including the Sundance Film Festival.

“Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Taking the corporation’s status as a legal “person” to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist’s couch to ask “What kind of person is it?” The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics – plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.”  Based on the book “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power” by Joel Bakan.”

Post Film Discussion:
Following the film, please join us for what promises to be a
fascinating discussion featuring corporate behavior and ethics expert Jim Detert, Assistant Professor of Management at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, and constitutional law authority Michael Dorf, Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell.

Date & Time:  Sunday March 28th at 2pm

Tickets: $10.00 for Non-Members
$5.00 for Cinemapolis Members and  TC Workers’ Center Members (with I.D. card), free with FLEFF pass

Recent Immigrants at Work in Tompkins County

Most of us are descended from immigrants, whether they are recent arrivals or long-time North Americans. The History Center at 401 East Martin Luther King, Jr. Street (aka State Street) has an interesting panel this Thursday, March 25, at 5:30 about our more recent immigrant neighbors. The Workers’ Center colleague Geovanny Trivino of the NYS DOL will be a participant on the panel. Here’s the blurb from the History Center:

This event, which is co-sponsored by the Ithaca Asian American Association, the Tompkins County Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, introduces recent immigrants speaking on their journey to America, efforts to find work, and what they do for a living in Tompkins County. Participating on the panel are Vanthy Dut (Cambodia), Simo Maataoui (Morocco), Vy Merrit (Cambodia), Mauricio Rosa (El Salvador). Also present will be Geovanny Trivino, of the Bureau of Immigrant Workers’ Rights, New York State Department of Labor, who will speak on working conditions that led to the recent investigation of restaurants on the Ithaca Commons. A question and answer period will follow the presentation.

This event is free and open to the public.

This program is made possible by a generous grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.

For info, contact
The History Center
401 East State Street, Suite 100
Ithaca, New York 14850
Phone: 607.273.8284 ext. 6, Fax: (607) 273-6107
community@TheHistoryCenter.net

The Scales of Justice

or,
Why You Should Always Tip Your Pizza Driver

from our trusty friend Eric Byrd, Community Union Organizer

Sometime back in the second century BC, at the start of the Roman Empire, unscrupulous Roman business owners noticed that certain of their employees were receiving tips from their customers… and they didn’t like it.  The business owners, that is.  They didn’t want their employees to make too much money, and thus “outgrow” their servitude, so they lobbied their Congresspeople to lower the minimum wage for these people.  Augustus Gluteus Maximus, a noted manufacturer of vomit troughs for the Roman orgies during this period, is credited with saying, “Competition in my industry is fierce… it’s tough enough for a guy like me to maintain a reasonable profit margin, without having to abide by anti-competitive minimum-wage laws.  These people are already earning a generous wage, thanks to this law, and it isn’t fair that they continue to receive this wage, while other less fortunate employees do not receive tips.  It’s only fair, then, to reduce the minimum wage for tipped employees.”  And so, while some readers might take issue with some of this author’s historical citations, it remains to this day, that there are classes of workers that are exempt from the minimum wage laws.  That is, business owners are legally allowed to pay them *less than* the minimum wage, which in New York State is $7.25/hr. Currently, tipped workers must be paid at least $4.65/hr, and some farm workers, who don’t even earn tips, can be paid as little as $2.65/hr… figure that one out.  But that’s a topic for another op-ed.

Anyway, among these “tipped employees” today are pizza drivers.  I am a pizza driver.  I’ve worked for the last five years at half a dozen delivery restaurants in the area, and I’m good with arithmetic, and I’ve crunched all the numbers, and I am here to tell you, down to the penny, what it costs me to work as a pizza driver, and why pizza drivers should not be considered “tipped employees” even though they receive tips… because there are costs associated with this job that other employees do not have to pay.

Obviously, those costs include car maintenance.  I’m lucky, because I’m a decent amateur mechanic, and I can do most car maintenance myself, for only the cost of the parts, while other drivers must pay a professional’s shop fee for labor.  But I must, and I do, maintain my car in whatever weather is available, because I can’t afford to miss work, and nobody pays me a cent to freeze my heiny off in February, changing brake pads in my driveway.  By my estimate, I have spent approximately $3000-$4000 per year, variously, over the last 5 years, either maintaining *or buying* vehicles I need to keep doing this job, and I have destroyed 4 (that’s right) FOUR vehicles in the last 5 years, not including the one I’m driving right now, in the pursuit of this line of work.

For a full-time driver, then, this amounts to $1.50 – $2.00 PER HOUR, just for maintenance.  And it would be even worse, perhaps $3.00/hr, if I had to pay the shop rate for all my maintenance.  I know all this because I’ve kept track of it all, for tax purposes, so I know what I’m talking about.  Put another way, I pay about 22 cents per mile for gasoline and maintenance… which happens to come a penny or two over what the restaurants have typically paid me at the end of the night for mileage, which you see on your ticket as a delivery fee.  And here’s a secret some of you don’t know:  sometimes the restaurant doesn’t give me all of the delivery fee, but they keep a part of it for themselves, and they leave you with the impression I’m getting all of it.

So there it is, I actually LOSE a penny or two for each mile I drive, and lately, with gas prices inching up and mileage fees staying constant, I’m losing a little more than that.  What is left?  The wage I am paid and the tips.  In this area, a driver’s wage varies from $5 to $7.25 per hour, although I did apply once at a small place that paid $9/hr.  In any case, isn’t it clear that if I WANTED a minimum-wage job, I could easily find one that doesn’t require me to destroy my own vehicle??

Currently, I work at two different restaurants, one of which pays me a $6/hr wage, and the other pays me $7.25, the state minimum for non-tipped workers.  When you add the tips, I average about $10-$11/hr, after paying for gas and maintenance.  But I think I deserve it, because other employees don’t have to deal with all the off-the-clock hassles involved with maintaining my own vehicle for use at work.  Many times over the last few years, I have looked into other lines of work… because about half the time, I’m not sure this one is worth all that hassle.  And perhaps the worst hassle of the job comes when, after spending my (unpaid) afternoon maintaining my car, and after hustling around and driving your delivery out to you as quickly as I am able, on snowy, dangerous roads, I arrive with your pizza, and you cheat me of my tip.

There’s a reason we call people like that “stiffs”.  When you “stiff” me, here’s the message you send to me, and to all other drivers:  “After all the hassles you handle with your own vehicle for this job, you still don’t deserve more than $6 per hour.”  Let’s get something straight.  I’m not UNICEF.  I don’t do this to serve my fellow man, but to pay my electric bill and my lot rent.  I don’t care if you’re tired.  I don’t care if you deserve a treat once in a while.  If you don’t think the pizza guy deserves a tip, then why don’t you get your fat, sorry behind out to your car, warm it up, drive it to the restaurant, and pick up the pizza yourself.  Because if you ask me to do it, I deserve more than minimum wage.  I also don’t care if you’re poor, or if your welfare check is late:  if you can afford 20 bucks for a pizza, then you can afford to pay me more than minimum wage, for the privilege of having me deliver it to you in my own car.  Even *taxi drivers* make more than that, and they drive *someone else’s* car.  The bottom line is, you’re a pig if you don’t tip your pizza driver.  And herein are the numbers to prove it.  Thanks for your friggin’ time.

More Movies

Thanks to the Loyal Reader who expressed enjoyment over a February post about the AFL-CIO ‘Working Class Heroes’ film recommendations. I’m including more today. Feel free to send reviews of these films or to add suggestions about your favorite Working Class Heroes films.

• Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980, Michael Apted)
  Sissy Spacek won the 1982 Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in this film adaptation of  the country singer-songwriter’s autobiography.  The film was nominated for six other Academy Awards.
• Cradle Will Rock (1999, Tim Robbins)
  Tim Robbin’s tour de force tells the story of Orson Welles’ attempt to use the WPA’s Federal Theater Project for a Broadway musical about a steel strike.  The film also depicts depression era politics with a broad brush:  subplots include anti-communist Congressional hearings; corporate plotting to aid Mussolini’s war machine; and Mexican muralist Diego Rivera’s famous confrontation with a young Nelson Rockefeller over the artist’s Rockefeller Center fresco.
• Devil and Miss Jones (1941, Sam Wood)
  Jean Arthur and  Robert Cummings star in this film about a department store owner who poses as a shoe salesman to spy on his employees’ attempt to organize a union.  Naturally, romance ensues.
• Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh)
  Julia Roberts won the 2001 Oscar for Best Actress for her depiction of single mother Erin Brockovich, who lands a job with a solo practice personal injury lawyer (Albert Finney).  She unravels a plot by a major corporation to hide its massive contamination of her community with deadly hexavalent chromium.  Finney and Soderbergh were also nominated for Academy Awards; the film was nominated for Best Picture.
• Fast Food Nation (2006, Richard Linklater)
  The film is a tough look at working conditions and food safety in the slaughterhouses and meat packing plants that supply fast food chains.  The multifaceted story line follows a corporate executive investigating reports of contaminated meat, immigrant workers contending with unsafe conditions and sexual abuse, and animal rights activists hatching schemes to save the cattle.
• The Full Monty (1997, Peter Cattaneo)
  The film depicts the trials and tribulations of a group of laid off steelworkers, who, desperate to raise some cash, decide to form an all male striptease revue.  The guys are not exactly models and they can’t dance, but a supportive female audience cheers them on and insists on the ‘full monty” (frontal nudity)as a finale.  Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay, the movie won an Oscar for Best Original Score.
• The Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford)
  Henry Fonda starred in this adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel about migrant workers fleeing drought and failed farms in Oklahoma only to be met with violence and exploitation in California.
• Gung Ho (1986, Ron Howard)
  Management and work cultures collide when a Japanese firm takes over an U.S. automobile factory in this comedy starring Michael Keaton.

A New Book

We’ve received a new book at the Workers’ Center, Lisa Dodson’s The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy. Dodson, now a sociology professor at Boston College, has been an obstetrical nurse, a union activist and the director of the Division of  Women’s Health for the state of Massachusetts.

When Dodson began her research for this book, she intended to track how an unfair economy affects low wage earners. But an early subject, the manager of a food company in the Midwest filled out her survey and remarked ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about how this affects me?’ Much to Dodson’s surprise, the food manager was not worried about how a poor economy threatened his personal financial security but was deeply stressed by overseeing employees who he knew made too little to adequately care for their families. Thus began Dodson’s inquiry into how social justice mavericks pull strings at their workplaces to help low wage earners.

One manager at a big box retailer was sympathetic when one of her worker’s teenaged daughter, a young woman who had worked through high school to contribute to the family’s well-being, was unable to afford a prom dress. In rural Maine, where these people live, the high school prom is an important step towards adulthood. The manager looked the other way when unsold dresses were boxed up to be sent back to the warehouse.

The food business manager mentioned above distributed dinged cans and bread with ripped bags to his employees instead of sending them back to the warehouse or throwing them out; instead of insisting that employees punch out if they needed to leave work to take their kids to a doctor’s appointment, he punched out for them at their scheduled leave time.

I won’t give away any more of the book in case this has piqued your interest in it. What a good feeling: that there are many people among us, taking small — and large — risks for the people they work with. If you read the book, send us a comment or a review. Happy reading!

Updates on WC Projects

Many thanks to the Ithaca Journal for their recent follow-up article about Amber Little and TJ Goehner, two of the former Cost Cutter stylists. If you haven’t read it,  please take a moment: http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20100308/NEWS01/3080362/Former-salon-employees-turn-lemons-to-lemonade

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The Listening Project is something new that the Workers’ Center is working on. Our goal is to learn about the working experiences of our neighbors in Tompkins County and to figure out how we can best help people in the future. I personally think the Listening Project is something more, though: it can be the record of history. Think about those out-of-work writers who, during the Great Depression, were employed with the Federal Writers Project. Many of those writers collected valuable oral histories of people who had been born enslaved.

We’d love it if you would volunteer to be listened to: every story is important to us.

For more information on the Federal Writers Project and examples of slave narratives, visit the Library of Congress collection at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/

For a current, nationwide effort to gather and preserve stories, visit the StoryCorps website at http://storycorps.org/about

Small Claims Court

Last Thursday a Workers’ Center client, Arthur Whitman, and I went to Small Claims Court in an effort to retrieve unpaid wages. Luckily for Arthur, his suit against City Health Club, 402 West Green Street in Ithaca, was successful: City Health’s owner agreed to pay Arthur the $2,301.04 owed him.

Here’s what we usually suggest when an employee or former employee has not been paid:

• First of all, communication is best. Have you spoken to your boss or supervisor, accounting or human resources departments, if applicable?
• If  that is not an option or hasn’t successfully resolved the problem, we at the Workers’ Center are willing to make a call for you. Frequently, we are able to mediate a dispute between worker and employee.
• If communication has not worked, the next step in the process (if the amount owed is under $5000) is to file either a Small Claims case or a Department of Labor claim for unpaid wages. Lately, we’ve been leaning towards Small Claims as the easiest and quickest route. The Departments of Labor, both state and federal, have been severely cut over the years; there just aren’t enough investigators to handle all the complaints filed. Hence, the Small Claims court option.

What we hope to accomplish by taking a case to Small Claims is not just resolution of the problem at hand but also a message to other unpaid employees that they do have options available to them. Too many times, employees who have not received their pay write them off as a hard lesson learned. Your wages are yours: it is illegal to make a person work without compensation.

Weekend Activities and Good News in the fight against wage theft

Workers’ Center members are invited to two different activities this weekend: one of our super-duper quarterly potlucks and a movie at  Cinemapolis.

On Saturday, March 6th at 5:30, please join us at the Unitarian Church of Ithaca (on the corner of E. Buffalo and N. Aurora Streets, Ithaca) for a potluck cosponsored with the Religious Taskforce for a Living Wage. The potluck will also be the kickoff for the Fifteenth Annual 40 Hour Fast for Worker Justice which local affiliates of the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State observe. This year, the fast’s theme is From False Idols to Moral Vision; the fast will begin at 8 pm on Saturday and concludes Monday, March 8 at noon when  fast participants will gather at Loaves & Fishes for lunch. Loaves & Fishes is located in the Parish Hall of St. John’s Episcopal Church at 210 North Cayuga Street in Ithaca.

On Sunday, March 7th, TC Workers’ Center members may show their membership cards at Cinemapolis to receive a discount for the commemorative  showing of  You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the documentary film about Howard Zinn. Zinn, the author of A People’s History of the United States and a tireless activist for human rights, passed away at age 87 on January 27. Following the film at 2 pm on Sunday, please join us for a discussion with Cornell historian Richard Polenberg and IC political scientist Zillah Eisenstein. Cinemapolis is located at 120 E Green Street in Ithaca. The WC member’s ticket price is $5.

And now for something completely different, NYS Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has surprised and delighted worker advocates by arresting the owner of a chain of boutiques in New York City for the theft of $1.5 million dollars in wages from his employees. This is unusual since wage theft has been treated as a civil matter in the past. Many thanks to the Retail Action Project for the tireless work seeking justice for workers. Read the full story here: http://www.labornotes.org/2010/02/ny-boutique-boss-arrested-faces-4-years-jail-stealing-wages