Make The Road By Walking

NEW YORK : Grassroots efforts in Brooklyn , New York , help to fight for the exploited workers here in New York .

 

saw this article at Laborstart

From: 

 

Protestors: Supermarket cheats workers

Photo by Jefferson Siegel, July 29, 2007

Protestors at an Associated supermarket at Knickerbocker Ave. and Starr St. in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

By Magdalene Perez | Special to am NewYork

July 30, 2007

  

 

Ignoring a soaking downpour and carrying signs reading "We want Fair Wages," more than 100 protesters picketed a Bushwick supermarket Sunday that labor organizers claim paid zero wages to grocery baggers.

"What we have here are workers who are working for no salary at all," said Andrew Friedman of Make the Road by Walking, a Bushwick labor rights organization.

Labor organizers called for a boycott of the Associated Supermarkets store at Knickerbocker Avenue, one of four they said had failed to pay minimum wage and overtime to more than 40 employees. Together the stores, including two in East New York and one in the Bronx, owe "literally millions" in backwages, Friedman said. 

The owners and management of the Bushwick store dispute that account, saying all employees are paid fairly and that issues over wages may have stemmed from disputes with previous owners.

All employees receive minimum wage or more, paid sick days, paid vacation and overtime, Morales said.

"This is a family business," said Nelson Veloz, one of the store's owners. "We're very humane to our employees."

Veloz said none of the people protesting outside actually worked in the store and complained that labor organizers had not approached him to try to resolve any complaints.

While several labor organizers spoke at the event, Make the Road By Walking did not disclose the identities of any of the workers it claimed to represent, saying their jobs may be endangered if they came forward.

The dispute was just one sign of increasing unrest and organization among Hispanic and other immigrant laborers in the city, who say they have been underpaid and exploited. Among the groups who supported the protest were the Million Workers March Movement, the Ecuadorian United Front, and clergy from three Bushwick Catholic Churches.

Already Make the Road by Walking has reached settlements for backwages with several stores along Knickerbocker Avenue, including S & S Farms deli, which paid $28,000, Foot Co. apparel, which paid $410,000, and a pizza shop and dollar store, which together reimbursed close to $58,000 to workers, according to Friedman.

As groups like Make the Road by Walking see successes, it inspires more immigrant workers to get involved, said one Ecuadorian delivery worker who reached a settlement with a Manhattan restaurant.

"Every day we're uniting more," said the delivery worker, who did not want to be named because the settlement he received was confidential. "We're seeing together we can change things."

 

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So I got interested in who Make the Road By Walking was and found out they do a lot for those that cannot speak up for themselves , heres a clip of their labor struggles

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From their Hompage :
  

The gap between rich and poor is at an all-time high in New York City. In 2005, low-wage workers made only two cents for every dollar earned by those at the top of the economic ladder. In these disconcerting times, in which low-paying service jobs have largely replaced union manufacturing jobs, Make the Road works on many levels to improve job opportunities for low-income New Yorkers throughout New York City:

Forging an Innovative Partnership with the Retail Workers Union:
¡Despierta Bushwick!
In 2005, Make the Road by Walking developed our latest and most ambitious workplace justice project, the ¡Despierta Bushwick! (“Wake Up Bushwick”) campaign to stop the rampant exploitation of retail workers in our community. Thriving retailers are paying workers as little as $2.00 per hour, and almost no area employers provide paid sick days, holidays, vacation, or health benefits. Employees attending to sick children are regularly fired for unavoidable absences, and women who become pregnant are dismissed.

¡Despierta Bushwick! is a collaborative effort of Make the Road by Walking’s workers’ committee, Workers in Action, and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to confront these conditions. The campaign targets abusive employers on Knickerbocker Avenue, a thriving retail strip near our offices in the heart of Bushwick.

The goal: establish enforceable employment standards – including higher wages, paid sick days and vacation, and job protections for workers. Those workplaces where workers want to organize a union will be organized into a new, democratic, Bushwick-based local union. Those who choose not to unionize will benefit from targeted enforcement of their rights by Make the Road by Walking and the New York State Attorney General’s office.

In the process, we hope to develop a model strategy that can be replicated in other places where community-based organizations have built a geographically-centralized, politically active membership.

A Major Victory for Employees at a New York Retail Chain
After years of paying workers a fraction of the minimum wage, the owners of a ten-store chain of sneaker and sportswear shops agreed to almost double their employees’ wages and to provide health insurance and other important benefits to workers.

Responding to pressure from the Workers in Action project of Make the Road by Walking, the owner signed a Good Business Community Agreement pledging to allow the workers in all their stores to decide free of coercion if they want to join a union, and, further, to negotiate a contract in good faith with the workers and their union.

The workers chose a union, and on December 1st the owner signed a contract covering over one hundred workers. This contract will eventually raise wages to $8.15/hour, provide time-and-a-half overtime pay, health insurance, time-off benefits including vacation and sick days, protection from unjust firings, and a voice at work. This marked a major victory for workers.

Legal Advocacy: Innovative Legal Services Protect Workers’ Rights

Make the Road by Walking is constantly innovating to improve our leverage and reach so that we can assist greater numbers of low-wage workers in New York City. We utilize a combination of federal court litigation, training workers about using small claims court and government agency complaint processes, and informal legal advocacy on behalf of workers who have been denied wages or been exploited on the job. Our Legal Department’s unique status as an integrated part of Make the Road by Walking’s whole enables us to coordinate these legal strategies with workers’ collective action, consumer boycotts, media attention and other methods of pressuring unscrupulous employers. During 2005, we collected over $600,000 in unpaid wages and overtime, in cases like that of “Luis M.”

Luis worked as a non-union laborer doing heavy digging and cement work for a major utility company’s subcontractor. He had to report at 6am every morning to load the crew’s truck; but his first hour of work each day was unpaid. Luis also worked at least 60 hours a week but never received time-and-a-half overtime pay as required by law. Make the Road by Walking filed a lawsuit on Luis’s behalf in federal court. After several months’ litigation, Luis received $35,000 and reinstatement with the company, but this time with union protection and union pay – a raise of more than $7 per hour, to $24 an hour.

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           Nice work people  

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Related links:
http://unionreview.com/selling-out-workers-safety-27-year-old-ecuadoran-carpente...
http://unionreview.com/video-workers-unite-brooklyn-break-slavery-chains