Today, Explained - All praise, no pay

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Essential workers in the food, transportation, and retail industries are being called American heroes. They want to be paid as such. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Tuesday, April 14th, 2020. Pretty overcast in Washington, D.C., but no rain. And the news that you can kind of see coming, Barack Obama has endorsed Joe Biden. I'm Sean Ramos-Verman. This is your coronavirus update from Today Explained. Joe Biden's chief competition, President Donald Trump, appears to be walking back his statement that he has total authority to reopen the country whenever he wants. Today, he said he'd make that decision

in conjunction, in quotes, with governors across the country. Meanwhile, governors on both coasts are coming together to say they'll coordinate within their regions to figure out how to best reopen for business. Italy and Spain are taking baby steps in that direction. Italy is opening up some stores while still under lockdown. Spain is reopening some factories and construction sites. We're at about 2 million coronavirus cases across the planet. The biggest outbreaks remain in the United States, Western Europe, Iran, and Turkey, and China, though Brazil and Russia have tens of thousands of confirmed cases and counting. India has now officially extended the world's biggest lockdown.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked a billion people to stay at home through early May at least. He said, if we have patience, we will defeat the coronavirus. You will need patience if you love the Tour de France. It's been postponed for the first time since the end of World War II, but it looks good if you're into wrestling. Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis said that when it comes to the World Wrestling Entertainment Organization, the show must go on. Florida, man. Today, Explained would like to hear from you, but also your favorite young people. What questions do they have for us about this pandemic, about germs, about what to do when they get to the end of The Legend of Zelda on the Switch there. Get them to call and leave us a message at 202-688-5944 with their questions,

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This coronavirus pandemic has changed who we call heroes. It's not just doctors and nurses and EMT workers anymore. Now it's our delivery people, our food service employees, our public transit workers. These people who have always been essential are finally being recognized as such. Liz Warren has a plan for them. Vice President Pence is hailing their service to the country. Tom Hanks is shouting them out on Saturday Night Live. But a lot of them are suffering now more than ever. Take Terrence Wise. He's a manager at a McDonald's in Kansas City, Missouri, and has been advocating for fast food workers since well before this crisis with Fight for 15.

It's an effort to raise the minimum wage and unionize fast food restaurants. You know, before the coronavirus pandemic, It's an effort to raise the minimum wage and unionize fast food restaurants. You know, before the coronavirus pandemic, me and my fiance, who's a full-time home health care worker, well, me, my fiance, and my three little girls, we were homeless. You know, it was us five living in the basement of my sister-in-law's house, and she's got six in our household. So, you know, we had 11 and a three-bedroom, one-bath house. So, you know, we're supposed to practice social distancing and all of that, but we had 11 people under one roof. And, you know, right after that, you know, the school started closing, not only here in Kansas City, but across the country. So it's been a struggle, you know, with childcare for the girls,

and now you got to feed them three times a day because schools close. And then, you know, going into the workplace since the coronavirus pandemic, I think the number one thing, and it's been impacting not only fast food workers, but everyone, it's been the mental aspect of it, you know, being afraid and on edge. I've been, you know, a full-time worker my whole life. I'm 40 years old. We've never seen anything like this. So to just go to work with the fear of going to work and something going wrong is one thing. And I'm normally a full-time worker, a manager, 40 hours a week. And for the past three weeks, I've been only getting 28 hours a week. So not only have I been impacted mentally, but the

financial challenges today and coming forward, going into the future, it's going to be some trying times, you know? Did you have benefits when you're at 40 hours? No benefits, no health care, no dental, no paid sick leave, vacation time, no benefits whatsoever, even though I'm a full-time worker and a manager, you know? So the difference between going from 40 to 28 is mostly that you're just making X amount less money. It's been like that across the board, not only in my shop, but across the board. Like I'm down to 28 hours a week. Some workers have been taken off the schedule altogether. And is that because business is slowing down? We normally do about $9,000 a day at my shop.

And recently we have seen about $7,500 a day. So sales are down about 20%. And when I try to explain to folks, yes, sales are down, but we have a labor target at McDonald's as well. We're supposed to do 21% labor every day, which is 21% of the sales. And for the past three weeks, we've been doing 17, 18%. We have fewer workers on the schedule. We're supposed to practice social distancing.

So we have five workers on each shift at all time. But it's still impossible to practice social distancing in the McDonald's environment, you know, keep six feet from each other and customers. So that plan's not been working. But with fewer workers, even though the sales have been lower, we've still been busy. And what it actually means is running 17 and 18 percent labor is we should have two to three more workers to handle the traffic that we have coming through. So even though our hours are down, sales are down, we're still making profit. And the few workers that we have, it's really weighing on them because they're working harder now.

Tell me what, if anything, McDonald's is doing to keep you guys safe right now. You know, their response is, just to simplify, it's been weak, you know. We've been organizing not only here in Kansas City, but across the country to fight and win protections that we should already have. We've been fighting for protective equipment, masks and gloves that have been non-existent, sneeze guards, you know. We've been fighting for hazard pay of at least $3. We've been fighting for the ability to get paid sick leave if we get sick. Recently, I've been sick, tried to call in to work and was pressured by my manager to come to work. So we've been fighting for all these protections

and McDonald's has been lacking in their response. We were on a call just last week with shareholders and analysts, you know, with McDonald's, and Fight for 15 workers across the country, some in California were on the call as well. And, you know, we laid our demands out for the hazard pay for protective equipment and the paid sick leave if one were sick, the ability to get tested. And the day after we aired out these grievances, I came to work and we had masks for the first time. This was like two days ago. So, you know, we saw that as a victory. And then I looked at the other side like, that's not right. We have to fight and demand the ability to be protected. Has anyone around you, your colleagues, your co-workers,

family members gotten sick? A co-worker of mine's in a group session like therapy, where she meets with a group of folks weekly. And she attended the session and they alerted her and let her know that, you know, you were in contact with someone who has COVID-19. And she had worked a shift after this exposure. I worked with her. I actually took her home that night when we got off. And she, of course, the next day let the job know. She called McDonald's and told them.

And they told her that she needs to stay away from work for 14 days. They didn't offer her to get tested. They didn't offer me to get tested. They didn't do a thorough cleaning of our store, any of that. They just told her to stay away for 14 days and she can come back. And she has an apartment. She has a life. So that's 14 days of no work where she won't be paid. And I can tell you for a few days after that, not only was I on edge, I know everyone in the shop was, you know, we were around someone who was exposed and we had no idea what the outcome of that situation would be. If you had to give McDonald's a grade, like between one and 10 on how they're protecting you and making you feel safe right now.

What would you give them? I would give them a zero. Damn. We would have to go below the scale. You know, being a part of the fight for 15 and a union movement, you know, the the need for paid sick leave and protections, it's really been highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic. But we've been fighting for these protections for seven years now. And McDonald's, you know, this is not a mom and pop shop. This is a global brand, a billion dollar corporation,

and they have a greater responsibility, not only to the customers we serve, but to their workers. And their response in whole has been weak. Now, we know they they've announced that they've going to give five percent of their stores two weeks of paid sick leave if you test positive for the coronavirus. And then that's verified. Now, they're not offering the test. You've got to go get it done. You've got to be tested, then test positive to get two weeks of paid leave. And it's only for five percent of their corporate stores. And not only that, they've been busy in Congress lobbying against worker protections. So McDonald's has been busy doing all the wrong things, and their response to ensuring that the workers are safe and the

public is safe has been lacking. You know, it's funny to think of McDonald's as unable to fulfill the needs of its workers because it is such a huge corporation. But obviously the government is stepping up and stepping in here to protect American workers. Everyone's getting a check in the mail. Do you feel like where McDonald's is slipping, the government has your back? No. And when you think about it, the proposed stimulus package and every little bit helps. Let's be clear. Workers need every bit that they can get.

But when you're talking about a $1,000 stimulus check, let's just say that my mortgage before I was homeless was $1,200 a month. That's not counting food, gas in the cars to get to work, basic necessities. So you talk about a stimulus package of $1,000, that's like putting a Band-Aid on a gash. What does my life look like and workers' lives look like one month from now, two, three months down the road? So we're going to need a lot more than just a one-time Band-Aid, you know, to help fix not only what's going on in workers' lives, but to help them. And McDonald's, you know, in general doesn't have to wait on legislation, you know, the government to subsidize their workers with food stamps or assistance. They can make changes now, but not enough is being done by corporations or our elected leaders to make life easier for what we call

essential workers. You hear me? Sure. I mean, you see these sort of one-off labor actions being organized in different places across the country, fast food workers in California, Amazon staff in New York. I know you're no stranger to labor action yourself. Do you think there's a chance here for essential workers like you across the country to do something big? We know in the labor movement, it's not about how big it can get. It's got to get bigger because we know folks with power don't give it up willingly. And we know as workers that when you look back, even at the history of our country, not only do we have the bloodiest labor history out of any country on the globe, but when you look back at the history of our country, not only do we have the bloodiest labor history out of any

country on the globe, but when you look back at our history of our country, nothing has been won or gained in this country without mass movement and organization. When you talk about women's rights, civil rights, the ability to vote, all of those things were won through a movement, you know, of working class folks coming together and taking action. And going on strike is one of the most important tools in our toolbox. Someone died to give me the right to be out here today to stand up and fight. So we got, you know, a cloth that we're cut from as the working class. And we're happy to live up to that tradition. and we look forward to escalating that as well.

Terrence Wise manages a McDonald's in Kansas City, Missouri, where he says he's gone on strike a dozen times and he might soon make it a baker's. We reached out to McDonald's to ask about Terrence's zero rating on a scale of 1 to 10. A spokesperson wrote back, Overall, this feedback does not represent the feedback we are hearing from the majority of employees across the country and that McDonald's is implementing wellness checks, providing masks where they're needed most, and adding protective barriers, among other measures, they said, they have the health and well-being of restaurant employees top of mind. More in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained ramp.com slash explained r a m p.com slash explained cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. We left off with Terrence saying he's looking forward to an escalation of the strikes we're seeing in places like California and New York. With workers across industries demanding better pay and protections, I asked Professor Jamila Michener if there's a chance labor groups could get together and organize for better conditions across industries. She's a professor at Cornell who focuses on how policy affects low-income people. Well, I think if there's potential, it's here now, because the depth of grievances and the fact that people are literally putting their lives

at risk to provide essential services creates a kind of context that we couldn't have imagined or predicted, but is also a bit of a tinderbox that is a kind of ripe context for people to respond in maybe ways we wouldn't have expected and that are unprecedented. And there's a name for this type of labor action, right? It's a general strike. What exactly is that? So a general strike is a strike that's not limited to a specific trade or occupation or employer. So it's not like GM workers striking or McDonald's workers striking. It's really when the strike transcends those individual companies or individual occupations and its workers on a broader level, uniting to fight for a kind of similar set of demands. And when was the last time the United States saw something like

that? Oh, you know, I don't know that there's complete agreement on that. But, you know, there was a general strike in Oakland in 1946. We might think about that as the last time, but not many people know about it. I think that the kind of seminal example of this that really looms largest in everyone's mind historically is the Seattle general strike of 1919. It was the kind of first general strike of the 20th century and the biggest and I think most impactful one. Pretty much a century ago. Interestingly, it's like the last time we had a wide-scale global pandemic was I think 1918 with the Spanish flu, right?

Exactly. So this was in the wake of that and also following the end of the First World War. And so people had been sacrificing during the war. They had been dealing with frozen wages and been told that they were doing that for the sake of the country and for the sake of democracy and things like that. And then when the war ended, the wages stayed frozen. And so after years of sacrifice and after suffering through a pandemic, people had had enough. And we saw a kind of massive strike. And it was across industries. It started with the shipyard workers, but it went beyond them. And workers all over the city of

Seattle coordinated and shut down the city for six entire days. So it was pretty unprecedented. And we haven't seen anything of that scale since then, honestly. Did workers get what they were asking for? Did they get better wages? Did they get better benefits, treatment? They did not. So in a concrete sense, the strike was not successful. There was a lot of pushback.

This was also just a few years after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. So everyone was super afraid of communism. And this was viewed as kind of a potential harbinger of communism. And so there was a lot of pushback and the officials who were in charge with negotiating, in particular with the shipyard workers who had begun the strike, they didn't capitulate and they didn't provide wage increases or do many of the different things that the workers were asking for. So by concrete metrics, this was a failure. But I think by a broader metric, which was the long-term impact that it had,

it was very much a success. There were strikes that followed on this, pretty major strikes in San Francisco in 1934. San Francisco's ever-smoldering labor war breaks out anew, with uniformed union members parading in protest against their employers. This strike stands as kind of an example of possibilities in the U.S. We are asking for a general strike to keep organized labor on the Pacific coast. We're not only asking for it, but we're going to get it. So it's had a long-term effect in terms of how it

shaped the labor movement and the possibilities for labor in the United States, but it didn't result in concrete gains for the people who actually participated in the strike. So they just ended up going back to work. They did. And then some of the salient people who were involved at that time were actually arrested and they were charged with being communist and things like that. But I think that this shows that that was a political context where the risk was huge and people still did this, right? They still took that step.

So it tells us a lot about the possibilities, I think. And what about the risk and possibilities now, you know, 100 years later, you've got Vice President Pence praising food workers and calling them vital and saying they need to step up and feed America. Meanwhile, people like Terrence are saying they want to strike to demand better conditions during this pandemic, but it's kind of hard to strike when you're not supposed to go outside or near other people. I do think it makes it hard. You know, something that happened in the 1919 strike was a really sophisticated and high level of coordination. People worked together,

they made sure that basic needs were still met during the strike, and that just required, to a certain extent, being around each other. And we can't do that right now. At the same time, a lot of the workers that we're talking about are workers whose jobs were mediated through technology anyway. So they're used to engaging the world in ways other than being physically proximate or physically close to someone. So while I think that the pandemic makes it hard in the sense of physical distance, there are possibilities that remain regardless of that. I think a higher bar as far as difficulty is just how difficult it is to look beyond

your own material needs right now, your health, your wellness, that of your families, food on the table, rent being paid. And when people are thinking about those needs, it's harder for them to kind of coordinate and work with others and organize. At the same time, those very needs can be a motivation to do more than you may have done before because you're desperate. You know, I saw this Walmart commercial this weekend with Bill Withers' Lean On Me playing and the message is like, salute your Walmart heroes. And I was like, is Walmart saluting its Walmart heroes right now? Are they giving people, how much did they pay to license Bill Withers' lean on me? Could they have distributed that money to their workers and

given them some solace, some financial safety net in this moment? I mean, it seems like workers have America's attention right now. Is there something they can do if a general strike is out of reach? What can they do instead? of connection and organizing that's happening among themselves. You know, my nephew works at an Amazon warehouse in Queens, actually, because a few people there, you know, came down with the virus and there was lots going on. And when I talk to him about these things, he's super aware of the strikes and of the discussion around striking. And he's not someone who's very political and who thinks about these things outside of this context and in normal life. So the fact that workers are recognizing,

not just that the public is recognizing their importance, but that they're recognizing their own importance, that they're recognizing that in order for Americans to be able to live the lives that they want to live, they need people packing their Amazon boxes and delivering their food, etc. That self-recognition of their importance, I think, is the first step towards continuing to build beyond this pandemic. So, you know, there's the question of, do we think a strike can happen right now during all of this? And I think that's a high calling and one that

is probably not quite possible. But then there's another question of, do we think that some foundation can be laid now in terms of altering the way that workers see themselves and altering the way that the public sees workers so that a year from now or two years from now, after some work has been done, some organizing has happened, we might see something closer to a general strike. I think if we stretch the time horizon that way, then there is much more that is possible. Is it too late, though? Is it too late in two years when people have maybe even forgotten how grateful they were to their grocery store workers back in that pandemic and in the spring of 2020? It may be. I mean, I wouldn't, if there were, if there's a real possibility now, I wouldn't say wait, right? But if it doesn't look like things are going to move in that direction now, I don't know that I would say that the moment will have passed two years

from now. We're looking at a long road of economic struggle ahead of us. And that doesn't go away, even when the most intense part of this pandemic wanes. And I think people are going to continue to have deep needs. I think people are going to continue to recognize, you know, that they're not getting a lot from their employers, that they're very insecure economically, that their families are not cared for in the way that they should be given how much work they're doing. And these issues are going to continue to percolate

and be a part of the public conversation. Whether or not it will be too late two years from now is going to depend on what happens between now and then you know the strike in Seattle didn't bubble up just out of nowhere there were people on the ground working for years beforehand to make something like that possible to connect different unions to each other to connect workers to each other who previously didn't understand their fates as linked. I think if this moment can spark that kind of activity, then two years from now might exactly be when those things have

built up to the point that the capacity is there to really organize people to push back. Jamila Michener is a professor in the government department over at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She's got a book. It's called Fragmented Democracy, Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics. Maybe see if there's a way to find it at your local bookstore. And, you know, tell your essential workers how much you appreciate them. And, you know, maybe ask if they're accepting tips if you can afford it. In the immortal words of Kanye West, if you admire somebody, you should go ahead and tell them people never get the flowers while they can still smell them. I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. This is Today Explained. Trey explained.