Category Archives: Wage Slavery

A popular way of thinking about history goes something like this: Society is a train that travels along an inevitable, one-way track. As it hurtles ceaselessly forward, progress is made.

We once believed that the sun revolved around the earth, before rightly conceding the error of our ways and embracing heliocentrism. We once allowed black people to be kept as chattel, subjected regularly to torture and rape. But then we learned that slavery was wrong. We once hired children to toil in dangerous mines and factories, where they lost eyes and limbs and succumbed early to occupational diseases like black lung. But we abolished child labor because we know better now.

Yes, things just keep getting better and better. And nowhere does this view of history as an inevitable, one-way progress train seem more evident than in the collective imagining of Victorian poverty, which has become a sort of shorthand for gratuitous cruelty and squalor. We tut-tut at the society our unenlightened forebears built, at the workhouse of Oliver Twist and the overcrowded tenement of Jacob Riis. We sure have come a long way, we tell ourselves.

You might assume that the reality show Victorian Slum House, which debuted on the BBC late last year and has just finished airing for the first time in the United States on PBS, would confirm such a rosy view. The show has, at first blush, a recognizable premise: A group of modern-day people must attempt to survive in a recreated Victorian slum house in East London.

Ellen Gray at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer describes the show as Survivor-meets-Who Do You Think You Are? This description isnt entirely accurate, because unlike Survivor, Victorian Slum House eliminates no contestants and offers no prizes to be won. Interpersonal conflict is minimal by reality television standards and is not played up for dramatic effect.

Instead, the drama comes chiefly from the struggle of making ends meet in an economy where jobs are scarce, wages are low, the cost of living is high, and legal protections for workers and tenants are nonexistent.

Each episode of Victorian Slum House takes place in a different decade: the 1860s, the 1870s, the 1880s, the 1890s, and the 1900s. Real historical events affect the participants experience. In the 1870s, the Long Depression following the Panic of 1873 causes skyrocketing unemployment, and participants must figure out how to make a living in a slack labor market. In the 1880s, participants must deal with an influx of immigrant labor in the form of Jews fleeing Eastern European pogroms.

Many of the participants of Victorian Slum House are descended from people who actually lived in the slums of East London Irish and Jewish immigrants, skilled and unskilled laborers curious to see how their ancestors lived. For example, Andy Gardiner, a professional golfer who uses a prosthetic leg, wants to understand disability in Victorian England.

Because of this premise, the show appears to be predicated on the progress train idea of history. It seems set up to demonstrate to participants and to viewers how much the world has improved since Victorian times.

But the most striking quality of Victorian Slum House is not how different its world is from our own, but how similar.

Take the labor market. The global economy during the fifty-year period covered by the show was pocked by financial crises particularly the Long Depression, which lasted from 1873 to 1896. Because there was no social insurance and few laws regulating workplaces, the effects of these economic crises were borne disproportionately by the poor.

Victorian Slum House depicts a society where, for the poor, economic precarity is the norm. Wages and working conditions are a race to the bottom, and accidents have catastrophic consequences for individual workers.

In the first episode, set in the 1860s, Graham Potter finds a job at a bell foundry. But he injures his back, which leaves his family short of one breadwinner. In the following episode, Grahams wife and children try to make up for the lost income by fulfilling piecework orders for artificial flowers. In a subsequent episode, the Potter family tries to make money by selling Victorian street food jellied eel and sheeps trotters for a small profit.

Despite the cuisine from a bygone era, this plot arc contains several analogues to the contemporary economy. Due to massive deregulation, workplaces injuries have once again become commonplace. For instance, a shocking Bloomberg article from March detailed the gruesome working conditions at auto parts plants in Alabama. Regina Elsea, who worked at the Ajin USA factory in Cusseta for $8.75 an hour, was impaled by a machine on the factory floor. She remained trapped in the machine hunched over, eyes open, conscious but speechless until rescue workers arrived and figured out how to free her. She was airlifted to a hospital, where she died of her injuries.

Reco Allen, a janitor at the Matsu Alabama plant in Huntsville, was ordered by a supervisor to operate heavy factory machinery with no training or safety equipment. His hands became trapped inside a hot metal-stamping press for an hour. When emergency crews finally arrived, his left hand was flat like a pancake, and his right hand was severed at the wrist, attached to his arm by a piece of skin.

On top of unsafe workplaces, Victorian Slum House participants must deal with a slack labor market, where jobs are scarce and employers can get away with offering race-to-the-bottom wages. Even in a best-case scenario, with parents and children all working, households often could not scrape together enough income to sustain their basic needs often making it necessary to piece together multiple streams of income just to survive.

Many people today find themselves in a similar position. They take on second and third jobs. They find gigs and side hustles. They work as drivers for Uber or Lyft, they sell goods for a small profit margin on Etsy or eBay, they become salespeople for multi-level marketing schemes like Herbalife, they sell their own blood plasma.

The gig economy is the piecework economy by another name. A Guardian article from December 2016 reported that Uber treats its drivers as Victorian-style sweated labor, with some taking home less than the minimum wage. Drivers at the taxi-hailing app company reported feeling forced to work extremely long hours, sometimes more than seventy a week, just to make a basic living.

Victorian Slum House also highlights disturbing similarities between the welfare system in Victorian England which was reformed by the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and the welfare system in the United States following the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 under president Bill Clinton. Both laws made material relief from poverty much more difficult to obtain. Moreover, both laws made the receipt of welfare conditional on working.

In Victorian England, welfare benefits for the poor were administered through the workhouse, which provided room and board in exchange for grueling labor. In the United States, those benefits are dependent on recipients fulfilling work and education requirements that force them into minimum-wage jobs and for-profit college programs, and has contributed to the rise in Americans living on less than two dollars a day.

Both of these laws required welfare applicants to plead their cases in front of a board who decides whether the applicant is deserving or undeserving of aid. If the applicant is deserving, a wide variety of strings are attached. In Victorian England, this meant that, among other things, single mothers would have their children taken from them, and sometimes be forced to wear yellow dresses marking them for public shaming.

In the United States today, at least fifteen states have passed legislation requiring drug testing for welfare applicants. In San Diego, law enforcement officers are permitted to search the homes of welfare applicants, up to and including their underwear drawers.

When Victorian Slum House participant Shazeda is unable to afford her rent as the due date approaches, she is faced with a difficult predicament not unfamiliar to the contemporary poor: she can petition the workhouse for welfare assistance which she may or may not get.

If she is fortunate enough to get into the workhouse, her two children will be taken from her because she is a single mother. If she cant get into the workhouse, she andher children will face eviction.

Victorian attitudes toward poverty were similar to prevailing notions about poverty today. According to the shows host Michael Mosley, there were two primary schools of Victorian thought about poverty. One held that the poor were responsible for their own plight. This narrative finds its contemporary analogue with conservatives like Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who believes that poverty is a state of mind, or National Review columnist Kevin D. Williamson, who believes that people find themselves in eviction court deservedly due to poor choices, and that if it were raining jobs and opportunity, [they] would find a way to walk between the raindrops.

The other narrative held that poverty was a sad but intractable problem that would always exist in society. This narrative finds its contemporary analogue among liberals, like former president Barack Obama, who called income inequality the defining challenge of our time and yet refused to support policies that would ameliorate the problem. Poverty is unfortunate, goes this school of thought, but sadly, nothing can be done at the structural level to get rid of it.

But something was done to ameliorate the conditions of the Victorian slum. Workers fought and died for the right to shorter work hours, safer working conditions, and the right to unionize. Progressive groups fought to outlaw child labor.

And the creation of the British Welfare State starting in 1945 made enormous strides towards eliminating many of the conditions that made life so wretched in the Victorian slums. The Family Allowances Act of 1945 was set up to provide a child benefit. The National Insurance Act of 1946 provided compensation for workplace injuries. The National Health Service was set up in 1948, providing health care to all free of cost.

In the United States, turn-of-the-century progressive reforms and the social programs of the New Deal and the Great Society offered similar relief. These policies British, American, or otherwise happened because of peoples activism, not because of progress. And their chipping away has been likewise a result of activism and legislation from the other side.

Intentionally or not, Victorian Slum House holds a mirror to the brutality of our own society and the many problems we thought banished to an unenlightened past. It reminds us that we arent hurtling inevitably towards progress. Society may be like a train, but if we want it to chug away from the miseries of the Victorian era rather than back towards them, well have to wrest control of the engine.

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Slumming It - Jacobin magazine

In 2015 the UK passed tough anti-slavery legislation introducing life sentences for traffickers

By Lin Taylor

LONDON, May 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A British court jailed four men on Tuesday for their involvement in trafficking Polish workers into the UK, tricking them into low-paid jobs and taking their wages, prosecutors said.

The four men, Sabastian Mandzik, 40, Robert Majewski, 45, Pawel Majewski, 27, and Seweryn Szymt, 20, were convicted at Newcastle Crown Court for transporting people for exploitation, conspiring to force people into labour and conspiring to conceal criminal property.

The sentences ranged from five to 12 years imprisonment.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the men were part of a people trafficking ring that preyed on vulnerable Poles -- often jobless and in need of money -- and falsely promised them well-paid jobs in northeast England.

Victims were kept in cramped conditions, with the salary from their minimum wage jobs paid into bank accounts controlled by the criminal group, CPS said.

"The treatment of the victims in this case and the conditions in which they were made to live were truly appalling," Senior Crown Prosecutor Jim Hope said in a statement.

"The CPS will continue to work alongside our criminal justice partners to robustly tackle all cases of modern slavery and, hopefully, to prevent others from falling into the same trap."

There are an estimated 13,000 victims of forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude in Britain.

In 2015 the UK passed tough anti-slavery legislation introducing life sentences for traffickers and forcing companies to disclose what they are doing to make sure their supply chains are free from slavery.

Two Polish brothers in January were jailed under Britain's modern slavery laws for stealing wages of around 18 other Poles they tricked with promises of work in the UK.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women's rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

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Four men jailed for trafficking Polish workers to Britain - Thomson Reuters Foundation

As Americans, we have always tried to do better, to live up to the ideals upon which we were founded 240 years ago.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote about the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, but excluded women, we corrected his mistake. When he wrote that power is derived from the consent of the governed, but left out nonwhite citizens, we corrected his mistake. And when the Founding Fathers allowed Americans to buy and sell their fellow humans as property Americas original sin we corrected this injustice.

Or did we? More than 150 years after we ended slavery, we continue to exploit human labor in a misguided attempt to maximize profits for the aristocrats and oligarchs.

Is this the best we can do? Is this progress we can be proud of?

Working 40 hours per week at the federal minimum wage, a worker will earn just $290 per week or $15,080 per year before taxes assuming that worker takes no vacation days, never gets sick, and works Christmas, Thanksgiving and every other holiday. That leaves just $1,250 per month to cover essential needs like housing, food, clothing and transportation. Its just not sustainable.

Families supported by minimum wage jobs are excluded from Americas promise. There is no opportunity to spend time with children, to build wealth or to even participate in civic life. We may have left the plantations, but for too many Americans, the realities arent much different today than they were at Mt. Vernon.

To help these families survive not succeed, but merely survive the government has developed a number of programs like the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps and Medicaid. This helps fill the gap between a full days pay and the dollars needed to subsist, but these programs were intended as a safety net, not as a subsidy to corporations who refuse to pay even a subsistence wage.

That is exactly what they have become Walmart and McDonalds even help their employees with the application process for public assistance.

But welfare comes with strings and a stigma. And what clearer, and more humiliating, sign can an employer send to an employee than to say, We dont even think youre worth a living wage?

Government programs are not the solution, except for those who are truly the most vulnerable members of our society. The solution is to guarantee that every American who works a full-time job can earn a salary that meets their basic needs and lets them participate in their family, in public life and in the economy. The solution is to attach value to the jobs our neighbors do and to our neighbors themselves by showing them that we attach value to their labor. The solution is to rid ourselves of our original sin and remove the last vestiges of a slave culture we claim to have rejected more than a century and a half ago.

The solution is to raise the minimum wage and ensure that its a living wage.

The moral argument for doing so is clear. The economic argument should be clear as well. In an economy that is 70 percent driven by consumer demand, putting more money into peoples pockets means putting more money into the economy, and the closer a worker is to just making ends meet, the faster every additional dollar they have isreturned to the economy a concept known as the velocity of money.

Put another way, raising the minimum wage instantly pumps millions of dollars into the economy. Its good for the individual, good for business and good for the country as a whole.

In nine years, America will celebrate our 250th birthday. We have come a long way in that time, but we still have far to go. Will we be a nation that has moved closer to the ideals of equality so critical to our founding, or will we still be struggling to erase the lingering residue of slavery, our original sin?

If we truly do hope to be an ever more perfect union, the answer should be clear.

Morris Pearl is chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans dedicated to equality for all people. He was previously a managing director for investment firm BlackRock.

Marc Morial is president of the National Urban League and the former mayor of New Orleans.

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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We ended slavery, so why exploit people with a $7.25 minimum ... - The Hill (blog)

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Adidas executive Aditi Wanchoo is on a mission - to wipe out any slavery in the German sportswear company's supply chain, and she hopes giving workers the technology to speak out will help.

With a background in corporate social responsibility at consultancy firm Accenture, Wanchoo was hired 18 months ago in a new position created by Adidas, one of the first companies to set up a role dedicated to fighting slavery.

In recent years modern-day slavery has increasingly come under the spotlight, putting regulatory and consumer pressure on companies to ensure their supply chains are free of forced labor, child labor and other forms of slavery.

As apparel and footwear industries rely heavily on outsourcing, sportswear companies have faced growing scrutiny.

Wanchoo said Adidas had been actively working on this issue since it was revealed at the 1998 World Cup that footballs were produced by child laborers in India and companies realized they did not have control over their suppliers.

Governments are now trying to tackle the problem with new legislation, such as the UK's 2015 law requiring companies to disclose how they are ensuring supply chains are slavery free.

"We have found that the UK Modern Slavery Act and recent legislative action in France and Australia have helped take the conversations to the boardroom," Wanchoo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview this week in London.

"My role was created to look at building relevant partnerships to continue our work on addressingpotential modern slavery risks for our extended supply chain, i.e. our Tier 2 processing facilities and Tier 3 raw material sources."

Slavery has emerged as a major global problem with the Global Slavery Index by the Walk Free Foundation estimating there are nearly 46 million slaves in the world.

The United Nations has a global goal to eradicate forced labor and slavery by 2030 and end all child labor by 2025.

Wanchoo said she was tackling the issue in various ways such as collaborating with other companies, NGOs and governments, and training suppliers about the risks of bonded labor and the impact of recruitment fees on workers.

TECH TO GIVE WORKERS A VOICE

She said Adidas was also on a major drive to encourage workers to speak up and use this information to eradicate slavery and improve workers' conditions.

The company already has "worker hotlines" giving 300,000 factory workers in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia the opportunity to anonymously ask questions, make suggestions or express concerns via text messages and smart phone applications.

But the company found this was not enough, and over the past year Adidas has run a pilot project in China with apps for workers to anonymously report issues - data that is collected and then analyzed.

Wanchoo said the aim is to introduce such a system in all of the company's 105 or so primary factories in the next five years and then look at cascading this down to second-tier suppliers.

In Turkey these worker grievance systems had uncovered concerns about child labor and reports of illegal workers from Turkmenistan, while in Asia workers had complained about abuse by supervisors, wage issues and food, she said.

She added that efforts to hear directly from workers was paying off. Last year campaign organization KnowTheChain ranked Adidas top out of 20 firms, chosen because of their size, for its efforts to eliminate forced labor and human trafficking.

"We want to make it as easy and anonymous as possible for workers," said Hong Kong-based Wanchoo, whose official title is senior manager - development partnerships, social and environmental affairs at Adidas.

She acknowledged this did not always go down well with suppliers who aim to keep costs as competitive as possible.

"Sometimes there can be resistance from suppliers, but we work with them to demonstrate how this can help them in the long run by improving supply chain transparency, communication, productivity and worker retention," she said.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith @BeeGoldsmith, Editing by Alisa Tang.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)

BEIJING China's securities markets regulator published rules on Saturday aimed at preventing major shareholders of listed companies from reducing their holdings in an "intensive, massive and disorderly" manner that "disturbed market order and dented investor confidence," according to a statement on its website.

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A dozen delivery and supply companies and affiliates based in Turkey are banned from doing business with the U.S. government due to their roles in profiteering from humanitarian aid intended for Syria, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Cancun, Mexico (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The rapid reaction by the Democratic Republic of Congo to recent cases of Ebola showed lessons were learned from earlier outbreaks, a top global health official said on Friday, stressing the need to factor health into disaster risk plans.

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Adidas' slavery buster hopes technology can give workers a voice ... - Reuters

The South African Football Players Union (SAFPU) say that its just a matter of time before there is a player strike in the country due to slavery wages.

Reports have stated that Maritzburg United midfielder, Siphesihle Ndlovu, is currently earning less than R7000 per month at the club despite being a regular first team player and SAFPU say that they intend to do something about it.

The unions Deputy General Secretary, Nhlanhla Shabalala, explained how seriously they are taking the matter, saying that there are players eating from rubbish bins because of the wages theyre getting.

He told the Siya crew, We are in the process of engaging the PSL to investigate these matters. With every pro contract that is signed, it goes to the PSL.

It is up to Maritzburg to prove to us that what were saying is not true. There are players earning slavery wages here, even though its the players who are the focal point of the league.

Im not going into the details of his contract, but hes had three increases since his debut and is still on a slavery wage. There are commentators earning much more than players, and its not right.

I know that it's not only Siphesihle whose earning this rubbish salary at Maritzburg but others as well, and it's even worse than what were discussing. If were wrong then we challenge them to prove it!

Meanwhile, on the topic of general wages in South African football, the former Ajax Cape Town man said, Weve spoken regularly about a minimum wage and have tried to speak to the PSL about it. Weve spoken to players and we think that a minimum wage for a professional footballer should be between R16,000 and R18,000.

It seems like the PSL is avoiding these issues and now were tired of writing letters. We are now mobilising players and trying to educate them on what theyre not aware of.

We are going to have a strike, he says. Its only a matter of time before that happens. The PSL would not exist without the players, and some of them are being treated like slaves. We are the voices of the players and we must do our job. We cant allow a situation where we have some of our players eating from the rubbish bins.

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SAFPU Plan PSL Strike, Fight Against 'Slavery Wages' - Soccer Laduma

CUMBRIA police were tipped off about 130 cases of modern-day slavery during the last year, with some victims being forced into prostitution.

The shocking revelation came as senior officers and other professionals gathered for a conference examining what the force and other agencies can do to tackle the scourge of slavery.

Police chiefs including Cumbria's police and crime commissioner Peter McCall want to explode the myth that slavery does not happen in Cumbria.

A key aim of the conference yesterday was to highlight how such exploitation thrives on the profound fear of vulnerable victims, often forced to live in squalor and left so terrified they dare not ask for help.

For that reason, police want more help from the public to spot the tell-tale signs of exploitation.

There have been examples across the whole county.

Detective Chief Inspector Lesley Hanson, the senior officer responsible for coordinating efforts to fight the problem in Cumbria, said: "This is relevant to our county because we've had 130 intelligence reports of what we felt were cases of modern slavery in this county. In terms of sexual exploitation we've had instances of pop-up brothels with Lithuanian females brought into the county.

"We've also had labour exploitation and we have looked at particular car washes in the county.

People may have the misconception that modern-day slavery doesnt happen in Cumbria, and that it's only an issue for big cities. However, human trafficking and slavery can happen anywhere and I'd urge anyone who has concerns to report them to the police immediately.

She described how gangmaster criminals strip the victims of their official documentation, including their passport, and then pay them a pittance for work, and intimidate or beat up anybody who protests.

Young women forced into prostitution are being sexually abused. The victims are very vulnerable, said DCI Hanson. They're effectively held to ransom. They may have come from the EU so travelling to the UK is not an issue but they come over for false promises. We've had instances of people earning 20 per week.

Some come across to the UK believing they'll be doing something completely different to what they end up doing.

In some instances, said the officer, victims were forced to work on illegal cannabis farms in remote Cumbrian locations.

People don't think this kind of thing is happening in Cumbria but it really is. We want people to know what it is and to recognise the signs.

DCI Hanson said Cumbria police had carried out numerous investigations in the last year, and safeguarded several victims as a result.

She added: But it's not always about prosecution. It's about keeping victims safe. Anyone of any race or background could be a victim of modern-day slavery.

We often rely on the public for valuable information and evidence when investigating these types of crimes. I would urge people to take the time to learn the signs and get in touch if you have any suspicions that something is not quite right.

DCI Hanson's colleague, Detective Inspector James Yallop, said victims often isolated and vulnerable because they have no English can find themselves dominated and ruthlessly exploited.

He said: They're in a foreign country and they feel lost. They have their identity documents and money taken from them and they're already in debt. They're forced to work for well below the national minimum wage.

They often live in substandard conditions, in multi-occupancy houses and they don't know who to turn to for help. It's intimidation.

The conference heard from several experts who urged those attending to give priority to fighting slavery.

Mr McCall said: The first step to eradicating the scourge of modern slavery is acknowledging and confronting its existence.

"The threat of modern slavery is real and is happening in Cumbria and we cant allow this type of crime to become established.

The message to you is simple if you see something suspicious, please report it.

"We see people being exploited in agriculture, in tourism, in car washes. It takes all sorts of forms."

The event was funded by the police and crime commissioner and held at Carlisle Racecourse with 215 professionals in attendance.

Signs that someone is being exploited could include:

* Scared and withdrawn

* No confidence

* Unexplained injuries

* May live and work in same place

* No access to passport or documents

* Limited contact with family, or outside world

* Doesnt know home or work address

* Forced or intimidated to work, with low or no pay

* Distrustful

* Poor hygiene and unkempt appearance

*Speaks little English

Anyone with information or concerns regarding exploitation is asked to contact police on 101. Alternatively you can contact Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.

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Public urged to help drive out scourge of slavery from Cumbria - NW Evening Mail

Three times last February, Eugene police officers found Rod Adams, a 60-year-old homeless man, lying in a sleeping bag downtown in the middle of the night. They arrested, handcuffed and took him to Lane County Jail each time, where he stayed for three total days on trespassing charges.

Since Adams moved to Eugene nine years ago, police have arrested him 40 times on 44 counts of being homeless: trespassing, prohibited camping and violating park rules lead the laundry list of minor crimes, plus warrant arrests for missing scheduled court dates. Adams received 10 tickets last year, putting him in the top one percent of all people cited last year.

Never has Adams been charged with a felony or violent crime, but hes been booked 15 times in Lane County Jail, where hes spent 32 nights, jail records show.

And thats only the ones they document, Adams says. Every fucking day theyre in my face.

Once a middle-class citizen, a disgruntled Adams left his job in corporate America at a tech company and stopped making payments on his home, which was repossessed. He now spends his time documenting the class war happening on the streets of Eugene. Hes become infamous for videotaping police interactions with homeless people downtown.

Adams intervenes when he sees the unhoused being harassed and often spews vitriol at officers. Hes posted dozens of videos to his Facebook group, RE-volt, over the past year, sometimes documenting officers ticketing sleeping homeless people late at night and others times calling the cops fascists.

Now, fed up with a justice system that penalizes being poor, Adams is taking his three recent criminal trespass cases to jury trials, where he will invoke the necessity defense, arguing he had no choice but to commit the crimes because the city offered him no viable alternative.

Its a rarely used and rarely won defense, and Adams does not necessarily expect to win. But he says the trials are necessary work that has to be done and only a prelude to greater efforts to end criminalization of homelessness. He hopes it will encourage other homeless people to do the same.

THE SOFTKILL

Adams is thin, about 5-foot-9 with blue eyes and an untrimmed white ponytail and a beard. He wears a camo hat and black combat boots and lives off his military pension Eugene Weekly confirmed his veteran status but can no longer afford rent, healthcare and other basic needs. Many of his possessions have been stolen, but hes managed to hang on to an Acer laptop and out-of-service LG smartphone. Those, he says, will be stolen one day, too.

Adams maintains a list of all the homeless people whove died in Eugene and often invokes their names when yelling at the cops. He counted 25 deaths in 2016 alone. Some hes heard about from friends, others hes seen for himself lifeless bodies under the bridges. One of these days, he says, thats going to be him.

Many people are upset with me because I do yell at the cops, he says. I say nasty, foul things to them. But they take no responsibility for what they do to those people out there, and those people wind up dead. So I absolutely will never apologize for verbally abusing them.

Adams plans to subpoena Eugene police chief Pete Kerns in his upcoming trials to talk about compliance training. He says police are trained to subject homeless people and all marginalized communities to character assassination, dispossession and the psychological inferiority. Adams calls it the softkill.

Ken Neubeck, a longtime local homeless advocate, described Adams as principled and fearless passionate about his beliefs, but frustrated at the slow rate of change. Neubeck thinks a lot of Adams toughness and prickliness toward the police is a product of his experience on the streets.

If you give him a chance, his whole voice changes, Neubeck says. Hell be sitting beside me in the car as a passenger, and all the sudden hes much more relaxed, and hes friendly. Hes talkative and respectful. I dont think theres really a mean bone in his body, from what Ive been able to see.

Wayne Martin, a retired pastor who housed Adams in his basement for a week in 2013, says he has great loyalty to Adams. He described him as a poet, giving eloquent homilies about corporate demons and his belief in a sort of agrarian democracy. He says he sees a fire light up in Adams eyes when he gets on a roll while delivering a speech.

Rod has had to have strong legs to keep standing, Martin says. Hes a whimsical guy and I think that helps. I think hes been really insulted a lot, both his intelligence and his person. Hes in serious disregard about a system that treated him badly.

When police officers interact with Adams, he asks them for their business cards. If they comply, he emails them The Package, which consists of excerpts from three philosophical texts that he says are the minimum comprehensions necessary to address the failing state. One text asserts the main difference between the unhoused in America and those in other countries is the publics attitude toward them.

Adams says no police officer has ever responded to Adams emails and lately theyve stopped giving him their cards.

Neubeck uses the term structural classism to describe the systemic criminalization policies that Adams deems the softkill.

In 2008, for example, the city established a downtown public safety zone from which it could legally exclude people convicted of certain crimes. But according to a 2010 police activity report, almost 60 percent of the people excluded were homeless. Neubeck says laws like Eugenes camping ban may not appear discriminatory it prevents everyone from camping in the parks, not just the homeless but that they have a disproportionate negative impact on people who dont have anywhere else to go.

I think thats what Rod is principally upset about, Neubeck says. Not only does the city not offer enough help to house people and provide them emergency shelter, but on top of that it is punishing people for doing things outside that they have no choice but to do.

Homeless people can be arrested for things housed people do regularly in their homes: drinking, smoking and going to the bathroom are illegal in public spaces. Adams has been arrested for smoking, drinking, littering and even theft of electricity for having his laptop plugged into a wall power outlet behind an auto shop.

In 2014, Adams spent 11 days in jail for a noise disturbance that occurred six years prior.

Its the laws that are bad, Neubeck says, but police officers still use discretion to enforce them. So Adams takes his frustration out on them.

SHAKING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Winning the necessity defense will be a tall order for Adams and his public defender, Ryan Gifford. They must prove that had Adams slept on private property due to: a specific threat of imminent danger; a necessity to act; and no practical alternative, while showing that the harm caused wasnt greater than the harm prevented.

Kathy Walker, a longtime Eugene resident who has dedicated much of her life to assisting the homeless, is helping Adams prepare for the trials and thinks theyve covered all their bases. Adams acquittal, she says, could set a precedent for future cases of homeless criminalization. A guilty ruling would only serve as evidence in an even bigger case, she says. A class action lawsuit could be possible, but expensive.

In 2016, the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts tossed out six trespassing convictions against a homeless man, ruling that he should have had the opportunity to argue the necessity defense in front of a jury.

The prosecutors in Eugene may argue Adams could have spent the night at Eugene Mission, a local shelter. Adams responds, Im poor, I cant afford rent and Im not going to retire to the Mission, so that only leaves the street.

The prosecutors may argue that if Adams cant afford housing, he needs to find work. You just authorized wage slavery, Adams replies. What part of retirement dont you understand?

Adams often says the case is not about him. He does not care if the court finds he broke the law; if he can change the six jury members predispositions about homelessness, he says, hell have done his job.

It doesnt matter what happens to me, Adams says. What happens is people get shaken out of their cognitive dissonance, so my grandchildren dont have to grow up with this.

The first of Rod Adamss three trials begins 9 am May 31 at Eugene Municipal Court.

Original post:

44 Counts of Homelessness - Eugene Weekly

May 24, 2017 11:36 AM

CHICAGO (CBS) The Fight for $15 movement took aim at shareholders meetings for two Chicago area corporate giants on Wednesday McDonalds and United Airlines as low-pay workers continued their push for a higher minimum wage.

Hundreds of McDonalds workers and other activists marched outside the fast food giants corporate headquarters in Oak Brook as shareholders held their annual meeting. Protesters began gathering outside McDonalds headquarters around 7 a.m., and staged a boisterous protest as they chanted and marched outside the corporate campus.

Police shut down Jorie Boulevard for several hours to accommodate the protesters, who were marching as part of the Fight for $15 movement.

Activists said McDonalds, the worlds second largest private employer, fails to pay a living wage.

McDonalds workers demanded union rights and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

Were tired of living in poverty. Meanwhile, they get to build a new headquarters in downtown Chicago, which Im pretty sure is pretty expensive; and we cant even afford to buy our children they toy that they want, or put food on the table, and that is absolutely unacceptable, Adriana Alvarez said.

McDonalds employee Betty Douglas said working for the fast food giant is like modern-day slavery.

It doesnt make any sense. We deserve dignity. We deserve $15 an hour. We deserve to be able to take care of our kids. My son, I cant even buy him any shoes, she said.

Protest organizers said, since the Fight for $15 movement launched nearly five years ago, more than 20 million low-wage workers have received pay raises.

However, they said McDonalds hasnt done enough, and essentially is exploiting its front-line workforce while executives line their pockets.

In response to Wednesdays protest, McDonalds issued the following statement:

Our commitment to the communities we serve includes providing opportunities for those who work in our restaurants to succeed at McDonalds and beyond. For hundreds of thousands, a job at McDonalds is their very first and our world-class training and education programs begin building the skills first time workers will need to succeed in the workforce. In recent years, we have raised pay and started offering paid time off at our company-owned restaurants. Additionally, eligible employees (at both company-owned and participating franchised restaurants) can take free high school completion classes, get upfront college tuition assistance and learn English as a second language. In just two years, we are proud that over 17,000 employees have participated in this extended learning. Together, these important investments in our people show why we are committed to being Americas best first job.

There were no incidents during the protest, and no demonstrators tried to cross police lines to get onto the McDonalds headquarters campus.

Fight for $15 protesters also sought to send a message to United Airlines at the companys shareholder meeting at Willis Tower on Wednesday.

Airport workers including baggage handlers, janitors, and security officers were joined by leaders of the Service Employees International Union, which has been trying to unionize the employees of subcontractors hired by the airlines.

OHare workers are coming together with other airport workers from major cities across the country, all fighting for a better life by sticking together and speaking out, SEIU Local 1 President Tom Balanoff said.

The workers claim contractors hired by United undercut jobs at OHare, and undermine safety and security.

We understand this is an important issue being raised in cities and states across the country. At United, we hold our vendors to the highest standards and require them to follow all applicable laws and regulations. Since we do not have a direct employer-employee relationship with our vendors employees, we must rely on them to work with each other directly, United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said in an email.

SEIU officials said 30 airport workers and supporters were arrested at the United Airlines protest, including Balanoff. Police issued citations for blocking traffic.

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Fight For $15 Protests Target McDonalds, United Airlines Shareholders - CBS Chicago

Adidas on a major drive to encourage workers to speak up and use this information to eradicate slavery and improve workers' conditions

By Belinda Goldsmith

LONDON, May 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Adidas executive Aditi Wanchoo is on a mission - to wipe out any slavery in the German sportswear company's supply chain, and she hopes giving workers the technology to speak out will help.

With a background in corporate social responsibility at consultancy firm Accenture, Wanchoo was hired 18 months ago in a new position created by Adidas, one of the first companies to set up a role dedicated to fighting slavery.

In recent years modern-day slavery has increasingly come under the spotlight, putting regulatory and consumer pressure on companies to ensure their supply chains are free of forced labour, child labour and other forms of slavery.

As apparel and footwear industries rely heavily on outsourcing, sportswear companies have faced growing scrutiny.

Wanchoo said Adidas had been actively working on this issue since it was revealed at the 1998 World Cup that footballs were produced by child labourers in India and companies realised they did not have control over their suppliers.

Governments are now trying to tackle the problem with new legislation, such as the UK's 2015 law requiring companies to disclose how they are ensuring supply chains are slavery free.

"We have found that the UK Modern Slavery Act and recent legislative action in France and Australia have helped take the conversations to the boardroom," Wanchoo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview this week in London.

"My role was created to look at building relevant partnerships to continue our work on addressing potential modern slavery risks for our extended supply chain, i.e. our Tier 2 processing facilities and Tier 3 raw material sources."

Slavery has emerged as a major global problem with the Global Slavery Index by the Walk Free Foundation estimating there are nearly 46 million slaves in the world.

The United Nations has a global goal to eradicate forced labour and slavery by 2030 and end all child labour by 2025.

Wanchoo said she was tackling the issue in various ways such as collaborating with other companies, NGOs and governments, and training suppliers about the risks of bonded labour and the impact of recruitment fees on workers.

TECH TO GIVE WORKERS A VOICE

She said Adidas was also on a major drive to encourage workers to speak up and use this information to eradicate slavery and improve workers' conditions.

The company already has "worker hotlines" giving 300,000 factory workers in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia the opportunity to anonymously ask questions, make suggestions or express concerns via text messages and smart phone applications.

But the company found this was not enough, and over the past year Adidas has run a pilot project in China with apps for workers to anonymously report issues - data that is collected and then analysed.

Wanchoo said the aim is to introduce such a system in all of the company's 105 or so primary factories in the next five years and then look at cascading this down to second-tier suppliers.

In Turkey these worker grievance systems had uncovered concerns about child labour and reports of illegal workers from Turkmenistan, while in Asia workers had complained about abuse by supervisors, wage issues and food, she said.

She added that efforts to hear directly from workers was paying off. Last year campaign organisation KnowTheChain ranked Adidas top out of 20 firms, chosen because of their size, for its efforts to eliminate forced labour and human trafficking.

"We want to make it as easy and anonymous as possible for workers," said Hong Kong-based Wanchoo, whose official title is senior manager - development partnerships, social and environmental affairs at Adidas.

She acknowledged this did not always go down well with suppliers who aim to keep costs as competitive as possible.

"Sometimes there can be resistance from suppliers, but we work with them to demonstrate how this can help them in the long run by improving supply chain transparency, communication, productivity and worker retention," she said.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith @BeeGoldsmith, Editing by Alisa Tang.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

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INTERVIEW - Adidas' slavery buster hopes technology can give workers a voice - Thomson Reuters Foundation

The latest issue of The Atlantic Magazine has a simple, almost forlorn, photograph of a Filipino woman, Eudocia Tomas Pulido, the subject of a story by Filipino-American writer Alex Tizon. Taken from an impoverished family in Tarlac, Lola, as the family members called her, was a gift from the authors grandfather to his mother. Lola served Tizons family (including his own, after his marriage) for 56 years, 21 in the Philippines and the rest in the United States. Only in her last 12 years of service did she receive a salary.

Lola was their sole domestic helper, cleaning, cooking and laundering, and caring for the five Tizon siblings. She was able to enter the United States because Tizons father was assigned to the embassy there. The family stayed on after the consular assignment, even as Lolas own travel papers expired, making her TNT (tago ng tago), an illegal immigrant.

Tizon was a respected journalist, having received a Pulitzer, and the story of Lola was his last. He died in March, before his story saw print. I listened to his widow being interviewed on BBC, and she said her husband grappled for years with this dark family secret, captured in the storys title: My Familys Slave.

Slavery?

Its the word slave that has caused so much furor in social media. We dont have slaves, we declare. We think of slaves as people bought and sold and kept in chains and, indeed, there are a few places in the world that still have them. We like to think we are a civilized people and what we have in our homes are not even servants or maids but helpers, domestics, housekeepers, katulong or kasambahay.

Our present system of domestic helpers may seem modern, even governed by a law prescribing a minimum wage, SSS, Pag-Ibig and Philhealth coverage. But in practice, it still carries vestiges of the precolonial alipin and the Spanish colonial hacienda serf or tenant system.

The alipin system was different from, and not as brutal as the chattel slavery of the Greeks and Romans, and from the slavery in the United States. A more proper term was debt servitude, where someone or an entire family had to pay off their debt by working in the household of the debtor.

Spanish colonialism introduced feudalism and haciendas, where hundreds of families might work for one landlord family. The term alipin was not used, but the tenants were indentured, too, in an uneasy patron-client relationship with the landlords who provided for the minimum needs of tenants, womb to tomb, and expected total loyalty, which many tenants did give.

Unfortunately, we still retain many vestiges of these old systems. In exchange for food, shelter, a minimal salary and benefits, employers have a strong sense of entitlement, with helpers expected to be at their beck and call 24/7.

Helpers are also expected to be loyal, without question. We certainly see that in Lola, fiercely loyal to Tizons mother, despite the latters abuse. Theres an account in the article of Lola intervening once when her employer was having an argument with her (Tizons mother) second husband. Imagine a tiny woman, 411, stepping in between her Filipino employer and a burly 250-pound man: Ivan, she calls out his name, and he backs down.

We argue, too, that most of our helpers are not subjected to physical abuse and, indeed, Tizons story of Lola paints a relatively mild picture compared to the many stories we have of Filipino women-helpers, here and overseas, of mauling, battery, rape. Lolas abuse was more often verbal, and psychological, although there was one horrendous account in the story where Lola, a young girl at that time, had to take a whipping in place of her mistress.

Neglect

Amid all that loyalty, Lola had no salary, and few concessions when she needed them. When Lola had dental problems she was told to better take care of her teeth. Both times when Lolas parents died and she wanted to return home for their funerals, she was admonished for even asking, and that there was no money, no time for her to return home.

Tizons article made me look up an earlier case involving a Filipino-American couple in Milwaukee, both physicians, who in 2006 were convicted of conspiracy to obtain labor and services by threats of harm and physical restraint. Their victim, also Filipino, was kept in virtual slavery for 19 years, paid $100 a month the first 10 years, then $400 a month. Her only contact with her family back home was through two letters a month, sent in an envelope without a return address.

The two physicians, already in their 60s, were sentenced to four years imprisonment, later increased to six years, and ordered to indemnify the helper an amount close to $1 million. They were deported back to the Philippines after serving their sentence.

The case is now cited in American books on law and social work as an example of trafficking, and one where conviction occurred even though there was no violence against the victim. Note, too, that the victim was paid a salary, although it was way below the minimum prescribed salary of $824 a month.

We need to raise the bar higher, addressing the issue of neglect in all its forms. Enslavement exists when theres no way out, when there are no options. Ive seen households where the helpers are third-generation, meaning their lola was the first to work for the family, then her daughter, then her granddaughter. They may be treated very well, but you still have to ask why, after three generations, they are still working as helpers.

Thousands of Filipino women with degrees in midwifery and education leave each year to work overseas because they feel that they are at least exploring an option, of a larger salary that can be remitted home, allowing their children to get to college.

We continue to have armies of domestic helpers because of grinding poverty. Like the Tizon family, the lolas in our lives allow us to pursue our careers, make our child-rearing so much easier. Beyond the minimum wage and food and shelter, we owe our helpers a way out, and I think its worth looking into how we might help them find options, a way out of poverty. One obvious place to start would be with their education, or their childrens education, giving a better fighting chance for social mobility.

(Tizons full article is available on The Atlantic site with links to other articles that have appeared in response to the story. Do read through, and I would suggest having it read and discussed with kids at home and in school, too. Dont limit the discussion to helpers. Our modern-day slaves often include yayas, houseboys, drivers, even caregivers.)

mtan@inquirer.com.ph

Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.

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A way out for 'slaves' - Inquirer.net