Category Archives: Wage Slavery

A coalition of Minneapolis eateries this past week proposed gradually hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour for all workers with an important exception: tipped employees. Tips should count toward their minimum wage, they said, leaving the base wage for servers and bartenders at $9.50 an hour.

The idea has no public backers at City Hall, and a prominent opponent, Mayor Betsy Hodges. In an essay published last week, Hodges said tipping is a legacy of slavery, and counting tips toward the minimum wage for servers would be a penalty that will leave tipped workers falling behind and subject to sexual harassment.

The essay raced across social media, striking fear into restaurant owners and many servers and bartenders as City Hall leaders explore raising the minimum wage citywide. And the controversy isnt expected to die down any time soon in a municipal election year when many mayoral and City Council candidates are vying for endorsements from organized labor.

It scares the living daylights out of me, said Kathryn Hayes, one of the owners of the Anchor Fish & Chips in northeast Minneapolis, who says a $15 minimum wage without a carve out for tips would cost her business about $170,000 per year. I hope that they think it through very seriously, because it will have massive consequences.

While City Council members have expressed interest in raising the minimum wage, they have not yet settled on a number and have directed staff to study the issue. This spring, the city is hosting dozens of listening sessions to gather public opinion.

Servers and bartenders are split on the topic, though many already making more than $15 an hour including tips say their business model wont survive a $15 minimum wage that does not recognize tips.

Callie Daniels, a bartender and manager at the Howe Daily Kitchen & Bar on Minnehaha Avenue, said she feels empowered behind the bar, not vulnerable to harassment. She makes closer to $30 an hour when she tends bar twice a week, and said she worries if her wage rises to $15 an hour before tips, her restaurant will take drastic measures.

Whats going to happen is everything is going to turn into you come in and you order at a counter, and then you sit down, Daniels said.

A solid independent restaurant doing $1 million in sales per year turns a $50,000 profit for the owners a 5 percent margin, according to restaurateurs who gathered for a minimum wage listening session Monday in Northeast.

Many establishments arent flexible in how they could respond to a higher minimum wage. Pooling tips is prohibited by Minnesota law. Introducing a service fee would allow restaurants to keep prices down but would cause pay to drop for many servers. Some establishments are trying to do away with tipping, but full-service restaurants havent had much luck.

Pathway to $15

The Minnesota Restaurant Industry on Tuesday launched a campaign called Pathway to $15 in which the minimum wage would rise to $15 for employers with fewer than 250 workers, including cooks and dishwashers, by 2024. Tips would be counted toward wages for servers, and if someone doesnt earn $15 per hour over a pay period, the business must make up the difference.

We do want $15 an hour to pass. But we want our wages to stay at $9.50, said Bryan Campbell, a bartender at Northbound Smokehouse and Brewpub who is organizing a listening session at the bar on Monday. If we dont make that $5.50 in tips, we want the employer to be on the hook for that, but realistically, you can work at a Perkins in Albertville and make $5.50 an hour in tips.

According to the Department of Labors statistics, waiters in the Twin Cities earn a median wage, including tips, of $9.07 per hour. The estimated wage for bartenders is $9.36 per hour. Hodges cited similar figures in her essay, and the data are a strong argument for those opposed to recognizing tips as wages.

But Campbell calls the number alternative facts, adding, I was making $20 an hour serving at a bar in Inver Grove Heights when I was 18 years old in 1998.

To the extent the figures are wrong, however, restaurants have themselves to blame. Managers are instructed to include tips as wages on the 13-page survey sent to them by the Department of Labor, but a certain number probably dont, according to officials at both the state of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Still, some waiters are not earning $15 an hour.

If you are an overnighter, Sunday through Wednesday, theyre slow shifts, said Jessica Bean, who waits tables and manages the Dennys on East Lake Street.

I see both sides of it, Bean said. Ive been that server who struggles. Im a single mom.

One of her co-workers, Arianna Barnes, had been cut from the floor at 2 p.m. on a slow Friday, and had to roll silverware and stock condiments for the next hour. Barnes said she probably earns $15 an hour when shes waiting tables, but shes not always waiting tables, and she would welcome a $15 minimum wage.

Youre going to want me to come to work and treat your restaurant like my restaurant, but yet you want your customers to pay me? she said.

Different approaches

Council Member Jacob Frey, who is among those challenging Hodges in the mayors race, floated the idea of counting tips toward a $15 pay floor among his colleagues, but he never made a public proposal.

Frey said he weighed all options to find passable proposals that would uplift all workers at a time when the mayor opposed a city minimum wage increase. Hodges, who had previously advocated a regional approach, said in December that she would push for a citywide increase.

Organized labor insists that Minneapolis mayor and council candidates who want a union endorsement must oppose a minimum wage carve out for tipped workers.

That is our top issue, said Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, an umbrella group for all unions in the city. We really believe in building power for all workers, and creating a structural way for workers to be left out creates a long-term unequal balance.

Council Member Kevin Reich sat in on Monday nights listening session that was full of restaurant owners. He said hes going to wait for a staff recommendation in May before taking a stance.

Politics has definitely taken hold of this topic, and politics has one effect if nothing else, it sucks the life out of nuance, Reich said. What Im trying to do is stay in that place of contemplation, listening, analysis.

Council President Barb Johnson said the council is giving restaurants a fair hearing, but she also is waiting to take a position.

I support raising the minimum wage, she said. But I want to respect our process that weve got going.

Twitter: @adambelz

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Role of servers' tips fires up Minneapolis debate over $15-an-hour ... - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Dozens of bar and restaurant owners are lining up behind a campaign to phase-in a citywide minimum wage of $15 an hour while making an exception for workers who earn tips.

Supporters of the Pathway to $15 campaign who between them own more than 100 Minneapolis bars and restaurants back a proposal that would treat most bartenders and servers who work in the front of the house differently than the cooks and dishwashers in the kitchen.

For back-of-the-house staff, the minimum wage would rise steadily to $15 an hour over a period of three to seven years. Meanwhile, their tipped co-workers would see gratuities factored into the wage calculation; bartenders and servers could be paid just $9.50 an hour, as long as their combined earnings from wages and tips totaled at least $15 an hour over the course of a shift. If not, their employers would have to make up the difference.

Thats whats known alternately as a tip credit or tip penalty. Mayor Betsy Hodges chose the latter term recently when she described her reasons for opposing the two-tiered system, which she said would unfairly penalize women, who make up the majority of tipped workers.

Supporters of Pathway to $15 counter that the proposal simply recognizes the total taxable income of tipped workers. The alternative, they say, is layoffs, higher menu prices and the loss of Minneapolis businesses that close or move.

Under the Pathway to $15 proposal, the minimum wage increases to $15 by 2020 for large employers, those with more than 250 employees. Small employers have until 2024.

Locally owned franchises of larger national chains, like McDonalds, or regional chains, like Davannis, could count as small employers if they have fewer than 250 employees based in Minneapolis.

The proposal also creates a separate wage tier for youth workers. Minimum wage would be $8.50 for those under 18.

Its a plan theyre taking to the City Council, which is expected to vote on a municipal minimum wage in the late spring or early summer. The details of a proposed ordinance are expected to be made public in May.

Targeting tips

David Benowitz, CEO of Craft and Crew, a restaurant group that includes Stanleys Northeast Bar Room and The Howe, estimated that extending the $15 minimum wage to his tipped employees would increase expenses at the two Minneapolis restaurants well over $200,000 per year, per store.

Thats a very scary number for us because we operate on very thin margins, Benowitz said. Thats well over our profit for the year, so we would have no choice but to change the business model for how we do business.

He said those changes would likely include raising menu prices by 1520 percent. Thats significantly higher than the less than 5-percent increase predicted by the economists who simulated the effects of a minimum wage hike in a City Council-commissioned study.

Without a carve-out for tipped employees, Benowitzs Minneapolis restaurants would likely adopt a no-tipping policy; he said it would be easier for customers to swallow the higher prices if they didnt have to tip on top of the check. Benowitz said his servers currently average about $24 an hour after tips, and the prospect of maxing-out at $15 means many of them support Pathway to $15.

Thats why veteran server Sarah Norton supports Pathway to $15. Norton, a mother of three who lives in St. Paul, currently totals roughly 40 hours a week between shifts at Jefe in Northeast and Jun in the North Loop and takes in additional income teaching voice lessons. Norton earns $9.50 an hour at her serving jobs, but she said her take home pay averages closer to $30 an hour with tips.

Norton, who runs the Facebook group Service Industry Staff for Change, said she was offended by Mayor Hodges comments on tipping. Echoing Saru Jayaraman of the Restaurant Opportunities Center, who in February spoke in Minneapolis, Hodges wrote in a blog post that tipping as an institution is rooted in the history of slavery and it originated as a substitute for a decent, fair, and equitable wage.

Shes coming after the tips, Norton said. In my experience, somebody is always coming after our tips, somebody always wants our tips, somebody always thinks were making too much money.

One fair wage

Other servers see $15 an hour as a pathway to financial stability, including Destiny Davis, a 24-year-old with five years of restaurant experience. Davis was most recently employed 2030 hours a week as a server and bartender at the Oak Grill inside the downtown Macys, where her take-home earnings varied significantly from one shift to another.

Davis earned $10 an hour behind the bar, but could take home $200 in tips on a good night. Another night, she might struggle to afford bus fare home after a slow shift waiting tables.

There have been days when Ive clocked in for four hours and I havent made a dime in tips, she said. Then, two weeks later, my check is for $65.

Davis, who is African-American, said she has experienced overt racism on the job, including customers who ask to be waited on by a white server. Its not just the whims of her customers that create uncertainty in her earnings; a sunny day would draw customers away to restaurants with patios, and a holiday would clear workers out of downtown.

Davis, who lives in South Minneapolis with her partner, said she was living close to the edge financially. If she wasnt in a relationship, shed consider moving back in with her mom.

If Im making $15 an hour plus tips, I can take a little breather, she said.

Advocates on both sides of the tipping debate agree that phasing-in higher wages would blunt the impact on business owners. A phase-in was included in the charter amendment 15 Now Minnesota attempted to put on the ballot last November.

15 Now Minnesota lost their fight in the courts, and afterwards advocates for what is often described as one fair wage shifted their focus to influencing the shape of the municipal wage ordinance now under development.

Ginger Jentzen, a longtime server who recently stepped down as executive director 15 Now Minnesota to run for City Council in Ward 3, said creating an exception for tipped workers would require restaurants to track the fluctuating pay of individual serving staff from shift-to shift.

It puts it on the individual worker to negotiate with management constantly about what their wages were for the shift, Jentzen said, adding the system opens the door to intimidation and wage theft.

She described the threat of a no-tipping policy as a scaremongering tactic that comes from the National Restaurant Association, an industry group that advocates for tip credit policies. Jentzen found the idea that restaurants might flee Minneapolis and their customer base similarly far-fetched.

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Restaurant-backed campaign enters minimum wage debate - Southwest Journal

On May 21, 1796, an enslaved 22-year-old woman named Ona Judge slipped out of her masters home in Philadelphia and into an illicit freedom. Runaways had become so common for Americas slave-owning gentry that three years before Judges escape, they pressured one of their ownthe nations first presidentinto signing the Fugitive Slave Act. The law established guidelines by which slave owners could pursue their slaves into northern states that were moving away from slavery and into a wage labor system. Whether or not she knew the laws specifics, Judge understood the manifold challenges she was facing by leaving Philadelphia behind. After all, the couple who claimed her as their property was the most powerful duo in the young nation. Their names were George and Martha Washington.

Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar has written a book that, in detailing Ona Judges extraordinary life, illuminates how George Washington* remained committed to the institution of slaveryso much so that he spent years trying to capture Judge and return her to Mount Vernon, where she had been born and raised. Judge was Martha Washingtons* legal property, and Marthas wealthheavily concentrated in the humans she claimedfar exceeded her husbands.

Dunbar first came across Judges name while conducting archival research for her debut book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, an academic study of free black women in the 19th century. While scanning the pages of a Philadelphia periodical, Dunbar discovered an advertisement announcing that a light Mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes, and bushy black hair had run away from the presidents home.

Her name and the situation behind the advertisement were more than intriguing. It seemed a little odd to me, Dunbar said in a telephone interview with Paste. Who is this person and what happened to themand why dont I know this?

Dunbar considered including Judges story in A Fragile Freedom, but she decided against it in favor of later creating a project devoted to Judges life. That project became Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Dunbars sophomore book released in February.

Ona Maria Judge was born in 1773 to Betty, one of Marthas most trusted slaves, and Andrew Judge, an English-born white man who had served the Washingtons as an indentured servant. In 1789, when George was unanimously chosen by the U.S. Senate to become President of the United States, Judge was among a small group of slaves who accompanied the first family to New York, the nations capital at the time. But it was when the capital and the president were relocated to Philadelphia that Judge grew aware of the differences in the publics acceptance of slavery between Northern and Southern states. Pennsylvania law, Dunbar writes in Never Caught, required the emancipation of all adult slaves who were brought into the commonwealth for more than a period of six months.

I dont want us to paint the image of the benevolent North who were against slavery because they understood the moral bankruptcy behind it, Dunbar said. There were of course people who did feel that way, but I would also argue it was the economy. A wage labor system that does not work with a system of slavery alongside it would perhaps force some to be against the institution of slavery.

Whatever the Pennsylvania laws roots, it provided the Washingtons with a distinct problem. Their wealth as landed gentry was directly tied to the people they claimed as slaves, and emancipation would cause them financial ruin. After consulting with the nations first Attorney Generalhimself a slave owner who had lost slaves to the Pennsylvania lawthe Washingtons turned their legal problem into a logistical one, devising a system to cycle their slaves back and forth to Mount Vernon before their six months were up. Dunbar highlights Georges correspondence with his secretary to show how anxious the president was to preserve hisand his wifeswealth as Virginian farmers.

I am not a [George] Washington biographer, Dunbar said. But he happens to intersect with this woman Ive chosen to focus on, and I think its great. It shows us just how complicated slavery was not just for regular folks, for enslaved people themselves and for fugitives and free blacks, but also for slave owners, who for various reasons by the 1790s were thinking differently about slave ownership.

While George may have held misgivings about slaveryculminating in his decision to emancipate his slaves after his deathJudges escape after five years spent cycling between Mount Vernon and Philadelphia presented him with a problem requiring a discreet solution. At the time, he was distracted by the 1796 election and the coming succession of John Adams to the presidency.

The last thing that [George] Washington wanted to do was have much attention paid to him running after an enslaved young woman, Dunbar said.

Judge had fled Philadelphia by sea and settled in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she passed as a free woman. Dunbar found evidence that Judge married a black sailor named Jack Staines, and their marriage announcement was printed just inches away from a newspaper column about Georges farewell address to the nation.

Its [already] amazing that she resisted him and got married, but then shes kind of contesting him in print, Dunbar said.

Yet marriage didnt bring Judge respite from her life as a fugitive. Shortly after her arrival in Portsmouth, Judge was spotted on the streets by Elizabeth Langdon, the daughter of Georges associate Senator John Langdon. This catalyzed Georges first attempt to recover Judge, in which he deputized a local customs official to approach her and argue that her life on Mount Vernon would be far better than life as a free woman. (Ironically, this circumvented the Fugitive Slave Act, which called for a judge to sign off on the recovery of a runaway slave.) Judge told the customs official that she would meet himand the ship that would return her to Virginiaat the docks, but she never showed. In his letter to the president admitting to his failure, the customs official sympathized with Judge, even proposing that George consider gradually emancipating his slaves.

But George wasnt finished yet. He tried twice more to recover Judge, first with a similar plea to reason and then with chains. By Georges third attempt, Judge had fled Portsmouth for the small town of Greenland, eight miles outside of Portsmouth, where she would live out the remainder of her long life.

Of course we want a happy ending for compelling histories like Onas story, Dunbar said. Reality, however, held a different course for Judge, who experienced daily indignities as a domestic laborer and saw her husband and then her children die one by one.

In the book, I never use the word free or freedom, Dunbar said. Because Judge wasnt that. She lived as a fugitive for half a century. And what she experienced, this was what life was like for the majority of free black people at that time in America. And thats what I wanted people to understand. To, in some ways, challenge the myth of the North as the land of milk and honey and opportunity.

What Onas story tells us is not just the fragility of a fugitives life, but of all black peoples lives at that moment, Dunbar continued. Because you have to ask the question: How free is free if slavery exists right next door? What does your freedom mean if, at any moment, you can be captured against your will?

As for George, Dunbar thinks that his response to Judges escape goes against the theory that he eventually viewed slavery as evil. Its convenient to think that [he] knew slavery was wrong and therefore freed his slaves, but its clear that he was never at any moment willing to live without the comforts of slavery in his lifetime. He wanted to make sure that the comfort and luxury that came with human bondage were present for his wife.

George, Dunbar notes in her book, did not truly emancipate his slaves upon his death, but rather ordered that they be freed upon Marthas death. While Martha would emancipate Georges slaves before her death, she refused to do the same for her own slaves.

We know that [George] Washington had no direct heirs, Dunbar said, and I cant help but think that it would have been a much more difficult decision to emancipate all of his enslaved peoplea tremendous amount of wealthhad he had children of his own. Without children, he was able to do what maybe others had contemplated. And while thats worth mentioning, I dont necessarily believe that makes him the hero we all want to believe him to be.

Although Never Caught chronicles events that are centuries old, the book has garnered attention for its relevance to current American politics. I had absolutely no idea that this book would come out at a moment of such turbulencebut I really cant think of a better moment for a book to arrive where a 22-year old black woman resists the President of the United States. If that isnt a kind of poignant and important history lesson for all of us, I dont know what is.

If a woman of no meanswho is literally considered the property of Martha Washingtondstands up and resists, it makes you ask the question: If Ona Judge could do it, what are the rest of us doing? Dunbar added. We have to realize that to resist at moments that are the most dangerous and difficult puts almost more power into that action. Its one thing to resist when the stakes are relatively low. But when you resist and everything is riding on the linethat means something.

*For clarity, George Washington is referred to as George and Martha Washington as Martha in this article.

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Erica Armstrong Dunbar Talks Never Caught, the True Story of George Washington's Runaway Slave - Paste Magazine

Wandsworth street cleaners took to the streets to protest rates of pay and slashed hours for two days this week.

Staff at Continental landscapes went on strike on February 28 and March 1 because their employers pay 7.50 per hour when the London Living Wage is 9.75.

The staff on strike, 18of the workforce, have appealed to the council to help their cause.

In the video Paul Grafton, a full time official at trade union GMB, said: "The council have completely ignored our pleas.

"[Continental Landscapes] earn huge amounts of money. The turnover is 13 million a year for these contracts.

A spokesperson for Wandsworth Council said: "This is a dispute between our contractor and their workforce.

"We expect services to be provided in line with the terms of the contract."

GMB representative Pat Duggan said: "From April Wandsworth Council made a half a million pound cut."

He said the council made "eight people redundant"leaving the cleaning staff with extra work, no extra pay and an hour less a day to do the work.

Mr Grafton said: "The directors of Continental Landscapes are simply promoting modern day slavery within Wandsworth and yet the Wandsworth Council show no interest and appear to be happy to see the staff earning so little."

He added: "Since Continental Landscapes have taken on the contract the staff have suffered not only in having their hours slashed but also the rates of overtime reduced at weekends and evenings.

"Some staff will also be losing a further 150 a month as a result of the continual cuts on the contract."

Councillor Fleur Anderson, Labour spokesman on Community Services, said: "Residents in Wandsworth already get a bad deal when it comes to street cleaning services which have been cut back by the Council to the point where bins have been removed and collections cancelled to save money."

Continental Landscapes have been contacted for comment.

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VIDEO: Street cleaners fight for London Living Wage from ... - Wandsworth Guardian

Wandsworth street cleaners took to the streets to protest rates of pay and slashed hours for two days this week.

Staff at Continental landscapes went on strike on February 28 and March 1 because their employers pay 7.50 per hour when the London Living Wage is 9.75.

The staff on strike, 18of the workforce, have appealed to the council to help their cause.

In the video Paul Grafton, a full time official at trade union GMB, said: "The council have completely ignored our pleas.

"[Continental Landscapes] earn huge amounts of money. The turnover is 13 million a year for these contracts.

A spokesperson for Wandsworth Council said: "This is a dispute between our contractor and their workforce.

"We expect services to be provided in line with the terms of the contract."

GMB representative Pat Duggan said: "From April Wandsworth Council made a half a million pound cut."

He said the council made "eight people redundant"leaving the cleaning staff with extra work, no extra pay and an hour less a day to do the work.

Mr Grafton said: "The directors of Continental Landscapes are simply promoting modern day slavery within Wandsworth and yet the Wandsworth Council show no interest and appear to be happy to see the staff earning so little."

He added: "Since Continental Landscapes have taken on the contract the staff have suffered not only in having their hours slashed but also the rates of overtime reduced at weekends and evenings.

"Some staff will also be losing a further 150 a month as a result of the continual cuts on the contract."

Councillor Fleur Anderson, Labour spokesman on Community Services, said: "Residents in Wandsworth already get a bad deal when it comes to street cleaning services which have been cut back by the Council to the point where bins have been removed and collections cancelled to save money."

Continental Landscapes have been contacted for comment.

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VIDEO: Street cleaners fight for London Living Wage from Continental Landscapes - Your Local Guardian

A KEY member of a ruthless slavery gang that trafficked vulnerable victims to Bradford to plunder their pay packets has been jailed for four years.

David Zielinski was an able and willing lieutenant for the family firm Zielinski and Sons that trawled the streets of their native Poland to find poor and desperate people to exploit in the UK.

But dreams of a better life in Britain contrasted sharply with a reality of sleeping on the floor in crowded, unfurnished accommodation and scavenging on the citys streets.

Zielinski and his family bought a luxurious villa in Poland from the proceeds of forced labour by men and women from their homeland, Bradford Crown Court heard. One man had 8,000 stolen from him and others were left with just 5 a day from their wage packets. The heating was turned off at addresses in Leeds Road, Thornbury, Lower Rushton Road and Nottingham Road, Bradford, and food was scarce. Victims had to relieve themselves in the garden because of inadequate bathroom facilities.

One man said he was treated like a dog and others spoke of severe beatings if they attempted to escape. A terrified victim was told he would be killed and buried in the woods if he ran away again. Zielinski was convicted by the jury of two offences of trafficking under the 2015 Modern Slavery Act and a charge of conspiracy to require another person to perform compulsory labour.

During the 12 day trial, the court heard from six victims of Zielinski and Sons. Nine other men were mentioned in the evidence by first name only and so could not be traced by the police.

Judge Jonathan Rose said Zielinski, 24, of Enfield, North London,was involved in the deliberate exploitation of fellow human beings.

We heard evidence of the luxurious villa your family owned in Poland, financed no doubt by the forced labour of these men and women. And this, of course, was the object of the exercise the enslavement of vulnerable men and women for your own financial greed, Judge Rose told Zielinski.

He continued: You were not the leader of this conspiracy, although I find you to have been an able and willing lieutenant who would profit no less than other members of your family.

Judge Rose made a ten year Slavery Trafficking Prevention Order when jailing Zielinski. He said the sentence was both to punish him and to deter others.

After the case, Detective Chief Inspector Warren Stevenson, of the Protective Services (Crime) team, said police had worked extensively with agencies across the country and in Europe to get justice for the victims of what he branded heinous offences.

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Slavery 'lieutenant' jailed for 'heinous offences' - Bradford Telegraph and Argus

News & Observer

The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is. News & Observer Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-per-centers were southerners. Slavery made southern states the richest in the country. The South was richer than any other country except England. But that ...

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The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is. - News & Observer

Its time to dress for a funeral.

Thats what Joel told the priests and farmers of ancient Israel. They had turned to their prophets for a hopeful word about the future, and Joel replied, Actually, its worse than you think.

Those words are ours today as we look at the reality of global climate change. The years ahead of us will be the most challenging our species has ever faced. For many of the other species that share this planet with us and for some of our own people it will be too much to survive.

The loss of biodiversity will be staggering. In 2015, The Guardian reported that one-in-six species will go extinct by the end of the century if emissions continue at their current rate. Even now, the tiny nation of Kiribati is facing total flooding of its 33 islands because of ocean level rise, attributed to melting ice. The people living there, in the middle of the ocean, will have no fresh water to drink.

Dressing for a funeral doesnt begin to prepare our hearts for this kind of devastation.

The period we are now entering is set to become the sixth great extinction in our planets history, even if we were totally unified and putting our best effort into this work. But the fact is we are not. Sec. of State Rex Tillersons appointment means that a former executive of the industry which has caused the climate crisis is now the top diplomat of the nation most critical to leading the world in climate justice. The fossil fuel industry and Tillersons Exxon, specially has understood the science behind climate change since the 1970s. Instead of being chastened by that knowledge, Exxon chose to wage misinformation campaigns to confuse the public. But the science of climate change is pretty simple simple enough that Abby would quiz third graders about it when she taught environmental education on the Southside of Chicago. The effects of the broken carbon cycle are all around us right now, obvious to those with only an elementary school education.

And yes, its even worse than you think. Last year we permanently passed the 400 parts-per-million threshold for measuring carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Its an important number, because it points to one aspect of our climate reality: There is no going back. No one currently living will be around by the next time our atmosphere gets below that threshold again, even if we were to stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow.

We have already changed our planet, irrevocably. And well face climate chaos on a variety of fronts, including warming temperatures.

In order to minimize damage we would have to close all of our coal mines and most of our oil and gas mines long before they are exhausted. In other words, we have to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

Contemplate what leaving fossil fuels in the ground means. Economically, it means that fossil fuel companies stand to lose trillions of dollars.

It is not the first time an industry on the wrong side of an ethical struggle has faced this kind of loss. In April 2014, The Nation ran a story about the economics of slavery. As the Civil War was beginning, slave owners faced the loss of billions of dollars in assets (ahem, people). Specifically,

Today, we rightly recoil at the thought of tabulating slaves as property. It was precisely this ontological questionproperty or persons?that the war was fought over. But suspend that moral revulsion for a moment and look at the numbers: Just how much money were the Souths slaves worth then?

Anyone who knows our nations story knows that the system of slavery didnt end without a bloody battle, and that even now the lingering effects of that system infects our society through rampant racism. Frederick Douglass wrote, Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

The power of those trillions of dollars in resources is not something we should expect fossil fuel companies to willingly walk away from. Keeping that carbon in the ground is going to require an overwhelming demand.

While the devastating losses from climate change cannot be tabulated in dollars and cents, just as we cannot ever put a full cost on the devastation of generations of enslavement of human beings, looking at the economic costs of climate change will necessarily be part of making the demand to leave it in the ground. What price will we put on the variety of changes that will accompany effects of a global rise in temperature of just two degrees?

The fossil fuel industry will lose trillions of dollars in their investments. How do we put a price tag on peoples lives?

This is not just a funeral. Its an epidemic.

We cant afford to wait for fossil fuel companies to behave as though theyre accountable to this situation. It is our responsibility as consumers to use fewer fossil fuels and to pay carbon offsets. It also our moral and theological imperative to insist that the industry offer better ways to live.

The crisis is upon us. As John the Baptist said, The axe is at the root of the tree. We must act, and we must act quickly.

First, we must pray. We have to be ready to repent from our destructive relationship with creation.

Second, we must see our work for creation as intersectional work that does not leave behind the voices and experiences of people of color, indigenous persons, women, immigrants, people who are poor, and children. Systems of oppression like racism, sexism, classism, and xenophobia must be addressed in the fight for Gods good creation. In order to do that, we have to be ready to repent from our destructive relationships with each other.

Third, we must resist responding to climate change in capitalist ways alone. We cannot buy our way out of this crisis. Instead, we must be voices perhaps in the wilderness ready to cry out for new systems that challenge the old ways. In order to do that, we have to be ready to repent from our destructive relationship with God.

Finally, we must cease seeking and creating false comfort. Like Joel, and John the Baptist, we must be clear-eyed and unflinching in describing the real crisis our society is facing. But its time to rediscover the doom oracles of the prophets as the deeply hopeful messages they really are. To build the public desire necessary to overcome the entrenched power of industries with a vested interest in destroying our climate will require a courageous hope, a hope that can face a bleak future and choose resistance instead of retreat.

May we create that hope soon.

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Dressing for a Funeral - Sojourners

March 1, 2017 A class action suit alleging that as many as tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants were coerced to perform free labor in a privately operated Colorado detention center has been given the green light to move forward in a federal district court.

On Tuesday, a district judge ruled to grant the 2014 lawsuit class action certification, marking the first time a class action suit alleging forced labor has been brought against a private prison. The suit was launched by nine former and current detainees at the Aurora Detention Facility, a holding center near Denver, Colo., operated privately on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The lawsuit may now encompass as many as 60,000 people detained at the center between 2004 and 2014, according to Andrew Free, one of the plaintiffs attorneys.

Roughly34,000 people are in immigration detention centers on any given day in the United States, 60 percent of whom in privately operated facilities. Running those centers proves a pricey task, and private prison operators which stand to gain by employing cheap labor to maintain the centers and turn a profit resort to legal, cheap labor on part of detainees.

But the first-of-its-kind case could shed further light on an ongoing issue. As more argue that detainees and prisoners must be paid and at wages higher than $1 per day a shakeup of the system could take place.

While low-wage work has long been a feature of the United States prison system, theres a legal difference between forcing those who have committed a crime and therefore foregone some 13th Amendment protections to earn their stay in prison, and those being held on civil matters, like immigrants. Coercing detainees to perform labor would violate ICE work standards, which guarantee the protection from workplace hazards as well as discrimination in voluntary programs.

Residents will be able to volunteer for work assignments, but otherwise not be required to work, except to do personal housekeeping, the agencys standards state.

The private prison immigration detention center and ICE collaboration doesnt really work without the forced labor of these detainees in Aurora, plaintiff's attorney Mr. Free told The Christian Science Monitor.

The question is, if the business model relies on having detained people clean, cook, do laundry, cut hair, maintain the facility thats what the business model requires in this particular case are we able to shift that business model? Is the American taxpayer comfortable footing that bill?

While novel in its scope, the suit also comes at a time when immigration policy is slated to shift under President Trumps administration. Immigration officials have increased enforcement activity, the administration plans to expand its number of detention facilities, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions made clear that much of the prison system will remain privately operated.

The suit sheds light on the way in which the detention system operates, Carl Takei, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties National Prison Project, tells the Monitor in a phone interview.

We have a name for the practice of locking people up and forcing them to work without paying them real wages," he adds. "Its called slavery. And companies like GEO group stand to profit immensely from the expansion of detention centers that the Trump administration has laid out in its executive orders.

The suit alleges that GEO, the private-prison giant operating the Aurora facility, violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a measure passed in 2000 with the intention of shielding undocumented immigrants who are victims of trafficking and violence, as well as forced labor. The plaintiffs contend that they were forced to work without any compensation and under the threat of solitary confinement. The suit also notes that when paid $1 per day, detainees made much less than Colorados minimum wage of $9.30 per hour.

GEO moved to dismiss the case. While a judge threw out the piece of the case involving a call for minimum wage earnings in prisons, he allowed the segment involving coerced labor to stand.

The company has denied allegations that it threatened inmates with solitary confinement in order to obtain free labor.

We have consistently, strongly refuted these allegations, and we intend to continue to vigorously defend our company against these claims, Pablo Paez, a GEO spokesman, said in a statement to the Monitor. The volunteer work program at immigration facilities as well as the wage rates and standards associated with the program are set by the Federal government. Our facilities, including the Aurora, Colo., facility, are highly rated and provide high-quality services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments pursuant to the federal governments national standards.

Whether at the Aurora facility or elsewhere around the country, experts say coercion plays a large role in getting detainees to work, but uncovering it can prove a nearly impossible task.

You cant underestimate the level of coercion involved, Mr. Takei says of detention centers and prisons around the nation. If you refuse to work as a detainee, you can be thrown in solitary confinement. There is no parallel to that in the free world. If I were to call my boss tomorrow morning and say Im not showing up to work, he might be able to fire me, but he couldnt throw me in a cell the size of a parking spot.

Whether inmates were coerced at the Aurora facility remains to be proven in court proceedings, but concerns linger for those who choose to work and only bring home between $1 and $3 a day.

It was voluntary, Delmi Cruz, a detainee at a GEO-run facility in Texas, previously told the Los Angeles Times of her stint cleaning bathrooms and hallways where she made $3 a day. [But] it wasn't fair."

While some cite the benefits behind the programs, such as putting extra cash in detainees commissary accounts or teaching them a new skill, many argue that ICE-mandated earnings should increase, or that private companies should pay a higher rate.

That debate has brewed around both prisons and detention centers. And as Mr. Trump pivots away from Obama-era policies regarding private ownership, calls for better wages for detained and incarcerated works will only grow louder.

The spotlight has certainly been on private corporations running and managing prisons. It certainly was last year under the Obama administration, and the momentum has changed under Trump, says Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior counsel for the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

Paying $1 to $3 a day is incredibly low," she says. "Just like in a state prison, if someone wants to participate in a work program, they should be compensated at a higher wage.

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Forced to work? 60000 undocumented immigrants may sue detention center - Christian Science Monitor

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