Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/8731/1/368/

A Worker's Vignette – Suspended for Being Sick

By George Fish
Archives - Dates and Topics 2009 online headlines for July 2009 click here for related stories: labor movement

7-01-09, 11:00 am



(Illustration by Victor Velez.)

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Until Sunday, December 31, 2006, I had been holding for about three weeks a second job at a gas mart/convenience store in Indianapolis, Indiana. This gas mart/convenience store is one of many for this several-state chain-store company, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a major oil conglomerate, and is run, just like the other oil companies and massive corporations in the United States, by a small group of greedy, arrogant millionaires who’ve built their fortunes on the hard sweat and low wages demanded of their very exploited employees. All too typical of a service economy where there are very few high-paying unionized jobs left anymore, and even fewer dedicated union organizers really serious about organizing all (as opposed to just a high-profile chosen few) of the most abused, most low-paid workers extant in today’s economy.

On that particular Sunday I found out the hard way all about the arrogant abuse of both the oil company conglomerate and its subsidiary, when I reported to my $7.00/hour job dehydrated and exhausted from the double whammy of a cold virus and massive fatigue caused by what is a very demanding, physically draining job, that of cashier in a high-volume convenience store almost constantly filled with customers. I wasn’t even a half-hour into my shift when I realized that, exhausted, dehydrated, spacey, groggy and prone to mistakes when I’m constantly handling money as I was, that I was not going to be able to make it through this eight-hour shift – especially when there would be no breaks, and I would be required to stand the whole eight hours. In fact, I was worried that I would faint and collapse to the floor! I indicated this to my co-cashier, a young woman in her twenties, and she became very uptight that I would leave her alone to handle a volume of customers that would be impossible for only one cashier to handle. But I knew I wasn’t going to make it, especially if I did my job the way I was required, on my feet the whole time, so I went into the office and called my genial manager, Bull, who up till then had been most affable and was always telling me what a great job I was doing. (Yes, above all, for $7.00/hour, reminding me of the Bob Dylan song where he relates of the club owner raving about his harmonica sound as he paid the young Bobby a dollar a day!) Bull was genial and praising of my work once again, but insistent: the only way I could leave the shift was to have a doctor’s note certifying my inability to work. (From the official “Employee Information and Benefits Notebook” I was given: “The Company may, at its discretion, request [the lawyer’s meaning of “request,” obviously, like the Godfather’s “offer you can’t refuse.”] that you provide, at your own expense, medical verification of any illness of injury.” [Emphasis added.]) Well, since this was not only the day of New Year’s Eve, but a Sunday to boot, the only way to get such certification would be to go to a hospital emergency room – at a $600 just-to-walk-through-the-door fee to get a doctor’s note stating I had a virus! Resigned to trying to get through somehow, I went back to my station.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning here, if just to provide a little levity, that none of us at our gas mart/convenience subsidiary store are aware of our co-worker’s or supervisor’s last names, so I can’t say whether Bull’s surname is one that begins with the letters “sh” and ends with a “t,” although certainly at this point I felt most definitely how appropriate it would be if it did!

But I wasn’t back at my station long before I realized that I really wasn’t going to make it through this shift, no ifs, ands, or buts about it! So I called Bull back again, and this time Mr. Genial was anything but genial; in fact, he was downright threatening as regards my employment and scheduling. His words: “I know you’ve said you wanted a lot of hours, but remember, I make the schedule, and I will adjust accordingly. And believe me, I have a long memory.” Bull reiterated, just as he had before, there was absolutely no one who could come in to replace me, and that if I wanted to leave sick, I would need a doctor’s note from that day, Sunday, December 31, stating I was too sick to work. My co-worker, the one and only other cashier on the shift, had suggested asking if another person, a certain youth, were available to come in, but, according to Bull, this youthful person was very close to his family and had a note on file from his pastor that he be excluded from Sunday work.

Mr. Genial had now definitely shown me his nasty side, being as so many others I’d encountered – off and on charm, as though congeniality were like a water faucet.

But I knew better than to walk out, for not only did I not wish to lose my job, I also didn’t want to leave my co-worker in a lurch, hand over to her a situation it would really be impossible for her to handle. So I pulled out the office chair and put it in front of my station, and, in direct violation of company policy, went back to cashiering sitting down. I also paid my co-worker the mandatory 31¢ for a cup of ice water, because nothing is free for employees at this store, nor do employees get any discounts. They pay like everybody else. So a simple glass of water with ice in a store-brand plastic cup is 29¢ plus tax. (And even though this gas mart/convenience store likes to tout its “Customers always come first” policy, no freebies for them, either; they pay even for an extra empty Styrofoam or plastic cup.) I also violated company policy again by having my glass of water at my workstation, and drinking it while working.

And this direct violation of company policy because I was sick – worked! I was now cashiering with a good modicum of efficiency, not feeling as spacey or groggy, not making mistakes, feeling my fatigue and dehydration lift somewhat, was even somewhat genial toward the customers, although when they asked in that offhand way how I was doing, I minced no words about being sick, nor any about how I was required to stay on the shift sick, or else go to a hospital emergency room and get a $600 doctor’s note. It’s interesting to note here, of course, in relation to this oil conglomerate subsidiary’s “Customers always come first” policy that the customers I was waiting on were indeed coming in first – in being directly exposed to the virus I was suffering from, so that they had a good chance of catching it too!

As mentioned, one of the reasons I deliberately stayed on the job was so not to leave my co-worker in a lurch. I tried to reassure her several times by telling her, “--, I’m sick, but I’m not going to abandon you while we both have to work this shift. Work with me, and I’ll do everything I can to work with you.” But this diminutive soul showed she was really tiny, tiny ethically and intellectually as well as physically, was just another of those all-too-frequent low-wage Company Men and Women that make this chain, and the McDonald’s and Wal-Marts of the world, succeed the way they do. Since she had said nothing reproachful or angry to me, I hadn’t expected her next move. She called Bull, and under the pretext of reporting a $20 bill found on the floor and wondering what to do with it, spoken loud enough from the directly adjacent office for me to hear, was actually reporting on me to him. As a friend of mine said in disgust when I recounted my story to him New Year’s Day, “That’s kindergarten! That’s like going to the teacher and saying, ‘Teacher, Georgie’s eating a cookie he’s not supposed to have.’”

So, after I’d been on the shift a little over two hours and was feeling as though I could indeed make it through all eight hours by sitting down as much as I could and drinking copious glasses of water, in walks Bull, angry as one, orders me to finish the cashiering transaction I was doing, sarcastically ordering me also to “get off [my] sick bed.” He then informs me icily, “You go get a doctor’s note saying you’re too sick to work today, and until then you’re suspended indefinitely. Get out of my store immediately!’’ So I pick up my jacket and leave.

That’s how it stood for a week. I was indefinitely suspended, but not fired, (otherwise I might qualify for unemployment compensation), and certainly wouldn’t voluntarily quit, and hand them my head on a silver platter. Life among the $7.00/hour crowd, a common starting hourly wage in the Indianapolis area, and I’m sure elsewhere – at least for non-yuppies, at least for all those lowly service employees the yuppies love to take for granted.

Then the truly ironic happened. I called the store about a week after this incident, and Bull was back to being Mr. Genial again. “George!” he began enthusiastically, “We’d like to put you back to work as a regular maintenance employee. You do such a good job at that. Realize that it’s company policy for the managers to make decisions on the spot, so that’s why I had to suspend you. But you’re welcome to come back to work, and we’d love to have you.” So there I was, into mid-September, 2007, back to work at this second job, regularly employed as a maintenance person with a flexible schedule I pretty much set myself, having gotten two 25¢ an hour raises since returning. And, except for a brief stint of unemployment when I was bounced off the schedule by the Regional Office computer because of mandatory limitations on allowable payroll hours during the slow winter season, I worked steadily there until the store was closed, and my job thus eliminated. Such is the paternalistic carrot of corporate capitalism that accompanies the stick of punitive action and its ever-present threat.

But this is capitalism today, in the era of declining unions and aggressive corporate greed. In the halcyon days of strong unions such as the United Auto Workers and the Steelworkers, wages and working conditions for non-union workers followed the trends set by what unions such as these negotiated with the Big Three auto manufacturers and Big Steel. But now the trend of what is set, and what workers will get, is set by Wal-Mart and the financial managers on Wall Street, when profits soar and stocks gain in value every time workers get the shaft (and which is still true, even during our current recession). Our times are now those characterized by the famous corporate exec who organized the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs at AT&T, and saw the value of his stock rise by $28 million.

The gas mart/convenience store subsidiary I worked for is all-too-typical in this regard of putting workers last. The above-mentioned official “Employee Information and Benefits Notebook,” given to every employee upon hire, states very specifically in the three-paragraph section, “Philosophy Toward Unions”:
The Company’s philosophy and preference is to operate without the presence of a labor union. We strongly believe that it is in the best interest of both our employees and the Company to operate without interference by a union. The intervention of a third party hampers our ability to communicate directly with employees and limits the Company’s ability to operate both efficiently and competitively. Therefore, while we recognize the legal right of employees to form a union, we will do everything the law allows to aggressively oppose any attempt to interfere with the direct relationship that exists between our employees and the Company. [Emphasis added. We all know the import of this, and all the pro forma caveats that precede it.]

The appropriate avenue for workplace concerns is generally with your immediate Supervisor. We fully encourage you to bring your problems directly to your Supervisor, where they can be discussed on a one-to-one basis. We recognize, however, that certain types of problems are best raised with your [corporate office] Human Resources Representative [e.g., sexual harassment].

We believe that when you consider the Company’s commitment to safety, employment practices, salary and benefit levels, and the willingness of management to listen and attempt to solve problems, you will see no need for a union.

Of course, the above-quoted passage is all too typical of employee handbooks and corporate policies across the nation. And not only that – business after business is quite willing to resort to openly illegal tactics to prevent union organizing, knowing fair well that even blatant illegality and unconscionable harassment will usually get only a legal slap on the wrist, and maybe some back pay or modest fines to pay. Currently existing labor law does little to protect workers. This is all very well documented in the recent report, “No Holds Barred,” by Cornell labor studies professor Kate Bronfenbrenner. And all too typical of what we non-union workers face, we who happen to constitute a whopping 87.6 percent of today’s workforce!

But here in Indianapolis, SEIU Local 3 has now achieved union recognition and a collective bargaining agreement with several (but not all) janitorial contractors over wages, benefits and working conditions. So at least partial victories in this area can happen. And far more victories such as this would occur with the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would recognize both workers’ rights to unionize and union recognition by employers by the simple process of union certification by submission of signed union cards by a majority of a firm’s employees. An EFCA with the card-check provision intact combined with the growing positive fight-back attitude is what will revitalize the labor movement.

But what I wrote above about the plight of retail and service workers still continues. Although my story is now over a year old, truly said of what happened to me still persists, and the injustice continues same as it always has. My original ending admonition remains the same, and still highly relevant, same as it did a year ago. And so I sum up thus: “Don’t get me wrong, but—sure, the well-publicized janitors and Wal-Mart employees get the shaft, but so do all those other service and ordinary retail workers. So hey, SEIU, Retail Workers, AFL-CIO, Change to Win and Jobs with Justice – how ‘bout Justice for Cashiers and Other Service Employees campaigns also! Organize us too! Work diligently to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and then get out there and give retail and service workers union cards to sign across the board, without fear or favor. Then, and only then, will we non-union retail and service workers have safety from exactly those kind of depredations I’ve related above.”

--George Fish lives in Indianapolis.


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