NYC Supermarkets have baggers working for nothing but tips

[BurtWorm]

Andrew Friedman
I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and haven't come across this. Anyone else from NYC have to tip your grocery bagger?

Another sign we're living in the re-Gilded Age. :puke:


http://www.dmiblog.net/archives/2007/02/heres_a_tip_for_grocery_stores.html

Here's a Tip for Grocery Stores - Pay Your Workers!

Yesterday's New York Times ran an infuriating story about widespread exploitation of workers in the grocery industry, Long Treated as Volunteers Tips-Only Supermarket Baggers Take Up Fight for Hourly Wage.

You heard it here first, though. Early in the summer I wrote a blog about this same problem, Gotta Get Paid.

Grocery stores throughout New York City have a practice of violating labor law by having the workers that bag the groceries work for tips-only. These workers receive no hourly wage. Some owners went on the record with the Times and admitted it. The fact that workers are willing to work for as little as $16 in tips for a thirteen hour work day speaks to how tight the labor market can be for elderly immigrants and younger African-American men. The fact that this practice is so common speaks to the inefficacy of labor law enforcement under Governor Pataki's Department of Labor.

Hopefully, things have changed. Elliot Spitzer, who, as Attorney General, had his Labor Department, led by Patricia Smith, begin an investigation of these practices in a number of Brooklyn supermarkets brought to his attention by Make the Road by Walking.

Pat Smith is now heading up the State Department of Labor. She should take up this issue as her first priority. She should begin an industry-wide investigation of labor law violations at groceries, and she should crack-down hard on employers who are breaking the law. She should also crack-down on employers who retaliate against their workers for reporting these violations. She did so while working at the AG's office - forcing the Associated Supermarket at 229 Knickerbocker Avenue to re-hire an elderly couple they fired in retaliation for speaking to her investigators.

[JVS]

1. That is horrible!

[incapsulated]

2. I'm on the east side and the delivery guys are all African immigrants

I always give them a big tip because I was suspicious this was going on, but I'm not sure. :grr:

[BurtWorm]

5. There was a sort of strike a few years ago from the delivery guys

and they wound up getting a deal, plus publicity that they *should* be tipped a dollar per bag delivered (and a minimum of $3).

Actually I did a search and found this Workers World story from 1999:

http://www.workers.org/ww/1999/african1125.php

NYC delivery workers organize

By Mary Owen
New York

When Mamadou Camara, 30, immigrated to the United States, he brought with him the spirit of a people's struggle that toppled military rule in his home country of Mali. It was that experience that led him, along with fellow African grocery delivery workers, to organize a two-day strike in early November to protest their exploitation by greedy delivery companies.

About 100 of the city's estimated 500 grocery-store delivery workers, mainly from West Africa, participated in the courageous walkout. It cost some of them their jobs.

Carrying signs reading "We are slaves" and "Please help set us free," they stood in front of the Food Emporium at 68th Street and Broadway to tell customers about their low wages, long hours and lack of benefits.

The delivery workers are from Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Burundi and other countries. They are employed by subcontractors--like Hearthstone Delivery, Same Day Express, Hudson Delivery and City Express. Operating with only a post office box for an address, these fly-by-night companies broker the workers' services to Food Emporium, A&P, Waldbaum's and other big chain supermarkets for a profit.

Shoppers pay $2.25 per delivery to the grocery chain, which in turn pays the delivery company. Little of that trickles back to the workers.

"It's like slavery. We work 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week for 50 cents to a dollar per delivery," Camara told Workers World. "With tips, we can make $180 per week. But you don't get good tips every day, and at some stores the tips are not as good as others."

From this paltry amount, delivery companies skim an additional $400-per-year "uniform and equipment" allowance from each worker, ostensibly to cover the cost of a couple of white shirts and a delivery cart. Under threat of being fired for the slightest infraction, the workers are sometimes forced to bag groceries in addition to trudging through the streets and up flights of stairs in the city's wealthier neighborhoods to deliver them--all for the same low per-delivery fee....

[incapsulated]

6. So they are getting a real wage now?

I hope so. I don't remember this.

[BurtWorm]

10. I doubt it.

Here's a NY Times story from that time, the only one I could find. (No follow up, for some reason.) It's like something out of Dickens or Upton Sinclair. Horrible!:



http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70A15F93B5E0C738DDDA80994D1494D81

To New Yorkers who are harried or too infirm to carry their own groceries, the delivery service that most supermarkets offer is a bargain. At Food Emporium, for example, delivery costs $2.25, no matter how many bags are lugged, no matter how many flights of stairs are climbed.

The two companies that control most of New York's delivery service, City Express Delivery and Hudson Delivery, list only post office boxes as addresses. The owner of City Express, Charlie Bauer, did not return several messages left with a woman at his office who claimed she did not know the company's location. Those who work for Mr. Bauer said he pays the lowest wages in the business, about 50 to 70 cents a delivery.

Mr. Weinstein, the president of Hudson Delivery, said his employees make $200 to $300 for 40-hour weeks. ''My guys make a good living and they love their jobs,'' he said, adding that the strike was an elaborate ruse by Mr. Camara to steal away his 26-year-old business. Mr. Camara denied that he was trying to start his own delivery business.

Both companies employ the men as independent contractors; they receive no health benefits, no paid vacations and are not covered by most labor laws. But after meeting with the strikers last week, officials with UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, said the men were full-time employees, not independent contractors. ''It's a typical ploy employers use to skirt the law,'' said Mike Donovan, an organizer.

Randy Wilson, a spokesman for the United States Department of Labor, said it seemed unlikely that the deliverymen could be considered independent contractors, who determine their own hours and work conditions. And the National Labor Relations Board is investigating whether the men were illegally fired because of their organizing activities.

Even if the men were to be considered independent contractors, federal law requires employers to verify their residency status. Hiring an undocumented worker carries fines as high as $2,500, said Mark Thorn, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 1995, a delivery company owned by Mr. Weinstein was cited by the agency for hiring 12 illegal African workers.

[Edweird]

3. that sucks! Here it's reversed, No Tipping Allowed.

[Extend a Hand]

4. I worked in a bag-your-own grocery store

in Alabama in the early 1980's. Back then there were always a number of mostly retired older men that would sit on the benches and offer to bag and/or provide a ride to people for a tip. They were called jitney men. Bus service in Birmingham really sucked and a lot of the older customers depended on these men to help them get home and unload groceries.

I'm not really sure they would have wanted to be store employees-- I think it was partly a social thing sitting there chatting with each other and customers. They certainly wouldn't have been able to provide transportation and go into customer's homes had they been employed by the store.

[itsrobert]

7. This is standard at Military commissaries (grocery stores) worldwide

These baggers make a lot of money on the tips. I rather bag my own and save my money, but they won't let you do that.

[MADem]

9. Funny, I posted about the military commissaries below...

I don't mind giving them a few bucks. You're helping out the spouse of a junior or mid grade enlisted, usually, or their kids.

[MADem]

8. They do that in the military commissaries, too. However, those jobs are coveted

and there is usually a waiting list of people who want the positions. The reason for this is because you can make twenty bucks an hour, cash, if you hustle...sometimes even more on the really busy days.

The baggers in the commissaries not only bag, but they haul your stuff to your car and help load it. Each trip, unless the shopper is a total ASS, is worth three bucks, at least. Occasionally the 'sports' will toss the baggers a five.

Of course, it's longstanding tradition, this system, and everyone who shops there knows the baggers work just for tips, so even if you only have a bag or two and don't need help getting to the car, it's good form to give the bagger a buck. The baggers are military spouses and in summertime and on weekends, kids of military personnel...so these aren't "give us this day our daily bread" positions.

I can't see it working at civilian supermarkets, though, especially the ones in areas where food costs an arm and a leg. People are too accustomed to having their grocieries bagged as part of the total store service. At commissaries, though, even in areas where food isn't expensive, you save a bundle, so you're more inclined to be generous to the baggers, plus, the system is pretty much the same wherever you go, so it's more of a custom than it is out on the regular economy.

[BayCityProgressive]

11. the thing is

the stores are already profiting from you shopping there..yet they expect yout o pay their employees wages too. Give me a break.

[MADem]

13. I agree with what you say. The commissaries don't make any profit, you see.

They charge five percent over their actual costs to pay for incidentals and have an operating fund. They take in enough to pay the employees, stock the shelves, pay the light bill, and pay for maintenance. They have that five percent slop fund, that takes care of contingencies (act of God destruction, for example) and it also goes towards future MILCON, and some of it may go to MWR/MWA as well.

For these reasons, the food is very cheap in these stores. They can get good deals through economies of scale, and on AVERAGE, you will do better shopping in the commissary. I notice that, where I live, I am better off buying fresh produce locally--it's less expensive and the quality is better--but even in my area, where food is cheap, I can still save plenty at the commissary. In places like DC it REALLY makes a difference.

So, if you're saving anywhere from twenty to fifty bucks--or more, if you have a huge family--on your groceries, it's nothing but a thing to toss a military spouse or a dependent a few dollars for loading up your car for you. And, like I said, the custom goes back many decades. I grew up in a military family, and I remember that being the norm back then...and that was a LONG time ago! I'm heading to the commissary tomorrow (storm coming, gotta stock up!)and I'll have my tip ready....

But it's not the same deal with civilian grocery stores at all. That's a profit-making exercise. The commissary isn't. It's there as a benefit for active duty and retired personnel and their families, not as a business where the goal is to make money.

[dysfunctional press]

12. some valet jobs in vegas can be like that...VERY coveted positions.

and you stand to make a WHOLE lot more than $20/hr. afaik though, the valets are paid a wage, but make their actual REAL money with tips.

[MADem]

14. There are waiter jobs like that too...

I worked in a resort area as a teenager a zillion decades ago, and my hourly salary wasn't even a DOLLAR. Yeah, it was a LONG time ago!! But we made all our 'good' dough in tips--and those jobs were coveted too--you didn't screw up, you hustled, you showed up on time, because you'd be bounced as there were plenty of people waiting in line for those good summer jobs. Of course, that was before the IRS made you declare your tips, which made it an even more profitable exercise. You could pull in forty or fifty bucks a night on busy nights, and that was a SHITLOAD of money back in the day!

[blogslut]

15. If a person is required to be on site for a set amount of hours

Then that person should be paid a wage.