Workers
I try now to write sparingly in OP about matters pertaining to our local grocery co-op, Weaver Street Market, where I attempt to be an active worker-owner.
But the WSM management are currently proposing changes to the WSM Board Policy ‘Treatment of Staff’ which dramatically diminish the few remaining co-operative and economic rights WSM employees still retain, and we workers need the support of the some 18,000 WSM consumer-owners in rejecting these changes.
We workers learned of the proposed changes only this past Friday (October 16), and we have until October 26 to register objection.
WSM Employee Policy (as of two years ago) now prevents me reproducing the text of the proposed changes publicly. In what one local newspaper editor has described as an anti-whistleblower whistleblower policy.
The work conditions that day laborers experience are an ongoing issue in Orange County. Through the work of Orange County Justice United, I have learned that day laborers in Orange County are often both Latino and African American, contrary to popular thought that all are illegal immigrants. Some of the Latino day laborers are here legally, but are unable to find work in the formal economy. Many of our day laborers face challenges including wage theft and unsafe work conditions where they may be injured, but do not have insurance to cover treatment, and run the risk of being robbed of their pay, often given in cash.
As an active worker-owner with Weaver Street Market Co-operative these past six years, I have worked hard not only to help WSM be successful as a business, but also as a model for democratic co-operation. It is with regret that I have to report that WSM continues to fail on both counts. It is time now to begin an active, community-wide conversation about the future financial and co-operative direction of WSM, and I invite OrangePolitics to take part in that conversation.
Bottom line: WSM has a crippling long-term debt of $8 million, incurred undemocratically in order to pay for the dubious expansion project of 2007/2008. That debt is costing our co-op millions in capital and interest repayments each year. Hence, the need for the 15% sales increase in 2011. With similar efforts required in the next four years.
It is WSM workers who are having to make those repayments by working ever harder, for less. We get longer opening hours. Less shift hours. Insufficient staff support. Paltry pay raises. And no dividend (haven't seen one for the past three years).
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