“Somehow, I went from the best
kind of baker to the worst.”
BREAD LINE
had the right to bargain collectively,” said Kyle Schilling, a baker
who claims to have lost work
hours due to the campaign. “They
make it so that it’s almost impossible. They just wear you down.”
AN ANTI-UNION CLIMATE
There’s nothing inherently lowwage or low-benefit about the
bakers’ work or even fast-food
work, according to Eileen Appelbaum, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Their circumstances are
largely due to the weak presence
of unions or other labor advocacy
groups in their broader industry,
she argued. Until food and service
workers have more representation, she said, low-wage and poverty jobs will continue to prevail.
“What made manufacturing
jobs good jobs? Not all the skills.
Unions,” Appelbaum said. “If not
the unions of the past, we need
some employee representation. ...
We have so many low-wage jobs.”
Many fast-food employees seem
to have tired of the stagnant wages and lack of benefits. This past
November, more than a hundred
fast-food workers walked off their
jobs at McDonald’s, Wendy’s and
Burger King restaurants for a oneday strike in New York City, urging
such chains to pay a living wage.
In 2010, a group of workers for
Jimmy John’s sandwich shops in
Minnesota tried to unionize. The
workers earned roughly the minimum wage and received no paid
sick days. They narrowly lost the
election by a vote of 87 to 85. Prounion employees accused the Jimmy John’s franchisee of pressuring employees to vote against the
union. (Last year, a judge ordered
the company to rehire workers it
wrongfully dismissed. Two years
after being fired, the workers are
still waiting, due to appeals.)
Despite the pressure from
management, the Panera workers
voted 11 to 7 in favor of the union
last March.
Nearly a year later, however,
they still aren’t recognized as a
union, as Saber’s company challenges the bargaining unit that
the labor board determined for
the election. The union election
involved 18 bakers in the Western
Michigan market; Bread of Life
management has said the appropriate unit would have been 45
bakers. (Employers often prefer a
HUFFINGTON
03.10.13