In December 2021, Winifer Pena Ruiz got a new job at a Chipotle in the Bronx. She was an aspiring student, and she hoped the work slinging burritos would help finance her future education.
Unions are the only way for the employees to protect themselves from management (speaking as one who was both a manager and later a union steward). The management principle is that all workers can be replaced if they “get out of line” and after all in their opinion the only people who deserve to be paid are managers and shareholders.
You’d think it’s because they view the people as just objects to be used and abused, but it’s worse. You’re not even an object, a “thing”…you’re less than one. Can they skimp on the kitchen buildout? Nope. Can they buy install shitty equipment such that they’re constantly replacing it? Nope. Can they just pay whatever rent they please? Nope. Can they skimp on the health and fire codes? Nope. Can they serve you wilted, rotting shit as a food product? Nope…no matter how hard Subway tries. Can they fail to post marginal growth, not just profit, to keep the shareholders happy? Nope. Can they just skip buying cleaning supplies? Nope. So what’s left? Functional slavery for the personnel and a political system that translates the employer-employee wealth disparity into the power to protect and maintain that system while reducing the “functional” caveat as much as possible.
Welcome back to the Gilded Age, my friends. We have some who build private rocket ships and others go to be hungry at night. What a country! Also too, let’s bring back some good union busting. Can’t let the serfs get too comfortable.
Stopped eating there the first time they spread Novo Virus. No reason to go back. Try Moe’s, they are better.
Sure is too bad “no one wants to work”.
But of course since the places hit by staff shortages typically serve the middle class it’s something of a twofer.
I sure do hope there’s no junior assistant Chik Fil A manager lurking to learn about Ms Ruiz’s efforts.
The kitchen of a real Mexican restaurant is full of people who want to work! All hidden from public view of course.
As the Harvard professor comments, it takes heroic efforts for American workers in the private sector to form a union or join one, partly because federal law has, thanks to decades of right-wing effort, evolved in ways to discourage rather than permit union organizing. In addition to which, every Republican administration from Reagan on has put corporate-owner-friendly, worker-hostile appointees on the National Labor Relations Board so that the direction of the board constantly shifts with the political winds, and workers lose ground in each of these administrations, while partly winning it back when a Democratic president is in office.
Haven’t been back in forever either, but if my local one unionizes I will be a weekly regular.
‘"Since I’ve worked at Chipotle, I’ve never seen my coworkers take the temperature of the chicken,” another worker at Ruiz’s restaurant told TPM.’
They really, really need to check temperatures to keep things safe. Public Health 101. Sounds like bad management, inadequate training, etc.
So, this particular store has some management problems that could affect public health. Instead of firing her, the supervisor should have asked what was up, found out about who trained who, and corrected the problem. The apparent piss poor communication regarding scheduling seems also to be a management problem at this store.
I’ve read where Chipotle was a great place to work hard and advance. It will take some digging to see if such problems are the same at other stores.
Chipotle needs to take the bull by the horns here and see what happened. Job one is protecting public health. But employees need to be treated reasonably and have input into scheduling decisions and be able to speak out especially where public health could be at risk.
Along with unionization activity increasing, public support for unions is at its highest level since the 60s:
This is one of the positives of our current political moment. Not just for the sake of workers, but because unions will be vital in the fight pushing back against the right and capital’s support of it.
Taking the temperature of a chicken.
We’re still fighting the GM sitdown strikes of 85 years ago. There, one of the benefits the workers won was the right simply to talk to each other in the cafeteria during lunch.
And Alfred P. Sloan, CEO of General Motors, was as big a Nazi as Henry Ford. He did everything he could to keep management control of GM’s Opel subsidiary in Nazi Germany – which was producing war materiel for the Third Reich. GM even managed to get “reparations” for the fact that the Allies bombed the Opel plants in Brandenburg and Ruesselheim in Germany.
The rights of labor, and the predilection of corporate CEOs for fascism, hasn’t changed in three-quarters of a century.
https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/hitlers-carmaker
They have incredibly dedicated workers featured in their commercials who not only provide you with the “best” guacamole but are religiously obsessed with grilling chicken.
I went to a Chipotle’s once, years ago in Austin. I was (and am) astounded that anyone would eat there in a city with a real tex-mex restaurant about every other block.
Microsoft’s neutrality when employees of one of its game companies wanted to unionize was refreshing. Most service economy employers insist on poisoning the labor-management relationship from the outset by going all Matewan on them.
