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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2002
Fred's keeps water, contract out of reach
Memphis, Tenn.--The way you are punished at the Fred's
warehouse is according to who you are. Does it have something to do with
supporting the union? I believe so. Office people are allowed up to 12 or 13 occurrences before
they are disciplined. They're in the air-conditioned offices. But the warehouse
people that are sweating out there busting our butts every day, we're only
allowed to get four before we're put on probation, and five before we're
terminated. There have been times that I needed to leave early and the
supervisor would tell me that I would get penalized one whole occurrence even
after working half the day. Other people may not get an occurrence at all. There's a lot of discrimination. The Latinos may work five
hours before getting a break. They work them just relentlessly. They might tell
them that they're not going to get a lunch break, to go ahead and finish the
work. After we started organizing the union, management started
tampering with the time clocks to try to make people late. They know people set
their watches to the time clocks and hang out until it's time to come in. In a
few instances, the time clock was moved up five or six minutes and everybody
noticed. If you're one minute late, that is one whole occurrence. There's no
such thing as a grace period. In the summertime, if it's 80 degrees outside, it's 95
inside the warehouse. They removed a water fountain so that the order pickers
had to leave their work areas just to get water. Every work area is supposed to
have water. They say you can't have your own water jugs on the floor, then they
tell you that you can't leave your work area to get water. It's a Catch-22. The people who have been terminated, we are all union
advocates. In my case they say they fired me for production--unsatisfactory job
performance. I've been doing the same job for two years as a forklift operator
in the put away department. I've never seen in the handbook where we have a production
standard. I don't even know if there is a production standard. Now all of a
sudden you're going to fire me for production? It was only because I was an
outspoken union advocate –Black warehouse worker |
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